Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Bible Study Questions AND information for you about Catholic Apologetics!

Hello All,

Here is are links containing answers to questions asked during the last two sessions. I realize it is a lot of information, but as you know, all of the emails I send you also go directly onto our bible study blog: stjeromebiblestudy.blogspot.com. 


Will the Jerusalem temple be rebuilt?

What does the Catholic Church teach about the general and particular judgements and the resurrection of the body? (also see CCC 988-1065)

Who is the "Ark of the New Covenant"? I think we covered this last week, but this question was asked 2 sessions ago, so I'd already found this reference.)

Why did the Christians leave Jerusalem before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in AD 70?

Last session we had a few brief discussions about the place of devotions/such as the Rosary, the prayer for the intervention of St. Michael the Archangel  in the spiritual life of the  individual Catholic Christian. Other topics that may come up at Friday's session may be the role of faith/works in salvation, Catholic moral teaching on divorce/remarriage, the practice of homosexuality, prayer to saints for their intercession, etc (I watched the lecture!).

I would like to provide some reliable sources for Catholic Apologetics: apologetics specifically means "a reasoned defense or justification" of the teachings of the Catholic Church-knowing why we do what we do, believe what we believe. learning to explain and defend the Catholic faith with confidence and ease".  1 Peter 3:15 calls us to "always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence".

Catholic Apologetics has absolutely exploded over the past 15+ years! There are many good resources that will answer all of your questions about the faith and help you to explain it to others:

1. The Coming Home Network: chnetwork.org. Many excellent resources on this website. One in particular that is my FAVORITE are archived episodes of The Journey Home which I have watched for many years-others have commented that it is one of their favorite shows. https://chnetwork.org/journey-home/. These are 1 hour in-depth interviews of individuals who have converted to Catholicism from a variety of Protestant denominations and other world religions such as Judaism Islam and agnosticism and atheism. All of the Catholic doctrines and dogmas are discussed in great depth and in a very gentle and thoughtful way by Marcus Grodi, a former Presbyterian pastor, who is an outstanding interviewer.

2. Catholic Answers podcasts https://www.catholic.com/audio and  the Catholic Answers website catholic.com which I use to find answers to the questions raised in the Bible Study.

3. Catholic Apologists whose books/articles you may want to "google" and read: Jeff Cavins, Scott Hahn, Tim Staples, Steve Ray (who is speaking at the upcoming Women of Christ Conference)- all of whom were Protestant pastors. Patrick Madrid is another.
Representative books: 





https://www.amazon.com/dp/0964261081/ref=nav_timeline_asin?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 -there are 3 books in this series of conversion stories.

Anyway, all of the above have been extremely helpful to me in my search for the truth of the Catholic faith, so I thought I'd share them with you as we discuss these common questions in Catholic Apologetics!

See you Friday, God bless!
Krishna Smith





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Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Bible Study Questions

Hello All,

Here are some resources for the questions that have come up in the past couple of weeks:

1. Will the Jewish people be saved? What about other non-Christians?

Thank you to Dr. Mary Utzerath: please refer to CCC 674, Romans 11:25 and Lumen Gentium specifically paragraph 16 http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html. 

2. What about the four living creatures in Revelation 4:7? 

First, I was asked to send you this description from the commentary I have been using to prepare for this study: "Beginning in the late second century AD, Christian writers identified the four creatures in the heavily throne room with the four gospel writers…although first century readers would not have understood the creatures in this way…Matthew's gospel has the human face because it begins with a genealogy that traces Jesus' human origins. Mark is identified with the lion because it beings by calling Jesus the 'son of God', referring to his royal power. Luke is the ox since his gospel begins in the temple where sacrifices were made. John is the eagle, since his soaring introduction of Jesus as the Word of God points to his heavenly origin."

Thank you to Brian Higgins for his further research: "On Friday I asked when did the church assign the four living creatures from Revelation 4:7 to the four gospels.  Your guide said it was the 2nd century which my research concurs.  I then asked how did the oxen get assigned to Luke. One reason I asked this is that in the Jeff Cavin video he talked about the daily custom was to sacrifice two lambs a day at the temple.  Since no clear answer could be given, I agreed to research this myself and provide a report.

All my research concludes that the oxen was assigned to Luke based on Luke 1:9 which describes the priestly duties of Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, in this manner "And it came to pass, when he executed the priestly function in the order of his course before God, according to the custom of the priestly office, it was his lot to offer incense, going into the temple of the Lord." The only conncection between this priestly duty and an oxyn is that incense was used as part of the daily sacrificial offering.  We have to conclude that Zechariah was also involved with preparing the burnt offering, which may have been an oxen, but could have been something else.

Further research lead me to Leviticus 22:19 which says that "a burnt offering, to be accepted you shall offer a male without blemish, of the bulls or the sheep or the goats."  An oxen is a form of a bull so it qualified, and a lamb is a form of a sheep.  Also, in Genesis 22:13, a goat is sacrificed instead of Isaac. 

What I have concluded was that since the gospels had already been written and accepted 100 years before the Catholic church assigned the four symbols, a certain amount of literary license was employed to get the four symbols to fit.  Not just for Luke, but getting a lion to fit Mark relies on Mark 1:4 describing John the Baptist in the wilderness and Mark 1:13 describing Jesus in the desert with wild beasts. Close enough, Mark gets the lion."

3. Why was the tribe of Dan so much worse than the other tribes of Israel that Dan was not included in the list in Revelation 7? I had a difficult time finding a Catholic source for the answer to this question. Here is one: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/christiancrier/2017/02/20/9546/

4. Is suffering offered up to God by any other religion besides Catholicism? https://www.fisheaters.com/offeringitup.html

God bless
Krishna Smith







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Wednesday, October 2, 2019

One Group in Fireside Cafe on 10/4!

Hello All,

A few items: 

1. Due to an expected drop in attendance due to vacations, etc, we are now able to move back into the Fireside Cafe to view Jeff Cavins' lectures and conduct our discussion as a single group beginning this Friday Oct 4. We will no longer meet in the Youth Room unless there is a funeral on a Friday morning-I will inform you via email if that is the case.

2. A question raised in discussion 2 weeks ago related to Revelation 1:5-if Jesus is the "firstborn of the dead", what happened to those who died before? Did everyone go to hell?

Please see the discussions in the links below: 


3. If you are trying to find previous emails I have sent, are looking for the code to watch the lectures on line, etc, I request that you refer to our bible study blog: stjeromebiblestudy.blogspot.com. You can sign up for email alerts whenever I make a new blog post. This will save you (and me) from having to go through our old emails!

Finally, a sincere thank you to Dr. Mary Utzerath who graciously facilitated a second discussion group during this transition! As in previous years, we will now shift to a single discussion group in the Fireside Cafe which has worked well for many years.

See you Friday at 9am!

God bless,
Krishna Smith
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