Brother, what is idolatry as you understand it? It sounds like you mean that if one doesn't have a grasp of biblical theology they can't be held accountable for idolatry?

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Chris Mangum
Presbyterian Reformed Church of Charlotte
student, GPTS
.357 Mangum

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. James 1:27

If you are asking a serious question, and really desire to put in some time to learn, I will give you these materials to help you begin a study on the idolatry of the mass in particular:

Calvin's Institutes - Book 4, chapter 17, sections 13-37

Turretin's Institutes - Volume 3, topic 19, questions 29-30


And for a work dealing with post-Tridentine developments in the RCC regarding the supper:

G. C. Berkouwer - Studies in Dogmatics, The Sacraments, chapter 13 "The Lord's Supper: a sacrifice?"

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Adam J. Myer
Back to looking for a call...
Evergreen PCA
Salem, Oregon

I voted yes, but have to admit there is still a part of me that misses the Divine Liturgy and every Great Fast the urge to attend orthros is strong.

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J. M. - Baptist - Ontario, Canada - Feileadh Mor

"Nothing is more seductive for man than his freedom of conscience. But nothing is a greater cause of suffering."
The Brothers Karamazov

A wonderful quote from the grand Puritan, William Gurnall (my emphasis emboldened):

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Josh Hicks, Chloë's Daddy
Member of TRBC. My Blog
The Puritan Pub (Team Blog)
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I do agree with Joshua. Ignorance of the law and intention is no excuse. The second commandment does not forbid intentional idolatry only. God calls on all men everywhere to repent of their idolatries (Acts 17). This is the universal position of the Reformed theologians: the Mass is a condemnable idolatry. Furthermore, in a sense the question of the people in the pew is irrelevant to the discussion: the Mass is idolatry because of what the RCC says about it, and because of how they practice it. It is idolatry because of the priests who administer it. Or do you think, Bruce, that the priests also are exempt from intending idolatry and of ignorance?

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Rev. Lane Keister
Teaching Elder, PCA, North Dakota (working out of bounds in a CRC and an RCA church)
http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com
http://brahmsgreenglove.blogspot.com
http://accenttranslation.blogspot.com
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Brother you gotta know I am kidding. That smiley face of yours looks like it could never get mad

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Bruce
PCUSA
Ocean City NJ

I was fully aware of the fact that you were kidding. I was kidding, too. Hence the wink at the end of my post.

Man, am I feeling lumped up here. You are misunderstanding me. I am suggesting a definition of idolotry that is the intentional worship of anything/being/diety that is not YHWH/Christ. I do think that by nature the practice of idolotry does have to be intentional. Worship by definition requires thinking/epistimology. This makes me think of this

17 "If you will not," said Naaman, "please let me, your servant, be given as much earth as a pair of mules can carry, for your servant will never again make burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other god but the LORD. 18 But may the LORD forgive your servant for this one thing: When my master enters the temple of Rimmon to bow down and he is leaning on my arm and I bow there also—when I bow down in the temple of Rimmon, may the LORD forgive your servant for this."

This may have bearing on the mass issue for the true believer or any of us that would intentionally wander in even if we do conceed it to be an idolotrous event. Guys thanks for the comments. I need my head examined for wandering into the Roman corner. I hope you all do understand that I share your distress over Roman theology.

Guys, I have to run thanks again. The more I think of the King's passage, I am thinking(no pun inteded) that idolatry and worship are by definition thinking mens games. Just food or thought. I will consider all that has been said.

I've never claimed to be the sharpest tool in the shed and have had little experience with the RCC, but they do claim to eat Jesus literally and drink His literal blood and have killed many people over it. I do not think I could ever come up with language hard or strong enough to condemn this doctrine of devils.

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1689 Baptist Confession

Psa 55:16 As for me, I will call upon God; and the LORD shall save me.
Psa 55:17 Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice.
James Farley, Wilderness Road Baptist Assembly.
Husband of Melissa and father of Ann.
www.wildernessroadbaptist.org

Amen Brother.

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Steven Bittle
Postulant
Christ's Ambassadors' Anglican Church (CANA)
Reformed Episcopal Church
OKC, OK

"Doctrine is not an affair of the the tongue, but of the life" - John Calvin

Please note what the Romanists themselves claim to be doing in the mass.

1378 Worship of the Eucharist. In the liturgy of the Mass we express our faith in the real presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine by, among other ways, genuflecting or bowing deeply as a sign of adoration of the Lord. "The Catholic Church has always offered and still offers to the sacrament of the Eucharist the cult of adoration, not only during Mass, but also outside of it, reserving the consecrated hosts with the utmost care, exposing them to the solemn veneration of the faithful, and carrying them in procession."208



From the "Catechism of the Catholic Church". As you can see, they claim to be adoring and venerating the elements.

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Rev. Adam King
Minister without a call (WPCUS)
Stated Supply: Reformed Presbyterian Church
Sterling, KS

I do not think Daniel should be the barometer of this thread. As a member of the Orange order he has obviously drank the "orange juice'' and is still ticked off with vehement hatred towards England!! I am voting for England to make another "pale" around dublin once again!!!!

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N. Robert; Trinity Reformed Church RCA, Holland MI

Once in a while you can get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right."

From the Catholic Encyclopedia

eucharist.
The name given to the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar in its twofold aspect of sacrament and Sacrifice of Mass, and in which Jesus Christ is truly present under the bread and wine.


Sacrifice of the Mass

The simple fact that numerous heretics, such as Wyclif and Luther, repudiated the Mass as "idolatry", while retaining the Sacrament of the true Body and Blood of Christ, proves that the Sacrament of the Eucharist is something essentially different from the Sacrifice of the Mass. In truth, the Eucharist performs at once two functions: that of a sacrament and that of a sacrifice. Though the inseparableness of the two is most clearly seen in the fact that the consecrating sacrificial powers of the priest coincide, and consequently that the sacrament is produced only in and through the Mass, the real difference between them is shown in that the sacrament is intended privately for the sanctification of the soul, whereas the sacrifice serves primarily to glorify God by adoration, thanksgiving, prayer, and expiation [NOTE: Propitiation is not used]. The recipient of the one is God, who receives the sacrifice of His only-begotten Son; of the other, man, who receives the sacrament for his own good.


The Blessed Eucharist as a Sacrament


The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist

If, then, natural, literal interpretation were false, the Scriptural record alone would have to be considered as the cause of a pernicious error in faith and of the grievous crime of rendering Divine homage to bread (artolatria) — a supposition little in harmony with the character of the four Sacred Writers or with the inspiration of the Sacred Text. Moreover, we must not omit the important circumstance, that one of the four narrators has interpreted his own account literally. This is St. Paul (1 Corinthians 11:27 sq.), who, in the most vigorous language, brands the unworthy recipient as "guilty of body and of the blood of the Lord". There can be no question of a grievous offense against Christ Himself unless we suppose that the true Body and the true Blood of Christ are really present in the Eucharist...
In order to forestall at the very outset, the unworthy notion, that in the Eucharist we receive merely the Body and merely the Blood of Christ but not Christ in His entirety, the Council of Trent defined the Real Presence to be such as to include with Christ's Body and His Soul and Divinity as well. A strictly logical conclusion from the words of promise: "he that eateth me the same also shall live by me", this Totality of Presence was also the constant property of tradition, which characterized the partaking of separated parts of the Savior as a sarcophagy (flesh-eating) altogether derogatory to God. Although the separation of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Logos, is, absolutely speaking, within the almighty power of God, yet then actual inseparability is firmly established by the dogma of the indissolubility of the hypostatic union of Christ's Divinity and Humanity. In case the Apostles had celebrated the Lord's Supper during the triduum mortis (the time during which Christ's Body was in the tomb), when a real separation took place between the constitutive elements of Christ, there would have been really present in the Sacred Host only, the bloodless, inanimate Body of Christ as it lay in tomb, and in the Chalice only the Blood separated from His Body and absorbed by the earth as it was shed, both the Body and the Blood, however, hypostatically united to His Divinity, while His Soul, which sojourned in Limbo, would have remained entirely excluded from the Eucharistic presence...
There is, furthermore, a fourth kind of multilocation, which, however, has not been realized in the Eucharist, but would be, if Christ's Body were present in its natural mode of existence both in heaven and on earth. Such a miracle might be assumed to have occurred in the conversion of St. Paul before the gates of Damascus, when Christ in person said.to him: "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" So too the bilocation of saints, sometimes read of in the pages of hagiography, as, e.g., in the case of St. Alphonsus Liguori, cannot be arbitrarily cast aside as untrustworthy.

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For the Glory of our King,
Joe Johnson
Married up in 1988 and blessed with two wonderful sons
TMS graduate
Preacherboy at Cornerstone Community Church, Escanaba, MI
http://www.SoundLife.org

I don't think we are turning our backs on them, just that it does not help them by attending. If there was no Protestant church nearby, would you go to a local RCC?

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

I believe the official RCC position would be that they are "aids to faith." They give the worshiper something to focus his attention on when praying or worshiping.

I had a Catholic once tell me that it is similar to Buddhism or Hinduism in that they have thousand of Gods to pray to and the RCC has thousands of saints to pray to. This makes for an easy change over. If you know any Catholics you immediately see that they have a saint to pray to for anything that is happening in their lives, including selling ones house. Simply plant a statue of St. Joseph (Jesus' step dad) in your front yard and you will sell your house.

There is a lot wrong with the RCC but if you listen to their theology it is not that different from your average arminian. I think there are Catholics who are saved but I don't think anyone could ever get saved according to what the chruch teaches.

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Erick Bohndorf PCA, KS
http://qayaqtraveler.blogspot.com/
Jeremiah 23:16,17, "Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. 17They say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, ‘No disaster shall come upon you."

Idolatry....
This passage is about not keeping company with someone who is considered to be a brother. Roman Catholics are not my brothers in Christ. Most of them dont' understand the Mass. I tried explaining to someone not so long ago, that everytime the Priest does a mass he is reoffering and resacrificing Christ again in his mind. They actually believe that Jesus humbles himself every Mass and becomes the bread and wine for the people so they can eat his flesh and drink his blood and be assured of forgiveness of sin by partaking of the sacrifice.

My Bible says that Christ was sacrificed once for all.

The mass is idolatry and a false demonic way to deceive people away from the only way to be right from God.






Here is the Apostle Pauls definition of idolatry.

Now lets play nice and be careful how we address each other on this thread and every thread. Be patient and loving. Not everyone has the same knowledge and harshness will turn people away. Harshness says I am correct and you are an idiot if you don't agree with me.

That is not how Christ would have us teach and love people.

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R. Martin Snyder (Moderator)

1689er
Harmony Baptist Church (Member)
PuritanCovenanter MSN Blog
PuritanCovenanter's MySpace Page

"Our object should not be to have scripture on our side but to be on the side of scripture; and however dear any sentiment may have become by being long entertained, so soon as it is seen to be contrary to the Bible, we must be prepared to abandon it without hesitation."
William Symington

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