Sunday, August 31, 2025

Gaza and Prophecy


What Gaza has revealed: how Christians are wrong about Biblical Prophecy
Wholehearted Ness Podcast | 30 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p5pAonQKEc


Did you mention to your friend that Catholic commentary traces the fulfilment of those prophecies pretty much to the time of Alexander the Great, or for some even Nebuchadnezzar?

Sophonias 2:6

6 And the sea coast shall be the resting-place of shepherds, and folds for cattle:


Haydock comment:

Ver. 6. Shepherds. Merchants shall come no longer, the country being subdued by Nabuchodonosor, and by the Machabees, ver. 7. --- Alexander ruined Gaza. (Curt. iv.)


So, does Netanyahu believe he is a soldier of Alexander of Macedon? Or, does your Christian (?) friend believe he is?

Saturday, August 30, 2025

A Tolkien Fan Misrepresents Anne Catherine Emmerick and Pius XII


That is, he probably gives an accurate account of her life, but he misrepresents the content of her text, to, with her holiness, bolster his misreading of her as "real prophecy" ... it obviously isn't because he is missciting her.


Evolution and The Fall of Man — Analog Episode 7
Mabel Media | 7 May 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeND7hU5ZzA


I think you misrecall Anne Catherine Emmerick as much as you misconstrue Humani Generis.

You basically don't know what you are talking about.

Here is her text* about Cain's fear:

But when God replied that Abel’s blood cried to Him from the earth, Cain grew more troubled, and I saw that he disputed long with God. God told him that he should be cursed upon the earth, that it should bring forth no fruit for him, and that he should forthwith flee from the land in which he then dwelt. Cain responded that everywhere his fellow men would seek to kill him. There were already many people upon the earth. Cain was very old and had children. Abel also left children, and there were other brothers and sisters, the children of Adam. But God replied that it would not be so; that whoever should kill Cain should himself be punished sevenfold, and He placed a sign upon him that no one should slay him. Cain’s posterity gradually became colored. Cham’s children also were browner than those of Sem. The nobler races were always of a lighter color. They who were distinguished by a particular mark engendered children of the same stamp; and as corruption increased, the mark also increased until at last it covered the whole body, and people became darker and darker. But yet in the beginning there were no people perfectly black; they became so only by degrees.


There is one phrase which could at first seem to support you, namely "There were already many people upon the earth."

This is however an area of agreement between Fundies and yourself.

What doesn't support you is the explanation: "Cain was very old and had children. Abel also left children, and there were other brothers and sisters, the children of Adam."

After that a little hint at what could be considered as racism** ...




[The following disappeared, perhaps the videasts hate what St. Augustine was saying ... seeing the man was classifying it as blasphemy in the video]

And you misconstrue St. Augustine.

It is indeed possible he did utter in books 4 to 6 some kind of repudiation of literal days from the reason you gave, but painstakingly in book 1 he had precisely explained how a 24 h day was possible before the creation of the sun (in clearly Geocentric terms). But his alternative to 6 literal days was not millions or billions of years, but one single moment.

Furthermore, you accuse him of blasphemy, because he did defend sibling marriages in the generation after Adam and Eve.

For it is very reasonable and just that men, among whom concord is honorable and useful, should be bound together by various relationships; and one man should not himself sustain many relationships, but that the various relationships should be distributed among several, and should thus serve to bind together the greatest number in the same social interests. Father and father-in-law are the names of two relationships. When, therefore, a man has one person for his father, another for his father-in-law, friendship extends itself to a larger number. But Adam in his single person was obliged to hold both relations to his sons and daughters, for brothers and sisters were united in marriage. So too Eve his wife was both mother and mother-in-law to her children of both sexes; while, had there been two women, one the mother, the other the mother-in-law, the family affection would have had a wider field. Then the sister herself by becoming a wife sustained in her single person two relationships, which, had they been distributed among individuals, one being sister, and another being wife, the family tie would have embraced a greater number of persons. But there was then no material for effecting this, since there were no human beings but the brothers and sisters born of those two first parents. Therefore, when an abundant population made it possible, men ought to choose for wives women who were not already their sisters; for not only would there then be no necessity for marrying sisters, but, were it done, it would be most abominable. For if the grandchildren of the first pair, being now able to choose their cousins for wives, married their sisters, then it would no longer be only two but three relationships that were held by one man, while each of these relationships ought to have been held by a separate individual, so as to bind together by family affection a larger number. For one man would in that case be both father, and father-in-law, and uncle to his own children (brother and sister now man and wife); and his wife would be mother, aunt, and mother-in-law to them; and they themselves would be not only brother and sister, and man and wife, but cousins also, being the children of brother and sister. Now, all these relationships, which combined three men into one, would have embraced nine persons had each relationship been held by one individual, so that a man had one person for his sister, another his wife, another his cousin, another his father, another his uncle, another his father-in-law, another his mother, another his aunt, another his mother-in-law; and thus the social bond would not have been tightened to bind a few, but loosened to embrace a larger number of relations.


City of God, Book 15, Chapter 16. Citing part of the first paragraph.***

In other words, it was not against the natural law for Cain, Abel and Seth to marry their sisters.




Let me get this straight.

A) You say some kind of people of Homo sapiens type preexisted Adam and Eve, but weren't created for a relation with God;
B) The Evolutionary Timeline holds, as per dating methods
C) Adam was in this Evolutionary timeline created 6000 years ago.

In this perspective, Americas and Oceania, peopled "before 6000 years ago" should, in pre-Columbian times, have been peopled by pre-Adamites.

A position held once by Isaac La Peyrère and condemned by the Catholic Church, his book was on the latest edition of the Index Librorum in 1948.

How would you get around that?

Universal Flood? Yeah, sure, Anzick 1 was a pre-Adamite, but his relatives were wiped out 4500 years ago, and replaced later on by descendants of Adam via Noah?

Won't work. If the Flood was in 2468 BC in the Evolutionary timeline, it had to be local or regional. Egyptians were Egyptian before and after that date, if we equate the real and Biblical date to carbon dates, Chinese were Chinese before and after, Japanese were Jomon before and after and so on. So, the Americas were American and Oceania was Pacific before and after.

You'd have a pretty good case for Isaac La Peyrère, and so against the Catholic Church.

Meanwhile, you'd be very hard pressed philosophically to motivate how a "very clever animal" could have developed language and all the things you pretend specimens of Homo sapiens were doing before 6000 years ago "without being the image of God" and you have no theological business to pretend "image of God" only means, the empirically not very directly verifiable "created for a relation with God" ...

* The complete visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich : The Old Testament – Part 2
http://annecatherineemmerich.com/complete_visions/volume_1_the_old_testament/the-old-testament-part-2/


** A lady who was a fervent believer in Anne Catherin Emmerick was also a very nice mother in law to a daughter in law who was black. "The curse is not on the individual" ...

*** The City of God (Book XV)
https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120115.htm

Wednesday, August 27, 2025

Heschmeyer and Myself on Why Not Orthodox?


HGL's F.B. writings: If the Church is Very Reduced, the Pope Is at Some Risk of Being Bamboozled by Bigger Actors · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Brian Holdsworth and Myself on Why Not Orthodox · Heschmeyer and Myself on Why Not Orthodox?

Why I am Not Eastern Orthodox
Shameless Popery | 26 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKrRzk94j2E


I can break down my reasons for reverting from Romanian Orthodox into two things.

They lie or are wrong. They hate.

They lie or are wrong.

  • Jesuit Inquisitors, or in an updated version, Franciscan Inquisitors, didn't condemn Peter the Aleut to death for refusing to commune in azymes. And it wasn't executed by their servants cutting small piece after small piece from his body, like Persians had done to St. John of Persia to whom incidentally Hermann of Alaska had a devotion, him being the missionary telling his Aleuts "if you go down to California, be very careful to not commune in azymes" ...
  • Speaking of azymes, Michael Caerularius was wrong in saying Jesus never celebrated the Seder, but some kind of pre-allusion to it. Prepare everything for the feast (that would include getting rid of leavened bread).
  • Paul (de Ballester-Convallier) of Nazianzus did not in a Catholic library find St. Robert Bellarmine saying "if the pope were to teach error or evil, the Church then is obliged", as claimed, but that could be a Protestant mistranslation (not featured in his story of leaving Catholicism, as he is supposed to have found Bellarmine in a Catholic library).
  • If Kallistos Ware honestly thought that "filioque was decided at Third Council of Toledo" when Catholic Visigoths could be overreacting to Arian Visigoths, he was wrong. It is verbatim found in the confession of faith against Priscillianists at the FIRST Council of Toledo, ending in 400, so, when Hosius of Cordoba was a likelier influence than St. Augustine of Hippo.
  • Hosius of Cordoba met St. Athanasius. I happen to favour Quicumque as really being by him. ONE argument against it is "it includes" (with a slightly different wording) "the filioque" which is circular. Another is "St. Athanasius wrote Greek" ... he spent two years or so in exile in Trier, which wasn't very Greek speaking, so if he didn't learn any Latin, he'd have been lazy as a missionary. There were already Jews in Trier and some parts of Quicumque read like a direct response to the argument from Shema.


They hate.

  • Modernist Orthodox hate Fundamentalism. Being against condoms isn't a hit with them, neither is being YEC or Geocentric. Ratzinger was uncharitable with his comments on Africa, if you ask them (that's when I knew I had to get back to Roman and solid ground)
  • Trad Orthodox hate Catholicism. How can you even imagine being Orthodox, when you neither abjured Papism nor got a Baptism by three Immersions from an Orthodox priest?
  • Middle of the road like Romanides and Metallinos hate both. Filioque breaks the god breathed therapeutic experience of hesychastic prayer and so does believing in the literal truth of Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies. Either way, you are back into "religion", a psycho-physic disease.


I cannot say this covers the Patriarchate of Antioch, but that was not available to me or accessible to me in 2006.


Smaller comments


6:54 In top of that, there are EO where there are Copts.

Catholics both have Uniate Copts and Uniate Melkites. Non-Uniate Melkites are EO, more precisely GO, in Egypt.

8:37 I do not agree with your quasi-total rejection of self-shepherding.

It would follow that conversions to the Catholic Church were illicit as following neither from Catholic shepherding (which by definition the convert didn't have when deciding to convert) nor from the previous whatever shepherd (who usually isn't converting).

In a similar manner, the Catholic Church hasn't condemned individual interpretation of the Bible. The Church has said (Trent IV, Vatican I) the interpretations must never contradict the position which the Church hath held and holds, nor the consensus of the CCFF. And also that making individual interpretation the supreme norm is not a recipe for unity (Mortalium Animos).

People who can't get a father confessor they trust or find a mass they find licit are not supposed to quit Catholicism altogether and people who on a question have no immediate access to the Church's interpretation are not at fault for daring one, unless it contradicts what the Church hath held and holds or contradicts the consensus of the CCFF.

9:57 Twenty.

Sunday, August 24, 2025

Brian Holdsworth and Myself on Why Not Orthodox


HGL's F.B. writings: If the Church is Very Reduced, the Pope Is at Some Risk of Being Bamboozled by Bigger Actors · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Brian Holdsworth and Myself on Why Not Orthodox · Heschmeyer and Myself on Why Not Orthodox?

Reconsidering the Eastern Orthodox
Brian Holdsworth | 23 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4KyyoYFEBY


16:04 You are probably making too big a concession to the Orthodox by tracing the Western view to St. Augustine.

He wasn't a writer prior to being a bishop and in 395 he was made coadjutor.

However in 400, a council in Spain, Toledo I, mentioned the filioque basically "off topic" in a creed (off topic insofar as it's not apparent that Priscillian, whom the council was condemning, was denying it).

If the Church is Very Reduced, the Pope Is at Some Risk of Being Bamboozled by Bigger Actors
https://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2025/06/if-church-is-very-reduced-pope-is-at.html


Concilium Toletanum primum
https://www.benedictus.mgh.de/quellen/chga/chga_043t.htm


Spiritum quoque esse paraclitum, qui nec pater sit ipse, nec filius, sed a patre filioque procedens.


This is before St. Augustine could reasonably have been influential in Toledo.

21:20 I think you overdo the problem in their own ecclesiology.

I'm a revert from the Orthodox, and I can relate to:
  • old territories under old jurisdictions
  • new territories (like lands to be Christened) or new old territories (like RC and Protestant lands) under whatever old jurisdiction comes there first.


In my own case, Russian was out of question, I'm a Swede, and Russia and Sweden have been enemies over centuries, both Charles XII and Gustavus IV Adolfus were opposing Czars in wars. On the other hand, I had been in Romania a few months of vacations when I was small and that was as close as I was to any Orthodox country at all. Now, less good reasoning. I was Neo-Himerite (corresponds to Patriarchate of Moscow) because I wanted to hold a hand in each direction of both Catholic Trads and Palaeo-Himerites (corresponds to Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia).

In my experience, Orthodox may have a harsh attitude on Catholics or a harsh attitude on Trads/Fundies, or both. But it's not neither. Perhaps I could have had that with Antioch, but wasn't available.

So having some Orthos frown on me because I didn't totally renounce Catholicism (I didn't abjure, and also didn't abjure on my return), others would do so because I was too traddy or fundie.

[Above apparently disappeared, as I saw when I tried to add the first of the two following lines]

Palaeo-Himerites never accepted me, and a Neo-Himerite Pentecost sermon criticised Antipope Ratzinger for exactly the wrong reason, pretending his view on condoms was uncharitable to Africans.

That's when I returned.

Saturday, August 23, 2025

Answering Jayni Jackson


The One Question That Shuts Down the Catholic and Orthodox ‘Authority’ Trap
Jayni Jackson | 16 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02FmU-NfmkE


3:05 Seing he had already done that once before, at the beginning of His Ministry, the priests certainly had thought of that.

9:38 "every Christian has a mandate to read the Bible for himself"

From Jesus or from Luther?

10:11 So glad you asked.

Under the authority of Moses. For instance Deuteronomy 13.

I'm not sure whether a representative of the Sanhedrin was among the Beroeans, but the duty of them to reject a false prophet is parallel to that of stoning a false prophet.

So, the Beroeans acted under the authority of the Old Law.

10:18 If the Pope should ever teach heresy, under the authority of Pope Paul IV and a few more we should conclude he is no Catholic and therefore no Pope.

There are also Church Fathers and ultimately Jesus for this move.

Now, a counterquestion. If I can detect an otherwise apparent Pope as teaching heresy, is it by contrast with what daddy heard in Catechism more than 60 years ago, or is it by contrast with what a highly learned man dug up as the Bible really meaning, even if no one ever heard of it, despite everyone reading the Bible, or what that highly learned man assures us the early Church did before Constantine?

10:39 No Catholic will say you have no right to believe the Bible.

The question is whether you have the right to interpret it.

If you say things like Ephesians 2:8 to 9 prove, not just justification without previous works meriting it (which we also believe), but also without an obligation to works from justification on, we could ask "who gave you authority to omit verse 10?"

If you say things like Matthew 16:18 having Jesus as the rock, we could ask you "and who gave you authority to omit verse 19?"

If furthermore we say Matthew 16:19 is a clear parallel to Isaias 22:22 speaking of Eliacim, and you respond "nah, Peter and Eliacim are two different persons" we could ask "who gave you permission to interpret the OT as if it were not about Jesus?"

And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things that were concerning him
[Luke 24:27]


Did you note: "in all the scriptures"? ... all of the OT is about Himself.

Including the relation between the House of David (=Jesus Himself) and Eliacim (can you find a better candidate than Peter?)

10:51 You are aware that Beroeans were at that point not yet Christians?

11:13 An Apostle's teaching "was tested by the very word of God"' by people who had not yet accepted his authority as an Apostle.

This is not a blueprint for how Christians should behave to their pastors ...

11:24 F. F. Bruce is not an Apostle. Nor someone the Catholic Church accepts as a legitimate successor of them.

And, in this context, not someone that I see as very well analysing the situation of the Beroeans.

11:34 If what you are doing is discerning simply from the Scriptures you accept whether you should become Catholic, fine, you are following the Beroean model.

However, what it seems to me you are doing is looking for excuses to reject Catholic authority, which reminds me more of how some groups of Pharisees were dealing with Jesus.

Like "Beroean model" vs "Catholic model" ... won't fly. Bad excuse. While examining St. Paul they were not yet accepting him as authority, but they were open to it. They were like any Jew today asking if Catholicism fits the Torah ... and some conclude it does.

12:06 The dilemma you have painted falls apart.

Current Church teaching indeed has a standard to live up to (so, higher). 1) Bible. 2) Oral traditions codified in post-Biblical times. 3) Past Church teaching.

Biblically, whatever is the true Church has an assurance that this will not fall apart into contradictions. Matthew 28:20.

12:46 Found the quote:

5. But, as I had begun to say, let us not listen to “you say this, I say that” but let us listen to “the Lord says this.” Certainly, there are the Lord’s books, on whose authority we both agree, to which we concede, and which we serve; there we seek the Church, there we argue our case


St. Augustine is not arguing for indivudual Bible reading to decide individual belief. He's arguing to take a schism to the Bible, the one authority both parties claim to adher to.

A little later he goes on to warn against churches or interpretations found only in some nationalities:

But if the Church of Christ is delineated among all peoples with divine and most certain evidence of the canonical Scriptures, whatever they should bring to bear and whoever should read it should say Look! Here is the Messiah! Or, There he is! Let us rather hear, if we are his sheep, the voice of our pastor saying Do not believe it (Matth. XVIV, 23). Indeed, those individual churches are not found among many nations, where that Church is; but this Church, which is everywhere, is found even where they are. Therefore, we seek it in the holy canonical Scriptures.


Like if you go to Ethiopia, you are likier to find Catholics and Copts than Protestants. If you go to Austria, you are likelier to find Catholics and Protestants than Copts.

13:12 "not just to the clergy"

No, but principally. Timothy is selected as clergyman because he is expert on OT Scriptures. He's instructed on how to chose clergy:

Holding the mystery of faith in a pure conscience And let these also first be proved: and so let them minister, having no crime
[1 Timothy 3:9-10]


There are two criteria. Faith (to be judged by ordaining or consecrating bishop). Pure Conscience (to be judged by ordaining of consecrating bishop).

13:24 "the Beroeans weren't rabbis"

Did rabbis, as a distinct institution, even exist?

They were however Pharisees, i e students of the law, like Paul himself had been. They were not fishermen from Galilee.

14:15 No, there is nothing about either right or responsibility of weighing every single teaching of someone you already accept as your legitimate pastor ... unless you have reason to doubt he is such.

The key point is, Luke is describing the behaviour of Beroeans prior to becoming Christians, prior to accepting Paul as their authority.

The way you put it, it sounds as if Paul came in, held a speech, and then Beroeans at home verified. If that had been the case, how would Luke have known they verified? He obviously knew because they voiced the test criteria. "OK, but does this really match up with ...." and Paul answered.

This was not an ordinary occasion, it was a missionary one. Same problem that Sabbatarians have with the text, they think Paul worshipped mainly by preaching in the Synagogue. No, he worshipped at Holy Mass, on Sundays. He preached on Sabbaths, because he was a missionary. They voiced objections, because it was his duty to answer objections as a missionary.

14:44 "my allegiance is to Christ, and to Christ alone"

Can you source that in the Bible?

Daniel Kim
@danielkim672
Are you looking for a direct quote? Only Through Christ can we have salvation. Only Through Christ are we restored into relationship with God). Jesus is the Head of the Body, all Christians make up the Body, just like Jesus is the Head of the Church. And Just as Jesus is the Groom.

You will agree that God is explicitly taught to us to have allegiance in only God and to God alone. Jesus is God, so what is the issue with saying Christ Alone as well? The Spirit Alone? As just because he said Christ alone, doesnt imply Christ but not God or Holy Spirit.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@hglundahl
@danielkim672 "You will agree that God is explicitly taught to us to have allegiance in only God and to God alone."

Again, a written quote would be welcome.

You are here making a reasoning, a plea, and not giving a direct quote.

The allegiance of the Beroeans was not just to God and Moses on Sinai, but to all of what they had grown up in ... with a healthy conception that some of it could be temporary for up to the arrival of the Messiah.

Peace2U
@Peace2U-LM
@danielkim672 HELLO…. Whom ever hears you hears Me!

Daniel Kim
@Peace2U-LM sorry, not understanding your point

Daniel Kim
@hglundahl What type of verse are you looking for?

Exodus 20 And God spoke all these words, saying,

2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
3 “You shall have no other gods before[a] me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God,


Deuteronomy 6:5 is only for God. Is there any teaching to give this to Moses?

In Isaiah 45:23. Is anyone bowing to Moses? Or any other human like we all will do for God? The only one everyone of God will swear allegiance to is God alone.

23 By myself I have sworn;
from my mouth has gone out in righteousness
a word that shall not return:
‘To me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear allegiance.’


Peace2U
@danielkim672 Luke 10:16. Jesus gave his authority to His church.

Daniel Kim
@Peace2U-LM Of course Jesus gives authority to His Church, He is the head of the Church. But I am not sure I agree with you that is what Luke 10:16, Jesus is teaching this. First, this is before the church is formed. Second, this power and authority is given to the 72 disciples that were sent out. That is a specific number and not all of the disciples of Jesus at the time were sent out nor given this authority. This was a special power and direct given at a specific time by Jesus.

Peace2U
@danielkim672 The 72 were taught and ordained priests before they were sent. This is parallel with the 72 priests under Aaron in the OT.

One was not to teach unless sent by the church. Jesus refined the OT Priesthood.

Daniel Kim
@Peace2U-LM I do not disagree with you regarding teaching others that there is extra responsibilities with teachers as that is what the Bible teaches. But how do you jump to 'one was not to teach unless sent by the church'? Again the church was not established yet and Jesus is sending these 72 out not the church. I do know where you are leading with this, but I disagree.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@danielkim672 OK, if that's the standard of allegiance, yes.

But in ordinary life allegiance to a King doesn't mean you defy police officers because they are not personally the King himself.

So, the allegiance to God, to Jesus Who is God (thank you for sourcing "every knee shall bow" in the NT to Isaias, proving it is a statement of Jesus' Divinity) involves obedience to others than the King of Heaven Himself. Insofar as they act in His name, which the Apostles and their successors do.

@danielkim672 Jesus was, with His disciples, in the last 3 1/2 years before the New Covenant, dress rehearsing the Church.

The hierarchy that He established before (72, 12, Peter above the rest in each case) remains in the Church afterwards.

This is especially obvious with Peter ("I will build my Church, I will give thee the keys" in Matthew 16, as well as with the 12 / 11 ("all power is given me" is adressed to them, if you look at Matthew 28:16, the intro verse to the passage).

Peace2U
@danielkim672 Because the scriptural name given as “Apostle” means one who is sent out. Only these men were empowered by the one who sent them. Others who also went out without being sent did not receive condemnation however, because they were not in succession of Jesus taught truths plus errors. This is why there were many heresies. The early church fathers “those taught by Apostles” wrote several letters which make clear the meaning of much that the CC teaches throughout the centuries. If one doesn’t adhere and instead assumes for himself he often teaches others errors.

@danielkim672 The church did exist in its infancy yet not fully developed. Christ gave His authority to forgive sins to his church in the upper room. It’s not always easy to recognize someone from their baby pictures lol. To many Christians do not understand many passages unless they are denotatively written. It’s a shame that the English words used to replace the ancient Koine Greek cause a loss of understanding.

TickettoRide!!
@TickettoRide-b8x
Apostle Paul — everything is but dung compared to knowledge of Christ. Philippians 3.

@Peace2U-LM YOU: The 72 were taught and ordained priests before they were sent.
ME: No. Jesus ordained them as traveling APOSTLES who were PREACHING the Good News of Jewish Messiah/Redeemer Jesus. PRIESTS are those that do rituals in the Jewish Temple, APOSTLES are traveling preachers (Mark 16:15-16, Acts 1:8, etc) — and Jesus' Apostles were to travel/preach ONLY to the JEWS — Matthew 10:5-6, etc

@danielkim672 YOU: But how do you jump to 'one was not to teach unless sent by the church'?
ME: Thats a false Roman belief — Acts 9:15-16 — and Paul immediately started preaching without any contact with the Church in Jerusalem — Acts 9:20. It is GOD that gives the Holy Spirit GIFT of any particular ministry: preaching, apostle, teacher, etc — the church has nothing to do with it. 1Corinth 12.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@TickettoRide-b8x Compared to, yes, but if in relation to, no.

@TickettoRide-b8x "PRIESTS are those that do rituals"

Pertaining to a covenant, a sacrifice.

In the words of Institution, Jesus describes the chalice as a new covenant which is eternal, and in Malachi 1:11, the OT prophet describes a food offering as the sacrifice by which God's Name is Holy among the Gentiles.

But this question goes beyond the scope of the video, since the video is supposed to defend Sola Scriptura.

"Paul immediately started preaching without any contact with the Church in Jerusalem"

Not without any contact with Ananias, who already belonged to the Church, and the preaching in Acts 9:20 was a proclamation of a miracle witness, not ordinary doctrinal preaching. By the time Paul and Barnabas set fourth as teachers, they clearly are sent by the Church, and more specically ordained, see Acts 13.

@TickettoRide-b8x "It is GOD that gives the Holy Spirit GIFT of any particular ministry: preaching, apostle, teacher, etc — the church has nothing to do with it. 1Corinth 12."

Looking up the passage about the Spirit giving, that's about charismatic gifts, not about offices in the Church.


15:43 The Beroeans were pretty close to at least first year theology students and they were at the point described not being faithful to Jesus Whom they hadn't accepted yet, but to Moses.

16:04 When they consulted the Scriptures, it is very arguable they also consulted the Oral Torah, as still not yet adulterated among them by rejection of Christ, as it was going to be.

17:24 They discerned under the authority of Moses.

Daniel Kim
@danielkim672
Under the authority of Moses? Why would a dead Moses have authority over people thousands of years later? Under whose authority is and was Moses? Did Moses create the Ten Commandments or God? Did Moses create the Levitical Laws or God?

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@hglundahl
@danielkim672 God set the law up through Moses. This means Moses had authority.

The specific Pharisaic habit of non-cohanim and non-levites studying the law was set up by Ezra, under the authority of Ezra and so of Moses. It was not a requirement under the law of Moses, which only prescribed every seventh year the High Priest should read all of the law to all of the people.

In fact, one could in a sense say, they were even acting under the authority of the priests in the temple, but those priests (unless St. John the Gospeller was among them) were mainly apostates by rejecting Jesus, so, the authority of their persons being annulled, it devolves back to Ezra and Moses.

The point is, the Beroeans were acting, not simply under the authority of a written text, but of a whole ecclesial arrangement, that of the old law as it was in this Second Temple period. They were not braving a system to make personal Bible study their rule. They were hearing about a change of the system and checking whether it was warranted from within the Old Covenant, all of it, not just bare texts.

@danielkim672 You also miss that Jesus told the Pharisees "Moses will judge you" — Our Lord didn't think Moses lost authority by dying.

Daniel Kim
@hglundahl I will ask you for the verse here. I think I know what you are referring to but want to make sure.

The Law of Moses, was it Moses that gave that Law any power or GOD?

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@danielkim672 God gave the law and its human author Moses authority under Himself.

Think not that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one that accuseth you, Moses, in whom you trust.
[John 5:45]


This means, Moses still has authority.

Either way, whether they were right or wrong that Moses had authority, they were acting under the authority of the law, specifically I would say Deuteronomy 13, the grave duty of rejecting false prophets.

The Beroeans were certainly NOT yet acting within the New Covenant or under the authority of St. Paul. Just as the Old Covenant didn't foresee you could defy a direct order by the High Priest by appealing to the law of Moses as written, so the New Covenant doesn't foresee you can defy an Apostle once you accept him as such or even just double-check him.


17:35 We should reject a heretical office holder or apparent holder as not Catholic and not office holder, on the authority of the teaching of the Gospel as it came down to our fathers within living memory.

If everyone within living memory in the Catholic Church had been decidedly Heliocentric, I would have no right to stay aloof from an apparent Pope who in 1992 said "Galileo was right" which he wasn't.

Fernand Crombette was Geocentric and Young Earth Creationist, and he died in 1970, two years after I was born. No one was telling him "no, you can't" ... because no such outrageous decision was taken prior to 1992.

So, I reject Wojtyla for 1992 bc Fernand Crombette is within living memory and because no previous Pope in an official statement adressed to all the earth's Catholics had come out as decidedly either Heliocentric or Old Earth. Pius XII did come out as Old Earth in 1951, but only in a document adressed to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

[Comments posted after this previous one are invisible under the video.]

18:51 No, when I belong to Jesus, I'm already beyond the stage of the Beroeans who were at that point only disciples of Moses.

Jesus did NOT ask us to believe Him without any human institution as evidence, if human means consisting of human beings and visible in human affairs.

If Jesus told Apostles to teach all peoples, He expected all peoples to hear the Apostles. Not just critically, while deciding, but uncritically once they had decided.

He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me.
[Luke 10:16]


I am a convert. My confirmation sponsor was a convert. His confirmation sponsor was also my friend, and his reason for converting was :

How then shall they call on him, in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him, of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear, without a preacher And how shall they preach unless they be sent, as it is written: How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, of them that bring glad tidings of good things
Romans 10:14-15]


In other words, we are NOT just supposed to believe Jesus because Jesus, but because credible human testimony which comes through the Church and refers to the Church.

19:56 "we all need reformation at some point"

We don't all need reformation at the same point in time. When Rome was as corrupt as Luther saw it (after that, St. Filip Neri is counted as Third Apostle of Rome), Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros made sure that Toledo was not corrupt.

When Poland needed cleansing from Lutheran errors, Rome was already OK again (one ancestor of Lewis XVI on the side of his Polish ancestors became a Lutheran, his son became Catholic again).

20:17 "who are the Beroeans to test Paul's word?"

So far, while doing so, still un-Christian.

20:36 In some cases one can.

As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction
[2 Peter 3:16]


Note that in the previous words, St. Paul was not supposed to be scrutinised according to the OT (St. Peter was not adressing Beroeans before their conversion), but adherred to:

And account the longsuffering of our Lord, salvation; as also our most dear brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, hath written to you
[2 Peter 3:15]


— Yes, but Romans 2:4 is different, that's Scripture!
— OK, how were they supposed to know it was Scripture if no one told them?

This by the way confirms that Peter was writing to Romans, he was near the Tiber, not near Euphrates.

But the point is, the easiest way for Romans to know the Epistle to the Romans was Scripture was, because Peter said so.

20:46 Can you point to any Pope prior to John XXIII doing so?

By the way, when Daniel cites Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus as adoring the true God, are they using the tetragrammaton name, or is Daniel interpreting their use of Nebo or of Ahura Mazda?

Just in case you should find one.

21:20 He is certainly not teaching obvious Catholic tradition.

The Catholic position would normally be, the Muslims have a correct philosophical grasp on what God is, but not a correct theological grasp on Who God Is.

22:05 I think pretty much all of your video has been challenging Catholicism on credentials instead of truth claims.

So, the question, why do we challenge your credentials can be answered: how do you know you are not one of the unstable and unlearned who twist the Scriptures.

If any Catholic would like to ask me that, I'd answer "I checked with Aquinas and Church Fathers on essential or doctrinal points, I just provide technical solutions" ....

24:18 As you asked for challenges, feel welcome to mine!




De Unitate Ecclesiae: On the Unity of the Church by Augustine
on the site Semper Reformanda
https://www.semperreformanda.com/de-unitate-ecclesiae-on-the-unity-of-the-church-by-augustine/


Une vision de la Création et du monde antique conforme aux Livres saints
Le savant de Dieu FERNAND CROMBETTE Un catholique français
https://ceshe.fr/loeuvre-dun-catholique-francais-fernand-crombette/


Also available in English: just click the button English (UK) or English (US) whichever you are more familiar with, and it will translate without changing the URL. If on first click it shows in your language and you would want to check the French, click the button Français.

Friday, August 22, 2025

I Actually Did Go Over This Argument Back When Converting


Where was your Church Before Luther? (Richard Field, Baptist Trail of Blood)
Gian The Baptist | 21 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZaJRngnOJg


0:46 You are aware that the Council of Trent is available online in English translation by EWTN or by Papal Encyclicals?*

Would you mind going to the session on Justification and tell me where Trent dogmatises "justification by works"?

I'll give you canons I, XI, XXI, XXXI as a sample:

CANON I.-If any one saith, that man may be justified before God by his own works, whether done through the teaching of human nature, or that of the law, without the grace of God through Jesus Christ; let him be anathema.

...

CANON XI.-If any one saith, that men are justified, either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ, or by the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, and is inherent in them; or even that the grace, whereby we are justified, is only the favour of God; let him be anathema.

...

CANON XXI.-If any one saith, that Christ Jesus was given of God to men, as a redeemer in whom to trust, and not also as a legislator whom to obey; let him be anathema.

...

CANON XXXI.-If any one saith, that the justified sins when he performs good works with a view to an eternal recompense; let him be anathema.


3:02 So, Apostolic times "necessary doctrines" and no local Church successfully imposes an addition that's an error.

Corinth and Galatia are rebuked, so their errors do not spread, they accept the rebuke and return to truth. This part we agree on.

Some post-Apostolic times, prior to the Reformation, "necessary doctrines + accumulation of erroneous additions" and after that, Reformation, a concerted attempt to rid the Church of these erroneous additions ....

There is a certain ambiguity of wording here. Or at least of implications.

Do the erroneous additions actually contradict the necessary doctrines or not? If they don't contradict them, how can we determine they are errors and wouldn't stamping them as errors add a layer of unnecessary, though possibly true, doctrine? If they DO contradict them, how can we say the Church accepting them was, prior to the Reformation, still the Church? Which is the exact object of the question you and Field intended to answer?

3:14 Was relatively new, compared to the accumulation that preceded it ...

OK, you don't have someone making an error in 1978 and it immediately gets denounced by people already not recognising him as Pope?

Again, if the "accumulation of errors" wasn't hurting the necessary doctrine, denouncing it as such was adding un-necessary doctrine. A schism for nothing.

If it was, then "necessary doctrine" had in the meantime disappeared and this makes the Reformation as Religion, not a simply old but rather a old, gone, renewed one.

3:22 The Church which was in existence, was made pure once more

Impossible, about the Church universal. It's certainly possible about a local Church, because a pure Church exists elsewhere in the meantime. For instance, while Galatians were going astray, Rome was pure.

This is the meaning of the where part of the question Where was your Church Before the Reformation?

The Catholic polemicist certainly got "yes, we see that you consider Papal Rome was recent centuries NOT pure" ... the question just becomes, "so, which Church was pure?" Not previous to, but contemporary to Papal Rome "accumulating errors" ...

3:34 You are doing two things.

1) You are substituting a metaphor for an argument;
2) you are basically admitting the "truths of the Reformation" constitute health restored not health preserved.

The problem is, I can see what health and death are in doctrine, but I can't see what illness is, other than pure neglect. An active promotion of error and this getting universally accepted is not bad health but actual death.

You are basically again making the claim, and how unfortunate for Richard Field he was not debating Catholics over the internet, he was also (if you are now giving his position correctly) making the claim that the Reformation was a resurrection. Or that at one point, as to things on earth, it would have been correct to consider your religion as one which was, and is not, and yet will be

OR you are avoiding it by pretending the "accumulated errors" were not mortal, after all.

3:46 It's enough for the question that ONE Church as it is today was the Ancient Church, and that it DIDN'T go away.

We get what you are saying. The Ancient Church, on your view, is NOT Papal Rome. The Pope in 1418, Gregory XII, and the Archishop of Prague in 1405, Zbyněk Zajíc of Hazmburk, were on your view NOT the ancient Church. Our question in reply doesn't presuppose they or their successors were and are.

So, it didn't continue in 1405 to Prague or 1418 to Rome and Constance. Where then did it continue in 1405 and 1418?

4:30 Thank you very much for rejecting Trail of Blood.

It is an historic error, Donatists and Culdees and Albigensians never shared doctrine so as to be different successive or local names of one Church (and Culdees were actually Catholic, unless you would prefer classing them as Eastern Orthodox or Copts, Patrick arriving a bit earlier to Ireland than Chalcedon or the quarrel over azymes).

But James Milton Carroll had the merit of actually seeing the problem. His offered solution is a false one, but because he gets the facts wrong.

5:04 Yes, similarily** Richard Field, the one who died 1616, not the Jesuit who died in Dublin 1606, also used to fly before the arguments could be contradicted on the internet.

8:44 Richard Field is pretending that:

a) prior to Luther, some damnable doctrine was just present locally and individually;
b) but (arguably) that since Luther, unfortunately most of the Latin Church dogmatised a damnable error.

So, what damnable error would that be?

"Justification by works" is not dogmatised. See Trent Session VI. Indulgences and Purgatory and prayers for the dead already were dogmatised, they were reaffirmed by the Council of Trent.

Here*** is Lateran IV:

Catholics who take the cross and gird themselves up for the expulsion of heretics shall enjoy the same indulgence, and be strengthened by the same holy privilege, as is granted to those who go to the aid of the holy Land.


You don't grant an indulgence if you don't believe in Purgatory.

9:05 to 9:44

If they reply 9:07 that that church was theirs and not 9:09 ours, for that the doctrines they now 9:11 teach and we impugn the ceremonies, 9:13 customs, and observations which they 9:15 retain and defend, and which we have 9:16 abolished as fond, vain, and 9:18 superstitious, were taught, use, and 9:21 practice in that church wherein our 9:22 fathers lived and died. We answer, "Then 9:25 none of those points of false doctrine 9:27 and error which they now maintain and we 9:29 condemn were the doctrines of that 9:31 church constantly delivered or generally 9:33 received by all them that were of it, 9:36 but doubtfully broached and devised 9:38 without all certain resolution or factly 9:41 defended by some certain only,


This is simply false.

If he meant Purgatory, it was constantly taught. If he meant "justification by works" it was not taught by Trent and is not taught now.

If he meant Lordship Salvation (in a different style from Evangelicals, to be sure), it was dishonest of him to classify it as "justification by works" ...

10:05 When he parallels Corinth, Galatia, Pergamus and Thyatira, he forgets these were local Churches, which could be reformed from the Universal Church they were part of, wherein others did not share their errors.

When he claims (of presumed abuses) this:

it is true that they were in the Church wherein our fathers lived, but not without signification of their dislike of them, and earnest desire of reformation


he acts as a bad historian, conflating different things.

  • Rome was, what Luther witnessed it as being, and after Luther's time, Rome received the Reformation actually needed and wanted from St. Philip Neri, who counts as "third apostle of Rome" (after Peter and Paul);
  • he cherry-picks individual dissent (and most of it he could probably find in favour of Kings rather than Popes ruling diverse national churches);
  • he pretends that dissenters who were condemned and seen as condemned as heretics were voicing a more general opinion of the Church.


This makes the treatment of Jan Hus in Prague and Constance very hard to explain.

When it comes to other rejections of Transsubstantiation, Jan Hus still believing a "physical" real presence, some of it depends on Albigensians denying Jesus was God in physical human flesh, like some very extreme views among Evangelicals depends on His having ceased to be so, His "resurrection body" (I dislike that term) being "a purely spiritual" one ... (which wasn't born of Mary nor Crucified).

11:22 to 11:35

11:23 It had been a vain challenge for the 11:25 stiff maintainers of errors and abuses° 11:27 to challenge the reformed party for 11:30 novelty to ask of them where their 11:33 church was before this reformation 11:34 began.


It wouldn't have occurred to them, because whoever answerd would very easily have said "in Rome, for instance"

Also questionable if there even were "stiff maintainers" especially united in some kind of church.

11:59 I would say that very briefly, Judaising became a common doctrine in Galatia.

St. Paul adresses the whole Church with "who has bewitched you" ....

I think it was rooted out and the false Cephas (probably not Peter) exposed and penitent so that it was forgotten even sooner than it had entered that Church.

TAKING A PAUSE HERE

* General Council of Trent: Sixth Session
Celebrated on the thirteenth day of the month of January, 1547.
DECREE ON JUSTIFICATION + DECREE ON REFORMATION
https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/trent/sixth-session.htm


** The speaker made an excellent point about Trail of Blood. I echo his wording.

*** Lateran IV
Constitution 3 On Heretics
https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum12-2.htm#3


° Richard Field, read by Gian The Baptist is still talking of local errors in the Church of the First Century and featured in the Bible.

Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Danny Faulkner Believes in Heliocentrism, but NOT ETs, is That Inconsistent?


Many Christians are Wrong about UFOs and ETs
Answers in Genesis | 19 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhnN1VkXG7M


10:10 You are aware that part of the pull for the Heliocentric shift was the appeal to ET's?

Kepler's Somnium, after which Lutherans accused his mother of witchcraft after which he was pretending, "no, that was just an allegory" ... but when I was a child, one man arguing Heliocentrism to me was appealing to inhabitants on planets or exo-planets and their non-Tellurian pov.

10:31 "Began to realise" ... on arguments like Copernicus' (in modern language) "spirographs are such ugly things, God would never allow Venus or Jupiter to move in spirograph patterns" ...

27:27 It is probable Eden's top soil and plant life was at the Flood transferred to Venus, and God makes it inhabitable for the two witnesses up to when they return (arguably they are Henoch and Elijas, and given how Jerusalem is currently pretty Sodom and Egypt, they might return here soon).

Crich Leslie
@Crich_Leslie
Why Venus?

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@hglundahl
@Crich_Leslie "third heaven"

@Crich_Leslie Or third heaven could be Mercury, in that case it could be Mercury.

Someone
withdrew a comment. Or it was deleted to silence the thread, I don't know. It's still visible in the notification feed.

"So, not anything in the Bible, but only your own astrological bull crap."


In response
I'd like to notice that "first heaven" is the sphere of the Moon and "fourth heaven" the sphere of the Sun.

And that the Biblical phrase "third heaven" (2 Corinthians 12:2) was originally up to very recent modern times understood in this type of context.

If I were an avid astrologer, I would be very certain of whether third heaven was Venus or Mercury. I wouldn't hesitate like I did. I would also know all of the Zodiac signs that oppose each other, not just Virgo and Pisces which involve birthdays in my closest family. I would probably chose the ones near the solstices rather than the equinoxes to discuss parallax.

Sharing on Islamic Dilemma


New blog on the kid: Otranto · Understanding the Crusades / Phillip Campbell · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Sharing on Islamic Dilemma

Muslim Accidentally ADMITS the Quran is CORRUPTED
Sips with Serra | 18 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1H0YirfQAo

A Reflection on St. Maria Goretti and Ven. Alessandro Serenelli


How Mercy Transformed a Murderer | FORWARD BOLDLY #mercy #grace
Christine Niles | 14 Jan. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbLwfROrwiM


I have a devotion to Venerable Penitent Alessandro Serenelli.

Like Padre Pio, he died a little after I was born.

0:53 And the execution of the election of the elect is sometimes aided by the prayers of the saints.

Like Jacob was elect, and in order to get to Heaven, he needed to be born, but his birth was aided by the prayers of, I think Rebecca, his mother, and again, in order for Alessandro Serenelli to be in Heaven, he needed to convert, he did so as the obvious fruit of 24 hours his murder victim spent offering every wound and pain and tear for his salvation. Dear St. Maria Goretti, pray for us!

9:30 Would any of this have happened, whether extreme poverty or Alessandro getting porn in train stations, if Nettuno had still been under the Papal States, as 33 years earlier?

20:13 When Maria said "yes, I want him to be with me in Heaven forever" her purity was already saved.

She actually fought him first.

There are people that as late as yesterday I don't think I was saved from ...

Saturday, August 16, 2025

Do Murderers Need to Turn Themselves In?


What happens when someone confesses a murder?
Catholic Answers Live Clips | 16 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMfnisVtnSM


4:50 In such a case, two things.

1) The priest could ask the murderer to turn himself in if someone else is credibly accused.
2) The penitent could at least earlier times have both taken the blame and not turned himself in, nowadays there is Interpol, so that's less of an option. Still could apply in some cases.

So my original 2, now third thing:

3) If the justice system is likely to frame innocent people just because someone has to take the blame, the murder case has to appear solved, perhaps neither priest nor penitent owe that justice system all that much respect, and what other innocent man gets framed that's on the corrupt justice system, not on the murderer. Now, in my one, I would make an exception to this if someone else is credibly accused. If the absence of confession to police by the murderer means someone else has to hear (reasonably) "OK, you say you are innocent, but the evidence looks very damning." But only if this is reasonably. Not if it's because of too loose a relation with the concept of "evidence beyond reasonable doubt" ...

Steven
@Steven-d8n8x
Nothing confessed in the confessional can be revealed, nothing no matter how heinous it is. You can offer all kinds of scenarios, but if you are inquiring about releasing information from the confessional......NO!

Hans-Georg Lundahl
@hglundahl
@Steven-d8n8x Thank you very much, but I was not speaking of what the priest can reveal (i e zero), but whether the priest can ask the murderer to reveal ... as the priest in this video seems to have thought.

It would be a very rare case. Both a very good penal justice system and a good likelihood of an innocent getting the blame and getting convicted. Not very usual.

Friday, August 15, 2025

A Short Attack of an Auto-Authenticated Canon


What better way than to attack the defenses in an equally "short defense" by Michael Kruger and Michael Horton? Here it is, and below it are quotes or allusions with my answers:

A Short Defense of an Auto-Authenticated Canon
Sola Media | 12 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSd9oC4QM74


Even by the middle of the 7:27 second century, we have about 22 out of 27 of the books well established and wellreceived by 7:33 the church. So the idea that you need a vote or you need a council or you need a decision is just 7:38 simply out of sorts with the way the books emerge. They emerged naturally organically as God's people 7:44 recognized uh God's voice in these books and they were authorized for for public reading 7:49 in the church.


What does "God's people" concretely mean? Specifically, since the Christians (inside the Catholic Church) were millions, what kind of decision making on what part that could humanly speaking decide was done?

"God's people recognised" ... when the "people of the US" decided on "We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union ..." it was concretely the Founding Fathers. Paul Revere was perhaps consulted on an earlier occasion, but his opinion, if ever given, is not recorded. The guys in Boston who threw down tea into Massachusetts Bay did not write those words.

Howeversomuch organically resistance against the British parliament and Taxation without Representation bore fruit in the War of Independence, Gouverneur Morris wrote the sentence "'we the people" ... and he did so as attending the Constitutional Convention of the United States.

8:50 Now you are speaking of these books, basically one by one.

Yes, Christians recognised Apostolic or close-to-Apostolic authorship and at the same time God speaking through the texts.

However, I would say, in each case, a hagiographer was both authorised to write the text and to give its authentification. Unless a higher one was given ... by St. Peter. II Peter basically alludes to there being a canonic list of Pauline epistles, which he, Peter, was endorsing. Clement the Stromatist says, Peter was asked to authorise Luke, read variously from Luke and Matthew which he already had, and added some own comment, and so inadvertently (at least at first) made Mark believe he was dictating a Gospel. Then he authorised in this order Mark and Luke.

So, an agreement that Jude was canon was maybe with St. Jude, enjoying his authority as Apostle, or maybe with St. Peter, enjoying his authority as the first Pope.

It never "arose organically" in an amorphous and impossible way, like how Romantics like Johann Gottfried Herder imagined that Muß i denn prior to Philipp Friedrich Silcher arose out of literal masses with no single lyricist or composer at any stage. On the contrary, if there was no overall single composer and lyricist, there was at every stage one.

And just as there was a composition (though perhaps so far not on note paper) prior to Silcher, there was a canonisation, either by Jude or by Peter, of Jude, prior to the 4th C. decisions on all 45~46 + 27.

And it was not an emergent one.

9:08 "the canon wasn't voted on, it was recognised"

It was as a totality of 27 books recognised 382 in Rome, 393 in Hippo, 397 in Carthage, and each time by an actual vote.

9:44 No one has said that the decisions of Rome, Hippo and Carthage for the canon as a whole doesn't depend on a previous tradition for each of the books.

Received? Sure. Something already true? Sure. But I'd very much challenge the idea that St. Clement of Rome ever wrote of 27 books or of having received, not only each, but all of them as a package.

You could argue that Rome in Italy and the two cities in and near Tunisia represent the middle of East and West and received assurance for each disputed book from one of the surrounding sides. But this only means that if a decisive vote had instead been held in the East, it would not have held Apocalypse or in the West not Hebrews (that being hypothetic, since we don't know the exact location of the Muratorian canon). So, again, it comes to a decisive vote.

10:04 The Catholic Church very explicitly dogmatises that the books did not become inspired by being so recognised by the Catholic Church.

In other words, that the canonisation is a recognition of something already true. You are attacking a straw man.

10:30 Each hagiographer was part of the Church.

The twelve were the most high-ranking members of the Church. Before I and II Peter were god-breathed as books, Peter was god-breathed in John 20 and in Acts 2.

Whether Jude or Peter authenticated the Epistle of Jude as canon, they did so as high ranking members of the Church and their decision was recognised by the Church for this reason.

Note, Peter, Matthew and Jude clearly were among the twelve. Mark, Luke and Paul clearly weren't. Whether James is James of Zebedee or James the Brother of God, whether John is John of Zebedee or "John who wore the golden headband" (i e a Cohen) is disputed. Three of the hagioagraphers were not as such authenticated by being god-breathed as Church in John 20. Perhaps one or both of the last two. Even if all of them were at the point of their writing recognised as Apostles, this was obviously by recognition by the twelve, or whether some were not recognised as Apostles (highly probable for Mark and Luke) their role as hagiographers also depended for recognition on the Church.

So, even if you go back to the inspired writing itself, you need a recognition by the Church. You will not find any of the holy writings buried down in the 1st C and then dug up centuries later, like certain golden plates of a certain sect. They were each recognised by at least part of the Church before John died (if dying is the best description). Whether other parts forgot later or whether other parts hadn't heard the full picture, there was still a need for further action from the Church. The one taken in the late 4th C.

10:51 "In a smokefilled room ..."

Much as Tolkien would have appreciated the idea of pipeweed grown in pre-Columbian times in the Old World, it would seem that Nicotiana tabacum and its use in pipes arrived into Europe well after the 4th C. councils, more like 1000 years later.

11:09 How does writing with authority and writing authoritative books for the Church contradict?

The authority that St. Paul time and again explicitly assumed over recipients was mostly that of Church planter (Corinth and most of the rest) and three times as ordaining bishop or consecrating bishop, like Justus of Canterbury had over Paulinus of York or like Drogo of Metz had over Ansgar. In other words, the explicit authority as hagiographer is an authority that pre-existed the writing as authority in the Church.

By contrast, St. Luke is not explicitly assuming authority any more than the author of I Maccabees, when he writes his books. He is narrating the facts after stating he would try to narrate the facts, and it is very arguable someone above him (like Peter in the account by the Stromatist) decided with authority that he had succeeded.

11:22 So, either they wrote with an authority assumed by the inspiration or they had no idea the Church would later canonised their books. False dichotomy. Tertium datur.

St. Paul already wielding authority wrote that authority into his books. St. Luke was writing with an explicit search for approval of an at least intermediate authority.

11:46 So, St. Peter, the First Pope, authentified the Pauline epistles. Perhaps Hebrews was missing on the occasion.

And St. Paul authentified St. Luke, apparently? A reference would be useful.

Hence, clearly at least some of the non-Apostle hagioagraphers of the NT received authentification from a higher CHURCH authority in their lifetime. Probably all.

12:05 Again, you are adressing a strawman. The 4th C canonisations are not the first time each book is recognised as canon, but the first time the whole collection is. Along with, note well, a 45~46 book OT collection (depending on whether a book, probably Baruch, but I've also seen Lamentations, is counted as part of or separately from Jeremias).

By the way, I Tim 5 need not cite Luke as on par with Deuteronomy, St. Paul could have cited a well established targum in the Jewish tradition which was also cited by Jesus in Luke. But which the student of Gamaliel would have known independently of Luke. Though, no doubt, having it from Jesus' mouth would have added to its authority. The words "Scripture saith" could in that case encapsule an authentification of Jewish oral teaching as correctly paraphrasing the words in Deuteronomy. Overall, it's probable that St. Paul was referring to Gospel of Luke, but it's not certain.

But if it was Luke, not only Peter (as the story goes in Stromata) but also Paul had higher authority in the Church than Luke and could thus authenticate.

12:17 As a Catholic, I agree. As soon as the book is received by someone with authority in the Church capable of authentifying a lower or recognising a higher authority, that book has status of canon.

But that was not for all of the books universal tradition in the Church afterwards. And the decision on these 4th C. Councils was not independent of tradition, but deciding what traditionS to rely on, in the cases of conflict.

13:03 "because you didn't have bishops yet"

Where do you get that from, even?

Protestant reconstruction without basis in the Bible. The first twelve bishops obviously had another name. That doesn't mean they weren't bishops. So were some other groups with special names. While these specificities were dying out, the general name was sought and found in the LXX version of a psalm cited in Acts 1.

Τὴν ἐπισκοπὴν αὐτοῦ λαβέτω ἕτερος.

13:20 "It's not a hierarchic polity"

Did Jesus set 72 out of the rest of His discples, 12 over these, Peter over the 12 and then the 12 also chose 7 deacons? If that's not a hierarchic Church polity, what is?

[tried to add]

I wonder if one would be so incoherent even from cannabis ...

14:55 "there was no unified polity structure"

This is not what "everybody knows" but what every Protestant assumes. However, I've already dealt with the canon, so I end here. Yes, each book was originally canonised well before 4th C Rome, Hippo, Carthage. But it was so by an already extant polity structure which was already hierarchic.

Wednesday, August 13, 2025

"Identifying False Mystics" ... Is the Duty of a Bishop, Not a Shrink


Check out a certain similarity:



Identifying False Prophets and Mystics Videogram
American Institute of Health Care Professionals | 13 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_WNCfuY3dA


Would you mind telling me, if American Christian Health Care Professionals have me on a watchlist on this kind of suspicion?

I claim that young earth creationism and geocentrism hold true. That "John Paul II" to at least "Francis" are probably not true Popes. That we probably live in the end times, that part of what Trump is doing (to immigrants) or planning to do (to homeless) is Antichristian, that he is not the Beast, as his gematria is not 666 in any version of his name I can spell so far, that a candidate on that account would be Putin, that earthly Jerusalem is already spiritually Sodom and Egypt, that Enoch and Elijah have not already come, but will. Oh, in the context of YEC, that Babel was (Genesis 10 and 11) in Göbekli Tepe (or perhaps Karahan Tepe) and that the tower describes a rocket project, where a take-off would have failed, while God's decision to confuse the languages gave Wernher von Braun a chance. Nearly everyone on earth had already forgotten Nimrod, and the few Hebrews who hadn't (later the many Catholics who haven't) were thinking in terms of a skyscraper.

Now, what I do most certainly NOT claim is being a mystic, or getting these informations from God or the Blessed Virgin or other saints, except by the means of Providence, just as Providence made me come across the info that Albigensians really were not Christians (Umberto Eco, Name of the Rose, never saw the film, got the book at age 16 as Christmas present and on New Year had decided to convert.

The kind of discernment you propose, the kind of watchfulness against abuse that you propose, is so easy to abuse, and is very probably by some being abused. I could have had my work in print 2009 if it hadn't been for this sort of thing, and instead I'm still impoverished and homeless despite 13 000 + blog posts, a lot of which are essays that could immediately be put into print commercially, and another lot of which are dialogues that could be put into print as soon as you get a clearing from other participants.

If I'm not off the street, it's not because I'm waiting for God to give me a sign to start earning money instead of writing, I'm waiting for guys, probably like you, to allow my writing to be a gainful work, as it was for Chesterton, as it is for Trent Horn or Jimmy Akin.

If you find the positions I enumerated so absurd, you don't even look for a possible rational argument about them, you just find them a symptom classifiable as delusion, I consider you a representative of the Scarlet Beast. If a Catholic clergyman bows down to your assessment or caution, should such a thing be the case, or that of someone like you, instead of asking himself whether what I said was heresy or could on a Catholic dogmatic view be correct, then his bowing down to you makes him part of the Harlot. Clergy should have Christ, not Communism, as the Bridegroom of His Church. And what you would in such a case be doing would be Communism, not Medicine. My mother was a Med. cand. and Intern, I know the difference between what she did, and what certain colleagues did to her, by a professional or personal interest in Psychiatry.

You pretend to be health professionals? Then the question of false prophets and false mystics isn't your concern. You are not bishops or theologians.

5:43 As I'm homeless, some could pretend I had sacrificed my life for some false mystic, or for a false experience on my own part.

I have not sacrificed my life, I am prevented from getting the life I want. By evil-doers, as far as I could tell.

6:14 "they're out miracle shopping"

Whether or not someone should hope for a miracle, is ultimately a concern between him and God. In some cases his superiors or pastors.

What a med professional terms "mature" or "immature" faith is totally beside the point. I don't think there is any part of any Church document (prior to Vatican II) that even uses the words. "Unstable" in II Peter is not synonym with "immature".

A Commie would obviously consider any hope for obtaining a miracle, and any unhesitant affirmation such and such a thing is a real miracle, is "immature faith" as long as he wasn't able to apply the kind of measures Albania did under Enver Hoxha.

6:34 A verification for the faith is not limited to wanting to see with ones own eyes, good Apologetics is not the doubt of Thomas.

By the way, I'm offering Apologetics. I'm not that needy myself, even if those who hate my Apologetics would love if it were the case.

7:04 A Fundamentalist type of understanding of the faith is what we should have.

If a certain guy in the Vatican isn't Fundamentalist, he arguably isn't the Pope (that includes the former Antipope Ratzinger), and shouldn't be listened to, since in a layman, he could be a Catholic ill instructed, but in the position of a bishop needs to be shunned as preaching heresy.

7:13 I'm certainly a victim of trauma and abuse ... by the likes of you.

Doesn't make me easier to manipulate.

If you pretend I'm manipulated, you are basically abusing mental health jargon to censor me, to pretend a non-extant protection and impose further abuse.

8:13 As Christians, you should leave the discernment to bishops and theologians, they shouldn't outsource it to your psychological assessments.

And bishops and theologians should not embark on this kind of discernment if no actual CLAIM to prophecy or mysticism is being made. They should ask the person concerned, and not outsource it to your psychological assessments.

Again, my positions are (apart those held by all Catholics, which are many more), these:

I claim that young earth creationism and geocentrism hold true. That "John Paul II" to at least "Francis" are probably not true Popes. That we probably live in the end times, that part of what Trump is doing (to immigrants) or planning to do (to homeless) is Antichristian, that he is not the Beast, as his gematria is not 666 in any version of his name I can spell so far, that a candidate on that account would be Putin, that earthly Jerusalem is already spiritually Sodom and Egypt, that Enoch and Elijah have not already come, but will. Oh, in the context of YEC, that Babel was (Genesis 10 and 11) in Göbekli Tepe (or perhaps Karahan Tepe) and that the tower describes a rocket project, where a take-off would have failed, while God's decision to confuse the languages gave Wernher von Braun a chance. Nearly everyone on earth had already forgotten Nimrod, and the few Hebrews who hadn't (later the many Catholics who haven't) were thinking in terms of a skyscraper.

I'd take a debate with anyone on these matters, provided he were the type of guy interested in debate, and I would not invoke my own experience as decisive argument. I would invoke the difference between "observation" and "conclusion", or the ASCII value of upper case A as 65, equally that Göbekli Tepe is West of the Mountains of Armenia, that a rocket before take off looks like a three storied tower, whereof only the top storey will reach into space (earlier referred to as heaven). I would appeal to an atmosphere in 2556 BC of 51 percent modern Carbon equally resulting in a carbon age of 10 000 years ago, as an atmosphere in 8000 BC with 100 pmC. On both theories, the sample would in 2556 BC have c. 51 pmC. None of these arguments are God speaking to me. None of this is based of me being a prophet or mystic.

8:35 The apparitions of Fatima were investigated exactly like what you refer to.

Chesterton mentioning that the respect for children is the fruit of Catholicism, not Paganism, or "Peter Pan belongs to the world of Peter, not to the world of Pan" was NOT investigated the manner you refer to.

Bernadette Soubirous was investigated as you mention. There was a medical involvement, but had nothing to do with "delusion" or "fundamentalism" or whatnot, the doctor took her pulse, so the trance was not induced by an anxious or otherwise very vivid physical passion.

Tolkien mentioning Henry VIII's divorce or impiety against the Welsh his ancestors spoke was NOT investigated such manners.

Now, the operative distinction is not between "banale" or "paradoxic" (Chesterton was regarded as paradoxic). The operative distinction is simply between receiving a message as someone seeing the Virgin Mary physically appear, and concluding for a truth out of own research. Each one of my positions falls on the latter side.

9:28 The questions "are they mad" (question in the case of Bernadette Soubirous, concluding negatively as the pulse was calm during her vision) and "do they have mental issues" (which could include any kind of "attitude problem" as per DSM-V) are not synonymous.

I'm on a daily basis abused by people wanting to "verify" if I'm of a sound mind. When Muslim children passing are curious whether I ate chicken, or when a black stranger asks me "how are you" in a way too reminiscent of "are you really well?" and I get visibly angry, they can go to some mental health professional and pretend I get angry for nothing. I don't think it's for nothing. It's respect for my personal liberties, for not allowing strangers to one-sidedly introduce themselves into my life as "friends" just because I'm on the street, and especially when it's highly probable they are doing some dirty work for actually mental health professionals who are power greedy people, as was seen in the Khruschev era (with which psychiatrists of the West had "scientific" collaboration).

10:02 "especially with all these mystics and false prophets that have doomsday calendars"

Does this mean, my claims on Apocalypse 11 state of the Knesset and Apocalypse 13 gematria will continue to be investigated until Armageddon, and be used as leverage to keep all the rest under a shrug by "it's being looked into" along with it?

Will it stop when Henoch and Elijah come and do miracles? Some of them obviously highly punitive.

Or are some people in your version of the Catholic Church (too respectful of the likes of you for my taste) finally getting around to the fact that mental health professionals and exorcists are less of clue than actually challenging me on the doctrinal level?

10:56 "it's important ... so you don't become a victim"

I'm an ex-Lutheran. One thing Luther said, in a very different context, was, if you find you have been fooled by someone, good for you. Nice lesson of humility for your judgement. He compares the guy in this position to a man fallen into a ditch adding "and here he lieth all for the better" ... he should enjoy the spectacle of his having been misled as a kind of slapstick comedy.

Luther didn't claim it was important never to become a victim to the neighbour ... in general. As to religious doctrine, he was far more ultra-magisterial than Catholicism is, and so Lutherans and Anglicans are to this day.

But the very phrase pair "it's important ... so you don't become a victim" is a very modern American phrase. The goal is not always within our power. The means to an impossible goal should not be extreme. Precisely as Nimrod had no right to draft mankind into a rocket project the Neolithic was not technologically mature for, and as Fauci or in France Salomon had no business drafting society into mask- or vaccine mandates. Or at least partially, Putin in Russia. The means chosen were extreme, the bad outcome one tried to escape was hysterically overemphasised (people weren't dying galore when the Black Sea flooded some decade or century before Babel, and mankind would not have been reduced to a rubble of skeleta reminiscent of Gaza without masks and vaccines), the good outcome (saving mankind from Flood-able Earth, eradicating Covid) was not attainable, therefore the "one world totalitarian" measures were not justified.

Tried to add:

I suppose, when I write, when I hold cardboards with URLs to my blogs, there are some US Americans around who here are telling people to either give me nothing at all, or give me only food, and above all not read my blogs, but pretend interest, hand the URL over to someone like you in France who hands it over to someone like you in US or Brazil. Because, of course, otherwise they might risk taking me seriously as a writer, believing I'm a writer because I said so, and "it's important they don't do that so they don't become victims"



Meanwhile, same day, or rather next day, but time zone of Australia, so still "same day" in France, as by "pure coincidence" Creation Ministries International, who are as unlikely to relish my Catholicism, as a Catholic on "American Institute of Health Care Professionals" to relish my Young Earth Creationism, came out with ‘Flat Earthism’ and seeking truth in a confused world. Those guys love to appeal to the Galileo case in a Heliocentric perspective, so are biassed against Geocentrism. Look out for them systematically mentioning Flat Earthism but not Geocentrism apart from Flat Earthism. Andrew Sibley writes:

Such writers argue that heliocentrism is false. That is, the correct view of the Sun at the centre of the Solar System (orbited by all the planets) was allegedly developed by people interested in promoting Paganism (i.e. sun worship), so that’s why they rejected the geocentric view.


Paganism is not just sun worship. It's also post-truth or radical scepticism. When Seneca (quoted by Sungenis, also not a Flat Earthist) is neutral on "whether a god turns the heavens around earth, or earth within the heavens" — that's a jab at sensory data being reliable truth. From Ficino to Kant, from Neo-Platonism to Idealism, there is a thrust to rely on pure thought against the senses. Geocentrism which adapts the thinking to actual sense data doesn't fit that.

But this is false. They ignore the fact that Geo, or Gaia was also an ancient Greek god, so the argument doesn’t hold. Furthermore, one of the main proponents of the modern flat Earth view, Eric Dubay, describes himself as a Hindu Yogi—and he is President of the International Flat Earth Research Society!4 ‘Flat Earthism’ certainly fits with Hindu mythology, where the Earth is said to rest on four elephants, themselves standing on a turtle.


Correct, but this is no valid indictment of Sungenis, myself, Gerardus Dingeman Bouw or the late Pope Michael I. None of whom believe in a Flat Earth, I have myself gone out of my way to show how Biblical literalism purported to lead to Flat Earth doesn't, like Where Are the Four Corners on a Globe?, my proposed answer to which is, Cape Horn, Point Barrow, Anadyr, and SE Australia (Hobart for reference) are four corners surrounding the lived in land masses, except mainly New Zealand and requiring very little curvature of the lines between the corners. The North line between Point Barrow and Anadyr passes only very little South of Murmansk, for example. The Bible was right, and a Globe equips me to see it.

Timmy Gibson Fell Away over Belief in Evolutionist Stuff ...


My answers refer to, for instance: Want to Live Close to Giant Dragonflies? Nah, Me Neither · Acknowledgement to Jerome Cohen for Previous · Creswell Crag and Bolsover


Or to a checkup with Witwatersrand: Contacting Karoo about superposition of layers and fossils, refeatured in this dialogue: Debate on Geology.

Christianity Can’t Be True - Says Former Evangelical Pastor of 30 Years
Timmy Gibson | 30 July 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR-LH4NIyQY


1:01 Not a believer in OSAS anyway, and in my teens I was confronted (partly by part time bullies of myself, partly actually by nice guys, kind of a good-cop / bad-cop routine) with loads of reasons to leave Christianity.

"If you are Protestant and believe the Bible, how do you deal with getting it from the Catholic Church?"


Oops, my bad, converted. Crossed the Tiber.

"If you believe in Adam and Eve, what about Australopithecus and Homo erectus?"


- "Guess they could be some kind of trolls" ... (didn't quite stay with that one: Australopithecus was an ape and Homo erectus are Adamites, perhaps with some Nephelim issues or perhaps with some deliberate Orc breeding by actual Nephelim).

Just for the record, that was about 42 years ago. Still RC, still believe in Adam and Eve.

4:11 Oh, dear.

No, never went for that solution. I just answered a few days ago, how we could live along dinosaurs up to Noah's Flood (when most dino bones we find are from), namely: same way we can live along lions. By NOT living along them and taking a safe distance, at least from the larger, but apparently also from the smaller ones. Wouldn't want to meet a rhino right now (there was an awful meme on a bullfighter facing one saying "my relative the bull was ill, so I replaced him" ... I don't think even toreros are keen on metting rhinos) and don't think they would have wanted to meet a Pareiosaurus back then. As none of the pre-Flood human settlements in South Africa are in or very near Karroo, I find the solution pretty vindicated.

I do however believe devils had some agency in flood waters and lava and radioactivity during the Flood and can have used it in part to prepare K-Ar and U-Pb dates. While God decreed the Flood, it was the devils who would have enjoyed executing it, and perhaps God gave them that chance. They'll have so little fun after Doomsday.

5:09 I just mentioned that Karroo where you find dinos is hundreds of kilometers from possibly pre-Flood habitations of men in South Africa.

That pretty confirms that men and dinos lived at the same time and men avoided dino grazing fields.

You know what would confirm your story? If human habitations had been found in Karroo, ten meters (33 feet) higher up in the layers than dinos. Or if, also in Karroo, you had found some Triassic critter ten meters higher up than a Permian one. I actually checked with Karroo (yes, it happens, very rarely, but still, that professional scientists answer me). Doesn't happen.

On another occasion, I looked at giant dragonflies, the types that have a wingspan of 50 cm. On two specimens of Meganeura, the one potentially Neanderthal close habitation was 86 km from there, on the other one 7 miles or 11 km. Plus in both cases, the Neanderthal presence if such is verified only by Mousterian tools, which could have been reused or revisited after the Flood, and in Creswell crags you also have post-Flood occupations, from the Magdalenian.

So, if you had found the giant dragonfly 10 meters below the human tools in Creswell crags rather than 7 miles way in Bolsover, that would have been evidence for your now position, that I don't see you as having.

[The comments seem to have been removed.]

Allen Parr is Right We Shouldn't Try to Handle Snakes (But Overall Wrong on Mark 16:17—18)


Charismatics Try To Fool You On This Bible Verse
THE BEAT by Allen Parr | 12 Aug 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNlgUOi8jU0


4:17 Jesus was in fact saying "these signs will follow them" ... not "you" but "them that have believed" (τοῖς πιστεύσασιν)

5:52 Nope, both Mark 16 and Matthew 28, the Great Commission applies to a group and basically the same one. The Apostles.

It still applies throughout time, as per Matthew 28:20, because the group is not finished with it's then members.

However, it applied to a group then, it applies to a group now. 12 / 72 / maybe even 500 back then. Catholic bishops now.

St. Mary Magdalene, an Apostle to the Apostles, was not an Apostle, was not in that group then. Women are not in that group now.

6:55 St. Paul was at that point not in the group. He was later handling deadly snakes.

The words are prophecy, not command.

Driving out demons is elsewhere commanded, to a specific group, which is perpetuated throughout time, but here Jesus is prophecying that the attempts will be successful, or sometimes even there wasn't an attempt, and the good result will follow.

Some where, some time, in Church history, perhaps someone will have accidentally drink what was meant to poison him and not died, or perhaps it's already fulfilled when St. Benedict of Nursia set out to drink, he made the sign of the cross over it and it burst. I'm not sure if that's fully the meaning of the aorist subjunctive I found in the interlinear namely πίωσιν.

And these miraculous signs are not restricted to the Apostles or their successors, the bishops. Venerable Eusebia Palomino Yenes (whose abbess was martyred by the Reds in the Spanish War, she had already died) didn't try to make an exorcism to get rid of the poltergeist, they were waiting for an exorcist to come, but with three Hail Marys on her part, the exorcism was already done, the commanded exorcist came to late to perform an exorcism there and then visibly stopping the Poltergeist. That's why in a poem I called her "exorcista de España" not as if she were an ordained exorcist, but because she performed an exorcism and can from that matter be called an exorcist. Dito for the skull of St. Bridget of Sweden, also in Spain, I think. Exorcisms are still worked by that relic.

7:34 The words And these signs shall follow them that believe: is a prophecy to which the group hearing the words was a witness, not a command to them.

He didn't say "do this as a sign" but "this kind of sign will happen" ... so, it is definitely not restricted to the then and there hearers.

It is indeed for all times, but having to handle snakes or accidentally drinking what someone else poisoned without telling you is obviously rarer than calling for an exorcist or getting a healing miracle in Lourdes or when a priest gives Extreme Unction.

8:18 The signs are not commands.

They are none of them for all individual believers, but all of them to the Christian community as a whole.

That's why we see exorcisms and healings today. Speaking a tongue you haven't learned is rarer, maybe last happend with St. Francis Wavier, unless he had a translator, since the Church is usually alert to avoiding the necessity for this sign. On Pentecost day, none of the Apostles, I can safely conclude had studied Cretan Doric. Nevertheless, Jews from Crete who knew Cretan Doric were hearing it. Snakehandling and poison drinking with survival are obviously emergency situatiional miracles, not sth you deliberately expose yourself to.

And when Paul had gathered together a bundle of sticks, and had laid them on the fire, a viper coming out of the heat, fastened on his hand And when the barbarians saw the beast hanging on his hand, they said one to another: Undoubtedly this man is a murderer, who though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance doth not suffer him to live And he indeed shaking off the beast into the fire, suffered no harm [Acts Of Apostles 28:3-5]

8:45 The actual text* doesn't say "will be able to" ... while healers exist, who actually are able to do so, it could often be in contexts where no healing was expected, like if a priest gives a cancer patient Extreme Unction and instead of soon dying he is healed and doesn't need an operation, the prophecy is fulfilled even if that priest doesn't have a parmenent ability to heal the sick.

Quit using that text*, which reads things into the words rather than translating. Unbelievers won't be converted by a priest "being able to" heal the sick, they will be converted by a priest actually doing so.

9:17 None of the signs say, "at will" ... an exorcist may be able to cast out some demons but not others. And not every Christian is an exorcist.

The sign belongs to the community of the believers, i e the Catholic Church, even if most can't cast out demons, it's enough that some can.

And none of the five signs says "at will" ... it's about results not expected for. Wednesday after Ascension Thursday, Peter wasn't saying "tomorrow, I'll speak Gaulish and Cretan Doric" and he was not claiming that ability in Jesus name, but whoever of the Apostles spoke in those languages did so as a free and unexpected gift from the Holy Spirit.

St. Paul wasn't expecting to be stung by a viper.

10:26 On the contrary, it is very applicable to believers today.

Miracles still happen.

Exorcisms and healings of the sick being the most common of the five.

Your problem is, you substitute "believers today" as the red herring, when the real one is "every single one" ... a community has the credit of every miracle it's members do, even if not every single member is doing a miracle.

You also pretend the word is about "at will" or read a text that falsely states "be able to" ... a sign is a sign even if or maybe rather especially if it is unexpected.

14:17 Thank you for clarifying, on your own reading it is not** "at will" ...

* The actual text = the Bible (original, Vulgate, Douay Rheims, Monsignor Knox, or for French Crampon). That text = whatever Allen Parr is using (NASV?) ** The "at will" is a logical exploration of how his adversaries reads the passage, even if they do not utter it, or should be reading it in consistency, even if they are inconsistent.