Posted on 04/01/2016 12:41:08 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
The Athanasian Creed Whoever wishes to be saved must, above all, keep the CATHOLIC faith. For unless a person keeps this faith whole and entire, he will undoubtedly be lost forever. This is what the CATHOLIC faith teaches:
Prots NEVER concert to Catholicism, they were Baptized Catholic and merely return to it.
It's what the early Church taught in defense against Arianism. I'm supposed to believe it, but it's difficult. It's very hard to believe that God will damn all those in the various sects who have resisted the Catholic Faith, especially those who have had contact with Catholics. If I had to rely on the witness of the priests and the people I certainly wouldn't be Catholic.
It's equally difficult to believe that God became Man to save us from our sins. The whole of the Incarnation seems too fantastic to believe... but I do.
Basically you're asking me if I believe the dogmatic definition of "Outside the Church there is no salvation". I believe it, I don't know what it really means anymore. I sleep at nights by hoping that at the moment of death God reveals Himself to each person and lets them choose. I have no theological foundation for believing that but I've got to sleep somehow.
NIV 1 Corinthians 4:6 Now, brothers, I have applied these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, so that you may learn from us the meaning of the saying, "Do not go beyond what is written." Then you will not take pride in one man over against another.And
For we do not write you anything you cannot read or understand.
Timmy casts out demons???
Blame the person who posted it rather than those who recognized it for what it was - another stealth non-catholic Christian bashing.
I believe the dead in Christ are alive with Him, now. They know now what we only thought we might know, someday. They know the living Christ, Son of God and Friend, the Friend who loves them. Their Lord, their Jesus, their Savior, their Friend.
He said to the thief on the cross beside him, 'Today you will be with me in Paradise.'
A friend of mine died this week. No, he didn't die, he passed on...from all the frailties that the human condition can bestow, to an eternal presence with his Savior, Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God. Yesterday, my comment to his wife, 'Tom is now in a better place'.
No organization can do that. Only by God's Grace are there ANY born from above. And being born from above is what Jesus Himself explained to Nicodemus must happen to have God in you. You cannot eat God into you. You cannot 'do' anything that will earn such Grace as God has offered to us in Him taking a human body and dwelling among us. Let me illustrate.
When in John 14 Philip says to Jesus, 'lord, just show us disciples The Father God Almighty, and that will be enough so we are sure you are Messiah, The Son of God, Son of Man, God with us.' I use single quote marks because I am paraphrasing slightly.
What Jesus responded to Philip could only come from God, God The Creator Who has intimate knowledge of How He constructed the Universe. BUT, though it was somewhat enigmatic in Philip's day, in our day we have a deeper understanding of Physics which allows us to see a bit clearer what Jesus was telling His dear friends.
I'll paraphrase it, then quote the Bible verses. Jesus gave them a lesson in dimensional limits. These men were spacetime limited as to what they could see. God is so much greater than the spacetime coordinate system in which we live now that there is no way to see any more of God than where He intersects the spacetime of us. Now it is true that God occasionally gave greater dimensional capabilitied to creatures, like when the Prophet and his young understudy were surrounded by an army chasing them,and the Prophet asks God to 'open the understudy's eyes to see more of what was 'there' and the Army camped upon the heights suddenly became clear ... to the understaudy AND the army chasing the Prophet! The chasers ran away in panic! So here is what Jesus told Philip:
John 14: 5 Thomas asked him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you have known me, you will also know my Father. From now on you know him and have seen him.”
8 Philip told him, “Lord, show us the Father, and that will satisfy us.”
9 “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?” Jesus asked him. “The person who has seen me has seen the Father. So how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 You believe, don’t you, that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I don’t speak on my own. It is the Father who dwells in me and who carries out his work. 11 Believe me, I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Otherwise, believe me because of what I’ve been doing.
Maybe you're wondering how this addresses uncertainty? ... Jesus was, in His physical body before the Resurrection, GOD with us. What God says you can take to the eternity bank. And GOD as Jesus told us that the work GOD requires is to believe on Whom God has sent for our salvation. WHEN one believes in Jesus as the ONLY means for salvation, that we cannot earn that Great Grace of God, THEN one is born from above. We see the results of so simple a plan in Acts, ont he day of Pentecost. we see it in the House of Cornelius. In fact, if we are growing in Grace and knowledge, we see it often as people awaken to the Grace of God in Christ and believe He is their Redeemer. No org can do that for us. ONLY God can do that bringing us from our limits to His greater Glory of His family with His Spirit life in us. Once born from above, we are cautioned by Paul to find a body of fellow believers and gather together with them for strength and growth and feeding on the Word which nourishes the Spirit, not the body.
Jesus PROMISED, Where two or more of my Body are gathered together in my name, there, right there, am I in the midst of them. Dimensionally, He can be right there yet unseen, just as whomever wrote on the wall in Palace party central of Daniel chapter Five was right there but only6 a hand shown in the room as it wrote on the wall.
When I say my prayers at night, I am absolutely certain God hears them all, because I am in Him and He in me by HIS PROMISE not my presumption.
Amen!
Yes, I can see the haters have indeed shown up.
That sounds adequate to me.
Do you even have a clue about the whole purpose of the law and the priesthood?
Nobody said God got anything wrong. Stop putting words in people's mouths.
FWIW, I find the projection of Catholics onto non-Catholic Christians very enlightening as Catholics try to presume they know what others are thinking when they make their wild assumptions about what's going on in someone else's mind.
Well, we’ve already had a brilliant display of the catholic knowledge of the written Word previously on this thread.
With the exception of Elsie, who has posted his denominational affiliation, I have absolutely no clue where the rest of the born again believers who frequent these threads worship or affiliate with. Nor do I care.
Our unity is in Christ, not religion.
We are related by the new birth, not by church membership.
With the exception of Elsie, who has posted his denominational affiliation, I have absolutely no clue where the rest of the born again believers who frequent these threads worship or affiliate with. Nor do I care.
Our unity is in Christ, not religion.
We are related by the new birth, not by church membership.
Preach it, brother.
So profound a TRUTH, so succinctly delivered!
“We are related by the new birth, not by church membership.”
I had to attend a funeral service once in a RC church. A priest gave the eulogy and told us about his own mother’s funeral.
Your post reminded me of this story.
The priest told us how he excluded one verse from “Amazing Grace” (his mother’s favorite hymn) because his mother was no “wretch.”
All the Catholic women swooned. I just wondered how the man could be so ignorant.
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