Replies

No one in the first century talked about being a Roman Catholic: its not in the words of the Bible.
///
No one in the first century talked about ... the Bible.

it didn’t exist. so much for “sola scriptura”.

...there was ONE universal church.
(like in Ephesians)
and scripture talks about the importance of not letting false teachers and Satan divide it.
(tickle in the ear, Church of Timothy and Titus).

it was only referred to as Roman, after (Jew hating) Luther betrayed his oath to God, and split the church, and removed books from the Bible
(which condemns any who add OR remove even a single verse...)

Holy scripture also says some scripture is too hard to understand yourself, and you need (annointed) leaders to guide you.
scripture itself refers to a specific important scripture verse, that is NOT in the current Bible !

the Bible itself, refutes sola scriptura, in many ways.

I have never heard of anyone calling the original Apostles of Christ or even the later ones like Paul, Roman Catholic or even Catholic.

While you may find the term “one” Church in early writings it took a while for the term “universal” Church to become popular.

Early Christians from Jerusalem were definitely different than Christians of today. Many of their beliefs would seem strange to us. Many of us can’t even tithe, much less give all to the church. If we thought that we would be struck dead by not giving all we had to the church we would probably not have anything to do with that church.

Today we have learned men who go to seminaries and know much more about the scriptures than us plain folk could possibly understand. They have presented to us a Catechism and creed that we may not be able to fully understand but they assure us that with their higher understanding of scripture and ordinations that they are correct. When you mix the learning of man over centuries with what is left of scripture you come up with what we now have in the major Jewish and Christian religions of the day.

These learned men have fortunately been able to explain to us that even though it looks to us that certain practices like homosexuality and sex outside of marriage are forbidden in the scriptures in reality we misunderstand because of our lack of understanding and learning. That these practices and many others are OK because by declaring that we believe in Christ all things will be forgiven us and that sin is no longer possible once we have accepted Christ. To prove the acceptability of these practices they, our leaders practice them themselves and ordain others who do also.

Unfortunately there are many that will not listen to the reason of these learned men who over the centuries have compiled the doctrines of the “true” universal church we have today. These people who will not listen claim that through the “Spirit” they have found something that the wise and learned have missed and then start their own church based on this newly found doctrine. So now we have thousands of “Christian” denominations and sects that are at odds with the “Universal” Church.

I don’t understand why we can’t just let these learned, ordained seminarians do our thinking for us and just follow them.