".
How many have ignored that command
from the mouth of God?
2. Thou shalt not bear false witness (lie),
Exodus 20:16. And of course all of the rest of the ten commandments of
God.
3. For those who take pride in attacking the Catholic Church, are
you sure that you know what you are doing?
If you end up being wrong then
these verses are just for you:
"So now I say to you keep away from these
men and let them alone. For if this plan or work is of men, it will
be
overthrown; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow it.
Else perhaps you may find yourselves fighting
even against God." Acts
5:38-39
For the last almost 2000 years, many times more powerful people than
we see today have tried to overthrow
the Catholic Church in every century and
they have been unable to do so. Now who do you think are those who
are
fighting against God? Is it the Catholic Church, or is it those who persecute
it?
Here is another set of verses as food for thought on the same
subject:
2Thessalonians 1:5-9. "This is evidence of the righteous
judgment of God, that you may be made worthy of the
kingdom of God, for
which you are suffering-- (6) since indeed God deems it just to repay with
affliction those
who afflict you, (7) and to grant rest with us to you who
are afflicted, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from
heaven with his mighty
angels in flaming fire, (8) inflicting vengeance upon those who do not know God
and
upon those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. (9)
They shall suffer the punishment of eternal
destruction and exclusion
from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,"
Q: Are you in full compliance with these
verses from Holy Scripture?
(24) "Therefore everyone
who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who
built
his house on the rock. (25) The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and
beat against that house;
yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation
on the rock. (26) But everyone
who hears these words of mine and
does not put them into practice is like a
foolish man who built his house on sand. (27) The rain came down,
the streams rose, and the winds blew and
beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash."
Matthew 7:24-27 (NIV, I used a Protestant bible for these
verses on purpose)
A: Are you in full compliance with those verses?
We shall see!
Who is the wise man who built His house on the rock?
It is none other than Jesus Christ who built His Church on rock as
posed in my first question
in this writing and is recorded in Matthew
16:18.
How many churches did Jesus build on the rock? He built only one
when He said 'church' and not churches.
The storms (attacks over the
centuries from both without and within) could not destroy it.
Again,
another proof that it was His promise that His Church would last forever. Review
all of those verses
that I listed earlier from both the Old and New
Testaments regarding divine protection for His Church.
Who is the foolish man
who built his house on sand? It is all of those 40,000+ sects who continue to
split the
body of Christ, not one church of which could have been built on
the rock and not one who had God given
authority to do so.
Now here is an
excellent Old Testament verse which complements Matthew 7:24-27.
I
mentioned it earlier but here it is again since it fits so well:
"Unless the
Lord build the house, they labor in vain who build it..." Psalms 127:1
Do you
see how nicely that verse fits here? Aren't all of those who built
their 'house' on sand laboring in vain?
Could that be the reason why all of
the mainline Protestant churches are in decline while the
Catholic Church
continues to grow*?
*The World Christian Encyclopedia, a
Protestant publication, lists a figure of 1,134,584,000
Roman Catholics in
the world in mid 2009. That is more than 1.1 billion.
Not one of those
thousands of splits in the body of Christ even comes close to that
figure.
Q: Do you call Mary, the Mother of GOD,
Blessed?
A: No? Well, Holy Scripture commands all of us to do
so in Luke 1:48, "Behold, henceforth all generations shall call me
Blessed".
Do you know what 'henceforth' means? It means from the time she
said it and forever more.
Do you believe that the words 'all generations'
exclude you?
How about the word 'shall' (or 'will' in some Bibles), does it
mean a command to you, or merely a suggestion?
Q: Is Blessed Mary the Mother of GOD?
A: Is Jesus
the Son of GOD? Yes, Matthew 27:54, Mark 1:1, Luke 1:34, John 1:49 and many
other verses.
Is Blessed Mary the mother of Jesus? Yes, see Luke
1:42-43, 2:6-21.
So those verses do confirm that she gave birth to Jesus,
the Son of God.
Mothers give birth to persons with a nature. They cannot give
birth to natures alone.
Jesus is a
Divine person meaning Blessed
Mary gave birth to a divine person,
so she can rightly be
called The Mother of
God.
Q: Do you believe what Martin Luther, the
first Protestant taught regarding sin?
"If you are a preacher of grace, then
preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear
a
true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious
sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly,
but believe and rejoice in Christ even
more boldly.... as long as we are here [in this world] we have to sin....
No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication
and murder a thousand times a day."
Letter to Melanchthon, August 1, 1521
Luther's Works, vol. 48
A: What did Jesus Christ teach us regarding
sin?
After Jesus had rescued the sinful woman from being stoned to
death:
"Jesus looked up and said to her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned
you?"
She said, "No one, Lord." And
Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you;
go, and do not sin again.""
John 8:10-11
Are
you in full compliance with that last verse which is the word of
God?
Q: Who wrote the Holy Scriptures that we call the
Bible?
A: The many books of the Bible
were written by scores of individuals over the course of many hundreds of
years.
Their writings were inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Q: Who is the only valid interpreter of Holy
Scriptures?
A: Since the Holy Spirit inspired the authors of the books,
which are His word (2 Timothy 3:16),
then the Holy Spirit can be the
only valid interpreter of its contents with the fulness of truth.
It is
impossible for anyone to write a text of which any person could take a line or
two out of context and twist it to mean
something entirely different from what
the author had intended. By taking verses out of context, a true statement could
easily be transformed into something other than the truth.
In all cases
that is why the author can be the only valid interpreter of what he had
written.
2Peter 1:20, "First of all you must understand this,
that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own
interpretation,"
That is one of the most important and most ignored
verses in the entire Bible.
It is also one of the most damaging to the
many who choose to ignore it.
St Peter, the Apostle who was told by the Lord
to feed His sheep (John 21:15-17) did exactly what he was told to do here
by
first saying "you must understand this". That certainly should have captured the
attention of anyone who read it.
But alas, it did not obviously for those
40,000+ sects that call themselves Christian since they completely
ignored
the last part of the verse and continue to do their own
interpretation of Scripture.
Q: So if I call
on the Holy Spirit to interpret the fulness of truth of Holy Scripture, will I
receive it?
A: I hate to answer a question with another question, but
here comes the use again of our God given common
sense.
If all of those 40,000+ splits in the body of Christ did
call on the Holy Spirit for guidance, then why are there thousands
of splits
instead of one united body of Christ? The Holy Spirit cannot speak anything but
the one full truth.
Q: Well if individual calling of the Holy Spirit for a
truthful interpretation, may be misleading, then who
can I call on for the
full truth?
A: Well the answer to that one is in Holy Scripture:
John
14:26, "But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father
will send in my name, he will teach you all things,
and bring to your
remembrance all that I have said to you."
Now for the
proper context, to whom did Jesus express those words?
It was during the last
supper and it was to the Apostles that He taught. Read all of John 13 and
14.
It is through the only Church that Jesus Christ founded
where the Holy Spirit will teach you all things.
And in Luke 8:10 He
said, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the
kingdom of God;
but for others they are in parables, so that seeing they may
not see, and hearing they may not understand."
Mark 7:14, "And he called the people to him again,
and said to them, "Hear me, all of you, and understand:"
Luke 2:50, "And they did not understand the saying which
he spoke to them."
Mark 12:24, Jesus said to them, "Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the
scriptures nor the power of God?"
Acts 28:26, "Go to
this people, and say, You shall indeed hear but never understand, and you shall
indeed see but never perceive."
Acts 28:27, "For the heart of this people
is grown gross, and with their ears have they heard heavily and their eyes they
have shut,
lest perhaps they should see with their eyes and hear with
their ears and understand with their heart and should be converted:
and I
should heal them."
Healing only after conversion?
John 8:43,
"Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you
cannot bear to hear my word."
A very interesting verse.
"It is because you cannot bear to hear my word" sounds like those who preach
against the only Church that
Jesus Christ founded. It brings to mind a quote from Cardinal Ratzinger,
who
is now Pope Benedict XVI:
"Truth has always bothered people and is never
comfortable."
Cardinal Ratzinger, October 9, 2000
However, 'He who
has refused to acknowledge the truth in life will be forced to confront it in
death.'
That one-liner is one that we all should remember because after death
it is too late to repent.
Here is a real 'corker' (Corker: a
remarkable or outstanding message)!
1Corinthians 2:14, "The unspiritual
man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him,
and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually
discerned."
Now go back up about half a page and read John 14:26
again.
Do you see the connection between it and 1Corinthians 2:14?
Here is
a hint, "they are spiritually discerned".
Here is another eye opening and
mind stimulating 'corker':
1Corinthians 12:3, "Therefore I want you to
understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says "Jesus be
cursed!"
And no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy
Spirit."
From what you have learned so far, does the underlined
portion of this verse have any meaning for you?
Does the Holy Spirit guide
your church?
Ephesians 5:17, "Therefore do not be foolish, but
understand what the will of the Lord is."
Do you recall what the will
of the Lord is?
If not then please go back to the beginning of
this page and count how many ones that you find in this
document.
2Peter 3:3, "First of all you must understand this, that
scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing,
following their own
passions."
That is another verse from St Peter where he started with, "First
of all you must understand this".
The only Church which Jesus Christ founded
is certainly being scoffed at today and from many directions.
What many do
not understand, however, is that His Church is His body (Ephesians 1:22-23),
and whatever His physical body had to endure then, likewise His Church must
have to endure now as well.
Jude 1:10, "But these men revile whatever
they do not understand, and by those things that they know by instinct
as irrational animals do, they are destroyed."
This is
another strong warning from St Jude, yet another Apostle (Luke 6:16).
"They are destroyed"?
Read the underlined first part again followed
by the last part. Would you want to be one of those destroyed?
It is
certainly a scary verse once understood. Is anyone listening? Is anyone heeding
this message of St Jude?
Nothing in Holy Scripture is written as a lark (any
carefree episode), but as the serious consequences
that we will all face if
the instructions within it are not heeded by all of us.
Acts
8:29-31, "And the Spirit said to Philip, "Go up and join this chariot." So
Philip ran to him, and heard him
reading Isaiah the prophet, and asked, "Do
you understand what you are reading?"
And he said, "How can I, unless
some one guides me?" And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him."
See,
when reading Holy Scripture, we need the guidance of its author, the Holy Spirit
as we have learned before,
and Philip, an Apostle, was certainly filled with
the Holy Spirit in Acts 2:4.
1Corinthians 2:12, "Now we have received not
the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God,
that we might
understand the gifts bestowed on us by God."
2Peter 3:15-16, "So our
beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him,
speaking
of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to
understand,
which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other
scriptures."
Luke 24:27, "And beginning with Moses and all the prophets,
he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning
himself."
Luke 24:32, "They said to each other, "Did not our hearts burn
within us while he talked to us on the road,
while he opened to us the
scriptures?""
Luke 24:45, "Then he opened their minds to understand
the scriptures".?
Q: So you can clearly see
from these three verses of Luke, that Jesus Himself while He walked the
earth,
was the sole interpreter of Holy Scripture. But what about after He
ascended into Heaven?
A: What was His promise to us before He ascended
into Heaven?
I gave you the verse earlier but here it is again as Jesus
spoke these words to the Apostles:
John 14:26, "But the
Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,
he will
teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to
you."
Q: Do you believe
that the Bible is the final authority?
A: If you do then please explain
why the Bible says it is the Church in Matthew 18:17?
Q: Do you believe that the Bible is the pillar and
foundation of the truth?
A: If you do then please explain why the
Bible says it is the Church in 1Timothy 3:15?
Well how did you do? How many questions were you able to
answer correctly?
Holy Scripture is such a complex collection of interactive
books,
written by scores of inspired persons, most of whom did not even know
each other.
Yet their books all dovetail so perfectly that only
God inspired people could have written them.
I feel one
lifetime is simply not long enough to grasp all that Holy Scripture has to teach
us.
After all, God is infinite and we have such puny finite minds in
comparison.
My opinion is that if we make it to Heaven we will learn more
and more
about God for all eternity and we still will not be able
to grasp all there is to know.
To me, Holy Scripture is simply mind
boggling. I have gone all the way through it many times
and every subsequent
time I find things that I completely missed in previous passes.
GOD
Bless,
Bob
Stanley
<><><><><><><><>
"Not
to oppose error is to approve it; and not to defend truth is to suppress
it".
Pope St. Felix III (483-492)
©
Written by Bob Stanley, October 20, 2011
Updated November 17,
2011