Dear Januarius,
The belief by colonised peoples, such as yourself, that what left Europe and came to them is Christianity is a deception.
What left Israel is Christianity. What left Europe is Christendom. They are not the same thing. Think of that before you condemn other believers and attest that the only Church of Christ is the Catholic Church.
People assembled to worship in Scripture (Romans 16:5). If your claim is correct then they would have been Catholics. Yet, neither Christ nor His disciples founded the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church originated almost 400 years after Christ. It was a means of unifying all pagan religions in Rome and syncretising them with aspects of Orthodox Christianity. The word Catholic means all inclusive.
You never find the veneration of statues and icons of Christ, Mary and saints in Scripture. They originated in pagan Europe -Acts 19:26.
The Anglican Church is an offshoot of Catholicism. The ONLY reason it exists is because King Henry VIII of England wanted to divorce his wife and marry his mistress, Anne Boleyn. The Pope refused.
Thanks to that adulterous affair, England broke from the Catholic Church and founded the Church of England in 1534.
Today, Catholicism and Anglicanism are the largest denominations of Christendom.
Almost nothing in human history matched the brutality of the Catholic Church during the Holy Inquisition in Europe and the FORCED conversions in Latin America and other places. Today, Boko Haram does it. We call it terrorism!
Investigate what the Catholic Church did to Native American children in Northern America and what the Anglican Church did to mixed race and native children in Australia and other places.
Forget denominations. Understand what Christ meant when He said “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” -Matthew 6:10. One takeaway is that there are no denominations in Heaven.
Drink from the Source, not the sauce. Read Scripture. Do as it says. Don’t let ANY denominations tell you this part of Scripture should be understood like this, and that part like this. That is dogma, not doctrine.
In John 7:48-49, the Pharisees said “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him? But this people who know not the law are cursed.”
Denominations know The law. But people, like you and I, know The Lord.
Many of us who are Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist and many other denominations are not what we are because of any conscious decisions on our parts. We are mostly a function of our parents decisions, who were a function of their parents decisions, and so on.
If we can be tied to faith in Christ, rather than our emotional attachment to our denominations, this world would be a much better place. Remember, “the kingdom of God is within you”-Luke 17:21.
Reno Omokri
Gospeller. Deep Thinker. #1 Bestselling author of Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years. Avid traveller. Hollywood Magazine Film Festival Humanitarian of the Year, 2019.
