Wednesday, February 20, 2008

A prayer for judgment


(Originally posted at Beggars All, but I like it so much I'll drop it here too.)
I think I've caused a bit of a stir when I said:

I pray that God will have mercy on many unknowingly in the darkness of RCC and cause Mary to be elevated to the title of a person of the Divine Quadernity.


Apparently my previous explanation was not sufficient.
Let me try something else.

Romans 1:18-32
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,
because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature;
and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips,
slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,
foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
What relevance does this passage have to the topic at hand and my expressed hope?
RCC is, to many people, a viable option when it comes to Christian churches. Why? For the same reason that the Word of Faith and Oneness Pentecostal heretics like TD Jakes are seen that way - they use the words "Jesus", "Holy Spirit", "forgiveness", "grace", "faith", "love", "God", "church", "Bible", etc. They quote from the Bible. They have crosses (usually) in their buildings and around their necks.
Insufficient differentiation between them and that which is truly biblical has taken place, and that's of course partly the fault of the true people of God. But it's also the fault of those who wish to take some of the labels of the biblical faith upon themselves and cut out other parts they find less convenient.

I want this mixing, this near-syncretism, to be eradicated, so that the difference between truth and error may be clearly visible. I join my tiny voice to the bold voice of the Scripture - "come out from them and be separate" (2 Cor 6:17) - and to Jesus' own words in Matthew 16:6-12 -

Jesus said to them, "Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." 7And they began discussing it among themselves, saying, "We brought no bread." 8But Jesus, aware of this, said, "O you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread? 9 Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? 10Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? 11How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread? Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees." 12 Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.


Now, why the boldfaced print in the Rom 1 passage above? It is to point out that a fair amount of the perverted actions that are described in the passage are results of God's judgment on those who had already rejected God's revelation and the worship of God. They went from bad to worse, from rejection to perversion, from lust to homosexuality, from self-hurt to other-hurt as well, because God took what was in their hearts and caused it to be amplified, to distinguish it further from that which is good, to carry out further judgment and receive glory for His justice.

Our RCC friends will of course object, but all are invited to take a look at the three recent posts on that very topic and decide for themselves just how relevant the "images of mortal man" part of Romans 1 is to RCC practice, as well as the many references to Mariology/Mariolatry that have gone before on this blog.
Thus my prayer is that the institution of the church will go from bad to worse, from blasphemy to serious blasphemy, from implicit rejection of biblical truth to explicit, etc. I pray that individual people in great numbers would come out from the church, and that others would be swayed against joining her because the dogma is just too blasphemous for even the most clueless to accept.
And of course it should always be our prayer that God be glorified in all things. He has chosen to glorify Himself through such judgments visited upon blasphemous institutions. Glory to God in the way He chooses His glory to come. And may God have mercy.


1 comment:

Carrie said...

This is why you need to post more!

Great post!