A Cure For That Infamous Decree

When we commit a mistake and we realize that we have committed such a mistake the sensible thing to do is to correct our mistake. And we usually do this immediately in order to offset the committing of more mistakes.

But there are mistakes which seem to resist correction not only for days but even for centuries. This resistance to correction is made by men who are supposed to have scientific knowledge of the mistake made.

The Mistake in Astronomy

Take the case of the teaching about the movement of the earth and the sun. From 150 A.D. (and even before this by Aristotle and his followers) it was taught by scientists and learned men of the Church that the earth was a stationary planet in the center of the universe and the other planets and the sun revolved around it. It is obvious to us now that this is not true. You remember this as the Ptolemaic theory of the solar system. This was corrected in 1543, more than 13 centuries later, by Copernicus but his correction was not accepted by the scientists of his day. In 1616 Galileo tried to prove that Copernicus was correct but instead of accepting this correction he was condemned by the Inquisition and remained until his death under house arrest. More centuries followed before the Church leaders accepted the correction of Galileo and acknowledged their mistake. This was done by John Paul II on October 31, 1992. He acknowledged that the church leaders had committed a mistake and correction was to be made about this.

A Greater Mistake Than That in Astronomy

But there is a mistake more serious than that committed by the church leaders on the case of Galileo. It is a mistake with more disastrous consequences not just for science and scientists but for ordinary people like you and me. And billions of people have suffered because of this mistake. And this mistake has not yet been corrected by the church leaders or by the successors of those who committed this mistake.

I am referring to that infamous decree made by the Roman emperor Theodosius on February 27, 380 making Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. This was a most tragic mistake, the worst that any emperor made, because it involved falsifying the teachings of Jesus. And yet this mistake has not been corrected yet, after more than 1,600 years.

No church leader nor successor of the Emperor Theodosius has come out and publicly acknowledged that this decree was a tragic mistake and needs to be corrected.

Stages in Correcting This Disastrous Mistake

The first stage in the cure for this infamous decree then is to convince the church leaders, even the successor of Emperor Theodosius as Pontifex Maximus (one of the titles of the Roman Pope), to come up with a public acknowledgement of the mistake made, just like what John Paul II did in the case of Galileo.

This revocation of that decree would release all those who were made Christians by that decree from all their obligations. They would be given a chance to start all over again or deny Christianity as their religion.

The second stage in the cure is to put back the practice of the catechumenate and improve it. Some churches have already done this, the most successful that I know of is that of the Church of Christ founded by Felix Manalo in the Philippines. Before a person is received into this Church he has to undergo 28 lessons in the fundamental doctrines of the Church, then he has to attend 15 weeks of group prayer meetings before he can be screened for baptism.

The third stage in the cure is to follow up on new members to make sure that they develop in their spiritual life.

In this time of spiritual awakening when more and more persons in all churches are spiritually awakened and there is uneasiness and spiritual hunger for genuine Christianity—and the signs of a spiritual awakening are all around us—we need to wake up spiritually and see where have our church leaders committed mistakes and convince them to correct these mistakes.

Only when the mistake about that infamous decree of Theodosius has been corrected and cured will we have the beginnings again of real genuine Christianity spreading among us.

Click Here!

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritworld for knowing more about spirituality or spiritual realities

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

7 Obstacles To Genuine Christianity

Why do we have very few genuine Christians? Why do we have countries which are populated mostly by Christians and yet their crime rate and human rights abuses are also one of the highest in the world?

This is because there are so many obstacles to the making of genuine Christians. I mention 7 in this article.

When people are on the process of spiritual awakening they can see more clearly these obstacles to genuine Christianity. When they are spiritually awakened, they try to get rid of these obstacles. This is because they have that uneasiness and spiritual hunger for genuine spirituality. As we experience these signs of a spiritual awakening we wake up spiritually and face these obstacles with courage and summon the strength to get rid of them.

The first obstacle is something that was done a long time ago but whose effect has gone down through the centuries reaching us and we do not know for how long this obstacle will still oppose genuine Christianity. This obstacle is the decree of the Roman emperor Theodosius promulgated on February 27, 380 making Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire, thus outlawing all other religions.

Because of this decree thousands upon hundreds of thousands of people became Christians without really knowing what Christianity was. In other words the Church was infiltrated, nay inundated, by nominal Christians. This situation persists today.

The second obstacle was the abandonment of the catechumenate, the process lasting for 3 years whereby adults were educated in the Christian faith before baptism. This was compounded by the baptism of infants. There would have been no problem even with infant baptism if the catechumenate was faithfully followed. But it was not so. People were baptized who did not know what they were going into and infants grew up without being educated in the Christian faith. The result has been the increase in the number of nominal Christians.

Today there is a program of catechumenate for adults and some kind of post-baptismal catechumenate but the genuine catechumenate producing genuine Christians is no longer implemented.

The third obstacle is the idea being floated around that to be a Christian all you need to do is to be a good person in your respective church. If you believe in the teaching of your church and you follow its ordinances and rituals, then you are a Christian. Crusades upon crusades have been conducted to disabuse people of this idea, but this idea persists among the members of the churches and even among non-members of Christian churches.

The fourth obstacle is the idea also being floated around that all you need to be a Christian is to be baptized. This is especially common among Catholics. They think that by having their babies baptized they have been turned into Christians. This is a misunderstanding of the ex opere operato (literally "from the work having been worked") doctrine of the Catholic Church. This doctrine states that if a sacrament is validly administered then it effects what it is supposed to effect, even if the one who administers the sacrament is a great sinner. When we apply this to baptism, it means that if the baptism is validly administered, then the effect of the sacrament is there, the grace of God is given. But it does not mean that by the mere fact of baptism the one baptized is a genuine Christian. It only means that the grace of baptism is given to the one baptized.

The fifth obstacle to genuine Christianity is related to the one mentioned above. It is the preoccupation of Christian leaders with the externals like church building, church attendance, paintings, sculptures, shrines, etc. The time devoted to these things takes them away from the time to be devoted to the essentials of Christianity: living the life of Christ, preaching what he has done, teaching his character and attitudes, etc.

The sixth obstacle is the neglect of the spiritual life. This is partly due to the fact that most people still think that the human being is composed of body and soul only. They do not think of the spirit as an essential component of the human person. They think that the soul and the spirit are the same. When you do not think that the human person has also a spirit you will not care about the spirit, since you think it is non-existing or is the same as the soul.

The seventh obstacle to genuine Christianity is the imposition of one’s interpretation of Scripture on others. Teachers of the Bible forget that the Scripture is rich in meanings and cannot be exhausted. So, different churches are built on different interpretations of the Scriptures. This is an obstacle to genuine Christianity because it gives the impression that Christians cannot agree or cannot be tolerant on certain points of the Scripture. Christianity then becomes a following of this or that interpretation of Scripture rather than of living the life Christ, which is what genuine Christianity is.

These obstacles continue to oppose genuine Christianity. Until when? We do not know. But until these obstacles are gotten rid of we will continue to have very few genuine Christians.

Click Here!

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritworld for knowing more about spirituality or spiritual realities

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.

Effecting or Implementing Genuine Christianity

In times like these when people are searching for something that they can depend on, when the lure of materialism has so miserably disappointed them, when everywhere people are looking for something that works, Christians and even non-Christians are looking for genuine Christians. How then do we effect or implement genuine Christianity so that we shall have genuine Christians around us?

There have been many books written and programs designed to supposedly effect or implement genuine Christianity. But the impact of the ideas in these books and of the activities in these programs seems to be negligible when viewed from a wider perspective. They have not really made the impression that here at last is something that works and works well, is surely effective in the making of a genuine Christian, anywhere, in whatever condition of life, in rich or poor countries, in the northern or in the southern part of the world.

I propose 5 steps in the effecting or implementing of genuine Christianity.

Step 1. Live Christ. This is most basic and most essential and yet is missing in our programs. These programs want and teach Christ to be the center of life, but nowhere can we read in Scripture that Jesus wants to be the center of our life. He is our life, not the center of it. Paul the Apostle said, For me to live is Christ. He did not say that Christ was the center of his life.

Remember that illustration of a circle where Christ represented by the cross is at the center? And the Ego or I is down below him? This was supposed to be the image of a spiritual Christian, where Christ is the center of life and all the other details of a person’s life revolves around him. This kind of Christianity where Christ is only one of the elements of our life, although supposed to be the most important and in the center, cannot effect genuine Christianity.

The life that can effect genuine Christianity is a life not just Christ-centered but Christ-lived. Jesus lives through and through that life and is not just its center.

And how is the life of Christ effected? We go to step 2.

Step 2 is pray Christ. We do not say pray to Christ. We do not even say pray with Christ. What I mean is pray Christ, pray the Christ prayer, the prayer of Jesus as he prays to the Father. Jesus is the one who is the central person who prays. His principal work now is prayer. We are in him, we realize that we are praying him, we are praying his prayer. This is not a five times a day or even fifty times a day prayer. Just as Christ prays always we always pray. Sure we go to special times of prayer, but even outside of these times we still pray. We pray when we sleep, when we rise up, when we prepare for work, when we go to work, when we rest, etc. Our whole day is a day of prayer in Christ. The Spirit of Jesus enables us to pray the prayer of Christ always, throughout the day and night.

Step 3. Preach Christ. Do not just preach something about him. Preach him and what he did. Announce to the world and all who he is, describe him and his wonderful, lovable qualities. Preach him as one who is not just a figure of history but as the great Presence at the present time, as the person most interested about us and them.

Listen to preachers who preach Christ and him crucified. Nowadays with the Internet you can choose your preacher, you can choose your personal pastor. Just beware of impostors. There are plenty of them.

Step 4. Teach Christ. Again it is not enough to teach about him. Teach him. Discuss him with other Christians. Let others talk of him. Draw out the opinions of others about him and lead them to what the Scriptures say of him. Most of all do not teach morality, that people are supposed to follow this and that commandment. This is Phariseeism and Jesus condemned it in no uncertain terms.

Learn from teachers who teach Christ and not their own ideas. You can find them in the Internet. Again be wary of fake teachers of the Christ.

Step 5. Serve Christ. When you help somebody be aware that it is Christ you are helping, not just this person with his need. Jesus has identified himself with all of humanity, and when you serve a member of that humanity, you are serving Christ.

And let Christ serve. As you live his life he wants to serve others through you. Allow him to do just that. Then the ones you are serving will feel the love of Christ.

When these steps are done we shall have a real spiritual awakening as more and more Christians are spiritually awakened and aware of what genuine Christianity is. There are indeed signs of a spiritual awakening around us as people have this uneasiness and spiritual hunger for the real kind of Christianity.

Click Here!

Here are my other blogs which may be of help to you:

http://bit.ly/spiritworld for knowing more about spirituality or spiritual realities

http://bit.ly/alterhealthcare for your health

http://bit.ly/novotrends for learning about the new trends around us

http://bit.ly/bepaidonline for earning some income from the Internet

Here are your links to download the e-books for FREE. To download a copy of A NEW CHRIST by Wallace D. Wattles click this website http://bit.ly/anewchrist. To download a free copy of A NEW EARTH by Eckhart Tolle click this website http://bit.ly/ebookanewearth. I hope that you enjoy reading these free e-books and profit much from them, as I have also profited greatly from them.