Free Republic

Purgatory is in the Bible This may well be the most common single question I receive concerning our Catholic Faith whether it be at conferences, via email, snail mail, or any other venue. In fact, I’ve answered it twice today already, so I thought I might just blog about it.We’ll begin by making clear just what we mean by “Purgatory.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches:All who die in God’s grace, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary to enter the...

The Papacy in Scripture – More Than Matthew 16 In an earlier blog post, I made the point that the role of St. Peter and his successors is made remarkably clear in Matthew 16:18-19 and its immediate context:And I tell you, you are Peter (Gr.—petros—‘rock’), and on this rock (Gr.—petra—‘rock’) I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.Jesus...

Washington, DC (LiveActionNews) — Heaven is for Real is a new movie based on a book by pastor and father Todd Burpo. Burpo wrote the book after his 4-year-old son Colton had a near-death experience that lead to a heavenly encounter. After Colton recovered, he began telling his parents remarkable stories, like meeting the sister he never knew in heaven. Although Colton had no knowledge of his mom’s miscarriage, he told his parents he met a girl who told him she died in his mother’s tummy. The bestselling book and film have inspired countless people, giving them hope that heaven...

Is Confession Biblical? The Lord declares in Isaiah 43:25:I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.Psalm 103:2-3 adds:Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases…Many will use these verses against the idea of confession to a priest. God forgiving sins, they will claim, precludes the possibility of there being a priest who forgives sins. Further, Hebrews 3:1 and 7:22-27 tell us Jesus is, “the… high priest of our confession” and that there are...

(continued from Part 2) 5. How did the preacher's message begin? The message began as a true word from God and was given as truth because God's purpose was to transmit truth. It was ordered by God as truth and was delivered by God's Spirit in cooperation with holy men who received it with exactly the pure quality that God intended (2 Pet. 1:20-21). It was received as Scriptura inerrantis by the prophets and apostles, i.e., without wandering from Scripture's original formulation in the mind of God. Inerrancy then expresses the quality with which the writers of our canon received...

John MacArthur We believe in biblical inerrancy. So what? How does the truth of biblical inerrancy and the authority of God's written revelation affect what we preach and how we minister? There's little point in defending the inerrancy of Scripture if we're unwilling to bow to the authority of Scripture in our approach to ministry. This article is adapted from a paper written by John MacArthur at the height of the inerrancy debate in the early 1980s. The theological highlight of 20th Century had to be evangelicalism's intense focus on the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. [1] Much of what was...

The Air Force Academy removed a Bible verse posted on a cadet's whiteboard after it determined the posting had offended other cadets, a spokesman for the academy said. The cadet wrote the passage on the whiteboard posted outside his room. "I have been crucified with Christ therefore I no longer live, but Christ lives in me," the verse from Galatians read. Mikey Weinstein, director of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, told me 29 cadets and four faculty and staff members contacted his organization to complain about the Christian passage. "Had it been in his room - not a problem," Weinstein...

The Last Supper"Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, 'Take, eat; this is my body.' And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, 'Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.'" (Matthew 26:26-28) God's love for us is poured out in the sacrament of the Eucharist, where Christ is truly present for us, giving us life and healing. The...

After this last Sunday's sermon at the church I attend, I got to thinking about something. My pastor has started a series on the book of Philippians, focusing on the joy of the Lord. During one of his points, he spoke of how some people get discouraged and do not think that the Lord cares about them. He referenced Isaiah 40: 26-29 which reads... Isaiah 40:26-29 (NLT) 26 Look up into the heavens. Who created all the stars? He brings them out like an army, one after another, calling each by its name. Because of his great power and incomparable...

The Apostle Paul’s directive to his son in the faith, Timothy, in 2 Timothy 2:15 carries tremendous importance and impact for any who would embark on a serious study of the Holy Bible. He exhorts Timothy: “Study to show yourself approved of God, a workman who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of God.” Let’s let that sink in, firmly. Approval of God is at stake here, he indicates, and personal shame is a consequence if one does not rightly divide the word of God. The directive to “rightly divide the word” tells us that there...

Sola Scriptura – An Unbiblical Recipe for Confusion Sola scriptura was the central doctrine and foundation for all I believed when I was Protestant. On a popular level, it simply meant, “If a teaching isn’t explicit in the Bible, then we don’t accept it as doctrine!” And it seemed so simple. And yet, I do not recall ever hearing a detailed teaching explicating it. It was always a given. Unchallenged. Diving deeper into its meaning, especially when I was challenged to defend my Protestant faith against Catholicism, I found there to be no book specifically on the topic and...

Obviously, taken as a whole, the books of the New Testament were quite popular. They were Scripture, after all!But how popular were they individually?People today have favorite books in the Bible–ones they go to all the time, and ones they only rarely look at.This is a phenomenon that affects both the books of the Old and the New Testament, and it’s possible to get a sense of how popular particular books were in particular time periods.One way of doing that–before the Bible was bound as a single volume–is by seeing how many copies there are of individual books.In Larry...

Scripture is a prophetic interpretation of reality. That is, it tells us what is really going on from the perspective of the Lord of History. As an inspired text it traces out not only the current of the times, but also the trajectory, the end to which things tend. It is of course important for us to read Scripture with the Church and exercise the care the Church would have us show and, at the end of the day, to submit our understanding to the rule of faith and the context of Sacred Tradition.With those parameters in mind, I would...

PART I - FAITH. IV. HOLY SCRIPTURE AND TRADITION 1. Holy Scripture or the Bible consists of seventy-two books, which were written by men inspired by God, and under the guidance and influence of the Holy Ghost. These seventy-two books are recognized by the Church as " the Word of God." The Holy Ghost inspired in a very special way the writers of Holy Scripture ; He moved them to write, and guided and en- lightened them while they were writing (Cf. 2 Tim. iii. 16; Matt. xv. 3; Mark xii. 36). The Council of Trent and the Vatican...

As we established yesterday, the official Catholic position on Scripture is that Scripture does not and cannot speak for itself. It must be interpreted by the Church's teaching authority, and in light of "living tradition." De facto this says that Scripture has no inherent authority, but like all spiritual truth, it derives its authority from the Church. Only what the Church says is deemed the true Word of God, the "Sacred Scripture . . . written principally in the Church's heart rather than in documents and records." This position obviously emasculates Scripture. That is why the Catholic stance against sola...

Sorry, John 3:16: The Top 10 Bible Verses YouVersion Shared Most in 2013 Leading Bible app analyzes how its millions of users used the Bible this year. Jeremy Weber [ posted 12/30/2013 02:38PM ] Courtesy of YouVersion YouVersion has released its year-end analysis of how its millions of users engaged the Bible this past year. Users shared 68 million Bible verses in 2013 via the uber-popular Bible app, installed 49 million times this year (and nearly 123 million times worldwide). The Bible verse that was "bookmarked, highlighted, and shared ... more than any other verse" in 2013? Philippians 4:13: "I...

Of all the books of the Bible, perhaps none has suffered so many attacks from the historical critical school as the Book of Daniel. Virtually every story in the book has been derided as a fanciful post-Exile invention. The composition of the book is usually dated to the Maccabean period, while Daniel, Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego are regarded as nationalist myths, ancient Israelite versions of Paul Bunyan and Rip Van Winkle. The Jewish protagonists are not the only characters in the book to suffer such abuse; the Babylonian king, Belshazzar, is also commonly held to be a mere fable. The...

The Key to True FastingBy: Msgr. Charles Pope Required fasting is almost non-existent in the Catholic Church today. Even the two days where fasting is required for those over 18 and under 60, it is really a mitigated fast of two small “snack-like” meals and one regular sized meal (no snacks in between now!). Not really a fast at all. A truer fast (going without food for the whole day) is practiced by some today as a personal discipline and it is laudable if a person is able.Yet, even the mitigated fast is “hard” for many as are most...

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. (Psalm 119:105) Many Christians take the beginning of a new year to evaluate their Bible reading habits, and then change or begin a Bible reading plan.For your convenience, we’ve compiled a list of Bible reading plans for you to choose from. Maybe in 2014 you will read more of the Bible each day. Perhaps you’ll slow down your reading and instead spend more time considering what you read. Whatever it is you’re looking for in a reading plan, you should find it below. 52 Week Bible Reading PlanRead...

Tonight we're going to continue our look at some of the great doctrines of Scripture and we've sort of entered in to a prolonged examination of the doctrine of sanctification. Now in talking about this idea of sanctification, and we've been defining it for weeks, we're really talking about progressive spiritual development. And the heart of it all is in John 17:17 where Jesus said, "Sanctify them by Thy truth, Thy Word is truth." Sanctification is separation from sin. There is an initial separation at salvation and then there's an ongoing increasing separation through all of our Christian experience. This...