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Moonbase,
You're trying a scorched earth policy and throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Jesus came to rustics, whores, illiterate peasants, the poor in spirit; he did not expect them to know any doctrines about transubstantiation or the trinity or homoousios or Apostolic Succession or whatever, nor did he teach any such things. He said to love God and love your neighbor as yourself; that's it. The whole edifce of Christianity, whether Catholic or Protestant, and especially the intellectualized posturing (e.g., sonship), is so not Jesus.
This is tossing out the baby with the bathwater.
Your medicine is worse that the illness you are trying to treat.
John chapter teaches about eating Christ's blood and flesh through receiving His word which is spirit and life. Unless one read this he might be deceived by the doctrine of transubstantiation.
Catholics forbade the "common" people to read the Bible. In a sense you are doing the same thing by suggesting God doesn't want people to READ what Jesus spoke, did, and taught.
You're extending the error for some strange reason.
Jesus also spoke to Nicodemus and the lawyers as He taught whores and tax unlearned crowds. Christ secured for Himself an apostle Paul who was a scholar.
He had Him as a special appointment to take His teaching to the Gentile world.
He wrote 13 books of the New Testament's 27. I believe he probably wrote Hebrews to Jerusalem Jews. He just did not write that book under his usual prologue of being an apostle.
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Jesus also prayed for all those who would afterwards believe in Him and His teaching through the word of His disciples.
"And I do not ask concerning these only, but concerning those also who believe into Me through their word, that they all may be one; even as You, Father are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us. that the world may believe." (John 17:20,21)
This prayer cannot fail to be answered by God. Though we may be long in seeing a universal and total consummation, it cannot fail to come.
Throughout the ages some who overcame the surrounding division and degradation have tasted this oneness. And He has this age and the coming millennial age to work His unstoppable will.
The history of the church is much like that of Israel. A remnant are sometimes used to secure the victory for the larger body, just as Gideon's small army of 300 won a decisive victory for the whole nation.
There is no answer in declaring Jesus only taught uneducated sinners.
There is no answer in blaming heretical teachings on the error of WRITING
period.
He said the gates of hell would not prevail against His builded church.
He did not say that the gates of hell would not try their best by many insidious
means. Both Christ and His church will enjoy complete vindication.
@moonbus saidGood post, and here what you said is the core teaching of Jesus and the Apostles .. it can only have meant, show them how to live as I do, loving God and my neighbors as myself.. And those who miss it, and preach another doctrine, do so deliberately because their heart is evil and selfish, and Christ is not in or with them.
Thanks for that 'confession'. An honest statement from an honest seeker.
Here's why I am not a Christian:
1. Nothing in the Gospels suggests that Jesus thought of himself as founding a new religion, separate from Judaism. When he said 'I am come not to break the law, but to fulfill it,' the law he meant was the Torah, no other. Nor is there any suggestion that Jesus exp ...[text shortened]... r Protestant, and especially the intellectualized posturing (e.g., sonship), is so not Jesus.
Jesus was clear that those who keep this core commandment,
- He is with them
- He lives in them
- He makes his abode with them
- He will welcome them into the Kingdom of God.
Others are cast out. Many Christians here apparently choose to be in this 'others' category, notwithstanding their constant boasting of having the Holy Spirit and their sainthood. Its all a sham.
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Second: the Bible is merely a snapshot, frozen in time at the 4c.
Sixteen hundred years in writing the sixty six books of the Bible.
That is quite a snap shot, don't you think?
Including the creation of the world in Genesis on through a few millennia at least with prophecy extending out through eternity . . . now THAT is quite a large "snapshot".
Whereas, the Holy Spirit continues to reveal the will of God to man through continuous revelation in the form of Ecumenical Councils (from which Protestants have excluded themselves).
The completion of the word of God Paul said he completed.
"Of which I became a minister according to the stewardship of God, which was given to me for you, to complete the word of God." (Col. 1:25)
Any ecumenical councils trying to tear down the apostle Paul's writings cannot be any further completion of God's word.
The Holy Spirit does lead the church into all the truth. That is the illumination on what has been WRITTEN.
Otherwise some may argue as they do that Islam (let alone the ecumenical counsels) claims it is legitimately extending God's revelation. Of course for Mohammed to allegedly do so he has to declare much of the New Testament as wrong or misinformed.
No moonbase, any light the church receives is illumination on what is there written in the sixty six Bible books not in adding any spurious religious ideas like Gospel of Thomas or Quran or Bahai "improvements" on Islam.
Christ alone is God become a man to be Lord.
Protestants 'took issue' by absenting themselves from Apostolic Succession, thereby cutting themselves off from the continuing revelation through the medium of Ecumenical Councils.
There was no automatic apostolic succession. Peter in a moment of weakness and unfaithfulness was rebuked publicly by a younger Paul. Leadership in the church is not such an automatic and official affair. Leadership in based upon faithfulness to the revelation.
The churches were established according to localities and no one church was to be headquarters for all the churches. Rome may have been a chief city. But the apostles did not establish Rome as the city church MOTHER over all the other local churches.
Multiple local churches in a region were not united together by the apostles to be a country or regional Church. And a union of these were not caused to be a Public Church.
You cannot be born into the Christian faith simply by being a citizen of England.
You cannot be born a Christian and automatically be an Anglican Christian.
Neither can you be born in any city or nation and automatically be a Christian merely because you are born that way naturally.
Those who RECEIVED HIM were given authority to become children of God. And it is not their natural birth that makes them God's children but the new birth by God the begetting Father.
"But as many as received Him, to them He gave the authority to become children of God, to those who believe into His name. Who were begotten
not of the blood,
nor of the will of the flesh,
not of the will of man,
but of God." (John 1:12,13)
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moonbase,
Being born a Roman citizen does not make one a member of the Roman Public Church. Each man or woman must receive Christ and be born - begotten spiritually of the begetting Heavenly Father to be one of His children.
Show me now in the New Testament where one local church was set up to cover more than one city. You will not be able to find one example. And Christ established churches according to cities. The name of the city was effectively the name of the church.
"What you see write in a scroll and send it to the seven churches;
To Ephesus
and to Smyrna
and to Pergamos
and to Thyatira
and to Sardis
and to Philadelphia
and to Laodicea. " (Rev. 1:11)
Seven localities = seven churches.
Each church designated by the locality of dwelling.
And "the seven churches which are in Asia" (Rev. 1:4) [b] were not united to be the Asian Church. Nor were the [b]churches in Judea united organizationally to be the Judean church. Nor were "the churches of Galatia" united together under one administration to be the Galatian Church.
And Rome had no write to unite all the churches organizationally under one ROMAN Public or Catholic Word wide Church.
Protestant reformation was incomplete in its recovery of the orthodoxy of the church. And though we thank God they recovered Justification by Faith and eliminated many superstitious things which permeated Catholicism, their recovery was not full. And many of the RCC errors they brought along with them as they left the headquarters of the pope and Rome.
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@sonship
Correcting a few sloppy typos. Excuse me.
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And Rome had no [right] to unite all the churches organizationally under one ROMAN Public or Catholic [world wide] Church.
Protestant reformation was incomplete in its recovery of the orthodoxy of the church. And though we thank God they recovered Justification by Faith and eliminated many superstitious things which permeated Catholicism, their recovery was not full. And many of the RCC errors they brought along with them as they left the headquarters of the pope and Rome.
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@Rajk999
You accused me of changing the word of God.
I challenged you to put forth your examples.
Have you done it yet?
Instead of "business as usual" rectify yourself from the stain of making false accusations leveled at another poster. Before chiming in again either retract your false accusation or prove it to be true.
Typos and misspellings don't count as changing the word of God, though I should not be making such errors.
@sonship saidI did that many times before. Not going down that road again with you. Go can dig up the old threads to find where I listed the times you changed the bible to suit your doctrine. They are many.
@Rajk999
You accused me of changing the word of God.
I challenged you to put forth your examples.
Have you done it yet?
Instead of "business as usual" rectify yourself from the stain of making false accusations leveled at another poster. Before chiming in again either retract your false accusation or prove it to be true.
Typos and misspellings don't count as changing the word of God, though I should not be making such errors.
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Where is the evidence that "Jesus" commanded "John" to write the book of Revelation?
As if I did not mention it BEFORE.
John writes in chapter one of his Revelation -
"I was in spirit on the Lord's Day and heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet,
Saying, What you see WRITE in a scroll and send it to the seven churches: . . .
And I turned to see the voice that spoke with me; and when I turned, I saw seven golden lampstands, And in the midst of the lampstands One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment reaching to the feet, and girded about at the breasts with a golden girdle, And His head and hair were as white as white wool, as snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire; And His feet were like shining bronze, as having been fired in a furnace; and His voice was like the sound of many waters. "
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This is the One who in His glorious state of resurrection and glorification appeared to John COMMANDING John to "write in a a scroll". The book of Revelation was written explicitly from Christ's command.
The One commanding identifies Himself:
"Do not fear; I am the First and the Last and the living One; and I became dead, and behold, I am living forever and ever; and I have the keys of death and of Hades." (See Rev. 1:11-19)
Of course the unbeliever who has not repented will not count this as Jesus commanding John to write because he doesn't believe in the truth of the resurrection, glorification, or exaltation of the Son of Man.
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"There is no salvation outside the Church." [Augustine, De Bapt., IV, c.xvii.24] "He cannot have God for his father who does not have the Church for his mother." [Cyprian, De Cath. Eccl. Unitate, vi.] "... there is one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and outside this Church there is neither salvation nor remission of sins ..." [Boniface VIII unan sanctum, 1303] The same doctrine is upheld by Pope John Paul II: only through the Gospel can man be saved, and only the Church may interpret the Gospel to man [Veritatis Splendor, Encyclical Letter, 1993].
The Roman Catholic Church tortured and murdered many true believers in Christ.
The Roman Catholic Church is a MIXTURE of truth with terrible errors. She was the evil woman who added leaven to the fine meal of the gospel until the whole lump was leavened.
"Another parable He spoke to them: The kingdom of the heaven s is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal until the whole was leavened." (Matt. 13:33)
Leaven was added to meal to ferment it and cause it to be bloated up in an enlarged leavened lump. A little leaven leavens the whole lump, Paul wrote.
And Jesus warned of the leaven of hypocrisy of the religionists who opposed Him.
"And Jesus said to them, Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees." (Matt. 16:6)
In verse 11 Jesus clarifies to the dull disciples that He means the teaching of the religionists was corrupting leaven.
"How is it that you do not understand that it was not about bread that I spoke to you? But beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Then they understood that He did not say to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees." (vs. 11,12)
The gospel is liken by Jesus to unleavened bread. And to this unleavened bread a woman added leaven of bad teachings and hypocrisy as a evil mixture to His teaching. Over the centuries the whole lump of His teaching was corrupted by the leaven of Roman Catholicism.
There is monstrous mixture of truth with superstition, occultism, and pagan religions. This was Satan attempt to destroy the church from within when persecution from without only caused the faith to spread.
In like manner the parable of the plant that changed its nature from that of a mustard seed to a huge world wide system "tree" where many evil things hide out in its branches is a prophecy of the mixture of Roman Catholicism.
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"Another parable He set before them, saying, The kingdom of the heavens is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, And which is smaller than all the seeds, but when it has grown, it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the heaven come and roost in its branches." (vs. 31,32)
The humble gospel and church life mutated into a gigantic world wide hierarchical religious organization. And many evils hide, lurk, lodge, and roost in the branches of this world wide system.
The birds in this chapter are a negative symbol as in 13:4. They represent activity of demons who steal the truth of the word of the kingdom from the hearts of those who hear.
"And as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the way, and the birds came and devoured them." (13:4) .
So the birds roosting in the branches of the great tree must represent negative things against the proper teaching of the kingdom of God.
"it . . . became a tree, so that the birds of heaven come and roost in its branches."
In general everyone knows evil people can hide out in religious institutions of all kinds. RCC was just the mother of all such daughter organizations. (Rev. 17:5)
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I did that many times before. Not going down that road again with you. Go can dig up the old threads to find where I listed the times you changed the bible to suit your doctrine. They are many.
You never went down the road to substantiate I change the word of God.
You cannot produce the evidence of your false accusation.
So you opt out with something like saying - " Oh there are many instances" and CANNOT produce one concrete example.
There are many places where you disagree with some interpretation of a passage/s. You bear false witness that there are many instances of me CHANGING the word of God.
Produce your MOST egregious example now.
(typos as I copied by hand passages don't count. Other translations than KJV don't count unless you can prove they really change the Greek text.)
You also have a chance to admit that you misspoke or meant something else.
@sonship saidSo, for you, the evidence that "Jesus" commanded "John" to write the book of Revelation is that whoever wrote the book of Revelation claimed, in that book, that he was "John" and that "Jesus" commanded him to write it? That's your "evidence"?
John writes in chapter one of his Revelation -
[b]"I was in spirit on the Lord's Day and heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet,