I’ve had an account on Youtube for about 4 years now. During that time I have had countless Christians approach me with extremely long “cut and paste” arguments against Catholicism. Almost always it’s some combination of the same arguments and almost always requiring very lengthy replies, that is assuming I will reply. I have given up replying for the most part except with some people.
They witness to everyone, regardless of their confession of faith and some of them give interesting arguments to rationalize their beliefs and to denigrate mine. That’s OK, I suppose, since they’re concerned about my soul. The problem is that they all believe something different.They’re all over the doctrinal map. Some believe in faith alone. Some believe in faith and works. Some believe in infant baptism. Some believe in believers baptism. Some believe in the Real Presence in their Communion. Others do not. If you mix them all up you might even find in all of them a complete agreement with the Catholic faith, with one exception. None of them accept the papacy. Some do have their own prophets, and those claim the Church is corrupted over time, but then many of the doctrines of those churches left the biblical train station never to return. They all agree that the Catholic Church is wrong, but they agree to different degrees. Some accept us as brothers. Others as apostate pagans. None can be sure. They all interpret everything their own way, and that’s the real issue that it boils down to.
It’s apparently OK to believe what you want as long as you derived that belief from Scripture, even if you run right off the tracks.
In the last year I watched a “Christian” minister of some sort, come up with new doctrines out of thin air. The latest thing I had seen from her was when she claimed that if you don’t follow her teaching then you’re calling God a homosexual. She taught that Jesus was the product of God the Father and the Holy Spirit, who were married in her thinking.The Youtube Christian community, if there is such a thing, jumped all over this, thankfully.
It’s not just her. She’s just more popular than some others. There are numerous “Christians” on there with funny ideas. They get these funny ideas from Scriptures. There are the Hebrew Israelites who browbeat passersby in New York. There are the other wild variety Sabbath people. There are the people who believe that you have to perfectly pronounce the name of Jesus or you can’t be saved. There are the Arians, KJV onlyists, TR onlyists, Sedevacantists, Calvinists, Arminians, Muslims (Islam is an extreme Christian heresy), etc.
Then there are the “prophets”. These are the ones that God is speaking to at all hours of the day and night. Who are these people and why do all of these prophets contradict the Bible? They don’t just come up with novel ideas. That would be too simple. No. They have to have it their way and when the errors are exposed they have to make accusations against the people who disagree with their bizarre prophecies. At least one deleted my comments when he was shown to be wrong. It wasn’t even doctrine. He made a demonstrably false statement about copyright. Sadly, his pride would not allow him to correct his error. That’s asking too much. A prophet cannot be wrong. What makes it difficult when dealing with them, besides the pride, is that they do get a lot of things right, but they get enough things wrong that they cannot be taken seriously. Fortunately, they’ll eventually get to the point where they contradict each other and their followers will split or try to correct the one that they perceive to be wrong. When the correction fails, which is what we can expect, they followers will simply leave.
They separate based on bible versions. They separate based on music. They separate based on a cult of personality. They separate because some believe in “home churches” instead of regular churches. They separate because it’s Thursday.
These are the people who attack Catholicism. I realize that I made a lot of general statements. The reason for this is because I wasn’t looking for a big debate with them, but am merely ranting about some of the issues I’ve come across in dealing with their rantings. If I named names many Youtube Christians would immediately some of the people talking about. I guess the whole thing about it, since this is Pentecost Sunday, is that all of them claim to be guided by the Holy Spirit, and they claim that I can have the same guidance, but what sort of guidance are they receiving when they can’t even agree with each other? That’s the question that is never answered.