Hello !!

Please have a look at and read the messages of Our Lord to Catalina Rivas at

http://www.apleatohumanity.com/

-- a friend in Christ (noemail@anon.com.net), August 03, 2004

Answers

Bump to New Answers to invite comment.

-- (bump@bump.bump), August 03, 2004.

If God has a message that He wants to send to mankind then why doesn't He just take over the airwaves and broadcast it through our radios and tv sets?

-- Disillusioned Catholic (skeptickk@yahoo.com), August 03, 2004.

He does. Tune into Vatican Radio. :-) But when God had His greatest message of all time to tell, He chose to send it to people who had no TV, radio, cameras or tape-recorders. He didn’t tell people to write down His message and the great majority of his hearers couldn’t even read or write. Meditate on that, DC.

-- Steve (55555@aol.com), August 03, 2004.

Meditate on that, DC.

I have and it bothers the heck out me. Why? Because all we are left with is hearsay. And from an age when people readily believed in all sorts of tall tales about monsters, spirits, miracles, etc.

When I consider the tremendous amount of suffering that Jesus went through when He was crucified, and the importance of believing in His divinity, I cannot help but wonder why He didn’t provide more substantial and permanent proof of His Resurrection.

For example, one atheist proposed that Jesus could have carved “JESUS LIVES” on the moon. What a great idea! Imagine using the moon as a giant billboard to advertise the Resurrection to all mankind now and forever. And it certainly would have demonstrated His power over heaven and earth.

But Jesus didn’t even have to do that. He could have simply remained here on earth instead of ascending into heaven. But with the Ascension -- POOF!!! -- there goes any proof of the Resurrection.

-- Disillusioned Catholic (skeptickk@yahoo.com), August 04, 2004.

I have meditated on it too, and it seems to me there must have been a reason why Jesus chose NOT to tell His disciples to write down what He said and did. And why God chose NOT to write a billboard on the moon or anything like that. In fact when people demanded “a sign from heaven” Jesus absolutely refused to give any sign, other than Himself and His preaching. (Luke 11) As Jesus predicted, (Luke 16:31) most people were not convinced even by His rising from the dead. It took faith to see Him in His risen form, even before His Ascension. The disciples themselves did not recognise Him at first and had trouble realising it was really Him.

Instead Jesus chose to tell them to found a Church on the Rock of Simon Peter and the pillars of the Apostles. Don’t you think it is miraculous that that same Catholic Church has survived intact, through all the troubles and strife of 2000 years, despite the sometimes poor leadership of the sinful men in charge of it, and is still living and growing and still believing the exact same faith it started with? Nations and empires have risen and fallen. Many powerful people and institutions have tried their best to wipe out the Church, but instead they themselves have disappeared. No other institution has lasted anything like that long. There are older religions, but they are elements of culture which have been passed on, not institutions to which people belong as members. The oldest other institution I can think of is the oldest of the universities, which are about 800 years old and which themselves began as Catholic monasteries and have now changed a great deal in their basic function.

I think that if, instead of leaving the Church to tell people about Him, Christ had left a video-recording of His life, too many people would have mistaken the medium for the message, to paraphrase Marshall McLuhan. They would get bogged down in the minutiae of the video-recording and dispute over the meaning of it. It’s bad enough as it is, the way we see people misusing the Bible and getting hung up about a particular verse of it, instead of just following the teaching of the Church Christ gave us. I think the Church has proved to be pretty “substantial and permanent”, don’t you?

-- Steve (55555@aol.com), August 04, 2004.

Jesus obviously didn’t want the transmission of the Holy Faith in Him to DEPEND on technology, even simple technologies like pen and paper. He founded the Church and gave it the faith and the sacraments, and they are accessible to all, even those who can’t get access to any TV or radio, or are illiterate. Of course the Church USES technologies like the written word (especially the Bible it compiled), TV and so on to HELP spread the faith, but the faith would continue even if they all disappeared, and the Church must not depend on them. For example soon after the telephone was invented the Church ruled that a priest can NOT hear confession over the phone, even in a dire emergency, (just as it had always ruled that it could not be done by exchange of letters) but must be present in person.

-- Steve (55555@aol.com), August 04, 2004.

Disillusioned Catholic,

-you want proof? hmmm... I was once the same...

There is no proof -for me, there is only faith and the 'knowing'...

Faith is a decision that can and will open one up to the 'knowing'... As one comes closer to God; God comes closer to one... One must be open to recieve and faithful to be open... I would suggest you set aside your perplexions and simply be open... Pray and meditate --the 'knowing' can happen for you as it did me...

I have ZERO doubt that God exists...

smiling...

Daniel////

-- Daniel Hawkenberry (dlm@catholic.org), August 04, 2004.

Luke 16:20 "And a poor man named Lazarus was laid at his gate, covered with sores,

Luke 16:21 and longing to be fed with the crumbs which were falling from the rich man's table; besides, even the dogs were coming and licking his sores.

Luke 16:22 "Now the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham's bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried.

Luke 16:23 "In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and *saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom.

Luke 16:24 "And he cried out and said, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.'

Luke 16:25 "But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony.

Luke 16:26 'And besides all this, between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, so that those who wish to come over from here to you will not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us.'

Luke 16:27 "And he said, 'Then I beg you, father, that you send him to my father's house--

Luke 16:28 for I have five brothers--in order that he may warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.'

Luke 16:29 "But Abraham *said, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.'

Luke 16:30 "But he said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!'

Luke 16:31 "But he said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.' "

Enrique

-- Enrique Ortiz (eaortiz@yahoo.com), August 05, 2004.

bumping for new readers comments

-- bumpster (bumping@thebump.net), August 12, 2004.