Posted on 04/01/2016 12:41:08 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
I am letting you be among the first to know. It is true. I am leaving the Catholic Church. I want you to know that this has not been a decision made in haste or without serious and intense research and consideration. But I can no longer remain in a church that I no longer believe in.
Let me explain.
I will be writing more about this soon, but for now let me just say there are five main reasons why I am leaving the Catholic Church:
1. I believe the sole rule of faith for Christians has to be Scripture. The Holy Bible is the only unchanging and definitive word of God that a Christian can build his or her life upon. Everything else, including the Catholic claims to authority, in the end, amount to ever-changing and ultimately sinking sand.
2. I believe works or any sense of salvific cooperation with God’s grace as constitutive to a Christian’s eternal life is unbiblical. “… not of works” (cf. Eph. 2:8-9) means not of works.
3. The idea of Mary and the saints being involved in the salvation of a Christian is tantamount to a denial of the sufficiency of Christ’s redeeming work on Calvary’s cross.
4. #3 can also be said of Purgatory, the “sacrifice” of the Mass, the Catholic view of salvation/justification, and more. These and more of the elements of Catholic teaching result in a denial of the sufficiency of the sacrifice of Christ. More to follow in a more detailed post.
5. What Catholics call the “veneration” of Mary and the saints is actually idolatry.
These are just for starters here. Many of you know that for the last 28 years I have defended the above teachings and more from the Catholic Church. I can no longer do so in clear conscience.
And by the way, just so you know…
April fools!
Isn't Paul a 'saint' in the Catholic church??
1 Corinthians 1:14
I thank God that I didn't baptize any of you except Crispus and Gaius
So you DO think that Mariology doctrine is essential; right?
Catholics are some of the most uninformed people of roman catholicism.
RCC baptism conveys no spiritual value. Believer’s baptism conveys no spiritual value.
WE (believers) are commanded to be baptized. It doe not save us from sin. The value is for those who need encouragement in their own faith AND as a witness to unbelievers of God’s power to save.
Normally, a believer’s testimony of what God has done for them is a vital part of the baptism. Baptism, by immersion, is a picture of the new life in Christ.
Good chance actually.
If your wife is a born again Christian ask her
She would love to bring you into the fold
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.” (John 6:35-40)
The church, the ekklesia, met in people's houses. There were small churches throughout the Roman Empire.
When did the "early Christian church" stop being "early"? They weren't meeting in houses by the 200s, they were meeting in basilicas. The Christian population of the empire was 15% by AD250, that's about 7.5 million people. There weren't 100,000 house churches spread throughout the Roman Empire.
Oh my! THAT is a satanic lie!
No it's not, it's the truth. We have a canon for the purpose of knowing which of the various books that claimed apostolic origin were fit for use at public worship. That's why Matthew's Gospel is included and The Shepherd of Hermes is not.
When the Church was compiling the canon they weren't doing it so you'd have a handy dandy printed copy to misread.
I study the Bible in more languages than English, in a sincere effort to keep from misreading the Word of God.
BTW, are you aware that the Bible itself contradicts your specious assertion, if you try to apply it outside of catholiciism? Faith, which is the ONLY means of salvation, comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. That a religion so distant from what Jesus started asserts that God needed them to decide what His Word is and what part of His Word should be profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, well, does thwat seem arrogant to you, full of human pride in an org rather than The Glory of God in Christ?
BTW, are you aware that the Bible itself contradicts your specious assertion, if you try to apply it outside of catholiciism?
Then
You
Are
Misreading
It
Your interpretation doesn't square with history. Was Athanasius one of your catholiciism people? If he wasn't then you have to explain away why he wrote out a NT canon for the use of the liturgy... if he WAS then you have to explain away why you aren't an Arian.
You aren't an arian are you?
The Bible books of the Old Testament were not compiled so people would know what Word of God they could use in the Synagogue. The letter Polycarp wrote to the Philipians included whole sentences from the existing letters and Gospels that were being read whenever believers gathered together, or included alluding to ssid letters, even the Revelation of John.
Do you really believe that God needed the leadership of your religion to determine which books to included in The Bible? I have to go to the catholic Bible to read the Apocrypha which were included in the Bible the hierarchy of Rome proclaimed was all that was acceptable. Do you really believe God needs your org to accomplish His purposes?
I use the spelling I do of Catholicism, to indicate that it is another religion, an ism in the same category as Mormonism. catholici plus ism, equals the religion of Rome.
And one final little note: if Truth is what catholiciism represents, why is there so much sequestered under the weight of The Vatican that is not allowed for folks to read?
The question isn't what does/did God "need" it's what does/did He use? Did He use Athanasius and many others to compile the canon of NT Scripture? I know God used him to fight off arianism and establish orthodoxy... you know the arians were sola-scripturists too don't you? The same fight that involved the canon also involved the question of Christ's Divine Humanity. It was all tied up together.
I also don't understand this: The catholic org compiled the books it decided were to be allowed. That you refuse to see that is a symptom of something we won't go into here.
In the first sentence you appear to be agreeing with me, in the second you appear to be saying I don't even agree with myself. Please explain.
Why don't you accept the Shepherd of Hermes as Scripture anyhow?
OK, you appear to be flailing around at this point. You do realize that not using something for Divine Worship (aka the Liturgy) doesn't mean it's not worthwhile, don't you?
And one final little note: if Truth is what catholiciism represents, why is there so much sequestered under the weight of The Vatican that is not allowed for folks to read?
What's that all about?
Is the Catholic Mass Liturgy?
At the risk of being accused of 'flailing around' again, do you believe God needs catholiciism to accomplish His purpose to have people born from above?
The liturgy of the Latin rite of the Church is called "the Mass (or Holy Mass, or Sacrifice of the Mass). Eastern rites (and a few western rites) do exist and they are also Liturgies.
Again, it's not what God needs, it's what God uses. I don't think it's proper to speak of "need" in relation to what God does. Does God use the Catholic Church to accomplish His purpose of having people born from above? I believe so.
He didn’t demonstrate anything but rationalized his preconceived notions.
Are you at all familiar with Tim Staples conversion story? He was a devout evangelical (Baptist and Assembly of God) whose preconceived notions were that the Catholic Church was totally wrong. After a two year long effort to prove that the Catholic Church was wrong, he came to the realization that the Catholic Church was right.
When Jesus explained Who He IS to His disciples, as recorded in John 14, He exposed to them that He IS I AM, limiting Himself to their plane of sensing. The night before He went to the Cross He was every bid an observant Jew, so He would not have violated the Levitical Laws because that would have caused Himself to not be the lamb of God without spot or blemish. So Jesus would not have given His blood to them. And He didn't, He gave them a symbol of His blood, as the cup of wine, and He even identified it as fruit of the vine as they were finishing the cup. Because that wine likely had some % of alcohol in it, preserving it without refrigeration, He di d not drink of it so that there would be no alcohol in His system during the trails which lay ahead. He even rejected on the cross the 'gaul' offered to Him, which was a form of numbing concoction.
The claims for the Catholic Liturgy are so opposite what the Bible teaches throughout (not taking a verse or two out of context and too literally when not offered in literal meaning), I cannot agree that God used the catholiciism hierarchy to decide what would be acceptable in the Catholic Liturgy. I am convinced that using Truth to support and promote a demonically inspired rite/ritual is not of God in any way.
The Bible tells us clearly what scripture is given for. The catholic Mass missuses Scripture in order to empower the ism of catholiciism. Just as the Mormons misuse Scripture to support their blasphemies.
That is where I'm coming from to this discussion. I don't want to be perceived as being deceptive. I oppose catholiciism for its claim to be the one true church, as if outside of that church there is no salvation. That is not of God.
Can we continue the Q&A? Perhaps you would like to defend catholiciism by asking me a question or two? I will strive to answer using the Scriptures, even the DR version if appropriate.
But perhaps you do not see this missive from Tim as ridicule?
I should hope so, if you believed it is true worship your excuse for remaining outside the Church would be nonexistent. I have always believed that the Catholic Church is either what she claims to be or she is entirely the work of the devil, there is no middle ground.
He gave them a symbol of His blood
And yet He said "is" an awful lot.
Regardless, let's talk about when the Catholic Church actually arrived on the scene because I think it's the People that Christ established as His own. I'm thinking you must have some point in time when Catholiicism came into being. When the first Mass was, for instance.
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