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Originally posted by octotom
reply to post by badmedia
There is only 1 true church,
I agree. But, the one true church is made up of local bodies of believers as we can't all be together.
I agree also, but just because I attend a church to be with fellow Christians doesn't mean that it's my "second" master. I am against church membership because of how some churches use church membership. If a church that I am attending were to trepass against God's word, I would do what I could to rectify the problem, then split if nothing changed. My Lord is more important.
All a church building is a building where people meet. There is nothing special about the building. What is special is what makes up the congregation. A church, or called out ones, can meet anywhere. In my hometown back in Florida, there is a church that meets on the beach. What is important is the edification of the body and the worship of God. Before I moved to Germany, my wife and I attended a church that met in a school cafeteria. Wherever you meet, the attitude is important. I can go and worship in a church that has 10,000 members and a multi-million dollar budget and all God is going to care about is the motivation of me being there. The same goes for those that build and pastor churches like that. God is only going to care about their motivation. What are they doing for him, are they reaching people, are they using their resources in a God honoring way.
See now, I've told you before, don't confuse Catholics with Protestants. Not all Christians believe that the act of Baptism does anything spiritually. It is a symbol and it shows that we're committing ourselves to Christ. Jesus had people baptized when he was alive and he commanded his disciples to baptize people in his name. If baptism was a purely spiritual thing, it would be impossible for his disciples to baptize people.
Also, it is really only Catholicism that uses physical things and applies spiritual meaning to it. You're not going to find statues of saints in a Baptist church. You're not going to find that Sunday's Jesus in the monstrance in the altar in the Methodist church down the road.
Always remember, not all Christians are Catholic and do Catholic things.
Originally posted by octotom
All the pastors that I know are horrified when people just blindly accept what they teach. They always encourage the congregation to investigate for themselves.
Originally posted by desert
Originally posted by octotom
All the pastors that I know are horrified when people just blindly accept what they teach. They always encourage the congregation to investigate for themselves.
Enlightenment. Unfortuneately, pastors of churches that people I know attend preach either "believe this way or you will go to Hell" or "this is 'God's word' and cannot be disputed!" It's the pastors who are horrified if their flock don't blindly accept.
I don't think me and octotom really disagree either, seems we are basically talking about the same understanding.
Originally posted by kiwifoot
Now the Church wants us to believe in the Bible, to obey the word, but strangely when it comes to living like true Christians like Jesus, they seem to forget the word and live in a world of wealth, pomp and ceremony. You can't have it both ways!