Wednesday is an Ember Day!

A reposting of earlier article:

What are "Ember Days?"
Four times during the liturgical year we have what are called "Ember Days."  These days were originally recognized in pagan Rome and were celebrations or honorings of the Roman agricultural gods for the different seasons as there were different plantings and harvesting for each of the seasons.  After Rome converted to Christianity in the fourth century, the Church, rather than drop these celebrations entirely, converted them to have Christian meaning.  Originally there were only three Ember Weeks, which were remembered with specific periods of fasting (Winter, Summer and Fall), the fourth (Spring) was later (but still quite early) added.  All four are mentioned as early as the late fifth century by Pope Gelasius.  Pope Callixtus I teaches of the (three) seasons of fasting in the early third century (100 years before Rome became Christian).

Does "Ember" Mean a Burning Coal or Volcanic Embers?
No, the etymology begins with the Latin used by Pope Leo in the mid fifth century jejunium vernum, aestivum, autumnale and hiemale and the English "ember" comes to us from the Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) heritage with the word "ymbren" which literally means a running cycle, or annual cycle - which is what the ember cycle represents.   

What is the Fast for Ember Days?
During an Ember Week, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday are the Ember Days.  It is actually a partial fast.  On these days we are to have just one full meal (can include meat) and two smaller, meatless meals - on Ember Fridays we also abstain from meat as well as keeping the fast.

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We Are Nun

The letter "nun" (the first letter in "Nazarene") is being painted on the homes of Christians in Iraq so that terrorists can easily identify them.  This symbol has been going all around the Internet as a sign of solidarity with the Christians of Iraq, most of whom are Catholics (Chaldean Catholics) and/or Orthodox.

Solidarity with Catholic Christians in Iraq:

Is There Fine Print in Romans 10?

"Before you sign a contract you had better read the fine print to see what is not covered," so says Pastor Seltz of The Lutheran Hour.  He goes on to say that "God's promises are not like that... there are no exceptions, there is no fine print.  Everyone who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ will not be put to shame.  Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.  You might be asking, 'Well, what does it mean to call on the Lord?'  Ah!  There's the catch, right?"  That's in the introduction to today's radio broadcast this first Sunday in Lent.  As he starts the actual lesson the above is repeated and then he asks, "Everyone?  Really? I mean, is there any fine print in Romans chapter 10?  You know about fine print, don't you?  Fine print spells out exclusions in contracts... Fine print says that even though it's being marketed is for everyone, it's not really for everyone.  So, is there any fine print in Romans chapter 10?  Does the word really mean everyone, or is there some fine print somewhere excluding people from this bold promise?  Where is the fine print in Romans 10?  Nowhere!  You won't find it there or anywhere in the Bible."  With all due respect, Pastor Seltz is wrong here.  Scripture, the Bible, DOES contain "exclusions" and even states that there will be some who cry out TO HIM "Lord, Lord!" who shall NOT enter the Kingdom of Heaven; in fact He will say to them, "depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!" (Matt. 7:21-23).  Part of "the fine print," if you will, limits entry into Heaven to those who "do the will of My Father in Heaven."  Simply calling upon Him is not enough, and the "fine print" is right there!

Attempting to prove his point, Pastor Seltz tells the story of the Pharisee and the Publican/Tax Collector who go into the Temple to pray (Luke 18:9-14).  The Pharisee boasts, "Thank you Lord for not making me like this tax collector..."  The tax collector humbly prays, "Have mercy on me, a sinner."  Jesus declares it is the tax collector who goes away justified before God.  Hmmmm, according to Pastor Seltz just "calling upon the Lord" is enough to justify, or save (keep in mind, he makes this equivocation in using this parable to support his argument for salvation).  So, per Seltz' earlier statement, the Pharisee should have been justified too!  Afterall, he too called upon the Lord, did he not?  Scripture tells us that the Pharisee did not leave justified.  So there we have yet another example of "fine print" which negates Pastor Seltz' premise.

Mt Claret Retreat Center, Camelback  Mountatin behind it.

Seltz goes on to tell another story, this one of a 21 year old man in Phoenix, Arizona who had decided to climb Camelback Mountain.  He made this decision without thought for any special clothing or gear - just a "strapping young man" who was full of courage.  However, as you may have guessed already, after getting about 50 feet up the side of a steep and shear rock face, he found himself unable to climb any higher and it was too risky to attempt to climb back down.  He was stuck, but he did happen to have a cell phone on him - so he called "9-1-1" and rescuers came out to save him.  He was saved because he gave up his pride and humbly called out for help.  Well, this climber happen to know the right number to call!  What if he had called the Mount Claret Retreat Center (a Catholic church and retreat center at the base of Camelback Mountain)?  The priests, nuns and/or office staff there would not have been able to "save" that young man - however, they would have known the right number to call to get him rescued!  The point we make here is just calling out for help may not be enough!  You have to call the right number!  When it comes to our salvation and the forgiveness of our sins, Jesus gave explicit instructions (more "fine print" for Pastor Seltz) which specifically points out who is able to forgive sins.  Jesus gave this authority to a special group of men, the Apostles, who would become our first bishops in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, and only THESE MEN had the authority to forgive sins, and sins THEY did not forgive are NOT forgiven (John 20:22-23).  In the same context, as Jesus sent our first bishops out, they too were to send others out in the same manner  (John 20:21) [typo fixed, thanks Nathan!].  So, going somewhere which does not have this apostolic authority means you're going somewhere which has no authority to forgive sins - you would therefore be still stuck on the side of Camelback Mountain, to use Pastor Seltz' analogy.  You would not be "saved."

One cannot read Romans 10 in a vacuum, apart from the rest of Scripture.  The "fine print" is there, for those who have eyes to see.

Overall, Pastor Seltz message is not too far off the mark, in fact, "the message" is right on - but when it comes to where/whom to call, he "missed it by that much."

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Contracept or Not

What to do?  Is it ok to use artificial methods of contraception?  That can be a difficult question to answer honestly and objectively looking at both sides of the issue.  Many love the convenience of artificial birth control and therefore neglect to objectively evaluate the pros and cons of artificial birth control for fear of what they might find.  Today, this author will try to remedy this situation by looking at the reasons why we shouldn’t be using artificial contraception.

At first I avoided the issue of an authoritative Church because I knew what the Catholic Church taught on the subject of contraceptive use.  And in this way I could claim ignorance of Her authority, I never took the time to find out why she taught as She did.  I was fooling myself that I wasn’t doing anything wrong.  For we Catholics know that to use contraception is against the teachings of the Church on moral grounds.  God joined the aspect of unity between two married people with the aspect of procreation in a single act of marital love.  What God has joined together let no man separate.

Then, one day I took the bull by the horns and looked at why the Catholic Church taught what She did on the issue.  I could deny it no longer and told my wife that I no longer believed in artificial contraceptive use. 

There are many Scriptural reasons why using contraception is wrong, the main verse demonstrating the misuse of the mans seed making the sex act infertile (spilling it on the ground as seen in Genesis 38:9-10) was the withdrawal method and in doing so the man was killed for it.  Now some will tell you that Onan was killed because 1)he did not produce offspring for his deceased brother and that’s why God killed him.  And others will tell you that it was because 2)he did not do as Jacob, his father, had told him to do.  But that is simply not the case.

First let us look at the passage in question:

Then Judah said to Onan (Judah’s son), Go into your brother's wife(Tamar) and do what it is right for a husband's brother to do; make her your wife and get offspring for your brother.  But Onan, seeing that the offspring would not be his, went in to his brother's wife, but let his seed go on to the earth, so that he might not get offspring for his brother.  And what he did was evil in the eyes of the Lord, so that he put him to death, like his brother. (Gen 38:8-10)

What we see here is a brothers duty to produce an offspring with the wife of a dead brother, this duty is called the levirate law.  Both in Gen 38:8-10, the Onan incident, and in Deuteronomy (hereafter Deut) 25:7-10 we find someone refusing to give offspring to their dead brothers wife.  And yet one is killed the other is not.  The difference in methods on how these men refused to give offspring will determine the reason for the difference in penalty.  The man in Deut. simply did not take the woman and therefore avoided giving offspring while Onan did take her and spilled his seed to avoid giving offspring.  The spilling of seed is the difference in the act and explains the difference in penalty.  Death instead of humiliation.

In fact any misuse of the mans seed is extremely condemned by God.  We find that any spilling of the seed in any unsuitable receptacle (ie inhospitable to the propagation of life) brings about the penalty of death.  The penalty for a man to lie with a man as with a woman is death and yet nowhere in Scripture do we see such a penalty for two women.  Levitical Law tells us that the wasting of seed with non-regenerative sexual acts warrants death, even the wasting of animal seed warrants death(Lev 18:22-23; 20:13).  That’s why there is no such death penalty anywhere in Scripture for the sexual pleasure of two women…because there is no wasted seed.

This idea of wasting seed to be sinful can be seen in mountains of Christian writings from the very beginnings of Christianity itself.  But today I’d like to ask a simple question.  Since the use of contraception was condemned as going against God’s law by Christians for over 2000 years, why would we now believe that God changed His mind on the subject? Since we know that God doesn’t change when reading Malachi 9:6 “For I am the Lord, and I change not”.  What was a truth of God revealed to man 2000 years ago will remain the same today. 

God Bless

Nathan

Purgatory, where's that in the Bible?

              It’s true the word Purgatory does not come up once in the Bible.  But that’s not a reason for rejecting the idea.  The word Trinity appears nowhere in the Bible but no one denies that it is taught throughout the Holy Writ.  Catholics simply contend the same for the doctrine of Purgatory.

              How do you explain the doctrine of Purgatory to a Christian who confronts you with it?  It seems that the Protestant Christian believes that one is saved once you accept Jesus into your heart as you personal Lord and Savior (the born-again experience).  This born-again experience can be explained as different processes already done in our Catholic life: How much better to accept Jesus then to take Him onto our tongues and into our very beings when swallowing the Eucharist? 

              Jesus’ salvific work was complete once He died on the cross.  He offered Himself up as the perfect sacrifice for our sins.  Jesus’ earthly work is complete, we need only ask with a perfectly repentant heart and our sins are forgiven.  But what happens to our souls when we sin?  Sinning ‘stains’ our soul, or it ‘muddies’ the soul, it becomes harder to see God through those stains, through the mud caused by our sins.  The water in the mud is pure, but the floating dirt dims God’s rays of sunshine.  Whenever you ask forgiveness with a contrite heart, you shall be forgiven, but the soul is still stained, still muddied from that sin.  There is restitution to be done as we see in Luke 12:59 “…I say to you, you will not be released until you have paid the last penny”.  To ‘clean’ yourself up you need to do penance (ie. Do good works for the Glory of God, read Scripture, say some prayers, etc…).  These deeds are to be done only to bring you closer to God, they are not technically needed for your salvation.  If you do not ‘cleans’ yourself perfectly in this life, God shall finish the job of your perfectedness by trial by fire as in 1 Cor 3:15 “But if someone’s work is burned up, that one will suffer loss (pain); the person will be saved, but only as through fire.”  You need to be perfectly ‘clean’ before you can enter into the presence of God (Rev 21:27).

              Most of us will never reach a level of perfect union with God in our lifetimes.  How then can you ensure your salvation?  You are saved!  Nothing can change that short of committing a mortal sin without repenting before the end of your earthly life.  Purgatory is just a way-station to clean up your stained soul before meeting the Father.  There is nowhere to be read that this process is instantaneous or that it has a duration.  There is no way to deny either lengths of time.  Both Protestants and Catholics agree that absolute holiness is necessary to enter heaven.  Disagreements arise when the question of duration comes up.

              How long does this purification, or sanctification take?  Some Protestants believe it is instantaneous, while Catholics believe that there is a possibility of duration involved in the sanctification process.  It seems that Catholics and Protestants believe the same thing but name it differently.  Because does anybody know how time works in the afterlife?  How is time viewed in light of eternity?  Nobody really knows, and whether it is instantaneous or not, Catholics name this process of cleansing as purgatory.

God Bless
Nathan

The Fatal Flaws in Sola Fide

The fatal flaw of sola fide can be found in the ONLY verse in the Bible which uses the words "faith" and "alone" (sola fide) together.  That verse is James 2:24:

You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. (NASB)
Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only. (KJV)
Do you see that by works a man is justified; and not by faith only?  (DRB)
You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.  (NIV)
See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.  (NABRE)

NO other verse uses these words together!  The ONLY place they are used together is in absolute denial of sola fide!  

Now according to the interpretation of Bradley Cochran (another blogger), even Luther's teaching on sola fide is NOT what most Protestants adhere to today. 

Luther’s notion of justifying righteousness is faith itself because faith satisfies the law.  Luther’s notion of justifying righteousness, then, was not Christ’s active and passive obedience, as in much of the Reformed versions of the doctrine of imputation.  
Furthermore, Luther’s fundamental understanding of justification is one of being “made righteous” by God’s granting of faith precisely because faith is transformational to the core of our hearts.  Luther’s understanding of “none are righteous,” is this: None are righteous apart from the heart transplant of faith, but with that transforming grace, people can be made righteous.  Luther’s understanding of “the works of the law” (pejoratively referred to today as works righteousness) is this: The works of the law are works done without transforming grace.  Good works, on the other hand, for Luther, are those done by the power of grace worked in the heart.

http://theophilogue.com/2009/01/17/what-martin-luther-really-said-luthers-sola-fide/

In other words, it is not faith alone, sola fide, which justifies - but the God given gift of faith which allows men to perform works which God sees as pleasing, or justifying.  Is the WORKS which justify, faith is the enabler to make the WORKS acceptable.  I'm not sure Cochran intended that, but that IS the logical conclusion to his argument - and that IS what Scripture tells us in James 2:24.

That being said, many Protestant sites make the claim that Luther said of sola fide, "it is the article by which the church stands; without which, it fails."  However, in doing a lot of searching for Luther actually making this statement, I've come up empty.  James Swan of BeggarsAllReformation blog also lists this among the "6 Quotes That Luther Didn't Actually Say." (Though Swan's "quote" does not mention sola fide explicitly, rather "justification" being the article by which the church stands or fails).  Did Luther himself say this?  For me, the jury is still out.  It is undeniable that many, perhaps even most Protestant apologists not only believe Luther did say it, they believe it - that their version of "church" falls if this article of sola fide falls.

In another article by Swan, from 2006, he defends Luther's use of the word "alone" in Romans 3:28.  The word "alone" does not appear in the original Greek OR Latin of this verse, it is an addition.  In Swan's article he dances around the fact, doesn't deny it - and then offers rationalization (some from Luther himself) for the reason Luther inserted the word into Scripture.  But oh, the irony!  Often when Protestant apologists are challenged with a scriptural view, they INSIST upon what was recorded in the original texts and reject ANY additions from later interpretations.  So why does Luther get a pass on this?  Why does someone like Swan support the rationalizations of Luther, and others, who argue for this addition to the text?  I submit he must do so.  If they do not defend Luther's defection from authentic scriptural text then they would be forced to admit Luther's Catholic critics were correct.  Luther SHOULD have accepted correction and not altered Scripture, but instead he entrenched himself in the error and used sarcasm as his defense.  

I'm sure Swan would be quick to point out that Luther himself pointed to other, respected, Catholics who used "alone" in reference to Romans 3:28.  The difference being, they were COMMENTING on the passage, not TRANSLATING it.  They were also contrasting "works of the law" not "works in general."  Works done in the state of grace, that is WITH faith, do indeed justify - as St. James so clearly points out and so explicitly states that faith is NOT ALONE in the matter of justification.  Even if we were to accept that "others made the same error" - why does this excuse the error?  It's still an error and still not appropriate to add interpretive words to a TRANSLATION of Scripture.  Now, if you want to call it Luther's PARAPHRASE of Scripture, fine - but let's not call it a TRANSLATION!  The fact is that MIS-translation of Romans 3:28 becomes quite foundational for the invented and anti-scriptural concept of sola fide. 
Whether or not Luther made the claim of the article of sola fide being that upon which his church, and the so-call Reformation, stands or falls - many DO put their "faith" in that article and that stance and the fact is - sola fide does not stand on its own.  Scripture does not support it and again, in the ONLY place where those two words are used together in Scripture (James 2:24) it is an explicit DENIAL of sola fide!  Come home to the Catholic Church.

AMDG,
Scott Windsor<<<

For more reading and related to this topic, let me recommend the following from another blogger and fellow convert:  Your Bible Probably Has a Mistranslation In It.
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Lucifer - A Cool Dude?

At first, I watched as a curiosity.  I was wondering how they would portray Lucifer, Satan, the Devil, on the very secular Fox Network.  Interestingly enough, this manifestation of the Fallen Angel of Light makes no bones about who he is - and who God is, even referring to God as "our Father."  His name is "Lucifer Morningstar," and when asked if that was a stage-name, he responds, "No, it was God given." 

The premise of the program, Lucifer is bored with Hell - and decides to take a "vacation" on Earth.  Presumably, at this time, an archangel, Amenadiel, is sent to convince Lucifer to go back to Hell - to return everything to balance.  It is as if God "needs" Lucifer to be evil and in Hell to provide balance and peace in Heaven.  Amenadiel despises Lucifer, as we all really should.  Therein lies the rub, this TV show presents Lucifer as someone we might like, or feel sorry for, that he was convicted to reign in Hell until the end of time.  Since when could Lucifer have the "power" to decide to "take a vacation" from Hell?  He has no such authority to do so.  Yes, clearly his presence is made known in the evil of men throughout the world and throughout all ages - but it is unfathomable that he would have compassion for any human being.  As he is walking the street with one whom he "helped" to stardom, she is brutally murdered and Lucifer takes on a mission, of sorts, to find out who was behind the murder and he seeks to bring the real killer to "justice."  He befriends a police detective whom he convinces to take a deeper look into the case - and proceeds to help her solve it.

The show begins with Lucifer Morningstar racing through the streets in a very nice, classic Corvette.  When he is pulled over by a police officer, he uses his power (like a Jedi mind-trick) to get the officer to admit to one of his deepest desires - and then to the fact that sometimes he just speeds through the streets with his lights and siren going, just because he can.  He claims he can't read minds, but has a "knack" to getting people to "confess" to him.
 
The real problem with this show is it glamorizes the most evil being known to creation.  It makes him look like he's not-so-bad.  It makes him look like someone you might actually like.  That being said, that truly is Satan's goal!  If we are swayed to accept him, or think he's not so bad or even that he didn't get a fair shake - we might be inadvertently letting him in to our lives - or worse, our souls.  In that respect, I really feel like this show is working FOR Satan, and sense a real danger in continued viewing of a version of Lucifer which is "not-so-bad."  Remember, Satan is the author of lies and deception - and if he can get you to turn your focus from God to him - he's winning - though ultimately he will lose, and so will everyone who follows him, for whatever reason.

I am not the only one raising red flags over this programming.  On this site (click here) there's a petition you can join to try and convince Fox to remove the program.  In my humble opinion, Fox is eating up the attention from Christians and the more they/we protest - the more "press" they get.  In that industry, "there's no such thing as bad press."   So, consider signing the petition, or consider just telling your friends and family how much you feel that this programming is really a tool for Satan and against God.