Non Protestant Protestants QUESTION from Bill May 9, 2000 Hello and Peace
I have been running into a few different Protestants that say they have been around since the beginning. Some in Baptist and some in Penticostial. One of the first things I usally ask is what name did they go by. I usally don't get any more then what they are called now. The Penticostials use Modelism as where they started from which I point out ended by 300's and did not appear until 1900's.
Then I ask why I have not seen them in history they claim the Catholics supressed the truth so then I point out that I read Historians like Josephus and others like him who were Jewish.
Then I ask to see some of the early writtings and they have never given me any. except one that gave me a few of the fathers when I asked about a specific subject. Then I pointed out how Catholic most of these were.
Can you think of any other question I could pose to them, or any problems I might have with these.
Thank You
God Bless You Bill
ANSWER by John-Paul Ignatius, O.L.S.M. on June 7, 2000 Dear Mr. Bill:
As far as I am concerned all non-Catholics are Protestant--even the Orthodox Church. Why? They are ALL protesting something the Catholic Church teaches.
Liberal Catholic, Cafeteria Catholics, and Ultra-Traditionalist Catholics are all Protestant. They to are protesting something about the Catholic Church.
But the historical term, Protestant, usually refers to that group of reformers (ya, right, rather rebellious revolutionaries) who split from the Catholic Church (i.e. Luther, Calvin, et al.)
The Anglican Church is usually not given the title Protestant (even though they grieviously protested Church teaching) because they were not part of the Luther/Calvin gang.
Churches that developed later in the 1800's for example, sometimes do not call themselves Protestant because they were not apart of the Reformation groups.
But I say a rose by any other name is still a rose. If one protests Catholic Church teaching, there are Protestant in my book :-)
As for the adsurd notion that Baptist or Pentecostal groups were around since the beginning, this is a popular fantasy because they know that any Church that claims legitimacy MUST establish a link to the first century.
So they do this by aligning themselves with various groups that Catholics called heretics. This, they say, is proof of Catholic suppression.
But if these people would get their head out from where the sun don't sun and obtain more than 25 IQ points, they would see that these groups that Catholics called heretics WOULD ALSO BE CALLED HERETICS by the Baptist and Pentecostals. These groups did all sorts of things that Bapatist and Pentecostals would consider heretical. But they ignore that in a frantic and desparate attempt to cling onto a non-existent connection with the first century.
The other typical fantasy-world they live in is the one where they say the Catholic Church supressed all literature and all evidence of the existence of Baptist in the first centuries.
Boy, they sure do give the Church a lot of credit. Neither Hitler, Stalin, Rome, Greece, Syria. or any other empire has EVER been able to wipe the history plate that clean in favor of themselves.
The fact is, for those actually interested in facts, is that if there were any Baptist-minded people in the first centuries there would be SOME evidence of it. There were be hidden writings in someone's attic somewhere. There would also be evidence of the Catholic Church trying to suppress these writings.
There is NO SUCH EVIDENCE. For these people to say the Church did this.....okay, where's the evidence? a, the evidence was all suppressed by the mean Catholic Church. .........okay, if the Catholic Church did such a great job of eradicating all evidence of baptist from the planet, then how could you know that baptist existed then? Who told you that Baptists existed in the first century? Mikey Mouse? The tooth fairy? who? and where did they get their information? How did they get information that does not exist because the Church so successfully suppressed it all?
You see, this argument is such a piece of non-thinking nonsense that it doesn't hold the weight of snail dodo.
We know because the Bible tells us, they will say. We know that people believed like Baptist and not like Catholics because of what we read in the Bible!!
Oh, I reply, you mean that book you call the New Testament that was compliled by Catholic bishops?
And, show me where any early church father or any other writer EVER interpreted the Bible the way the Baptists do? Just one!.
Well, we can't cause the mean Catholic Chruch destroyed all the writings.
Then we are back to the question of how you know this when all the writings are gone cause the Church got rid of them!!!
Well we know cause the Bible tells us...
urgh!!!!!!!!!!
At this point the only thing I want to do is get some matches and a stake burn the person on the stake NOT because he is a Protestant or a heretic, but because he is stupid and couldn't think himself out of a chair. There is an old saying, never argue with liberals, teenagers, mentally disturbed people, or women for it is just spitting in the wind.
Does this help any? :-)
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