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Easy Salvation Almost By Procedure and the Catechism
Posted : 27 Sep, 2013 06:34 AM
Easy Salvation Almost By Procedure and the Catechism
Being saved has been re-defined as an easy process in the churches, especially in the mega church movement. There is now a teaching in some of the churches that preachers can minister the Holy Spirit to people in church services, and that receiving this ministering is being born again and is the means to salvation. But this ministering is just a ritual, and does not fundamentally change a person from the state of the natural man (I Corinthians 2: 14) to a man who is spiritual and born again.
In this re-definition the "new birth" can be something that happens after salvation, not a fundamental change that itself puts one into the kingdom of God.
Charles Finney began the Alter Call in the early 19th century, which was perfected in the mid 20th century by guys like Billy Graham. But the teaching that salvation is by a procedure or ritual of receiving it from a preacher, that salvation itself is confered by water baptism, and almost just by joining a church goes even beyond Finney's Alter Call procedure or enactment in being saved.
Here is one statement on this ministering of salvation by present day preachers: "The natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit......that is why they are to be ministered....."given" by ministers that have not only been called but who have been chosen, ordained and filled with the Power of God to impart and manifest the things of the Spirit. The things of the Spirit of God are not taken. They are "given" ministered."
A preacher who has been trained in a Christian seminary and who has been ordained by a church to preach is supposed then to be able to minister salvation to people. This moves the so called Protestant church toward the position of the Roman Catholic Church, that salvation is ministedred by the Church and there is no salvation outside of the Church.
"A sacrament is delivering or ministering of grace as the Holy Spirt and through special liturgies in church services. "... they are born of water and the Spirit." John 3: 5
The teaching is that people who are saved are born again by baptism. They interpret John 3: 5, "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" as meaning that water is literal baptism in water, and in itself brings salvation. In Acts 15: 1, 5 the Pharisees who joined the Jerusalem Chistian community said that male Christians must be circumcised nd keep the ceremonial law to be saved. But nowhere in the Old Testament does it say that circumcision brings salvation.
Remember that John the Baptist in Matthew 3: 11 said "I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:"
In Matthew 3: 11 Christ is not said to literally baptize people with fire. Fire is metaphoric for spiritual cleansing. In Zechariah 13: 8-9,two parts, or two groups of those who claim to be the people of God, are cut off and "I will bring the third part through the fire and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, it is my people: and they shall say, the Lord is my God."
The water baptism of John the Baptist was literal, physical baptism in water. But the spiritual baptism by Christ is the giving of the Holy Spirit, and baptism is not literal but is a cleansing by a metaphoric fire of God. Water baptism was something that metaphorically confirmed that the old creature that inhabited the person had been put away and that a new creature had been born in Christ Jesus. In itselfg it did not bring salvation, but was a way of expressing the fact that one had been saved.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c1a2.htm
Catechism Number 1316: "Confirmation perfects Baptismal grace; it is the sacrament which gives the Holy Spirit in order to root us more deeply in the divine filiation, incorporate us more firmly into Christ, strengthen our bond with the Church, associate us more closely with her mission, and help us bear witness to the Christian faith in words accompanied by deeds."
Catechism Number 1317: "Confirmation, like Baptism, imprints a spiritual mark or indelible character on the Christian's soul; for this reason one can receive this sacrament only once in one's life."
Catechism Number 1318: "In the East this sacrament is administered immediately after Baptism and is followed by participation in the Eucharist; this tradition highlights the unity of the three sacraments of Christian initiation. In the Latin Church this sacrament is administered when the age of reason has been reached, and its celebration is ordinarily reserved to the bishop, thus signifying that this sacrament strengthens the ecclesial bond."
Being born again, a major transformation, from the natural man to a spiritual man, was re-defined by the Roman Catholics. They made this process into what they call a sacrament, a ritual. In Catholicism, a person is born again by a ritual. This makes the capital C Catholic Church the agency that grants salvation. In Catholicism, people are not saved except in the Church.
Catechism Number 1314: "If a Christian is in danger of death, any priest should give him Confirmation. Indeed, the Church desires that none of her children, even the youngest, should depart this world without having been perfected by the Holy Spirit with the gift of Christ 's fullness."
The ritual of Confirmation brings people into bondage to the Catholic church. And this is what the the Catechism says:
Catechism Number 1285: "Baptism, the Eucharist, and the sacrament of Confirmation together constitute the "sacraments of Christian initiation," whose unity must be safeguarded. It must be explained to the faithful that the reception of the sacrament of Confirmation is necessary for the completion of baptismal grace.89 For "by the sacrament of Confirmation, [the baptized] are more perfectly bound to the Church and are enriched with a special strength of the Holy Spirit. Hence they are, as true witnesses of Christ, more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith by word and deed."
So, some Protestant churches have moved closer to the Catholic Catechism on the role of sacraments performed in the church by a priest or preacher, qualified by ordination.
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