Are the Greek/Russian orthodox Valid Christian Churches?

GE:

Dr Walter, this is a new description to me :

"the evangelical Anabaptists".

At the time of the Reformation the REFORMED and 'Calvinists', were called and known as "Evangelic". According to the information I have from quite a few respected authors, in any case.

 

GE:

I must agree with WestminsterMan above, "More eschatological Millerite twaddle from the good doc. " There certainly is that overtone ... not that I necessarily disagree with the good doc.

 

Fine! Now just but out of the discussion then since by your own admission you could care less.

 

I have never read Miller and so I cannot be charged with following a man whom I have never read. So much for that argument.

My position is based upon the scriptures and as yet no one has been able to disprove it. All you have done is joined in with mud slingers.

I have estabished this interpretation in later posts and WM and no one else has been able to provide any evidence my interpretation is incorrect.

 

Any serious student of the Anabaptist movement knows they were not a unified movement. There were various groups that differed with each other in serious points. One fraction of this movement was LATER identified as "Mennonites." Other fractions were later given other names. The Munsterites were pedobaptists who beleived in violence to usher in the kingdom, a tenet not embraced by other major Anabaptists groups.

You need to expand your reading. The Mennonites publish a quarterly that often identifies the different groups that were called "Anabaptists" by their enemies. However, the Mennonite scholar Bainton says they rejected that name and simply preferred to be called "Baptists" and that is long before most historians are willing to recognize that particular name in history.

 

Meno Simons listed a number of charges which were commonly used against members of his following for simply standing up to open sin among the religious people of his day:

"If someone steps up in true and sincere love to admonish or reprove them for this [drunkeness, cursing], and point them to Christ Jesus rightly, to His doctrine, sacraments, and unblamable example, and to show that it is not right for a Christian so to boast and drink, revile and curse; then he must hear from that hour that he is one who beleives in salvation by good works, is a heaven stormer, a secretarian agitator, a rabble rouser, a make-believe Christian, a disclaimer of the sacraments, or an Anabaptist." - The Complete Writings of Meno Simons, "True Christian Faith."

In other words the term "Anabaptist" was a term of reproach with the Catholic population that they could assign to those who simply professed a person should live godly. Like many Catholics of our day, live as you please, go to confession and then return to living an ungodly life.

In other words the term "Anabaptist" was used as a synonym for "rabble rouser" or "salvation by good works" or "heaven stormer" or "secretarian agitator" or "a make believe Christian" or "disclaimer of the sacraments."

Robert Robinson in his ecclesastical History documents this slanderous approach by Rome to Anabaptists over and over again in his history.

 

If you think you can mock God's word, clearly expressed over and over again in Scripture, then that's just where you will be going. The Roman catholics and Orthodox commit this sin in ignorance. Protestants who do it are sinning against the light. If I were you, I'd get that picture off the wall and dump the crucifix in the bin. Seriously.

Steve

 

Dont give me advice Steve. Seriously.

 

From the trial of Michael Sattler, Anabaptist. May 1521.

After this had been done, he was burned to ashes as a heretic. According to the Martyrs' Mirror, "His fellow brethren were executed with the sword, and the sisters drowned. His wife, also, after being subjected to many entreaties, admonitions and threats, under which she remained very steadfast, was drowned a few days afterwards. Done the 21st day of May, A. D. 1527."

Steve

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Those of you who have been bantering with Dr. Walter need to lighten up. He is a fundamentalist. Fundamentalists learn from each other and never go outside their small circle to learn from others. Dr. Walter is a case in point. He gets his world view from the fundamentalist seminaries he has attended. Their world view has been inbred over nearly 100 years of shutting out all other views but their own, so it would be surprising indeed if Dr. Walter saw things any other way.

I will say this. He knows scripture better than anyone else who posts on the BB. I think he is absolutely wrong in his understanding of scripture but the fact is that he knows what it says and where it is said. Now, Dr. Walter, I have one question and one affirmation. The question is that you said:

If that is true, why are you wasting your time in a seminary? You ought to be home schooling yourself. It would a lot less expensive.

Now the affirmation. You are absolutely right in your interpretation of 2 Peter 1:20-21.

 

I understand you are trying to be tactful and think you know me. You don't know me and you do not know what has shaped my theology. My theology was shaped before I ever went to Seminary. Seminary gave me tools but did not shape or determine my beliefs. What shaped and determined by beliefs is that I believe the Bible is God's Word and in connection with that belief I have spent untold number of hours immersing myself in intense studying of it and what I have gained from intense study has shaped my beliefs and NOTHING ELSE.

Indeed, those within my own denomination would readily tell you that I am a free thinker and am willing to isolate myself from the rest of the pack simply and only due to my own convictions based on intense study of God's Word. So your estimation is completely wrong.

I reject much of what I am taught in Seminary. I am not there to drink in everything a professor may offer. I am there for the TOOLS that make me more of an independent thinker and more capable of rightfuly discerning the Word of God. I went to Seminary to learn the Biblical langauges and become proficient so that I would not have to depend on anyone else but God and His Word to efficiently interpret the scriptures.

Thank you, but it makes no difference to me if you affirm what I believe about 2 Peter 1:20-21 or if you condemned me for what I believe about 2 Peter. 1:20-21. What matter's to me is that my interpretation of 2 Peter 1:20-21 fits the immediate as well as the overall context of Scripture.

 

Now, could I have come to the same basic truths and understanding of Scripture without those tools? Yes, and I did. However, I wanted to be better equipped to deal with those who opposed those truths and so I went to college and seminary to learn the tools of their trade. What I have learned has not changed the beleif's that I gained by prayer and study before I enter the Seminary door. What they have done is sharpen my focus and made me a better and more equipped defender of those truths.

 

Let me share with you what did shape my theology. When I first began to witness to lost people where I worked, I saw a need to better understand the scriptures in order to be a better tool in God's hand.

On my 15 minute breaks twice a day I would carry a New Testament with me and I would take one book at a time and do the following:

1. I would read it through the first time just to be aquainted with its content.

2. I would read it through a second time and try to understand the natural division of thoughts when the writer changed from one subject to another and noted those changes.

3. I would read it through a third time and assign headings that would summarize the topics of each section

4. I would read it through a fourth time and note development of arguments and other input within each section

5. I would read it through a fifth time and summarize each secondary development within each section and see how each verse added or contributed to that development of thought.

I did this with every book of the New Testament and many books in the Old Testament. What this exercise did, was place in my mind a permenant location of every theme and argument in their proper developmental context. I did not aim at memorization as much as placement of each verse in the contextual development of the present theme or argument. Hence, when a person quoted a given text I automatically placed it in its developmental context and could easily tell if the one quoting that text was jerking it out of context or using it in keeping with its context.

I recommend this procedure for every serious student of God's Word if you really want to know the scriptures according to their contextual development.

 

Well, none of them had the Synoptics until at least 70AD, probably later. John's Gospel and Revelation were not written until the 90sAD. So that kind of blows your theory out of the water.

 

No. That's the myth.

 

Munster? And don't tell me no Free Church members were never involved in the lynching of blacks in the Deep South.

No-one gets off scot-free in the atrocities stakes.

 

Ivan the Terrible? If so, you're wrong in your analysis. The schism between East and West happened in 1054; Ivan wasn't born until 1530.

 

In your parallel, bigoted universe, perhaps. Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth...

 

So, are your a Doctor or are you indeed embarrassing yourself by pretending to be something you're not? If it's the latter, that very much calls into question the accuracy and authenticity of everything else you say...which would make sense...

 

No, Orthodox don't believe in eternal security: Orthodox, like Catholics and Arminians, are synergist in their soteriology ie: they believe that the believer co-operates with God's saving grace to maintain his/her salvation and that therefore that salvation may be forfeit if the believer repudiates that grace, wereas Calvinists and Lutherans are monergist ie: they believe that God's grace alone saves and that the believer is powerless to assist in or resist that.