past my bed time, so this is all for tonight. Acts 22:16, Saul had his sins washed away by baptism. God is the one who does the baptizing, thru the Church, His Body. the thief was saved as everyone who was saved in the OT was. in the NT, “he who believes and is baptized will be saved” we must come thru the door established by Jesus, not what seems right to us. again, your way of thinking was unknown for 1,500 years, that should give you pause.
Except for the pesky detail that for all Catholics castigate non-Catholics for not taking the words of Jesus above other Scripture, they sure are quick enough to elevate anything and everything else above Jesus' own words when it suits their purposes.
Jesus told us time and again to simply believe Him and in Him.
The thief on the cross had no time to be baptized. The tax collector praying at the temple went away justified.
When asked by the Jews what works to do for eternal life, He told them that the work of God is to believe in Him.
He told us time and again, that belief is what justifies and condemns tradition, the very thing that the RC church places above the very words of Jesus.
That Catholic church has changed radically over the centuries. There is no consistency in what it believes. It places way too much stock in tradition and the opinion pieces of ancient writings. Many of those whom the church considers church fathers, have works attributed to them that turned out to either be fraudulent or heretical.
The RC church has a fantastic tendency to pick and choose what to believe to support its doctrine and discard anything that disagrees with it, Scripture included.
If that's the kind church you want to put your stock in, one built on sinking sand, by all means, you have that right. But as you like to say, *by their fruit you will know them* and the fruit of the Catholic church that we see today is anything but godly. It's corrupt to the core. It's reaping in the whirlwind what was sown in the wind.
I'll remain part of the one built on the Rock of Jesus and His Word.
But you can't say you weren't warned.