#Reformed church

[annagracewood]

Merry Christmas, y'all and a prayer request and family update

Merry Christmas, y’all. God surely is gracious, isn’t He? This year has been one of tremendous ups and downs. My heart has broken a thousand times this year as some of my children denied their faith. I beg your prayers for them. However, in midst of such pain, the Lord has reconciled a daughter and myself. This is such a huge thing, something I’d prayed for for so many years. She’s a Christian…

[andreaspadaccini-andrea]

SPANISH WINE

It has been a month since I started attending a Reformed confessional church. It has been a breath of fresh air to me. There is much rest in accepting my humanity—that I'm a sinner, falling short of God's standard, of God's holiness. I can genuinely feel the care of the people especially my friends who are helping me to transition.

We drink Spanish wine for the communion of the saints. The wine is bitter than other wines. As I heard if you are a wine enthusiast, you do not pick this one or you whined, wordplay intended. But as for me as long as I'm at the table of Cristo Rey, I know that any wine—no matter how bitter—is still a grace from God that I can enjoy the serving of His love through reminding myself of Jesus' sweet sacrifice for my salvation. I can enjoy God through thick and thin, in health and sickness, in better or worse, in smooth and rough roads of my pilgrimage.

Me, internally, as I'm typing those words above thinking of how grateful I am with my friends from the church where I'm transitioning to who encourages me and are willing to genuinely lend their ears to listen to me as I share my struggles in life, and me having the confidence that they will not use it to their advantage:

[world-v-you-blog]

The Tapestry of History, 12 – The Rise of the West, 7 – The Reformation, 3

(Image credit – Wikipedia – St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, Paris 1572 – by François Dubois) The Protestant Reformation of the 16th Century is one of the pivotal events of Western History, and thereby of World History. The geopolitical state of the world in the 21st Century is, in part, attributable to the consequences of the division of Europe into Roman Catholic and Protestant nation-states…

[battleforgodstruth]

Woe To You When All Men Speak Well Of You - Pastor Patrick Hines #shorts

Woe To You When All Men Speak Well Of You – Pastor Patrick Hines #shorts ▶️Pastor Patrick Hines has recently had a brand new book published, called, “Earth’s Foundational History – Part 1: Genesis Chapters 1 Through 5.” (Paperback – May 4, 2023) https://cutt.ly/16RCeZ0 These two books are also available on Amazon. All proceeds go directly to Pastor Hines: ▶️Am I Right With God?: The Gospel,…

[thoughts-of-caly]

protestants the entire month of october:

[crippledanarchy]

If you're in the US and you're concerned about Palestine, leave US Jews alone, and start asking your local evangelist how much money their christian church sends annually to support the genocide being committed by the state of israel.

[canisalbus]

as a 16th century clergyman what does machete think of the printing press

I think by the time he was born the printing press had been around for almost a century and a half, so I'd reckon the society as a whole was largely past it's initial novelty and controversy. Machete himself is bookish and nerdy, he's very invested in gathering knowledge about various topics and trying to piece together a good picture of how the world works. Getting access to reading material would be a lot harder if every book was still copied individually by hand. His standards are pretty high though, there's a lot of poorly translated, shoddily printed and flimsily bound books around and he's prone to scrunching his nose at them.

[secretariatess]

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

I think it's a dang shame that we'll put celebration of the day the church split over the day the church was formed.

It's not that I think what the Catholic Church was doing at the time that instigated the Reformation was good or in no need of correction, but rather that God's church was split and created factions upon factions where we now squabble with each other. We went from a united church to one with many denominations that fight with each other about which ones are the "true" ones, or which denominations are "wrong."

Don't get me wrong, I like being Nazarene. I like what the Nazarene church offers, and I agree with Nazarene theology. And it wouldn't be possible without the Reformation. I don't agree with Catholic theology. I think there are many things where they are off base. But there are still those in the Catholic church who are Christian, and I'm not going to write them off because of the Protestant/Catholic chasm.

The Reformation was necessary. I'm not sure it was necessary to celebrate. The Church split. It split. The Church, where Jesus said that the world would know us by the love we have for each other, split.

To put it another way: God's family split. How is that not heartbreaking? I am under no delusion that everyone was working in harmony previously, but still . . . .

When Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses up, his goal was not to split the church. It was to correct the church. But he had lobbed a hand grenade at a festering rot, gone too far deep to accept correction and instead desired to keep its corruption.

There's a lesson in the Reformation. There was good in the Reformation. I do believe God worked in the Reformation. But I feel like the lesson and warning of the Reformation is lost when we celebrate "no longer being Catholic!"

The Reformation should be sobering.

And if we are going to celebrate a formation of the church, why are we putting so much stock on the Reformation, and ignoring the Pentecost, where God came down again?

What is the purpose in celebrating the Reformation, and what is the excuse in forgetting Pentecost?

[rabbitprayer]

No desire to convert to catholicism but the desire to kind of pretend that no schisms ever happened.

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2017)

[wronghands1]

[apenitentialprayer]

i've read that mormons and JWs are considered heretics because they don't affirm the trinity, so i was wondering what the sort-of 'cut off' point is. like would the ACOE be considered heretics because they say mary isn't the mother of God, only the mother of christ, for example

Alrighty, this is a big one. So, as far as the Jehovah's Witnesses and the (mainstream) Latter Day Saints movement go, things are.... a little more complicated in terms of whether their doctrine is "heresy" or if they are just plain non-Christian (and thus wouldn't count as heretical).

The crux of the argument that they are not Christian is that they do not affirm the Nicene Creed, which was articulated during the Councils of Nicaea (325 AD) and Constantinople (381 AD). While Mormons and JWs can affirm the most primitive of Christian creeds ("Christ is Lord"), the Nicene Creed very quickly took on the status of the σύμβολον, or symbolum in Latin; the "symbol of faith," the creed whose affirmation is itself a verification of one's Christian identity. That's why during the Council of Trent, for example, the Tridentine Fathers invited Protestants to participate in the Council on the condition that they could still affirm the Creed.

Of course, Mormons and JWs do not see it that way. They self-identify as Christians; and each group doesn't see themselves just as Christians, but as restorers of a purer, more original Christianity that had existed before the creation of that Creed.

But, anyway, if the conclusion of this argument is accepted, and members of the (mainstream) Latter Day Saints movement and Jehovah's Witnesses are not considered Christian, they by definition cannot be considered heretics; per the Baltimore Catechism, heretics are "baptized Christians, but do not believe all the articles of faith" (Q 1170).

The Assyrian Church of the East affirms the Nicene Creed, have Apostolic Succession, and have limited intercommunion with the Catholic Church. And, Christologically, they have an interesting situation going on. The Assyrian Church has not formally accepted the dogmatic Christological definitions of the Council of Ephesus (431). And, on that alone, the ACoE would seem to fit into the Baltimore Catechism's definition of heretic.

But over 1550 years after that split, the leaders of both the Assyrian Church of the East and the Catholic Church signed a document that affirmed that both Churches saw the other's Christological doctrines as valid, and that both theologies were expressions of the same Apostolic faith. You can read the full document, which is not very long, here.

But to abstract the discussion of heresy for a moment (bold of me to do, admittedly, after saying the last ask was a little vague); we need to make a distinction between formal heresy and material heresy. As Pope Benedict noted in 1993, which itself was an echo of the 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia's description of heresy, the defining characteristic of formal heresy is pertinacia, which can be translated as "stubbornness." What makes a person a "heretic" in a condemnable sense is this pertinacia, this holding fast to falsehoods in defiance of correction by proper authority.

So while the first generations of Protestants may be considered formal heretics, Pope Benedict noted that this does not reflect the actual social and religious conditions of Protestants living today, who are simply living out their Christian faith in the traditions that have arisen since the Reformation. They may be material heretics, and the doctrines of Protestantism may be considered heretical from the Catholic viewpoint, but being a Protestant does not automatically incur the guilt of heresy.

And, in all honesty, most Christians alive today (and most Christians in all ages) have in all probability been material heretics - i.e., they hold some wrong or incorrect opinions concerning the faith, but simply out of ignorance and not in defiance of proper authority. And that is not a sin.

[brotherslayer]

otome isekai where someone ace is reincarnated as a harem protagonist and throughout the game her only goal is to get rid of every single love interest and end up in a nunnery

[battleforgodstruth]

OF SANCTIFICATION - PURITAN THOMAS BOSTON

My Twitter page https://twitter.com/RichMoo50267219 Thomas Boston playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL41DF02B831A428DA OF SANCTIFICATION – THOMAS BOSTON ▶️SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/user/stack45ny▶️After subscribing, click on NOTIFICATION BELL to be notified of new uploads.▶️SUPPORT CHANNEL:…

[thoughts-of-caly]

5 guys, 5 nights at freddys, 5 seconds of summer, what about the 5 solas of the protestant reformation (sola fide, sola gratia, sola scriptura, solo christo, soli deo gloria)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Peter Montgomery at RWW:

Musician and Christian nationalist political activist Sean Feucht, who is affiliated with the dominionist New Apostolic Reformation, will bring his trademark mixture of worship, spiritual warfare, and hard-right politics to the National Mall on Saturday, Oct 26.  Feucht, an ardent supporter of former president Donald Trump, recently claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign was benefiting from “some serious demonic sorcery witchcraft thing.” He has previously demonstrated a willingness to spread lies about the Biden administration. In a “prayer zoom” livestream Wednesday night, Feucht said Saturday’s gathering will be a chance to “do damage to the kingdom of darkness. “I feel like this is a strategic assignment,” he said. “I feel like God is sending us on assignment…This is a governmental assignment…I feel like God is sending us in as the Navy Seals of intercessors…There comes an hour in battle when you need the Navy Seal intercessors.”  One of Feucht’s colleagues called the event an opportunity for the “ekklesia”—a term dominionists use to signify the church as a governing body on Earth—to “declare the majesty and the dominion of your kingdom over the governments of men.” Feucht said the weekend would kick off with a few hundred people gathering inside the U.S. Capitol complex on Friday morning, followed by a “Jesus March” from the Lincoln Memorial to the White House at noon on Saturday and the main event at 4 p.m. “This will be the last major faith worship event on the National Mall just days before the election and we are so excited to see how God is going to use it to turn the tide in America,” Feucht told Trinity Broadcasting Network’s Erick Stakelbeck. Feucht’s event comes just two weeks after dominionist New Apostolic Reformation leaders gathered thousands of people on the National Mall for a political and spiritual warfare rally that culminated with an “apostolic decree” that Trump would win this year’s election. Feucht considers anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ activist Lou Engle, the organizer of the Oct. 12 rally, his spiritual mentor. 

Feucht is a missionary-musician associated with the controversial and influential megachurch Bethel in northern California. In 2020, his run for Congress ended with a defeat in the primary election in spite of endorsements from Charlie Kirk, Christian nationalist political operative David Lane, and NAR leaders Ché Ahn and Cindy Jacobs. But when COVID-19 struck, Feucht saw an opportunity to make a name for himself by leading public events in defiance of public health restrictions, dubbing them “Let Us Worship.” In 2020, Feucht was part of the pro-Trump boosterism engaged in by many Christian nationalist and dominionist religious-right leaders. When Trump was defeated, Feucht claimed that the incoming Biden administration was “carrying some of the most anti-Christ agenda and philosophy that maybe we have seen in the history of America” and he warned, “There is a mob spirit that wants us to bow down to the gods of secular liberalism … and if we don’t bow, we’re gonna be bullied, harassed, and threatened. We’re going to be censored. We’re going to banished from speaking in the public square.”

Far-right Christian Nationalist Sean Feucht will bring his Let Us Worship rally to DC’s National Mall this Saturday.