I invite you to open your Bible with me to Galatians chapter 1, first chapter of Galatians, and we're going to be looking at verses 6 through 10 as our primary text this morning. On this Reformation Sunday, I really want to go back and just explain reasons why the Reformation occurred in the first place. And my hope is that by telling you these things, I'm filling in the gaps in your knowledge so that you can have a better understanding of why the gospel must be preached to Roman Catholics. I want to establish in your mind, really, what was at stake and I want to plant these thoughts in your heart and I want to root them in scripture. I want you to see what was at stake then and what is at stake now. Your understanding of this will be determined by your understanding of the gospel. If you understand the gospel, as I fill in these gaps and explain some of the historic teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, this is going to be crystal clear to you. When you know the gospel, you're going to see how this differs from Christianity. But it will also determine whether you see Roman Catholics as fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Your understanding of this is determined by your understanding of the gospel, and when you understand the gospel, that's going to determine whether you see Roman Catholics as fellow brothers and sisters in Christ or as a mission field needing to be reached with the true gospel. It will determine whether you see Roman Catholicism as simply another denomination of Christianity, as many believe. In fact, I might say most people in churches believe Roman Catholicism to be just another branch of Christianity or whether you understand Roman Catholicism as it is, in fact, another religion entirely. It has a different gospel. It has a different standard of authority for faith and life. And so much is at stake in our understanding of the one true gospel. So let's go back to the foundation of the gospel. I want to begin this morning by reading Galatians chapter one verses six through ten, and then I'm going to take a few minutes to explain the context in Galatia. And then I want to lay out the implications of departing from the gospel of Christ, which gave rise to the Reformation in the 16th century. Listen to God's words through the Apostle Paul Galatians chapter one verses six through ten, and now in honor of God in his word, I invite you to stand with me for the reading of these verses. He writes, I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, not that there is another one. But there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we are an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed, as we have said before. So now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you receive, let him be accursed. For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Father, take these powerful words, these clear words right out of the opening verses of Galatians, and I pray that you would galvanize our hearts to understand the gospel. What is at stake and why we must evangelize the lost in any other religion? And I pray that you would use this now in Jesus name, I'm in. Well, the letter to the Galatians was written by the apostle Paul to confront an abandonment of the gospel among professing Christians in Galatia, they had the gospel, they understood the gospel, they received it from the apostles themselves. And yet they had drifted from it under the influence of some others who are also local to the Galatian scene. There were certain false teachers. They're called Judaizers. You've heard that term before, but maybe you don't really understand a lot about what the Judaizers were. Well, the Judaizers also professed faith in Christ. You see, that's what made it so dangerous. They were in the church. They were claiming to believe the gospel, but they were saying, yes, it's Christ, but it's Christ. Plus, you see, you have to add something to Christ. It's not enough for you to just believe in Jesus Christ. You must also keep what amounts to the ceremonial functions of the mosaic law. These men were undermining the central New Testament doctrine of justification by faith alone in Christ alone, apart from works. In understanding the context, keep in mind that Galatians was written after the Jerusalem Council, recorded in Acts 15. The Jerusalem Council dealt with the Judaizing error and essentially denounced it as a false teaching in the church. They were insisting, that is, the Judaizers were insisting on adding works of the ceremonial law, like circumcision, In addition to the gospel of Christ for salvation, they were saying that unless you are circumcised according to the law of Moses, you cannot be saved regardless of what you believe about Jesus. And they were telling the church you can't be saved by just believing in Jesus as payment in full for all of your sins. You have to keep the ceremonial laws of Moses. Now, you notice what that sounds like. When you hear somebody saying you have to keep the ceremonial laws of Moses, that has the clear ring of tradition to it. I mean, there's nothing on the surface wrong with the law of Moses. It was never a problem with the law of Moses. That's the inspired, inerrant word of God. The law of Moses does reveal God's heart. What makes it wrong is that they were using that as a form of gospel. The law of Moses was never a gospel. It was never a message of good news. It was a message of condemnation. And they were saying you need to keep the law of Moses in these ceremonial acts, in these traditional acts that have taken place among Israel since the beginning of the Mosaic law, given it Sinai from God. And you add that to the gospel of Christ. They're saying that's true Christianity. The apostles are saying no way that is a perversion of Christianity. That is an apostasy from Christianity. This is a form of legalism and it's always been around and sometimes it's called Judaizing and other times it has different names in the church. There's a form of that in every age of the church. But this has the apparent weight of tradition backing it up because they're claiming Moses. Moses is no lightweight, you know, especially when you're talking about Jews and Jews in the church. The name of Moses carries tremendous weight. And it should, because Moses was used by God in a tremendous way to reveal the law of God. And again, the law is good. It's not the law that's bad. It's the way they were using the law. This reminds us that whenever Satan deceives people, he uses as much truth and appearance of morality as is necessary to lead people away from the correct application of the truth. Essentially, away from the gospel, that's what Satan wants people to not believe is the gospel. He doesn't care how close you get to the gospel. He doesn't care if you get all the way into the church, all the way into the center part of the church. As long as you miss the essence of the gospel and get all the terminology and all the syntax and verbiage right, he has no problem with that. As long as you in your heart miss the essence of the gospel and pin your faith on something other than the finished work of Christ. That's the problem. Satan doesn't mind quoting the Bible. His messengers quote the Bible all the time. They're good at that. As long as it's a misinterpretation. As long as the definitions don't come from Scripture, but come from traditions of men. He doesn't mind it if people live moral lives. He doesn't mind it if they have an external righteousness. As long as they miss the essence of saving faith. As long as they just missed the point. He doesn't mind it if people pray fervently multiple times a day. I hear people say, oh, but they pray. They pray all the time. Surely they must be right with God or they read the Bible all the time. Those are wonderful, wonderful in and of themselves. But by themselves, they really say little about a person's true relationship with God if their understanding of the gospel differs from God's definition of the gospel. So he doesn't mind, Satan doesn't mind, that is, if people pray fervently as long as they don't have saving faith in their heart and instead cling to rote formulas and superstition as their hope. Almost every false religion prays. Almost every adherent of every false religion prays. Keep that in mind. Prayer is no litmus test for the validity of somebody's message. Satan doesn't mind if people are devout, if they're sincere in their religious activities, as long as what they believe about the gospel is false. And so the Judaizers were an early satanic attempt to pollute and destroy the early church in its infancy. And that's one of the reasons, one of the primary reasons that Galatians was written. So after the Jerusalem Council met, they decided under the inspiration of the spirit that believing the gospel which is enabled by the free gift of justification by faith alone, that belief will result in a life conforming to the moral laws of God. That's the inner work of the spirit, is that you don't need to have a duty message like you just keep the rules. Forget about having the spirit's help. You keep the rules. It's just you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you keep the rules. You jump through all the mosaic hoops and then you're good. We see the gospel says Jesus Christ has to fulfill that, but he empowers us to keep the moral law. He empowers us to live out the true intention of the law by faith through faith in Christ. That's why the rallying cry of the Reformation was the just shall live by faith. We live by faith. We're not just saved by faith. Notice we live by faith. That means faith is not just the entrance into the kingdom of God, it sustains us every step of the way. No one can live for God apart from faith. No one can please God apart from faith. And so understanding this in Acts 15, the apostles and the church decided that they're not going to add any further burden to the Gentile believers who have been filled with the Holy Spirit just as the Jews were. So they said no further burden. We just want you to understand these these external patterns. And if you look at Acts 15, you can see that they delineated this as not eating meat strangled or sacrificed to idols. They didn't want to offend them for no reason. And yet, in doing that, they were in no way mitigating the gospel. They were not in any way diluting it or contradicting the gospel. They're saying, don't give unnecessary offense just because you believe the gospel. Don't go around looking for somebody's feet to step on when you're preaching the gospel. Try to be as conciliatory as possible, but don't hedge one inch on gospel territory. And they did that because no Christian is bound by the ceremonial laws of Moses. You know why? It's because they were fulfilled by Christ. They foreshadowed what Christ came to accomplish. All of them, all of the ceremonial functions of the law were like snapshots of Jesus in the Old Testament. Jesus alone is perfectly fulfilled these ceremonial functions of the law on behalf of all who believe that means he keeps the ceremonial law for us. He is our perfect circumcision of the heart by faith. He is our Sabbath kept. He is our cleansing at the labor. He is our perfect incense. He is our perfect sacrifice. He is everything the law of Moses failed to be perfectly for us. He is the perfect fulfillment. And therefore, to synchronize the ceremonial functions into the gospel is to deny their completion in Christ on our behalf. Adding to the gospel nullifies the gospel. The true gospel of Christ allows for no additions or subtractions. In fact, if anyone adds to the gospel, it's not the gospel. If anyone subtracts from the gospel, it's not the gospel. And the only authority for making this determination is what the written word of God. That's the only authority, not traditions, not the writings or decisions of men. In other words, if you have true faith in Jesus Christ, you don't need the ceremonial functions that prefigured Christ. And if you don't have true faith in Christ, these ceremonial functions won't help you anyway. Because the only way to be saved is through belief in the gospel, the true gospel. That's the only way a soul can be saved. Scripture declares that anyone who preaches a gospel contrary to the apostolic message of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ alone, that person is accursed. And that word accursed is a very strong term. It literally means damn. So Paul is saying, under the inspiration of the Spirit, that anyone who believes a gospel that is tweaked, that is modified in any way, is preaching a message of damnation, not salvation. Regardless of how religious it sounds, regardless of how many times they say the name Jesus, if it points to a different Jesus than the gospels point to, it's a false gospel. Now, listen again to what Paul says in Galatians 1, 6 through 10. I am astonished. This is right in the opening sentences of Galatians. It just goes right into this. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. That's a hetero gospel. Not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we are an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. For am I now seeking the approval of man or of God, or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, note he once did try to please man. He's saying, I used to do that. He said, if I was still trying to please man. I would not be a servant of Christ. So that's my past. Paul is saying, look, I admit I was a man pleaser. I spent the first part of my life trying to please men, trying to keep the law of Moses, trying to jump through the hoops, keeping all the ceremonial laws. I was I was at the top of the class among my kinsmen in that race. He says it's rubbish. All of that is rubbish. The gospel of Jesus Christ stands alone is sufficient to save a soul. And these words in Galatians are so pertinent now to our understanding of why the Reformation occurred, because they address an apostate form of Christianity. That's what the Reformation deals with principally. It deals with a form of Christianity that subtly, slowly, over centuries began to drift from the faith. It began to apostatize like wood when it warps, when it gets wet. You notice how wood begins to pull away and it becomes in a way that is no longer plumb. It's no longer absolutely straight. That's the way it is orthodoxy. Think of orthodoxy as a perfectly straight line, anything that drifts from the perfect line of orthodoxy. And that's like a medical word. We we talk about orthos as anything that is straight, anything that straightens a back or a foot. We we use that word orthos in that route. Anything that strays from that is warped. It is oblique. It is something other than purely straight. And Galatians addresses those who once had the gospel. They had the gospel from the apostles lips, but they deserted it. They had the gospel, but they distorted it. They replaced the gospel with words that have an appearance of righteousness and morality, which looks so good on the surface, but they nullify the essence of the gospel. And incidentally, the word for distort in verse seven, if you look at that word, I have that underlined. That word is metastrophe in the Greek, and it means to change or to alter so as to make it point in a different direction. That's what they were doing, the Judaizers in Galatia were making the gospel point in a different direction. That is what the Catholic Church has done over the centuries is make the gospel point to something other than faith alone in Christ. Now, let me talk about Roman Catholicism in the context of the gospel. For centuries now, what has come to be known as the Roman Catholic Church, embodied by the Vatican and its head, the pope has been preaching and requiring its adherence to affirm a different gospel, which can only result in damnation. I want to make that absolutely clear. I'm not playing word games. I'm not saying this for shock value. And I realize this may sound like an overstatement to some of you who may not be aware of what Roman Catholic theology is, but anyone who understands clearly the gospel of Jesus Christ, as well as some, you don't have to know all of them. If you just know some of the historic teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, some of the doctrines and dogmas, you will know this to be absolutely true. You will see how this is so different from Christianity. It's irrefutable. And therefore, if we truly love the lost, if we truly love the precious souls who are blinded by this old ornate ritualistic system, if we truly love them, we want them to be saved. We must pray for their salvation and we must seek ways to make the gospel known to them before it's too late, because there is a hell to avoid. And I say that with hope because I know Roman Catholics who have come to Christ. I know Roman Catholics who have been saved by the gospel. As many of you know, my wife, Jennifer, was saved out of the Roman Catholic Church by the grace of God. By His merciful grace, He sweetly led her out of that ritualistic system of darkness and superstition. And so her heart and mine is now to see her family safe. We want to see other Roman Catholics come to faith in Christ. This is not just a detached thing for me. This is personal. This is real. This is where we live. We are missionaries in this world. And incidentally, the most fervent missionaries to Roman Catholics today happen to be those who were once Roman Catholics themselves who have been saved through faith in Jesus Christ. They are the ones who are most fervent about getting the gospel into the Roman Catholic Church because they love them. They want these dear people to be saved. It's not about saying you're wrong. We're right. We just want you to adopt our definitions. That's not it. We want their hearts to be changed. It's truly a message that we can't bring in the flesh. It's a message that only God can make known through his spirit. And you can debate for hours. You can argue for hours and get nowhere. It's not going to be won by debates. It's not going to be won by arguments. We must pray that the Lord of the harvest will open their hearts to the gospel and we must be faithful to sow the seed that alone can bear fruit. The most unloving thing for a Christian to do is to withhold saving truth from the hearts of those who are blinded and deceived simply because we don't want to upset them. We just don't want to rock the boat. We don't want to risk an offense. You know, the greatest defense is letting someone you know and love meander peacefully down a path of destruction without so much as a word of warning. Those who are devoutly religious but lost are in great danger. Don't say they're good people. They're nice people. They they believe a lot of things that we believe. Don't say that you're deceiving yourself. Understand the gospel. When you understand the gospel and then you look at what Roman Catholics say about the gospel, you will see this is not Christianity. And so why did the Reformation take place? That's what I want to get to. All of this has been built up to ask this question. Why did the Reformation take place and what was at stake? Understand first that although the doctrine of justification by faith alone was the material cause of the Reformation. The formal cause was the authority of Scripture itself. Now, let me say that again, although the doctrine of justification by faith alone was the material cause of the Reformation. The formal cause, that is, the underlying cause, was the authority of Scripture itself. For hundreds of years now, the Roman Catholic Church has been at odds with biblical Christianity on both of these issues. For while Roman Catholics accept the Scriptures in an historical sense, they believe and teach that Scripture is but one of the authorities governing the lives of its people. Furthermore, where Scripture differs from their traditions or from a ruling by the Vatican, guess which authority holds sway? Not the Bible, not the Bible. Listen to the words of Vatican to this is official Catholic doctrine. Quote, The Roman Catholic Church does not draw her certainty about all revealed truth from the Holy Scriptures alone. But both scripture and tradition must be accepted and honored with equal feelings of devotion and reverence in quote. That's their view of scripture. They dogmatically deny that it alone stands as the authority for the people in their church. Tradition, by the way, is whatever the Roman Catholic Church has said over the years. It's everything the Roman Catholic Church has believed and taught over the years. The Church of Rome teaches that the Bible was produced by the church. In other words, they're saying the church gave birth to the word of God and that therefore the scriptures are subject to the church from which they came. But only a severe misunderstanding of Christian history could sustain such a premise for a while. The premise is true that the source of something has authority over that which is derived from it. The problem is what they view as the source. If the church is the source of the scriptures, then the church has authority over the scriptures, right? We would concede that point. But if the scriptures are, in fact, the source of the church, Then the Scriptures have authority over the church. Binding authority, sovereign authority. It's like the old question, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Well, unless you're an evolutionist, you know, the obvious answer is that the chicken came first, right? God didn't create an egg and put it on the ground to hatch and raise itself. He created two full grown chickens, male and female, and ordained them to reproduce after their kind. That's the way creation took place. The chicken came first. In a similar fashion, the church didn't give birth to the word of God. It's just the opposite. The word of God gave birth to the church. It was at the preaching of Peter on the day of Pentecost. Three thousand souls were added to the church. The word of God always comes first. Before creation could come into being, God had to speak before salvation can occur. The word of God must bring regeneration before the church can exist. The word of God must bring it into existence. The word of God always comes first. This is always the pattern in the Bible. And so the Roman Catholic Church denies that scripture alone is authoritative to reveal God's will to his people and to direct the church according to his will. They also deny that justification is by faith alone, apart from human works, and this lies at the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ. If you base your faith on anything that you have done, you are not trusting in Christ. If you're trusting in Jesus and something else, you are not trusting in Christ. The Council of Trent is the official response of the Roman Catholic Church to the doctrines related to the Reformation. And by the way, every true Catholic is bound by these teachings. You may know Catholics, as I do, who don't believe all these things that I'm saying Catholics believe. It's because they haven't been taught. Most Catholics don't know most Catholic doctrine. And so if you ask them if these things are true, they may be clueless, but I'm telling you historically what is in the operating system of Roman Catholicism that they're not aware of that they are actually bound to. And if they went and talked to a priest about these things or somebody who had authority in the church, they would say, yes, this is Catholic teaching and you must not depart from this, because if you do, it's a mortal sin. It is a mortal sin to knowingly depart from Catholic doctrine. So most people are not aware that all the members of the Roman Catholic Church are uniformly required by the Vatican to believe and submit to every position of the Roman Catholic Church or else or else they're not considered a faithful Catholic in good standing. In fact, for a member of the Roman Catholic Church to refute or disagree with any of these positions is to commit a mortal sin and be under the threat of eternal damnation according to their system. Now, this is official Catholic dogma. And by the way, this is what makes everything hold together in the Catholic Church. And the higher you go in Catholic learning and theology, if you talk to someone who really knows Catholic teaching, they will say all of this is true. Everything I'm sharing with you is in print. It's historic. It's part of their doctrine and dogma. And so no dissent from Catholic teaching is allowed. It's not allowed. whatever the Vatican teaches every true Catholic is required to accept as true or they'll receive the most severe anathemas now listen to some of this I know that this is going to go by quickly too quickly to for you to write this down, but listen to this official Catholic dogma. I'm going to quote from the Council of Trent, Session 6, Chapter 16, Canon 9. If you ever want to go back and look this up, what I'm about to quote is a direct contradiction of Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. This is where they damn the gospel. This is part of it. If anyone saith that by faith alone the impious is justified in such lies as to mean that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to be obtaining the grace of justification and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will. Let him be anathema. That's saying the opposite of what Ephesians 289 says. If you say that you don't need to have your own will predisposed by your own works, if you're saying that righteousness is not attained by you personally striving to get it, if you say it's just by faith alone, they say you are damned in the Catholic Church. So if you believe the gospel and if you're a saved person, you're no longer a Catholic. And if you're a Catholic, you're not a saved person. Doctrinally, now I know that there are people in the Catholic Church who actually believe in Jesus. In fact, I read a book just a few months ago from a Roman Catholic priest who came to faith in Christ while reading a John MacArthur book. And he started teaching other monks and priests what he was learning in some of these books. And he was getting into the word. He said, I'm addicted to Scripture now, but he's not leaving yet because he wants to be a missionary in the Catholic Church. But you see, he's a Catholic in name only. He's not really a Catholic because he no longer believes Catholic doctrine and theology. That's the thing. Catholics can come to faith in Christ. They do every day, but they don't come through the Catholic system. To come to faith in Christ, you have to circumvent the Catholic system. You have to come out of Catholic theology and believe the opposite of what the Catholic Church teaches in order to be saved. Now, here's another one from the Council of Trent. Quote, if anyone says that the righteousness received is not preserved and also not increased before God through good works, but that those works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained and not the cause of its increase. Let him be anathema. So, according to the Catholic Church, all of us who are believers in Christ are damned. That's what they say. Because I say, as you do from the Bible, that the good things that we do in this life do not cause us to be saved, but they are the fruits for the signs of our regeneration. That's what the Bible says. We have to say that Catholic theology says we are anathema because we say that that's the Council of Trent. That's historic Catholic doctrine. Over and over again, the Catholic Church is pronouncing one damnation on the gospel of Christ after another. So to believe Catholic doctrine is to deny and reject the gospel of Christ. And again, most Catholics don't know this. Most Catholics that I know have, like many, a cut and paste theology. They hear other people. They watch TV. They hear what other people believe. They say, well, that sounds good. I'll add that to my belief system. And they kind of mesh it all in with Roman Catholicism. And what you have is sort of a syncretism of Roman Catholic theology in one form and a little bit of liberal Protestantism in another form. And it's all kind of mixed together in a hybrid. But in the ninth chapter of the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church also anathematizes anyone who claims to have assurance of their salvation through faith in Christ. They say you can't even believe that you're saved without being damned. Now, since the Vatican holds itself to be infallible, they can't change their doctrines. That's a problem when you're infallible. You can't change without admitting error. See, if they change, they have to admit to making a mistake. And incidentally, papal infallibility that was instituted in 1870, relatively recently. They believed it before that, but it was finally instituted in 1870. It was approved, by the way, on a split decision. They had to vote several times to finally get it through, and it never was unanimous. The idea of papal infallibility is a hard sell for anyone who studies history, because various popes and councils have contradicted themselves on multiple issues over the centuries. In fact, that was one of Luther's arguments when he stood before the Diet of Worms. Years ago, when Pope John Paul II apologized for the historic failings, quote unquote, of the Catholics. He did not mean the failings of the infallible church that consists in the papacy in the Curia. They are not guilty because they are always to be held as immaculate and sinless. You see, the Catholic Church does not believe that the church consists in the laity. They don't believe that the people are the Catholic Church proper. They believe that the laity are the sons and daughters of the church. But the true church is the Roman Curia, namely the Vatican, its cardinals, its bishops, its priests. And so the errors and sins that have been committed and admitted are not owing to the church. They're still infallible. They're just saying the sons and daughters of the church have erred over the centuries. And we're asking for you, the world, to forgive them for those historic earnings while we are completely sinless. They wash their hands of the laity. Now, going back before the Reformation, there were scores of abuses and departures from orthodoxy. Let me just hit some of these. The idea of purgatory. That's a big one. Because purgatory makes the whole system hold together. If you don't have justification in this life, if justification is progressive, and you're just a little bit more saved by taking the math, or you're a little bit more saved every time you do a so-called good work, then you're never fully saved. And so they have to have a safety net built into the system. Purgatory is the safety net. And the doctrine of purgatory became Catholic dogma based on extra biblical writings, namely Second Maccabees. Second Maccabees chapter 12 verses 42 through 46. That's about prayers for the dead. That's another thing they got out of the Apocrypha. That's why they pray to the dead and for the dead. And incidentally, just briefly, the Apocrypha was written before the New Testament era. It was written between the New Testament and the Old Testament in that 400 years of silence. The Jews themselves knew about the Apocrypha, but they never considered it canonical. I mean, they knew about it, but they said this is not sacred writings. These are just historic writings. And so they don't belong with Moses. They don't belong with Isaiah. They don't belong with David in the Psalms. But they just said their historic writings. Now, after the New Testament age, what became the Catholic Church incorporated the Jewish apocrypha into their canon. That's where it came from. So it was never regarded as canonical prior to that. Now, listen to the most recent version of the Catholic catechism, this is last updated in 2005 question, what is purgatory? Answer purgatory is the state of those who die in God's friendship assured of their eternal salvation, but who still have need of purification to enter into the happiness of heaven. Now, there's a contradiction there earlier, they told us that you can't be assured of your salvation without being damned, but if you die in assurance of your salvation, then you might go to purgatory to have the rest of your sins cleansed. So, in other words, there's no such thing as complete forgiveness of sins for anyone claiming to be a member of the Catholic Church in good standing. You can never claim to be fully justified question. How can we help the souls being purified in purgatory? They answer. Because of the communion of saints, the faithful who are still pilgrims on earth are able to help the souls in purgatory by offering prayers in suffrage for them, especially the Eucharistic sacrifice. They also help them by almsgiving, indulgences and works of penance. There is no such place as purgatory, according to Scripture. It's a total fabrication. It is founded on some verses in the Apocrypha, which they believe support an idea of purgatory. But the only place in Scripture where sins are ever purged, and I hope you never forget this, the only place in Scripture where sins are ever purged is on Calvary at the cross of Christ. He died once for all the sins that would ever be purged. Once for all, who would ever believe on him for salvation? And all you do is trust in him completely. You put your trust in him completely. You will be saved. You don't add anything to it. This is a one time finished sacrifice. That's why the cross behind me is empty. It's an empty cross. If you go to any Catholic church, you see a crucifix. with a languishing Jesus still nailed to the cross because they believe that his sacrifice is ongoing. They believe that he has to be re-sacrificed in an unbloody manner every time the mass is offered. And so there is no finished sacrifice. You commit a new sin, run back and take the mass. Oh, you've got to get saved again. You've got to keep being saved. It's progressive. It's never final. You see, the Catholic Church, And therefore, its adherents reject the finished sacrifice of Christ and they substitute their own sacrifice in the mass, also called the Eucharist, which is repeated thousands of times a day around the world. In the mass, they teach that Christ is repeatedly sacrificed anew for sins that you committed today or yesterday or this past week. And they do this sacrifice over and over and over and over again. It never stops. It's ongoing. According to their system, it never can stop. The mass is a denial of the finished sacrifice of Christ on behalf of those who believe in Christ alone through faith alone, apart from human works of merit. So a Catholic in good standing must therefore reject the sufficiency of Christ's atonement on the cross, believing they must participate in the repeated sacrifice of the mass or else be damned. They believe that they believe that if they miss the mass, they will be damned. And that's what the Catholic Church teaches. In fact, to intentionally skip the mass is considered a mortal sin by the Catholic Church. If you don't have a really good reason, like you're too sick to get out of bed or somebody has died in your family to get a pass, if you intentionally skip the mass for just no good reason, that is a mortal sin. You see, this whole thing is so filled with damnation to frighten dissenters. And then there is the selling of indulgences for the forgiveness of sins. This made the church increasingly wealthy, leading up to the Reformation in the 1500s. And incidentally, the indulgence controversy was the principal issue behind Luther's ninety five theses. Luther was basically a Catholic in good standing when he wrote those ninety five theses. He said, if you had asked me then, I was a papist. I would have ardently defended the pope to the death when I wrote those ninety five theses. See, his heart hadn't fully been changed, but he was saying there is something wrong with that indulgence way. They are not representing the church correctly. Johann Tetzel with his regime out there selling indulgences to build St. Peter's Basilica. You see, that's what got Luther so agitated that he wrote those ninety five theses. That's why he nailed that to the church door in Wittenberg. And then there's the false gospel of progressive justification by works. That is, you participate in justification progressively by your own good works and through the sacraments. You have to have the sacraments along with good works. Then there's the abomination of venerating idols and relics. Prayers for the dead, prayers to the dead. Incidentally, I remember back when John Paul died on the TV coverage on, I think it was on CNN. They had a guy that they interviewed at the Vatican, one of the mourners. He said, we've been praying for him and now we'll be praying to him. And that represents the beliefs of most Catholics. They prayed for him. Now they're going to pray to him. For centuries, there's been the idolatrous veneration and worship of Mary above Christ and even God the Father. There's the perversion of forced celibacy among the priests. As I said before, since the crucifixion of Jesus, there's been no need for sacrifices. There are no more altars in the Christian church because there's no sacrifice. This is not an altar down here. This is a table where we put the communion elements. It's not an altar. There's no sacrifice that's offered there. It doesn't represent sacrifice. There's no more temple in which God dwells. There's no more tabernacle. There is no more priesthood. The priesthood has been abolished. God has done away with all of these at the coming of Christ. Christ replaces all of these with perfection. The mass is therefore a false sacrifice on a false altar in a false temple by a false priest to a false God. No one who understands the gospel could possibly confuse this with Christianity. This is so different from what we believe in the Bible. But the reason so many people are deceived today is because the Catholic Church uses Christian terminology and they use Christian concepts and they give these words a pagan definition. So many of the concepts that sound similar to us, similar to true Christianity, like baptism, it's a common word. Like prayer, like justification, even Jesus as Lord. They have a totally different definition from anything resembling scripture. It's a different gospel. It's a gospel of works. But even if we are an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed, as we have said before. So now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. That is God's verdict on all false gospels. And that's just a brief overview of some of the factors that have caused even faithful monks over the centuries to rise up in protest. Did you know there are over one billion people today claiming to be Roman Catholics? One billion. That is a huge mission field. They need to hear and believe the gospel, and we need to love them. They are not the enemy. They are the mission field. And we need to use every means without compromising one inch on the gospel. But we don't need to cast them off because hundreds and hundreds of Roman Catholics come to faith every day. They're believing the gospel. They don't know it. They need to hear it and they need to hear it in distinction from a Catholic understanding. Roman Catholicism is, in every sense, a religious and ornate mission field. And that's why the Reformation occurred. And that's why reform still must occur today. That's why biblical reformation and evangelism for the lost must continue every day until every lost person has heard the true gospel of Jesus Christ. My question for you at the end is, will you tell them? Will you tell them? To that end, let's close in prayer. Father, your word gives us life over spiritual deadness. It gives us light in a world of spiritual darkness. And our world is so dark with unbelief. We pray that those who are blinded right now by religion and comfortable with the traditions of men would believe your words and would repent before it's too late. I pray that you would compel us individually to go out and tell them. We ask it in Jesus' name, Amen.