http://www.ovrlnd.com/Charismatics/Catholic_Charismatics.html

Re your comment “So many people (including my pastor) told me I was not causing him to sin” . . .

Unfortunately this is the state of the organizational church. When I was first saved and a new believer the Lord showed both me and my husband to come out of Roman Catholicism. We witnessed to relatives and after a period of time some were saved (very few). One of the saved ones called her Christian church for counsel regarding what to do in a certain situation regarding attending a Catholic event. She was told by the person who answered the phone that they were also of a Catholic background and that they go to every Catholic function in their family. Not only that, but the person said that the Pastor also attended all Catholic functions. I was sick when my relative repeated the story to me. What does that tell you about the state of the church? I’m not saying pull your son out of the school, that is unless the Lord clearly tells you to do so, but I would stand firm and not cave in to the priest’s demands under any circumstances.

My daughter was saved around the same time that my husband and I were saved. She was about 14 at the time. That was 20 years ago. My son then 13, was rebellious (still is, please pray). She was brought to meet with a Catholic priest in order to sway her back to Catholicism. She was not swayed. The priest said that she was in rebellion and that my son was in good standing with God. (A classic case of calling good evil and evil good.) My daughter attended a Catholic highschool after she was born again. (Her father had control of the school situation. I was divorced and already remarried 7 years when I was saved.) But while she was there she was never forced to do anything that went against her beliefs.

The bottom line is keep close to the Lord in prayer and be rooted in the Word of God because we are living in days where many people will be going to hell directly from their pews. Forgive me if I sound dramatic but many times we cannot trust the counsel of “Christian” pastors or other Christians. I encourage you by telling you what I’m sure you already know . . . God is faithful.

Cathy

Protestantism requires something that the Dark and Middle ages did not have much of, and that is an educated populace and ready access to printed materials. One cannot teach absolute reliance upon the Bible as the sole deposit of faith if one cannot read and one does not have access to a Bible. It’s much easier to spread practices such as recitation of the Rosary, the Angelus and other prayers while a priest mutters a mass in Latin if the population is heavily illiterate, as was the case before access to mass printing methods.

And where there were “alternative” faiths, such as the Cathars, it’s very clear that the authorities were quite willing to go very much out of their way to suppress such faiths, even if it meant killing thousands of people in one day (22 July 1209 in Beziers, Languedoc).

So, I will disagree with you on the notion that there were proto-Protestant or post-Apostolic survivals.

And, finally, I don’t claim to be a Christian.

thanks for clearing up the ‘chalk and cheese’ reference.

I guess I knew how blasphamous it was, but I was not sure if I was over reacting. So maney people (including my pastor) told me I was not causing him to sin, but I could not reconsile the neiling with the Word. I forbid him from doing the sign of the cross though.

I called the Princilple and she isnt sure what to do, because she says they are not praying to the statue but to God, so she is going to have the Priest call. Im standing firm this time, but its hard. Being that Im a single mom.

Keep me in prayer. Im deffinitly not going to back down!

Kneeling before any statue is wrong, even if it is of the ‘real’ Jesus {and the catholic Jesus and the real one are different anyway]. I would guess they also make him do a sign of the cross while doing so, which is also pagan based ritual?

Also not making a graven image of anything is one of the ten commandments. It is wrong whatever he is doing.

I do understand where you are coming from, wanting the best for your son’s education. Roman Catholic schools can be very good educationally, but….

My son goes to a Catholic School, because the Christian Charismatic church that he was going to before became heavily influenced with Lakeland. My thinking in puting him there was that although it was catholic it may be just a little more hands off, because they had so many children who were not catholic going there.

From the beginning I told the Principal that my son is not to take communion or pray, but he would respect them if they did it. Her response was “Thats fine, but he should neil during prayer”. I immediatly felt uneasy about that, but being that we were in a hurried meeting I didnt get around to asking the most important question “neil to what”.
But i did tell my son that not under any circumstances was he to bow or neil to a statue of Mary and we had discussed the toppic of the Catholic Church befor I made the decision to put him there.

So that Friday my son came home saying that they had to neil to a statue of Jesus on the cross, I felt a little relieved because I was not really wanting to have to call the school if it was a statue of Mary and tell them that he could not do it(being that my son was already new and it was hard to find good schools), but I still feel like something is not pleasing to God about my son neiling and that I’m causing him to sin in some way.

I know its wrong but I feel like I will be setting my son up for some mistreatment if I call and tell them that my son cant neil. But if I get confirmation that its definitly idolatric for him to neil to a statue that is not the true Jesus we believe in I will call in a heart beat. I just need proof for me.

I was also wondering if you have any leassons that I can use in our home bible study to show my son and myself clearly why catholicism is wrong, because I have always considered it somewhat of a cult. I was taught that catholism was wrong from a young age, but I need to be armed with teaching that has facts and scripture that are A,B,C basic in style.

The definition of bigot is someone who ‘is strongly partial to one’s own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.’ This is not true of me. You and your partner can believe whatever you like, I will tolerate your freedom in that [but not accept it as truth and warn you of its eternal consequences]. I will allow you if you want to believe it that God is a green robot and lives in a flying saucer, BUT if you insist that your beliefs are ‘Christian’ and expect me to accept them as Christian, then of course I will vigorously refute that, because it just ain’t so. {And by the way isn’t it equally being bigoted by your logic for you to insist I must believe and declare as YOU do?}

If we had no source text to refer to, and just my and your opinions, then I would be hard pushed to be able to say with any authority: ‘no, the Christian God is not a green robot living in a flying saucer’ – but we do, the Bible. And that source text shows clearly that God is not a green robot. Because of the source text I can be as bold as I am when declaring that Catholicism is fundamentally wrong at its core when claiming to be ‘Christian’ as I am in declaring the Christian God is not a green robot living in a flying saucer.

Nobody would be being a bigot for insisting that William Shakespeare wrote about ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and not ‘Rolland and Julia’ for this facts would be based on facts and historical record. It would be sound scholarly work and exegesis, not just mere personal opinion. And so with my claim that the Roman Catholic faith and the true gospel are very, very different on many scores. It is not just my opinion. This FACT is based on the word of God. My source text is the Word of God which throws light on exactly what Catholicism is and is not. And I am NOT just talking about Catholic fringe beliefs or ‘heretical’ schisms but ‘essential’ Roman dogma.

Just because Roman Catholics have claimed to be Christians and have claimed succession all the way back to Peter for hundreds of years means nothing apart from folk have swallowed this lie for hundreds of years. Anybody can call themselves anything or claim anything and it is not necessarily true. Peter was NOT the first pope. I know you are more intelligent than that, Mirele, surely.

Your other half is free to believe what he wants. But if he thinks that Catholicim is Biblical ‘Christianity’ then he is deluded – as are you if you back him up.

>>You would not be a Christian today if it were not for the Catholic church.

I am a Christian today IN SPITE OF the Catholic church who did their best to keep me in darkness, never taught me or anyone else the gospel, opposed it rather at every stage, and when I converted attempted to pull me back into the fold. They continually persecute the truth. If the Catholic Church had not ever existed many more people would not be in hell and would be true Christians. Many martyr’s blood would not have been spilt. You talk about bigots – your other half is enjoined with the real bigots.

You also have a poor version of church history. The RC church were not the only ‘church’ before the protestant reformation in the 16th century. We may not have heard of the TRUE church – the dissenters to Rome – in the dark ages because they were so persecuted, many scattered and many were slaughtered by Rome.

But some names we do know. There were pre-reformers such as Wycliffe and Hus and Lollardy hundreds of years before the Reformation. There were also the Waldenses from around the 12th century. And notably the ‘Vaudois’ or ‘Valley Dwellers’ from very early on – around the 5th and 6th cntury http://www.giveshare.org/churchhistory/DuggerDodd/Dugger09.html

To claim that Catholics are not Christians betrays, at minimum, a near-absolute ignorance of history. I know about this myself, because, before I went to college, I’d been taught at church to believe in the apostolic age, then jump forward 1400 years to the Reformation, totally ignoring what went in between. You would not be a Christian today if it were not for the Catholic church.

Now, this is not to say that the Catholic church doesn’t have some very serious problems. My significant other is Catholic, and whenever the Pope or the local bishop or some other bishop does something boneheadedly stupid, he gets an earful from me. He’s also very aware of the problems, and if he’s not, he asks me, because I’ll use my Google-Fu to find out. Example: he asked me, “what’s this stuff about Mary Co-Redemptrix? what’s that about?” I did some Google-Fu and found out that there’s a movement within the Catholic church to declare the “fifth Marian dogma,” that Mary was co-Redemptrix with Jesus. I told him it was my considered opinion that politically, this was never going to ever become an official dogma, because it would cause too many problems in trying to gather back all those separated churches.

Of course, over the years, I’ve migrated my way out of Christendom, so my criticism of churchy-type stuff has become even more pointed and bitter. Yep. Still annoyed that I spent 30+ years of my life being afraid. Catholicism is the least of my problems, but you really need to look at that bigotry and ask if that reflects the Jesus you claim to worship.

“During the mid 1980’s Cathy and I became aware of the Catholic Charismatic movement. The Mass was livelier and the songs were similar to those sung in Christian churches. We attended “healing masses” which focused on healing and praying the rosary. The rosary contains prayers which are mostly “Hail Mary’s”. At that time we became aware of what was known as the Marian apparitions at Medugorje. The “Virgin Mary” was allegedly appearing before some young men and women and bringing forth a monthly message. We were fascinated by stories of rosary beads changing colors, from silver to gold, when people went to Medugorje.

During this same period we began visiting a church in New York City where the gospel of Jesus Christ was being preached. We heard testimonies of how people’s lives were being changed by the power of Jesus Christ. This fascinated us also because we were so accustomed to the rituals and rote prayers we said every Sunday at the Catholic Mass. As time went on we would attend Mass in the morning and visit the other church in the evening, and the power of God’s Word was bringing us into the knowledge of the truth.

Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. (John 8:31-32)

Cathy told a Christian woman at that other church about the alleged appearances over in Yugoslavia. The woman quoted a verse of scripture to her:

And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. (2 Corinthians 11:14)

This troubled Cathy and she went before the Lord and asked Him to show her the truth no matter what. She prayed before the Lord with an open Bible and an open heart, and began to see many scriptures which contradicted the messages that were coming from the “apparition of Mary” in Yugoslavia. This was very upsetting to her because we were really into this apparition thing. We had purchased videos and invited others to come to our home to view them with us. We also handed out pamphlets which promoted the apparition. We were evangelists for Mary at that time. Cathy was convinced that this whole thing was not of God and she tried to convince me, but I was not willing to listen. This went on for several weeks until one day she came down the stairs with tears in her eyes and asked me to listen to her. Something inside my heart told me to listen, and I did, and I told her that I would pray about it.

knew that I had a choice to make. It was either the word of God (the bible) or the messages of “Mary” from Medugorje. I chose to believe the word of God. I can remember the day when the Lord lifted the spiritual veil of deception which had covered my eyes. I was reading the gospel of John and it seemed that the words were jumping off the page at me. I knew at that moment that the Lord Jesus Christ was the Son of God who came down from heaven. I knew that the Lord Jesus Christ was persecuted and slain on the cross for my sins. This was “head knowledge” before but now it was revelation truth from heaven straight into my heart. The Lord Jesus Christ had become ever so real to me and I knew that He died for me. A change had taken place inside my heart, and I was born again in the true biblical way. Jesus said this:

That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. (John 3:6-7)

Cathy and I researched the messages from Medugorje and it was as if the Holy Spirit had taken a fluorescent hi-liter pen and began to expose the contradictions and falsehoods within those messages. We did the same with the other apparitions of Mary and we found them to contain similar errors.

As new Christians we now believed what Peter said and that we were now part of the “priesthood of believers” (1 Peter 2:9) which encompasses people from every nation on planet earth. We now knew that we did not need the Roman Catholic Mass, which is called the “Perfect Sacrifice Continued” (item 360 Baltimore Catechism p171), and which declares as its purpose “to satisfy the justice of God for the sins committed against Him” (Item 361 Baltimore Catechism p173). We now believed what Jesus Christ proclaimed right before His life expired “It Is Finished” (John 19:30). We now believed what Peter told us in one of his letters:

For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: (1 Peter 3:18)

We now believed what the apostle Paul told us in his letter to the Romans. We saw the value of the blood of Jesus Christ like never before.

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. (Romans 5:8-9)

We now knew that the Mass, which declares that Christ through the ministry of the priest is offering Himself to God in “an unbloody manner” (item 357 Baltimore Catechism p168), was not in agreement with the Word of God which tells us this:

For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. (Leviticus 17:11)

We also knew from studying the scriptures that the real Mary was a sinner just like the rest of us:

And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. (Luke 1:46-47)

Only sinners need a Saviour, and the Bible tells us that every single one of us has come short of the glory of God.

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.(Romans 3:23)

The last time that I find Mary mentioned in the scriptures is in the book of Acts:

And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room, where abode both Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas the brother of James. These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren. (Acts 1:13-14)

Mary is listed here along with everyone else and she most certainly is not exalted above the others who are mentioned here. Mary was praying along with the rest of the other believers in Jesus Christ unto her God. None of the others are found praying to her as I did for many years and is still done today by multitudes.

One of the most striking things to me was the fact that the second commandment found in the Baltimore Catechism was not the same second commandment found in the bible. The real second commandment is found in Exodus 20 and reads as follows:

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:4-6)

In the Roman Catholic Baltimore Catechism the second commandment is listed as “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” (Baltimore Catechism item number 195, p 100)

How could there still be Ten commandments if the second commandment which dealt with graven images (statues) and which took up three verses in the scriptures is removed from the list?

The answer is found by taking a look at the ninth and tenth commandments in the Baltimore Catechism which are as follows:

9) Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors wife.

10) Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors goods.

(Baltimore Catechism item number 195, p100)

But the bible relegates only one single verse to this subject which is found below.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s. (Exodus 20:17)

The Lord really opened up my eyes with this one because statues are found in Roman Catholic Churches all over the world. There are shrines to Mary all over the world. There are statues built to honor “saints” all over the world. I can remember visiting a Catholic shop in search of a statue of Mary because I wanted to have my own little shrine in the attic of my home. A person had a choice of a plain white statue or one which included the colors of blue and white. I was shocked at the prices for even the smaller statues, and I never bought one. It was not long after that visit to the Catholic shop, that I got saved and saw all of these things as nothing but idolatry according to God’s word.

As the Lord continued to open up my eyes about the deception of Roman Catholicism I would share this with others including pastors. I soon found out that this is an issue which most pastors refrain from speaking about. There was so much compromise I did not know where to begin. I have to remind myself that the bible warns us about such things in the following verse:

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; (1 Timothy 4:1)

If the Spirit of God, which is the Spirit of truth prophesied of such apostasy then it must certainly happen. Many pastors walk under the disguise of a “love” which is nothing but a counterfeit love which creates a false “unity” of believers in Jesus Christ. They lay aside the truth of God’s word and accept the doctrines of devils which Paul warned us about. On the surface they appear to be “anointed” but in reality they are crafty compromiser’s of God’s word. Some are very aware of what is going on, but they remain silent because it is not popular to speak out against these things. True love warns people about false doctrine and calls it what it is in order to protect the sheep. True Godly and biblical love can be found in the ministry of the Jewish apostle Paul who never failed to warn the people whom he loved so dearly.

Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men. For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears. (Acts 20:26-31)”

I think you are taling about the concept of ’soul sleep’ which is a very interesting topic. I know Jacob Prasch had a very long discussion with another ‘theologian’ Robert Morey on it. You might want to google for it as it contains lots of theology.

Here is another link -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_sleep

Oh I am so sorry, I did not realise it was not an international expression. Here is an explanation from http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/chalk-and-cheese.html

‘Two things that are might possibly be confused but which are in fact very different.’

The earliest citation of the phrase, in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, 1390 does suggest some dodgy dealing, in which cheese is replaced with chalk:

Lo, how they feignen chalk for chese.

But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:8-9)

When the Spirit of God opened my eyes, and delivered me from the darkness of Rome, I left that church in a very short time. The scriptures made it ever so clear to me that Jesus Christ was the only mediator that I needed, and that I myself, was now part of the priesthood of believers. (1 Peter 2:9-10) We must never forget the precious reformers who have gone before us, and who have gone to the flames, so that everyday people like you and me are able to have a Bible in our hands today. Thank You Lord Jesus for that. Here is a direct link to my testimony. http://soulrefuge.wordpress.com/2007/07/27/my-testimony-from-darkness-to-light-2/ Be Blessed in the Lord, Bill White