Mike da Tigah

Islam is not unlike every single man made religion on the planet with mankind trying to ascend to God through their own efforts rather than accepting what God has already done for them on their behalf for both salvation and relationship, and it’s driven by what infects all of humanity, our own self righteous desire to earn, or deserve our standing with our creator. The common denominator in them all, even the so called Christian variants of religion, is in what man is going to do for God rather than what God has done for mankind. One nets nothing but a lifetime of exhaustion and uncertainty on the hamster wheel, and the other peace and security in our creator. God sacrificed His life for us. We don’t sacrifice our life for Him to be saved.

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Yes, but we will know them by their fruits. People who repent do change. There is no other way about it.

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That scripture is referencing false prophets, not believers.

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Distinction without a difference. It is impossible to change your mind and not your ways.

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I know no one who’s changed their ways to align themselves with God’s perfect expectations in keeping the 613 laws in the OT, much less the 9 of 10 we speak of keeping. Matter of fact when Jesus ratchet them up to the Jews in the Sermon on the Mount, it became even more impossible to keep perfectly as required in Matthew 5:48 after He buried them in their inabilities to achieve righteousness. If it were being better, He would have said so rather than absolute perfection.

Truth is, without Jesus’ righteousness given to believers, we cannot please God with our doing better, as that is a foolish endeavor. The only thing that pleases God is doing His will, and that is to believe upon His Son for it all. Otherwise, we’re the savior, and not Him.

If it aligns with HIS moral values. :lol:


And just what are those?

Well, I know one thing for an absolute certainty, and that’s that our food industry is getting people sick, and it doesn’t take someone with a medical degree to look at the back of a package and the list of ingredients, most of which is solely in there to increase shelf life, and see that as reality. It’s not normal, and America is a very sickly country. But I guess as long as corporations own us lock stock and barrel, and are making huge money off of it, it’s all good, but is it really?

We have a large group of predominantly Spanish subcontractors working for us, and that’s simply because they’re the ones who make up the industry, and yet they make very good money. It’s just labor intensive at times, and our people don’t want to put the work in it takes to become a professional contractor. They’re legal and have to be in order to work for us, but the issues they’ve faced are admittedly not so black and white when it comes to dealing with ICE. They’ve been targeted on their way to and fro to job sites, detained for extended amounts of time as they go through their paperwork and validate everything on multiple, multiple occasions and for a while we couldn’t even get them to cross the state line for jobs because ICE was camping out at the state line to pull them over and detain them, and they were scared of what they thought might happen, some of it just fearful, and some of it valid. If you’re in a white work truck/van and Spanish, you’re getting pulled over.

It’s not all right and wrong here. These guys all know that they better have their stuff in order every day, but they are paying a real price for those who’ve broken the law and come over illegally, and so there are some valid issues with ICE that I can agree with, but that still doesn’t mean we don’t need ICE or strong border enforcement. It’s just real sloppy, and it does need to improve quite a bit.

Hand to heart, I have no idea who’s even playing. That’s how much I’m invested in that silliness.

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Ultimately, it is unavoidable, yes.

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It’s unavoidable when it’s unattainable by your righteousness to earn entry into God’s kingdom through anything but Christ’s righteousness alone, through faith alone in Christ alone.

Scripture tells us plainly that our righteousness is like filthy rags before God, and those rags referenced are actually menstrual rags. Isaiah 64:6

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For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, / not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

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Know that a man is not justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified. (Galatians 2:16)

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Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness!’ (Matthew 7:22-23)

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So also, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Understand, then, that those who have faith are sons of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and foretold the gospel to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.”…(Galatians 3:7)

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Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. (John 6:47)

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And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:40)

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Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that everyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. (John 3:14-18)

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The very first record we have of faith alone saving someone is the thief on the cross with Jesus. He believed, and Jesus told him that this day he would be with Him in paradise. The man recognized who Jesus was and was undeserving of the cross, but knew that he himself did deserve death for his sins on his cross, reached out to Jesus in faith to save him, and Jesus saved him. He believed upon Jesus and was saved. That’s it. He did no works. He believed upon Jesus to save him and was saved.

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And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one's bands were loosed. And the keeper of the prison awaking out of his sleep, and seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword, and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm: for we are all here. Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?

And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, straightway. And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house. (Acts 16:25-34)

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The Bible is littered with countless scriptures telling we are saved by faith alone. These are but a few, but there are many more to list. There are none that say you are saved or justified before GOD by your works. Before men yes, but not before God.

Americans will vote unanimously in favor of limiting vote to citizens.

The lawless will vote for sticking it to Americans.

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Just observing this thread, but as someone who has been on a serious spiritual journey for about the last 7 months, I would just stop posting brother. You mean well, but you're saying a bunch of things that are gross misrepresentations of actual Catholic teachings. I say this as someone in a nebulous denominational state. I'm not going to go into correcting them because I'll be here all day doing it given these aren't simple theological issues, and I would recommend doing some study on your own. I particularly recommend looking at actual Catholic apologists out there who can speak on these matters so that whether or not you agree, you at least can speak more accurately about what they believe.

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I was raised Catholic, attended Catholic school, and my family is predominantly RC. I know exactly what they believe because I was in it, and it is not scripture. It is Catholic teaching, much of which stands in complete opposition to scripture itself. You are taught to put your faith in the church, not the scriptures, and that’s the problem in a nutshell. It’s also the problem in certain Protestant churches that attempt to wrap their doctrines into scripture rather than letting scripture speak for itself in context. That’s where you get all of the unscriptural doctrines like repent of your sins for salvation, sinner prayers, inviting Jesus into your heart, give your life to Jesus, make Jesus Lord, maintaining your salvation, asking Jesus for additional forgiveness to that which He already gave you at the cross when you first believed, etc… when people add things or take things away from the word of God there is mass confusion, but when we take the word of God and take Him at His word in context there is peace, and assurance because God said it. Man didn’t. We are called believers because we believe upon Jesus. He is the savior, I’m not, and neither is a denomination or anything else man’s relying upon in addition to Jesus. That’s what is scriptural, and as a believer I am called to make a stand for the Gospel, and there’s only one Good News. That’s not found in me or what I think but in what Jesus said.

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Religion didn’t kill Jesus. Jesus willingly chose death to defeat death and conquer sin. “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” (John 10:18)

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Clearly, and this has been the plan since the garden for Jesus to lay down His life for the sins of mankind, but it is also true that it was the hand of religion that was used to bring that about. The point being that the most scholarly and religiously educated in history, the Pharisees, were completely blind to who Jesus is, and preferred their own self righteousness to the righteousness found in Jesus alone, and nothing has changed with religion. It focuses on what you have to do, keeping man on the treadmill, whilst the entirety of scriptures is focused on God and His finished works FOR mankind.

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If you trust Jesus, then you should do what he commands and teaches. That includes being an active member of The only church He founded (the one holy and apostolic church), receiving the sacraments He instituted, beholding our Mother, Mary (John 19:26-27), and believing in the impossibly hard teachings (he almost always includes the words “Amen Amen say to you” just to emphasize he knows exactly what He’s saying and you heard Him right.

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Jesus did NOT found the Roman church. Constantine did. Jesus is the head of His own church, and He did not put it in the hands of Peter, but He founded upon the foundation Peter uttered to Jesus that Jesus is God. That is the truth of what His church is founded upon. It’s certainly not an unreliable sinner who was relying solely upon Jesus for His salvation, one that was only verses later rebuked by Jesus, or subsequently rebuked by Paul as well for laying works upon Greeks.

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John 3:5 Unless one is born of water and Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

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Yes, and in John 3:6 He shows that being born of flesh is what he meant by being born of water, and being born of the Spirit is referencing John 3:3 whe He told Nicodemus that He must be born again. John 3:16 is the key to being born again. It’s the believing upon Jesus alone as your savior that the free gift of salvation is given to you.

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Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. John 8:58

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That’s John 6:53-58, and it is not literal. We don’t sacrifice Jesus over and over again and literally eat His body and drink His blood He is referring to our faith in Him alone, being in Him and He in us, even as He and the Father are one. When He died on the cross we too died, and when He rose, our spirit man rose with Him, and now we are not two, but one. We have a different heart, desires, and place with God as Jesus is in us and we in Jesus. We are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, and yet still bodily here of course.