Jimmy

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Last Notes

2024-08-23 12:34:06 UTC

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Most of that is just incorrect. Just saying. Starting with his Greek etymology. I'm sure he has the best intentions. Do not listen to him.

2024-08-22 20:28:53 UTC

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There are at least 4 very good churches around the city where mine is located. I suspect there are about 4 others I am not familiar with. Population of the city proper is only 150,000.
They are rare, but not too rare to find. How many churches have you visited so far this year? If there were 4 in your city, is it likely that you would have met them based on your search?

2024-08-22 20:21:22 UTC

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I'm sorry. No, I disagree with your interpretation of st John's vision, because it contradicts the explicit word of Christ in the Bible. He said "the seven lampstands are the seven churches"
So I'm going with that. They are the seven churches, not God's blessing on the seven churches.
However, I agree with you about the churches being corrupt. Every church everywhere in every period is corrupt. Christ told us it would be like this. If you are looking for a church that doesn't contain corruption, you are not looking for the church Christ made for us in this life. He said so. False teachers will come, etc. So did the apostles, obviously. So I'm with you there.
I belong to a very based, very serious, fighting, joyous, singing parish in which people worship the Triune God vigorously and love each other. It has some bad elements. The broader church has some bad elements. It's not free from error and sin. It's a real place, full of real people. It is the church of Christ on this earth and that's where you go to meet Him. Several people in this weird little joint have told you the same thing.
You don't need to engineer a church, just go find the church.

2024-08-22 20:07:28 UTC

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Lots of people have interacted with you right here giving testimony about their personal experience in their own congratulations. Why don't you believe them?

2024-08-22 20:05:54 UTC

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OK, but those arguments started when? Mid-twentieth century? There was approximately 1,700 years between the first (known) church building and somebody saying "hey wait, this is a bad idea. This isn't working. That's isn't what Peter/Paul/Mark said to do"?
Really? We're taking every single country too. Churches built in Palestine, Greece, Europe, Africa, all the way to India. Christianity feel into the exact same unforseen grave error everywhere the apostles set foot?
PLUS we don't even know when the first church was actually built. There may very well have been a church building constructed somewhere on the fringes of pagan Rome that was visited by a living apostle. Seriously. Britain, Ethiopia, and India would be the likely spots.
The whole thing is twentieth-century nonsense. It's just not plausible. And it's not about the building. It's about submission. House church people I've met in real life, at least, want to make a new church just the way they want it. They want to figure everything out for themselves. I've never once met one who wants to worship in a house, but be under any ecclesiological authority. What about you? Does your house church ideal the local bishop visiting to celebrate the eucharist and confirm new converts (lay hands on them so they may recurve the holy ghost, per the explicit scriptural practice). Will you make a public confession when he visits so you can make a good communion with a clear conscience? Because that's exactly what the REAL pre-constantinian house church Christians were doing. We have records. Is that the house church you imagine?

2024-08-22 19:50:27 UTC

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Christ is the lamp. The church is the lampstand. Having your lampstand removed means your church is wiped out. No longer bringing the light of Christ to the world. Existing churches are still existing, until they are gone. Now they might be on the way out (Episcopals), but that just means God's not done yet.
99% of churches today might be on the way out. I'll go with you that far. Now you go with me, to one of those 1%, THIS SUNDAY.

2024-08-22 19:44:12 UTC

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They met in homes until they could build buildings. They were generally the homes of the rich. Big places. (seller of purple) actually, they first met in synagogues. But the places they celebrated the eucharist, even if in a home, were set apart for worship. We have records of this. As soon as they could build or convert a building for worship, they did. So you should too. It follows the biblical pattern. The tabernacle was God's idea. I have never understood how worshipping in a building that no one sleeps in is such a big deal for certain people.
I've known a lot of them--just never got it.

2024-08-22 19:34:59 UTC

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Sure, but we know what Christians were doing all the way back. Even pre-constantine, the "murky" years. There's tons of text from that period. We don't have to guess about anything. A cold, analytical, thorough investigation will give a surprisingly detailed picture of how the apostles instructed the church to operate, believe, and practice. The answers are plain and no more work needs to be done. But modern western protestants don't like the answer.
Orthodox, trad catholic, Anglo-catholic, novus Ordo catholic, high church Lutheran, in that order. That's what the apostolic church looked like, as far as practice*, and anybody saying anything different is telling himself comforting lies.
So pick the most based congregation of one of those, or go crazy with some liturgical Presbyterians--they are good people too (would marry into). If you set about to repair the Christian church and end up with anything substantially different from what the ones on that list look like, you are farther from the mark, not closer.
*I'm not considering doctrine here, just what the visitor gets from his eyes and ears the first day, BUT I contend that the serious, enlightenment-denying threads of those groups have more doctrine in common with each other than they do with the worldly mainstream in their own tradition
I'm also not saying that they are equally correct or anything. They obviously all make some mutually-exclusive claims.
But anything is better than "forsaking the gathering together of the brethren." Christianity is corporate. Can't practice alone.

2024-08-22 19:02:26 UTC

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On the contrary, I contend that this impulse to strip down and straighten out the Christian church is unnecessary and more likely than not will result in worse error. It always does. 100% of what is wrong with the church today is novelty introduced with various efforts to "fix" something or other over the years.
We, as men of one particular place and time, do not have anywhere near the skill, experience, knowledge, sanctification, etc. to improve on what has been passed down to us by our betters. Furthermore, the very fathers of church: the apostles who touched Christ's earthly body and sat under his own teaching--all of it, not just what got written down--warn and entreat us in their epistles to "hold fast," "don't forsake," etc. Over and over.
So choose a denomination or tradition that suits you (I suggest choosing based on ethnicity), go find the most serious, unspoiled, striving congregation within that tradition--the one fighting hardest against modernity--and submit yourself to that rule of life energetically.

2024-08-22 17:04:51 UTC

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I understand what your saying. People will ruin anything.
I will humbly submit that it is almost always a mistake to pit obedience to tradition against obedience to God. Jesus did it that one famous time because they were following traditions contrary to the command of God. What they were doing was bad because it violated God's law, not because it was a tradition of men. In a Christian culture, every tradition of men should align and overlap with the law of God. Obviously, we've never lived in one that good. But many traditions that come to us are directly from the apostles, and we would be retarded to forsake them because of that one exchange with the pharisees. On the other hand, those were Christ's words, and they were recorded for us.
So we have these arguments.
I think it boils down to tribalism (which is a good impulse I believe). People trust their own people. If your people, whom you trust, say "catholics follow the tradition of men instead of God's law" then you tend to believe them. I know I did for a long time.

2024-08-20 13:52:14 UTC

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Yes!
Step 2 for us: making marriages within and between these groups, and figuring out a way to overcome/settle/eliminate the denominational differences. We have way more in common with each other than we do with the converged threads within our own traditions.

2024-08-20 13:32:36 UTC

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Now that I'm up on top of the soap box, let me do one more:
I frequently find myself arguing on the internet the cousin that faithful and fruitful old-type Christian congregations still exist in the US. Where the kingdom of God is preached and not the enlightenment. And the teenage boys are masculine, abs the v teenage girls are feminine, and the young women are nursing babies in the service and the fathers make the children behave and take care of the church business. Where people don't get divorced and worship is reverent and joyous.
And they exist in most, of not all , traditions: roman catholic, orthodox, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Anglican, at least. I'm not saying they are all equally correct about the right way to be Christian, I'm just saying they exist. And I have a hard time convincing people of this fact, because they are so rare that many have never seen one.
You know one thing all the ones I've seen have in common? Robust, vibrant congregational singing. Every single one. Because they are full of professional musicians? No. Because they value corporate worship, so they work at it. Without getting paid. (audible gasp)

2024-08-20 13:22:12 UTC

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Thinking "out of the deep have I called into thee oh Lord--Lord hear my voice" VS saying it privately VS singing it with a hundred other people....
This is what the judge dread guy means when he says that Christianity lost its memetic power.

2024-08-20 13:19:35 UTC

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I believe that the relegation of singing to professionals in the US was as big a blow to saving souls as anything else the devil pulled off in the twentieth century.

2024-08-20 13:18:02 UTC

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The 1928 bcp has a lot going for it. The marriage service was starting to get cucked though. I guess it was published right as the Rollercoaster tipped over the top of the steep hill, but before it picked up any speed. The lectionary in the 28 is solid gold though. If you just read the scripture in the list for morning and evening prayer for the whole year, I guarantee that you will feel like a new man. And the coverdale psalms? Reciting them twice a day for a year will stave off the filth like an iodine pill in a fallout zone. I suspect singing them every day for very long might result in translation into heaven.
I swear if I could get everybody I see arguing about the church on the internet to sing the psalms in congregation, the world would change.

2024-08-19 15:27:10 UTC

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I'm not roman catholic, but this:
"As for apostolic succession -- I am rather iffy that this is at all unbroken if, in the line, you find men such as popes who fucked married women and had their husbands murdered etc etc etc. Although all people sin, the idea that someone can engage in THAT level of evil AFTER installation as Pope and be a valid apostle is not sane. And multiple such popes existed prior to the schism with the orthodox."
Is cleanly contradicted by king David. You even (conveniently) named his specific sins that he did after being made king. And then God not only let him remain king and then put his son on the throne, but also promised that the scepter would never depart from his house.
So a bishop who is ordained today is a valid bishop no matter what sin bishops in his line of ordination personally committed. This is and has been the view of the church from before Nicea. We know because it was one of the issues that had to be decided at the council (what about sacraments performed by bishops and priests who later denied the faith under persecution).
So apostolic succession might be correct or in error, but it's not in error for the reason of the sins of bishops of the past.

2024-08-13 18:16:35 UTC

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I'm not saying that we will be a voting bloc, I'm just saying that people will know we exist. At this point, I have a hard time convincing people who haven't personally come into contact with one of these clusters to believe they are real. My family and my parish are basically cryptids to people like you.
But in 2050 my grandchildren and those like them will be a percent or two of what's left of the white race in north America. Everyone will have personally bumped into these people.

2024-08-13 18:04:52 UTC

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I see this everywhere in my circles. Smart, high performance Christians raising very large numbers of children deliberately to grow up and maintain their culture. The twentieth century is over. The devil did his worst and only *mostly* wiped us out. The drug-resistant strain of western Christianity survived. By the numbers, the outside world will be realize we exist about the generation after next--say 2050.