...we're back to the same historicity argument...why is a timeline the weight of you're argument?

How long were incoming emperors worshiped in the Roman Empire? How long were Egyptian emperors worshiped? A timeline is not a defensible position.

October 31 marks the day when Martin Luther posted his 99 thesis. Maybe you ought to go read those. To me that spells the end of your timeline and changes the position of your Church.

Protestants deny the power of the pope. He's a human being, nothing more. There is no apostolic succession.

First, understand that the Pope is not in my chain of command Dummy Child. We Orthodox, like most level headed Protestants, recognize him as the hierarchical and spiritual leader of the Holy Roman Church. And the Pope knows he is only a man, like all validly ordained clergy know extremely well. Do you, too, have feet of clay?

Martin Luther eliminated the Epistle of James because it disagreed with his personal theology and added words to holy scripture such as faith "only" (sola fide) and scripture "only" (sola scriptura). Go celebrate that bit of your history you obviously approve which no Pope or clergy in valid apostolic succession would dare to do. Anathema!. Christian History is important and that history proves apostolic succession and Christ's Church, the Body He established, is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. Scripture explains the choosing and ordaining of clergy and how theological conflicts are to be resolved by the ordained clergy. When you have no history, no Apostolic Tradition, no apostolic succession you have a shell of a church without any substance. But unquestionably you still possess grace just not the fullness of grace available to you and all because one man, an ordained Catholic priest, didn't follow theological protocol to resolve legitimate problems, and started his own religion that continues to this day to be named after him and not Christ.

I believe you're getting a bit lost and confused in your timeline argument. It was you who initiated that particular topic and I responded with more factual, but equally insignificant, data as it applied to the discussion subject at large. Simply followed your lead. Where we going next? Too cold and windy to play outside today. But I'm game for anything because I have history, Sacred Tradition and the correct interpretation of Holy Scripture on my side. I hope you are enjoying this as much as I am.

If you find it only hilarious then, I'm sorry to say, your grasp of the obvious is seriously lacking. Don't you find it just a little bit disconcerting that you are incapable/unable of acknowledging or putting up a credible defense to those theological and historical truths I have placed directly in front of you? You give silly retorts like the one above because that is the only way you can assuaged your false pride. But, if that's all you've got, then it's OK. But honestly, you need to start using that wonderful brain God gave you besides for something to keep your ears apart.

Ignorance on parade and purposefully masquerading itself as truth. You foolish little man if you believe only Roman Catholics possess the study of Dogmatic Theology you are simply a bigoted, hateful and illiterate excuse for a Christian lacking that essential virtue of love! There are many works of dogmatic theology by Protestant theologians that are recognized and agreed on by both Romans and Protestants as great spiritual works. I remind you once again, as I have on several occasions that, as an Orthodox Christian, I do not have a dog in this fight between fundamentalist protestants like you and the Roman Church. But since I am discharging into a non-conductor (you) it appears a constant reminder is required. Perhaps in your limited experience and knowledge you are not remotely knowledgeable of the Ancient Faith and Practice of the Orthodox Church? Perhaps it is time for you to retreat into the shadow of your bigotry until you know more. You're now presented with the opportunity to read, learn, mark and inwardly digest. Seize upon it!

Ignorance on parade and purposefully masquerading itself as truth. You foolish little man if you believe only Roman Catholics possess the study of Dogmatic Theology you are simply a bigoted, hateful and illiterate excuse for a Christian lacking that essential virtue of love! There are many works of dogmatic theology by Protestant theologians that are recognized and agreed on by both Romans and Protestants as great spiritual works. I remind you once again, as I have on several occasions that, as an Orthodox Christian, I do not have a dog in this fight between fundamentalist protestants like you and the Roman Church. But since I am discharging into a non-conductor (you) it appears a constant reminder is required. Perhaps in your limited experience and knowledge you are not remotely knowledgeable of the Ancient Faith and Practice of the Orthodox Church? Perhaps it is time for you to retreat into the shadow of your bigotry until you know more. You're now presented with the opportunity to read, learn, mark and inwardly digest. Seize upon it!

You foolish little man if you believe only Evangelicals possess the study of Dogmatic Theology you are simply a bigoted, hateful and illiterate excuse for a Christian lacking that essential virtue of love! There are many works of dogmatic theology by Catholic theologians that are recognized and agreed on by both Catholics and Protestants as great spiritual works. I remind you once again, as I have on several occasions that, as an Orthodox Christian, I do not have a dog in this fight between fundamentalist Catholics like you and the Protestant Church. But since I am discharging into a non-conductor (you) it appears a constant reminder is required. Perhaps in your limited experience and knowledge you are not remotely knowledgeable of the Ancient Faith and Practice of the Orthodox Church? Perhaps it is time for you to retreat into the shadow of your bigotry until you know more. You're now presented with the opportunity to read, learn, mark and inwardly digest.

...is exactly the same way I think.

That's all you've got? you were never properly taught the fullness of the faith. There is so much out there that supports your Faith in Christ that you've never been exposed to and that is not fair to you and other Christians. Attending church, singing a few songs, listening to a sermon by a preacher who puts his own spin to interpretation, and a little bit of bible study is insufficient to producing strong Christians. And this world needs strong, well informed Christians, dogmatic Christians, militant Christians, in the proper sense that the church on earth is the "church militant", uncompromising! You need the fullness of your Christian heritage, we all need it! Knowledge is the only thing that builds a solid, grounded Faith. Pax!

That's all you've got? you were never properly taught the fullness of the faith.....There is so much out there that supports your Faith in Christ that you've never been exposed to and that is not fair to you and other Christians.....

Why do I need the fullness of Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Quakers, Shakers, Apostolics...?

Do you?

Why do you think that intellectual immersion is the path to God? Where is that written?

...and God said: Create divinity school, ingratiate my words with human interpretation, because an all knowing God, isn't?

Time to change your tag from Dummy Boy to Dumb A$$ and that's being charitable! You're about as sharp as a marble. You actually are more dense and ignorant than I ever suspected. You would choose hell rather than to admit you don't know something or have something to learn. That is the mortal sin of pride. You don't even know enough to formulate a logical and credible argument as you inappropriately demonstrated when you used Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, et al, as your incredible misunderstanding of the theological concept of "The fullness if the Faith." Yes! Time to change your name tag. I won't respond to you in the future except when your religious bigotry crawls up out of hell. One thing for the non-essential use of your brain to struggle with - where did Mary find Jesus when He was lost and what was He doing? And why did God give man the brain to know Him if man was not expected to use it to know God. The Church knew "Who" Jesus was but it took the Church/Christianity almost 600 years to understand "what" He was. You didn't know that did you? Of course you didn't because you know nothing about the formal heresies conflicting the nature and person of Christ through the misinterpretation of scripture by heretics in the past. But you've benefited from those whose intellect were led by the Holy Spirit to seek and learn Truth. Go in peace but with invincible and freely chosen ignorance as your guide.

Yahweh, God of the Bible, and Allah, supreme deity of the Islamic Qur'an, clearly cannot be one: Yahweh has a Son: "And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world" (1 John:4:14).

Allah has no son: "...Praise be to Allah, Who hath not taken unto Himself a son, and Who hath no partner in the Sovereignty..." (Sura 17:111); "Allah hath not chosen any son, nor is there any God along with him" (Sura 23:91).

In a recent interview with a French Catholic newspaper, the pontiff, Pope Francis, suggested it was not productive to think of Islam as a threat and pointed to its shared roots with Christianity “It is true that the idea of conquest is inherent in the soul of Islam," he said. "However, it is also possible to interpret the objective in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus sends his disciples to all nations, in terms of the same idea of conquest."

The above title has created controversy among Catholics (and some evangelicals) who have never studied the background of either of these earthbound religions. It reflects the often repeated ambition of the Pontifical Council for "Inter-religious Dialogue." Rome has been pursuing the fertilization of this "common ground" with Islam for decades, per the 1994 Vatican publication, "Recognize the Spiritual Bonds Which Unite Us: 16 Years of Christian-Muslim Dialogue. This is what the Roman Catholic Church has long sought.

There is confusion created by the Church of Rome in her zeal to capture control of the spiritual voice of all the world's religions, she speaks out of both sides of her ecumenical mouth. In her relationship to Islam, she has made theological overtures contradicting Christian orthodoxy, but appallingly worse, there are much deeper existent ties fettering the two religions. Apprehend the commonalities between these two faiths.

Despite, clear and critical differences between the biblical God and Allah, the Roman Catholic Church accepts them as one and the same God. The following quote is from Vatican II:

"The Church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has also spoken to men. They strive to submit themselves without reserve to the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God's plan, to whose faith Muslims eagerly link their own.

Although not acknowledging him as God, they venerate Jesus as a prophet, his virgin Mother they also honor, and even at times devoutly evoke. Further, they await the day of judgment and the reward of God following the resurrection of the dead. For this reason they highly esteem an upright life and worship God, especially by way of prayer, alms-deeds and fasting" (Nostra Aetate, Vatican II).

Careful consideration of the above quote (taken from what the Roman Catholic Church claims is an infallible council) no Christian can escape realizing what truly binds Catholicism and Islam together is: They both have an unbiblical Jesus who cannot save their souls. The Qur'an teaches that Jesus did not die on the cross: "And because of the Jews saying, We slew the Messiah Jesus son of Mary, Allah's messenger - They slew him not, nor crucified, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain" (Qur'an Sura 4:157).

Vatican II gives Muslims credit for "venerating" Jesus, but it is a "another Jesus." Sadly, Catholicism also has a false Christ, teaching that His death on the cross was not sufficient for our salvation. They say His sacrifice (which, according to the Scriptures, was offered once for all to take away our sins completely (Hebrews: 9:28) be continually "re-presented" as a daily sacrifice for sins, thousands of times, around the world, but Catholics then, must also expiate their own sins through sufferings on earth and after death in purgatory. This is "another gospel" than that taught by Holy Scripture.

Finally, Vatican II spells out clearly what both Islam and Catholicism regard as their only hope for salvation: "...they highly esteem an upright life and worship God, especially by way of prayer, alms-deeds and fasting." This is works salvation.

In Islam, a person is accountable for every thought, word, and deed. His/her life is to be lived pleasing to Allah as found in the Qur'an and the hadith and shari'a, which is the body of rules covering all Islamic religious, political, social and domestic life. Breaking such laws involves various temporal punishments. At the Last Judgment Allah will determine one's eternal destiny by weighing one's good and evil works on the divine scale: "Then those whose scales are heavy with good deeds, they are the successful. And those whose scales are light are those who lose their souls, in hell abiding" (Qur'an Sura 23:102,103). The hadith vividly describes the tortures of hell.

James McCarthy's video, titled "Catholicism: Crisis of Faith" displays revealing interviews of worshipers leaving Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. He asks them on what basis they expect to get to heaven. Only one made any reference to Jesus. Their response was they felt they were pretty good people, and were fairly confident that their good deeds outweighed their bad ones.

Although the Catholic Church states that it is by God's grace that one can enter heaven, they change that to "grace enables one to do the works which qualify one for heaven." In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, they "obtain the joy of heaven, as God's eternal reward for the good works accomplished with the grace of Christ" (paragraph 1821) and they "can merit for themselves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal life" (paragraph 2027).

Pope John Paul II addressed a Catholic community in Turkey with these words: "... it is now urgent, precisely today when Christians and Muslims have entered a new period of history, to recognize and develop the spiritual bonds that unite us."

No! What is "urgent" is that Catholics and Muslims be set free from the spiritual bondage of the impossible task of qualifying for heaven by their own good deeds, and their hearts opened to receive the free gift of eternal life (Romans :6:23) through faith in what Jesus Christ has already completed on their behave.

The similarity between Islam and Catholicism starts at birth, Catholicism and Islam each exceed one billion, nearly all of whom enter their respective faiths as infants. More than 16 million babies are baptized into the Roman Catholic Church each year, and are baptized as Catholics because their parents were Catholics. That's the primary way the faith is propagated, rather than personal belief, for babies have no understanding of the concept of faith.

All children born into a Muslim family are automatically Muslims. Their official "confirmation" follows as soon as they are able to confess the shahada ("There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger"). This baby-oriented process for increasing their ranks has been a motivating factor in the Vatican/Saudi co-sponsored lobby against United Nations endeavors to introduce contraception for population control, especially in third-world countries.

Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world today; Catholicism is the largest religious body among those professing to be Christian. If the number of followers was a good measure for selecting a religion, then Islam and Catholicism would both qualify, however, the Bible has no such yardstick. Jesus said, "Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leads to destruction, and many there be which enter. Strait is the gate and narrow is the way, which leads unto life, and few there be that find it" (Matthew:7:13-14).

People are aware of the veneration and worship of Mary among Roman Catholics, but the same deference exists among Muslims. A chapter in the Qur'an is named after Mary ("Surah Maryam"). From Cairo to Bombay to Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina, multi- thousands of Muslims have congregated to processions carrying her statues and where her apparitions have appeared. She is esteemed above the most revered women of the Muslim faith, including Muhammad's two favorite wives, Khadija and Aisha, and his daughter Fatima.

The hadith teaches that Muhammad selected Mary as his first wife upon entrance into Paradise. A popular Catholic apparition of Mary is referred to as Our Lady of Fatima, the name of Muhammad's daughter.

Catholic and Islamic prayers are similar. For the Muslim, praying to Allah five times a day is an act of obedience; the prayers are always repetitive. As one former Muslim puts it, "It's hardly intimate communication with Allah; ...it's done to escape the punishment due those who neglect prayer."

Most prayers prayed by Catholics are also rote and repetitive, i.e., saying the rosary. Repeating 16 "Our Father's" and 153 "Hail Mary's" is not personal communication. When a Catholic goes to confession the priest assigns rosaries as punishment, or penance, for one's sins. A prayer to God should hardly be considered a form of punishment!

Prayer beads were a part of Islamic devotion to Allah long before an apparition of the Blessed Lady taught St. Dominic to pray the rosary beads in the thirteenth century. Although prayer beads are a stock item in ancient and modern paganism, they are never used in the Bible.

Catholics and Muslims use pilgrimages to obtain God's favor. The hadj, one of the five pillars of Islam, is a required (one-time) journey to Mecca. For Catholics, pilgrimages are historically acts of religious purification, often induced by the promise of indulgences. Multi-millions of Catholics travel yearly to hundreds of shrines dedicated to Mary throughout the world. The Crusades were indulgence-stimulated attempts to regain Jerusalem from the infidel Muslims to re-establish Catholic pilgrimages. The Church of Rome offered the crusaders full pardon from purgatory if they died trying to liberate the Holy Land. Similarly, Islam offers assurance of Paradise to those who die in religious battles (jihad), including suicide bombings.

Roman Catholicism recognizes Allah as the God of the Bible. In 1985, Pope John Paul II declared to an enraptured audience of thousands of Muslim youths, "Christians and Muslims, we have many things in common as believers and as human beings....We believe in the same God, the one and only God, the living God... ." But how is that possible?

Historically, Allah was the supreme pagan idol, of 350 idols worshiped by Muhammad's Quraysh tribe.

Catholicism's zeal to relate to Islam creates wonder about its own perspective on the God of the Bible. In the "Sacred Scripture," God is referred to as Yahweh about 9,000 times. Never is He thus referred to in the Qur'an. He reveals himself in the Scriptures as "The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob/Israel." He is the Father of the Jews, "the God of Israel."

In the Qur'an, however, Allah never refers to himself that way. God calls the Jews His "chosen people." He gave them the land of Israel as a heritage "forever": "And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children's children for ever" (Ezekiel: 37:25). God's covenant is with Isaac (Genesis 17: 19-21), while Muslims believe Allah's covenant is with Ishmael, son of the Egyptian slave, Hagar.

Allah has a completely different attitude toward the Jews than does the God of the Bible. Allah commands his followers to "Take not the Jews...for friends" (Qur'an Sura 5:51). The Jews are in the Qur'an called "the people of the book" (i.e., the Bible), and if they refuse to convert to Islam, they must pay a tribute tax, and become subservient to them: "Fight against those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by his messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low" (Sura 9:29). According to the hadith, which Muslims regard as authoritative as the Qur'an, Muhammad says, "The last hour will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims kill all of them."

The hadith (tradition of Muhammad) says that on the Day of Judgment, Muslims will fight and kill Jews, who will hide behind trees that say, "Oh Muslim, Oh servant of Allah, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill him." Roman Catholicism has its own well-documented history of slaughtering the Jews.

Whereas God the Father declared from heaven concerning Jesus, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew: 3:17), Allah of the Qur'an condemns such a belief: "...the Christians say: Messiah is the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouths. They imitate the saying of the disbelievers of old. Allah's Curse be on them, how they are deluded away from the truth" (Sura 9:30 Qur'an)!

Catholicism approves of and praises Islam, yet has eternal curses from the 16th century Council of Trent still in effect against all Protestants and Christians who do not unite with them.

Truly, this is not Christianity.