Sorry William. You are dead wrong.

[color:"0000FF"]Matthew 16:18-19 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; [color:"FF0000"]and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. [/color] And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.[/color]

There is the promise. It is iron clad and bound by the precious Blood which Jesus shed on the Cross. Notice to WHOM Jesus was addressing this. He was addressing the first one who would hold the office of covenantal head over the people of God -- St. Peter.

In a covenant relationship, as we see in the federal paradigm you guys are so fond of, it is the federal head who leads the family under him. He protects it, leads it, and is responsible for it. Thus, when Adam, as the federal head of mankind, sinned against God, the entire human race, being within his loins and yet unborn, were cast into the separation from God which the Bible calls "death". Neither you nor I did anything to earn this other than to be under Adam's headship. The covenantal head acts on behalf of the coveantal people.

This is why the Jews were annihilated in AD 70 (remember I said that my reason for coming here was that I was searching for more material on Preterist Eschatology?). The covenantal head of the Jewish theocratic nation, the high priest, condemned Jesus to death, and in doing so, condemned all who were in the nation to the destruction which befell Jerusalem in AD 70.

The covenantal head of the earthly people of God is the Holy Father in Rome. He is the "prime minister" if you please, who is in charge down here. It is the responsibility of this office to exercise proper doctrinal and moral teaching so that the people of the kingdom may obtain the salvation which is in Jesus Christ, and having obtained it through faith, live that life in "covenantal faithfulness" to the end of their days.

The promise of Christ is that His Holy Spirit would thus protect this office from error in these two areas that the people of God might know truth from error. This is completely unlike the mess we view as Protestantism, in which, as my first post [color:"FF0000"]made by Protestants[/color] states, there is a confusion which borders upon the lunatic. Having dozens of differing ideas on baptism, salvation, ordinances vs sacraments, the number of sacraments, even the existence of hell, is not a testimony to the protection of the Holy Spirit upon the Protestant Rebellion.

Neither is the wholesale moral depravation we are seeing in most "mainline" churches today as they allow for "gay marriage" (an oxymoron if I ever heard one!), abortion "rights", live sexual arrangements, feminism, female "preachers and priests" and a host of other moral degeneracies. Again, where is the protection of the Holy Spirit? Seems considerably absent to me.

And lest you start thumping your chest about how YOUR denomination is more conservative and will never allow for such things....let me remind you that at one time, so were these. Let me further remind you that already the PCA has changed the wording of the Nicene Creed to appease the feminists among them. Won't be too many more years before they have "wimmen preachas".

You watch!!

Your lack of understanding of the truth does not change the truth. Neither is it changed by the many in the Catholic Faith who mangle it, oppose it (as I said, they SHOULD leave), or fail to live it properly. Truth is truth and the Lord Jesus Christ established one office on earth to protect that truth for all time.

In closing, let me ask you this: in a country filled with pagans, when the average pagan looks out of his villge and sees 15 different Christian assemblies, all preaching something different, even to the point of telling him different ways to get to Heaven, how can he not feel that Christianity is a religion of simple minded idiots?

If the men who wrote the paragraphs I posted in the first post could see today what Protestantism has become, they would be spinning in their graves like pinwheels!! <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/jawdrop.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/jawdrop.gif" alt="" />

Cordially in Christ,


Brother Ed