Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
Harold,
I think you've taken a little too much of the evangelical position on the RCC to heart. I don't disagree with many of the faults of the organization. And they have recently been showing their tendency toward getting directly involved in government and politics (4th verse, same as the first on that count).
But we gloss over the tremendous stability of teaching and doctrine. (A trait that has been both good and bad — hard to bring in error, but once it is there, hard to eradicate.) It took them some time (centuries) yet they now agree with Martin Luther on most of his theses.
And while they are not likely to ever move to an evangelical mode of "salvation," that is such a late-comer to the dance that we should understand it less as the God-ordained way and more like another way to come to faith.
Learning for a life-time and somewhere along the way realizing that you have come to believe has been the way for most of Christian history. No, it was not as common in the first days since there was no opportunity to learn. But they also baptized the whole family when the head of the house believed.
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interesting response bro OBW. But this thread is about the indwelling Christ in our spirit.
Essentially, early on that became a problem. Jesus said he would send the comforter to teach us, all of us, of everything.
The Paraclete, or those claiming to be inspired by it, became a problem for the established proto-orthodox, the church institution that had developed in the 2nd. c. Montanus and his two female colleagues, Priscilla, and Maximilla, claimed the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The movement caught on. They claimed to be channeling the Paraclete, with fresh new prophesies. The established proto-orthodox condemned it as heresy. They won out. And such movements of claiming to channel the Holy Spirit were squashed out.
Come to think of it, Witness Lee had the same problem. He squashed movements of the Holy Spirit that sprang up, in his movement, like Elden hall, and like sending his man into a movement of the Spirit among brothers to start a LC in Tampa Florida.
Following the Spirit -- that's like the wind -- can cause a real disturbance to the establishment. It takes control away.