Yet medically verified healing miracles there are as impressive as those performed by any Pentecostal faith healers. Watch the posted movie. It will change your view of Roman Catholicism at its best.
Ezekiel 33 (01-16-2020)
You really do need to study Catholicism before condemning it--something few Pentecostals are honest enough to do! Catholics teach that Mary's role is that of intercessor. The Bible encourages us to be intercessors; so why can't Mary, when asked, intercede with God in our behalf just as we do? As is typical of Pentecostals in my experience, you lack the integrity to even consider the evidence for these Marian miracles and their life-changing impact on devotion to Christ.
As noted, Jennifer Jones won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in "The Song of Bernadette"-- a feat no evangelical Christian movie has come close to achieving. The evangelical audience in my church was mesmerized by the movie, but I doubt many Pentecostals here are intellectually curious enough to watch it to learn the amazing story of how the healing pilgrimages to Lourdes began.
How do you know anything about that ? Do you know how many thousand posts I've spent discussing Catholicism with actual Catholics including devoted Marians ? I debated the new Catechism of the Catholic church with them a few years after it was first published in English. Mary as the Queen of Heaven and the whole thing.
Oh, I've read the first hand accounts of the apparitions.As noted, Jennifer Jones won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in "The Song of Bernadette"-- a feat no evangelical Christian movie has come close to achieving. The evangelical audience in my church was mesmerized by the movie, but I doubt many Pentecostals here are intellectually curious enough to watch it to learn the amazing story of how the healing pilgrimages to Lourdes began.
OK, I'll call you bluff: I challenge you to lay out the biblical case used by Catholics to justify their doctrine of praying to the saints, including Mary.
But I'm speaking about site members in general. I posted the actual movie precisely because I knew that posters would refuse to watch movies not approved by the Pentecostal Ghetto.
By contrast, the evangelicals who came to my movie nights to watch "The Song of Bernadette" absolutely adored that movie!
I'm fully aware that the RCC doctrines concerning Mary stop short of defining her outright as a god or an idol with intrinsic power. In my opinion they do so by the fraction of an inch and how various Catholics approach the Virgin may involve outright idolization even when they are able to argue their way out of it. I have gotten a lot of Jesus believing Catholics baptized in the Holy Spirit on various continents so I also know how different they can be from the Mary devotees. Catholicism is in practical reality a very complex religion, which has a lot to do with the discrepancies between the Bible that they do believe in and their traditions that involve a lot of baggage from the first centuries that never gets rooted out because it's stuck there for all time. The need for a virgin queen of heaven that Marians can emphasize above all other things, have in their hearts and commune with her and so on is part of that tradition. It's all in the latest catechism, it reads like an awful hybrid of new and old, good and bad.
https://static.wixstatic.com/media/6..._2481_s_2.webp
Colonel,
When I was a grad student at Harvard, I used to regularly attend a Catholic/ Episcopal charismatic prayer service in which with the gifts of the Spirit were operational. In their prophesying and interpretation of tongues, the Lord spoke in a modern vernacular chatty style. So we all got the shock of our lives when I invited Sharon, an attractive young Pentecostal woman to a meeting. There was a message in tongues to which she rose and offered the interpretation.
Her interpretation stuck the right spiritual notes, but it was expressed in flawless King James English: e. g. "O my beloved, if thou wilt hearken to my voice...Yea, I exhort thee...,forsooth ye must.., etc. I felt guilty that I was both embarrassed and amused. I mean, those Catholics and Episcopalians were used to hearing the Lord say things like, "Hey, my people, you need to lighten up and chill out!"
btw, this wonderful charismatic group dissolved when the local Catholic bishop got wind that a presiding episcopal priest was serving Communion to Catholics, Episcopalians, and other Protestants like Sharon and me.
Now, Colonel, are you going to respond to my challenge or not? I repeat: do you know how Catholics justify praying to saints and Mary from Scripture?
It doesn't matter how anyone justifies people praying to Mary or the saints - what matters is what God says
A true story.
Around 1997 I met a refugee Muslim from Afghanistan who fled in fear of his life of the Taliban and had to leave his family behind.
Obviously he was in great distress and not sure what to do and one night he had a dream
In this dream he saw a marvellous garden which he entered and he noticed 2 people were sitting on a white bench.
One was a man and the other was a young beautiful woman.
He immediately was captivated by the woman. He did not have much understanding of the christian faith but the minimal knowledge he had revolved around Catholicism and he instinctively knew this was Mary.
He was awed by her and ignored the man and he began talking to her. Her only response was - Why are you talking to me? - Talk to my son and
pointed to the man sitting next to her.
He then turned and knew it was Jesus and fell at his feet. Jesus laid his hand on his head and told him not to fear but would help him come to Australia.
Shorten the story - we connected and I had the privilege of leading him to Christ.
You will find those who have true supernatural experiences from God like this ignorant Muslim are never instructed to talk to Mary or the saints
but go DIRECTLY to Jesus the only mediator.
God spoke to an ignorant Muslim and gave him scriptural truth - even Mary wasn't interested in his communication..interesting how Mary dismissed him
The Holy Spirit doesn't need Mary or the saints - I find it ironic that God was teaching a ignorant Muslim basic foundational truth
Out of the mouth of babes ....
If Mary could speak to the billion Catholics on earth - She would SHOUT ...Stop praying to me
BTW there is also the testimony of multitudes of former Catholics who no longer pray to Mary who boldly proclaim they were ignorant and deceived and disagree with you in regard to pray offered to anyone apart from God