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NASB | John 10:30 "I and the Father are one." |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | John 10:30 "I and the Father are One [in essence and nature]." |
Subject: Should we rethink the Trinity? |
Bible Note: Hank, Get real! "bashing the Catholic church is offensive"? Why? Does the awe inspiring Almighty God of the Holy Bible condon or even tolerate as true representatives of his what "orthodox" religions' history testifies? Or does their clear fruitage condemn their leaders as being identified as what Jesus at Matt. 7:19 calls "man of lawlessness"? Proof is in the pudding! Clearly, the So-called christian's or christendom’s clergy are more reprehensible in shedding blood than all other religious leaders. They have brought great reproach upon both God and Christ. I could write you volumes but this short note should suffice. The responsibility for bloodshed by the clergy has been both direct, in the Crusades, other religious wars, inquisitions, and persecutions, and indirect, in condoning wars in which members of the churches killed their fellowman in other lands. Yes, Catholic kills Catholic and Baptist kills Baptist in the past and present. From the 11th to the 13th century, the clergy of Christendom introduced the Crusades. These resulted in horrible bloodshed and pillage in the name of God and of Christ. Hundreds of thousands were killed. The Crusades included the senseless slaughter of thousands of children who were induced to participate in the Children’s Crusade of the year 1212. In the 13th century, the Roman Catholic Church officially sanctioned another God-dishonoring horror—the Inquisition. It began in Europe and spread to the Americas, lasting for over six centuries. Originated and backed by the papacy, it was a murderous attempt to torture and stamp out all who disagreed with the church. While the church had previously persecuted non-Catholics, the Inquisition was far more extensive in scope. Peter De Rosa, who states that he is a “patriotic Catholic,” says in his recent book Vicars of Christ—The Dark Side of the Papacy: “The church was responsible for persecuting Jews, for the Inquisition, for slaughtering heretics by the thousand, for reintroducing torture into Europe as part of the judicial process. . . . Popes appointed and sacked even emperors, demanded that they impose Christianity on their subjects under the threat of torture and death. . . . The cost to the Gospel message was horrendous.” The only “crime” of some who were murdered was that they possessed a Bible. Regarding Pope Innocent III of the early 13th century, De Rosa states: “It has been reckoned that in the last and most savage persecution under [Roman] Emperor Diocletian [third century] about two thousand Christians perished, worldwide. In the first vicious incident of Pope Innocent’s Crusade [against “heretics” in France] ten times that number of people were slaughtered. . . . It comes as a shock to discover that, at a stroke, a pope killed far more Christians than Diocletian. . . . [Innocent] had no qualms about using Christ’s name to do everything Christ objected to.” De Rosa notes that “in the pope’s name, [the inquisitors] were responsible for the most savage and sustained onslaught on human decency in the history of the race.” Of Dominican inquisitor Torquemada in Spain, he says: “Appointed in 1483, he ruled tyrannically for fifteen years. His victims numbered over 114,000 of whom 10,220 were burned.” This writer concludes: “The record of the Inquisition would be embarrassing for any organization; for the Catholic church, it is devastating. . . . What history shows is that, for more than six centuries without a break, the papacy was the sworn enemy of elementary justice. Of eighty popes in a line from the thirteenth century on, not one of them disapproved of the theology and apparatus of Inquisition. On the contrary, one after another added his own cruel touches to the workings of this deadly machine. The mystery is: how could popes continue in this practical heresy for generation after generation? How could they deny at every point the Gospel of Jesus?” He answers: “Pontiffs preferred to contradict the Gospel than an ‘inerrant’ predecessor, for that would bring down the papacy itself.” Also lawless was the part that the clergy played in the violent institution of slavery. The nations of Christendom kidnapped many thousands of Africans, took them far from their own lands, and for centuries brutalized them physically and mentally as slaves. Relatively few of the clergy class actively opposed. Some of them even claimed that it was God’s will. Clearly failing to obey Jesus' Golden Rule Matthew 7:12 “All things, therefore, that YOU want men to do to YOU, YOU also must likewise do to them; this, in fact, is what the Law and the Prophets mean." identifies God's enemies. So, I ask you Hank, why would anyone in their right mind say what you yourself said? |