Where does the Bible teach the doctrine of the Bible alone?
where does the Bible say what is and what is not scripture!
Where does the Bible say read for yourself and make your own doctrine or your own salvation?
by reading through the thread you seek to argue the validity of the RCC or Catholic Church in general.
it seems most don't do the homework.
the catholic church, though catholic means universal, is the church of the roman state. an institution until at least Pope Gregory the Great the Emperor was the vicar of the church and appointed popes, east and west roman and Greek. the church of England was molded the same and the king is still the vicar of that church.
also part of the responsibility of the Church of the state of Rome, was to convert and eliminate pagan religions and practices.
so for approximately 1000 years the Catholic church ruled with an iron fist, especially the RCC. the church really didn't kick into high gear until after Gregory the Great and much of the rules the clergy follows to day were establish by him.
martin Luther spook up in the 1500's and then a few hundred years later the age of enlightenment came in the 1700's promoting separation of church and state.
but in King James' day late 1500's and early 1600's there was contention between England and the Vatican and England pushed out the RCC's right to hold civil court in their territory. one of many things which included the excommunication of Queen Elisabeth the mother of King James.
now there's a lot of wisdom in what God has allowed here, RCC and KJV were neck to neck in dominating the world. RCC has all of central and south Americas dominated and the KJV or protestant if you will has its influences through out most of the rest of the world except for maybe china until Moa came in to power. the Orthodox Greek still has influences in eastern block Europe so mush as the city of St Petersburg's name has been restored.
a general wants to overcome his opponent and the best way to motivate his competitive subordinates is to basically get them to run a race to win against each other. then they have a tendency to work harder and cover more ground. Montgomery and Patton of WW2 were of that cut.
though the integrity of the "religion" is important but in many cases like Israel's history before Christ, as long as the institution survives, the faithful have a place to be. the church as an institution need only to accommodate and not persecute the faithful.
today the institution is becoming less and less accommodating to the faithful and accommodating to the ways of the world its in, and it won't be long it will persecute the faithful for the faithful's beliefs because they are contrary to what the world wants you to believe.
in retrospect its simple as long as where you are accommodates without persecutions you and yours your at peace with the world. they don't have to follow the ways you follow do they?
Abram now Abraham was a stranger in the land his whole life, and you are supposed to be of the same faith as Abraham.
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