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now I am not trying to get people to like me, with this post, I am just trying to get you to see how we are to love God and His Word. His Word is not just another book that can teach us how to live, It is the Word of God. Breathed from God Himself, people have died( foxes Book of Martyrs) killed( just as the jews had Jesus killed ) by the Catholic church itself. so That I can stand up and Preach His Word, in our language. Ok i know we are to love another also and He also said to love our enemies. But if you attack God, or His Word you are not mine enemy, but rather a enemy of God, He that is not with me is against me. Let me give one more thought on this. there is another lie that came straight from hell that us Christians have accepted as true. Many people will say well, we just have to learn to agree to disagree. one of satans tools that goes against the very Word of God has been adopted by the Children of God themselves, for the Word of God says :
1co 12:25That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another.
Thaddeus, you don't have to worry about being liked. There is no chance of that. You need not worry about being respected for your erudition, either.
Protestant history is similar to their "exegesis" [using the term loosely]. It is based on myths. The Catholic Church, we here have been told, had burned copies of the Bible. Whereas, in actuality the Church guarded the Bible, defined its canon, and burned and forbade reading of editions that were inaccurate, heretical translations. Bibles such as Tyndale's translation had footnotes attacking the Church and the pope.The Church produced translations into vernacular languages were made years before the "Reformation". The Gospels had been translated into Anglo-Saxon long before the English language was formed.
Any impartial, objective person, who did even a small amount of research would quickly conclude that the famous
Book of Martyrs, written by John Foxe, a sixteenth-century apostate Catholic, was historically inaccurate. Many of the "martyrs" in the reign of Mary Tudor were unorthodox and would have been burned in the reign of Protestant Queen Elizabeth. Indeed, Foxe supported a regime that tortured and killed Catholics who simply wanted to live in the faith of their ancestors. He also supported a regime that burned Evangelical Christians such as Baptists! It was Protestant Christians who had persecuted the Puritan Pilgrim Fathers of seventeenth-century England, and that group in turn, on settling in America, had persecuted fellow Bible believers!
Contrary to what some protestants claim, Catholics do not believe in continuing revelation, but instead have always taught that public revelation ceased with the apostles and that the faith had been once delivered to the saints. Ironically, it is the heresies of Faith Alone, Eternal Security, Sola Scriptura and Forensic Imputation, which make for new "doctrine", new "revelation". It is the duty of the Church as the pillar and foundation of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15) to interpret and discern that original deposit laid down by Jesus Christ and His Apostles. The Catholic Church had not invented transubstantiation in the thirteenth century any more than it had invented the Trinity in the fourth. Some extreme protestant evangelicals are in the same position as Jehovah's Witnesses, who say the word "Trinity" is not in the Bible.Whereas theteaching is plainly there in the bible and the Church simply defined the term. The same holds for Purgatory. Some protestants might argue that Purgatory cannot be clearly seen. This would be a weak reply, as many protestants are subjective as to what they see. After all, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and a host of others could see infant baptism, while Spurgeon, Billy Graham, and others could not. Apostolic Christian teaching is more logical. God had established a Church to be the final arbiter, and he is not the author of confusion. The development of doctrine is like the development of a photographic image. The image is on the film, but as time and circumstance change the image emerges clearer.
There is not one text which asserts that the Bible alone is sufficient. The famous passage that asserts that Scripture is profitable (2 Tim. 3:16) means it is helpful but not sufficient. It is profitable for me to drink water for my health, but it is not sufficient. I cannot find one verse which teaches that the Word of God is purely written. Instead, we find that Jesus had honored non-scriptural tradition in the Jewish faith community he belonged to. His condemnation of the false interpretation of tradition given by the Pharisees was not a condemnation of tradition per se. The Church he founded on his apostles (Peter in particular) was a Church that accepted teaching both in written epistle and by word of mouth.
Always with Christ,
Amen