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| No | 53% | 65 votes | Total: 123 votes | |
| Yes | 47% | 58 votes |
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Add to FavoritesThe church is just that:thee church
Christ did not set up churches,man did. Christ gave believers the task to send out the word.God brought into the arc believers two by two(difference between 2 clean and 7 unclean beasts) and sent out the word two by two.Where two or three are gathered in my name so shall I be.God also sets up how in those that gather should be as in Timothy.And as usual there a snare, God didn't say to make up doctrines of men and salvation comes from mans precepts. Salvation comes from God and that is the core of any church to send the word out,That's it. Nothing else matters beyond that. Why is that? You can feed the poor, we can heal the sick in body and we can cloth them but to what good is that if they are spiritually dead.
That fact is there is one church and that is as the Holy spirit is there within. Somebody is wrong.Somebody doesn't have truth anymore.We have tens upon tens of churches today with all conceive ideas about God except what God has already laid out.We have had and there still are very learned men that have spent years studying religion. Unfortunately they don't study Gods word,the Bible. The Churches in the opening pages of Revelations had the same problem 1900 years ago. Some were already dead.That was written for us today. It is not by accident that "to Reveal" "it is hidden for a time" God is telling us about those churches and it is in the last book . Read Revelations 3.
Gods salvation is of a broken and contrite heart and as truth is now removed from all the churches,let them fight out Satan's salvation plan. God has given the Remnant the task to still send out the the word in truth and from the Bible alone. We are to flee Judea and two by two send out this word in the last of last days.I pray your not caught with the churches as God pours out judgment on them and the world.
Get into the Bible and make sure your path is straight before worrying about some external building with stiff neck preaching;concerned for an all inclusive God, church memberships,and easter egg hunts as the world does. God is not all inclusive. Don't be there when God sends them away even as they cry :But we preached in your name ,we cast out demons,we sent out the word and God says,I do not know you.
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Yes
Hope for Reunion between Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics
Will the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches ever reunite? I believe the chances are good that they will. More progress has been made in the last fifty years than in the previous five hundred.
The main obstacle to reunion is the two sides' different understanding of power in the church. While in the Roman church power is invested in church leaders, and in particular, in the Pope, the Eastern Orthodox churches believe that power resides in the Church as a whole, that is, in the Holy Spirit who animates the Church.
The difference can be illustrated by the disagreement over the moment when the bread and wine of the Eucharist become the Body and Blood of Christ, which is really a dispute not over when this happens but how. The Roman Church has held that the change happens when the priest repeats the words of Christ at the Last Supper: This is my body; this is my blood. The Eastern Orthodox hold that the change occurs when the priest prays that the Holy Spirit will come and change the gifts. The Roman view is that the priest has the power to effect the change by saying the proper words. The Eastern Orthodox view is that the Holy Spirit alone has this power, and that this will happen in response to the Church's prayer.
In the Eastern Orthodox view, there is no source of authority outside of or different from the Church in its entirety. No one person or group of people within the Church, no bishop or council of bishops, can be said to be over the Church in the way that the Pope is over the Roman Catholic Church. That is at the heart of the dispute between these churches. The Orthodox churches do recognize the authority of councils, e.g., the seven ecumenical councils, but even these were seen to be authoritative only in retrospect, after their decisions had been found by the whole Church to be consistent with its experience of truth.
Local churches speak through their bishops and bishops strive for unity among themselves. This is the older view of church structure, as can be seen from Cyprian's statement to a council in Carthage in the third century: No one of us sets himself up as a bishop of bishops, or, by tyrannical terror, forces his colleagues to a necessity of obeying, inasmuch as every bishop, in the free use of his liberty and power, has the right of forming his own judgment, and can no more be judged by another than he can himself judge another (cited by Augustine, On Baptism, Against the Donatists, 2.2.3).
Two things make me hopeful that the Roman church's understanding of power is changing. First, the Second Vatican Council moved toward a more Orthodox understanding of power with its new sense of the importance of the Church as people of God in sacramental theology. The local church as gathered, worshiping community is the basic sacrament of which the seven sacraments are expressions. This sense of the importance of the worshiping church led the Council to invest more power in local communities through regional councils of bishops. True, in the last twenty years or so there has been a retrenchment and an effort by Rome to pull power back to the center. But the Council's decrees are still there, allowing for further development in the other direction.
Second, the Eastern Catholic, Uniate churches have in the last fifty years or so been experiencing a renewed interest in their eastern heritage. Within themselves, they function more like the Eastern Orthodox churches than the Roman church. This difference is reflected in new Code of Canon Law for the Eastern Churches put out by Rome. Within the Eastern Catholic churches, primates function as first among equals, rather than claiming supreme authority as the Pope does. These churches have experienced freedom and they are pushing for more. They present a different model of being Church within the Roman communion. They will be a thorn in Rome's side, urging change. The Eastern Orthodox would do well to embrace these fellow Eastern Christians rather than treating them like social outcasts.
Reunion between Rome and the East will not be easily attained. But there is much reason to hope for it. With the Holy Spirit's help, it will happen.
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