aqwsed12345
JoinedPosts by aqwsed12345
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Why Do JW's Believe that Hell is Symbolic When the Disciples of the Apostles believed it Was Literal ?
by Sea Breeze inlooks like the early christians believed jesus when he warned about hell over 40 times.
why don't the jw's do the same?.
from “the epistle of barnabas” (70-130ad).
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Heretic!!!
by cellomould inafter the roman church had consolidated its power in the early middle ages, heretics came to be regarded as enemies of society.
the crime of heresy was defined as a deliberate denial of an article of truth of the catholic faith, and a public and obstinate persistence in that alleged error.
at this time, there was a sense of christian unity among townspeople and rulers alike, and most of them agreed with the church that heretics seemed to threaten society itself.. however, the repression of heresy remained unorganized, and with the large scale heresies in the 11th and 12th centuries, pope gregory ix instituted the papal inquisition in 1231 for the apprehension and trial of heretics.
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aqwsed12345
Most Protestant fundamentalists live with the belief that more people died during the Inquisition than in any war or epidemic. Huge numbers circulate among them, based on nothing but their own concocted statistics. Interestingly, these numbers keep growing, as if they are trying to outbid each other, to surpass one another. What started as several thousand victims per year has become five thousand, then ten thousand, one hundred thousand, and then it continued to the point where now there are 25 million, 50 million (as Milton Carroll says in "Trail of Blood… 1931"), and even one popular fundamentalist book (Jack T. Chick's "Smokescreens. Chick Pub. 1983.") attributes 68 million victims to the Spanish Inquisition alone, and if we add his other claims, that amounts to 95 million!
These million figures are so grotesque that they cast doubt on the sanity of their authors, but let's just consider it a case of demographic ignorance.
The total population of Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries was about 45-60 million people, and it only reached 100 million by the end of the 17th century (this can even be verified in a high school textbook). Moreover, there was no Inquisition in Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, or the British Isles. The Inquisition primarily affected Southern France, Italy, Spain, and certain areas of the Holy Roman Empire.
Furthermore, historians can point out signs of every major population decrease in social, societal, and demographic structures, as well as in archaeological excavations, such as plagues, wars, etc. However, no such evidence has been found in the territories affected by the Inquisition, and there can only be one reason for this: the small number of victims. This is also supported by the documents recording the Inquisition proceedings (which was mandatory in every case). Based on these and other historical research, the current position of historians (independent of the Catholic Church) is that the number of victims can only be placed in the thousands.
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Heretic!!!
by cellomould inafter the roman church had consolidated its power in the early middle ages, heretics came to be regarded as enemies of society.
the crime of heresy was defined as a deliberate denial of an article of truth of the catholic faith, and a public and obstinate persistence in that alleged error.
at this time, there was a sense of christian unity among townspeople and rulers alike, and most of them agreed with the church that heretics seemed to threaten society itself.. however, the repression of heresy remained unorganized, and with the large scale heresies in the 11th and 12th centuries, pope gregory ix instituted the papal inquisition in 1231 for the apprehension and trial of heretics.
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aqwsed12345
"Saying the church is holy but the people transgress....well, I'm not buying it. The people are the church."
The Church is made up of people, but the Church is an institution, a legal entity, which by definition cannot even sin. The historical facts of the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the Galileo trial etc. do not discredit the Church, firstly because the sanctity of the Church is not diminished if some of its members commit sins; secondly, because the anti-church historical perspective greatly exaggerates the significance of these events, while at the same time silencing many holy and righteous moments that would significantly change the perception of them.
Apostle Paul also found serious mistakes and sins in the early Church, but it never crossed his mind that the Church had ceased to be a Church and to be holy. He demands excommunication, not a new foundation: "It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans; for a man has his father's wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you" (1 Corinthians 5:1). Jesus said that sins and scandals are inevitable in a community, but the consequences are personal: "It is impossible that no offenses should come, but woe to him through whom they do come!" (Luke 17:1). ....so only "to him", not to the Church at al!!!
If, with the spread of the Church, the initial fervor cooled, and mass conversions brought with them the weeds, sometimes to an extent that it seemed to threaten to suppress the good harvest: there was never a time in the Church when shadows extinguished all light. Its indestructible holy vitality was shown anew by rising from its lows by its own strength: precisely in times of lethargy and moral low tides, it conceived and nurtured within its own bosom the heroes who brought a new religious dawn (great ecclesiastical innovators, founders of monastic orders; e.g., in the 13th and 16th centuries). The fact that the Church sometimes exhibits very great abuses and sad declines in the field of religious and moral life is due to:
1. The uncompromising purity and sublimity of the Catholic ideal, against which human nature, disciplined into strict discipline, is more prone to passionate rebellion than against indifferent or compromising educators.
2. With certain psychological regularity, great declines follow or accompany great upsurges; where there are no high mountains, there are also no deep valleys or chasms threatening.
3. The pervasive deficiencies among the ecclesiastical leaders in the Catholic Church have a stronger impact due to the hierarchical principle than in other congregations; and conversely, because here the priesthood is not a caste, not an Aaronic priesthood, but every generation of priests is recruited from among the faithful, and the decline in the moral and religious standard of the faithful also makes the renewal of the priesthood difficult.
"But what of the Jews? The church cannot claim the conversos were a threat?"
During the medieval and early modern Christian-Muslim armed conflicts, the Jews always fought on the side of the Muslims. The Jewish-Muslim relationship was not bad at all until the 20th century; in fact, Jews generally supported Islam over Christianity. It is not appropriate to project the current state (Israeli-Palestinian conflict) back into the past.
I suppose this would be justified by Jewish perspective historiography with the argument that they fared better under Muslim rule than under Christian dominion. The Christian perspective, on the other hand, suggests that this was because the Jews, using modern terminology, posed a national security risk as they potentially worked in the interest of Muslim rule. The question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, remains a good one.
The Spanish Inquisition was indeed characterized by extraordinary severity and lasted a long time. However, due to its origin, purpose, and methods, it requires a separate assessment. The Spaniards, having just liberated themselves from 700 years of Arab rule, used it for political objectives to maintain their hard-won national independence and unity, while preserving a veneer of religious character. Its organizer, the creator of Spanish national unity and royal absolutism, was Catholic Ferdinand (reigned 1479-1516), with its first chief inquisitor from 1481-98 being Tomasso Torquemada OP (†1498). The Inquisition's task was not so much the persecution of heresies, as there were hardly any heretical movements in Spain at that time, but rather the detection and suppression of numerous conspiracies against the newly formed Christian kingdom. Its cruelty (prolonged investigative imprisonment, torture, burning at the stake, life imprisonment) was often condemned by the popes, though with little result. The institution was not abolished until 1820. Whether the political goal of the Spanish Inquisition, the maintenance of national unity, could have been achieved in another way is difficult to say today, not least because political power has since then continued to use every means for similar objectives.
The Inquisition has become a real hobbyhorse of anti-church movements. It is necessary to criticize the barbaric and cruel methods of jurisprudence characteristic of the era, which resulted from the amalgamation of Roman law, as well as Frankish and Germanic legal customs, but it is important to recognize that this was typical of the time. The excesses of some representatives of the Church must also be criticized. However, the viewpoint that seeks to portray the Church as a discredited institution because of the Inquisition should be rejected. The number of victims of the Inquisition was large, but nowhere near as many (hundreds of thousands) as biased historiography, such as that of the Freemasons, tries to present. It lacks any scholarly basis to conflate the characteristics and severity of the Spanish Inquisition with the operation of the Inquisition in general. In evaluating the Inquisition, more objectivity and a more unbiased processing of the available documents would be necessary than has been the case to this day.
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New book on the Spanish Inquisition
by Dagney inhttp://www.npr.org/2012/01/23/145512271/the-inquisition-a-model-for-modern-interrogators .
very interesting.
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aqwsed12345
The official ecclesiastical procedure against heretics indeed had its excesses, but events from hundreds of years ago should not be judged by today's standards. To understand this, let's look at the formation of the Inquisition. The heretics of old (Cathars, Waldensians, Bogomils, Hussites) were far from being pious religious dreamers. They burned down churches, cities, killed people, and lived or propagated abnormal civil and sexual lives. The state had to act against these actions. When the state began using the accusation of heresy for political purges, the Church intervened and did not allow the state to arbitrarily decide who was a heretic and who was not. Thus, the Inquisition saved many people's lives, but history books do not write a word about this.
The perception of the Inquisition's scale and methods is also unfair. Many have been led to believe that the Inquisition massively and easily burned people at the stake, while subjecting them to terrible torture. It is true that torture was used in certain cases, but this was due to the spirit of the times, and the Church practiced mercy here too: The inquisitorial court used one kind of torture, while the secular courts' torture instruments were only limited by imagination. It's not without reason that many caught criminals invented a religious element in court ("the voices said"; "God messaged") so that their cases would be transferred from the secular to the inquisitorial court, where they could hope for a milder punishment. Thus, the majority of inquisitorial trials were ordinary criminal proceedings, and not "dramatic collisions of conscience and power." Death sentences were only issued in severe and common-law cases. The number of these was not more than two or three individuals per year. The severity of punishments is also relative. Indeed, the punishments were harsh. But the medieval person could endure them. In less softened peoples today, the justice system still uses more cutting methods.
True religious judgments were rare, and only very significant or particularly violent heretics were executed (e.g., Jan Hus). However, two factors come into play here. In the Middle Ages, God was considered the King of kings. Anyone who offended the king was sentenced to death for treason. Teaching heretical errors about God or falsifying His word was thought in the past to offend the King of kings, thus heretics were also sentenced to death. But remember, in the Middle Ages, Christianity was the state ideology, the main force of social cohesion. Attacks against it violated societal interests. Open critics of the state ideology were always punished. It's no different today: And it's not necessary to think only of the mass executions of the French Revolution, the Nazi concentration camps, or the communist gulags. Just observe the activities of national security agencies. In many Western countries, if someone is a mover of a movement considered "heresy" by the official medium, then the state power monitors and possibly shuts it down. Not without reason. Modern freedom of speech is not as straightforward as many believe. In many European countries, openly or even covertly offending certain nationalities or deviations is punished with imprisonment. The essence doesn't differ much from the persecution of heretics, and the methods are not far from those of the Inquisition.
Spain is an exception. Not only because the Inquisition operated most harshly there, but because there, the Inquisition was primarily in the hands of the state, not the church. This led to many abuses and mercies, but fundamentally, there was a reason for it. Spain was full of seemingly converted Moors who pretended to be Christians but were actually spying and trying to bring Europe under the crescent. These people were indeed sought out by all means. However, it's evident that the Inquisition also served a counter-intelligence function here. Its name reflected this: Sanctum Officium Inquisitionis, the Holy Office of Investigation.
So, the Inquisition had many dark sides, but these were not the consequences of the institution itself, but of human fallibility. It stands that the sanctity of the Church is not diminished if some of its members commit sins, because such scandals are unavoidable. If the inquisitors operated conscientiously, they cannot be faulted, for with their rigor, they protected the common people from common-law, religious criminals. There were saints among them.
Many believe that "the Catholic Church burned at the stake those of different faiths."
First of all, it was not simply "people of different faiths" who were burned, but rather the incorrigible rebels and deliberate religious subversives. Second, and most importantly, it was not the Church that burned them. The Church itself never burned anyone, either at the stake or otherwise. Death by burning is a terrible remnant of pagan Germanic law, which unfortunately, was adopted and maintained by virtually every state in the Middle Ages; and importantly, it was a state punishment, not an ecclesiastical one. Just because the state was so intertwined with the Church at the time and considered religious crimes as also state crimes: qualified as subversion and rebellion, hence sometimes the state power itself pursued the perpetrators of religious crimes with its often brutal means, including torture and burning at the stake. In determining the religious crime, ecclesiastical factors were of course consulted, and thus mixed courts were established, such as the Inquisition. The ecclesiastical factors unfortunately erred in often being too readily defenders of state excesses and not sufficiently opposing the cruel and often unjust methods of torture and punishment. In most cases, however, they did take action and it was the Church itself that repeatedly and vehemently spoke out against these barbaric customs.
In distributing death by burning, everyone was equally guilty at the time: individuals, society, the people, cities, and states, not least the heresies themselves, which also extensively used torture and other forms of torment against Catholics.
Many also believe that "the Inquisition led hundreds of thousands to a horrendous death."
The "hundreds and hundreds of thousands" is a mild exaggeration invented by the Spanish apostate Llorente and circulated by numerous fanatical anti-Catholic novelists. According to serious calculations, the number of victims of the Inquisition over 700 years falls well short of even the number of martyrs and those tortured during the English persecution of Catholics. Why do those who so readily mention the Inquisition remain silent about the much bloodier persecutions of Catholics in non-Catholic areas?
Moreover, the Inquisition itself was only partly an ecclesiastical institution, as we have already explained. It should also be added that the best-performing Spanish Inquisition was a state institution, established to monitor and neutralize the traitorous dealings of Arabs who remained in Spain after the long Moorish occupation and had ostensibly converted to Christianity, as well as the Jews who secretly allied with them. To this end, the judges of the Spanish Inquisition always first sought to determine whether the suspected Arabs and Jews could legitimately claim their baptismal certificates, that is, whether they were indeed living a Christian life or merely using baptism as a cover. This led to a unique mixing of religious and civil elements in the Spanish Inquisition. The Church cannot be held so responsible for the Spanish Inquisition to the extent that, on the contrary, it was the Roman Curia that protested against the actions of the Spanish Inquisition in many cases, seeing them as an unwarranted interference by the Spanish crown in ecclesiastical legal matters.
But what does the world know about this! The "Spanish Inquisition" is a hobbyhorse on which the enemies of the Church have happily ridden for a hundred years. Experts can refute the horror stories circulating about it a hundred times, but for some people, what matters is not whether something is true, but whether it can be used as a trump card against the Catholic Church.
In 1590, Antonio Pérez, the private secretary of Philip II, fled to France and then to Germany due to murder and treason charges. While there, he wrote a detailed report for the Protestants about Spain's deeds. But in revenge, he added two or more zeros to every number, thus inflating the number of victims to several million over a hundred years. The countries of William of Orange and Elizabeth I enthusiastically spread these writings that discredited the Spanish, which became known as La Leyenda Negra - The Black Legend. This, in turn, spread in the public consciousness through Anglo-Saxon historiography and has become indelibly embedded. Since then, no one has ever done so much harm to their own country.
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There were two types of Inquisition; the ecclesiastical and the Spanish Inquisition, which were fundamentally different from each other.
A. The ecclesiastical Inquisition (investigatory or examining committee, court) was the Church's institution against heretics to oversee the purity and unity of Christian doctrine, to unveil the schemes of those who would disrupt religious unity and church discipline, and to protect the misled from being led astray. This institution was founded based on a decree issued in 1184 by Pope Lucius in agreement with Frederick Barbarossa against the Albigensians; its main operational areas were southern France and northern Italy; its goal was to root out remnants of heresies dangerous to both the Church and the state (Waldensians, Cathars, Albigensians), to win them over, or to neutralize the stubborn ones.
Later, the ecclesiastical Inquisition targeted any heresy; it naturally did not apply to Jews unless it concerned baptized Jews who relapsed, as such individuals were treated as heretical Judaizers, just as apostate Christians who converted to Judaism.
These ecclesiastical inquisitional institutions were under the direct jurisdiction of bishops, thus they were episcopal investigatory seats, with a codified procedure. Pope Innocent IV in 1248 entrusted the Dominican Order with the ecclesiastical inquisitional authority over heresies. Just as the episcopal, so too the Dominican Inquisition spread across European states: beyond Spain, Portugal, and Italy, it reached France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and later England, wherever there was a desire to defend against dangerous heretics. However, European rulers later began using the Inquisition not to preserve the unity of faith but rather to secure their own power.
In dealing with ordinary heretics (Gottschalk, Abelard, Gilbert, Berengar, etc.), the ecclesiastical Inquisition's proceedings were mild; it aimed to neutralize them to the faithful through excommunication, at most imprisonment. However, if their teaching and attacks also aimed at subverting the ecclesiastical and social order, and if they did not cease their heresy but stubbornly clung to it, being found guilty not just against the faith but also against state laws, they were handed over to the secular authority, which typically punished such individuals with death by fire (burning at the stake) and confiscated their property. The Church itself never used physical punishments, especially not the death penalty. In interrogations, although the popes prohibited it, torture was sometimes used, following the disapproved practice and procedural model of that era's secular courts, but much less frequently and much more mildly than those courts, always considering the individual's constitution and the nature of the offense.
For what our more refined understanding and more humane sentiments may disapprove of in the Inquisition's proceedings, it is not the Church but the era that should be held responsible. Moreover, we must not forget that preserving the unity of faith and the Christian social order against disruptive elements, dangerous fanatics, and deliberate wrongdoers demanded stern and effective measures in those harsh times; the heresies that called the (ecclesiastical) Inquisition into existence threatened the very foundations of family, state, marriage, private property, and society itself, and if they had prevailed, culture would have been destroyed, and humanity would have regressed into barbarism after 600 years of the Church's sacrificial labor.
The institution of the ecclesiastical Inquisition was reorganized by Pope Paul III in 1542, and Pope Sixtus V abolished it in 1587, replacing it with the Congregatio Romanae et universalis Inquisitionis Sancti Officii (Holy Office), a church committee attentive to the purity of faith, composed of cardinals and distinguished theologians, alongside several ecclesiastical and secular legal scholars.
B. The Spanish Inquisition was established by the Spanish state power under Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella towards the end of the 15th century (1480), primarily operating in Spain. Its goal was to preserve Spanish national and religious unity by subduing elements dangerous to the state, namely the uncontrollable Marranos (secret Jews) and later the Moriscos (secret Muslims), who mocked Christianity.
It is a great misconception or a result of malicious intent to claim that the primary purpose of the Spanish Inquisition was the confiscation of Jewish property, which was then shared between the crown and the Church. Its primary and foremost goal was the protection of Christianity and the Spanish nationality against the engulfing Maranos, or the secret Judaism hiding under a Christian guise.
The Spanish Inquisition, although retaining the external forms of the ecclesiastical Inquisition, was not a Church but a secular, state, political institution. Its inquisitors, whether clerical or lay, were appointed by the king, who also dismissed them from their positions, provided their remuneration, and issued instructions; they exercised their power — even if they were priests — not as the Church, but as the state, the king's officials, and executed judgments in his name.
However, this institution, originally established for racial protection purposes, increasingly became a precursor to royal absolutism against the nobility and clergy.
In his historical work, the Jewish author Heinrich Grätz, discussing the Spanish Inquisition from his own Jewish bias, calls Isabella "bigoted" and zealously claims that she and Ferdinand, by establishing the Inquisition, paved the way for Spain's impoverishment and decline. (Geschichte der Juden, V. Bd. Leipzig, 1864. pp. 300—363.) However, he is mistaken, as Spain's subsequent decline was caused by other factors.
Undeniably, Ferdinand, with the Spanish Inquisition, not only created national and religious unity but, as the Inquisition later primarily aimed to prevent the infiltration of Protestantism starting with Martin Luther (1483—1546), saved Spain from the schism that, at the beginning of the modern era, brought bloody civil wars to other European countries.
The Spanish Inquisition worked with extremely harsh means (prolonged investigative imprisonment, torture, life imprisonment, death by burning).
The Spanish Inquisition cannot and should not be attributed to the Church, as the popes protested against this state institution, often raising their voices against its excessive harshness and, especially initially, severe abuses.
The Spanish Inquisition was abolished only in 1820, after about two and a half centuries of operation. It was briefly revived later but was permanently abolished by the council of state in 1834. In Portugal, the Inquisition was dissolved in 1821.
When attacking the Inquisition, it is usually the Spanish Inquisition that is meant, as the anti-Inquisition accusations typically refer specifically to it. However, even with the Spanish Inquisition, the following should not be overlooked:
a) Primarily, that the main goal of the Spanish Inquisition was originally to investigate the dealings of Marranos and Moriscos (apparently converted Moors) who were conspiring against Christian Spain and plotting multiple uprisings. This was not directly a religious matter but one of state security. In the centuries-long defensive struggle that Spanish Christianity waged against its sworn enemies, the Moors and Jews, the Inquisition was the last weapon of the Christian national kingdom against the overconfident (secret) Jewry aiming to subject all of Spain under Jewish rule, and the Moors (Moriscos) counting on the support of their African co-religionists and the Turks to re-establish the old Moorish rule. The Spaniards, who had suffered under Moorish rule for nearly 800 years, dreaded its return and the subsequent subjugation of Spain.
b) The jurisprudence of the 15th century was merciless, even cruel, worldwide; however, despite its strictness, the prosecutorial process of the Spanish Inquisition was much more humane and milder than that of all other secular, state courts of the era. The Inquisition exercised much greater caution in the use of torture compared to the courts of other countries. Only with special permission from the chief inquisitor and always in the presence of a supervising physician could physical punishment be applied; over time, the original severity lessened; from 1500 onwards, the repeated use of torture was strictly forbidden. The reason the Middle Ages used torture (torture for confession) is that the medieval justice system believed that the queen of evidence (regina probationum) was not the testimony of witnesses but the confession. — Death by fire (burning at the stake) was not a punishment exclusive to heretics, but in the 15th and 16th centuries, it was a special punitive tool for those who offended the divine Majesty.
The prisons of the Inquisition were also different from the prisons of that era; they were well-arched, bright, and dry rooms where the prisoner was not shackled and could move around. The provision of food was much better than in other prisons. Special care was given to the sick prisoners. The Inquisition's representatives occasionally inquired whether the supervisors and guards were treating the prisoners well.
The auto-da-fé was not the burning of the condemned, as sensationalist historians and novelists narrate. The Spanish word fé (faith) should not be confused with the French feu (fire). The auto-da-fé, in Latin: actus fidei (= act of faith, deed of faith) was a religious act, either the release of the innocent or the reconciliation of the repentant sinner with the Church, symbolized by holding a burning candle in hand as a sign of their revived faith, making a confession of faith (actus fidei) and renouncing heretical doctrines, accompanied by an exhortatory sermon.
The immuratio (from the Latin murus = wall) was not "being walled alive" as some novelists who do not understand medieval Latin think, but imprisonment; placing the individual in solitary confinement (“between four walls”).
The sanbenito or sacbenito (from Latin: saccus benedictus; Spanish: sacco bendito = blessed sack) was neither a "straitjacket" nor a "mocking cloak," but a type of robe made of coarse, yellowish-brown linen, consecrated by the Church for penance. Many medieval rulers also donned such garments towards the end of their lives in preparation for death. Those absolved by the Inquisition were required to wear this for a certain period. The garments of the obstinate heretics handed over to the secular authority for execution typically had flames and images of the devil painted on them.
c) The victims of the Inquisition were not all punished for their faith or lack thereof (heresy); under Torquemada's inquisitorship, the Spanish Inquisition dealt not only with religious offenses but also a whole range of other moral crimes and civil, political felonies: blasphemy, polygamy (imported from the Moors), fornication, sodomy, church pillaging, espionage, treason, rebellion, murder, smuggling, usury, witchcraft, and the "witch trials."
d) Like all human institutions, the Spanish Inquisition also had its abuses. It is undeniable that the Spanish Inquisition often treated the accused with excessive harshness; it is also undeniable that the number of its victims was not insignificant. (According to Gams, III, 2. p. 74, the number of those executed for heresy was about 4000.) However, it is also undeniable that biased and deliberately falsifying historiography, mainly by anti-church historians who wish to hold the Church responsible for the errors of the Spanish Inquisition, unscrupulously embellish its cruelties and unjustly exaggerate the number of its victims, especially based on the biased work "Histoire critique de l’inquisition d'Espagne" (Paris, 1817—1818) by Juan Antonio Llorente (1756—1823), a Spanish apostate canon and free-thinking writer who was forced to flee to France due to treason but was later also expelled from there. Llorente, the "homo mendax," had his exaggerations and distortions recently refuted by the Protestant Schäfer ("Beiträge zur Geschichte des spanischen Protestantismus und der Inquisition des 16. Jahrhunderts, 1902. 3 volumes). Nonetheless, due to the biased falsifications of anti-church historians, the horror stories told about the Spanish Inquisition are ineradicable from pulp fiction novels.
e) The inquisitors, accused of religious intolerance, were no more tolerant towards Catholics than the so-called reformers of the 16th and 17th centuries, nor did they respect "freedom of conscience" any more. In fact, they practiced the Protestant principle of "cuius regio, eius religio" (the religion of the ruler is the religion of the state) — which gained ground through its enforcement — with even less tolerance and more cruelty towards Catholics than the Inquisition. (Zwingli, Calvin, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Elizabeth, etc.)
f) Even if we were to believe all the exaggerations that anti-church writers like to tell, it is certain that during the entire duration of the Inquisition's operation, not as many people fell victim as in just one of those countries where Protestantism was introduced by force of arms, such as England, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Ireland, etc., where thousands of Catholics loyal to their faith and the Pope were murdered. What is the Spanish Inquisition compared to the martyrs of Protestant intolerance!?... Compared to the horrors of the Protestant investigative courts and blood courts, the Spanish Inquisition was — an innocent matter... And yet, although these facts are well known and not even denied by objective Protestant historians, — they are usually silenced, and the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition are shamelessly blamed on the Catholic Church (!).
g) The enemies of the Church, in order to create sentiment against the Church, either out of ignorance or malice, attribute the severity of the Spanish Inquisition to the Church, whereas it was precisely the Popes (Sixtus IV, Leo X, Gregory XIII, Paul III) who repeatedly protested against the Spanish Inquisition as applied by the Spanish kings, and even wanted to abolish or at least reform the entire institution. They repeatedly excommunicated abusive inquisitors, constantly admonished the judges to moderation, but their decrees were embezzled or their proclamations were prevented by the kings.
h) The Church has never converted, nor does it convert by force, because its principal stance is that no one should be compelled to embrace the Catholic faith against their will. ("Ad amplexandam fidem catholicam nemo invitus cogatur". CIC. can. 1351.), and that the purity of faith should be preserved solely by spiritual means. (Forced conversions have never redounded to the glory of the Church, neither under the rule of the Visigoths nor in later times with forced baptisms.) Therefore, the Church has always disapproved of religious coercion originating from the state, as practiced by the Inquisition, whose legitimacy it can never recognize. This is why, no matter how useful the Inquisition was to Spain, the Popes always disapproved and condemned its acts of violence and every single act of cruelty.
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Heretic!!!
by cellomould inafter the roman church had consolidated its power in the early middle ages, heretics came to be regarded as enemies of society.
the crime of heresy was defined as a deliberate denial of an article of truth of the catholic faith, and a public and obstinate persistence in that alleged error.
at this time, there was a sense of christian unity among townspeople and rulers alike, and most of them agreed with the church that heretics seemed to threaten society itself.. however, the repression of heresy remained unorganized, and with the large scale heresies in the 11th and 12th centuries, pope gregory ix instituted the papal inquisition in 1231 for the apprehension and trial of heretics.
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aqwsed12345
There were two types of Inquisition; the ecclesiastical and the Spanish Inquisition, which were fundamentally different from each other.
A. The ecclesiastical Inquisition (investigatory or examining committee, court) was the Church's institution against heretics to oversee the purity and unity of Christian doctrine, to unveil the schemes of those who would disrupt religious unity and church discipline, and to protect the misled from being led astray. This institution was founded based on a decree issued in 1184 by Pope Lucius in agreement with Frederick Barbarossa against the Albigensians; its main operational areas were southern France and northern Italy; its goal was to root out remnants of heresies dangerous to both the Church and the state (Waldensians, Cathars, Albigensians), to win them over, or to neutralize the stubborn ones.
Later, the ecclesiastical Inquisition targeted any heresy; it naturally did not apply to Jews unless it concerned baptized Jews who relapsed, as such individuals were treated as heretical Judaizers, just as apostate Christians who converted to Judaism.
These ecclesiastical inquisitional institutions were under the direct jurisdiction of bishops, thus they were episcopal investigatory seats, with a codified procedure. Pope Innocent IV in 1248 entrusted the Dominican Order with the ecclesiastical inquisitional authority over heresies. Just as the episcopal, so too the Dominican Inquisition spread across European states: beyond Spain, Portugal, and Italy, it reached France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and later England, wherever there was a desire to defend against dangerous heretics. However, European rulers later began using the Inquisition not to preserve the unity of faith but rather to secure their own power.
In dealing with ordinary heretics (Gottschalk, Abelard, Gilbert, Berengar, etc.), the ecclesiastical Inquisition's proceedings were mild; it aimed to neutralize them to the faithful through excommunication, at most imprisonment. However, if their teaching and attacks also aimed at subverting the ecclesiastical and social order, and if they did not cease their heresy but stubbornly clung to it, being found guilty not just against the faith but also against state laws, they were handed over to the secular authority, which typically punished such individuals with death by fire (burning at the stake) and confiscated their property. The Church itself never used physical punishments, especially not the death penalty. In interrogations, although the popes prohibited it, torture was sometimes used, following the disapproved practice and procedural model of that era's secular courts, but much less frequently and much more mildly than those courts, always considering the individual's constitution and the nature of the offense.
For what our more refined understanding and more humane sentiments may disapprove of in the Inquisition's proceedings, it is not the Church but the era that should be held responsible. Moreover, we must not forget that preserving the unity of faith and the Christian social order against disruptive elements, dangerous fanatics, and deliberate wrongdoers demanded stern and effective measures in those harsh times; the heresies that called the (ecclesiastical) Inquisition into existence threatened the very foundations of family, state, marriage, private property, and society itself, and if they had prevailed, culture would have been destroyed, and humanity would have regressed into barbarism after 600 years of the Church's sacrificial labor.
The institution of the ecclesiastical Inquisition was reorganized by Pope Paul III in 1542, and Pope Sixtus V abolished it in 1587, replacing it with the Congregatio Romanae et universalis Inquisitionis Sancti Officii (Holy Office), a church committee attentive to the purity of faith, composed of cardinals and distinguished theologians, alongside several ecclesiastical and secular legal scholars.
B. The Spanish Inquisition was established by the Spanish state power under Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella towards the end of the 15th century (1480), primarily operating in Spain. Its goal was to preserve Spanish national and religious unity by subduing elements dangerous to the state, namely the uncontrollable Maranos (secret Jews) and later the Moriscos (secret Muslims), who mocked Christianity.
It is a great misconception or a result of malicious intent to claim that the primary purpose of the Spanish Inquisition was the confiscation of Jewish property, which was then shared between the crown and the church. Its primary and foremost goal was the protection of Christianity and the Spanish nationality against the engulfing Maranos, or the secret Judaism hiding under a Christian guise.
The Spanish Inquisition, although retaining the external forms of the ecclesiastical Inquisition, was not a church but a secular, state, political institution. Its inquisitors, whether clerical or lay, were appointed by the king, who also dismissed them from their positions, provided their remuneration, and issued instructions; they exercised their power — even if they were priests — not as the Church, but as the state, the king's officials, and executed judgments in his name.
However, this institution, originally established for racial protection purposes, increasingly became a precursor to royal absolutism against the nobility and clergy.
In his historical work, the Jewish author Grätz, discussing the Spanish Inquisition from his own Jewish bias, calls Isabella "bigoted" and zealously claims that she and Ferdinand, by establishing the Inquisition, paved the way for Spain's impoverishment and decline. (Geschichte der Juden, V. Bd. Leipzig, 1864. pp. 300—363.) However, he is mistaken, as Spain's subsequent decline was caused by other factors.
Undeniably, Ferdinand, with the Spanish Inquisition, not only created national and religious unity but, as the Inquisition later primarily aimed to prevent the infiltration of Protestantism starting with Martin Luther (1483—1546), saved Spain from the schism that, at the beginning of the modern era, brought bloody civil wars to other European countries.
The Spanish Inquisition worked with extremely harsh means (prolonged investigative imprisonment, torture, life imprisonment, death by burning).
The Spanish Inquisition cannot and should not be attributed to the Church, as the popes protested against this state institution, often raising their voices against its excessive harshness and, especially initially, severe abuses.
The Spanish Inquisition was abolished only in 1820, after about two and a half centuries of operation. It was briefly revived later but was permanently abolished by the council of state in 1834. In Portugal, the Inquisition was dissolved in 1821.
When attacking the Inquisition, it is usually the Spanish Inquisition that is meant, as the anti-Inquisition accusations typically refer specifically to it. However, even with the Spanish Inquisition, the following should not be overlooked:
a) Primarily, that the main goal of the Spanish Inquisition was originally to investigate the dealings of Maranos and Moriscos (apparently converted Moors) who were conspiring against Christian Spain and plotting multiple uprisings. This was not directly a religious matter but one of state security. In the centuries-long defensive struggle that Spanish Christianity waged against its sworn enemies, the Moors and Jews, the Inquisition was the last weapon of the Christian national kingdom against the overconfident (secret) Jewry aiming to subject all of Spain under Jewish rule, and the Moors (Moriscos) counting on the support of their African co-religionists and the Turks to re-establish the old Moorish rule. The Spaniards, who had suffered under Moorish rule for nearly 800 years, dreaded its return and the subsequent subjugation of Spain.
b) The jurisprudence of the 15th century was merciless, even cruel, worldwide; however, despite its strictness, the prosecutorial process of the Spanish Inquisition was much more humane and milder than that of all other secular, state courts of the era. The Inquisition exercised much greater caution in the use of torture compared to the courts of other countries. Only with special permission from the chief inquisitor and always in the presence of a supervising physician could physical punishment be applied; over time, the original severity lessened; from 1500 onwards, the repeated use of torture was strictly forbidden. The reason the Middle Ages used torture (torture for confession) is that the medieval justice system believed that the queen of evidence (regina probationum) was not the testimony of witnesses but the confession. — Death by fire (burning at the stake) was not a punishment exclusive to heretics, but in the 15th and 16th centuries, it was a special punitive tool for those who offended the divine Majesty.
The prisons of the Inquisition were also different from the prisons of that era; they were well-arched, bright, and dry rooms where the prisoner was not shackled and could move around. The provision of food was much better than in other prisons. Special care was given to the sick prisoners. The Inquisition's representatives occasionally inquired whether the supervisors and guards were treating the prisoners well.
The auto-da-fé was not the burning of the condemned, as sensationalist historians and novelists narrate. The Spanish word fé (faith) should not be confused with the French feu (fire). The auto-da-fé, in Latin: actus fidei (= act of faith, deed of faith) was a religious act, either the release of the innocent or the reconciliation of the repentant sinner with the Church, symbolized by holding a burning candle in hand as a sign of their revived faith, making a confession of faith (actus fidei) and renouncing heretical doctrines, accompanied by an exhortatory sermon.
The immuratio (from the Latin murus = wall) was not "being walled alive" as some novelists who do not understand medieval Latin think, but imprisonment; placing the individual in solitary confinement (“between four walls”).
The sanbenito or sacbenito (from Latin: saccus benedictus; Spanish: sacco bendito = blessed sack) was neither a "straitjacket" nor a "mocking cloak," but a type of robe made of coarse, yellowish-brown linen, consecrated by the church for penance. Many medieval rulers also donned such garments towards the end of their lives in preparation for death. Those absolved by the Inquisition were required to wear this for a certain period. The garments of the obstinate heretics handed over to the secular authority for execution typically had flames and images of the devil painted on them.
c) The victims of the Inquisition were not all punished for their faith or lack thereof (heresy); under Torquemada's inquisitorship, the Spanish Inquisition dealt not only with religious offenses but also a whole range of other moral crimes and civil, political felonies: blasphemy, polygamy (imported from the Moors), fornication, sodomy, church pillaging, espionage, treason, rebellion, murder, smuggling, usury, witchcraft, and the "witch trials."
d) Like all human institutions, the Spanish Inquisition also had its abuses. It is undeniable that the Spanish Inquisition often treated the accused with excessive harshness; it is also undeniable that the number of its victims was not insignificant. (According to Gams, III, 2. p. 74, the number of those executed for heresy was about 4000.) However, it is also undeniable that biased and deliberately falsifying historiography, mainly by anti-church historians who wish to hold the Church responsible for the errors of the Spanish Inquisition, unscrupulously embellish its cruelties and unjustly exaggerate the number of its victims, especially based on the biased work "Histoire critique de l’inquisition d'Espagne" (Paris, 1817—1818) by Juan Antonio Llorente (1756—1823), a Spanish apostate canon and free-thinking writer who was forced to flee to France due to treason but was later also expelled from there. Llorente, the "homo mendax," had his exaggerations and distortions recently refuted by the Protestant Schäfer ("Beiträge zur Geschichte des spanischen Protestantismus und der Inquisition des 16. Jahrhunderts, 1902. 3 volumes). Nonetheless, due to the biased falsifications of anti-church historians, the horror stories told about the Spanish Inquisition are ineradicable from pulp fiction novels.
e) The inquisitors, accused of religious intolerance, were no more tolerant towards Catholics than the so-called reformers of the 16th and 17th centuries, nor did they respect "freedom of conscience" any more. In fact, they practiced the Protestant principle of "cuius regio, eius religio" (the religion of the ruler is the religion of the state) — which gained ground through its enforcement — with even less tolerance and more cruelty towards Catholics than the Inquisition. (Zwingli, Calvin, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Elizabeth, etc.)
f) Even if we were to believe all the exaggerations that anti-church writers like to tell, it is certain that during the entire duration of the Inquisition's operation, not as many people fell victim as in just one of those countries where Protestantism was introduced by force of arms, such as England, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Ireland, etc., where thousands of Catholics loyal to their faith and the Pope were murdered. What is the Spanish Inquisition compared to the martyrs of Protestant intolerance!?... Compared to the horrors of the Protestant investigative courts and blood courts, the Spanish Inquisition was — an innocent matter... And yet, although these facts are well known and not even denied by objective Protestant historians, — they are usually silenced, and the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition are shamelessly blamed on the Catholic Church (!).
g) The enemies of the Church, in order to create sentiment against the Church, either out of ignorance or malice, attribute the severity of the Spanish Inquisition to the Church, whereas it was precisely the Popes (Sixtus IV, Leo X, Gregory XIII, Paul III) who repeatedly protested against the Spanish Inquisition as applied by the Spanish kings, and even wanted to abolish or at least reform the entire institution. They repeatedly excommunicated abusive inquisitors, constantly admonished the judges to moderation, but their decrees were embezzled or their proclamations were prevented by the kings.
h) The Church has never converted, nor does it convert by force, because its principal stance is that no one should be compelled to embrace the Catholic faith against their will. ("Ad amplexandam fidem catholicam nemo invitus cogatur". CIC. can. 1351.), and that the purity of faith should be preserved solely by spiritual means. (Forced conversions have never redounded to the glory of the Church, neither under the rule of the Visigoths nor in later times with forced baptisms.) Therefore, the Church has always disapproved of religious coercion originating from the state, as practiced by the Inquisition, whose legitimacy it can never recognize. This is why, no matter how useful the Inquisition was to Spain, the Popes always disapproved and condemned its acts of violence and every single act of cruelty.
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Heretic!!!
by cellomould inafter the roman church had consolidated its power in the early middle ages, heretics came to be regarded as enemies of society.
the crime of heresy was defined as a deliberate denial of an article of truth of the catholic faith, and a public and obstinate persistence in that alleged error.
at this time, there was a sense of christian unity among townspeople and rulers alike, and most of them agreed with the church that heretics seemed to threaten society itself.. however, the repression of heresy remained unorganized, and with the large scale heresies in the 11th and 12th centuries, pope gregory ix instituted the papal inquisition in 1231 for the apprehension and trial of heretics.
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aqwsed12345
The official ecclesiastical procedure against heretics indeed had its excesses, but events from hundreds of years ago should not be judged by today's standards. To understand this, let's look at the formation of the Inquisition. The heretics of old (Cathars, Waldensians, Bogomils, Hussites) were far from being pious religious dreamers. They burned down churches, cities, killed people, and lived or propagated abnormal civil and sexual lives. The state had to act against these actions. When the state began using the accusation of heresy for political purges, the Church intervened and did not allow the state to arbitrarily decide who was a heretic and who was not. Thus, the Inquisition saved many people's lives, but history books do not write a word about this.
The perception of the Inquisition's scale and methods is also unfair. Many have been led to believe that the Inquisition massively and easily burned people at the stake, while subjecting them to terrible torture. It is true that torture was used in certain cases, but this was due to the spirit of the times, and the Church practiced mercy here too: The inquisitorial court used one kind of torture, while the secular courts' torture instruments were only limited by imagination. It's not without reason that many caught criminals invented a religious element in court ("the voices said"; "God messaged") so that their cases would be transferred from the secular to the inquisitorial court, where they could hope for a milder punishment. Thus, the majority of inquisitorial trials were ordinary criminal proceedings, and not "dramatic collisions of conscience and power." Death sentences were only issued in severe and common-law cases. The number of these was not more than two or three individuals per year. The severity of punishments is also relative. Indeed, the punishments were harsh. "But the medieval person could endure them. In less softened peoples today, the justice system still uses more cutting methods" (Tamás Mehrle O.P.: The teachings of St. Dominic's life).
True religious judgments were rare, and only very significant or particularly violent heretics were executed (e.g., Jan Hus). However, two factors come into play here. In the Middle Ages, God was considered the King of kings. Anyone who offended the king was sentenced to death for treason. Teaching heretical errors about God or falsifying His word was thought in the past to offend the King of kings, thus heretics were also sentenced to death. But remember, in the Middle Ages, Christianity was the state ideology, the main force of social cohesion. Attacks against it violated societal interests. Open critics of the state ideology were always punished. It's no different today: And it's not necessary to think only of the mass executions of the Great French Revolution, the Nazi concentration camps, or the communist gulags. Just observe the activities of national security agencies. In many Western countries, if someone is a mover of a movement considered "heresy" by the official medium, then the state power monitors and possibly shuts it down. Not without reason. Modern freedom of speech is not as straightforward as many believe. In many European countries, openly or even covertly offending certain nationalities or deviations is punished with imprisonment. The essence doesn't differ much from the persecution of heretics, and the methods are not far from those of the Inquisition.
Spain is an exception. Not only because the Inquisition operated most harshly there, but because there, the Inquisition was primarily in the hands of the state, not the church. This led to many abuses and mercies, but fundamentally, there was a reason for it. Spain was full of seemingly converted Moors who pretended to be Christians but were actually spying and trying to bring Europe under the crescent. These people were indeed sought out by all means. However, it's evident that the Inquisition also served a counter-intelligence function here. Its name reflected this: Sanctum Officium Inquisitionis, the Holy Office of Investigation.
So, the Inquisition had many dark sides, but these were not the consequences of the institution itself, but of human fallibility. It stands that the sanctity of the Church is not diminished if some of its members commit sins, because such scandals are unavoidable. If the inquisitors operated conscientiously, they cannot be faulted, for with their rigor, they protected the common people from common-law, religious criminals. There were saints among them.
Many believe that "the Catholic Church burned at the stake those of different faiths."
First of all, it was not simply "people of different faiths" who were burned, but rather the incorrigible rebels and deliberate religious subversives. Second, and most importantly, it was not the Church that burned them. The Church itself never burned anyone, either at the stake or otherwise. Death by burning is a terrible remnant of pagan Germanic law, which unfortunately, was adopted and maintained by virtually every state in the Middle Ages; and importantly, it was a state punishment, not an ecclesiastical one. Just because the state was so intertwined with the Church at the time and considered religious crimes as also state crimes: qualified as subversion and rebellion, hence sometimes the state power itself pursued the perpetrators of religious crimes with its often brutal means, including torture and burning at the stake. In determining the religious crime, ecclesiastical factors were of course consulted, and thus mixed courts were established, such as the Inquisition. The ecclesiastical factors unfortunately erred in often being too readily defenders of state excesses and not sufficiently opposing the cruel and often unjust methods of torture and punishment. In most cases, however, they did take action and it was the Church itself that repeatedly and vehemently spoke out against these barbaric customs.
In distributing death by burning, everyone was equally guilty at the time: individuals, society, the people, cities, and states, not least the heresies themselves, which also extensively used torture and other forms of torment against Catholics.
Many also believe that "the Inquisition led hundreds of thousands to a horrendous death."
The "hundreds and hundreds of thousands" is a mild exaggeration invented by the Spanish apostate Llorente and circulated by numerous fanatical anti-Catholic novelists. According to serious calculations, the number of victims of the Inquisition over 700 years falls well short of even the number of martyrs and those tortured during the English persecution of Catholics. Why do those who so readily mention the Inquisition remain silent about the much bloodier persecutions of Catholics in non-Catholic areas?
Moreover, the Inquisition itself was only partly an ecclesiastical institution, as we have already explained. It should also be added that the best-performing Spanish Inquisition was a state institution, established to monitor and neutralize the traitorous dealings of Arabs who remained in Spain after the long Moorish occupation and had ostensibly converted to Christianity, as well as the Jews who secretly allied with them. To this end, the judges of the Spanish Inquisition always first sought to determine whether the suspected Arabs and Jews could legitimately claim their baptismal certificates, that is, whether they were indeed living a Christian life or merely using baptism as a cover. This led to a unique mixing of religious and civil elements in the Spanish Inquisition. The Church cannot be held so responsible for the Spanish Inquisition to the extent that, on the contrary, it was the Roman Curia that protested against the actions of the Spanish Inquisition in many cases, seeing them as an unwarranted interference by the Spanish crown in ecclesiastical legal matters.
But what does the world know about this! The "Spanish Inquisition" is a hobbyhorse on which the enemies of the Church have happily ridden for a hundred years. Experts can refute the horror stories circulating about it a hundred times, but for some people, what matters is not whether something is true, but whether it can be used as a trump card against the Catholic Church.
In 1590, Antonio Perez, the private secretary of Philip II, fled to France and then to Germany due to murder and treason charges. While there, he wrote a detailed report for the Protestants about Spain's deeds. But in revenge, he added two or more zeros to every number, thus inflating the number of victims to several million over a hundred years. The countries of William of Orange and Elizabeth I enthusiastically spread these writings that discredited the Spanish, which became known as La Leyenda Negra - The Black Legend. This, in turn, spread in the public consciousness through Anglo-Saxon historiography and has become indelibly embedded. Since then, no one has ever done so much harm to their own country.
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Interpretation of Acts 15:28,29
by Christianhonest inwhat does the mandate to "abstain from blood" mean for jehovah's witnesses freed from the control of the governing body?.
it had previously been understood that the best translation of acts 15: 28-30 was "to abstain from blood.
" however, a careful analysis of the passage shows that the best translation of this passage is "to abstain from (shedding) blood," where the word "pour out," which does not appear in ancient manuscripts and other biblical versions, does.it appears there understood in elliptical form.in the same way it happened in the case of colossians 1: 16-20 where the new world translation of the holy scriptures correctly inserted the word "other" several times, understood there in elliptical form, in the phrase of the original greek "all things ", thus obtaining the correct translation" all (other) things ".even though christianity reaffirms itself in translating this passage as saying that "through him all things were created", because he maintains that jesus is god according to his pagan doctrine of the trinity, multiple biblical passages sustainthe biblical truth that jesus is not jehovah god, but his beloved son that god later used as his creative partner.according to this paul said that "though he existed in the form of god, he did not give consideration to a usurpation, namely, that he should be equal to god, no, rather, he emptied himself and took the form of a slave and he came to be in the likeness of men, more than that, when he was in the manner of a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, yes, death on a torture stake, for this same reason, also, god he exalted a superior position and kindly gave him the name that is above all else, so that in jesus' name every knee of those [who are] in heaven and those who are [over] the earth and those [who are] under the ground, and openly recognize * every tongue that jesus christ is lord for the glory of god the father.
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aqwsed12345
Critique of Jehovah's Witnesses' blood policy by Raymond Franz, a former member of Jehovah' Witnesses' Governing Body.
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Interpretation of Acts 15:28,29
by Christianhonest inwhat does the mandate to "abstain from blood" mean for jehovah's witnesses freed from the control of the governing body?.
it had previously been understood that the best translation of acts 15: 28-30 was "to abstain from blood.
" however, a careful analysis of the passage shows that the best translation of this passage is "to abstain from (shedding) blood," where the word "pour out," which does not appear in ancient manuscripts and other biblical versions, does.it appears there understood in elliptical form.in the same way it happened in the case of colossians 1: 16-20 where the new world translation of the holy scriptures correctly inserted the word "other" several times, understood there in elliptical form, in the phrase of the original greek "all things ", thus obtaining the correct translation" all (other) things ".even though christianity reaffirms itself in translating this passage as saying that "through him all things were created", because he maintains that jesus is god according to his pagan doctrine of the trinity, multiple biblical passages sustainthe biblical truth that jesus is not jehovah god, but his beloved son that god later used as his creative partner.according to this paul said that "though he existed in the form of god, he did not give consideration to a usurpation, namely, that he should be equal to god, no, rather, he emptied himself and took the form of a slave and he came to be in the likeness of men, more than that, when he was in the manner of a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, yes, death on a torture stake, for this same reason, also, god he exalted a superior position and kindly gave him the name that is above all else, so that in jesus' name every knee of those [who are] in heaven and those who are [over] the earth and those [who are] under the ground, and openly recognize * every tongue that jesus christ is lord for the glory of god the father.
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Revelation 13 and 17 Beasts
by Duran inrevelation 17:8-11,12-14. revelation 13:3,5,7,8,10;11:2,3. revelation 13:11-17;19:19,20,21. revelation 15:2;20:4. what beast does it state that gets thrown into the fiery lake with the false prophet?
what beast gets the 42-month authority given to it in which time the motb is given out?.
what beast is the 8th king?.
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aqwsed12345
Babylon is indeed an important biblical symbol, and it's beneficial to understand what characterizes it! In chapters 17-20 of the Book of Revelation, we see Babylon, the pagan Rome of that time, the beast which is the symbol of all antichrist powers, a caricature of the dominion of Christ. Wherever there is a quest for world domination, the beast is present, Satan, who lies as he did during the temptation of Jesus in the desert, claiming that he owns the whole world and gives it to whom he wishes. This is the diabolic imitation of Christianity. John looks at his own time, sees the evil, the mighty forces of human frailty, the power of the Roman empire, but he also sees that these cannot compare with the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ because, pardon the expression, they are not in the same weight class. Emperors die, empires vanish, ideologies disintegrate, but the incorruptible body of Christ lives, and a Christian can eat from the tree of life every day. Here too, it is proven that the sufferings of this life are not comparable to the glory that will be revealed to us in the future (Romans 8:18).
Babylon is a symbol, a symbol of Roman power persecuting Christians. But Babylon lives on, and as long as there is human history, there will be Babylon. In the twentieth century, we all witnessed empires collapsing. The older generation still remembers the self-satisfied communist propaganda of the fifties, and the even older generation has memories of the haughty self-glorification of fascist ideology. Both promised world salvation, an earthly paradise, and saw themselves as eternal, while producing mountains of corpses and committing atrocious wickedness. But behold, these too have failed, not primarily for political or economic reasons, but essentially because of an anthropological error: they wanted to build a great and eternal empire against God, which is so contrary to human created nature that it cannot last long.
Of course, unfortunately, new Babylons are also forming, and perhaps every century, every generation is given the opportunity to witness the rise and fall of a Babylon. Our era too produces its own antichrist empire, which I dare not name, just as John did not dare to name his own in his time. Let him who has understanding figure it out. It could be an empire, an organization, a concept, an ideology that opposes God's universal rule. The essence of Babylon is the striving for world domination, characterized by a fierce hatred for the revealed religion, for the mystery of the cross, which first hides behind the veil of tolerance, false peace, saying: man is allowed everything, and then one day openly attacks the Church of Christ. It is characterized by the complete twisting of God's laws, the parliamentary voting down of the Ten Commandments one by one, the complete relativization of the most basic categories, such as male and female, life and death. With a powerful apparatus, it makes the media of the time its vassal, through which it manipulates people's thinking and subverts their values.
Let us not be so naive as to not see behind all this the machinations of the personal evil, Satan. The new Babylons are built according to his plans, even if those who execute the plan do not know who their leader is. Therefore, whenever someone approaches us with fine theories to incorporate us into an organization, let us have the courage to ask in whose name they come, who sent them, to whom they are accountable, from their immediate boss to the highest leader.
Rev. 17:1–6. The harlot on the beast. Through the mediation of one of the angels entrusted with pouring out the seven bowls of wrath, John becomes privy to a new vision. In verses 1-6, the angel shows the seer "great Babylon" (v. 5), upon which judgment will soon be executed. The first descriptor of great Babylon: "the great harlot, who sits upon many waters" (v. 1). Old Testament mode of expression for designating a wicked and idolatrous city as a "harlot" (Isaiah 1:21; 23:16; Nahum 3:4; Hosea 4:12; 5:3; Ezekiel 16:15; 23:1). The ancient Babylon literally "sat" on many waters, built over the irrigation canals led from the Euphrates (cf. Jeremiah 51:13). Rome was not located by the sea, nor did it have a river comparable to the Euphrates. But as we see from verse 15, "she who sits upon many waters" is not to be understood geographically but allegorically. Rome's religious immorality spread throughout the world through the idolatrous and antichrist nature of the emperor cult (cf. 14:8). "The wine of her fornication," offered by the "divine emperor" to all subdued and allied peoples, is the worship of a mortal man instead of the living God. It intoxicates the peoples with the emperor cult, giving them the illusion that the emperors can truly help them in the ultimate questions of life and fate.
The angel takes John "into the wilderness" "in the spirit." The wilderness here does not mean the same as in 12:6, in the case of the woman clothed with the sun. For the church, the "wilderness" means refuge. For the harlot Babylon, it is a sign of desolation, for according to Isaiah 21:1, the judgment came upon Babylon from the wilderness. In the wilderness appears the antithesis of the woman clothed with the sun, the church, a woman sitting on a red beast. The beast is the phenomenon known from chapter 13, which has seven heads and ten horns (cf. 13:1). The color red (cf. 12:3) is the symbolic color of the underworld evil demons in Babylonian mythology. According to the representations that have survived from the ancient Near East, the gods often appear standing or riding on some animal, usually a wild beast. As we will see later, this phenomenon refers to the symbolic embodiment of Rome, the goddess of Rome. The names of blasphemy on the beast are the same as those we encounter in 13:1, the divine titles of the emperor, holy, majestic, divine, god, lord. The woman sitting on the beast was adorned with wealth and laden with jewels. The purple and scarlet are the colors of the Roman emperor and the Roman knights. In her hand, the golden cup full of "abominations and the filth of her fornication." The contents of the cup are the same as the wine indicated in the second verse, the intoxicating wine of the emperor cult; by which the peoples were intoxicated. The name of the woman on the beast was written on her forehead, which revealed the secret of her being. This moment, again, refers to the connection of the phenomenon with Rome, as Roman harlots wore their names on their forehead bands. The name of the woman sitting on the beast: "great Babylon, mother of the harlots and abominations (monstrosities) of the earth." This designation is a biting mockery of the reverse of the name of Rome's mother goddess, and at the same time its judgment. In fact, this Rome and its emperor, revered as gods, are nothing but the source of idolatry, the enemy of the living God, the embodiment of the antichrist spirit and as a monster the destroyer of God's people. Particular attention should be paid to the expression bdelygma in the name of the woman sitting on the beast. The word originates from the Book of Daniel (9:27; 11:13; 12:11). From here it was taken over by the First Book of Maccabees (1:54), and then by Jesus (Matthew 24:15; Mark 13:14). The bdelygma originally referred to the monster that destroyed Jerusalem and God's people, persecuted the Yahweh faith, desecrated the temple, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, a Seleucid ruler. Later it became the apocalyptic name for the antichrist. The monstrosity of the woman sitting on the beast is evident from the following statement: "and I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus" (cf. 18:20.24). Therefore, judgment comes upon her (cf. 6:10; 19:2).
"...whose seat is in the city built on seven hills." - According to Rev 17:9, the whore sits on seven mountains, which, according to our anti-Catholic friends, means the Vatican, as ancient Rome was built on seven hills.
Firstly, the Greek word used here, "horos," means mountain, not hill, as all translations reflect (as do international translations - except for a couple of anti-Catholic translations). The word for hill is "bounos." In the Bible, a mountain is a well-known symbolic expression for kingdoms (cf. Psalm 68:15; Daniel 2:35; Amos 4:1, 6:1; Obadiah 8-21). That this is also the case here is clearly clarified by the Apostle John, for he adds: "And they are seven kings." So the seven mountains represent seven kingdoms or countries, but since the number seven signifies completeness, perfection, the seven kingdoms ultimately denote all the kingdoms of the Earth.
Secondly, the Vatican was not built on seven hills, but only one: Vatican Hill. Moreover, it is not part of the seven hills on which ancient Rome was built. Those are on the eastern bank of the Tiber River, whereas Vatican Hill is on the western bank.
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Revelation 13 and 17 Beasts
by Duran inrevelation 17:8-11,12-14. revelation 13:3,5,7,8,10;11:2,3. revelation 13:11-17;19:19,20,21. revelation 15:2;20:4. what beast does it state that gets thrown into the fiery lake with the false prophet?
what beast gets the 42-month authority given to it in which time the motb is given out?.
what beast is the 8th king?.
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aqwsed12345
Many Biblical scholars believe that "Babylon" is an allegory of Rome; perhaps specifically at the time to some aspect of Rome's rule (brutality, greed, paganism), or even a servant people that does the bidding of Rome.
In 4 Ezra, 2 Baruch and the Sibylline oracles, "Babylon" is a cryptic name for Rome. Elsewhere in the New Testament, in 1 Peter 5:13; some speculate that "Babylon" is used to refer to Rome. In Revelation 17:9 it is said that she sits on "seven mountains" (the King James Version Bible—the New International Version Bible uses the words "seven hills"), typically understood as theseven hills of Rome. A Roman coin minted under the Emperor Vespasian (ca. 70 CE) depicts Rome as a woman sitting on seven hills.
According to the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, "The characteristics ascribed to this Babylon apply to Rome rather than to any other city of that age: (a) as ruling over the kings of the earth (Revelation 17:18); (b) as sitting on seven mountains (Revelation 17:9); (c) as the center of the world's merchandise (Revelation 18:3, 11–13); (d) as the corrupter of the nations (Revelation 17:2; 18:3; 19:2); (e) as the persecutor of the saints (Revelation 17:6)."
Revelation 17:1 - Revelation 17:6 This chapter is the key to the Book of Revelation: Saint John sees the embodiment of the Antichrist in pagan Rome, which persecutes Christians. However, it should not be forgotten that the Roman Empire is also a precursor to all godless powers. The great harlot: Rome. The great waters are the peoples of the Roman Empire (Rev. 17:15). They have fornicated, that is, they have adopted Rome's idolatry and immorality. The scarlet beast is the first beast described in Rev. 13:1-8, the material and political power of the Antichrist. The names of blasphemy are the deified names of the emperors. The seven heads and ten horns are explained by the angel in verses Rev. 17:9-14. Verse Rev. 17:6 alludes to the persecutions of Christians. The angel presents Rome as a great whore. As Rome, or Babylon, stands against the heavenly Jerusalem, so this whore stands against the woman crowned with stars. Rome sins with its godlessness, idolatry, and emperor cult, or in the language of the Scriptures: it is immoral. This woman builds her power on the conquered peoples, the great waters. The angel takes John into the wilderness; Isaiah calls Babylon the "desolation of the sea" (21:1), from which John might have taken the expression, representing the barrenness of godlessness. The woman sits on a scarlet beast which symbolizes both the splendor with which she surrounds herself and the blood she has shed to govern the conquered peoples and that which the Christians have spilled for their faith. On her forehead was written her name: public women wore their names or their house name written on a band on their foreheads. The mystery indicates that it is not the real Babylon being referred to, which was already in ruins. The woman is drunk with the blood, the spilled blood of Christians gave further impetus for persecutions.
Revelation 17:7 - Revelation 17:18 The Roman Empire, identified with the Antichrist, was in its full power during the time of Emperor Augustus, but is no more: with Nero, Augustus's family line died out, and the turmoil following Nero's death almost led to the empire's collapse. It rises from the abyss: it regains strength, and the persecution of Christians resumes. The seven mountains: the seven hills of Rome. The seven kings: represent seven emperors. The five are: Nero, either Galba or Otho, Otho or Vitellius, Vespasian, and Titus. The sixth ruler is Domitian, contemporary of Saint John, the seventh is likely Nerva. The ten kings: barbarian kings subjugated by Rome, who will later rebel against Rome (Rev. 17:16) and thus become instruments of God's punishment. For one hour: a short time. The angel explains the vision. A symbol can refer to multiple things, but a thing can also be explained by multiple symbols. The beast on which the woman sits is the Antichrist. As Christ died and rose again, the Antichrist tries to mimic this. - The Roman Empire existed before Christianity, so it was. With Nero's death, Augustus's family was extinct, so it is not, and people really thought the empire would also end, but it was revived. Here Satan tries to imitate Christ's second coming: was, is not: emerges from the abyss. The beast's seven heads are the seven hills of Rome, as well as seven emperors. Different explanations are given for these seven emperors. One explanation is that Augustus is the first, followed by Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero – these are said to be "five have fallen". Vespasian is the sixth: he is reigning now. Titus is the seventh: he has not yet come, and he will rule only a short while. Domitian is the eighth, who people saw as the resurrected Nero. This sequence disregards three rulers (Galba, Otho, Vitellius) who tried to come to power after Nero's death. However, it is also possible that John sees seven rulers who will rule at the end of the world, with the eighth being the Antichrist himself. The ten horns are the kings helping Rome, who persecute Christians but ultimately turn against Rome. The number ten is also a complete number. - The whore is destroyed, but the beast itself remains, indicating that it is not only the personification of Rome but also of every godless power throughout history.
Revelation 18:1 - Revelation 18:3 The chapter dramatically presents the fall and punishment of God and His Church's main enemy, the pagan Roman Empire. The angel proclaims the fall of Rome in a prophetic past, as if it has already occurred. The angel announces Rome's fall and destruction because of its idolatry. John writes about future events as if they had already happened.
Revelation 18:4 - Revelation 18:8 The Lord Jesus warns Roman Christians not to share in Rome's sins (Rev. 18:4-5), and commands the angels to execute judgment (Rev. 18:6-8). The angel urges Christians to leave the city so as not to perish with it. But this call also means that Christians should not have any fellowship with pagans.
Revelation 18:9 - Revelation 18:10 Allied princes mourn Rome but do not rush to its aid. In one hour: suddenly. The allied kings mourn Rome but from a distance, lest they perish with it.
Revelation 18:11 - Revelation 18:20 Merchants and sailors, who accumulated great wealth through trade with Rome, also lament the city's fall. The merchants mourn the fall of Rome because their businesses cease. In contrast to this mourning stands the joy of Christians: Rejoice...
Revelation 18:21 - Revelation 18:24 The final fall of the persecuting Rome is symbolically sealed by an angel with a great stone thrown into the sea (Jer. 51:61-64). The immutability of the judgment is symbolized by the casting of the stone into the sea. Pagan Rome disappears like a stone thrown into the sea.