Posted by Dog on December 16, 2003, at 8:53:15
In reply to Re: Blasphemy and Accusatory Snide Remarks!, posted by Tovah on December 15, 2003, at 17:59:28
feelings will run hot in the case of anything about the mother of Jesus, who is my Lord. the cult of Mary is very strong. she is, as i said before, most blessed among women, but she cannot hear your prayers... only the Lord Jesus Christ, who is a jealous God, is worthy... i am not a great theologian, but i do believe the only authoritative writings are the Holy Scripture which are the 39 books of the Old Testament, and the 27 books of the New... in these books, all point to Christ and there are no "buts": its not "worship God and serve Him only..."but" also pray to Mary and listen to her and venerate her and make a statue of her and put it in your church and kneel down and pray to her" or even anything like that or anything that can be interpreted that way... there is nothing i have ever seen in the Protestant church that "essentially puts her down"... if you can show me something that most Protestants accept that "puts her down", i would stand corrected, but i know, as God is my God, i have never, ever seen anything that remotely "puts her down"...i would also ask you to qualify what "puts her down" means... perhaps you've taken something personally against yourselves, as Mary-worshippers, that someone said Mary is not God, which she isn't, or someone said something against the practice of kneeling down before a statue of Mary or something... the cult of Mary worship is also strikingly similar to many fertility cults who worship a female deity as a central figure in their religeon...Praying to Mary and having her as the central figure in your faith is not Biblical Christianity...
i'm glad you have experience in different "flavors" of the Christian Faith...Lutheran, Methodist, Roman Catholic, etc., but essentially there is only ONE Christian Faith, and that is Faith in Jesus Christ, which is the God of the Bible...in Jesus we are saved...it is by His work on that Cross that we are saved from our sins and it is nothing else...
i love what Mary did and I love her... i believe she lives, but her bones are on earth... she will be resurrected some day as will we all...every knee shall bow before Jesus Christ someday, even Mary's knee will bow before Him...until then we are to "vernerate", worship, pray to, serve, love Jesus Christ only, and no one else...Jesus is the central figure in Christianity and there is no one else...He did not say "I am the way, the truth, and the life", and then say "but my mother Mary is also"... it was Jesus Himself saying "I, I, I" and there is no one else...> Whoa! I think feelings ran a little hot here. I am a former Protestant (I was Methodist as a child and Lutheran as an adult). I am a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy (the church that goes way back BEFORE the Reformation). And I must say that I know what Dena is referring to re. Mary because I have read some Protestant writings that essentially put her down. It is one thing to not "worship" her (BTW, she is venerated in our faith, not "worshipped"), but SOME (perhaps not you or people you know, but SOME) Protestants do go a little bit too far in the other direction. Please don't say these attitudes don't exist anywhere in Protestantism; you may not have expereinced it or read it yourself, but Dena and I have. However anything we post has to do with our own experiences and not YOU or YOUR faith per se. Hope that helps.
poster:Dog
thread:289364
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/faith/20030908/msgs/290446.html