Actually I had only asked if you were saved. Then Jamesbond came in to insure the thread would get derailed onto what he wanted: a religious debate so he could call me out on the false doctrines of the Catholic church.onethousandknives wrote:So, my thread's been derailed, thanks Adama, and I don't know if I should throw my pearls before swine, too.
First off, I am not Roman Catholic, but Orthodox. We have the highest number of martyrs of any branch of Christianity. We have Apostolic succession starting from the Apostles themselves. And, the Romans split from us because they wanted their own weird cult of Rome where Rome was dictator of all the churches, and other weird customs like unmarried priests, unleavened bread for communion, etc.
The problem with the presupposition of Protestantism is, every Protestant denomination basically starts out like Muhammed, or Joseph Smith in the book of Mormon. They all say "Oh, the original church is now corrupt, and mine is the true church! Come join MY true church!" This is the premise of Islam for example. This is the premise of Mormonism. This is what Martin Luther said more or less (though in Luther's defense, he actually tried to get reconciliation/a dialogue with the Orthodox...) The problem with Protestantism too, is it all comes from the "tree" of Romanism, with theological ideology of Augustine being the overarching influence even in Protestantism. No Protestant branch is truly separate in theology from Roman Catholicism (not counting Moonies or groups like this...) they all carry over Roman ideology.
The other problem with this supposition. To have a system that works as follows, as in the Protestants' minds, it works like this. They think after 100AD all of Christendom is now apostate, as Protestantism didn't exist until the 1400s. So according to Protestants, God just must be an idiot, and 1300 years worth of people after Jesus Christ came back are going to hell because they were not around during the new manmade religious invention of Protestantism. "Hey, I sent my son to save the Earth, but uh... yeah, after he comes, 1300 years worth of people cannot possibly be saved because they're Catholic!" Is this at all logical? That God would send his son to Earth to die for our sins, raise from the dead, create a church, then just let it fall into complete apostasy in every way so that nobody could possibly be saved in it, then create 30,000 other denominations of Protestantism who mostly all disagree with each other as the replacement?
Again, too, I am not Roman Catholic, and the Orthodox and Romans ended up splitting over many of the problems people list with the Roman church now. For example, St. Cyril and Methodius almost got killed by the Roman church for giving the Slavs an alphabet and conducting church services in the Slav's native language and not Latin. So with the Orthodox, we said enough was enough with the Roman bullying/"innovations" and split. But, there still needs to be a structure and an agreement between the churches. You cannot have "Every man did what was right in his eyes." Like is the situation in Protestantism right now. You can't have the complete insanity and sometimes outright demon possession of people that can happen with the Pentecostal churches for example.
Anyway, Adama, I'm glad you've found Christ again. Like you, I recently (about 7 years ago now) had a revival of sorts in myself as well. And after learning and reading very much, I got very overbearing with people and frankly quite judgmental and pride filled towards people with my religion. But it'll end eventually. You'll stop being "on fire!" for whatever reasons. Then you'll have the true task of really viewing things for the long haul, and your whole life. And you'll look back upon yourself as a fool for being so pride filled and judgmental. Remember, "with the measure you use, it will be used against you."
I am not a Protestant. I am a Baptist, named after a man named John the Baptist. I know he sounds familiar.
There were two systems set up for churches. The formal and the informal. The public and the underground.
Your church and the churches you call Protestant all come from the formal church that was set up whenever you claim it was set up (which is not when it was actually set up, but that is a digression). The Baptists are the informal, who also held the Bible through the Greek text known as the Textus Receptus. As opposed to the Codex Vaticanus, which the Catholics go by.
The Catholics sought to oppress the Baptists. The Catholics are also the ones who wrote history.
The Protestants which the Catholics dislike so much are practically all Catholic anyway, at least as far as a Baptist is concerned. They are all apostate religions. That is because they believe in WORK SALVATION when God says salvation is by FAITH ALONE. That is damnable heresy.
And it isnt hubris. It isnt me stating that you must be a Baptist to get to heaven. It is me telling you that YOU BETTER GET SAVED so that you can go to heaven. What I am saying is, the doctrines of the Catholic and Orthodox churches do not allow for entry into heaven because they preach works, and by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in His sight. For by the law is the knowledge of sin. It is written, For the Just shall live by faith. Not of works lest any man should boast. Salvation is the gift of God. But your churches will damn you to hell, because they are apostate churches. If you don't want to look into any of this for yourself then that is fine.
If you want, this can be my last post in this thread on this topic. I do not wish to write any more to you, because if you do not accept what I have written above, then there is no reason to continue. That is all I have to say.
