Christ is risen! Truly he is risen!
The Preterists use Scripture to prove Scripture.
All Protestants claim that they are following Scripture! Yet many of them cannot agree, as we see testified on this very message board.
There has to be some objective standard of truth to guide us in how to interpret Sacred Scripture.
Do you think that it was Christ's desire that there would be 20,000 different denominations and sects, all competing and claiming they were the One true Church?
For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you. (1 Corinthians 11.19)
Christ allows heresies, so that the approved may be made known, but it was not His prayer and desire that anyone would become a heretic. The Scripture says that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
Does that end up being the case? No, some definitely perish and will not seek repentance in this life and will only after it is too late.
Christ prayed that the Church would be one, even as He and the Father were one.
Now if you were to read the entire gospel of St. John very carefully, you would see that Christ explicitly showed that His will never diverged from the Father's.
Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. (John 5.19)
I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me. (John 5.30)
Did the Son's will ever diverge from the Father's? No. Did the Father's will ever diverge from the Son's? No.
Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: (John 17.20-22)
Christ clearly prayed that the Church would be one, even as He and the Father are One.
One Lord, one faith, one baptism (Ephesians 4.5)
Not 20,000 different faiths, all with differing wills.
One faith. This one faith existed in apostolic times, because we read of the Church growing in the book of Acts.
If you want to be part of the one faith of Christ, you can't just go and start your own church and do things however you feel like it,
You MUST maintain the apostolic traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation, starting from the very beginning.
It's obvious that many Protestants were raised in an environment where they were taught that the Roman Catholics were always pushing the idea of tradition. Since the Roman Catholics clearly perverted many traditions, the Protestants in their ignorance simply forsook tradition altogether.
I believe there is an expression used to describe this. It's called: "throwing out the baby with the bath water".
Other Protestants simply invented their own peculiar traditions foreign to the historical traditions of the apostolic teaching.
When I exhort you all to follow Holy Tradition, I am in no way telling any of you to become Roman Catholics, which have perverted the traditions since leaving Christ's Church around a thousand years ago. That's when Roman Catholicism began. When they were still in the Church, they were Orthodox Catholics, meaning right confessing Catholics. Roman Catholicism only began to exalt itself above the Church in the times of Pope Nicholas against St. Photios the Great in the 9th century. Prior to that the Popes of Rome were Orthodox, and did not differ in faith from the Eastern Orthodox 'Popes' or Patriarchs as they are often called.
Neither am I exhorting anyone to follow the peculiar man-made traditions that the Protestants have invented just to compete with the foreign traditions of the Papists.
Protestants love to claim that they follow the Scriptures, and the Scripture alone. Many Protestants say, if you want to prove it to me that I have to follow something, show me in the Scriptures.
Where do we find so-called "altar calls" in the Scriptures?
"let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear" (Hebrews 12.28)
We are told to worship God with REVERENCE and godly FEAR.
Protestant preachers these days are nothing more than entertainers and fast talkers, cracking jokes, and laughing and giggling, and rapping, etc. while their congregations dance in the aisles, holding their cup of espresso in one hand, while raising their other hand in the air, whooping it up, etc. while they listen to rock and pop music on electric guitars.
Where is any of this in the Bible?
Show me where any of the disciples of Christ who preached sermons in the book of Acts were cracking jokes and putting on a performance for their audience. They spoke of repentance. They spoke the truth, which cut people to the heart, and not this cotton-candy crap that pseudo-Christians of today preach.
Cyprian |
