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Growing up in a Lutheran church, the Rev. Roger Prehn rarely heard about the Virgin Mary, except during Christmas.
Now a pastor in Orlando, Prehn preaches in a sanctuary with a nearly life-size bronze statue of Mary and the baby Jesus. During advent, the four weeks leading up to Christmas, he leads his congregation in singing the Magnificat -- a prayer Mary sings in the Gospel of Luke.
Until fairly recently, devotion to Mary would have caused a scandal in most Protestant churches. Many Protestants still reject Mary's exalted status within Catholicism and worry that honoring her will put her on par with Jesus. But in recent years a growing number of mainline Protestants and evangelicals have started to rethink their centuries-old opposition to revering Mary....
Read the Second Commandment! This Rev. is in some serious trouble.
Even our leaders can be doing the work of demons. Be sure to read scripture, and pray & test everything mans says. Romans 3:4 "Not at all! Let God be true, and every man a liar. As it is written: "So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge."
It makes it difficult for us to love and trust any man, but imagine how our Father feels about HIS own children. As a father loves his child today...when we come across a situation like the above mention, we can pray out of love and merci for the people we know and love dearly.
SO, Mary was a "Catholic" as the article stated? I always thought she was a Jew who stated in the Scriptures that she also was in need of a Savior! I thank our Lord that He pulled me away from the false church of Rome. To give you a better study and understanding of how Rome views Mary, I would highly recommend Dr. James White's book, Mary, Another Redeemer?His web site, www.aomin.org is also an excellent resource. Dr. John MacArthur has an excellent CD on Rome's teachings of Mary that is available as well. You can order it through his website at www.gty.org. Hope this information helps. Soli Deo gloria!
Somewhere buried in the early comments is there any mention about Mary Worship? Just to bring the more reflection on that topic I would suggest the following articles.
Well, I basically agree with what Never Went In last said. I do believe it is important to gather for worship with believers of similar faith. However, I'm not a Berean. Bereans are residents of a city by the name of Berea...and I don't live there. But like the Bereans, I will study and search the scriptures. I regularly read through the entire New Testament once or twice a year, always learning something new....maybe that's the "Berean" attitude.
"So should we investigate how the Bereans of today are living out the Christian faith and imitate that and accept it as the truth and correct understanding?"
I think we should just be a Berean ourselves, and look to the Holy Spirit to help us know the truth. We can listen to other people we trust, but we should still be Bereans.
The wolves in sheep's clothing were prowling around amongst God's people right from the start and the Bible warns repeatedly of them, that they will appear as an angel of light while they spread their damnable heresies and lies.
Not to say don't go to an establishment church, just remember to "keep your heart and mind in the knowledge of Jesus Christ," check your Bible to "see if it be so." Talk things over with the pastor (respectfully) that you don't agree with, same with the rest of the people in the church, just like you do on SA.
Don't get a party spirit. Your hope and pride should be in Jesus, not in some denomination. In Acts all the believers were called "Christians." All of them. That was their only name. Church at Ephesus, Church at Thessalonica, etcetera. Just "church." They weren't trying to outdo each other on who had the best church.
quote: "The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history."
From the beginning the people knew what was scripture and what wasn't.
And so did God. He didn't need anybody to cannonize it for Him. The cannonizing was just rubber stamping what was already obvious to everybody.
One of the tests of canon is, did the people read it and believe it?
So the people coudl recognize the Bible when they saw it, and that's why they rejected Jerome's vulgate. They were not fooled by the phony title, borrowed (stolen) from the real vulgate, common Bible of the people.
There were several translations into other languages right in the first century. The Word of God spread like wildfire as we read in Acts. These manuscripts were copied, translated, and copied again.
The RCs, if anything, stamped out the spread of God's Word. They tried to blow up Parliament to stop the King James Bible from going forth.
No, this isn't my own theory. I studied Bible History to find this out. I gave you a link below to Sam Gipp's stuff online to get you started. He is an excellent writer, very exact, not too wordy, knows his material. I love him.
It's also interesting that the common people were often forced to abandon supposed popish ideas, or that other supposed popish ideas remained because the voice of the common citizenry was too great to put to silence.
Psalms 12: The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council [ Council of Trent ]. Martin Luther, who made an attempt to remove the books of Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation from the canon (echoing the consensus of several Catholics, also labeled Christian Humanists — such as Cardinal Ximenez, Cardinal Cajetan, and Erasmus — and partially because they were perceived to go against certain Protestant doctrines such as sola gratia and sola fide), but this was not generally accepted among his followers. However, these books are ordered last in the German-language Luther Bible to this day. There is sound and accepted historical accounts of the cannonization process. What "Psalms 12" quotes seems to be something altogether different from what is generally accepted. Is this conspiracy theory your own, or are you quoting another?
"The Bereans received the word with "all readiness of mind" and searched the scriptures "to see if it be so." And they were listening to Paul."
So should we investigate how the Bereans of today are living out the Christian faith and imitate that and accept it as the truth and correct understanding?
Thus saith the Lord; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited. Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and shose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
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We need God, not some man's dry doctrine that's probably just a heresy anyway.
The Bereans received the word with "all readiness of mind" and searched the scriptures "to see if it be so." And they were listening to Paul.
And Apostle Peter says: It is better to obey God than man. I remember coming across a Roman Catholic individual's website and he actually quoted that in regard to not following an erroneous pope. Interesting. And of course, the only infallible words are those within the covers of the Holy Bible.
Never Went In, You make some points which are quite true. However, if you go to an extreme conclusion, the only folks left on the earth who will not be heretical are you and those who follow scripture after it is filtered through your mind(basically Scripture according to Never Went In). You take the Bible alone, so do I. However, I am sure we both would have disagreements about how a particular verse should be interpreted and whether it is valid proof for a doctrine or practice. Therefore, be careful, lest you find yourself among those you claim are heretical.
"But the bible "Never Went In" rightly holds as the sole authority was COMPILED and MAINTAINED by the organizations he claims he has no affiliation with."
This is just false. The Bible manuscripts existed long before the RCC came along. Rather than preserving and maintaining them as Wade G says, the Catholics hunted down the Christians, killed them and burned their manuscripts. The Bible was kept from the people by the Catholics. The war over the Bible went on until 1600s, over the martyred bodies of Tyndale and others who fought to bring the Bible to the English speaking people.
God preserved His Word, not the RCC. It's true Erasmus was a Catholic monk, but he was a mole, planted by God for "such a time as this." Erasmus preserved the true New Testament Received Text, snuck it past the nose of the Pope by writing a flowery intro of praise to the Pope.
Erasmus' Textus Receptus is the text used for the true Bible, the KJB. Erasmus' Text was never used by the Catholics. Rather, Jerome's phony "vulgate" was used, a mistranslation from Origen's already-mangled manuscript Vaticanus.
Read Sam Gipp online http://www.chick.com/reading/books/158/158_57.asp
His Answer Book is online
Also His Understandable History of the English Bible is online in abbreviated form.
The bible that we have was canonized by those same church fathers.But the bible "Never Went In" rightly holds as the sole authority was COMPILED and MAINTAINED by the organizations he claims he has no affiliation with. Like it or not "Never Went In" your faith is shaped by events after the time of the apostles! The same goes to all the other folks who hold the RCC in such high disregard, and use such caustic demeaning terminology as to cut off communication with those folks who need to understand the full range of the Gospel!
MSC -- The only problem with the Protestants who say "Scripture Alone" is they don't do that, as we both know. It's Scripture according to Luther or Calvin or Scofield or Darby or Spurgeon or Charles Stanley or John MacArthur, or whoever Satan's heretical star of the day is.
We don't need to hook up with Protestants to find out what the Bible says. The Bible says it's the Holy Spirit who will lead us into all truth, not these religious authorities.
Fact is, almost the entire established church is going to go into the New World Religion. The King James Bible will be declared hate literature, and a New Age Bible will be presented to take the place of the NIV.
Richard Land is head of the entire Southern Baptist Convention and has been welcomed with open arms by the CFR as its member. He, along with Rick Warren, will be used by them to set up many gullible Christians for the great deception to come.
The world will be one big religious happy family. The antichrist will come along and seem like the best thing to ever come along, even the Messiah.
The established church is not the true universal church. There are Christians in each one of the established churches, a remnant, and many without. This is the real church, the believers.
Never Went In, You're right about referring strictly to the Bible's authors--a good idea and excelent place to start. It sounds like you adhere to a very important Protestant doctrine despite your never-gone-in/come-out idea....and that doctrine is called by Protestants "Scripture Alone."
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I always thought she was a Jew who stated in the Scriptures that she also was in need of a Savior! 
I thank our Lord that He pulled me away from the false church of Rome. To give you a better study and understanding of how Rome views Mary, I would highly recommend Dr. James White's book, Mary, Another Redeemer?His web site, www.aomin.org is also an excellent resource. Dr. John MacArthur has an excellent CD on Rome's teachings of Mary that is available as well. You can order it through his website at www.gty.org. Hope this information helps. Soli Deo gloria!
