Christianity

The Catholic/Protestant conflict is a hard topic to reply to because there is so much history surrounding it. To best understand it though, it is best to understand some of the history of the early Church. After the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit fell on Jerusalem, in the upper room. (For more context/entire story read John 12 " Acts 2) After that happened, the Disciples of Jesus began teaching/telling the people all over the region of the gospel (good news) of Jesus. They told of how he came to the earth to fulfil the laws God had revealed to Moses and how he was assigned to come to the earth to be the perfect sinless sacrifice that would restore and redeem a guilty sin-filled world of people back to the holy, righteous, and perfect God. * (View side note at bottom) As Christianity spread and grew the Jews and Romans (they occupied Israel at the time) decided that it must be stopped. The Jews were determined that it must be stopped because it impacted the money flow to the Synagogue, and the Romans were determined that the message of Jesus must be stopped because it painted Jesus as God, and in the Roman world the emperor was God. So, they teamed up. In reality though it was a demonic attack against God's plan for the redemption of humanity. I"m sure they hired numerous people to persecute, jail, and kill the early Christians, but in the Bible, we hear of one named Saul (he was a Jew and a Roman citizen). Saul was notorious for how he went about persecuting Christians, but one day, on the road to a city called Damascus, God caused Saul to see a blinding bright light, which caused Saul to go blind. In the moments that followed, (I am paraphrasing) God Said "Saul, Saul why are you persecuting me?" Saul asked "who are you lord?" God responded, "I am Jesus whom you persecute." Saul then said, "Lord what do you want me to do?" God then told Saul to go to the city and he would meet someone. God then gave Ananias (one of the Christians in Damascus) a dream to go and meet Saul, pray for his sight to be restored, baptize him in the Holy Spirit. Saul then began telling people about Jesus. Later, his name changed to Paul. (the story is found at Acts 9 and continues in Acts Chapter 13) Paul is accredited with writing 13 books in the New Testament. In the Roman empire Christianity was recognized as a different "religion" than Judaism during the 1st century. In 300 A.D. the Parthians adopted Christianity as their state religion, but Christians weren"t granted the right to freely exercise their faith and worship in the Roman empire until Emperor Constantine in 313 A.D. made it the state religion. The Romans had an original state church, and then it split into a couple of different denominations, one of them being the Catholic church. The Catholic church was the primary form of church in the west up until Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Catholic Church. (Here is a list of his 95 theses http://www.luther.de...) One reason Martin Luther was appalled at the Church of his day was because they were selling indulgences (essentially pieces of paper the church sold were something along the line of since the pope forgives you, God now forgives you too because you purchased this piece of paper.) Martin Luther knew that in the Bible the only way for God to forgive you was not by doing good deeds or buying pieces of paper, but by grace through faith in the finished work of Jesus and that it was the gift of God (Ephesians 2:8-10). Following Martin"s act of rebellion against the established state church, the church began to split off into different denominations. Everyone thought that their ideas were right, and the others were wrong, hence, conflict ensued. (I might be off some on this) The thing is, is that Jesus never called his followers to be a part of a denomination, or a particular sect of theology. He called them, and still calls people, to be in personal friendship/relationship. People have turned Christianity into a religion. God never intended it to be one. God intended "Christianity" to be a one on one relationship between the creator and the created. Sometimes I feel as though Christians forget that. God wants to have friends just as much as we do. Don"t get me wrong though, in the Bible it does say that believers are part of the family of God and goes on to say something along the lines of as Christians we should commune among each other, but in the spectrum of eternity it is not about how good you think you"ve been, how many times you"ve gone to church, or how many "good deeds" you have done. That is not what it is all about. It is about what have you believed about Jesus and what he did for you. I don"t mean for this to sound churchy, it just sometimes comes across that way. God does love you, and he wants and is the friend that sticks closer than a brother (or any family member) (Proverbs 18:24) God cares for you. God cares about what is going on, your heart breaks, fears, depressions, your successes, your dreams, your desires, your everything. (Psalms 56 particularly verse 8) You don"t have to answer this question if you don"t want to. What do you believe about Jesus? I am not trying to convert you or anything, because that is a personal decision between you and God, but someone will ask you someday, so why not today. (Side note: One way to picture this is to think of a large deep chasm. Before Adam and Eve originally sinned, the chasm was non-existent, and man could commune with God. But after they sinned a chasm formed between God and man because a perfect God cannot have imperfection near him. So, on one side of the chasm is the world and all the people in it and God on the other side. No matter what the people do they cannot make a bridge to the other side. God, knowing what was going on, did not want to be separated from the people he created for eternity, so he sent Jesus to be the sacrifice that would create a bridge between the people and God, so they could commune once again. Therefore, it is crucial to believe Jesus was who he says he was so that there is a bridge. Or, one other way to picture it is that God is the perfect judge. Since, all of man kind has sinned against God by breaking God"s law (sinned " Romans 3:23 and 6:23), every human is guilty, and seeing as God is the perfect judge in this scenario, he cannot and will not let the guilty go unpunished, whether that be jail time, bail, etc. However, because God loves the people he created, and does not want to punish them even though they deserve it, he sent Jesus to take the punishment for people and be the intermediary between them and God. As a believer and follower of Christ, when you are being judged (in the scenario) God doesn't see a guilty person who has broken the law. He sees Jesus, the intermediary who paid the fine and did the time for you to be free and not guilty. Again though, it is crucial to believe Jesus was who he says he was, or God would still see you as a guilty person deserving of punishment. Either Jesus was who he says he was, of he was the greatest con man/liar to ever walk the earth. Believing in Jesus does not give a person a license to sin as much as a person wants to. The Bible says to take up your earthly desires daily and crucify them so that you live like Jesus daily (Luke 9:23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me). Anyway, back to the main topic) Have a great rest of your day, CJ193