U2 what do you think?

[LexingtonPethead]

I think that's Jason or SU you're meaning your post to be for David...Exe is married.

Yeah, you're right. I didn't bother checking the earlier post. It's fixed now.

[LexingtonPethead]

Don't feel bad. I was a preachers kid, raised in a sack. I dated a mormon chick. That was an eye opener! Then I dated and married a daughter of a staunch Catholic. My wife is a born-again, bible believing Christian. I almost dread family gatherings. It is beat Brent the Baptist time. It's worth it.

It seems that Catholics who become Christians are the most avid critics of Catholicism. They can be real crusaders when it comes to bringing other Catholics to Christ. I'm glad it turned out well for you and your wife.

[separateunion]

This is going to ruffle a dew deathers, but...

If you are a true Catholic, believe all doctrines, practice all rituals, then there is no way that you can be a true Christian. I have family that is catholic. I have been to their classes. I have read books from converted priests and nuns. There is no way.

Thay do not believe in salvation without works/or self imparted righteousness. They do not believe in salvation alone, but salvation and the Catholic church. They do not believe in the perfectly preserved word of God. If you study what the rituals are, like sacrament, they believe that they are eating the literal body of Christ and drinking his blood. They bow to idols, bigtime commandment breaker. They have engraven images of things in heaven. They rely on a man for forgiveness of sin, when that was done in Christ on the cross. They prey to the dead which is a huge no-no. They have their own "scripture" which contadicts the bible in thousands of cases. It has been proven to be written by nuts. In fact, they knew that they weren't true, so in the Council of Trent in 1546, they said that they would curse (damn to hell) anyone not accepting the whole book as they assembled it, and their doctrine of Jesus + catholic church = salvation.

They're bible was based on works from wescott and horte, which were two black magic practicing freaks that did not believe in the ressurection of Christ, the reality of heaven (they believe that it was in your mind and that you could use drugs or alcohol to get in that fram of mind), they took their scripture from Origin, who was a Jesus Christ denying, Bale the sun god worshipping idiot commissioned by Constantine to write his bible for his version of christianity (which did not include Jesus Christ).

Thing is, all the stuff you said is what I've been taught about Catholics (my dad is a former Catholic and his whole side of the family is Catholic, so it's something I come into constant contact with). However, I've been non-chalantly prying her for what she believes and what the Catholics truly believe.

For starters, the girl comes from a great family background - big family (eight kids) and they homeschool. She seems very pure and devout in her faith. I asked her how she defined her faith, and she said without Jesus Christ, she would have nothing to define her faith by. I asked her about salvation through works, and she said some Catholics believed that, and those Catholics made a bad name for the rest of Catholicism. She does seem to believe in transubstantition, but we really didn't get into that. Tonight, we talked about praying to Mary, and she said that is a huge misconception about the Catholic Church.

I'm not saying I believe her or don't, but it's definitely something that has gotten me interested in studying the doctrine of the Catholic Church much deeper. For all I know, the way the Catholic Church is run up here could be different than others experiences others on this board have had or her family could disagree with some things in the Catholic Church, but feel that it is a better environment for their family than Christian Churches.

I don't know, and I think this girl is worth spending the time to get to know. They way we sort of met and got to know each other was something like Divine Intervention. Whatever the reason may be, I know God had his hand in our meeting.

I have known several people who have attended the Catholic Church and been very strong Christians, so that may be the case here. I guess time will tell.

[seichu kaisho]

I can probably bet you that my Catholic friends are smart enough to realize that it's not necessary to pray to Mary. It seems to me that my friends and relatives who regularly attend Catholic services don't believe the heresy that's been taught to them over the years. I've been to several Catholic services, and though they do those "Mary, mother of God" prayers, the ritual also includes praying directly to Jesus Christ about having mercy on us and forgiving our sins. My hopeful guess is that because they pray those prayers to Jesus, perhaps the Holy Spirit convicts them as a result of how praying to anyone except God is wrong, and perhaps with that spiritual revelation filling their heart, they refuse to pray to the saints. That's just my guess. And an extremely hopeful guess.

About my awesome, precious friends and relatives who attend Catholic services: I pray that their beliefs are correct. I don't want any of them to go to hell! And please, oh God, I pray and beg You that they won't!

Separateunion, I agree with you that there are probably a lot of false teachers within the Catholic church, but that doesn't mean that all Catholic-church-goers are gonna believe that junk. The way I see it, they probably just respect and honor the saints no more than we respect and honor President Bush, for example. How could Catholics be ignorant enough to think that Mary and Joseph are gods when they are told, over and over again, the fact that Jesus Christ is the only God?

[brent]

If they do not believe that way, and do read scripture, and they can see that the church leadership, all the way to the pope are fruity heretics, then why not do as the bible says and get rid of them? The church is the judge of the overseers. The church has criteria to judge the service.

The reason that they can't is because the Catholic church does not belong to the people. It belongs to the heirarchy. It is a multi-billion dollar money making machine.

So, IF they truely are saved, then they have the Holy Spirit in them. IF they read the bible, then the HS will convict them. The question for you to ask them is "What is salvation to you"? If there is one God and One Truth and One gospel and One Word of God, then there can be no multiple contradicting versions or doctrines. There is His way or no way.

[brent]

If you get a Strongs and study the Greek, the issue of tongues goes away. Shoot. If you just study the bible in context it goeas away. If you let the bible say what it says, then there is no confusion. You do not need to study Hebrew, because the Hebrew translation into english is as good as it gets.

The point is simply...God is not the author of confusion. He has one message and there is only one way to read it when it comes to the gospel. There are some things that are debatable in-house.

[brent]

I gotcha. You are right.

I didn't mean that Hebrew is not important. It is very specific due to the roots words. I myself find it hard to locate resources that have a Hebrew text and english translation side by side, with a sort of dictionary between. I have some parrallel bibles like that with the Greek.

But since the Gentile (non-Jewish) gospel was given to us by Paul via the Antioch text, and we are talking in this context about salvation, then that is what you need primarily to research salvation for us.

[gman]

there are those who believe that baptism really isn't for the church. There is the one baptism of the spirit which replaces previous forms of baptism. I don't really go for that myself.
As for tongues and other gifts, my opinion is a little different from the standard fare. The standard fare is generally either that gifts ceased once the scripture was completed, or they will cease when Christ returns.
I tend to agree with the idea that the gifts were not necessarily meant for the church as it exists today. The gifts were used by Jesus, and also given to the discples and some others. Thier primaru purpose was to be a sign to the unbelieving that Jesus was indeed Messiah. People began to get saved, the church started to grow, and the scriptures were being circulated throughout the world from church to church. Once you had a firmly established body of Christ throughout the world, the church and the growing body of believers became the sign that Jesus was God, thereby replacing the sign gifts. Paul talks about the gifts being a sign for unbelieving Jews, and also talks abou the Jews as a whole being put off in God's plans until a later time; obviously the future gathering of the 144,000. If the sign was primarily for the Jews, and they were put on hold, then the sign was no longer needed. The gentile world had Paul and the new Body of Christ as a sign.
That is just my opinion. It is a way of avoiding trying to use scripture to attach an exact ending to the gifts and instead look at their purpose and whether that purpose was fulfilled.

[brent]

In Acts 2, it is definately talking about "Logos", language. I mean it is all right there in the story. People are saying, " Hey, I can hear you, you can hear me, but we look like a Japanese movie and don't normally understand each other". Well, something like that. Anyway, it was a form of communicating to the other 12 dialects.

Now, the Corinthian church was talking an extatic utterance, which got it's roots in the pagan society. You can go into Africa and there are cultures that do this now that are not Christian.

When Paul says that he speaks with the tongue of man and angels he is NOT refering to tongues in the extatic utterance form. At NO place in scripture did God, the angel of God, the angels sent by God, or Jesus Christ speak in any other way than man could understand, or in extatic utterance. I don't know about you, but I want to speak to God the way he speaks. He speaks to us, on our level. Revelation says that we couldn't handle how God speaks.

Jesus Christ said that a FOOLISH generation seeks a sign. Signs were for the non-believing Jews and those Gentiles infused/intermingled into their culture and belief system.

When Paul ministers to the Gentiles, it is non eventful in the jump a pew and babble area.