So, YOU reject the basic tenets of the Christian faith such as:
The Triune Godhead?
The Virgin Birth?
The Divinity of Christ?
The Crucifixion as atonement for the sins of the world?
The Resurrection?
In that case, I guess I WAS wrong for calling you a “Protestant”.
I am not a member of any of Christendom’s churches, because I removed myself from that disunited rabble decades ago after intensive Bible study.
Do I reject the things on your list? Only the first one which finds no support in scripture at all. Not once did Jesus ever claim to be God incarnate. If he made such a statement I’d like to see it....
As for the others....yes, I accept the
virgin birth because that is firmly stated in scripture....but the adoration of the virgin is not. Nor is the making of images something advocated in the Bible, unless God specifically commanded it. Statues of Mary dominate Roman Catholicism.
Mary hardly rated a mention in the Christian scriptures....she was the means of delivering the savior because he had to come into the world through a human mother. She was chosen, no doubt because of her faith, but to elevate her to equal status with her son, and make little mention of the Father, is insulting to him, to say the least.
“The divinity of Christ”...yes, I accept that Christ was
divine but he was not God, and he is never called “Yahweh” or “Jehovah”.
No Bible verse says so. God has one name....Christ has many.
“Theos” in scripture can mean ‘God, or any deity, or even one acting as God’s representative’.
Jesus said that God called the judges in Israel, “gods” because they acted on his behalf. (John 10:31-36)
Christ fits that category too as John 1:1 in Greek, makes a distinction between “theos” and “ho theos” in that verse. What is plainly evident in the Greek is missing in the English translation.....”ho theos” is God, but “theos” can be any god, or a god-like one. No one was more god-like than Jesus, who identified himself only as “God’s son”.
“The crucifixion as atonement for the sins of the world”....yes, because that is also firmly established in scripture.
“The resurrection”? Absolutely, but we refuse to make it disappear into a pagan fertility festival in honor of a false goddess. Though we appreciate the resurrection as God’s miracle in bringing his son back to life, we are not told to celebrate that, but to memorialize only his death. Since the Lord’s Supper was held on Passover night and it replaced the annual Jewish Passover for Christians, we follow what Christ commanded.......there is no such thing as “Easter” in the Bible.
And YOU should know better than to judge the entire Catholic population of over 1 billion people based ONE a bad neighbor. Only GOD knows the heart (1 Chron. 28:9) . . .
That was only one small example.....my experience with Catholic people is encountering them in my ministry often over many decades.....I once had a lady excitedly tell me she had a photograph of the blessed virgin in the clouds......when she showed me the picture, my heart went out to her as I asked why Mary had appeared as a statue and not as a real person? She looked perplexed and her excitement left her as she contemplated my question. So many I have invited to get their Bible out and read some verses with me....they invariably came back with a catechism.....they clearly did not know the difference. The one thing I discern about Catholic people is their willingness to implicitly trust their church leaders to tell them the truth, without question......the Jews did that too, and rejected their own Messiah....leading to God’s complete abandonment of that unfaithful nation whose traditions had replaced God’s word as well. (Matt 15:7-9)
History repeats you know.....because people do not learn the lessons from the past.
Catholics don’t teach that we are forgiven only AFTER we say prayers of penance. They are prayers of reflection and supplication. The absolution has already taken place.
Says who? The prayers offered are just recited words....do they magically transform a person into being forgiven and absolved from guilt.....free then to go out and do it all again?
I never met a Catholic person yet who was taught to think....only to perform. Is that what God wants? Mindless performance?
The fact that Jesus breathed on the Apostles when entrusting them with this ministry is highly significant because he doesn’t do this anywhere else in the New Testament. In fact, there are only TWO times in ALL of Scripture where God breathes on man:
The first is when he breathed life into Adam.
The second is here in John’s Gospel when he is giving them the power to forgive or retain sins.
While it might seem to be saying that the apostles could forgive sins, we cannot ignore the testimony of the rest of the Bible. We need to be like the noble-minded Beroeans in “carefully examining the Scriptures” to see what is so. (Acts 17:11)
When King David sinned, it was God he approached in prayer to forgive him. (Psalm 32:5) Did Jesus change this when he came? No......he taught us to pray: “Our Father who art in heaven, . . . forgive us our trespasses.” (Matt 6:9, 12) And that is how Jesus’ Jewish disciples understood the matter. They knew that it was not some man, but God, who could ‘forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ (1 John 1:9)
If someone committed a serious sin in the congregation, the matter was given over to the elders to determine what was to be done.
If the sinner refused to repent of his serious sin, he was to be expelled from the congregation. Was it a matter of some men deciding to forgive or retain his sins? No, they would simply be acting in accord with what they could conclude would already have been done in heaven. How would they know this? By what God has revealed in his Word on such matters, (2 Tim 3:16-17) the scriptures would determine the outcome.
Though some Bible versions render this verse in a way that suggests that the heavenly action occurs after the earthly decision, noted Bible translator Robert Young said that it literally should be: “shall be that which has been bound (already).” The elders would be carrying out what was already determined by examining the offender to determine the genuineness of his repentance.
In Matt. 26:44, Jesus himself prayed the exact same prayer no less than THREE times in the Garden of Gethsemane after the Last Supper.
There is nothing prohibiting praying more than once about a matter that is troubling us, as Jesus demonstrated...he was about to face the biggest test of his faith....so he needed his Father’s help, which was forthcoming. The prayer was in accord with his circumstances.....he did not get that prayer out of a prayer book to recite as if we cannot speak with God directly about our problems, through Christ as our only Mediator.
Jesus’ admonition was to “keep on seeking, keep on knocking”, so as to demonstrate our faith in God’s saving ability.....nowhere are we instructed to offer the same prayer on every occasion...no appeals to Mary or the saints can be an acceptable means to communicate with God. There is only one means of communication with the Father.....and that is through his son. (1 Tim 2:5-6)