All the Christians before the year 300, and many after.
Jesus put Peter in charge while he was still alive.
17 Jesus replied, Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.
18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.
19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
- Matthew 16:17-19
There is no hole from Jesus Christ to the last Pope.
Thank You.
From:
https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/1054513.msg12418159#msg12418159.
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At the resurrection of Jesus, Who were the first people to see Him after He was made alive again. Weren't they the women? The women were first to see Him after His resurrection.
Why were the women the first to see Him then? After all, the women do not hold a prominent place over the men in the New Testament, and very seldomly in the Old. Wasn't it because
they were there, at the tomb, after He arose? But the men weren't.
Similarly, the only reason Peter was held up above the rest of the apostles was
he was there. In life before he met Jesus, he was a butt of a forward person. He was among men what a "woman liber" is among women. He was pushy and boastful to some extent. And God simply used it, BECAUSE HE WAS THERE.
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Notice the fickleness of Peter in the following Bible verses. The Roman Catholic Church probably DOES follow the pattern of Peter. If you look at all the Papal Bulls, you can see the fickleness of the Church over the ages. But God never changes. So why follow the fickleness of Peter? Matthew 16:16-23:
Simon Peter answered, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Jesus replied, Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Then he warned his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Christ.
From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. Never, Lord! he said. This shall never happen to you!
Jesus turned and said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.
When Jesus said "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it," He wasn't enlisting or recruiting or installing Peter as His vicar here on earth. Rather, He was making the distinction between Peter and the church.
As long as anyone holds to the expression of faith that Peter expressed, that person is part of the church. It has nothing to do with promoting Peter as vicar, or setting up a head of the Church on earth. We can see below that, that Peter was even called Satan by Jesus. However, that is the way the leaders of the Roman Catholic Church in Rome often act... like Satan, basing salvation on good works or lack of bad ones, rather than basing salvation of the work of Jesus on the cross.
Peter denied Jesus before Pilate, when Jesus was being judged, just before He was crucified. Sure, it was a moment of weakness. But by his denial he was not included as one of the apostles until he was reinstated by the arisen Christ. See how it happened by reading from the Gospel of John, chapter 18 to the end.
