This I understand…seriously…but have you thought of the influence of man throughout the 2,000 years? Again…it’s been squirreling around in my head and just thought I’d put it out there.
When Constantine became “king” there had to be those who wanted to have his ear…would not some abuse of those wanting their way happen? Just a thought as well.
God bless… seriously guys…I just wanted a discussion. Putting up a hand and saying NOPE it can’t happen isn’t going to solve the questions going around in my head and in others who may be reading and not posting.
I totally get what you’re saying, but think for a minute.
You have Jesus Christ, God-made-Man, who came down to earth, suffered, died, and rose from the dead in order to save humanity.
Now, Christ came ‘in time’ and He became one of us. Surely He understood the faults and failings of human people and what could happen to His message if He simply left a group of people to first LISTEN to His message for 350 years (with some of them receiving garbled and erroneous teachings which were claimed to be His). . .then for another 1500 years to mostly listen to spoken teachings which were indeed all put together in one place (the Bible) but because people were illiterate, what was told them could be (and sometimes was) falsely claimed to be His teachings. . . and then over the past 150 years or so, for people to be literate enough to actually read those teachings but who again could be gulled, or who could gull others, into accepting unclear, new, slanted, completely different ‘versions’ of what was said to be His teachings, and who knows WHAT we’ll face in the coming centuries. . .
It’s well and good to say "the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth’ but look at the history of Christianity. If there were not some tangible way for people to be assured that what they heard and read was real, authentic, inerrant, God-breathed teaching that wouldn’t be read and ‘conformed’ to whatever any ‘authority’ chose to make it (consider the Lambeth Council of 1930 and what it did to understanding God’s word, and how that led to many Protestant groups doing a 180 on the understanding of ‘contraception’, which in turn led to a 180 on the concepts of divorce, remarriage, abortion, and now ‘gay marriage’, homosexual behaviors, ‘women priests’ etc etc.), then what has occurred in the last 80 years would have been the norm since AD 33 and we wouldn’t have Christianity at all. We’d have bunches of little gnostic groups here and there, and in one century one group would prevail, and then another and another, until we’d have no real Christianity at all. We’d be a bunch of agnostic pagans again who went through the ‘Jesus phase’ the way our ancestors went through the Greek, Roman, Norse, Egyptian, etc gods. There would be no way to know what Jesus actually SAID because we’d never even have the canon of Scripture.
So there must have been some way God preserved His teachings. . .and if He did so THEN He does so now.
What Christian group has been around since ‘the beginning’ then?
And if it was right ‘then’, why would it ‘go off the rails’ at any point? If IT did, then what would stop any OTHER group which took its place (and it would have to have proof of ‘succession’ because it would have to continue on, teaching what had always been taught as truth, specifically showing where the other group ‘split’, and then ITSELF teaching the opposite of that, and showing that it was indeed upholding what had ‘always been taught’.)
The Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church are still pretty much the ‘lone voices’ teaching what was taught 2000 years ago, and what has come ‘since then’ is in continuity with Scripture and Tradition.
No other Christian Church can show such a claim. While all have a part of the truth, some like the Lutherans a very, very large ‘share’ of the truth indeed, there are still aspects of Lutheran teaching which cannot be shown to be apostolic or which are not contradictory to Scripture and tradition.
While individual Catholics, as well as individual Protestants, Jews, Muslims, etc can all make errors, no matter how well meant, with regard to their faith and their understanding, or can be obedient or disobedient to their Church, it is the teachings of the Churches themselves which must be examined thoroughly.
A given individual might be personally lovable (such as Billy Graham) and much of his actions might be thoroughly Christian and indeed put many individual other Protestants AND Catholics to shame, but that doesn’t mean that all Christian teachings espoused by Mr. Graham are authentic. He can ‘get things wrong’, and it’s that ‘mix’ of wrong and right, good and bad, that is so damaging for Christians today. When our brothers and sisters in Christ speak of Christ so well, act so lovingly, and live such joyful lives of service to God, it is hard to accept that SOME of the teachings they claim as truth aren’t truth. Equally, when some of us (of the Catholic persuasion) come across as mean, petty, judgmental, narrow-minded, entitled, rude, holier-than-thou, etc., it is hard to accept that some of the teachings THEY claim as truth ARE truth. Even when they say, “There are three Divine Persons in One God” (which most Christians know is truth), there is the tendency to think, “I’m not sure I believe this, coming from a Catholic!”
so do not take me seriously.
True that…