This Bothers Me

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Dad of 3

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This is going to seem heretical, but I have to ask it, in two-pronged form. I grew up Catholic and now consider myself a recovered Catholic (insert laugh track here). It took me some 30 years to discover that Catholicsm and Christianity aren't the same, and that tore down many walls for me. That said, I hear talk on local station KRKS about the fact that 80% of Americans consider themselves Christians. This never takes into account that those polled are culled from Mormons, Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, and other lesser-known sects whose basis is Judeo-Christian in origin. I understand how statistics work and therefore never put much stock into them. The first part of the question is why is there no discernment regarding this? I suppose I don't expect outright condemnation, but still, I call a spade a spade.The second part of the question is that when I hear talk of "the church" of pre-1525 or so, it's also never mentioned that until the Protestant Reformation, the church was in error. Here's the "heretical" part: I want to believe more strongly, but the question that plagues me is how could the Bible be 100% correct when the church itself was 100% incorrect? I understand free will, but given the fact that Jesus is the center of Christianity, why isn't there more than a few years about him in the Bible? The Nicean Conference was 325 and the Protestant Reformation began in 1525 (?). I'm having doubts about those 1,200 years in between.Can anyone help clear up these inherent problems?
 

HammerStone

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I define it this way. Polls don't mean much of a thing to me regardless. Salvation and faith are personal matters that cannot be lumped under one gigantic umbrella other than Yeshua the Christ. I know that I harp on this point, but it is important to understand this because it facilitates a stronger relationship with God when you understand that he is YOUR God and not some faceless, nameless deity that we seem to be introduced to in church. Yes there are a lot of "denominations," "cults," and beliefs out there but I will not lump all of one sect under a giant umbrella of damnation. All the Catholics and Episcopalians aren't going to hell; conversely, all the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians aren't going to heaven (to name a few). Take what you want out of this next statement, but it's not meant to be offensive. You worry about you and let that 80% be concerned with their own salvation and judgment by God. If everyone but you is saved, that's not going to help you out.
Here's the "heretical" part: I want to believe more strongly, but the question that plagues me is how could the Bible be 100% correct when the church itself was 100% incorrect? I understand free will, but given the fact that Jesus is the center of Christianity, why isn't there more than a few years about him in the Bible? The Nicean Conference was 325 and the Protestant Reformation began in 1525 (?). I'm having doubts about those 1,200 years in between.
Well, when you get right down to it, you have to separate the wheat from the chaff in this case.Matthew 16:18And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.When Yeshua made this statement he simply said church without supplying an adjective such as Catholic, Baptist, Protestant, etc. The Church that is the Bride will not fit under any heading or title other than those given in the Bible. There is no saved denomination, salvation, again, is a personal matter.I can say that there were people who feared God and followed his commandments during those ~1500 years that you speak of. There were true Christians spread throughout the world and you'll probably not hear much about them due to the times. Remember that what we know about history is based on what little evidence and documentation we have available to us; we discussed how history is a big debate in many regards just the other day with a professor and some friends. Remember too that we'll be hated for His name's sake and that we'll delivered up to be killed in some cases. This holds true throughout all of history.As for there "only" being three years - the simple answer is that is all that was needed. Three is a very important and Godly number and I find there to be no coincidence that the ministry of Yeshua lasted three years. There are traditions, such as the one at Glastonbury in England of a Yeshua that very well may have visited the British Isles as a young kid with his uncle Joseph of Arimathea. You'll find other traditions and tales, it's probably not all true but I put stock into the one in Glastonbury.The Truth is always there. I draw your attention to the blessed book of Revelation where only 144,000 are said to stand at the end with the "seal of God" in their foreheads. That's a very small number in a world that currently boasts 6 million or even a country of 300 million. I don't believe this to be a symbolic number, either.
 

Dad of 3

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I draw your attention to the blessed book of Revelation where only 144,000 are said to stand at the end with the "seal of God" in their foreheads. That's a very small number in a world that currently boasts 6 million or even a country of 300 million. I don't believe this to be a symbolic number, either.
I've studied this one and it can only refer to Messianic Jews, 12,000 representing each tribe.From your wording, it sounds as though you're coming from the position of a Jehovah's Witness.
 

HammerStone

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I've studied this one and it can only refer to Messianic Jews, 12,000 representing each tribe.
And that is a result of the world's teachings that we came from some tribes that developed here and mysteriously appeared there. It's from the same crowd that wants to teach us that the OT is reserved for the Jews and much of the NT speaks again to the Jews and that we're just the Gentiles. They either don't want to accept or simply deny their heritage for various reasons. The Caucasian race is called that name for a reason; it is the remnant of the 12 tribes that passed over the Caucus Mountains and became what was later known as Europe and eventually went on to found America.
From your wording, it sounds as though you're coming from the position of a Jehovah's Witness.
Hardly. I must say that's the first time I have ever heard that in my life. I guess there's a first for everything.
 

Christina

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From your wording, it sounds as though you're coming from the position of a Jehovah's Witness.
Dad of 3I can attest to the fact that Swampfox is not a Jehovah Witness nor affiliated with any other religion but rather is a student of the God's Word the Bible solely
 

Dad of 3

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Wow, Swampfox, in one fell swoop, you've taken much of God's grace and mercy away from him.Since you think there will only be 144,000 saved, that doesn't give much hope for any of us since all of the seats are already taken.
 

pointer

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(Dad of 3;4812)
Here's the "heretical" part: I want to believe more strongly, but the question that plagues me is how could the Bible be 100% correct when the church itself was 100% incorrect?
In the Dark and Middle Ages, something like 99% of the population of Europe was illiterate, even in its own vernacular languages. The Bible was usually rarely available, was not found in 'church' buildings, and was translated into Latin, which only the rich and the religious understood (and by no means all of them). In effect it was a closed book for over a thousand years, and Europe was pervaded by unprecedented and never repeated ignorance and superstition that would astonish most Westerners today, if they understood its depth. For the same period there is, understandably, no real evidence of Biblical Christianity evident in history; in effect, the church died out under pressure of persecution, as outside Europe Muslim depredation annihilated Christianity there also. It was the return of education to Europe, and particularly the invention of printing that brought the light of the gospel to Europe and the world.This may be a surprising finding for many, but the facts cannot be denied, and must be faced. The counter-argument that is unfailingly proposed by Roman Catholics is that Jesus promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail against the church, but, as so very often, they do not know their Bibles. Jesus meant that His followers would not be destroyed by death. The 'gates of Hell' was a Hebrew expression referring to Hell itself, not to human agents of Satan in this world (which is a very revealing error for them to make).The word Protestantism means 'pro testamentum', i.e 'for the truth of Scripture'. The problem with Protestantism was and is that it did not and does not give up the old medieval habits of thought and practice, such as 'sacraments', infant baptism, Sunday observance and clerical domination, with its more or less subtle tendency to re-introduce works justification. It is only now, after two millennia, that there is, with the growth of independent churches and house groups, a return to orthodoxy, or at least a move in that direction.
 

BernieEOD

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"The Church" As the Bible refers to is the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ are those who believe in him. Belief in Him is the belief:1) Christ is the Son Of God, born of an immacualte conception2) That Christ is God in the flesh, that is 100% God, 100% Human3) That he walked the Earth living the perfect life we could not4) That being without sin, he became sin and died in our place paying the price for our sins that we could not.5) That after being crucified, he rose again on the 3rd day.6) That he will return to establish his Kindom upon this Earth.What you refer to as "The Church" are human institutions. Membership in these institutions of and by its self does not make one a believer. Jesus does not recognise any human institutional boundries. The Protestant Reformation brought a lot of truth to light but the protestant Churches are no more "The Church" Than the Catholic Church is. Even with the best intentions, we are still in a fallen state and cannot build a perfect Church in this life upon this Earth. There is a saying that goes "If you ever find the perfect Church, don't join it! If you do, it won't be perfect anymore!"
 

pointer

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(BernieEOD;4904)
What you refer to as "The Church" are human institutions. Membership in these institutions of and by its self does not make one a believer. Jesus does not recognise any human institutional boundries. The Protestant Reformation brought a lot of truth to light but the protestant Churches are no more "The Church" Than the Catholic Church is. Even with the best intentions, we are still in a fallen state and cannot build a perfect Church in this life upon this Earth. There is a saying that goes "If you ever find the perfect Church, don't join it! If you do, it won't be perfect anymore!"
I agree with you thoroughly about human institutions. One cannot nail down the Holy Spirit, though people try. An individual church may be Spirit-filled at one time, but be devoid of the Spirit only a few years later, despite having a similar appearance to outsiders.I don't quite know what people mean by 'the perfect church'. Of course Christians sin, but that is no excuse for them consciously doing things wrongly when they meet. The apostles set up churches, so we may suppose that those reflected the Lord's perfect will, and were thus perfect in the way they operated. By following Scriptural precedent, and not going beyond it, the same can be achieved today, and, I believe, is achieved at certain times and places, indeed, whenever people are obedient to the Word. Jesus said that where just two people were gathered in His name, He would be with them. (God does not even need that many, as just one OT prophet made a difference.) If two or more Spirit-filled people who live in the same area find that the Spirit is absent in their current meetings, they should and will leave and form their own church. They only have to pray together, and they have already started.
 

pointer

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(SilentFlight;4918)
when you go into church do you feel God's presence sort of amplifide?
Do you mean when a Christian meets others? I don't think a Christian feels any more the temple of the Spirit at those times, but of course he or she can speak in a way that cannot occur with non-Christians.
 

HammerStone

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Pointer, as far as there being any organized church in the middle ages other than the Catholic church, you'd be correct. However, I think you make a huge assumption that cannot be proven in that you believe the church, and more correctly the Protestant Church, did not exist in the sense that we know it now. It goes back to what Bernie said with faith being a personal matter. We cannot speak for individual and even small gatherings. Any such beliefs that didn't agree with the church were branded as heresey and many were punished in various ways and a few even burned at the stake. Obviously, there'd probably not be many records left either through them being hidden or destroyed when found. I don't believe that the church (the real church, the body of Christ), in some semblence to what I believe and we see now, didn't exist through this period. There were actually quite a few attempts at publishing vernacular Bibles and these are the known ones:
During the Middle Ages, translation particularly of the Old Testament was discouraged. Nevertheless, there are some fragmentary [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_Bible_translations]Old English Bible translations[/url], notably a lost translation of the [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_John]Gospel of John[/url] into Old English by the Venerable [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede]Bede[/url], which he is said to have prepared shortly before his death around the year [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/735]735[/url]. An [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_High_German]Old High German[/url] version of the gospel of Matthew dates to [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/748]748[/url]. [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne]Charlemagne[/url] in ca. 800 charged [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcuin]Alcuin[/url] with a revision of the Latin Vulgate. The translation into [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Church_Slavonic]Old Church Slavonic[/url] dates to the late 9th century.[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_the_Great]Alfred the Great[/url] had a number of passages of the Bible circulated in the vernacular in around [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/900]900[/url]. These included passages from the [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments]Ten Commandments[/url] and the [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentateuch]Pentateuch[/url], which he prefixed to a code of laws he promulgated around this time. In approximately [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/990]990[/url], a full and freestanding version of the four Gospels in idiomatic Old English appeared, in the [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Saxon]West Saxon[/url] dialect; these are known as the [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wessex]Wessex[/url] Gospels
And then:
The most notable [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English_Bible_translation]Middle English Bible translation[/url], [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyclif%27s_Bible]Wyclif's Bible[/url] (1383), based on the Vulgate, was banned by the Oxford Synod in 1408. A Hungarian [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussite]Hussite[/url] Bible appeared in the mid 15th century, and in 1478, a Spanish translation in the dialect of [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valencia_%28autonomous_community%29]Valencia[/url].
(Thanks, Wikipedia) A statement that the beliefs did not exist would be impossible to prove.
 

pointer

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Pointer, as far as there being any organized church in the middle ages other than the Catholic church, you'd be correct. However, I think you make a huge assumption that cannot be proven in that you believe the church, and more correctly the Protestant Church, did not exist in the sense that we know it now. It goes back to what Bernie said with faith being a personal matter.
Individual, personal faith could not produce Protestant churches as we now now them; and they could not have existed, as they would have been persecuted to near extinction as the Cathars and Albigensians were. But I quite agree that this is an important point that should not be overlooked. There is some evidence for individual Catholics refusing to believe the dogma of 'the Church', and accepting justification by faith instead; Catholicism was certainly not as monolithic as we are led to believe, at any rate. However, these people remained Catholics and did not form their own separate church, and it is church matters in particular that this thread is concerned with. It is fair to say that, in effect, the church, as known to the apostles or to Protestantism, did not exist, and could not have existed.
There were actually quite a few attempts at publishing vernacular Bibles and these are the known ones:
These were not used in 'church' liturgy, and they were neither available to nor usable by most ordinary people, who would not have been able to read them if they could have afforded them. These versions had very limited circulation among people who were not going to throw off the yoke of 'the Church', and they are of very little historic significance. It was the great scholar John Wyclif, 'the Morning Star of the Reformation', and his friends who translated Scripture specifically for the English ploughboy and milkmaid, as they had their version copied by hand in very large numbers, and they also taught those people to read.
 

pointer

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(SwampFox;4963)
Pointer, as far as there being any organized church in the middle ages other than the Catholic church, you'd be correct. However, I think you make a huge assumption that cannot be proven in that you believe the church, and more correctly the Protestant Church, did not exist in the sense that we know it now. It goes back to what Bernie said with faith being a personal matter.
Individual, personal faith could not produce Protestant churches as we now now them; and they could not have existed, as they would have been persecuted to near extinction as the Cathars and Albigensians were. But I quite agree that this is an important point that should not be overlooked. There is some evidence for individual Catholics refusing to believe the dogma of 'the Church', and accepting justification by faith instead; Catholicism was certainly not as monolithic as we are led to believe, at any rate. However, these people remained Catholics and did not form their own separate church, and it is church matters in particular that this thread is concerned with. It is fair to say that, in effect, the church, as known to the apostles or to Protestantism, did not exist, and could not have existed.
There were actually quite a few attempts at publishing vernacular Bibles and these are the known ones:
These were not used in church liturgy, and they were neither available to nor usable by most ordinary people, who would not have been able to read them if they could have afforded them. These versions had very limited circulation among people who were not going to throw off the yoke of 'the Church', and they are of very little historic significance. It was the great scholar John Wyclif, 'the Morning Star of the Reformation', and his friends who translated Scripture specifically for the English ploughboy and milkmaid, as they had their version copied by hand in very large numbers, and they also taught those people to read.
 

Christina

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In a nutshell there are more than 5000 manuscripts dating from the 1st Century onward with which modern translations can be compared and their accuracy determined. In addition, there are large numbers of Lectionaries (1st and 2nd century sermons or written lessons) which quote a great portion of the Bible. Almost all the New Testament and a part of the Old Testament can be found in these documents. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain almost all the Old Testament and predate the time of Christ. Thus, we are not lacking in manuscript evidence from which we can make comparisons. I realize that many of the modern (recent) translations do not have the accuracy of the King James Version of the Bible which is based on the Greek "Textus Receptus." In fact all modern translations are based on the faulty work of two unsaved men named Westcott and Hort. Their method of examining the Bible is called "Higher Criticism" and they accepted many of the errors of the early Catholic scribes and others which put them in their translations. Any knowledgeable Christian rejects these corrupt translations. Some have made critical statements and brought the King James Version into question. In truth there are few places in the KJV that are at variance with the the Greek manuscripts. They are so few that they are minuscule and involve spelling, numbers, etc. The location of each one is known and we know what the original said. Not one of them affects any doctrine of the Bible. Nothing is lost or changed. Also, many Bibles will identify these variant readings in their marginal notes.
 

pointer

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(kriss;4989)
the accuracy of the King James Version of the Bible which is based on the Greek "Textus Receptus."
Does this mean that the Church of England, which produced the 100% perfect KJV, was 100% perfect?