Just returned. My have we been busy!
First, the assembly I attend has no pastor. We have elders, deacons, and a preacher. All of which are members of the congregation.
As to all the other issues... Wanting something to be doesn't make it so. Continued repetition of lies, no matter how many centuries the lies have been in existence, does not eventually cause them to be true. The RCC does not have a monopoly on God, His Word, His power on earth, or anything else of, from or by God. Far, far from it.
Again, I implore those who seek Truth to read Scripture. Don't invest your eternal destiny in mere men. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you in the way He does, through study of God's Word!
You mean the lies of the Protestant "Reformation". What I meant was that Protestantism's ideas about Christianity would have been every bit as novel to the early Christians as those of the Jehovah's Witnesses.
As to all the other issues... Wanting something to be doesn't make it so. Continued repetition of lies, no matter how many centuries the lies have been in existence, does not eventually cause them to be true. The RCC does not have a monopoly on God, His Word, His power on earth, or anything else of, from or by God. Far, far from it.
>>Have you ever bothered reading the early Fathers of the Church without the blinders of your Protestant partisanship on? I challenge you to do what I did. Try to discover whether the earliest Christians understood the Scriptures the way you do today, or were they closer to what Catholics or the Orthodox believe? That's a rhetorical question.
>>The only thing here with you is fear of being wrong. Where does your sect get its authority to interpret the Bible, not to mention you personally? The Torah wasn't subject to private interpretation under the Old Covenant, nor is the Gospel in the New Covenant.
>>Understanding history is to cease to be a Protestant. I got saved by joining Christ's original Church, the Catholic Church. To say the Roman Catholic Church didn't exist until centuries later is bunk. Perhaps the rigid, regimented structures developed later, but the kernel of the episcopacy, not to mention the local Church of Rome existed from the First Century.
>>Pope St. Clement I, a student of Sts. Peter and Paul, wrote a commentary on the apostolic preachings around 90 A.D. When did your sect start?