Hebrews 6:4 - 6:6

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Permalink Reply by Tammy on July 7, 2014 at 6:16pm

There are sooooooooo many differences between what a Christian believes & what a Catholic believes. Well, most Catholics that is. We, as Christians, follow the word & letter of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation to a tee (or we should). We believe it is the inerrent word of God.We believe that All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness as it says in 2 Ti 3:16.

Catholics follow traditions which is what they say is the oral teaching of Jesus Christ handed down to His apostles, who in turn handed it down to their disciples (the early Church Fathers), and then to the next generation, and then finally to us. They believe they are the one & Only true church & call themselves the Mother Church. They believe the Virgin Mary to be the mother of God so she's also the mother of the church. They believe she was sinless. They believe she remained a virgin even tho the word tells us she had other children. They pray to Mary & the Saints asking them to intercede for them. There is nothing wrong with tradition but it must always align with the written word. The minute it strays from that truth, then it's false. 

Now, I've never studied the Bible & how it was put together & who decided the certain books would be in it. I have read that for almost 400 years there was no written New Testament to fall back on. All of the apostles and disciples taught orally for the first 400 years.  They wrote everything down in their epistles and gospels but none of it was widely available to geographically separated disciples and it wasn't part of "The Bible" until the Councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage put the 27 books of the New Testament together in 382 AD, 393 AD, and 397 AD.  At that time, it took on the important role or responsibility that passes from one person to another of infallible scripture with the Old Testament.  Interestingly, Protestants today accept this Catholic "Tradition" of these  27 books of the Bible being divinely inspired. Whether this is historical fact & I'm not saying it's not, the other traditions should still jive with what they themselves put in the complete book & it doesn't. SOOOOOOO many of their teachings or "traditions" contradict what we know hold in our hands. That's where the problem lies. If you're the one that came up with the first original Bible based on the writings of apostles, then should your beliefs & traditions also not coincide with it instead of contradicting it? 

I could write a novel on it it seems lately. Hope this helps. 

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Permalink Reply by ScribeD on July 9, 2014 at 11:34pm

The 400 years statement is often repeated by Bible skeptics, but it is spurious. The Bible was gathered into the full "canon" of scripture within 150 years of the last Apostle. The reasons why certain books were rejected and others accepted is a simple formula of how the Word of God was verified in centuries prior.

Much of the Apostolic writings were extremely widely distributed and accepted as scripture from the times of John's death. While memorization was a commonly used method, the entire point of Jesus' rejection of the Pharisees was that they refused to keep to the written Torah and created their own "law" based on an oral tradition called Talmud. The Apostles knew this and therefore they both taught "from the holy scriptures" and wrote their own Gospels and encyclical letters for distribution, intending the church to keep, copy and teach from those. The notion of the 400 years gap is a way for skeptics to attempt to make out that we do not have valid copies of the letters written by the Apostles. It is a false claim that has been fought against since the 2nd century. It is easy to demonstrate as false, with a little research.

The traditions and uniquely odd teachings of the modern Roman Catholic church can easily be traced to Medievalism that took over in the church during a time when the Roman Catholic church began to meld European paganism into Christianity and also to build up the single authority of the Pope. This began from about the 4th century onward and took shape heavily in the 7th century - largely as a result of the vacuum of power from the fall of Imperial Rome and the rise of Feudalism in Europe during that time. The reason why their teachings do not align with scripture is because, like the Israelites a thousand years before, they neglected the written word and began making things up. Scripture warns sternly against this in many places.

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Permalink Reply by Tammy on July 10, 2014 at 1:48pm

Thanks for that piece of information Scribe. I've been studying Catholicism for about 2 months pretty deep. There are so many aspects to it unlike what I would have ever believed when I first started. I thought it was just a few points that they differed on. Sheesh, did I ever have that one wrong. I had not gotten to the piece above & I so appreciate you helping me there. I still have a lot more to look into. I may even inbox you if you don't mind about a few questions pertaining to Peter & stuff. I'm going to research it myself first but if I can't seem to find the answers I'm looking for, do you mind me inquiring of you?

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Permalink Reply by ScribeD on July 11, 2014 at 12:43am

Sure. They way I understand Roman Catholicism (as opposed to the other branches of early "Catholic" church) is that they blended church authority with civil authority, which is a big "no no" in scripture from the Old Testament. In so doing, many times the Lords and Princes of the various feudal societies of western Europe wound up taking leadership roles in the church and even becoming popes.

As a result, you have a superficial veneer of Christianity that is filled with Medievalism and mythology. In some ways, Roman Catholics can be the most ardent on some essentials of the faith. At other times, they completely ignore plain and clear commands of both New and Old Testaments, because it conflicts with their institutional doctrines, which Jesus would call "Traditions of men".

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Permalink Reply by Tammy on July 11, 2014 at 2:58pm

Exactly. They are the Pharisees of the modern world.

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Permalink Reply by thewatchman on July 13, 2014 at 7:36pm

Well, the whole Hebrews 6 I believe is something that should be important to us and to identify with. We should all be concerned with salvation.  

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Permalink Reply by JB on July 14, 2014 at 6:41am

Tammy, I learned  a lot about the Catholic Church through "Rob Zins" I believe he used to be a Catholic Priest.

JB

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Permalink Reply by Tammy on July 14, 2014 at 9:40pm

JB, Does he have his own site or what?

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Permalink Reply by JB on July 15, 2014 at 4:48am

I don't know Tammy if he has his own site or not, I just type in "Rob Zins" on Catholicism, and I get on the side, a list of videos of him at various colleges, and other places he meets with Priest and others for debates on the subject. You might look-up this one debate he had with him and White, Vs. Sungenis and Butler at the Boston College. You might find it on You Tube debates dealing with Idolatry and Virgin Mary. Very interesting debate.

JB

Permalink Reply by Tammy on July 15, 2014 at 1:11pm

Thank you so much JB. I'll def hunt him down

Permalink Reply by ScribeD on July 15, 2014 at 11:43am

There are many internal proofs that we are not "missing" any chapters or books of the Bible. Catholics like to present the Apocrypha as a "section" of the Bible. It's important to note that Jesus never quoted from any one of them, nor referred to their works; while he referred to all 5 books of Moses, the psalms, proverbs, the historical books and quoted every other prophet of the Old Testament. I think that speaks volumes. Jesus would be the authority on that, I think.

However, there is one other fascinating fact for conjecture: the book of Isaiah, which so eloquently speaks of the ministry, life and suffering of the Messiah (Jesus), at least 500 years before His birth, has a prophetic pattern that also fits as a template of the Bible itself.

• Isaiah has 66 chapters. The Bible has 66 books. 
• There is a specific pattern break in the book of Isaiah which has caused many scholars to call it two books - the first part is 39 chapters and the second is 27 chapters. The Protestant Bible has 39 books of the OT and 27 books of the NT.
• The first part of Isaiah focuses heavily on God's Law and His Judgments, and Israel in specific. The second part of Isaiah focuses on redemption and the specific details of the Messiah, as well as indicating that Messiah will be a light to the Gentiles; which also fits the OT/NT pattern.
• There are many hidden details about the Messiah in Isaiah which don't make sense until you understand the full context of Christ/Messiah from the Gospels. There are also many details and facts in the whole Bible, which don't make sense until you see the full scope of Christ/Messiah from the perspective of the fulfilled NT.

Other points to consider: At no point can you add in the Apocrypha and get any additional accurate insights or revelation about Jesus and His work of redemption. It only muddies the water with concepts that are contradictory to clear and plain doctrines of the Bible. But, if you try to remove any book of the OT or NT, you lose important insights that do validate the message of the Gospel at some level.

Every insight and doctrine within the 66 books of the Protestant Bible is corroborated by some other book in the OT or NT. Yet, there are many things within the Apocryphal books that stand alone and bring confusion the doctrines and points which are otherwise clear and plain in the 66 books of the Bible.

Many of the authors and key characters of the books of the Bible are either authors of multiple books, are referred to in other books or have some familial connection with the key characters. For instance, you find that Ezra is mentioned in Nehemiah and Psalms. You find that Zerubbabel, an associate of Ezra, is mentioned in Nehemiah, Ezra, Haggai, Zecharia and we learn from Matthew and Luke that he was an ancestor of Christ. You will not find such connections and corroborations from the Apocryphal books. The links are questionable at best.

Most scholars find that the apocryphal books are historical and insightful, but that they contain historical inaccuracies and that they introduce pagan concepts which are not in line with God's revealed truths from the Bible (such as Pergatory). So therefore, early Church fathers questioned their value and many flat out rejected them as being unworthy. Over time, the Roman Catholic church introduced them as fitting the Bible, after the period where the Roman Church itself had become corrupted. During the Reformation, the Protestant church rejected them. Hence today, Protestant Bibles do not contain the Apocrypha and the only people pushing for their acceptance into the Bible are the Roman Catholics, who have based some of their doctrines upon those books, or used them to validate practices which are questioned by the rest of the Church around the world. So, they have a vested interest in keeping them, to validate practices that would be clearly understood as unbiblical.

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Permalink Reply by Tammy on July 15, 2014 at 7:13pm

One thing I've found very interesting & maybe even quite hysterical. They call us Bible-believing Protestants. They say it as if it's a curse word. 

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