knowledge of salvation

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='Illustro' date='Mar 20 2006, 02:53 AM']Thanks Brother Adam for this wonderful work you have put together here for us.    Post #26        This is great. I've learned what I've been searching to find. The balance between faith and works. I was having difficulty understanding it and now it's clear. Well appreciated.

The second part of the work though, I'm not too interested in because I notice that Roman Catholics can be arrogant about their religion enough to knock down others without even realizing it. I'm not a Protestant, though I read about what happened to those people who were murdered by the Roman Catholic church, under the pope, back in the early days after Christ. They were tortured on ugly man-made instruments and murdered by the very religious order you profess is so perfect. That is why they protested. It isn't perfect. No religion is. They all are part of the whole. A learning experience. To come to know about the Savior.

That is a part of history you should read up on. Here's something that will help you to understand how evil it was for them. It's long and there are many links...but it's well worth the effort to find out. We're not here to separate and split...but to bring together, in common under The Lord. All religions are tending towards He. So let's find what binds together, rather than splits apart and causes strife. Fight evil with good. Submitting unto the Lord. Even the Islamic religion thinks that they are the perfect religion and they would fight evil with evil to prove it. Most of them anyway. That's how they were taught. I see though that you have an excellent understanding of what truly is meant by the Grace of God. To love one another... as God so loved us that He gave His only Son for our salvation. That's beyond religion.

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If you want to learn about Catholic teachings - ask the Catholics, not some website that pretends to know something about it.
Would you ask somebody practicing voodoo about modern medicine??

[Illustro]

But why are you offended?

I was brought up in a Roman Catholic home and went to a Roman Catholic school. Something about the religion didn't do it for me. I desired more self-less love from others, and so I went out to search for the truth. Who knows where one will find the truth? Outside, inside, in the bible, on a website? It was a combination of all of these things. Daily life teaches its lessons...and I've learned.

The ego is not important in Jesus's Heaven. Self-less love is. When you separate yourself from yourself and from religions and go out to help others through love for Jesus and love for one another, then you find the Kingdom of God. It's everywhere. You must look to find. And now I can offer self-lessness because I found it! Dead in Jesus.

[Paphnutius]

[quote]. When you separate yourself from yourself and from religions and go out to help others through love for Jesus and love for one another, then you find the Kingdom of God. It's everywhere.[/quote]But here you are making a false dichotomy. True Christianity encapsulates selfless love perfectly. Religion's entire aim is to help guide the Christian in selfless love.

And I am sorry that Catholicism "did not do it for you," but that seems to directly contradict what you just said about selfless love. If you give selflessly because it "does it for you" then you are still doing it for selfish reasons.

[Norseman82]

[quote name='Illustro' date='Mar 20 2006, 12:24 PM']Something about the religion didn't do it for me. [right][snapback]915728[/snapback][/right]
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So, in other words....it's all about you?????

[Paphnutius]

[quote name='Norseman82' date='Mar 20 2006, 12:37 PM']So, in other words....it's all about you?????
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Great minds?

[Illustro]

: Why all the nipping and biting? Looking at life from the perspective of someone who has died and came back again...they also have words comparable to what Jesus taught us. For example this mans experience:

"After death, most people find within themselves the psychological state Swedenborg called heaven. It is a joyous condition and a state of expanded awareness, of perceiving more and more of the grand plan of creation. The heaven which Swedenborg experienced, corresponds to deeds, not creeds. Therefore, persons from many cultures and religions form the societies of heaven. Swedenborg often mentioned that these societies, the Church of the Lord, are universal. This Church of the Lord consists of all those who have lived in the goodness of love according to their own spiritual life on earth. A graphical representation of the heavens and hells Swedenborg experienced can be seen at the web link provided."

And check this out:

"During several of Swedenborg’s near-death experiences, he would witness people dying and see their happenings in the afterlife. He stated that immediately following death, there is a period of self-discovery in which the social masks worn on earth dissolve away and the true self is revealed. Each person then shapes their own eternity to correspond with [color=red]their real inner nature[/color]. Some people become irrational, driven by fear and greed. Such people are in the spiritual condition which Swedenborg called hell. Hell is a psychological condition which corresponds to the suffering we experience on earth when we allow ourselves to be driven by the blind greed of our own egos. There are no devils in hell to inflict punishments because in the hellish spiritual state each person acts out their own malice by tormenting others."

Emanuel Swedenborg and Near-Death Experiences

[url="http://www.near-death.com/experiences/triggers14.html"]http://www.near-death.com/experiences/triggers14.html[/url] Edited March 20, 2006 by Illustro

[Paphnutius]

[quote name='Illustro' date='Mar 20 2006, 01:32 PM']:     Why all the nipping and biting?
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We could easily ask the same of you, posting anti-Catholic links and the like. I just observed that your statements were incoherent. That is all

Edited March 20, 2006 by Paphnutius

[Illustro]

Sorry. I never meant to torment you with my findings. Just looking for peace.

God Bless You. And God Bless Everyone Here!

[Norseman82]

Illustro,

My purpose was not to be mean-spirited or tormenting, but rather to challenge you and to make you think. I just have a tendency to occasionally use provactive words to get people's attention at times.

You see, Catholicism is more than just a "me and God" thing; there is a community aspect to it. Ironically, there is where you should look for "self-less" love. Study the lives of the saints as examples; study Mother Theresa as well.

[Brother Adam]

[quote name='Illustro' date='Mar 20 2006, 01:24 PM']But why are you offended?

I was brought up in a Roman Catholic home and went to a Roman Catholic school. Something about the religion didn't do it for me. I desired more self-less love from others, and so I went out to search for the truth. Who knows where one will find the truth? Outside, inside, in the bible, on a website? It was a combination of all of these things. Daily life teaches its lessons...and I've learned.

The ego is not important in Jesus's Heaven. Self-less love is. When you separate yourself from yourself and from religions and go out to help others through love for Jesus and love for one another, then you find the Kingdom of God. It's everywhere. You must look to find. And now I can offer self-lessness because I found it! Dead in Jesus.
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If you believe in self-less love why did you egotistically abandon the Church in pursuit of your own truth? The testimony of Christians of thousands of years stands against your relativistic approach to life.

[missionseeker]

[quote name='jesussaves' date='Mar 19 2006, 09:02 PM']I could go through and give a rebuttal to each of your verses. The fact of the matter is that the Spirit guides everyone. Those who believe the simplicity that Jesus died for their sins, that's adequate. Everything else is secondary; those who believe secondary things so varyingly, they are on the path to the Truth. That's all that matters. These basic tenants are not as far and in between as you think. You ask how I know? The holy spirit acting how I just described. I ask how you know the Catholic Church is true? You can claim the holy spirit, and that you have just as much right as I do to make that claim. That's fine, I can grant you that. It doesn't make you right though. And it doesn't imply in anyway as you seem to think that it does that the only way to know what the spirit is saying is through some third party mediator. Not that third party mediation couldn't be the way; it's just not the way the holy spirit leads.
The fact is that Catholics such as yourself here seem to rejoice in the confusion. That way they can say they alone have the solution to salvation. The ironic thing is that they are the ones who created the confusion. That's classic manipulation: give someone a problem, then tell em you are the only one that has the solution. Worse off, use secondary confusion to insist upon primary confusion simplicity that is really simple. All these complicated things are things indeed secondary issues; the issues that you make as complicated regarding salvation are not complicated as you construe them to be.
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Jesussaves,

I typed in "confusion" in the Catholic Defense Directory (which has links galore for everything you could ever want to know about anything the Church teaches) just to see what (if anything) would come up.

About 5 things did, if you're interested in reading them. (one is an audio download, though- probably the one that has the most to do with this debate)

[url="http://www.phatmass.com/directory/search.php"]http://www.phatmass.com/directory/search.php[/url]

But PLEASE read this.

[url="http://web.archive.org/web/20030604154245/http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ469.HTM"]http://web.archive.org/web/20030604154245/...smus/RAZ469.HTM[/url]

It's long, but I'm sure it will answer some of your questions.

Cat