What is the easiest way to remember Bible verses for defending the faith

[stmichaeliscool]

I am 1 out of 3 Catholics at a school of 500-600 Protestants. And i want to be able to defend my faith more easily by spitting out verses. I just need a good and easy way to memorize verses.

 

[Dr.Colossus]

I don’t have any great method to offer you, but “spitting out verses” is generally not the best way to go about defending the Catholic faith. Proof-texting will not get you very far with Protestants because many (most) are very familiar with this method, and for every verse you may provide they will likely have another which appears to contradict you. Rather, it is important to be able to show the full context of the verses that they quote to prove their doctrines, because invariably the context will support the Catholic position.

 

[nohself]

There is a wonderful little pocket book called Catholic Pocket Evangelist: Biblical Outlines for Scripturally-Based Discussions of the Roman Catholic Church by Father Mario P. Romero. You can stick it right in your backpack. It’s probably the best tool I have for evangelization. He goes through all the controversial topics and presents bible verses which support the Catholic view. Incredibly compact but incredibly thorough.

I would suggest that first and foremost you try to deflate their notion of sola scriptura, “scripture only.” If they truly believe this doctrine they’re not even going to listen to your what you say about Mary and purgatory and the communion of saints, etc. because quite truly they aren’t specifically taught in the Bible. Brush up if you need to, on the two source of divine revelation, Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Remind them of what Paul said: “Hold fast to the traditions you learned either by word of mouth or by the letter” (2 Thessalonians 2:15).

Once you cause them to doubt sola scriptura, everything else falls down around them. It really is battle, not against protestants per se, but against the faulty notions in their head. Acting and speaking with love is probably the most important thing.

Jamie

 

[Reformed_Rob]

stmichaeliscool:

I am 1 out of 3 Catholics at a school of 500-600 Protestants. And i want to be able to defend my faith more easily by spitting out verses. I just need a good and easy way to memorize verses.

I think the best way to do that is to memorize verses

Ok, seriously.

Don’t just go randomly picking verses to memorize. Here’s 3 things I’d recommend:

1. Regularly read Scripture. That means daily, at least like 3 or 4 chapters of a single book a day. Finish a whole book, don’t just switch books withoug reading the whole book. Also, along with that, while you’re praying the Rosary, GET A LITTLE WILD and read a Psalm or two in the middle of sets of Hail Mary’s, or some awesome prayers of godly men, like in Daniel 9, and Micah 7 for instance.
2. Pick a topic, learn the Catholic arguments for whatever it is, especially how the Church uses Scripture to arrive at and support that doctrine. Learn Protestant objections, and how to answer them. Remember those verses, memorize them. To help, write in your Bible, like start at one passage that stands out to you for that topic, and then think “how would I present this?” and then make cross-reference notes, so you can show somebody a verse, and right there in your Bible you’ve made a little note for the next verse you’ll go to, and so on.
3. Be familiar with sections of Scripture, like books, and where certain things are talked about. The Gospels are kinda hard, because they’re all different as far as Chapter numbers go, but Apostolic epistles are easier, and some OT books are too. That way, you don’t necessarily have to memorize so many texts, but rather you know “about” where they are because you’re familiar with the teachings of Scripture.

Ok, maybe that helps.

If I were you, and if I were Catholic in your situation, gee I’d want to be getting with the other Catholics there and having at least a once or twice a week hang out time where you discussed what you’ve been learning and share with eachother and pray for eachother.

But I’m not Catholic, but wanting to be Catholic, I can feel your desire, wanting to defend what you believe (me, coming to believe). Don’t let it consume all your time, but it sounds like it’s time to buckle down and learn more about your faith. Enjoy it, it’s a rich faith. I think so, and I’m not Cathlic.

 

[Maccabees]

tatoos!

 

[serendipity]

I thought Patrick Madrid’s Where is that in the Bible is a good handbook for studying key passages that support and defend the Catholic faith. It’s small and compact (could fit in a pocket). Under $10 from Amazon. Basically it lists apologetic topics, has a brief summary of what the Catholic church teaches on each, and then lists biblical references that you can look up.

Dave Amrstrong has a book something like The Catholic Verses: 95 Questions that Confound Protestants, but I’ve not read it yet. It’s more expensive and also available on Amazon.

Some helpful web sties for similar information:

catholicapologetics.com/cheatsheet.htm

scripturecatholic.com/my_top_ten.html

ic.net/~erasmus/RAZHOME.HTM

As far as remembering them, I don’t know what works best for you. Obviously the more you read them, the more you remember. Any specific topics you want to address? And the simpler the book is written, the easier it is to remember.

I highlight my Bible with a certain colour, when the passage supports church doctrine or teaching, and then I write a foot note saying what doctrine it supports. Seeing that helps me remember more.

It also helps me if I work by theme, then my thoughts are organized. Like I started with focusing on the faith alone argument, worked with the communion of saints, doing a bit on rapture now. It’s good to begin the overview of why the Catholic Bible is better than the abridged Protestant version (beucase they don’t ahve all the Old Testament verses that Jesus referred to be “scripture”). There is a Catholic Answers Tract on that (and on helpful scripture references).

Also, for things that really matter to me, I have a small notebook where I write topics on the right hand corner, and then write the verses on the pages below.

 

[Maccabees]

Flashcards anyone?
Friendly Defender Flash Cards With Carrying Ring

aquinasandmore.com/index.cfm/FuseAction/store.ItemDetails/SKU/19281/category/3/index.htm

General Description:
Is your Catholic child or student
prepared to respond to these questions?

I. “Why do Catholics teach things that are not in the Bible?”

1. “How can you believe a piece of bread is really Jesus?”
2. Why is purgatory necessary? You’re either saved or not saved."
3. “Are you born again?”
4. “Why pray to Mary when you can go directly to Jesus?”
5. “Why tell your sins to a priest? A man can’t forgive sins.”

Your child or student can learn to answer these six questions and 44 more with the Friendly Defenders Catholic Flash Cards!

Join Charitable Charles, Gracious Grace, Joyful Joey, Confident Carlos and Solid Sally as they help prepare your child or student to charitably explain the Faith when it is challenged.

I actually have these they are a hoot! Because the same questions your kids get from their evangelical friends you get as an adult and the toons are kid friendy so you and your kids can learn to answer the fundamentalist next door together!:yup:

 

[Church_Militant]

stmichaeliscool,
(Firstly to that!)

OKay…It takes time to gain the facility with scripture that your non-Catholic friends have right now so be kinda patient.

As an immediate remedy I would suggest a couple of free tools that will help bunches.
The library here on the CA main page has great tracts that you can print out and study and even take to friends who hit you with questions.

The Bible Christian Society offers a boatlaod of FREE audio tapes on all aspects of Catholic belief and apologetics.
Get them here: biblechristiansociety.com/
You can even take them and give them to the people with questions and if they hesitate, just ask if they’re afraid to hear the answers to their questions. Basically you sometimes have to call their bluff.

Another FREE source is the Catholic Home Study Service, which offers TERRIFIC Catholic studies that will get you moving towards really knowing your faith. I’ve done ALL of 'em so I know what I’m talking about and recommend them to all and sundry.

If you wanna invest a few bucks, I recommend Beginning Apologetics # 1 from San Juan Catholic Seminars, which will give you KILLER answers for less than ten bucks and is set up to answer questions. I have all 7 of their booklets and they really are a help in defending the faith. I have at least 2 of them here by the comp as I work here on the forum in case I need a ready reference.

Also Grotto Press publishes some really great cartoon tracts that you can carry in your pocket when someone takes their best shot. They ROCK.
Get 'em here: grottopress.org/index.html

Also check out The Catholic Society of Evangelists:
Here: saint-mike.org/cse/default.asp

Lastly, READ YOUR BIBLE every day and underline or highlight verses that speak to you as you read. One buddy of mine who is converting to the faith after lengthy discussions with yours truly (Praise Be To God! It was the Holy Spirit…not idiot me.) uses different ink colors to code his Bible topically. I just use one color…a pencil, because I find the multi-hued markings distracting.

PM me if you want more help or I can offer any assitance at all, at all.
Pax vobiscum,

 

[RobedWithLight]

To be honest, the easiest way isn’t necessarily the best. Sometimes, in our haste to become “instant” defenders of the Church, we end up retreating, sometimes in shock or shame, having been thoroughly and woefully unprepared to explain fully and deeply those scriptural passages that non-Catholics love to spew out to the unwary Catholic they happen to encounter.

There is no substitute for patient study and reflection coupled with the firm conviction that God unfailingly guides His Church and we who belong to it have nothing to fear.

Gerry

 

[Scott_Waddell]

RobedWithLight:

To be honest, the easiest way isn’t necessarily the best. Sometimes, in our haste to become “instant” defenders of the Church, we end up retreating, sometimes in shock or shame, having been thoroughly and woefully unprepared to explain fully and deeply those scriptural passages that non-Catholics love to spew out to the unwary Catholic they happen to encounter.

There is no substitute for patient study and reflection coupled with the firm conviction that God unfailingly guides His Church and we who belong to it have nothing to fear.

Gerry

Amen! I would recommend stmichaeliscool (great name )going to Dave Armstrong’s site: Biblical Evidence for Catholicism and reading in particular his dialogues with Protestant opponents.

Really, although it is important to have those key Scripture passages in mind, you are usually in a no-win situation with anti-Catholics. They ask you for Biblical proof for x Catholic doctrine under the assumption that there isn’t any. When you DO give Biblical evidence, they accuse you of eisegesis or “twisting scripture”.

The best thing is to live the faith. Be joyful, patient and friendly. NEVER MAKE UP AN ANSWER WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW! There is nothing wrong with saying, “I don’t know. Let me do some research and get back to you.” If the opponent is a jerk, he may walk away triumphantly that you could not answer a question, but don’t take the bait. The object is not to win an argument, but to get to the truth.

Remember this from Karl Keating (this should be tatooed on every Catholic’s arm):

Sometimes non-Catholic listeners are hostile, sometimes disruptive, sometimes rude. The urge to give as one has received can be almost overpowering, but so far I do not think I have thrown any wicked one-liners, the kind that cut to the heart more effectively than any stiletto. The restraint has paid off. After many public appearances, Protestants thank me for speaking well of their position and for not getting riled. Many want to find out more about the Catholic faith. How many of them would have gone away with their worst suspicions confirmed if I had used against their beliefs the kind of language used against mine by professional anti-Catholics? How many Catholics would have been scandalized and would have found themselves distancing themselves from the Church instead of embracing her ever more closely?

Scott

 

[BibleReader]

Actually, you can do it online, here. Go to Google and just hit in word combinations like “Catholicism errors” and you’ll come up with thousands of sites which help you to know in advance the things our Protestant brothers and sisters like to dwell on, when they criticize Roman Catholicism.

Also, get to know your Bible, and the places in it where Catholicism finds its primary justifications.

One of the problems with Catholioc analyses of Scripture “out there” in the literature today is that it is severely literalist. As Dei Verbum Paragraphs 15 and 16 and CCC Paragraphs 128, 129 and 130 discuss, the Bible uses an allegorical teaching tool called “typology.” When Bible commentators and apologists stay literal, they throw out three-quarters of the wonderful material in the Bible justifying The Catholic Faith. Examples:

Mary: John 2: The story is a “typological word picture” for the salvation process and for Mary’s role in it. First focus on what Jesus does: He has six jars, or “evil” (six) “mortal men” (jars), filled with potable water, or “salvation” (potable water). When He changes it to wine, we are being shone that He, Jesus, will supply that salvation with His atoning “blood” (wine).

Now, carefully study Mary’s actions in the story, and Jesus’ response to them.

The people at even need wine, Jesus’ saving “blood” (wine). Mary responds by interceding for them with Jesus. Now, our Protestant friends are right – Jesus, the second Person of the divine Trinity, responds to Mary’s intercession with a slightly nasty rebuff, because frankly God doesn’t need a mortal’s help – “Woman, how does this concern of yours involve me? My hour has not yet come.” (Catholic commentators can argue until they are blue in the face that Mary is not being rebuffed, here, but she clearly is.)

However, keep reading…

Again, God doesn’t need a mortal’s help, so initially Jesus functionally tells Mary to go mind her own business.

But then, Holy-Spirit-inspired Scripture shows Mary confidently persisting – “Do whatever He tells you.”

And then, a completely astonishing thing happens…

Jesus makes this concern of Mary His concern, anyway, and against God’s timing – remember that He explained, “My hour has not yet come.”

And then He provides salvation by His saving blood.

So, the story is a picture of how Mary *successfully *intercedes for us, even against God’s timing.

One more thing: Here, when Mary functions as special intercessor, Jesus calls Mary “woman.” From the cross, as He is dying, He calls Mary “woman,” and places the Church in her care. John 19:26: “Woman, there is your son.” That was her official commission to the role of intercessor.

You will find that our Protestant brothers and sisters are shocked to here this argument, and do not have a good answer for it.

TO BE CONTINUED…

 

[BibleReader]

CONTINUED FROM ABOVE…

The Real Presence: The Real Presence in the Eucharist is taught all over the Bible.

When Jesus is born in Luke 2, He is born in Bethlehem, the Hebrew term for “House of Bread.” In the House of Bread, we see Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes, like a cadaver wrapped in a shroud, lying in a manger, a feeding trough for yoked animals – a kind of “dinner plate”!

So, in the House of Bread, we see the actual body of dead Jesus on a dinner plate!

Confronted with this, really good Protestant apologists argue that Jesus, Himself, in Luke 13:15, uses phatne,“manger” to mean “stall.”

How do we know that it doesn’t have this meaning when Jesus is born.

Response One: That interpretation requires that in Luke 2:16, Mary and Joseph and Jesus all be “lying” in a stall when the shepherds come, or else that they be outside the stall, while Jesus is lying inside the stall – in either case, an awkward picture.

Response Two: There are other pictures of distribution of the actual body of the Dead One in the Bible.

In Judges 19, the story of the Levite of Ephraim, the concubine is (a) from Bethlehem, like Jesus; (b) on an ***, like Jesus, she (c) rides into Jerusalem; (d) in the vicinity of Jerusalem, she is sacrifice by the member of the priestly tribe, to save all of those in the house, like Jesus; (e) the Levite distributes her actual physical sacrificed body to the people of Israel.

There are other pictures of the Real Presence, but I haven’t got time to lay them out, here.

Learning to do this takes time. Even most priests can’t do this. But, it can be done.

No matter what, evangelize with love.

 

[BibleReader]

Here is the Immaculate Conception…

In Ezekiel 17, the Parable of the Two Eagles, the first eagle seizes the uppermost branch of a cedar tree and plants it in a “fruitful field” or “seedbed” or “fertile ground,” depending on which translation you read, and it grows up into an enormous vine.

Jesus says, “I am the vine,” does it not?

So, that cedar-branch-turned-vine is Jesus.

The eagle is the Holy Spirit. The cedar tree, red wood, is the bloodied cross, and in principle here the family of the bloodied cross, giving rise to the “uppermost branch,” Jesus.

The eagle planting the uppermost branch of the cedar tree in a “fruitful field” is Mary’s immaculate womb, in immaculate Mary.

Why “immaculate”? Because in the Bible, a desert, or wasteland, or wilderness = “mankind in need of salvation.”

A “fruitful field” doesn’t need salvation at the time it is “fruitful.”

 

[Catholic_Dude]

stmichaeliscool:

I am 1 out of 3 Catholics at a school of 500-600 Protestants. And i want to be able to defend my faith more easily by spitting out verses. I just need a good and easy way to memorize verses.

Heres my two cents.

1. As a few people have said, there isnt a quick and easy silver bullet to take them down, and even if there was you would still be surrounded by 596 Protestants left (600-3catholics-1dead guy by
   the bullet = 596)

2)Give us more info to help you, for example is this High or Middle school? What are some of the challenges they have made? Have any teachers made any subliminal comments about the CC? What type of Protestants. I guarantee if you answer a few of these questions people on CA will have a mountain of info to help you.

3)If you want to shake them up a bit I do reccomend a few verses, here are a few:

a)James 2:20-24, especially 24 if all you want to remember is a few:

24You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone. (NIV)

b)Matt 7:21

21“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

c)James 5:14

14Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. (NIV)

d)John 6:52-54

52Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” 53Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

e)1Timothy3:8

8Deacons, likewise, are to be men worthy of respect, sincere, not indulging in much wine, and not pursuing dishonest gain. (NIV)

f)1Timothy5:23

23Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.(NIV)

Now ‘a’ and ‘b’ are when they start talking about faith alone, and that there is more to the “salvation equation” than they care to accept. In ‘c’ ,I love this one, most people have never read/heard it. It is so clear that there has to be elders/bishops and that anointing is a sacred, historical, Biblical, thing and of course the CC does it!
Now ‘d’ is a quickie that people in Catholic Answers use all the time, it says that the Jews understood what Jesus was saying to be real blood and flesh, not grape juice and white dough!
Now this isnt a substitute for knowing your faith, they are only meant to provide temporary immuity.In ‘e’ and ‘f’ it teaches that wine is not bad and in fact can be good for you, “not indulging” indicates that it can make you drunk if you indulge whereas grape juice will not.

Good luck!

 

[serendipity]

Church Militant:

Lastly, READ YOUR BIBLE every day and underline or highlight verses that speak to you as you read. One buddy of mine who is converting to the faith after lengthy discussions with yours truly (Praise Be To God! It was the Holy Spirit…not idiot me.) uses different ink colors to code his Bible topically. I just use one color…a pencil, because I find the multi-hued markings distracting.

I do this too. I find that gel pens work best on Bibles, since the apges are relatively thin. I use purple to highlight key controversies: sola scrpitura, communion of saints, not by faith alone, sacraments articles. I used pink for rapture-related passages (becuase the purple is running out, and there are so many things raptursists look at; I’ve studying this with David Currie’s Rapture: The End-Times Error that Leaves the Bible behind - excellent book wiht lots of time lines and diagrams to make absoring the info so easy). Then I use green to underline passages that speak to me personally.

 

[john654]

Hi,

I’ll give you the best advise so far.

Get out of that school! Go to a school that has the Eucharist. Protestants are lost.

John