High Demand Religions?

[ohio jones]

ICYMI As I have explained previously, the problem is created with posts that have 3 or more quotes within quotes within quotes. The bold print assists me in following who stated what so that misquotes are avoided. As an experiment try reading through one of those multiple quotes posts on the smallest smart phone screen. You will quickly see enlargement of the print makes it highly difficult to follow the layered quotes.

If all of the layered quotes must be retained for clarity, rather than deleting one or two of the earlier ones, I would suggest using bold while composing and previewing the reply, but removing the bold before actually submitting the post.

Of course we have been through this before. ALL CAPS is considered shouting. Forum members bold the print to highlight. Those highlights are helpful to follow the conversation. Perhaps it is time for others to be less sensitive and more accommodating. That is what discipleship in the Christian faith embraces. Or are you just persecuting the Catholic?

The persecution (if that's what you call a warning) is for transgressing the forum guidelines, not for being Catholic.

Do not argue with Mods.

[MaxPC]

The preview feature process is how I do those types of replies. Sometimes though it seems the bolded still come through.

I think it is still preferable to give the benefit of the doubt as is promoted by Christian discipleship which, interestingly can be relevant to the thread’s topic. Is it considered a high demand religion to expect grace and mercy?

[Valerie]

The facts in the Early Church Fathers’ writings also disagree with your opinion. If you have an open and scholarly mind, I recommend you do a thorough reading of the writings of the Early Church Fathers. Both Catholic and Orthodox view these early apostles from the first 400 years as authoritative.

If you are not interested in the scholarship of the Early Church Fathers, so be it. This topic has been hashed to death and the ‘us vs them’ mentality is so firmly entrenched that discussion of the documented evidence is no longer productive. Therefore we shall agree to disagree. Done and dusted.

(I am using bold as well in order to assist anyone who is visually impaired.)

The early church fathers do not, actually, support infant baptism; this was a false doctrine that appears a bit later, around 300, but the real reason for its necessity was Augustine's bizarre doctrines that infants are born with "original sin" because he believed marital relations were inherently sinful, and would imbue sin on a child. I have no idea where he came up with such nonsense ideas.

We will continue to discuss and debate it as long as people decide to come onto an Anabaptist forum and promote false doctrines, such as baptising infants, serving communion to infants, baptising donkeys, serving communion to horses, or the idea that a newborn baby is sinful and will go to hell.

You are not in the position to call early church writers false teachers or call out false doctrine in regards to this topic. You are 2000 years out from Apostles starting Churches. You are defending Anabaptists for their beliefs which is understandable but they are simply wrong about their conclusions. And I loaned my early church writers book out but you are wrong that this started in 300.
EVERY country the Apostles started the Church, east or west, the "norm" was infant baptism. It was stated as fact not "guessing" that the Apostles themselves taught it.
Anyone questioning it, like I remember Tertullian did, and I believe that was before 300 that he questioned it, well he left the Church anyways to become a Montanist, a sect that eventually died out. But the "common" practice was for Believers to baptize their infants. As OJ pointed out about Anabaptists differing each other in application, same would be true of the original Church- early church writers BEFORE 300 had opinions on how old the infant should be- how many days old.

Differing opinions on baptism does not fall in the category of heresy.

I believe in total immersion. I could say to teach pouring or sprinkling is heresy. But I can read the early church allowed for poring if there was not water available for total immersion.

Obviously, the Anabaptists rising up to attempt at starting the Church over was not prophesied nor seemingly guided by the Holy Spirit- they were anything but "one" except in attacks against Catholics. I read the detailed history years ago.

Martyrdom does not equate to being correct (i.e. Muslims, other Protestants, Mormons)
But speaking of martyrdom, Anabaptists are a tiny fraction of numbers of Martyrs compared to EO & RC-

[Valerie]

This text in Eph 4 above reflects the fruit of the Spirit described in Gal 5 - 'The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control.'

Is this how we are treating each other or has the flesh been given control ? You decide.

The Bible teaches us to also contend earnestly for sound doctrine, and to mark false teachers and false doctrines.

And yes, Sudsy, teaching things like that it's OK for Christian churches to bless nuclear bombs and bless soldiers' guns and artillery before going out to war is, indeed, false doctrine. There won't be any of that sort of thing in Jesus' kingdom. We should be focused on praying for the lost souls doing these things and seeking to win them over to Christ and to following Jesus' teachings and to be led out of their false churches.

You keep using what Russia is doing "now" as a way to dismiss early doctrine and Apostolic teachings. Yet you yourself had provided a link where other Eastern Orthodox disagree with Putin & patriarch Kirill so that has nothing to do with early Church teachings and none of us on this forum were there for the ORAL teachings Apostle Paul said to stand fast in, but we do have the evidence by those who were not liars, saying what they taught was passed down. You can argue until you are on the other side with brothers and sisters from early on through the end, baptized as infants. ANYONE can fall away after baptism. Just ask the Amish

[Valerie]

This has been sad for me to read the way professing brothers and sisters in the Lord treat each other over their differences and practises. If we are going to stand up for the scriptures being our guide to faith and practise, these same scriptures tell us the following - Ephesians 4:1-6-

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

This text in Eph 4 above reflects the fruit of the Spirit described in Gal 5 - 'The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control.'

Is this how we are treating each other or has the flesh been given control ? You decide.

Thank you Sudsy, people are contending for the faith once delivered to the Saints, intentions are good, and yes unnecessary words can be offensive-
I was called out for defending infant baptism on a Mennonite forum. When I came here I took didn't believe in it but I do now & certainly just because this is a Mennonite forum primarily does not give them the right to call Christians "heretics" for believing in what Apostles taught as if they ,"know" . That's just wrong

Early Anabaptists were anything but gentle when they arrived at Catholic Churches to attack their doctrine. Not sure if you read their earliest history but it's not any more wrong for me to be "here" defending early church teachings than it was for them to arrive at RC Churches to contend against them- that would be a double standard.

[Josh]

Y'know,

If infant baptism were so important, then the Bible would say things like:

And Peter said to them, "Be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ, you will be forgiven of your sins you committed when you were a week old, and then repent 10 years later."

Therefore go and make disciples of all babies, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 10 years later teach them to obey everything I have commanded you.

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ as babies somehow got clothed with Christ, despite being a week old.

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death when we were a week old, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life when we were babies, toddlers, and children.

And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, “you heard from me; for John baptized with water, and oddly enough only those of you who were adults, but you and your newborn babies will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

Baptism as a baby, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience for a newborn baby, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

And now why do you wait? Rise and bring your babies here to be baptized and wash away their sins; you'll need to get your newborns to call on his name.

But the Bible doesn't say any of those things. Every time the Bible talks about baptism, it only makes sense as something for a believer in Jesus to do who has the capability to believe in Jesus to cleanse the of sin, to repent of their sins, and to choose to be baptised. When it tells us to go and make disciples of all nations, it doesn't tell us to go and find babies to baptise. It tells us to preach the gospel.

I have a 1 year old, and he can't understand the gospel yet. I can talk to him about Jesus, pray with him, but he barely understands what any of it means. I bring him to church anyway and he sort of gets "what to do" when we kneel in the benches to pray, but that's about it. He doesn't understand what repentance even means. He's too young to know what right and wrong mean.

Yet the Eastern Orthodox persist in not just baptising infants, but also "confirming" them when they are a week old and giving them their first communion - to newborns who are still nursing. How does that make the slightest sense at all? Where does the Bible teach doing such has any value?

[Judas Maccabeus]

668]
You keep using what Russia is doing "now" as a way to dismiss early doctrine[/font] and Apostolic teachings. Yet you yourself had provided a link where other Eastern Orthodox disagree with Putin & patriarch Kirill so that has nothing to do with early Church teachings

By their fruits you shall know them. The Serbian Orthodox Church continues to push the Serbian state to get Kosovo back. Face it, fusion of church and state, which is the Orthodox way has an anti-Christian result of the church getting involved in war

Just ask anyone who lived on Cyprus, It was Ceasropapism that got that civil war started.

668]

and none of us on this forum were there for the ORAL teachings Apostle Paul said to stand fast in, but we do have the evidence by those who were not liars, saying what they taught was passed down.

There is no evidence that these teachings ever existed, except for someone’s word. If Pau had important teachings, he very well could have included it in a letter. Much of the missing teachings alleged are pseudepigrapha.

668]

You can argue until you are on the other side with brothers and sisters from early on through the end, baptized as infants. ANYONE can fall away after baptism. Just ask the Amish

Nobody is saying that a person cannot fall away. That is a Reformed doctorine. You been listening to a reformed preacher a bit?

What you present has been rejected by generations of Anabaptists. We see no reason to accept this sort of “oral” nonsense now, we have not for 500 years, and we are not going to start now.

I would suggest that you do not really believe these so-called “oral teachings.” As long as you attend a reformed church, it could be said that IF you really believed it yourself, than you would act on it. You haven’t, which suggests that they are not so important to you in the final equation. You are pushing others to do something you are not willing to do yourself.

[Sudsy]

I believe that the topic of infant baptism is one of the main identifiers of Anabaptism and why it received that title. So any challenge to this belief is going to be hard not to get into quarreling in a way that does not reflect the fruit of the Spirit. Hard but not impossible if we allow the Spirit to guide us. Col. 4:6 reads -

Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

With regard to who is welcome to post here at the top of the page it reads -

MennoNet.com
Where Mennonites and others connect

If I understand this correctly, everyone is welcome to connect here.

But it seems to me that how we connect is important and when 'defending the faith', as it is sometimes called, history shows us that often the flesh was in control even to the point of physical killing one another in the worst of ways. Today these attempts at killing are most often through words. And according to Jesus anyone who is angry with his brother or publicly shames someone is also guilty of murder. So, if I am understanding Jesus rightly, I need to be careful on how I go about 'defending the faith' with how I chose my words as words can kill. And I have the Holy Spirit within me to check my spirit when I am not putting to death the deeds of the flesh.

I do believe in a sense that Christianity is a 'high demand religion' and that being that I not give way to my flesh which requires constant coming under the Spirit's control. As scripture says - walk in the Spirit and I will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh.

[ohio jones]

you are wrong

Perhaps the bold font was not intentional since one of the quoted posts does not have a [/b], but please keep in mind the guidelines:

Do not state that someone else is wrong. State your own thoughts and opinions.

[Sudsy]

Robert wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 9:33 pm
Do not state that someone else is wrong. State your own thoughts and opinions.

My opinion is that what you are saying is correct.