Tempe 12ft Chicken suggested we might want to continue this discussion that got started on the Links and Information forum, in a new forum where it more properly belongs. I'm fine with that, it will probably get me going on the research I've been wanting to do more of for some time.
I regard my position to be classic Reformation Protestantism, that originally was truly a protest against the Roman Catholic Church that had dominated the world for some thousand years in the Holy Roman Empire. There had been objectors all along who got themselves burned at the stake for their opposition, and even whole populations of dissenters outside the Roman Church who were true Bible believers, who were persecuted and murdered by Rome for "heresy" long before the official Inquisition got started.
God then raised up a number of men in one generation from within the ranks of Roman Catholicism who saw Rome's errors by the light of the Bible and finally saw it as in essence not merely rife with errors in need of moral reformation, but doctrinally opposed to the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
But I don't want this to be just about the Protestant Reformation, but about the whole history of the conflict back to the beginning, between the man-made traditions of Rome and their persecutions of the true followers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is something I've known for a long time but only in the last year or so started learning about as an ongoing battle that is alive and well in our own time. There's lots of evidence but I haven't been good about keeping track of it so I'll have to re-collect a lot of it as we go.
Note: Although such a topic is bound to get people riled up I want to emphasize that this is not about ordinary Catholics or Protestants, it's about an institutional war that is headed by the Vatican in the name of the papacy. There's been a lot of skulduggery, forgeries, plots and conspiracies I had no idea about until fairly recently, in the effort by the Counter Reformation, led mostly by the Jesuits, to defeat the Protestant Reformation, hidden doings that very few know anything about. The conventional histories are not to be trusted.
What I've been learning has been eye opening for me, and I'll try to muster the evidence for it but my participation may be on the slow side as I do that.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
He who surrenders the first page of his Bible surrenders all. --John William Burgon, Inspiration and Interpretation, Sermon II.
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