Todd Merkel

Husband 💍 Father - 1689 Baptist Reformed ✝️ Christian 🌷Sola-Scriptura theology & apologetics 📖 Sola Fide. 🔥Sola Gratia, Sola Christus, Soli Deo Gloria

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

Alternate account for @ByGraceAL0NE

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

@farmingandJesus How is that wicked sinner going to say he does not deserve hell. Does he think he is the Christ?

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

@9INE0hS8NT @gmsmadrid @EcciusMaximus He cannot. He has become the judge of the hearts of others. But that is because he has been taught to think highly of himself and not of others.

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

@EcciusMaximus You don’t understand what we mean when we say faith. That is blatantly obvious. Not a single Protestant believes that faith means mental assent that does not result in action. Please do better to not strawman others to make a point you don’t even have to make.

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

@farmingandJesus Praying for your comfort, peace and contentment.

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

You’re creating a category Scripture never does. The issue isn’t whether imputation is cleanliness. The issue is whether Christ completely qualifies the believer for heaven. Romans 8:30, Hebrews 10:14, and Philippians 1:6 all say He does. Where does Scripture say a justified believer must undergo Purgatory before entering God’s presence?

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

The problem with your argument is that you’ve assumed what you’re trying to prove. Revelation 21:27 establishes the necessity of perfect holiness, not the existence of Purgatory. Protestants agree that nothing unclean enters heaven. We simply believe Christ completely accomplishes that purification through His once-for-all sacrifice (Heb. 10:10, 14), whereas you insert an intermediate state that the text never mentions.

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

@autocorrect2_0 @FacingEast1 @imzahai The only infallible interpreter of Scripture is the Word of God.

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

@farmingandJesus Yep. They have that light and that salt that we immediately recognize.

[ByFaithAL0NE @ByGraceAL0NE]

Politics! We can always dredge up more adrenaline because of the latest moral or
ethical or social or cultural or political emergency. Crises may stimulate us
to action but they do not sustain life. The church must never look to the
latest cause for her life. We cannot ignore the enemies outside the city of
God, but we must not be absorbed by them. War must not efface worship.
The real question is not “Who is against us?” but “Who is among us?”

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

@ginamilan_ @USA_MAGA_X100 I’m not terrified.

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

The Constitution is a written authority. Courts do not create its authority…they recognize, interpret, and apply it. Just as the Scriptures are a written authority. Pastors, councils, and the Church do not create their authority they recognize, interpret, proclaim, and apply it.

An interpreter is not the source of authority. If it were, every judge would outrank the Constitution, and every pastor or council would outrank Scripture. We both know that is not the case.

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

I'm dead! This comical poetic masterpeice from 400 years ago has me ROLLING!

William Prynne’s A Pleasant Purge for a Roman Catholic, to Evacuate His Evil Humours, printed in London in 1642.

On and Against Popish Beads and the Repeated Pater Nosters Said Upon Them

I wonder much why Papists use beads to pray,
And all their Pater Nosters on them say.
Is it because they set their prayers for sale,
And buyers take by number, not by scale?
As merchants count the wooden logs they store,
Must they use beads to keep the count and score?
If so, it seems a just and lawful act,
Though selling prayers is no Christian fact.
Or is it that they bargain every day
With God how many Paters they will say,
And so their beads are used to keep account,
That God may have his properly vowed amount—
So many Pater Nosters as they say
By contract, vow, or penance they must pay?
This seems an honest practice, fair and just,
To render God his due; yet first they must
Prove God accepts their prayers by count, not scale,
For weighing them would ruin price and sale.
Their Paters are so light that God must take
Them all by count, since they no weight will make;
For should he place them in his righteous scale,
Their endless host of Paters would not weigh
Enough to move the balance in the least,
Though all their daily number were increased.
Their beads, then, keep the score ’twixt God and them,
Lest God forget what they have paid to him.
He must be forgetful, if not false; therefore
They dare not trust him, but must keep the score.
Or else they think he minds no more than they
Their mumbled Paters, else they would not pray
By count. I fear they sometimes cheat the score
To make him heed their many Paters more.
Or do they use their beads alone to find
The number of those Paters they scarce mind?
Their thoughts being elsewhere while the prayer is said,
The beads must tell them how much they have prayed.
Their Paters, surely, show great deep devotion:
They know their number only by bead-motion.
Should God receive them not by count, but weight,
A feather would outweigh their whole estate.
I fear their beads, though light, would overweigh
All Paters and all Aves that they say,
And would be worth far more, if they were sold,
Than all the Paters and the Aves told.
But why must Paters thus be said by score?
Did Christ’s apostles, prophets, saints before
Our time so pray? No. Search the Scriptures through:
No prayers upon counted beads come into view.

Some think our Bede first caused these beads to be,
And that from him they gained their name and plea.
Though this be false, yet seven hundred years
After our Lord, no counted bead appears.
But now the case is altered: few can say
Their Paters unless beads assist the way.
Pray on them? No—let every reader heed:
They never say they pray, but “say their beads.”
This is their proper language, and thereby
They own their beads do not assist them to pray,
But merely help them use vain repetition,
Against Christ’s prayer and his express prohibition.
For Christ ordained the Pater purposely
To ban vain babbling and their beads put by.
He calls such repetitions heathen ways,
And warns his own against such empty praise.
But chaplets now have spoiled the remedy
And made it serve the very malady.
Some scores of Pater Nosters must be said
Upon their beads before their prayer is weighed,
Before God hears or heeds the words they pray:
It seems he has grown deaf along the way.
Perhaps he cannot hear the first, the third,
The fourth, or fifth time that the prayer is heard;
Or else they fear he sleeps and cannot see,
And peals of Paters must awaken he,
Or beads must rattle with so great a noise
Before he hears or listens to their voice.
Yet if he hears their first twelve Paters, all
The next are idle, fruitless, prodigal—
Indeed, a taking of God’s name in vain,
Which, if it merits anything, merits pain.
Such idle babble and battology
God does condemn, reject, abhor, defy—
Especially when they kneel down before
The images of saints and say them o’er
To them, as though each saint the Father were
And could their beads and babbled Paters hear.
This common, cursed practice Rome allows;
Her Trent Catechism openly avows,
Or at the least refuses to disown,
The invocation offered at their throne.
Indeed, Hubberdin and others long ago
Maintained that men might Pater Nosters show
To holy Peter and the saints as well,
Without offense—as their own writings tell.
And George Douly, in his Instruction
Concerning chief points of their religion,
Has lately told us men may say the Pater,
Or Ave Mary, in the worship of another—
In honor or invocation offered
To any saint or angel they have proffered—
With this intent: that either they may cry
To God for mercy through that saint on high,
Or ask the saints themselves that they would bear
Before the Lord the substance of their prayer.

A novel point of faith and of devotion,
Unknown to Christ, but born of Rome’s invention.
Had Papists sense or reason, they might see
How hateful their repeated Paters be—
Most irksome and displeasing unto God.
For should a man approach a judge or lord,
A prince or king, and twenty times or more
Repeat the same request before his door—
Ten, twenty, thirty, forty times rehearse
The selfsame words, without improving verse—
All men would think him foolish or insane;
His suit would be rejected with disdain.
Though just at first, his plea would be denied,
Because by clamorous babbling it was spoiled.
If it is folly, frenzy, babbling, then,
To state the same request so oft to men—
Indeed, the quickest way to be denied—
Is it not likewise folly thus to cry
To God, “Our Father, Father,” for an hour,
As though repeated words possessed more power,
Until the final bead is numbered o’er
And every Pater added to the score?
It surely is—a mere mockery
Of God, who turns his ears from such a cry.
All judge the cuckoos foolish when they sing
No other note than “Cuckoo” in the spring,
And for three months repeat without a pause
The selfsame cuckoo-note without a cause.
We think that children play the fool as well
When counting every cuckoo-call they tell.
Yet Papists are far worse: the cuckoos cease
For nine months yearly and allow us peace,
While these their cuckoo-Paters, night and day,
Throughout the year repeat and never stay.

And whereas cuckoos never keep account
Of how their many cuckoo-cries amount,
The Papists far surpass them in this score:
They cry their cuckoo and then count it o’er.
They mark how often every cry was said
Upon the string of beads designed and made.
Thus they are even more foolish, dull, and vain
Than cuckoos, children, fools—and so remain;
For all their several follies joined we see
In them, and linked in one absurdity.
If they on beads in prayer will still proceed,
They are fools, children, and the cuckoo’s seed.

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

@Double_O_Scotch @JennyWakefiel12 Luther err’d. “Let God be true, and all men a liar.” - Romans 3:4

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

@JennyWakefiel12 And they just can’t understand why this is clearly a most blasphemous thing.

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

Don’t let Catholics lie to you. Church fathers did believe in faith alone for justification.

[🌷 LIZZIE🌷 @farmingandJesus]

No one taught justification by faith for 1500 years? Hmmmm

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

@selina_mcd13 @sola_chad Knowing God and that God has a standard of righteousness ultimately condemned them (no excuse). But only the grace of God in the gospel of Christ can deliver them. Therefore, apart from Christ and His gospel, they are doomed to judgement.

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

@sola_chad Yes. Apart from the gospel of Jesus Christ, there is no salvation. There is only judgement for the wickedness and sin of the heart of all men who have no faith in the grace of God.

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

@LandonLeBoeuf2 @farmingandJesus That’s exactly the point of my original comment. Praying to Mary for help of any kind is actually stealing glory from the Lord because He alone is to be sought for all our help of all kind.

[Todd Merkel @MerkAmerica]

Gabriel wasn’t praying to Mary. He was delivering God’s message. He was simply greeting her. The Rosary is a prayer addressed to Mary that asks for her intercession. Those are fundamentally different categories. Scripture honors Mary, but it never commands or models praying to her.