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J
jmcrae
Guest
So, there’s really no difference between your church and the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Oneness Pentecostals, Seventh Day Adventist, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Four Square Gospel, Pentecostals, etc. - just “believe” whatever, doesn’t really matter what, just as long as you’re sincere, and you can feel the Holy Spirit (or something …), and you’re saved?Yes but thankfully we believe in the salvation message of Christ:thumbsup: AMEN
We dont need continuous history to guide us we need the HS. That is what God promised and that is where I put my faith.
Because these all claim the same things that you do; that they believe in the real message of Christ, and that they don’t need history, because they have the Holy Spirit to guide them.
B
Blue_Serenity
Guest
Then I guess we have nothing else to talk about.
J
jmcrae
Guest
Because we know that the Holy Spirit is not a spirit of contradictions. He would not tell me one thing, and you the totally opposite thing. There is not “my truth” and “your truth” - there is only Truth.
B
Blue_Serenity
Guest
:yup:Yes but thankfully we believe in the salvation message of Christ:thumbsup: AMEN
We dont need continuous history to guide us we need the HS. That is what God promised and that is where I put my faith.
A
ALLFORHIM
Guest
Hi,
I think maybe what blue meant is that whoever has the HS in them and are congregating together will be separated from the phonies.
Am I right Blue?
J
jmcrae
Guest
I got sealed by the Holy Spirit at the time of my Confirmation.
I was anointed with the Oil of Salvation and received the laying on of hands on the evening of April 14, 2001, some time shortly after 9:00 pm.
That’s the path He uses, to come down to us. We can be assured that it is really the Holy Spirit and not a false spirit because of Christ’s promise to Peter, who was our first Pope.
M
MrS
Guest
I was sealed with the Holy Spirit at my Confirmation. The seal also gave me extra graces to put on the armor of faith, and to realize (not necessarily accept) that I must love God with my whole mind, my whole strenght, my whole heart.
It does not promise me the talent of self-interpretation.
The heirarchy of the Catholic Church received promises that I have never received.
The heirarchy has those special graces to see what the Fathers or the theologians think, and express, and proclaim… and then decide what is true or not… under the guidance of the Holy Spirit
A
ALLFORHIM
Guest
I got sealed by the Holy Spirit at the time of my Confirmation.
Oh I was under the impression from Scripture the HS came directly from God.
J
jmcrae
Guest
It comes from God to the Church, and through the Church to the members of the Church.
M
MrS
Guest
How do I know it is not the Holy Spirit who leads other faiths in their division???
When you have so many different theologies (use infant baptism or divorce for example)… and your faith, and another’s faith have opposite moral teachings… which they both claim are guided by the Holy Spirit…
then we must conclude:
[1] The Holy Spirit is wrong in at least one of their theologies
(not possible for the HS to be wrong)
[2] The Holy Spirit is wrong in both of their theologies
(not possible for the HS to be wrong)
[3] The Holy Spirit is right in both theologies
(not possible for the HS to be in contradiction with Himself)
[4] It is not the Holy Spirit leading them…
.
J
Janet_S
Guest
This is an explanation of Matthew 16:17-19 by James Akin, a Catholic convert from Protestantism. You can read his full conversion story here:
ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/AKINSTOR.htm
A year or two after reading Leon’s paper on Mary, I read a book by a Catholic author who gave a long quote from Matthew 16 in his section on the pope. In this passage Christ says, “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church.” Up to this time I had always thought the rock on which the Church was built is the revelation that Jesus is the Christ, and I could argue this position well. As my eyes scanned the passage, I noticed for the first time a structural feature in the text which required that Peter be the rock.
In Matthew 16:17-19 Jesus makes three statements to Peter: (a) “Blessed are you Simon Bar-Jonah,” (b) “You are Peter,” and (c) “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.” The first statement is clearly a blessing, something which builds Peter up and magnifies him. Christ declares him blessed because he received a special revelation from God.
The third statement is also a blessing: Christ declares that he will give Peter the keys to the kingdom. This is clearly a beatitude, something that magnifies and builds Peter up.
And if Christ’s first and third statements to Peter are blessings, the middle statement, in its immediate context, also must be a blessing.
This was a problem, because in order to defend the view that Peter is not the rock on which the Church is built, I had to appeal to a minor difference in the Greek text between the word used for Peter () and the word used for rock ().
According to standard anti-Catholic interpretation, means “a small stone” while means “a large mass of rock,” and the statement “You are Peter ] ,” should be interpreted as something that stresses Peter’s insignificance.
Evangelicals picture Christ as having meant, “You are a small stone, Peter, but I will build my Church on this great mass of rock which is the revelation of my identity.”
One problem with this interpretation, a problem that many Protestant Bible scholars will admit,[1] is that while and did have these meanings in some ancient Greek poetry, the distinction was gone by the first century, when Matthew’s Gospel was written. At that time the two words meant the same thing: a rock.
Another problem is that when he addressed Peter, Jesus was not speaking Greek, but Aramaic, a cousin language of Hebrew. In Aramaic there is no difference between the two words which in Greek are rendered as and . They are both ; that’s why Paul often refers to Peter as [2] (cf. 1 Cor. 15:5, Gal. 2:9).
What Christ actually said was, “You are and on this I will build my Church.”
But even if the words and did have different meanings, the Protestant reading of two different “rocks” would not fit the context. The second statement to Peter would be something which minimized or diminished him, pointing out his insignificance, with the result that Jesus would be saying, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar- Jonah! (You are an insignificant little pebble.) Here are the keys to the kingdom of heaven!” Such an incongruous sequence of statements would have been not merely odd, but inexplicable. (Many Protestant commentators recognize this and do their best to deny the obvious sense of this passage, however implausible their explanations may be.)
I also noticed that the Lord’s three statements to Peter had two parts, and the second parts explain the first. The reason Peter was “blessed” was because “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (v.17). The meaning of the name change, “You are Rock,” is explained by the promise, “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (v. 18). The purpose of the keys is explained by Jesus’ commission, “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (v.19). A careful reading of these three statements, paying attention to their immediate context and interrelatedness, clearly shows that Peter was the rock about which Jesus spoke.
These and other considerations showed me that the standard anti-Catholic interpretations of this text could not stand up to careful biblical scrutiny. They were forced to wrench the middle statement to Peter out of its context. (continued)
ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/AKINSTOR.htm
A year or two after reading Leon’s paper on Mary, I read a book by a Catholic author who gave a long quote from Matthew 16 in his section on the pope. In this passage Christ says, “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church.” Up to this time I had always thought the rock on which the Church was built is the revelation that Jesus is the Christ, and I could argue this position well. As my eyes scanned the passage, I noticed for the first time a structural feature in the text which required that Peter be the rock.
In Matthew 16:17-19 Jesus makes three statements to Peter: (a) “Blessed are you Simon Bar-Jonah,” (b) “You are Peter,” and (c) “I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.” The first statement is clearly a blessing, something which builds Peter up and magnifies him. Christ declares him blessed because he received a special revelation from God.
The third statement is also a blessing: Christ declares that he will give Peter the keys to the kingdom. This is clearly a beatitude, something that magnifies and builds Peter up.
And if Christ’s first and third statements to Peter are blessings, the middle statement, in its immediate context, also must be a blessing.
This was a problem, because in order to defend the view that Peter is not the rock on which the Church is built, I had to appeal to a minor difference in the Greek text between the word used for Peter () and the word used for rock ().
According to standard anti-Catholic interpretation, means “a small stone” while means “a large mass of rock,” and the statement “You are Peter ] ,” should be interpreted as something that stresses Peter’s insignificance.
Evangelicals picture Christ as having meant, “You are a small stone, Peter, but I will build my Church on this great mass of rock which is the revelation of my identity.”
One problem with this interpretation, a problem that many Protestant Bible scholars will admit,[1] is that while and did have these meanings in some ancient Greek poetry, the distinction was gone by the first century, when Matthew’s Gospel was written. At that time the two words meant the same thing: a rock.
Another problem is that when he addressed Peter, Jesus was not speaking Greek, but Aramaic, a cousin language of Hebrew. In Aramaic there is no difference between the two words which in Greek are rendered as and . They are both ; that’s why Paul often refers to Peter as [2] (cf. 1 Cor. 15:5, Gal. 2:9).
What Christ actually said was, “You are and on this I will build my Church.”
But even if the words and did have different meanings, the Protestant reading of two different “rocks” would not fit the context. The second statement to Peter would be something which minimized or diminished him, pointing out his insignificance, with the result that Jesus would be saying, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar- Jonah! (You are an insignificant little pebble.) Here are the keys to the kingdom of heaven!” Such an incongruous sequence of statements would have been not merely odd, but inexplicable. (Many Protestant commentators recognize this and do their best to deny the obvious sense of this passage, however implausible their explanations may be.)
I also noticed that the Lord’s three statements to Peter had two parts, and the second parts explain the first. The reason Peter was “blessed” was because “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (v.17). The meaning of the name change, “You are Rock,” is explained by the promise, “On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (v. 18). The purpose of the keys is explained by Jesus’ commission, “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (v.19). A careful reading of these three statements, paying attention to their immediate context and interrelatedness, clearly shows that Peter was the rock about which Jesus spoke.
These and other considerations showed me that the standard anti-Catholic interpretations of this text could not stand up to careful biblical scrutiny. They were forced to wrench the middle statement to Peter out of its context. (continued)
M
MrS
Guest
There is a road through a major city near me… and on a short strech of road, there are 9 “churches”, and of those nine, 4 have signs proclaiming they are baptist… and of those 4, two actually share the same parking lot.
Their theologies are quite different (one is reformed), yet they both claim what Blue might be suggesting… that they are (like you said) “separated from the phonies”
That is certainly not the working of the Holy Spirit leading a church into all truth.
.
A
ALLFORHIM
Guest
You cant even be part of Christ Church until you have the HS. So it is really the other way around. Until you are justified by faith in Christ you are not part of the church of believers. The church heirarchy is not what saves you. It is belief in Christ’s work on the cross.
But Im sure that is what you meant:thumbsup:
J
Janet_S
Guest
Matthew 16:17-19 continued, by James Akin
I reversed my interpretation and concluded that Peter was indeed the rock on which Jesus built his Church. This is what an unbiased reader looking at the grammar and literary structure of the text would conclude.
If Peter in fact was the rock Jesus was talking about, that meant he was the head apostle (the Greek text reveals that Peter alone was singled out for this praise, and he alone was given the special authority symbolized by the keys of the kingdom of heaven, though other disciples shared in a more general sense Peter’s authority of binding and loosing [cf. Matt. 18:18]). If he was the head apostle, then once Christ had ascended into heaven, Peter would have been the earthly head of the Church, subordinate to Christ’s heavenly headship.
And if Peter was the earthly head of the Church, he fit the most basic definition of the office of the pope. As a result, I had to conclude that Catholics were right in saying that Peter was the first pope. Whether Christ intended there to be any other popes was a question I still had to settle, but already I had seen enough to know that I would have to re-investigate Catholic theology.
If Catholics could be right on this issue, they could be right on other issues as well. It unsettled me to know they were right on the sacraments of baptism and confession.
I reversed my interpretation and concluded that Peter was indeed the rock on which Jesus built his Church. This is what an unbiased reader looking at the grammar and literary structure of the text would conclude.
If Peter in fact was the rock Jesus was talking about, that meant he was the head apostle (the Greek text reveals that Peter alone was singled out for this praise, and he alone was given the special authority symbolized by the keys of the kingdom of heaven, though other disciples shared in a more general sense Peter’s authority of binding and loosing [cf. Matt. 18:18]). If he was the head apostle, then once Christ had ascended into heaven, Peter would have been the earthly head of the Church, subordinate to Christ’s heavenly headship.
And if Peter was the earthly head of the Church, he fit the most basic definition of the office of the pope. As a result, I had to conclude that Catholics were right in saying that Peter was the first pope. Whether Christ intended there to be any other popes was a question I still had to settle, but already I had seen enough to know that I would have to re-investigate Catholic theology.
If Catholics could be right on this issue, they could be right on other issues as well. It unsettled me to know they were right on the sacraments of baptism and confession.
M
MrS
Guest
1Peter… “… and it is baptism that now saves you…”
Belief = obedience. When the jailer, or the centurian wanted to become Christians, they (and their whole households… slaves, servants, spouse, children… no rejection of infants) were baptised into Christ,… both His life and His death.
Baptism is the first sign of the Holy Spirit. The graces come with what Catholics call this Sacrament of Initiation… and continue with Confirmation. They are not ordinances… they are outward signs of the grace of the Lord.
M
MrS
Guest
sounds like grace is flowing in your life
B
Blue_Serenity
Guest
B
Blue_Serenity
Guest
Yes, exactly! Too many people claim to have the HS when in reality they are just leading themselves further from God by believing “whatever they want to” believe.
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