Ray Comfort on The Atheist Experience

Yes it's doctrinal. Or it's AT LEAST doctrinal since I don't know about other likely differences in how the service is conducted.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes, for you that is apparently trivial, but for Christians doctrine is of utmost importance. Catholic doctrine also condemnzs the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith alone, among a long iist of other anathemas against Protestantism. This is doctrine, it's all-important.

What am I "wrong" about? You think you can rewrite history or what? I'm simply trying to get across the position of the Protestant Reformation. Maybe I'm not doing the best job of that but you certainly cannot rewrite what the Reformation actually said and churches that follow the Reformers believe and do. What's your point? It's silly.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I don't think I get your point at all. The reality is never the words about the reality but the words lead you into it. Transubstantiation into real flesh and blood is ludicrous. However, when I was reading the Catholic mystics I was very impressed with their sense of experiencing the real presence of Christ when they had the bread and wine. I think that same experience is available through consubstantion too though, without the literal flesh and blood thing, because all we can possibly experience of Christ is spiritual and that is available through the bread and wine. He is there, but as Spirit, not as literal flesh and blood. And having said this I'll also say that I think the interpretation that came from Zwingli I believe, that it is purely symbolic, does miss the point that we can actually experience the Spirit of Christ in communion. It's more than symbolic.Alnd all these doctrinal differences matter a great deal.

***tearing hair out at total misreading*****

Protestants ARE Catholic Offshoots, Thuggy, as Theodoric says. The Reformers were all Catholics, Luther was a Catholic Augustinian monk and a priest who performed Mass. Not sure about Zwingli but I think Calvin was a lawyer, I'd have to look it up. Anyway, they were all Catholics who by studying the Bible came to realize that there was a lot more wrong with Catholicism than the sale of indulgences which was Luther's first objection. Soon he began to see that the power of the Pope and his decress and in fact his very existence as the supposed Head of the Church were antichristian. ( \Look up "head of the church" in the Bible and you'll find two verses that specifically call Christ by that name. The Pope is a usurper of God's position and that's what the Reformers discovered. identifying the Pope as the Antichrist on that basis among others).The term Protestant was used later to describe those who were protesting against the Church of Rome, their doctrinal distortions, thneir essential paganism, and the ursurper Pope. All from reading the Bible carefully and discovering the discrepancies between "popery" and original Christianity. Luther is famous for having recovered the doctrine of salvation by grace alone from the works-righteousness of the Roman Church. And that Protestant doctrine is the main thing The Roman Church has put under a curse (anathema) in their Council of Trent decrees. among many others. That's still on their books, and the Office of the Inquisition is still in operation, so all their "friendly" gestures toward Protestants are lies.__So the Protestant movement aimed to recover the original Christian doctrines the Roman Church had obscured and twisted. They established new churches with a purer biblical foundation, though there were degrees of how far different denominations pulled away from their Roman origins. The term "Mass" is one holdover in some churches, so is the priestly garb which persists in modified form in some churches. The Anglican Church is maybe the most Roman in spirit despite its adherence to Protestant doctrine for the most part.The Protestant Reformers considered the Roman apostasy to have begun in 606 AD when the Bishop of Rome was declared Universal Bishop by the Emperor Phocas of the Byzantine Empire, establishing the Bishop of Rome as the Pope. Before that date doctrine had already deteriorated to some extent in some places but you could still find the pure doctrine in it. After the Pope was established, however, more and more of the pagan rituals and doctrines of the Roman pagan religions was incorporated into the Roman part of the Church, the priestly garb for instance, that weird pointy headdress of the bishops that has been traced back to the religion of Dagon the fish god that figures in the Old Testament, the rosary which is used still in pagan religions with its repetitive "prayer," the worship of "saints" and prayer to them, which was really the transfer of the pagan gods to these Christian figures. And eventually the cult of Mary developed, and images of Mary with the baby Jesus are identical to images found in other pagan religions that go all the way back to the religion of Semiramus and her son Tammuz. And so on and so forth.The Protestant Reformation cleaned up most of that but some remnants of it linger in some of the denominations. Yes Protes tantism came out of Catholicism.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You are raising too many questions for me to get into very deeply right now. But one thing is always true of Christianity: we can have many revivals of true Holy Spirit life in the churches, and the Protestant Reformation was one such revival, but spiritual life always deteriorates over time and has to be revived again and again. We are still susceptible to the flesh. We need another revival and I pray for it. Some churches are pretty far gone into false doctrine these days, but some remain true at least on that level but they need the power of God to come down and revive them/us spiritually. I personally certainly need it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This is false, completely backwards. Luther had no intention of breaking from the RCC at all. He put up his 95 theses as a traditional challenge to debate, and that's all he expected: a debate on those issues which he considered to be corruptions in the Church. He was sure the Pope would agree with him and that measures would be taken to end the corruption.Instead the Pope took offense at Luther's arguments and excommunicated him. This is what provoked Luther to recognize the nature of the papacy as the Antichrist. Political actions started later as the peasants revolted against the political power of the Church, and Luther did NOT approve of that action..

Don't overdo it. Yes the original Reformers were all Catholics, of course, but the Reformation was an opposition to Catholicism and most of its work was in undoing Catholic errors of all kinds as they discovered them. Catholicism had distorted the teachings of the original apostolic Church and usurped power over all Christians, adding in pagan religious doctrine down the centuries to absolutely corrupt the original Christian doctrine. I listed its pagan accretions in a post above somewhere but I can list them again if necessary.All that is what the Reformation undid, and it most particularly undid the RCC's teaching on salvation by works, restoring the original biblical teaching on salvation by faith in Christ alone, after which it tells us we were saved UNTO good works, not saved by them.Yes, there was some holding over of some Catholici practices that should have been expunged but weren't, but most of it was superficial trappings. Although it is pretty disturbing to see that Dagon-inspired fishhead "bishop's mitre" on the head of Anglican priests. Actually the very title of "priest" is a Catholicism that should never exist in the Christian church as a special function because the Bible says all believers are priests: "ye are a holy priesthood."

That is based on RCC false doctrine. They do not represent the earliest church though they claim to. The papacy didn't exist until 606 AD when the Bishop of Rome was made Universal Bishop against the very spirit of Christianity, and eventually became a world power that dominated all Christians.It is a purely historical fact that Protestantism developed out of Catholicism simply because the Reformers were Catholics. But as to substance and doctrine the Reformation recovered the truths of the biblical Church and left Catholicism behind.The RCC should not even exist any more, but they are still maneuvering to tryh to regain the worldly power they lost because of the Reformation. Protestants have lost any historical sense and actually treat the RCC as just another denomination when in reality it is the soul of antichristianity. Pontifex Maximus indeed. Do you know that was the title of the head of the Roman pagan religions? "Co-Redemptrix" indeed. Marian apparitions? Demonic seductions to the false Church that has blasphemously made "Mary" the equal of Christ.Scripture says to those in the false Church who are true followers of Christ nevertheless: "Come out of her My people, lest you partake of her plagues."Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.