The pope condemns personal relationship with Christ

I would also say that it makes sense for a Pope who has recently played up the importance of "being good" to get to Heaven to now downplay in a sense the importance of having a personal relationship with God in favor of simply attending Church.

Think about it - it must comfort a lot of people to know that they only have to "be good" and attend Church every Sunday to go to Heaven now. No more worries about that icky finding God or accepting Him as your Savior bit which is usually the big stumbling block for most people.

originally posted by: ketsuko
I would also say that it makes sense for a Pope who has recently played up the importance of "being good" to get to Heaven to now downplay in a sense the importance of having a personal relationship with God in favor of simply attending Church.

Think about it - it must comfort a lot of people to know that they only have to "be good" and attend Church every Sunday to go to Heaven now. No more worries about that icky finding God or accepting Him as your Savior bit which is usually the big stumbling block for most people.

Yes it sounds like the Pope decided to light up the Wide Road in case anyone missed it.

a reply to: Wifibrains

The Pope saying that isn't out of the ordinary. The Catholic dogma teaches that the Church is the distributor of grace, and in order to receive the grace of God one must adhere to the sacraments. They teach a false, works based salvation, contrary to the real salvation of "by grace through faith" that is taught over and over again in the New Testament. The Pope is also known as the "Vicar of Christ". The word Vicar derives from the word "vicarious" or "vicariously", and it means that the Pope is the representative of Jesus Christ, and that His power and authority is exercised vicariously through the Pope. This is why the Catholic Church changed the Ten Commandments, and this is why the Catholic Church has literally made up doctrine through various church writings that is claimed to be equal in authority to the Bible. The bottom line is this... The Catholic Church is a Godless, Antichrist man made religion, just like Judaism. The Catholic church officials are nothing more than modern day Pharisees.

Ww

originally posted by: BO XIAN
a reply to: Wifibrains

The video speaker is a bit shrill but . . . with just cause.

The WHOLE PURPOSE of Christ's death on The Cross was to re-establish

one on one RELATIONSHIP between all who accepted His Blood as cleansing, covering and Salvation--WITH THE FATHER.

What a hideous travesty from hell is right.

The globalist collectivist side of him is coming to the fore.

May God have mercy.

Yes. The renting of the veil from top to bottom symbolized God's removal of a priest from the equation.

a reply to: XCrissCrossX

ABSOLUTELY INDEED.

What more could God . . . could Christ have done?

Suffered and bled horribly for our

DIRECT ACCESS TO . . . drum roll . . .

THE FATHER!

Of course . . . hierarchies loathe liberty . . . and particularly individual liberty with direct access to ALMIGHTY GOD!

a reply to: ketsuko
You know I never understood that BS about accepting god as savior to be saved........ If god is real, he is real whether or not you accept it, and if god is savior, it wouldn't be conditional on asskissing.

Gravity don't give a crap if you believe in it, it just does what it does regardless. If god is real, is god going to be weaker than gravity? Is god going to be subject to the same ego tripping man is? I seriously doubt it.

There is one character you hear about though........ The evil one, that cannot have your soul unless you give it yourself. I came to the conclusion that most organized religions are false, if god and the adversary is real, then the adversary must be the one being praised in most organized religions.

The real god if real should not require praise, or worship to have power. Dude just up and decided one day, lets create a bunch of #, and that was that. The universe was so. Would something with that kind of power create us, abandon us with some obscure writings from hundreds of years ago, then expect an intelligent species such as us to believe it all with no proof? Why bother giving us brains and free will at all in that case? Unless god is a psychopath, it makes no sense! There are those of us that have been seeking this god all our lives, through various religions, why hide from people like me? Is god a coward, is god a psychopath? I hope not.....

a reply to: BO XIAN

A nice dream you have, about needing someone else to establish a connection for you to ANYTHING.

We shall soon peel back the ridiculous antics of whomever it is who has truly kept this world in deception, and tricked the minds of the caring Christian even, into believing that this story is even remotely true.

Stop processing everything through the Framed Lies, that have you feeding them untold amounts of power, whilst you falsely believe you are gaining truth.

NOT ONE RELIGION, seeks truth, or anything else, but is controlled by those who have dominated, continously, and they need YOU to make a decision to divide yourself, i wonder how tightly controlled your "heaven" must be!!

a reply to: OptimusSubprime

It is too bad, that you cannot look and see that not ONE religion or organization on EARTH, actually teaches anything but DOGMA, designed to LIMIT you in everyway, all the while making you feel JUST good enough to make yourself buy into it,

Regardless, all of them are fear based, and do not tell even a 1/100th of any reality to do with the non-physical, or physical dimensions we reside in.

As in everything else, it appears noone can tell, that all of this is a very nicely prepared joke.

a reply to: BO XIAN

Dear BO XIAN,

Forgive me for imposing on your patience yet again. I knew that I would have to respond to your post, but I still haven't found the words. Please be generous in interpreting anything I say, this time I don't have a diagram set out with what to cover (not that I ever do). I'm hip-shooting.

I completely agree that before Christ came we were never going to be clean enough to gain entrance to heaven to be with Him. The "salvation" of the peoples of the earth was the sort of goal that makes sense for a loving God. Restoring the "bridge" we could cross to God if we chose was a feat of love and mercy which will resound through the Universe for all time. FULL AGREEMENT WITH YOU.

Might I ask about your opinions of ETs? I realize some see them as demons. Is that widely accepted? I didn't think so, and I'm not sure that the Church thinks that.

I do believe that if there are aliens who aren't demons in disguise (which is possible), they could add information about theirsalvation story, but not about ours.

Do the aliens need redemption? Perhaps they made the right choice in the initial test. If they do need redemption, did they receive it in the same we did? God sending His son in their appearance to die as a sacrifice? Or was there some other method used? Either way, I would think that God's glory would only be magnified in our minds once we found out.

Where I might be in the league of demons is that I'm not sure that ET's are demons. If they are, we've fought demons before and God's grace has saved us. If they're not, we'll certainly learn somethings, although maybe not about salvation. On the other hand, they might just destroy us all. It's not something I worry about because I think the possibilities have been pretty much covered.

What I doworry about is the possibility that they are pure, innocent, and trusting. I would not want that form of alien to have contact with mankind in general, until the Prince of the Air has been completely destroyed at last.

Choices have consequences. And to support a fossilized, corrupted, arrogant bureaucracy and trumped up LORDING IT OVER other believers is just outrageously UnBiblical and anti-authentic-Christianity.

Should I take that to mean you'd support a hierarchy that wasn't fossilized, etc.? I think your answer would be no, from what you've said in other places in your post. It seems then that the objection is to the existence of a structure, rather then the quality of the structure.

I think you're right, in that no structure will ever be what we would like it to be. So we're faced with either, a structure with human flaws, or no structure at all. (By the way, some of my deepest experiences have been when I was by myself, at home or in church.)

Now it's time for a mind-experiment. What happens if the Christian churches world wide announce, "Christianity is between you and God. We will no longer exist as organizations telling you what to think, do, or believe. Go, and find God and Jesus on your own."

Am I misunderstanding what you think would be ideal? If I'm not, then what is a Christian? Someone might say, "I know Jesus existed and he said wonderful things (although I'm not quite sure what they were). I don't bother with the Bible, because that has been corrupted over time. I just sit in the woods, try to figure out what Jesus might say, and I'm good."

With what authority could we say "You really should read the Bible," or "You're a sinner and need redemption," or, "You should participate in the Last Supper," or, indeed how could we tell anyone anything about Christianity, since all that is needed is a personal relationship. To be honest, I suspect people will ask, "Just what is this personal relationship?" I'm afraid all we could say would be something along the lines of "If you have one, you'll know."

And what do we do when someone announces that he is a Christian and Christians believe in killing infidels? Who can say to such a person, "No, you're wrong, that's not what Christians believe?"

I don't see a solution to these difficulties, I present them in the fervent hope that you can resolve them for me.

With respect,
Charles1952

a reply to: ParasuvO

Perhaps we don't have enough of a shared dictionary to have a shared dialogue.

Your reality is extremely different from mine.

Cheers.

a reply to: TKDRL

A short little analogy. A Mexican teen is trying to get through the desert to the US. He knows enough that he is suffering from some symptoms of severe dehydration, and there is no water, or even another person, in sight.

A man shows up with a gallon jug of water and asks, "Would you like this? No charge." But the question has to be answered with a "yes" or a "no."

Get my point?

And a very good and to the point post.
a reply to: TrueBrit

originally posted by: charles1952
a reply to: BO XIAN

Dear BO XIAN,

Forgive me for imposing on your patience yet again.

You are a delight and never bother my patience in the slightest. Thx for your kind response.

I knew that I would have to respond to your post, but I still haven't found the words. Please be generous in interpreting anything I say, this time I don't have a diagram set out with what to cover (not that I ever do). I'm hip-shooting.

Sounds like how I write all the time.

I completely agree that before Christ came we were never going to be clean enough to gain entrance to heaven to be with Him. The "salvation" of the peoples of the earth was the sort of goal that makes sense for a loving God. Restoring the "bridge" we could cross to God if we chose was a feat of love and mercy which will resound through the Universe for all time. FULL AGREEMENT WITH YOU.

imho . . . for some reason . . . EVEN IF . . . as seems likely in many respects . . . though some find it heretical . . . EVEN IF there are distant orbs with citizens needing and other orbs with citizens not needing Salvation . . . there's SOMETHING ABOUT

"ALL CREATION GROANS EARNESTLY EXPECTANTLY, YEARNINGLY EAGER FOR THE [RELIEVING] MANIFESTATION OF THE SONS OF GOD." . . . made possible by Christ's Redemptive work and sacrifice.

ALL creation has evidently felt sin's pollution, Satan's infections . . .

Maybe this is the place to answer your question further down in your post since I'm talking about such things.

Guy Malone

www.ancientofdays.net...

www.alienresistance.org...

after sponsoring 12 or so top flight scholars to study the ET critter issues . . . they all concluded . . . that the best answer is that they are fallen angels.

Fallen angels that did not lose their bodies in the flood and thereby become demons--because they had evidently not chosen to take on bodies sufficient to copulate with human females at that time.

I dialogued with Guy Malone several times face to face. I once asked him if he thought there was any chance that there were merely 'citizens of distant orbs' existing who were not fallen angels. He thought there was less than a 1% chance.

I'm not sure he's right about that.

I am convinced that it's irrelevant to our current relationship with God and our dealing with God's priorities for us in this time/space dimension.

There is a possibly kosher prophetic bloke who's been posted about on ATS . . . don't have the link handy . . . who claims that angels or God has told him that there are distant planets with citizens . . . in this multiverse and other multiverses.

I don't know.

I am utterly convinced that Guy is correct in this sense . . . ALL the "races" of critters pretending to be ET's . . . ARE CLEARLY UP TO NO GOOD.

They are clearly in cahoots with the father of lies . . . doing his bidding . . . working to set up the END TIMES GREAT DECEPTION Christ warned us about.

They are NOT NICE critters. Some pretend to be . . . but are also seen clearly working with "races" that are far from nice. So the pretense is hollow.

And their 'healing' of humans on occasion could be construed as nothing more than we'd do for a calf we were going to Bar-B-Q 4 months from now.

I think Tom Horn and Cris Putnam in EXO-VATICANA . . . with their massive DVD document files . . . demonstrate rather conclusively that the Vatican has--as I've noted--been busy slowly escalating the incrementally softened shocking news that the critters MAY HAVE KNOWLEDGE ABOUT SALVATION that would force us to reconsider the validity of the Gospel history.

That's unmitigated blasphemy, imho.

Paul himself said that even if an angel from heaven came preaching ANY OTHER GOSPEL, TO CONSIDER HIM ACCURSED. INDEED.

Poltergeist goings on occur with the critters.

Occultish dabblings were involved in all 400+ cases they have on file wherein they taught the victims spiritual warfare strategies to STOP the abductions cold . . . successfully . . . they could always find there was some satanic/occultic dabblings that gave a spiritually legal doorway/opening to such goings on--an invitation to the enemy, so to speak.

The critters chronically lie. Government whistleblowers have asserted that for years. Why the government has therefore allowed itself to be seduced by the liars is a whole 'nother issue.

I've said for years that at some point, the Pope himself would assert that the critters were nice guys or at least would be considered as nice guys.

I just didn't expect it to be this soon.

Might I ask about your opinions of ETs? I realize some see them as demons. Is that widely accepted? I didn't think so, and I'm not sure that the Church thinks that.

It depends on the Protestant congregation/denomination. Some of them spout the same sort of nonsense coming out of the Vatican about the critters. . . . people all gahgah about our 'space brothers' here to save us from ourselves.

Jesus already did that and declared it finished at The Cross. The rest is mop-up.

The RCC is now on record as considering them great creatures--our 'space brothers' . . . at least worth evangelizing and baptizing, 'IF THEY NEED IT.'

I do believe that if there are aliens who aren't demons in disguise (which is possible), they could add information about theirsalvation story, but not about ours.

I don't know for certain. I think Guy tends to be much more right than wrong about most things in this ball park.

I've long been fairly convinced that THE CROSS & the EMPTY TOMB are the FULCRUM of all eras and all multiverses and all inhabited spheres.

To be continued. Probably after rebooting a contrary desktop.

Lets rattle the cage...

originally posted by: FlyersFan

The pope condemns personal relationship with Christ

That's NOT what he said.

Catholic Register - Pope Says Church is a Family That Welcomes and Teaches Us

Observing how our relationship with God “is personal but not private,” he stated that our journey of faith “is born of and enriched by the communion of the Church.”

“Whoever says they believe in God but not in the Church, has a direct relation with Christ outside of her, falls into an absurd dichotomy,” he noted, stating that “God has confided his saving message to human persons, to witnesses, and it is known to us through our brothers and sisters.”

However, to walk our path in the Church is not always easy, because “at times we encounter human weakness, limitations and even scandal in the life of the Church,” the Holy Father said.

But even so, “God has called us to know him and to love him precisely by loving our brothers and sisters, by persevering in the fellowship of the Church and by seeking in all things to grow in faith and holiness as members of the one body of Christ.”
Concluding his address, Pope Francis encouraged those present to keep in mind that, “as Christians, we cannot disregard the other, the Church; we cannot save ourselves on our own.”

He said that a personal relationship with Christ comes through the Church. That if you have a personal relationship with Christ, it's because it was brought to you by the Church. That the Church takes care of that relationship and helps it grow. He was stating that, without the church, it can wither away.

I agree and disagree with his statement.

The Church brought us scripture which brings us Jesus. The Church also brought us the great writings of the saints and the awesome prayers and mediations that bring us closer to God. But the legalities of the Church, as helpful as they can be, can also be a hinderance to many.

Poppy pants is still wrong. I did not find God in a church. The Vatican church is no longer representing the truth but spreading lies. God no longer walks down the halls of the Vatican. The devil does.

a reply to: Jesuslives4u
The vatican never did represent any truth though.

a reply to: charles1952
No, I don't get the point. What kind of person would even need to ask? A person with some common sense and empathy would just give it, not force someone to beg and worship in order to receive help. That is what ego maniacs would do, humans lost in themselves. If god is real, he should be above that nonsense IMO.

a reply to: Wifibrains

Maybe he's studying another bible than the one I use. The thief on the cross NEVER stepped inside a church for his salvation. But Jesus accepted him into paradise when he confessed his sin and asked the Lord to remember him when he comes into his kingdom. Church cannot and has not SAVED anyone. JESUS SAVES!

a reply to: Yule C Mann

YES!

You sir, win all of the internets!

This is crucial, absolutely vital to have at the forefront of ones mind when dealing with matters pertaining to the Christian faith. The Church is an imperfect thing, created and maintained by imperfect beings, and guilty of great sins of its own, many of which have never been answered for.

Whether you believe or not, understanding that in the true Christian faith, nothing, not the Church, not the Pope, not a priest, and not a symbol, comes before Christ, is essential if one is to be able to see a believer and tell them apart from a liar in a nice pullover. It is He who gave His body and His blood for us, He who saves our souls, and offers us eternal life. No one else.

“Whoever says they believe in God but not in the Church, has a direct relation with Christ outside of her, falls into an absurd dichotomy,”

Haha. So transparent. "God is your authority, but we will tell you what God says". I don't see the Pope attacking the idea of a personal relationship, I see him defending the necessity of the Church playing the middle man in such a relationship. I dunno...what does the Bible say about threesomes?