Date:   10/16/2007 12:41:04 PM ( 18 y ago)
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URL:   https://www.curezone.org/forums/fm.asp?i=1022226

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With all respect to you my friend, I think you are the one who has to read a little history from some unbiased source.    Yes, the word "protestant" obviously means to protest, but the word was actually not coined by those who were doing the protesting.   The reason for the protest was because one monk came to the realization that the church for whom he had given his life was not really serving the living God, but out to extract as much money and abuse parishioners all they could for their own selfish and corrupt ambitions.   A closer look into the Scriptures allowed this man (Martin Luther) to see clearly that the "just" (the saved, the true followers of Christ as Messaih and not just a teacher) are to live by faith and by faith only.   That meant that all the moneys that people were paying out to priests in order for them to obtain favors from heaven for them, was totally unnecessary and actually quite wicked.  From then on, the idea is that believers derive their teaching straight from the good book and not as some passed down tradition.   Protestants, or a better term, Evangelicals, (another nice Greek word) do not have nor want any succession of Popes or apostles, because they are free to follow their conscience before God, and if they follow someone's teaching regarding Scripture, they are free to exchange ideas without some central authority telling them what's right or not.  That's what we do on this forum  :-)

Of course this does mean that there are going to be many different interpretations, and indeed there are, but the important thing is that as we are all accountable to God alone in the end, better to be in one's own error than to be in error because one followed other men's ideas rather than study on your own.  Personally, I think it is better to make a mistake in interpreting someting out of the Word by ourselves in trying to please God, than to blindly follow the mistakes of other men without checking it out with Scripture.  That is why on this forum we discuss different ideas back and  forth, but we are all directly accountable to God for what we are doing, not because some guy said so 100 years ago.

On the subject of the fire:  I don't think that the reason pastors in this country have not told us is because they don't want us to know.  What silly purpose would that serve?   Many of us are used to seeing believers receive miracles on a frequent basis.  These are usually miracles of complete healings from incurable diseases, or answers to prayer on impossible situations.  These miracles follow a Biblical pattern, as Jesus Christ said that the things He did on earth and even greater things we would do as well.  There are miracles reported by certain believers, like hands bleeding from a picture or statue of a saint, tears, images up in the sky somewhere, that most evangelicals do not take to be from God.  Why? Because they do not follow the Biblical pattern for miracles that Jesus established and do not really bring glory to God.   Please understand that by this I'm not saying that the fire which lights the candles at your services are not from God!   Far be it from me to judge something that I don't know about as not being the Holy Spirit, that's only God's jurisdiction to judge.  But what I am saying is that this is the reason in this contry we do not immediately jump to say something is a miracle from God, because we believe in miracles but we like to be sure they follow a Biblical pattern, that is all.

We have a great freedom of religion in this country (thank God, and it's a struggle on the political scene to keep it that way).   I personally do not like a whole lot of what is hapening in many churches, especially what are called the mega-churches, but pastors don't keep secrets on God's moves from us.  Perhaps there are many wonderful things happening all around the world that God is doing for His children that we simply don't know about. 

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