First of all Iâd like to apologize for coming in the middle of this thread. My mistake; I didnât realize that it was already going for quite a while. That being said, Iâve now read the entire post and really hope that once again youâll return to see what else is being said.
This is not a tantrum thrown at authority. This is the result of actually reading and reflecting on the Word of God. Jesus is my authority. The Lord is my Shepard.
Letâs start here.You acknowledge that you rely on Sacred Scripture as your authority and itâs my authority too as the Word of God. So letâs go with that.
Iâve found that if youâre going to say that the Bible is the inspired word of God and itâs your reason for your decisions on what to believe and what not to, then thereâs no sense in convincing you to believe anything that anyone else has written. But if Jesus is, as you say, your authority, and the Bible is, as I believe youâre implying, Godâs written word, then Iâm guessing the Bible is what you are using to decide on your beliefs. Would that be correct?
If we then will be using the Bible to discuss our beliefs than would you agree that ALL of the Bible is inspired by God and not just some? The reason that I ask is that I believe that ALL of the Bible is inspired by God and not just some and therefore we cannot dismiss or throw out any of it that we do not like or that doesnât suit our arguements. Would you agree?
Another thing that we cannot do is insert a meaning to the Scriptures that is not there at all. For example, when Jesus says, âfor my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.â( JN 6; 55) we cannot explain this verse by saying that He meant that His flesh was âsymbolic foodâ and âsymbolic drinkâ, because thatâs not what it says does it? Or when He says that, âunless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.â (John 6;53) we likewise cannot say that he meant, âUnless you eat of the bread which is my symbolic flesh and drink of the wine, which is my symbolic blood, you have no life in yourselvesâ can we? Because that is clearly not what it says and there is no indication other than our own personal feelings on the topic that would cause us to think otherwise.
So if you do return than you should state the rules for this debate that you wish to have and stick to them.
I would highly suggest though that you give Coolduude a chance because from everything that Iâve read he along with a few others are clearly educated on the correct faith of the Catholic Church and can help you clear up what are obviously some major misunderstandings of our faith. Unfortunately there are some others that seem a bit foggy or misinformed still on the true beliefs of our faith, so for now I would feel very confident in suggesting that you keep your questions aimed at Coolduude with just a few others that you already were conversing with.
From the questions on the Papacy that you listed you have MANY MISunderstandings on that topic. I am a recently trained Lay Ecclesial Minister in the Catholic Church (graduated from the local Catholic Seminary) and have been a lifelong Catholic and it has only been in the past 3 years that I have truly started to be convinced of the absolute truth of this faith. It was like all the puzzle pieces fit together perfectly without needing to be jammed into place! When you learn about Judaism and their beliefs and their Bible (our Old T.) and look at the New T. and how it fulfilled it perfectly and then you read the earliest accounts of the Christians it absolutely blows your mind! You wind up thinking, "If only others would listen to what I have learned and look at the evidence they would never question again which Church is the true church. The problem is so many refuse to listen thinking that they already KNOW what we believe and that they already KNOW the truth. Stop closing your ears and eyes and simply Look at the evidence. We canât convince a person that wonât even try to listen to the truth and the proofs!
Why do you think that it matters so much to us whether or not a very young boy leaves our faith? Do you think that we have nothing better to do with our time? In one very real sense, NO! There is nothing better than to lead a soul to the truth about Jesus Christ and the Church he founded. If it wasnât for being absolutely positive of this truth and seeing proofs that are so convincing that we can no longer argue against them, I would simply give up and go to bed, as it is, I and others are spending a lot of time praying for you and digging out any quotes we can that will show the truths to you. You are our brother and we canât stand watching you be deceived by others; even if the others donât mean to deceive but are also deceived as well. (and yes, people who are deceived and therefore donât belong to the Catholic Church can still go to Heaven. Itâs those who willingly refuse to even listen to the truth or turn from it once they know it to be the truth that we worry about.)
As for the Lutheran Church. Why would you join a church that was started 1500 yrs later by a man that wanted to throw out Bible books such as James, which he called, an epistle of straw", Revelation, and various others and add the word âaloneâ to a scripture that would clearly change the meaning of the text, and then say that he didnât care whether it was in the original translation or not, that he knew it wasnât but that he wanted it there because he said it should be there and that was good enough! (Iâm paraphrasing here, but I can get you the actual quote if youâd like.) Do you actually think that the Holy Spirit was with that man when he started his new church?
Peace (conât next spot)
people only asked for my objections
