Simple Man

Testing Catholic and Orthodox claims against Scripture.
“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” John 17:17

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

@MJKelleyII Rome isn’t Jesus’ Church. It tortured, imprisoned and murdered far too many people for this to be true.

Jesus says, "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit."

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

@MimanyMaker @dragodimitrov This is true but Joe Schmidt did not convert to feminism did he?

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

Your response misapplies both the fruit principle and Matthew 16:18, while assuming the very point in dispute, that the Roman institution is the Church Christ promised would endure. It is not.

The good fruit bad fruit principle is not limited to individual prophets. Jesus applies the same logic more broadly: “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit” (Matthew 12:33). Those who claim to speak and act with divine authority are to be tested by what they produce.

A body that, over centuries, officially authorized torture, imprisonment, and execution of people for holding different beliefs (while claiming the keys of the kingdom) is producing the kind of fruit Jesus warned against.

That is not the same as “the Church contains sinners.”

Judas was a sinner inside the early church; the Inquisition and related persecutions were institutional actions carried out under papal authority. Rome actually had a papal executioner at one point with hundreds of victims.

Jesus said His kingdom is not of this world and that His followers do not fight that way (John 18:36). He also said the mark of His disciples is love for one another (John 13:35). Systematic coercion and bloodshed is not that fruit. Period.

Christ’s promise in Matthew 16:18 is real: “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”

That promise means the Church Christ builds is the assembly of those who confess Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God, and it will not be destroyed by death or the powers of hell.

It does not mean any institutional hierarchy or organization is immune to serious error, corruption, or widespread unfaithfulness.

Scripture repeatedly warns that the visible church will face internal threats in Acts 20:29-30, 1 Timothy 4:1, 2 Thessalonians 2:3,

The letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2–3 show local churches can be severely compromised and even threatened with the removal of their lampstand if they do not repent. All seven of those churches today are in ruins or are tourist spots.

Israel was God’s covenant people, yet repeatedly they fell into deep corruption and idolatry; God preserved a remnant. The same pattern holds for the Church. The gates of Hades do not prevail against the true Church because Christ preserves His elect and His gospel, not because any one institutional line is guaranteed perpetual fidelity.

Your response claims that if the Church became so corrupt it ceased to be the true Church, then Christ’s promise is false.

That only works if one already assumes the Roman institution is the Church of Matthew 16:18. That is exactly what is being questioned.

Peter himself was called “Satan” and a stumbling block only a few verses later (Matthew 16:23). The rock is the confession of who Jesus is (or Christ Himself as the foundation: see 1 Corinthians 3:11; Ephesians 2:20).

The Church is built on that foundation. Institutional claims of exclusivity do not override the fruit test or the biblical warnings about apostasy and wolves among the flock.

Christ’s promise stands. The true Church endures. That does not require us to pretend centuries of documented institutional bloodshed and coercion were somehow consistent with the tree He planted.

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

What you are saying is not true. I love my Catholics and Orthodox. I have family in both of those faiths.

I strongly disagree with the Vatican and its long history of torture, imprisonment and murder of anyone that disagrees with it.

You are in a cult. I pray God opens the eyes of your heart.

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

@ptlemic @HoenirsSight @UcheMaryOkoli Kenneth Copeland is demonic. Why are you manifesting over him when the the topic was Romans road, you are all over the place.

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

@ptlemic @HoenirsSight @UcheMaryOkoli I can’t help you. You aren’t making sense.

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

Apostolic succession is a later Catholic invention, not an apostolic teaching. Early figures like Irenaeus of Lyons, under intense persecution, advanced the idea of an unbroken bishop-to-bishop line to reassure embattled believers of continuity and orthodoxy.

By twisting Matthew 16:18-19 (Peter as rock and holder of the keys), Acts 1:20-26 (Matthias filling Judas’s office), John 20:21-23 (apostles sent with authority to forgive sins), and 2 Timothy 2:2 (entrusting teaching to faithful men) into a rigid spiritual bloodline modeled on contemporary monarchies, Rome transformed pastoral oversight into a hierarchical claim of exclusive authority.

This construct centralized power in the Roman see, secured political dominance, and still underwrites the modern Catholic assertion of an unbroken chain, which is nothing more than an institutional fiction engineered for control.

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

@ptlemic @HoenirsSight @UcheMaryOkoli You don’t understand this verse.

Jesus is describing the intense spiritual reality that started with John and continued with His own ministry.

The kingdom arrives with power, faces real violent opposition, and calls people to step up with urgency.

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

The “no one recognized Him” line is selective. The risen Christ was not an apparition that shifted form. He was the same Lord, identifiable.

Apparitions that shift form are exactly the kind of thing that Scripture tells us to test and reject especially when they elevate Mary, add to the gospel, or redirect attention from the finished work of Christ.

Scripture never tells us to expect messages from Mary after the ascension of Christ, It does warn us repeatedly:

“Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.” (Galatians 1:8)

“Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.” (2 Corinthians 11:14)

“Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.” (1 John 4:1)

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

@ptlemic @HoenirsSight @UcheMaryOkoli “A new commandment I give to you: Love one another; as I have loved you, so you must love one another." (John 13:34)

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

For example: John 6 is not a eucharistic institution manual, and the Catholic appeal to it is textbook eisegesis.

Jesus delivers the Bread of Life discourse months before the Last Supper, repeatedly equates “eating his flesh and drinking his blood” with coming to him and believing in him (vv. 35, 40, 47, 51–58), then undercuts any crude physical reading by declaring that “the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (v. 63).

The crowd’s scandalized reaction and mass departure never prompt Jesus to clarify, “Relax, I mean a future ritual under the appearance of bread once I give priests the power of transubstantiation.” He simply lets them walk and doubles down on faith.

Treating the passage as a proof-text for the later medieval doctrine of the Mass requires ignoring the actual literary and theological context of John’s Gospel and retrofitting a thirteenth-century Aristotelian solution onto a first-century call to believe in the incarnate Word.

That is not exegesis; it is apologetic reverse-engineering.

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

@ptlemic @HoenirsSight @UcheMaryOkoli You are deceived.

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

Jesus never listed seven sacraments. He did not create a formal system of seven efficacious signs that confer grace ex opere operato (by the work performed).

The Roman Catholic Church’s claim is that He instituted them, and the Church later discerned and defined the exact set.

That discernment is a medieval scholastic construction, not a direct New Testament inventory.

The verses you listed are real texts describing practices or teachings, but reading the full later Catholic sacramental system back into them is anachronistic.

The system developed over centuries through interpretation, ritual evolution, philosophical overlay, and eventual dogmatic definition.

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

@ptlemic @HoenirsSight @UcheMaryOkoli This is not correct.

The Romans Road was popularized in America by Baptist preacher Jack Hyles in 1948.

These five verses, read in this order, lay out the gospel from problem to promise without needing anything outside the book of Romans.

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

@ptlemic @HoenirsSight @UcheMaryOkoli Seperstion is not permanent. Jesus restored Peter’s three denials of Christ at the end of the Gospel of John by asking Peter is he loved him three times.

When we curse we distance ourselves from God. He does not leave us or forsake us.

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

There is nothing better than a walk down Romans Road. Nothing.

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23)

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

“If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)

“For, everyone who calls on the name of the Lordwill be saved” (Romans 10:13)

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

@ptlemic @HoenirsSight @UcheMaryOkoli Not my words, God’s Words.

“Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you." (Deuteronomy 31:6)

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

There is nothing better than a walk down Romans Road. Nothing.

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23)

“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

“If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)

“For, everyone who calls on the name of the Lordwill be saved” (Romans 10:13)

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

@UcheMaryOkoli Submit to Jesus.

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

@ptlemic @HoenirsSight @UcheMaryOkoli He shouted curses. They don’t need to be directed at anyone specifically just like the post you complained about, it’s the same effect, it causes separation from God.

[Simple Man @TestByTheWord]

This is not true. When we are at our lowest, God is closest. We all have to go through darkness to get to the light. It’s part of a process that allows us to surrender to his will but some people reject it.

I can tell you with certainty, God loves you more than you love yourself or your children. He loves you so much he gave up his only son for you. Can you honestly say you love anyone that much that you would do the same?

God will never leave you or forsake you. If you believe in Jesus you are a child of God.