Posted on 04/10/2017 6:40:46 PM PDT by fishtank
Evangelical Apologist Hank Hanegraaff Converts to Eastern Orthodoxy
Posted by: Rob Bowman
On Palm Sunday, April 9, 2017, Hank Hanegraaff formally joined the Orthodox Church. Since 1989 Hanegraaff has been the President of the Christian Research Institute (CRI) and (since ca. 1992) the host of CRI’s Bible Answer Man radio program.[1] Hank, his wife Kathy, and two of their twelve children were inducted by a sacramental rite called chrismation into the Orthodox faith at St. Nektarios Greek Orthodox Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, near where CRI is based. In chrismation, a baptized individual is anointed with oil in order to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.[2]
(Excerpt) Read more at religiousresearcher.org ...
Were you a hypocrite who demanded respect from Protestants while refusing to give any in return? That's what we deal with here
Well, I don't think I was quite like that. I thought born again Christians were wrong, and I had a certain amount of animosity toward them, but it wasn't all consuming to me.
You know, even at my most "fundamental" I always had a certain respect for the ancient churches. I found out they not only didn't return the favor, but spent all their time attacking Fundamentalist Protestantism almost to the exclusion of anything else.
Sheesh. I couldn't pick up a Liguorian or a Catholic Digest or one of the publications in the orbit of the Our Sunday Visitor without reading attacks on Biblical inerrancy, on the historicity of Genesis, on Jonah's fish, etc. They attacked Jonah's fish more often than they attacked abortion!
It's a sad thing that they've allowed their ethno-cultural prejudices to determine so many of their positions. I find it difficult now to have any respect for them at all, especially when they attack the "liturgical poverty" of Fundamentalists when they spent two thousand years trying to destroy the practice of Judaism (because it was "dead and faithless;" does that sound familiar???).
Yes, a little, maybe. As I said, I went to catholic schools, all through high school, and did not have any contact with born again Christians, plus, all I wanted to do, was play sports, so spiritual issues didn't interest me much, until I got to to the Air Force.
It wasn't a direct word-for-word quote, but that is rich you scolding me for cutting (copying) and pasting - as if there is anything wrong with that - it most certainly IS relevant that many early church fathers did not hold that the Deuterocanonicals/Apocrypha were Divinely-inspired writings. Why do Catholics discount the Jewish view of these books as NOT being from God? Unto them were given the "Oracles of God", why would they NOT receive them like all the other books in the Tanakh?
As for having a choice in how I view these books, I don't have the same mandate as you do nor would I reject what was genuinely Holy Spirit-breathed Sacred Scripture? I have read these books and I do not hear the voice of God through them like the others of the Bible. Do they say some thoughtful or inspiring things? Yes, but they are NOT from the Spirit of God. They do not have the power and the authority of the inspired books nor do they EVER claim to be the voice or word of God. A few even admit there WERE no prophets in the land at their time!
The Masoretic Text does not contain those books. The Septuagint had FIFTEEN extra books and Rome tossed out all but seven for the Catholic canon. So there goes your "they were in the Septuagint" argument. We also learn from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masoretic_Text:
The Masoretic Text was primarily copied, edited and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries CE. Though the consonants differ little from the text generally accepted in the early 2nd century (and also differ little from some Qumran texts that are even older), it has numerous differences of both greater and lesser significance when compared to the manuscripts of the Septuagint, a Greek translation (about 1000 years older than the MT made in the 3rd to 2nd centuries BCE) of the Hebrew Scriptures that was in popular use in Egypt and Israel (and was used in the quotations in the New Testament, especially by Paul the Apostle).
BTW...thousands of writings were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, so the appearance of extra-Biblical books certainly doesn't make them canonical either. You may as well give up your insulting and pathetic bullying as if you will change anyone's mind by force. Like I already said, I have no reason nor desire to reject what is genuinely from the Holy Spirit. Those books don't teach the doctrines Catholics presume they do - which was why the Reformation spurred the Council of Trent to dogmatically define them as canonical. There is a higher standard for what is God-breathed Scripture and no man has the authority to tell God what he will or will not accept and obey when God has spoken. His voice is NOT there in those books. It just is not.
Wait till you have to deal with the Iglesia ni Cristo. You haven't seen hate and discontent, till you have dealt with them. They make those you describe, look like pikers. The Iglesia ni Cristo, is a cult, with a capital C.
By the way, I forgot to mention, one priest, in our Catholic religion class, told us, that that the sin of Adam, was sexual in nature, and the Flood of Noah, was only a small local Flood. I doubt there are many priests who teach that, but at least he did. Weird, huh?
“Oh how ironic. You scold Protestants for rejecting religion when your religion began as a “protestant” rejection of the religion your founder practiced!”
No irony. My religion’s founder is God. He founded Judaism. He founded the Catholic Church. Jews wanted nothing to do with Christians. They had rejected Jesus and demanded His crucifixion. (We commemorate that very event today no less.) Jews later banned Christians from the Temple and synogogue. In other words, we did not reject Judaism. Judaism rejected its God and His followers.
That will be my last comment to you in this thread.
But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Jesus, who healed on the Sabbath and was condemned by the religious establishment.
You betcha He taught relationship and not religion. He condemned religious activity without the more important things of the heart, truth, and mercy, and justice.
It's all about becoming right with God and becoming His CHILDREN.
That is relationship, not religious works.
THANK GOD that peop[le are finding Jesus and that religion is not keeping them from Him any more.
Jesus taught what you criticize as a *simplistic gospel.*
Jesus didn't make it hard. Religion makes it hard.
He taught was that salvation was by faith, believing on Him and that we were secure in that salvation.
He doesn't disown us every time we mess up. He's a better Father than that.
John 3:3-8 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
John 3:14-18 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
John 5:24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
John 6:40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
John 11:25-26 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
“It wasn’t a direct word-for-word quote, but that is rich you scolding me for cutting (copying) and pasting - as if there is anything wrong with that...”
WITHOUT ATTRIBUTION. Not surprisingly you left that part out - as you leave out so many necessary details that completely change the sense of what someone said. I said: “So clearly you’re cutting and pasting and passing it off as your own. Lovely.”
“I have read these books and I do not hear the voice of God through them like the others of the Bible.”
Oh, so divinely inspired actually just boils down to your feelings. Well, gee, of course it does. You’re a Protestant. It has nothing to do with God Himself, or His Church, or what early Christians had and used and believed. Nope. It’s all about what you “hear” with you’re incredibly flawed understanding of reality. Yeah, that’s a reliable measure.
“The Masoretic Text does not contain those books.”
And it also contains not a single book of the New Testament. So?
https://theorthodoxlife.wordpress.com/2012/03/12/masoretic-text-vs-original-hebrew/
“Those books don’t teach the doctrines Catholics presume they do...”
Oh? Please state all the “doctrines” we “presume” they teach. While you’re at it do the same thing for the Books of Ruth and Esther. When you flounder on that - which you especially will on Ruth and Esther - what will then be obvious?
” - which was why the Reformation spurred the Council of Trent to dogmatically define them as canonical. There is a higher standard for what is God-breathed Scripture and no man has the authority to tell God what he will or will not accept and obey when God has spoken. His voice is NOT there in those books. It just is not.”
Your opinion is irrelevant to God. Some, with your way of looking at things, have decided (based solely on their feelings just like you admitted) that the Book of Revelation is not inspired. All you’re doing is proving that Protestantism is nothing but a joke. It all rests on the feelings of people who can decide whatever they want about scripture and still insist they believe in sola scriptura - even when it comes to denying the inspiration of entire books of the Bible.
Jesus taught what you criticize as a *simplistic gospel.*
Jesus didn't make it hard. Religion makes it hard.
He taught was that salvation was by faith, believing on Him and that we were secure in that salvation.
He doesn't disown us every time we mess up. He's a better Father than that.
John 3:3-8 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
John 3:14-18 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
John 5:24 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.
John 6:40 For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
John 11:25-26 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
Then one can conclude that both the EO and the Romans are being silly in allowing petty little differences to put them in schism for a thousand years or more.
“Jesus, who healed on the Sabbath and was condemned by the religious establishment.”
And what was Jesus’ response? He condemned their HYPOCRISY. You’re proving my point.
“You betcha He taught relationship and not religion.”
No. He taught that religion without relationship just leads to hypocrisy. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+23
“He condemned religious activity without the more important things of the heart, truth, and mercy, and justice.”
As I just said, He taught that religion without relationship just leads to hypocrisy. The problem so many “Jesus, but not religion” Protestants have is that they:
1) forget that they HAVE a religion too. Instead they assume that what everyone else has is a religion.
2) have erroneously come to believe that Jesus denounced religion. He never did. He denounced hypocrisy.
3) forget Christianity itself is a religion. Christ founded it.
Fer sure.....
er.... not to Mark being a hypocrite......
He never had it before?
That’s one slick response!
Without oil, one’s gonna be squeaky.
Some might even say “He’s quite freaky!”
But never the less,
If Christ you confess
You’ll no longer appear quite so geeky.
A reasonable reply.
Well; maybe HE isn't....
Which PALES in light of the Magnificence of the Only True Church: Roman Catholicism!!!
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