Usually Im defending bro. Francis in Rome from heretical mania denouncing him as essentially a demoniac, when he is in fact doing a tremendous work in his papal position. I love him dearly, and greatly admire the majority of his work he has done, and I cant tolerate hatred for my Catholic brethren. However, I am deeply baffled by something, and I have to ask a very serious question: how is it that it is 500 years after the Reformation, and the vast majority of Catholics still have this absurd notion that the Reformers taught doctrines that denied that one would go to hell for committing sin? Why does, or at least it seems to be, that almost all Catholics still think that justification by faith alone equates to believing that one is liberated from moral obligation to obey God? Martin Luther himself said: We are saved by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone. I have seen so many countless times how his writings are misquoted to make him say that it is alright to sin. Martin Luther was far more against sin than just about any Catholic alive at this time, and there really is very little excuse for anyone to still be holding to this madness. Now, I know that plenty of Protestants are going about promoting licentious doctrines wherein we wont be lost even if we are sinful and wicked, and that is excuseless too. I picked up esteemed Catholic theologian Adam Marxs book, Roots of the Reformation, just to get a grasp of a fairly modern high Catholic view of Luther and the Reformation, and was astonished by what a colossal misconception was held in the book of everything Luther and the Reformers taught. Marx re-imagined Luthers teachings into being ones where one can commit any sin while still remaining saved (which is completely against everything Luther ever taught), and then put forward an incredibly generous theory by most Catholic standards) that Luther simply had a severe mental breakdown, caused only partially by delusions of grandeur, and partly by unrealistic self-condemnation and guilt, and partly by justifiable strain brought on by abuses in the Roman Catholic Church at that time which even Marx admits were absurd and without excuse. I bet that if the average Catholic got singled out by the Pope, and sent off to burnt at the stake, they would find themselves turning into a Protestant really fast. Remember that Luther was prepared to die and was only saved by a miraculous intervention by Prince Frederick of Saxony, who had a major angelic encounter the morning Luther was nailing his theses on the door, where he was shown the event as it happened, and was told that the man nailing the paper to the door was a true disciple of the apostle Paul, and that he had gotten The bottom line and the reality is: Luther was very adamantly against sin, fully believed that someone could backslide after having been converted, and even wrote entire treatises against the idea that Christians are not subject to Gods commandments. Probably the only passage which could even be construed as being pro-sinfulness would be a very early writing of his around 1521 while in the Wittenberg Castle translating the Bible into German, which he wrote to Philip Melancthon. The wording of it is difficult at first, but so were Pauls writings, so if he was Pauls disciple, perhaps he got a bit of his teachers difficulty in being understood in letters, which even Peter himself referenced in his second epistle. Now, I will speak more pointedly: Papal infallibility, or even the idea of having one bishop over the entire body of Christ has no scriptural foundation. We even have Paul specifically saying: Do NOT say that you are of me or Peter or James or Apollos. Yes, we can point to all the corrupted Protestant heresies of today and yesterday, but we can do the same with Catholics, and in the end, shame on us all for not having looked for whatever good we could find in one another, because that good is Christ, and Jesus said that no man could do a miracle in his name and lightly speak evil of him. There have been miracle-workers of divine healing and miraculous wonders in both the Protestant and Catholic world (and I should know a little bit about them, considering God does them through me on a regular basis, as probably 500 people on my friends list can immediately testify to). For that matter, Martin Luther and Francis Xavier were both being used by God to work major healing miracles simultaneously in different parts of the world. Whether you want to keep the Pope atop the position where everyone has to pay homage to him or not, we need to quit being stupid and ignoring our best asset: one another, before it is too late, and this country is overrun by the godlessness that is right around the corner. Pope Francis has been reaching out to Protestants, Pentecostals and Charismatics as his brothers, and dont be surprised if we see him do something like remove the excommunication on Luther or something else. I for one will join him in putting aside our differences, embracing in love, and weeping together for a moment, then going forward in determination to bring the message of forgiveness and peace to the world. We all need to quit bickering over who is in charge, let the government rest on Christs shoulder, and get busy warring against the Devil, because as long as everyone is more concerned about who is real and who isnt, and not about whether or not Jesus Christs heart is being manifested to the world, the Devil is gaining ground. United we stand - Divided we fail.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 14:02:00 +0000
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