So , protestants.
Are you going to answer why it is there are 10000 flavours of protestant doctrine , all of the denominations born after 1500? - none traceable back to the true church.
There is no church which is traceable back to 'the true church' (whatever that was). There never was a 'true church'. There were a large number of independent churches around the known world and which of them were included as part of the true church, depended on opinion. In the first three centuries there was no hierarchy. Only God knew who the 'true church' was, even outwardly. But more importantly only God knew who were truly His. Large churches, such as Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea, Rome tried to exert their influence in their own area. But none fully succeeded.
Then came the catastrophic fourth century when the church, instead of being kept 'pure' by persecution, was pervaded by pagan ideas as a consequence of Constantine's 'conversion'. He tried to make the Roman church pre-eminent for political reason and failed. The Roman church was the one that was most affected by paganism. The 'true church' had ceased to exist outwardly. Although of course God knew who belonged to the true, now 'invisible' to men, church. (Invisible in that no one really knew who exactly belonged to it. It was of course visible, just indeterminable).
Thus the first Christians belonged to independent churches which practised adult baptism (guess who that looks like?) . Sadly as the centuries passed true Christians had to go 'underground' in order to escape the persecution now being carried out by supposed Christians..
The Roman Catholic church did not come into being until after 700 AD. It was simply a political organisation using religion for its own end.s. Before that it was simply a regional church. It did not even control the West. The Celtic church was equally powerful and not in submission to Rome..
Thus no church truly traces back to 'the true church' which never existed as a physical unity, only as a spiritual unity.
As you know, Mark, when you are being honest, there are not a huge number of denominations in the UK. Why do you pretend that there are? And non-Roman Catholic churches get together in unity through organisations like the evangelical alliance and the Keswick conventions. They are not divided and in antagonism with each other. In these organisations all are united under one statement of doctrine which makes allowance for minor differences. So you are totally distorting the position to your own ends. SHAME ON YOU.
It is convenient to argue "they agree on the fundamentals" - they do not
Evangelicals in ALL denominations do, apart from the RC church. You simply try to exaggerate the differences.
- which is why they fracture with monotonous regularity.
Rubbish.
The differences are profound, and the list above only just scratches the surface, but multiply up that list and you already see 10000 permutations and flavours of radically different doctrine.
I don't actually think that you are really aware of the facts. You are a
turncoat who is simply trying to put the worst reflection on the situation. It is always turncoats who try to exaggerate differences in order to justify their own desertion.
How can any of them be the true church? They are mutually exclusive so at very least 9999 of the 10000 are false doctrine. So which of the 10000 is right? And are you going to denounce the 9999 as heretics?
you would be better to say nothing and seem stupid, than speak out and show that you are. the church you are describing is not one I recognise. It is NOT true in the UK. Evangelicals in all denominations get together in demonstrations of unity. They are NOT mutually exclusive. I have preached acceptably in most of them and have always been welcomed. You are a
distorter of the truth.
There are a lot more versions of "make up your own" designer christianity, just cannot be bothered to type numbers longer than 5 digits.
A good description of the present Roman Catholic church, 'make up your own designer pretended Christianity'..
