(06-29-2011 09:36 AM)NIU05 Wrote:  Alexis de Tocqueville the French sociologist, wrote in 1835 that the strength in America was in her churches.

Today America's problems are not Democrats and Republicans or liberal and conservatives, it is her churches. Our churches are WEAK. They can not even be relied upon to express basic Judea Christian theology. We have many churches that knowingly,willingly and viciously hide known deviant activity. It is the right of all Christians to eat of the Living bread, they should not be starved to death. Where there is no bread they must change, move and adapt to those churches that will feed HIS people.

Find a bible based church and do not allow you or your family to starve to death.

Agreed. I think that many church leaders (and the people who trained them) are unaware, or afraid to mention the good that the Christian Church has done for the world.

The Church let her historical influence be reduced to talking points, which were easily swept away since the members didn't understand what they meant.

Now the church is on the defensive. Many people actually think Christianity was a negative in history and the development of Western Civilization. It's taught that way in some universities. It's certainly presented that way in pop-culture. That's a shame.

And the reaction by the Church has been to grow weaker, just as you describe. To try and be meek and weak, to water down truth, or hide it altogether, so people's feelings don't get hurt, so nobody is "offended."

That's not going to do anybody any good.

(06-29-2011 09:36 AM)NIU05 Wrote:  Alexis de Tocqueville the French sociologist, wrote in 1835 that the strength in America was in her churches.

Today America's problems are not Democrats and Republicans or liberal and conservatives, it is her churches. Our churches are WEAK. They can not even be relied upon to express basic Judea Christian theology. We have many churches that knowingly,willingly and viciously hide known deviant activity. It is the right of all Christians to eat of the Living bread, they should not be starved to death. Where there is no bread they must change, move and adapt to those churches that will feed HIS people.

Find a bible based church and do not allow you or your family to starve to death.

THIS!!!

So many people look to schools, or other government agencies to convey and instill morals. Yet more live under the illusion that a nation can be immoral and great at the same time. And sadly even more want their churches vies tyo conform to the world, being of the world rather than in the world.

The Basic premise of rights in the US is that the are immutable, conveyed upon us by our very nature (be it from God or chance). The place those rights end is where another begins.

Without a moral foundation it is childlike to expect the average citizen to be content with their rights ending at the point where another begin.

Without a moral foundation it is impossible to expect families to suffer through difficult times, and children who's families break up are at risk in every measurable way when compared to their piers.

Without a moral foundation the trade policies and foreign relation of the united states will boil down to a might (military or economic) makes right mentality every time.

(06-28-2011 07:34 PM)Know Nothing Wrote:  

(06-28-2011 06:57 PM)GrayBeard Wrote:  Still waiting on the whole Praying to the Saints thing....then we can start going through the other talking points.

Catholics do not pray to the saints. We ask the saints to pray for us(intercession is the term we use) to God in the same way you might ask your friends, family members, or fellow church members to pray for you.

That's not the same thing. The "Saints" are dead, absent from the body, gone, in eternity. Show me the Biblical examples of people asking the dead to intercede on their behalf.

(06-28-2011 08:41 PM)miko33 Wrote:  

(06-28-2011 07:34 PM)Know Nothing Wrote:  

(06-28-2011 06:57 PM)GrayBeard Wrote:  Still waiting on the whole Praying to the Saints thing....then we can start going through the other talking points.

Catholics do not pray to the saints. We ask the saints to pray for us(intercession is the term we use) to God in the same way you might ask your friends, family members, or fellow church members to pray for you.

True, Catholics do not pray to saints. The Graybeard did not care for that answer when I gave it to him earlier, and he believes that once you die, you are severed from the rest of believers who are still on earth. He does not believe that the Church is composed of the living who abide in Christ and those who have died in Christ.

What many Christians fail to grasp is that Jesus did not come to earth to write/edit the bible, but he came to build His Church. Yes Christ died for our sins, and we can have his salvation, but his salvation is through His Church (His words written plainly in the bible). The bible was made by The Church that Christ established here on earth. The reverse is not the case, and too many people have built their church upon the bible. That's backwards, because the bible was created by The Church.

There are no bible verses - aside from the books of Macabees that you reject - that directly point to asking the saints for their prayers. But there are other things that we do that is not directly stated in the bible, but Fundamentalists, Evangelicals and Reformation Protestants take them for granted. Show me in the bible where it says that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the only 4 Gospels that should be contained within the New Testament.

OK, so you reject the Bible as the holy word of God. Then we have nothing else to discuss. I guess you can just make it up as you go and set the rituals up in any way you choose.

(06-29-2011 11:19 AM)GrayBeard Wrote:  

(06-28-2011 08:41 PM)miko33 Wrote:  

(06-28-2011 07:34 PM)Know Nothing Wrote:  

(06-28-2011 06:57 PM)GrayBeard Wrote:  Still waiting on the whole Praying to the Saints thing....then we can start going through the other talking points.

Catholics do not pray to the saints. We ask the saints to pray for us(intercession is the term we use) to God in the same way you might ask your friends, family members, or fellow church members to pray for you.

True, Catholics do not pray to saints. The Graybeard did not care for that answer when I gave it to him earlier, and he believes that once you die, you are severed from the rest of believers who are still on earth. He does not believe that the Church is composed of the living who abide in Christ and those who have died in Christ.

What many Christians fail to grasp is that Jesus did not come to earth to write/edit the bible, but he came to build His Church. Yes Christ died for our sins, and we can have his salvation, but his salvation is through His Church (His words written plainly in the bible). The bible was made by The Church that Christ established here on earth. The reverse is not the case, and too many people have built their church upon the bible. That's backwards, because the bible was created by The Church.

There are no bible verses - aside from the books of Macabees that you reject - that directly point to asking the saints for their prayers. But there are other things that we do that is not directly stated in the bible, but Fundamentalists, Evangelicals and Reformation Protestants take them for granted. Show me in the bible where it says that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the only 4 Gospels that should be contained within the New Testament.

OK, so you reject the Bible as the holy word of God. Then we have nothing else to discuss. I guess you can just make it up as you go and set the rituals up in any way you choose.

Nice strawman. I said nothing of the sort. In fact, your last sentence is very telling and is an indictment of the entire protestant/evangelical/fundamentalist movements. Some groups believe in a hierarchy (Anglicans, Lutherans), some groups believe that leadership should be based on a "council of elders" (Presbyterians) and others are built completely around the pastor (Like the so-called nondenominational churches).

Before you reply that you are not referring to organized denominations like Lutherans, Methodists, etc., you already are a member of an organized denomination. Your groups continue to splinter into more and more "denominations". More and more people continue to judge their fellow man as being "apostate" or "heretical", so they must split away. On and on it continues. Everyone having their own unique interpretation of the bible. Calvinism vs. Arminianism, Unitarian vs. Trinitarian, Baptism as a regenerative act vs. being a symbolic act, etc., etc. It's the continued divergence of beliefs because your group is rudderless. You guys make it up as you go merely because of all the different interpretations of the bible.

(06-29-2011 11:57 AM)miko33 Wrote:  

(06-29-2011 11:19 AM)GrayBeard Wrote:  

(06-28-2011 08:41 PM)miko33 Wrote:  

(06-28-2011 07:34 PM)Know Nothing Wrote:  

(06-28-2011 06:57 PM)GrayBeard Wrote:  Still waiting on the whole Praying to the Saints thing....then we can start going through the other talking points.

Catholics do not pray to the saints. We ask the saints to pray for us(intercession is the term we use) to God in the same way you might ask your friends, family members, or fellow church members to pray for you.

True, Catholics do not pray to saints. The Graybeard did not care for that answer when I gave it to him earlier, and he believes that once you die, you are severed from the rest of believers who are still on earth. He does not believe that the Church is composed of the living who abide in Christ and those who have died in Christ.

What many Christians fail to grasp is that Jesus did not come to earth to write/edit the bible, but he came to build His Church. Yes Christ died for our sins, and we can have his salvation, but his salvation is through His Church (His words written plainly in the bible). The bible was made by The Church that Christ established here on earth. The reverse is not the case, and too many people have built their church upon the bible. That's backwards, because the bible was created by The Church.

There are no bible verses - aside from the books of Macabees that you reject - that directly point to asking the saints for their prayers. But there are other things that we do that is not directly stated in the bible, but Fundamentalists, Evangelicals and Reformation Protestants take them for granted. Show me in the bible where it says that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the only 4 Gospels that should be contained within the New Testament.

OK, so you reject the Bible as the holy word of God. Then we have nothing else to discuss. I guess you can just make it up as you go and set the rituals up in any way you choose.

Nice strawman. I said nothing of the sort. In fact, your last sentence is very telling and is an indictment of the entire protestant/evangelical/fundamentalist movements. Some groups believe in a hierarchy (Anglicans, Lutherans), some groups believe that leadership should be based on a "council of elders" (Presbyterians) and others are built completely around the pastor (Like the so-called nondenominational churches).

Before you reply that you are not referring to organized denominations like Lutherans, Methodists, etc., you already are a member of an organized denomination. Your groups continue to splinter into more and more "denominations". More and more people continue to judge their fellow man as being "apostate" or "heretical", so they must split away. On and on it continues. Everyone having their own unique interpretation of the bible. Calvinism vs. Arminianism, Unitarian vs. Trinitarian, Baptism as a regenerative act vs. being a symbolic act, etc., etc. It's the continued divergence of beliefs because your group is rudderless. You guys make it up as you go merely because of all the different interpretations of the bible.

Its not a straw man either. It's a point that if we can not come to an agreement on, then there is no way we will be able to find common ground for the rest of our discussion. In other words, we will not see eye to eye on this and the "truths" that we hold to will not be reconcilable.

You claim that the Bible was written by the churh which leads to it being fallable. I beleive that while the pen to paper was of a human, that the scriptures were God breathed. That they existed from the beginning but were not written down until the preordained time.

We are fundamentally different there, and since I base my Christianity on the Bible, and you don't base your Catholicism on it, or even hold it in high regards as the Word of God, then this debate will fail to find any common ground.

(06-29-2011 12:06 PM)GrayBeard Wrote:  

(06-29-2011 11:57 AM)miko33 Wrote:  

(06-29-2011 11:19 AM)GrayBeard Wrote:  

(06-28-2011 08:41 PM)miko33 Wrote:  

(06-28-2011 07:34 PM)Know Nothing Wrote:  Catholics do not pray to the saints. We ask the saints to pray for us(intercession is the term we use) to God in the same way you might ask your friends, family members, or fellow church members to pray for you.

True, Catholics do not pray to saints. The Graybeard did not care for that answer when I gave it to him earlier, and he believes that once you die, you are severed from the rest of believers who are still on earth. He does not believe that the Church is composed of the living who abide in Christ and those who have died in Christ.

What many Christians fail to grasp is that Jesus did not come to earth to write/edit the bible, but he came to build His Church. Yes Christ died for our sins, and we can have his salvation, but his salvation is through His Church (His words written plainly in the bible). The bible was made by The Church that Christ established here on earth. The reverse is not the case, and too many people have built their church upon the bible. That's backwards, because the bible was created by The Church.

There are no bible verses - aside from the books of Macabees that you reject - that directly point to asking the saints for their prayers. But there are other things that we do that is not directly stated in the bible, but Fundamentalists, Evangelicals and Reformation Protestants take them for granted. Show me in the bible where it says that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the only 4 Gospels that should be contained within the New Testament.

OK, so you reject the Bible as the holy word of God. Then we have nothing else to discuss. I guess you can just make it up as you go and set the rituals up in any way you choose.

Nice strawman. I said nothing of the sort. In fact, your last sentence is very telling and is an indictment of the entire protestant/evangelical/fundamentalist movements. Some groups believe in a hierarchy (Anglicans, Lutherans), some groups believe that leadership should be based on a "council of elders" (Presbyterians) and others are built completely around the pastor (Like the so-called nondenominational churches).

Before you reply that you are not referring to organized denominations like Lutherans, Methodists, etc., you already are a member of an organized denomination. Your groups continue to splinter into more and more "denominations". More and more people continue to judge their fellow man as being "apostate" or "heretical", so they must split away. On and on it continues. Everyone having their own unique interpretation of the bible. Calvinism vs. Arminianism, Unitarian vs. Trinitarian, Baptism as a regenerative act vs. being a symbolic act, etc., etc. It's the continued divergence of beliefs because your group is rudderless. You guys make it up as you go merely because of all the different interpretations of the bible.

Its not a straw man either. It's a point that if we can not come to an agreement on, then there is no way we will be able to find common ground for the rest of our discussion. In other words, we will not see eye to eye on this and the "truths" that we hold to will not be reconcilable.

You claim that the Bible was written by the churh which leads to it being fallable. I beleive that while the pen to paper was of a human, that the scriptures were God breathed. That they existed from the beginning but were not written down until the preordained time.

We are fundamentally different there, and since I base my Christianity on the Bible, and you don't base your Catholicism on it, or even hold it in high regards as the Word of God, then this debate will fail to find any common ground.

Catholics believe the same thing that you do concerning scripture. I've never said that. But the scriptures written by God (through man) were not collected into the bible we have today. So when the Church during the first couple of centuries established the entire cannon of books that must be included in the bible, it in essence "created" the bible. It did not write the Holy Scriptures, but the Church determined what was inspired work vs what was not. So the bible you hold in your hands today was made possible by the Church. I've stated this numerous times and you continue to twist my words into something that I did not say.

The Old Testament was but not the New. Even then, there were 2 cannons of Old Testament floating around in the time of Christ. The early Christians used the Old Testament Cannon that was set in the Septuagint while the Jews at that time used a "Hebrew Cannon" and eliminated books from the bible. Did you know that the earliest Christians used the Apocryhpa (that Catholics called deuterocanonical)?

(06-29-2011 09:36 AM)NIU05 Wrote:  Alexis de Tocqueville the French sociologist, wrote in 1835 that the strength in America was in her churches.

Today America's problems are not Democrats and Republicans or liberal and conservatives, it is her churches. Our churches are WEAK. They can not even be relied upon to express basic Judea Christian theology. We have many churches that knowingly,willingly and viciously hide known deviant activity. It is the right of all Christians to eat of the Living bread, they should not be starved to death. Where there is no bread they must change, move and adapt to those churches that will feed HIS people.

Find a bible based church and do not allow you or your family to starve to death.

The irony in this post is that you cite Tocqueville, a Catholic, as a reason to join "a bible based church" from which(based on your previous posts) you exclude the Catholic Church.

Tocqueville also predicted this:

"Our posterity will tend more and more to a division into only two parts, some relinquishing Christianity entirely and others returning to the Church of Rome"

This has proven prophetic with apostasy of the Episcopalians, ELCA, PCUSA, UMC, UCC, ABCUSA, etc etc. and also the long list of protestant pastors, scholars, and theologians that have been entering the Catholic faith in the past few decades.