Those are indeed great reasons to become more childlike. Children are less spiritually impure than adults. Which is why the Kingdom is for one's such as them, because that's what we'll be doing in the Kingdom: living an innocent, pure, existence of love for each other and God. I'll say, there's nothing quite like spiritually snuggling in with God, taking rest and comfort in my abba. Just being God's child.Children are meek and teachable...like sponges absorbing what they are taught. They have little in the way of pre-conceived ideas that can become a barrier to accepting new concepts. They are trusting and often eager to please.....aren’t these the things that make children a great role model for accepting Christ’s teachings?
Baptism isn't about some level of spiritual or certainly mental attainment or maturity. It's about love and desire for God and all souls can love and have desire for God, in fact the closer they are to the innocence of the babes the more they are able to do so. The infant's soul cries out to God clearly, and I'm happy to be part of a Church that allows them into the covenant.
There isn't a need. The Catholic Church doesn't teach that there is a need.Then why the need for the repetitive things that most Catholics know as prayer?
That's what I said, they use prayer ropes, but not rosaries.No....as I said Hindus and Buddhists use them, among other non-Christian faiths.
Who are you to say whose prayer is from the heart and whose is not? Is there something barring me from meaning to the core of my heart a prayer that I make multiple times? If a mother prays every night to God for her son to get off drugs, is she less than if she had only prayed once?Again you are not speaking about prayers from the heart....you are speaking about prayers by rote.
If you can't say a prayer more than once without meaning it, then don't. If you don't like the idea of "prayer without ceasing", or using prayer as both a communication and a rod to keep our thoughts tamed and on God, then don't. I'll be here meaning every prayer I say with every ounce of my person. I'll be wanting the mercy of Christ upon me all day, every day, and so I will pray, to the best of my ability, without ceasing "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner."
Also, that doesn't even address what I argued again. Which is that there is enough information on the development of Christian prayer ropes to defend against the accusation that it is a foreign religious intervention.
Everything has intricacies.Intricacies? What intricacies?
Is a city going to in actuality float out of the sky? Is a ten-headed monstrosity going to rise out of the ocean? Is there an actual fiery pit that those not living in Christ are condemned to? Is there a literal book that Jesus checks your name for, like a bouncer or Santa Clause? Those're all 'intricacies'.
Fallible men identify them by interpreting history.History identifies them
Then you aren't listening, there are plenty of Christian denominations who hold officially or de facto an interpretation that only differs in that they believe it will be a millennial reign and not a forever oneIn the days of the present world rulership...this is when God’s Kingdom displays its power to remove all failed and corrupt human rulership, crushing them and their supporters out of existence, and replacing them as the earth’s only governance.
This is “the good news of the Kingdom”....but I never hear Christendom say much about such an awesome event that will change conditions and human life on earth forever.
It isn't about a lack of knowledge, it's about a reality that we are limited. Do you pretend to know everything about God's nature and plans? Do you claim that you know without error what in the symbolic prophetic dreams is to be taken literally and what allegorically? Are you going to be displeased and complain if salvation is a spiritual union that the human brain can't fully grasp and not a literal city of gold with pearl gates?Beyond human comprehension? Seriously that is one lousy excuse for lack of knowledge IMO.
It's what you think about what the Bible says.It’s what the Bible says, not what I think
I want to know how you the person Deeje understands what the Bible says. You quoted the Apocalypse of John again, so again I ask. Do you understand that to mean a literal city being lowered from outer space to earth through the atmosphere? A rift in reality that opens to heaven and the city comes through? Allegory of how God's city will be heaven sent, but it will actually be physically built like any other city?
Texts rarely explain themselves, that's why the Apostles taught and they taught far more than they wrote. And if you ignore the teachings you'll never properly understand the texts.