It's irrelevant that God never said the gates of Hell wouldn't prevail against the United States. You seem to have lost track of your argument. You said "Nothing founded a millenium and a half after Christ's ministry on earth can claim to be the original preserved faith of the apostles. That's a simple chronological fact." You're making two errors here: 1) first, your're arguing that if the church lost its way for a very long time, it means it could never return to the original faith. But time doesn't matter. Just as with the example with the Constitution, even if the the church strayed from its original state for hundreds or even thousands of years, it is still possible for it to return to the original. There isn't some kind of chronological time barrier that makes this impossible; 2) your second error is your strangely obstinate and logically flawed viewpoint that a return to the original faith after a long period time is somehow a "founding" of a new, distinct church. Just as a return to the original intent of the Constitution after a thousand years is not a founding of a "new" Constitution, the same goes for the church returning to its original faith.Realitybites said:Quote:
suppose that for 1600 years leftism took over the U.S. and the Constitution was abused and interpreted far, far away from the original intent of the original drafters.
God never said that the gates of hell would not prevail against the United States. You and I both know what the test of a prophet of God is and what the implication is of an ecclesiastical history that says the church became corrupted in 400 AD and remained in that state for 1200 years until Gutenberg and the Reformers came along to restore it.
Not that I blame Luther's motivations; 550 years after its founding Roman Catholicsm had reached a deplorable state. But the correct response to looking at your denomination and realizing that it has gone off the rails isn't let me grab a bible and forge yet another one in my own image. The correct response is we have to go back.
The Trail of Blood is a work of fiction. It basically collects a list of heretics, including the Albigensians, Cathars, Paulicians, Arnoldists, Henricians, and others. These groups would not be eligible to join a Baptist church of the 20th century. For example the Cathars and Albigensians taught that Christ was an angel with a phantom body, whose death and resurrection were only allegorical and the Incarnation impossible. It relies on the historical ignorance of the reader for acceptance.
It is also a historical fact that the institution known as the Roman Catholic church did not exist in that form prior to its founding in 1054 A.D and the excommunications of the Great Schism when the Church of Rome began its departure from Christianity.
You are also making the flawed argument that the church's departure from its original faith would necessarily make Jesus a false prophet for claiming his church would never be defeated by Satan. But a corrupted church that eventually rights itself is NOT indicative of "the gates of Hell" prevailing against it. If Satan had prevailed against it, it would have never righted itself. It would have been destroyed completely, and true Christianity would have disappeared forever.
I must emphasize that up to this point, all you've done to support your claim that Protestantism can NOT be the original faith is argue that the Reformation didn't take place until the 16th century. You've only argued about time. But has time corrupted the Protestant view? The proof is in the pudding. If your claim is true, then you should be able to provide clear, concrete examples of what Protestantism believes or teaches that is NOT in accord with the original faith. But despite my repeated requests, you've conspicuously avoided doing so. Why? Give us an example so we can hash out whether there is any validity to your claim. I've already provided you with at least one example of how Orthodoxy is NOT the original faith - the veneration of icons. Can you provide an example regarding Protestantism?
