Originally posted by CatholicConvert:
As noted then, you better not celebrate that Jesus the Christ died for your sins, because long before there was the One Who is Truth and did such, paganism recorded 16 Crucified Saviors. Hope you don't wear a wedding ring. That is straight out of paganism. So is the concept of the Trinity (triadic godhead0>
Are you getting the point, or do I have to spell it out for you? The pagans, having no direct revelation from God, were stumbling around in the dark. As they groped for the Truth, they would uncover little bits and pieces of it here and there. It took Jesus the Christ to bring the full and complete revelation of that Truth to mankind, and even then, there are still many who do not understand it.
Your link is bogus, the man claims he is a "Deist," and is somewhat of an atheist trying to prove that Christianity is bogus. So What! I am not impressed by such futile attempts to thwart the puposes of God in the redemption of mankind--that which can never be thwarted.
Here is a quoted from your beloved site:
"In the end of it all, a person is forced to turn inwards, and in the end you live by faith, or you don't live at all. If you love people and feel fond towards them, you always know the right sort of things of to do and you always know which theological propositions are worth consideration and which are useless and good for nothing (or at least good for nothing if you are fond of people and long to be kind and generous to people). You don't need a divine voice to tell you to do things like that, and while it is ambiguous, and thus not comfortable and certain, you really don't need an unambiguous divine oracle to teach you how to do things like that, so in the end, the loss of the doctrine of divine oracle isn't much of a loss to me, and all the work required to deal with the consequences of the decision to struggle with ambiguity is a lot of wasted effort in my eyes. Even after the most diligent of efforts I have always found that at the very least that one small bit of doubt and ambiguity always remains, and certitude has always proved to be elusive. What God has made difficult and elusive is not something I am encourage to pursue, since I consider the extra prohibitions to be the ‘Word of God' in this situation, thus functioning as the opposite to an encouragement, but rather as a ban"
--What was that last statement about the Word of God, the Bible? Better read it again.
Let's get this straight. Christianity does not come from paganism. It never did. It comes from the direct revelation of God Almighty. Satan has its counterfeits and always will. If you want to put things satanically backwards then you are deceiving the people. God came first, not Satan. God always was, and is eternal; not Satan. Satan counterfeits Christianity. Catholicism is a counterfeit of what Biblical Christianity really is. It did not start until the fourth century when Constantine tried to marry Christendom to the state, and in doing so brought in many pagan customs into Christendom. At that time Christianity was paganized, and in part the pagans were Christianized. But there still remained groups of believers, local assemblies true to the Word of God in every age that were outside of this ungodly marriage that was soon to be called the Roman Catholic Church.
There are many reasons, and certainly they are not all anti-Catholic.
Sure they are. The Catholic Church, which the final voice of authority in Christendom as established by our Lord in His giving of authority, infallibility, and power to the apostles, HAS SPOKEN.
ROMA LOCUTA EST. LA CAUSA FINITE. (Rome has spoken. The matter is ended!) But that is not good enough for you, because you wish to be your own authority. Well, good for you. You think you have found something terribly damning in the practices of Christmas. The Church has selected a date and said that the practices of Christmas are acceptable. That is all I need to know, since the Church is my spiritual home, given to me by God.
All means all, and you had better use that word carefully. Commercialism, one of the reasons given, has nothing to do with Catholicism.
The Catholic Church in your eyes is the true church; but why try to deceive others. As that site pointed out it is the harlot church. It is a counterfeit church. It never had the truth to begin with.
You speak very boldly and pompously: "ROME HAS SPOKEN" Whopee! So what! So has every other cult under the sun. So did Jim Jones speak, and see where it got him! The Catholic Church spoke and many God-fearing Christians were drowned, beheaded, murdered, martyred for their faith; and for one reason only--believing and preaching the gospel. Read Foxes Book of Martyrs.
It is called the "sacrifice of the mass." It is the sacrificing of the blood and flesh of Jesus. It is an actual sacrifice.
Yup. That is right. It is indeed very real, the one and same sacrifice which Christ made upon the Cross of Calvary for the sins of mankind.
That is what transubstantiation is all about, and why the Protestants abhor it so much.
Well, that is certainly not good that the Protestants would abhor the very thing which Jesus says gives eternal life to mankind!! (John 6: 53).
It is blasphemy.
No, it is blasphemy to take God's Word and deny that this is what God said:
Blasphemy (Greek blaptein, "to injure", and pheme, "reputation") signifies etymologically gross irreverence towards any person or thing worthy of exalted esteem. In this broad sense the term is used by Bacon when in his "Advancement of Learning" he speaks of "blasphemy against learning". St. Paul tells of being blasphemed (I Cor., iv, 13) and the Latin Vulgate employs the word blasphemare to designate abusive language directed either against a people at large (II Kings, xxi, 21; I Par., xx, 7) or against individuals (I Cor., x, 30; Tit., iii, 2).
Since Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, the Whole Christ, (and this has been the testimony of the Church for 2000 years) it is not the Catholic and Orthodox who blaspheme God by their reverent treatment of the Holy Mysteries. It is those who deny this truth and say scurrilous things regarding the Euchrist. You are well fortunate that God is extremely longsuffering and not willing that any should perish, especially those who act in ignorance.
Protestants abhor your false interpretation of John 6:53, and thus the resulting blasphemy. Christ was once offered for the sins of many. He has never been re-offered, re-sacrificed, re-presenting to God that which is eternal--all unbiblical concepts--all blasphemy to God. If Jesus Christ is truly in the Eucharist then you are truly a cannibal for eating Him, after all you used the definition of the word as "to injure." I could think of nothing more injurious.
The act of the sacrifice of the mass is gross irreverence to the majesty of the Almighty God who sits on the Throne of God, after shedding His blood once and for all.
However, when we fit that into the equation, then to a Baptist or protestant, the mass is the death or sacrifice of Christ.
No, it is NOT the death of Christ, for Christ only died once. He cannot die again. It is the sacrificial meal of the New Covenant, prefigured in the Passover Lamb. We have the true Lamb to offer for our sins. There is NO DEATH in the Mass. The Mass is the re presenting to God of that which is eternal in Heaven (Rev.5:6). This took place from eternity past (Rev. 13: 8) and will exist for all eternity, as we see by the fact that John the Beloved saw the Lamb slain some 40 years after the chronological fact had taken place on earth. It is a continual sacrifice which makes continual offering to God for our sins. And in the mystery of God, every time the priest speaks the words of consecration over the elements, God is pleased to part time and make that eternal sacrifice very real and present.
Pure semantics. You just said, "It is a continual sacrifice which makes a continual offering to God for our sins." That is heresy to the nth degree. Christ died once, and once for all. He was the just that died for the unjust that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the Spirit (1Pet.3:18). He died once, and only once. A man does not die continuously. When my Grandfather died, he died, and that was it. That was over 35 years ago. He is dead; he is still not dying today. He does not continuously die. That is a ridiculous thought even to think of. Christ died once, and once for all. When he died, he was dead, and put in the grave for three days and nights. Then he rose from the dead. Do you believe the gospel account. He was dead. He did not continuously die even in the grave. He died once. Thus the need for the resurrection. You do believe in the resurrection don't you? If so, then there is no need for a mass.
If you were to tell a person that mass is "go, it is the dismissal," they would say "HUH??" We don't speak according to derivations, but according to what the words mean in our current lingo. In the current usage of the word mass, as the sacrifice of the mass, meaning the sacrifice of the blood and flesh of Christ, death is not an inappropriate word.
It is a highly inappropriate LIE (sorry, what else would you have me call deliberate untruth) because N
NE DIES in the Mass. The eternal sacrifice is made present.
We've been around this block many times, DHK. This is just another of your many efforts to "blacken the eye" of the teachings of the apostolic Church (both Catholic and Orthodox). The weight of historical teaching is against you. The weight of Jesus' words is against you. And the weight of your sins is against you, for without the shedding of blood, there is no remission. If you do not have a blood sacrifice, THE Blood sacrifice, how do you expect God to forgive you and on what basis? Because you think nice thoughts about Jesus? Because you believe that He died upon the Cross for your sins? Well, hey, even the Mormons and JW's believe that.
Mental assent to the facts is NOT the same as experiental union with Him. You need His Blood for your sins, and you need Jesus in the Eucharist to have union with Him.
Wherein have I lied? You have not demonstrated that at all. I lie because I disagree with you in theology?? You can do better than that Ed. Jesus does not offer Himself a continuous sacrifice, and that ain't no LIE. The Catholic Mass is a lie, when they try to re-offer the flesh and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Heresy and blasphemy is what it is, but it is not a lie, not according to Scripture.
I tried to point out that there are denotative meanings and connotative meanings of words. I guess you didn't catch that. Most people go according to the connotative meaning of a word. Thus the sacrifice of the mass, to most people connotates a death, by the very nature of the word "sacrifice."
DHK
