Ray Comfort on The Atheist Experience

Lies, lies and more lies. There is no NEED expressed by Christians for the world to end; all we ever say is that it is prophesied to end under certain circumstances and those often appear to be underway. No need there at all, simple warning based on prophecy. What looks like it's getting worse to us may be our oversensitivity to the work of the devil which is always at work in the world and may not be any worse now than it was a thousand years ago, though it can look that way to some of us. So we could be wrong about the timing but we have no need at all for it to be getting worse. Take it or leave it.Actually the world got a lot better as Christianity spread in the early days because what it spread was a love of humanity that did not exist in the pagan empires. People's lives were improved in many ways, morality improved, civilization flourished wherever the doctrines of Christ were followed. But scripture predicts that the devil will regather his forces and undermine the good before Jesus comes back to bring it all to an end.There is no NEED for any of this to happen. We'd love to see the world keep improving. Denying ourselves is what we should be doing because it thwarts the flesh and the devil and allows the spirit to thrive, there's nothing masochistic about it.
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I'm SO sick your your revisionist disinformation. Christianity was already in the British Isles by the time of Constantine and they had already sent out missionaries to northern Europe. It didn't spread far for a few centuries, and it was NOT spread by force and corruption at ALL. There were occasions when a whole tribe was converted because the king was converted, which isn't the way it should have happened but I don't call that coercion as you are using the word. The unfortunate effect of Constantine was that his influence brought about the political world domination of Romanism, but even then there were true Christians who spread the true word.And I didn't use the word "peaceful" although in essential ways it was. It brought about humane policies, rescued babies put out to die, rescued the elderly put out to die, over time influenced liberal policies in government, -- the Magna Carta was inspired by Christianity for instance == reformed law, fostered a general spirit of kindness and tolerance.
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There is still a lot of Christian influence in the west, and parituclarly in the US, but it has been eroding rapidly since the sixties so that we get the angry antichristian stuff we read every day at EvC, including yours. There is a resurgence of the paganism that had been overcome in Europe, much of it through the Marixist influence that got going strongly in the sixties. The influence of the pagan eastern religions that flooded into the country in the seventies following the sixties political upheavals is at least a symptom of the big change the sixties brought about. The legalization of abortion is a major change back to paganism, also the push toward voluntary euthanasia. The giving of tax exempt status to witchcraft and other satanic and pagan religions is another move in that direction. We can see the beginnings of this resumption of pagan influence back in the Enlightenment, through Nietzsche and certainly Darwin, who inspired Hitler's eugenics though you all want to deny it. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What I'm saying in that quote is not that I relish the idea of the world coming to an end, just that the Rapture itself, being with Christ, would be lovely. I could have gone on to say, and I'm sure I have many times, that I can't wish too hard for the Rapture because it would mean the destruction of the world was coming soon and I really do NOT want that.AND this is not some personal wish to end life, it's just a way of saying tht the Rapture would be glorious. Paul himself said he was torn between the promise of being with Christ and the work he needed to do here. That's a typical Christian position.\
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Nothing one can say about all that I guess. The Catholic stuff does go too far but you are including all of Christianity and your view is so far from our view of it there's just nothing to say.

Catholics do mass, Christians do not. and in fact we consider it to be a blasphemy. We do take communion, however, in memory of his sacrifice for our sins. And it is also emblematic of us partaking of his nature.Some people took it literally back at the beginning too and would have outlawed it if they could.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Christians don't do Mass, it's a completely Catholic thing.

Mass is a service in which Christ is sacrificed over and over, and Protestants consider it to be blasphemous. As a priest Luther found himself scared to death to perform such a feat as to invoke the living God, change the wafer into the living Christ, which is what Mass does. I don't know why there is any confusion about this at all because it's historically the case that Mass is a Catholic practice rejected by Protestants. Communion in the Protestant churches is not Mass.

Then you are ignorant of a huge historical controversy.

I hadn't equated it with transubstantiation, I thought there was more of a ritual involved, but yes I suppose it is the same issue. That being the case, historically Protestants were willing to die rather than accept that Catholic definition, so it's not a trivial thing and you certainly can't say Protestants also practice Mass. there is no sacrificing of Christ over and over in Protestant churches, that is what is considered to be blasphemous, plus the definition of the communion elements as actual flesh and blood.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yeah, all Catholic offshoots, not Protestant. And not all of those denominations have anything they call "Mass." Every church I've ever been in calls Mass a heresy or blasphemy.

It was the Reformers themselves that rejected the Mass, not any particular denomination.

OK I didn't know they used the term "Mass, " but Luther rejected the idea of transubstantiation for consubstantiation so it isn't the same thing, and the vast majority of Protestant churches do not use the term "Mass.".Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

OK you forced me to look up "Higgs boson." I'll never be able to grasp this stuff but this probably comes as close as anything ever will to making sense to me.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sure, you can play with words and confuse things, but their "Mass" is not the Catholic Mass. Just as your "Christianity" is not the real Christianity.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The point, dear dear Theodoric, is that the word "Mass" usually refers to the Catholic Mass, and I hadn'e known before that some Protestant churches also use that term, but since they do it has to be said that it is not the same "Mass" that the Reformers objected to. That is, it is misleading to say that Protestant churches ALSO have the Mass because it is not the same Mass.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.