Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform In The 21st-Century Church Downloads Torrent 1 [UPDATED]
I so agree with you, Stella! The last few years took me into a deeper place with God by learning to listen and TRUST the Spirit of God within me! He began to show me things that my "Christian box" would deem blasphemous. But the unconditional LOVE of God began to reveal to me the exact things that Richard Rohr is expressing. God only becomes bigger when this realization arises. And FEAR loses its hold. I started watching a lot of Near Death Experience videos and realized Christians and atheists were experiencing the same story, both surrounded by LOVE, not judgment. None of them wanted to return here. And none of the atheists who returned ran to Christianity. They came back to earth with a new understanding of God and their lives were changed by the encounter with the God of LOVE. But they did not feel a need to find Jesus in Christianity.I find that my story is a bit unique as I departed from my 50 years of evangelical belief structures. I was a teacher of the "Word" for many years. But experiencing the God Source of unconditional love removed all fear from my life. The verse Perfect love casts out all fear, for fear has to do with punishment... from I John rang so true to my soul! I didn't fear being led astray but began believing that "NOTHING can separate me from God"! (Romans) I love Psalm 139, "where can I go from your Spirit?"! Hallelujah, nowhere! For God is in all and runs through the fabric of all! But many Christians would say I have been deceived and led astray. To me, that is contradictory to your claims and Scriptures. God has me! It was my deep time with Him that led me this way! Was it my great search for God and willingness to pray that led me down the wrong path? Geez! That's wouldn't be a very nice God, now would it? What Father would lead His child astray as she sat at His feet and asked for guidance? Actually the Gospels even say, that if we know how to give good gifts to our children, how much MORE our Heavenly Father will give to us, specifically of the Spirit! Jesus described the LIving Water as bubbling from within. NOT as a BOOK that STILL, after 2000 years, has not reached every nation. Generations of people have been dying and going to hell because they never got the book?! What a loving God!! NO, the God I know is FAR GREATER than the historic 66 books that were deemed "The Bible" all those years ago. Think of all the others that were kicked out because they didn't fit the box of the assembly! But evangelicals have been taught to not use any thinking, and rather TRUST Sovereignty! "God wrote that book. It is His word. And HE put it together!" No! Man did that. And we can learn from their views as they, like all of humanity, have tried to understand God. I don't throw out the Bible, but I view it for what it really is. And I have realized that the doctrines that the church teach are not the things that Jesus taught. Christians INTERPRET Jesus's words based on their stated doctrines. Religion is man-made. All of them. God is still God. And until we reach the end of this life, NO ONE will have all the answers. Sadly, Christianity, though no longer violent through the killing of others physically, can be very violent verbally and emotionally to anyone who opposes their views. They do it to one another, which is one of the things that began my "deconstruction" process. The American Gospel videos are a clear example. Blessings and love to all as you as you seek and desire to know the "God-Source"! No one on this page would likely even be here if your heart wasn't looking for God! May the Living Spirit reveal to you one step at a time exactly what you need to see right where you are! You are fully loved, fully accepted, and fully embraced right where you are!!
Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Church downloads torrent 1
We need more people like Richard Rohr who seek to follow Jesus, rather than use the Bible as a weapon to separate people from the Kingdom.At best the conservative evangelic church, particularly the American variety is heretical, at worst it's totally idolatrous. Martin Luther's reformation was in response to a Roman Catholic church that had become so powerful, so corrupt, and so focues on earthly power that it had lost it's way. You don't have to look hard to see that is what is wrong with the conservative evangelical church when it is corrupted by QAnon, votes so much for an antichrist, and is blind to all of this.I pray that the Kingdom of Heaven can continue to break into our reality, and shine it's light in the darkness.We are in the stages of an new reformation if you have eyes to see it.
While occupied with his manifold pressing duties, all of them performed with indefatigable zeal and consuming energy, alarmed at the excesses attending the upheaval of social and ecclesiastical life, his reform movement generally viewed from its more destructive side, he did not neglect the constructive elements designed to give cohesion and permanency to his task. These again showed his intuitional apprehension of the racial susceptibilities of the people and his opportune political sagacity in enlisting the forces of the princes. His appeal for schools and education was to counteract the intellectual chaos created by the suppression and desertion of the monastic and church schools; his invitation to the congregation to sing in the vernacular German in the liturgical services in spite of the record of more than 1400 vernacular hymns before the Reformation proved a masterstroke and gave him a most potent adjunct to his preaching; the Latin Mass, which he retained, more to chagrin Carlstadt than for any other accountable reason, he now abandoned, with many excisions and modifications for the German. Still more important and far-reaching was the plan which Melancthon, under his supervision, drew up to supply a workable regulative machinery for the new Church. To introduce this effectively "the evangelical princes with their territorial powers stepped in" (Köstlin-Kawerau, op. cit., II, 24). The Elector of Saxony especially showed a disposition to act in a summary, drastic manner, which met with Luther's full approval. "Not only were priests, who would not conform, to lose their benefices, but recalcitrant laymen, who after instruction were still obstinate, had a time allowed within which they were to sell their property, and then leave the country" (Beard, op. cit., 177). The civil power was invoked to decide controversies among preachers, and to put down theological discussion with the secular arm. The publication of a popular catechism in simple idiomatic colloquial German, had an influence, in spite of the many Catholic catechetical works already in existence, that can hardly be over-estimated.