Uh, I'm not
defending the RCC. In fact, the last thing I had said was for
you not to make
the same mistake as they, by looking at "the true Church" as an "
Organization" (or particular group, as
either the RCC or those competing small groups).
Could you show any doctuments supporting your claim?
Which historian write such claim is very important.
For starters here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigenses
Albigenes have been mostly and unjustly misunderstood by the people since they were brutally tortured and murdered by the Catholics. They spent most time for preserving and translating the Bible while RCC prohibited the reading Bible and translating the Bible, but their translations were burnt by the Catholics.
Note, that the link redirects you to the article "Catharism", which is one of those other (related) groups the "Baptist/COC/JW/sabbatarian view of history" claims as its own. Even though it's Wikipedia, a Wiki article is only unreliable when it doesn't have its sources, and this one has a load of sources at the bottom. I had also recently see this somewhere else, but I didn't remember where; but all info on them unanimously says the same thing. The category of this article is even "Gnosticism".
For example, some group of believers tolerated Infant Baptism, but refused the Idolatry and Papacy and they preached the Gospel so that the people may be born again.
See, the mistake here is that you are taking every group in history that either agreed with you on one point; if nothing more than opposing the RCC, and claiming it is a "lost true group" and hence predecessor to your church (even if it agreed with one of Rome's "lesser" evils). But the
other doctrines they believed were even worse than the RCC. Did Baptists and Bretheren ever believe Satan created the world?
Have you ever heard that Waldensians existed even before the roman Catholics started? KJV reflected the Waldensians Bible as well.
All that means is that a group of Christians lived in the Waldensian Alps before the church organized itself in Roma and the other patriarchates. However, this group changed right along with the rest of the Church; until about the 8th century, when they began pulling away, because of some of the doctrines and practices Rome continued to add. Then, in the 11th century, they stood out even more, and just like the EOC, at that point, the issues were stuff like indulgences, and the papacy. But they were not Baptists or Plymouth Bretheren. They were more like what we would call "Old Catholics".
It seems that you have not read either Baptist history or the history written by EH Broadbent, one of the Brethren historians.
I've read the Baptist history, and it was the same as COC, JW's and sabbatarians. I used to be a sabbatarian, following somewhat the WCG, who put out a booklet "the History of the Church", using this same outline, and I also have Dodd and Dugger's (CG7-Stanberry/Denver) similar book with the same outline. So I believed that the Waldensians, Albigenses, Anabaptists and all other small groups inbetween were all "faithful", 7th day sabbath and Passover-keeping, non-trinitarian, non-pagan "true Christians". Later on; I bought the SDA book "the Waldensians", and while it was arguing the same premise, it was quite honest, and I saw that the Waldensians were nothing like the SDA, WCG, COC or even the Baptists, but simply Catholics who had priests, nuns, monks, Eucharist liturgy, etc. but simply opposed some of Rome's latest innovations. Right from an SDA book trying to argue that the Waldensian were predecessors to the SDA!
The other groups were even worse. The Anabaptists were the only ones the Baptists, Brethren, (and to a certain extent, the modern sabbatarians) culd trace back to, and even they were very different in many areas. So I could no longer believe this "Baptist view of history".
There is a huge gap between the histories written by RCC and Baptist groups.
What do you think about Calvinism?
Calvin claimed the Infant Baptism, Baptismal Regeneration, Clergy sytem, No salvation outside the Holy Catholic (not Roman catholic) church. Are they not heresies?
Don't be brain-washed by the Broad-way religions who killed the people by condemning them as Heretics. Neither Jesus nor Apostles ever told in the Bible that the Heretics must be killed or exterminated. If Gamaliel had been like the killers of the mainstream "so-called" Christians, he would have recommended the high priest and the elders to kill the Believers including the "first pope" Peter ( Acts 5:29-39).
If you don't know that RCC killed so many people, you don't know the history of the church.
Again, I don't see how you think I'm defending either RCC or Calvinist history. It's not either one organized group or another; they
all form as powerbases around their particular traditions. If there was any "small, underground Church", I have heard of small groups of Christian families around Jerusalem who go all the way back. I don't know if that might have simply been referring to the local Catholics, and no one seems to know about it. But that is where I would look for any "unbroken link". Otherwse, the link is the Word of God, and anyone in any age who believes in Christ and trusts Him for salvation. Organizations/sects actually tend to get in the way.
