What about Charlie?

JohnstonThere’s a good chance that by now, if you read a lot of Catholic blogs, you’ve heard of Charlie Johnston.

Charlie is a Catholic layman who lives in Denver, Colorado. A convert from Protestantism, he claims to have received visitations from Jesus, Saints and angels for most of his life.

I’d like to take today’s post to give a little introduction to what Charlie has been teaching and share a few thoughts as to how one might respond to this sort of thing.

The Message

So what has Charlie been saying? His central message is that there is “a Great Storm” coming, a series of catastrophic events for the entire world. He speaks of wars, governments falling, economic collapse and millions dying. North Korea, China and the Islamic religion have all made appearances in his messages at some point.

In addition to his warning of coming troubles, Charlie spends a lot of time talking about how Christians are to behave during this coming tumult: “Acknowledge God; take the next right step; and be a sign of hope to those around you, knowing that God is always close at hand”.

Charlie says that, during the the troubles, people will think it’s the end of the world but that will not be the case. He speaks of of an eventual rescue through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which ultimately renders his message as one of hope. After this divine rescue, Charlie says that there will be a long period of peace, prosperity and Christian unity.

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Dialog with Jerry: Part 1 (Sola Scriptura)

Bible ClosedI recently devoted several posts to an exchange I had with a sedevacantist called Mike in the hope that, if you ever encounter a sedevacantist like him, you’ll have some idea as to what to expect.

Well, a little while ago I had some correspondence with a non-Catholic Christian named Jerry and I thought it would also be helpful if I posted some of that exchange here as well.

As often happens, we began our discussion by focussing on the Reformation doctrine of “Sola Scriptura” (“Scripture Alone”), the subject of my recent four-part series. As you can see from our exchange below, Jerry was a little confused as to the meaning of this Latin phrase…

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The Dawah Dilemma

The Qur’an speaks about Allah helping the followers of Jesus and keeping them “uppermost”, but this presents a dilemma since, historically, this has to refer to Trinitarian Christians… which is a very strange thing for Allah to support. If it wasn’t Trinitarian Christians, who exactly has remained “uppermost” since the time of Christ?

O believers! Stand up for Allah, as Jesus, son of Mary, asked the disciples, “Who will stand up with me for Allah?” The disciples replied, “We will stand up for Allah.” Then a group from the Children of Israel believed while another disbelieved. We then supported the believers against their enemies, so they prevailed. – 61:14

˹Remember˺ when Allah said, “O Jesus! I will take you and raise you up to Myself. I will deliver you from those who disbelieve, and elevate your followers above the disbelievers until the Day of Judgment. Then to Me you will ˹all˺ return, and I will settle all your disputes. – 3:55

What have you got against Christianity?

I’m friends on Facebook with a gentleman who was one of the assistant ministers at a Protestant parish I used to attend. He has since become the vicar of a different parish in another part of the country. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to call him Father Tow.

A few weeks ago, I had a rather strange conversation with Father Tow. It was prompted by his posting the following image on Facebook:

Being a huge C.S. Lewis fan, I immediately recognized that this was a common misquotation. What Lewis actually wrote was:

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it, I see everything else.”

C.S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?”, The Weight of Glory

I therefore commented on the picture, saying that it’s a great quotation, but that it’s not quite what Lewis wrote.

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Tattoo Follow-Up

Last week I shared links to two other blog posts which discussed the issue of Christians getting tattoos. Needless to say, there was quite a lively discussion on my Facebook page! In the discussion, quite a few of my Christian friends shared the stories behind their tattoos and, despite my personal dislike of tattoos, I found the whole things fascinating so I thought it might be a nice idea to do something of a follow-up post…

So, if you are a Christian and have a tattoo, please contact me. I’d invite you to send me a picture of your tattoo, together with a little bit of the story behind it. I’ll then collect them all into a post for next week 🙂

jesus-shepherd-tattoo

 

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