And if you have your bulletin, it has four, one, two, three, four questions on it, but what I'd like to do is, anybody that has a Roman Catholicism related question, if you want to ask it too, so I kind of compiled for our question and answer time, which is what we're doing this evening with open microphones, I compiled the email and hallway questions into these four. Because I just commented, I don't know, I think it was last week or the week before, I said that when I'm on an airplane and I'm studying my Bible and they ask me what I do, you know, I say that I'm studying the Bible and they usually say, I'm Catholic. And I say, oh, I'm Catholic, but I'm not Roman Catholic. And it always elicits a, what's the difference? I've never had that not happen, and which is them inviting me to explain the gospel to them, which Romanism is opposed to the gospel, and the church that Christ started is the gospel, so that's why I do it. But from that, I wrote these questions. What is the Catholic Church? When did the Roman Catholic Church begin? What is the history of Romanism? That's the Roman part of Roman Catholic, that's what Romanism is called. And the last question, what was the Reformation about? So those are the questions, but does anybody have any other kind of, oh, I see a question coming. Well, how about about football? You could ask one about football, right? But any questions? Because I want to make sure I get everything in and say, hello, my name is. Hello, my name is Jordan Dersh. I was just wondering, what should our stance be towards those evangelicals who are affirming of Catholicism or the small fragment of Catholicism, or Catholics rather, who claim salvation by grace through faith? alone. Say that again, I only hear you right there. What should our attitude be towards those evangelicals who are affirming of Catholicism or the small portion of Catholics who do believe or appear to believe salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ? Les, I somehow messed up my, oh, there it is. How did I do that? I can go a third time if you need me to. Les, how did I make it small? Will it hinder what I'm doing to make it small? I guess not. I'll try and write on it. But writing doesn't work. Oh, there we go. Okay, what's our attitude toward evangelicals that toward evangelicals that are for, what'd you say? That are affirming. That are affirming, uh-huh. Of the small portion of Catholics who claim salvation by grace alone. Sounds very Christian, in other words. and then still want to remain in the Catholic Church. I'll just add that on. Well, yeah, you have, they want to remain. I would say the biblical question, or biblical answer to that is the same that, where'd you go, Jordan? There you are. Do you remember when Jesus' disciples came up to him and they said, there's people that aren't with us, and what did Jesus say? If they're not against us, they're for us. And if they're not for us, they're against us. He said both. He said it both ways, and it has very deep meaning. And I think that I will answer that tonight. And if I don't, you can jump up at the end, because I've got a lot of slides to cover. Hello, my name is? Hello, my name is Lisa. And how do I explain to my very Catholic family that there is no purgatory? purgatory. And the short answer I would give you, Lisa, is ask them to show it to you in the Bible. And they will take, well first they'll go to the priest, and he will tell them to take you to 2 Maccabees 12, I think 24, and you go Did you know that Jesus did not believe that was part of the Bible and they will go and go back to their priest and the priest will not know either and they'll go to the archbishop or something and Because purgatory isn't in the Bible. It's it's only in Maccabees. So then with purgatory if it's not in the Bible They have a bigger problem See, that they are willing to go against the Bible and to believe a doctrine that's not in the Bible. And so then you back up and you say, instead of talking about purgatory, then what I do with them is I spend time going over Peter's messages and Paul's messages because Those two preach the gospel, and are recognized by the Roman Catholic Church as clearly being, you know, especially Peter the Pope. And I actually have a study called The Gospel According to Peter, and it's amazing. It's interviewing Peter, and say, Peter, do you believe in purgatory? And what Peter said is that silver and gold, you know, we don't have silver and gold to purchase our salvation, because remember they were trying to, and he says, no, no, it's only through the precious blood of Christ. And so that's one way I do it. Usually, this one, I don't want to get in a debate with them over the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory. What I want to get in a discussion with them is, is there hope founded in the Word of God, or something else? So that's what I would do. But that's going to come up when I, I'll show you in a minute about purgatory. Hello, my name is... Hello, my name is Brandon Morse. I've heard some pretty smart Christian apologists argue that they're Catholics for the reason that The Catholics have an oral tradition that's passed down that helps them interpret what the Bible says. The argument is that us not having the oral traditions of the priests and the bishops and everything coming down from Peter, supposedly, how do we know how to interpret our Bible? Are our hermeneutics that strong to make up for their passed-down oral tradition? What a great question, Brandon. And what I would say to that is, number one, what that's called is corpus magisterium, that's a big buzzword for the Roman Catholics, corpus, body, magisterium of the teaching, that they have a body of teaching that has been passed down. And so with them, with those that say that, I take into first John, in chapter two where John says that we don't need someone to teach us, that we have an anointing, and he teaches us all things, and that's the Holy Spirit. what believers are supposed to do is come to the gathered church to be encouraged, to be taught, but to examine, as it says in Acts 17, 11, that we examine and check the scriptures whether what is being taught is in the scriptures. And so what the scriptures tell us in 1 John 2 is we have an anointing of the Holy Spirit. that teaches us all things. So we are Holy Spirit taught, and we can, just us, with the Holy Spirit inside of us, do what Luther did, and question things, because the Bible says this, and you say that. That body of oral tradition passed down that only they can interpret goes against what Jesus said. He says you follow the laws of men rather than the laws of God and what he interpreted is the Pharisees had their oral tradition that wasn't written down in the Bible and he was speaking from what was written down and so actually Jesus answers that and what What the priests and whoever's teaching that wants to do is, they want to do the same thing that the Inquisition did in taking away the Bible out of the people's language. It doesn't want them to even interpret it, they want to interpret it for them. And John, in 1 John, said not to do that. And prior to that, Jesus said, you take men's traditions above the written Word of God. So it's the same as two questions ago. Do you equate the Bible With tradition, no. Tradition's important. The Bible trumps it. That's a hard word to use these days, isn't it? The Bible is above it. We have to change our vocabulary. It's kind of like gay no longer means gay and Trump doesn't mean Trump anymore, you know? And those two don't, I wasn't equating those two either, but oh man, we're getting in trouble here. So did I say enough random before I get in trouble? But that's what I would I would take him to first John and then to what Jesus said about the tradition of the Pharisees not being higher than the Bible. Yeah, okay your blessing. Oh another one. Hello. My name is hi. My name is John I think you've begun to answer my question But how do you witness to relatives who grew up in the evangelical tradition and have converted to Catholicism? I the same way I would witness to those that grew up in evangelicalism and are pagan lost people. It's going back to the heart of the gospel. I mean, especially if they've gone from evangelicalism to Roman Catholicism, which is what Elizabeth Elliot's brother did, to just give a current example. Elizabeth, shadow of the Almighty, Elliot, is from a magnificent Christian family, and her brother converted back to the Catholic Church, famously, from an evangelical seminary. But what do you, how do you discuss that with them? How I would do it is, that means they have a real interest in the gospel, and the scriptures, and church history, and everything else, and I would go back and define with them what is salvation. because the heart of the issue is how we get the justifying death of Christ applied to our life. And is it applied the way the scriptures say, and the scriptures say that it was imputed to us, credited to us, or do we believe the way that Roman Catholic doctrine of oral tradition that we just heard about says that it is infused. The difference between imputation, which is what the Bible teaches, imputation, the difference between imputation and infusion is the difference between having something put into your credit card account and going around all your life with an IV bag. What would you think of someone that had one of those little four-wheely cart things that has a little bag hanging on it and they had a, you know, a line, a pick line going into their vein and they were pushing that thing around And that's a Roman Catholic. A Roman Catholic has to be tied by an IV bag to the Roman Catholic Church to get to purgatory. They can't even get to heaven. They are getting an infusion, drip by drip, every time they go to the Catholic Church. Every time they do a sacrament, they're getting more drips, more drips, more drips, and I'm going to cover this in just a second. Do they understand when they went that way, that it is no longer confusing. In 1564, is that when Trent was? About Trent. See, you're catching me without thinking about this too long, but when the Tridentine, when the Council of Trent codified Roman Catholic doctrine, it's no longer possible to say that Roman Catholicism is biblical justification described by the Bible. The Roman Catholic Church defined in Trent this infused grace through the sacramental system. Before that, it was a mixed bag. You had godly born-again people in the Roman Catholic Church, and you had real rascals. But in Trent, they codified it. Now, someone can be inside the Catholic Church and say, I disagree with Trent, and I just go for the stained glass windows. I think they're foolish to do that, but they can be saved. But if they swallow that, the Bible says in Galatians 1 that they are anathema. because they have added works to salvation. So it's serious. So if they're just a thinker and they like organ music and stained glass windows and smoke, it's okay if they deny that. Okay, but I'm gonna get into it just a minute when I get into the doctrine. Thanks, John. Hi, my name is Brian Stelfer. And this has to do with the terminology. My impression is that Roman Catholic, people of Roman Catholic faith consider themselves to be Christians. And so we have this dichotomy of Roman Catholic Christians, Protestant Christians. Is that an accurate impression? And how do we resolve that? Yeah, that is the exact thing that, in fact, that's the direction the world is going. Even in Kalamazoo, there's a local pastor that is trying, I've gotten so many emails from him, and he says, we all need to get together for the celebration of Martin Luther's, you know, Wittenberg event, and get all the Christians and Catholics together to tell all of Kalamazoo that we're all Christians. And I wrote him back and I said, I absolutely am opposed to your idea. You are a nice guy. Your idea is horrifically, unbiblically, incorrectly wrong. Because there is a massive difference between Roman Catholics considering themselves to be Christians and truly born-again Christians who simply, by calling on the name of the Lord, get a new heart without the seven-stage sacramental system. See, most people don't understand Roman Catholic doctrine. And so what they say is, it's Christian. It's Christian, yes, in the sense it's not Hinduism. But in the sense it's biblical, it's not Christian. And so that's, and I'm getting, boy, you're, Brian, I don't know if you're a Y or an I, but that is a bingo question, because that's exactly what we're talking about tonight. So how about at 7, I'm going to pause, and all of you that asked something, if I didn't hit it, we'll reset, okay? Thank you. Okay, that's enough, because we'll never get to my 37 slides, and you can all think about your Let me see if I can find my slides. There we go. So, first of all, what does it mean to be Catholic and not Roman Catholic? And that is what alarmed and set off the email response. What does it mean to be Catholic, but not Roman Catholic? Well, I would say that I'm using Catholic as an adjective, not as a noun, okay? As a noun, in English, Catholic means that you're a Roman Catholic. But if I say that I'm Catholic, and, you know, it is taking advantage of the English language, it's to precipitate them to ask, what's the difference? So, what does it mean when I say that, okay? Well, first of all, let's just go through the dictionary. This is Catholic in the dictionary. You notice that it's, There's an adjective form and a noun form. Adjective is a wide variety of things all embracing the synonyms are universal, diverse, diversified, wide, broad, broad-based, electric, liberal, latitudinarian, narrow. What I'm talking about is this. Catholic, in its truest sense, just like other English words, like affair, used to mean your business. Now it means something different nowadays. It's kind of a euphemism for adultery. Gay used to be, in all the Christmas carols, a happy gay time. Now it's a euphemism for sexual degeneracy. Okay, do you understand? That words change with cultural, you know, context. And so, when I say that, I'm taking advantage of the original meaning of the word Catholic, which is the universal, the, let's see, relating to the historic doctrine and practice of the Western Church and what characterizes all Christians. And, of course, the dictionary says it's of the Roman Catholic faith, but I'll show you why I say this. Now, the noun form is what you think it is. It's a Roman Catholic. Now, going back to where the word comes from, the word Catholic in English comes from, look at this, kataholos. Greek words that mean Kasalikas, universal. So actually, I'm thinking of the New Testament world and the church that came out of the day of Pentecost. And it was, there was only one church that was born on the day of Pentecost. Today, there are hundreds of flavors of Christianity. And there's a lot of people that think Mormonism is Christianity, or they think, you know, some of these, you know, let's all get together against abortion. They, under the umbrella of Christianity, they'll put almost anybody, as long as they're pro-life, or pro-family, or something like that. And so, what we've done is, we've kind of lost the definitiveness of doctrine through through wanting to have social power or something like that. So in the most basic sense, in the Greek language, kataholos, or katholikos, means universal. And so that became in Latin, katholikos, which became Catholic in English. So that's what I'm talking about. But I only say it to cause that questioning. Because what it does is when I say I'm Catholic and not Roman, they immediately let down their defense shields. If I said I'm an ordained Baptist minister, they would just, they would turn in their seat, you know, and look out the window and put in their earbuds. But if I say I'm Catholic but not Roman, what I'm saying is I'm a part of the church Jesus started, not the one you're in. They're not the same. But they didn't realize I said that. And so they say to me, what's the difference between the Catholic Church that you say you are, which is defined in the Bible, and the Roman Catholic Church that I'm a part of, that's not described in the Bible? Well, it is, but it isn't described as the Church. And so that's what I'm trying to prompt them to talk about. Now, it's too bad Do you know how to fix this so it gets less wherever you are? Do you know how to make it little again? Because no one will be able to see my slides. Too bad. I don't know enough about this, but this is really small. I'll just read it to you if we don't know how to fix it. This is a typical Roman Catholic advertisement that's on the internet. And it says, who started your church? And this is St. Peter's Basilica, which is so recognizable. And they have churches. and founders, and years, and locations. And they put themselves right there as the originators. Catholic Church, they actually should say Roman Catholic Church, but the Catholic Church, they're right, the church Jesus started was in AD 33, and it was in Jerusalem. But they, by putting their little St. Peter's Basilica at the top, are implying that in 2016, They are still this. But they're not, and I'll show you in just a moment. And then they go, I mean, this is a fascinating list. Saddleback Church, Rick Warren, 1982, Orange County. You know, what church are you a part of? Calvary Chapel, Chuck Smith, 1965, Harvest Christian, 72, Greg Laurie. Four Square Gospel, Amy Simple McPherson at the Angelus Temple. Christian Science, Mary Baker Glover Patterson Fry, Eddy, Boston, 1879. Jehovah's Witnesses, right there. Charles Taze Russell, Judge Russell, Pennsylvania. Salvation Army, William Booth, Mormons, Joseph Smith, 1830. What they're doing is they're kind of lumping together everyone except for them. And this is very common, and that's why Elizabeth Elliot's brother migrated to the Roman Catholic Church. That's why many people, even evangelical type people, have moved to the Orthodox Church, because they're trying to go to the pure form of Christianity. But they're not going to the pure form of Christianity, they're just going to the external visible manifestation of ancient Christianity, which has moved far from the scriptures, as we'll see. They end with Luther up here, Martin Luther, 1517, the Anglicans, founded by Henry VIII. He did found that church. It was a Roman Catholic Church. Anglicanism was started by King Henry VIII of England. And the one thing we all remember from history, if you were listening, that you were more likely to stay alive in his court if you were a dog than one of his wives, because he had a penchant for killing them. But he did start the church so he could divorce, because Catholics wouldn't let him. That's where Anglicans came from. It's Roman Catholic English form. Calvinists by John Calvin, Presbyterians by John Knox, et cetera, et cetera. So that's why we need to define this. Now basically, this is how we define it. This is a little drawing I make. What I say is, this square is the word of God. See, word of God right here. It's central to everything. And here's the early church. which grew into, over the centuries, the Roman Catholic Church. And this part of the Roman Catholic Church was very biblical. Actually, it's a higher percentage of that. I would say that 95% of Roman Catholicism is biblical. It's just the other 5%. Within the other 5%, there's some deadly poison that is deadlier than anything. It's damnable poison. It's a works religion that denies the once and for all death of Jesus Christ on the cross. And that is part of Roman Catholicism. This was codified in the Council of Trent. So church history started with the early church, which morphed into the Roman Catholic Church. As time went on, We have the next iteration of the Church, which was very biblical, but had some non-biblical parts, and that was the Reformation. And the Reformation, if the errors are damnable of Romanism, the errors of the Reformation would be what we would call theological drift. And you've heard me talk about this many times on Q&As, but there are things in Reformation theology that aren't in the Bible. You know that. They're never mentioned in the Bible. They're logical and they're true, but they're not biblical, and yet they become the central doctrines of Reformation theology, which is what is so fascinating that they're not in the Bible. But there is so much. The majority of Reformation theology is very biblical. The errors in Reformation theology are not damnable. They're just logical, but they're not killers. They're just dividers. Then church history goes on, and we come to what I call the evangelical church. Now remember, the Reformation retained a lot of that covenantal, which is a real danger, that people are saved because they're in families that go to church, and that the parents are members, and the kids just have to be confirmed. And what happens after a few generations is you have confirmed people that are lost. See, that's what happens. That if you have a non-evangelical church, and evangelical churches, you were born lost, a pagan, on your way to hell, and you need to be born again. Which, doesn't that sound very similar to Jesus? To Paul? To Peter? That's what they all preached. They all looked at crowds, to the people that thought they were in the covenant, Jews, and said, you have to be born again. And the people got angry. And they said, we don't, we're Abraham's seed. Jesus said, no, I can make Abraham's seed out of rocks. You need to repent and be born again. Well, the reformers, sadly, retained elements of Old Testament Israel. You see it with all the Sabbath observance and law observance that shows up in the Reformed faith. But another thing is that they're in the covenant, kind of like the Jews were circumcised, you get baptized as an infant. You see, infant circumcision in Judaism became infant baptism in Reformation theology. It's one of the glaring errors that Luther and Calvin and Zwingli left in their theology from Romanism. They were all Roman Catholics. that came out of the church, but they brought, dragged with them, some of the baggage of the church. And so that's over here. The infant baptism and the covenantal elements are theological drift, and they're incorrect, they're unbiblical. Well, we have the evangelical church. And the evangelical church, basically, I mean, this is kind of like the, just to put faces with it, it would be D.L. Moody and, you know, the Missions Movement and Baptist Today and Billy Graham. I mean, you know, that kind of people. They're not Reformed, but they're believers, they're evangelicals, and they believe that you must call people to salvation. Well, sadly, there's a percentage Just like there's a portion of Roman Catholicism that's not biblical. See, remember, this is the Bible. Roman Catholicism built on the Bible with horrific, poisonous additions. Reformation theology built on the Bible with some theological drift and baggage. Evangelical theology built on the Bible with a lot of traditions that aren't in the Bible. There are many of them. How about Sunday school? I mean, the Baptists act like Jesus started Sunday school. He did not. The early church didn't have Sunday school until the year 1789. Same time as our Constitution was ratified in America. And Robert Rakes, in England, started Sunday school. There was no Sunday school before that. And people gauge churches on whether they have Sunday school or they have evening services. Actually, the church started with evening services, not morning services. We've made the icon morning services. And when someone has an evening like Saturday night, we wonder, oh man, are they doing something wrong? We are prone to a lot of personality-driven traditions. And we have to always be carefully checking what we believe against the scriptures. Did you know, the longer you talk about something, the clearer it should be if it's true. And so anytime it's hasty or anytime it becomes fighting, it's not from the Lord. The longer you look at truth, the clearer it becomes. And so it's very good to always be weeding out what the additions are, but one error that could be in evangelicalism is decisionism. You know what that is? Yeah, I already did that. I prayed that. Not saying, have you been regenerated? Have you got a new heart? I'm talking about salvation. See, with the Roman Catholics, they say if you're baptized as an infant, you're in. With the covenant theology, they say if you're baptized as an infant, you're in the covenant. Do you know what our problem is? We have gotten kind of like that by saying, if you raised your hand or followed me and prayed that prayer, you're in. It doesn't mean necessarily you're in. Because there are many that say, Lord, Lord, Matthew 7, that aren't saved. The proof is whether you have a transformation on the inside and want to, from the heart, do the will of your Father in Heaven, Jesus said. So we have the tradition even of decisionism, or whatever you want to call it, that people all the time say, oh, I've done that. I say, uh-huh, you've done that, but what has God done? Has He given you a new heart? Has He given you a new spirit? Has He taken away your stony heart? Has He given you a heart that is responsive? Has He put His spirit within you? Do you long to do His will? Do you hate sin? Those are all the evidences of salvation, the vital signs. It's kind of like, you know how when people are on big accidents, they run around and check their pulse for breathing, you know, and all that. What are the vital signs of salvation? One of them is that you had a beginning because it is a new birth, but if you've just made a decision and there's been no change, then what Paul said in 2 Corinthians 13 5 is examine yourself whether you're in the faith. Because we need to do a self-examination whether we see God at work. completely changing us from the inside out. And then you say, wow, there's another circle here. Yeah, this is what theologians call the renewal or the charismatic movement. And did you know we have to be very cautious about that? There's some people that almost think the charismatics are like morons, you know, they're not saved. Yet, the vast majority of the charismatic renewal movement is biblical. They just have added these excessive things, you know, an excessive emotionalism, an excessive wanting some confirmation by, you know, being able to speak in tongues. You know, speaking in tongues really is supernatural. If a person is empowered by God to speak a language they never learned, and they are so articulate instantaneously in that language that they can actually communicate the gospel. That is a marvelous spiritual gift. You don't really see that anymore. You see a learned pattern, very few syllable, kind of a prayer language or whatever called. That's wonderful. That's a sign of having a heart for God. That's not the spiritual gift of Pentecost or of Acts 2, or even of 1 Corinthians 12 through 14. That was a speaking in a language that someone else was gifted to interpret, and it was only for a sign, Paul said, to Israel. showing that people that were not Jews were going to hear the gospel, and they were going to come to Christ, as it was promised in Isaiah. And so, this whole notion of this excessive looking for confirmation, and look what it spawned. I mean, does anybody really want to lay claim to some of the wackos that are riding around in their jets, and raising multi-million dollars, and getting in trouble with the IRS, and claiming to heal people that they're selective in who they heal? When Peter and Paul walked and their shadow crossed sick people, they got well. These people have carefully orchestrated workers in the back that weed out the people that they don't want coming on the stage for them to slay in the spirit and heal. I mean, have them go to Shriner's Hospital to a completely deformed burn victim and heal them. That's the level of New Testament healing, which Paul didn't have at the end. You know that. Paul never had miraculous powers after 59 AD recorded in the Bible, and he lived for almost a decade after that. He couldn't heal his best friend and son in the faith, Timothy. And he wanted to, but he couldn't. So, they're off the page with the gifts. I mean, they're off the page of the scriptures with their longing. It's almost like the Bible isn't enough and the indwelling spirit isn't enough. I want more. And that's a real dangerous thing because if you want more, the devil will give it to you. And there are many people that speak in tongues that are not Christians. Tibetans, you know, tribal people. Satan will counterfeit anything. Whenever you get away from the Bible, whenever you're outside the box, you and I are fair game for the deceiver. And what did Jesus say is the primary thing that's going to mark the further we get to the end of the age? Deception. Deception. And so that's why doctrine does matter. And the Reformation was a doctrinal reset from the errors that we're going to see in a moment. So basically, Here's a, you can't see this, but it's just for me to see so I can talk about it. This is the history of the church and one of the, there are several big points on here that are important. This is a council of Nicaea, and we divide theologians as Nicaean and anti-Nicaean, or post-Nicaean. So those before Nicaea and after Nicaea. You might have heard that. It was in 325 AD. This is an important thing. This is Diocletian. And Diocletian had the strongest persecution of the church. This is kind of what started the Roman Catholic Church. These huge persecutions right here. that lasted 10 years. And what Diocletian, by the way, he's the only Roman emperor that retired. All the rest of them died, either in battle or of living too high on the hog and drinking out of all those lead vessels and getting venereal diseases. But he was such an amazing man that after he'd fixed the whole Roman Empire, he retired to his own little city he built for himself that's down in modern, you know, Tyrannian Sea Adriatic area that's a beautiful place that people go to. But Diocletian did three things before he quit. He destroyed every Bible, There is not one complete copy of the Bible left that predates him. He destroyed every one of them. He is methodical. We have pieces of all of them, because the people tore them up and distributed them into, that's why we have 25,000 manuscript portions. But he went through and systematically destroyed, there is not a complete copy. of God's Word that predates Diocletian. The second thing is he destroyed every known leader. He killed or imprisoned or whatever every pastor and every place that the church met, he destroyed. That was his tenure purge. Bibles, pastors, buildings. And he was the most efficient. He almost was able to extinguish Christianity. But what happened was, he killed all the leaders, got rid of the Bibles, and destroyed their buildings, and they multiplied. And they started, like the guys that were preaching I told you about this morning, out of the little cage before they were burned at the stake, the martyrs were sharing the gospel and their hope. And what Diocletian did is he just retired. because he couldn't stop Christianity. And so, following him comes Constantine, right here, who legalized Christianity. And I could tell you lots of other stuff, but we don't have time tonight. So basically, we have within the Word of God, remember the Bible, We have the Roman Catholic Church that has added works, which is very dangerous. We have the Reformation that we have to guard against this drift and also the sloppiness of pulling in some of the Roman Catholic infant baptism and covenantal ideas that they came in. And then we have this whole evangelical church that has a tradition and almost a dangerous view of non-regenerating decisionalism. Kind of like a child has nothing to do with their circumcision, and so you can actually be in the covenant without your own decision, that it just happens by your family, or that you just pray a prayer, and God has to save you. It's amazing what comes of this. So there are always dangers in every group. Then there's the excess side of the Renewal Charismatic group. Even the early church had portions that were unbiblical. That's why Paul wrote all those epistles. The church was practicing stuff. So see, there is some tolerance within the Lord's mercy and grace for us to not be exactly right. By the way, some people, no one asks this, but where's Calvary Bible Church? Are we, you know, here or here or here or here? We are right there. How do you like that? Right inside the Bible, right? Just teasing. Even Calvary Bible Church would be, we would have a portion of what we believe totally biblical, and we have other stuff that we just do it because we want to, or we like it, or it's a tradition. And it's not really tied directly to the scriptures. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as the part there isn't either presented as biblical, defended as biblical, or it's harmful. And so that's why we have wonderful elders who do examine that. And by the way, the Arminian and the Augustinian Calvinistic part are both presented in the Bible. Arminius did not get his ideas out of the Jehovah's Witness or the Mormons or the Gnostics. Every one of his points that were countered, you know, at Dort, the whole conflict between Arminianism and Calvinism, both flow from the scriptures. Just a different way of looking at the same scriptures. And I'm not going to get into that, we've got into that so many times. So we've already seen this. So real quickly, How do we get where we are? Well, first there was Judaism, then Christ came, and he started what? people would call the One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church. Now, those words mean a lot of different stuff nowadays. There are apostolic, you know, charismatic churches, and there are apostolic, Abyssinian, Orthodox churches. And so, what I mean by that is, Jesus ordained a group of apostles who started the church that was one church that was built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. So Jesus started that, and what Paul calls, in Romans 9 through 11, we were grafted into the stump that was Judaism-Israel. They were the olive stump that God temporarily set aside and we're grafted in. But he says, don't get all proud about that, because God is gonna return, Acts 15 says, and rebuild Israel. And so that's coming, but that's prophecy, and I'm not gonna talk about that. So here's the church that Jesus started and built on, you know, the Old Testament, people of God, and then the apostolic time and the day of Pentecost. And immediately, early on, the Armenians broke off. That's one of the oldest Christian groups, not Armenians, Armenians. They're the ones in the genocide in Turkey. they moved up to Turkey, these Christians moved to Egypt, the Copts, and then the church chugged along till 1054 AD. with the great schism, and it was over the philoque, which they added in the church doctrines, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, and the Orthodox didn't like adding that. And so, plus they had a, they felt, the Orthodox felt, the priests could be married, and the Roman Catholic Church didn't want them to be married, they had a celibate priesthood, and lots of other things. The Roman Church wanted to have images, and the Orthodox Church wanted to have have icons which are two-dimensional kind of relief drawings or relief, you know, pictures that are raised, that's Orthodox, but full rounded images is Roman Catholic. So they divided on that and there's the Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox are the main evidences of that. The Roman Catholic Church went on and is to this day, you know, over there. The Roman Catholics In 1517, Luther split into Lutheranism, Calvin into the Reformed, Ulrich Zwingli into the Radical Reformers, from which we get the Hutterites, the Mennonites, the Brethren, the Amish are downstream from that. In the Lutherans, you know, the Moravian, if you've heard of them, the Covenant Church, the Free Church, Baptist General Conference is reformed, you know, kind of over their Baptist side. The Quakers, other Baptists, the Congregational Church, ooh, the Universalists, the Unitarians, they actually come from Reformation. The Unitarian Church started in Prague from heavy duty, Reformed, over, unbiblical, you know, drifting. It actually is downstream. The Unitarian Universalists are downstream from the Reformation, sadly. The Christian Reform all around us, the Presbyterians, started by John Knox. Then, the Anglican Church, which is the British form of Catholicism, and the Anglican Church in America is called the Episcopal Church. So Episcopals are British Catholics. and they're having talks all the time to reunite with the Roman Catholic Church, as are the Orthodox and all the others, as are the evangelical pastors of Kalamazoo, sadly, talking about that. The Anglicans broke in through the Wesleys into the Methodists, and from the Methodists come the Assemblies of God, the Holiness Church, and all that, and upstream from that would be the Charismatics up here. which are Arminian and which are from the flavor of the Methodists there. So basically we have Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Methodist, Reformed, Lutheran, and all these splinter groups that basically, you know, like the Mennonites and the Amish and the Brethren and the Closed Brethren and all those, that they're the German kind of segment that went with Zwingli. So that's kind of a way of looking at the church. like a tree. Another way to look at it is just that the church was basically as Christ started it until the time of Constantine, and then it began to morph by 1054 right here into the Orthodox Church, who lays claim to they're the pure church, and the Roman Catholic Church, which lays claim they're the true church, but the offshoots are Luther right here, And then Zwingli, and the Anabaptists, and the Baptists, and the German Baptists, and the Adventists, and out of the Adventists come the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Primitive Baptists. So those are all downstream from Zwingli, and the Amish, and Mennonites, with Menno Simons and the Amish are right there. Then Calvin in 1530 broke off with the Reformed Churches, the Dutch Reformed, the Reformed Churches of America, and from them the Restoration Churches, the Church of Christ, the Disciples of Christ, and the regular Church of Christ. The French Huguenots came off of Calvin too. Then we have John Knox who took Calvin to Scotland and became the Presbyterians. And the Presbyterians had different iterations, and down here with Cramner and the Church of England, and they grow into the pilgrims, like in Thanksgiving, the Quakers. The Church of England, you know, goes on in its form. The Congregationalists, which broke off of the Church of England, became the Unitarians. and became all these, you know, Christian sciences downstream from the Congregationalists and then the Unitarian Universalists, which is all a mess. And then out of the Church of England came the Wesleys. And from the Church of England came the Episcopalians. And the Wesleyans became the Methodists, which became the Salvation Army, the United Methodist Church of today, the Pentecostal Movement, and the Azusa Street Revival. All of the Charismatics are down here. The AG, Assemblies of God. the four square, Amy Simple MacPherson, and then broke off down here in 1908 is the Church of the Nazarene. So basically, you know, here's what Christ started and the Apostles that morphed into the Catholic and then split off into the Orthodox, and then the Roman Catholic Church has gone into all these divergent streams. Here's another way of looking at it. The Roman Empire, pre-Christ, Christianity begins right here, and the cross, and Christian Church becomes the Western Catholic Church, as in Rome, and the Eastern Orthodox Church, kind of what you've already seen. And, you know, we could talk more history until you're tired of history. Here's the U.S. News & World Report cover from 25 years ago. And this was the cover, and it's called The Lord's House. And they were trying to, on the cover of a magazine, described Christianity, and I blew it up for you. Here's the day of Pentecost, the Holy Catholic Church. Then from the Holy Catholic Church, the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic are two streams. So US News & World Report got that pretty right. And then from that, the Anabaptists, the Amish, Mennonite, and Normal Baptist, the Reformed churches, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, and then the German segments, which all of their iterations, then from the Catholic Church came the Church of England, the Quakers, the Methodists, the Pentecostalists, the African Zion Episcopal Methodists, and the Plain Episcopalians. And so that's Time Magazine's take on church history, which isn't too bad. Here's another view, but this one, is how the Orthodox look at themselves. You know, the Russian and the Greek Orthodox. And basically, the one church that Christ started Here's the day of Pentecost, 33 AD, Peter and Paul martyred, 64, Justin Martyr, an early Christian apologist, 150. Then we have the councils, the church councils, which if you look in the back of our hymn books, some of this stuff is in there, if you ever look at the hymn books. The first ecumenical council was Nicaea, where they defeated Arianism, which is Jehovah's Witness-ism. Arius believed that Jesus wasn't God. He was a created being. I mean, Mormonism is old. It goes back, and so does Jehovah's Witnesses, and it goes right back to the beginning. The first problem the church had was combating this error. of the deity of Christ. And then, Carthage, where they met to agree on what the church had already believed about the Bible, the canon of the Bible. Then, Chalcedon, the Chalcedonian Creed, which is so beautiful, talking about the deity of Christ. Then, they had the next conference was on that filique addition, which caused this split between Romanism and the Orthodox Church because of the aftereffects of this council. Then they started going bad. By 787, they approved icons. You know, the schism here started where the Eastern Orthodox Church had married priests, and the Roman Catholic had celibate priests, and you all know the story. Here's where the Crusades are. Right after the schism, the Crusades emanated from, of course, the four major countries of Europe. And by the way, way back here, the Nestorians, that was the first major heresy that started a denomination, the Churches of the East. And then the Oriental churches, the Copts and the Syrians and the Armenians and all those, those broke off too. Here goes the Roman Catholic Church into Lutheranism, Reformation, you know, Zwingli and all that. And then there's even an old Catholic Church that broke from the new Catholic Church, you know, when they stopped the Latin and all that. But this is the Orthodox Church which, even today, is attracting many Christians because they claim to be the original version. So that's another way of looking at the same thing. I won't even go through this. This is how all the reformed churches, you know, the Netherlands, the Dutch, and this and this and this, and you can read all that. It's just common knowledge in history. It's fascinating how they followed different nationalities. The Germans primarily were Lutheran, as in the Lutheranism today. The Swiss French followed Calvin and Beza in the Reformed Presbyterian, and the Scottish Presbyterian, the Dutch Reformed American, and then the Swiss Germans under Zwingli, They contributed to that, and the Brethren Church through Menno Simons and Amund that started the Amish people and the Hutterites and all that, and then of course Henry VIII and Cramner started the English Episcopal, which was Anglican, then Episcopal in America. So again, how much these flow from the national rivalries of Europe. And another way of looking at it is Protestant churches are the Lutherans with Martin Luther, and then John Calvin started the Reformed. From him, an ultra-Reformer, Zwingli, who always rode around with his sword. He was quite a fighter. and John Calvin, who was really into Geneva and the, you know, reinstituting the law there, and was a great expositor, which broke into the Presbyterians, the Scottish, into the Congregationalists, from which came the Unitarians, and then the Anglican branch, which you've already seen, which so affects us to this day. Again, coming from that. Another way of looking at it is that Christ was crucified, and this is what we're gonna get to, in 313, Religio licita. Constantine declared that Christianity was legal. Up until that time, it was illegal, punishable by death. In the arena, at the stake, you know, or whatever means they wanted to use, push them off the cliff. And so we had a genuine church. This is what we call the early church, the Christian church. You can call it the Catholic, you can call it the Universal, you can call it the early form, the biblical church. But something happened after this date. And what happened is, and I have a chart for you right here, is that Constantine merged the biblical churches with paganism. Have you ever wondered where robes and beads and candles and lent and popes and pontifex maximuses and all the stuff they wear, where did all that come from? I don't read any of that in the Bible. It came right there with the legalization of Christianity. Constantine had a problem. He had tens of thousands of pagan religious on-the-payroll priests, and he legalizes and makes the empire's religion Christianity. You remember, he had a dream, and he saw a shield that had a cross on it, and a voice said to him, in Latin, as if God speaks Latin, in hoc signe vince, in this sign conquer. And he was going to the Milvian Bridge, and he was going to face the battle of his life, and he had this dream, and so he had them all paint crosses on their shields. And they went into battle and won. And that was the sign, make Christianity legal, cross. And he did, but he had to do something with all those thousands of pagan priests. So he said, we'll just make a Roman, that's the pagan Rome pantheon, Catholic, that's the original church of Jesus Christ, church, and merge. And instantly, Christianity became institutionalized. And what that looks like is right here. This is the church Christ started. By the way, this is my favorite chart when I taught. This is from the Master's Seminary when I taught church history. The split between Roman Catholicism and Christ. And basically, the church Jesus Christ continued until a series of hard left turns that the Roman church made. The first being purgatory. 593, Purgatory, and the first Pope in 590. And you can see it bigger here. 593, Purgatory, and the first real Pope. There were other pastors of Rome, but Gregory I called himself the Pope. And then the temporal powers that the church could grant, temporal powers. Then there's a whole bunch of stuff that doesn't matter. The money for masses started in the 12th century. Indulgences for sale that you could buy someone's, you could buy merit to spring Aunt Zelda out of purgatory started in the 12th century. And here's the worst one. The dogma of the Mass began in 1215, and that's where it was stated that if a priest would go, intone these words, hocus corpus meum, if he did that with a normal piece of bread and said in Latin, hocus corpus meum, which in Latin is, hoke this, Corpus, body, meum, my. This is my body. If you would say in Latin, with a normal piece of bread, this is my body. Only I had to say it in Latin. Hocus corpus meum. It changed from bread into the body of Christ before your very eyes. What does hocus pocus meum sound like? Yeah, that's where the term hocus pocus came from. It came from people that didn't speak Latin, that saw a man wearing a funny outfit go, hocus corpus meum, and changed what they knew as bread into the very body of Christ. They said, he's doing hocus pocus. Isn't it funny how all this stuff comes into our culture? That started right here. That was the stake in the heart of the church. And so, then it goes on, and I'll have to pick up here next week, because I don't want to rush through it. The slide gets even worse after the mass starts. But if you notice, the church was pretty much, you know, biblical with all of our problems until the 6th century. And then, the slide keeps getting worse. And I haven't put all of them in, but in 1950, the church declared that Mary was bodily assumed to heaven. She was in a perpetual sleep from the first century. And all of a sudden, her body, to heaven. Just because the Pope said it in 1950. That's amazing, but I better stop because it's time to go. Let's all stand. Sorry, I didn't get any follow-up questions. We'll pick this up, Lord willing, next week. You're in seminary. This is exactly what I taught at the Master's College and Seminary, and it's so fascinating when we get into what all this means, especially when we look at what is Romanism, biblically, and why is it poisonous, and what's the difference between imputation and infusion? It's really good to understand that because we're surrounded by 40, 50, 60 million people in our own country who say they're Christians, but they believe that their Christianity is through an IV bag that they're connected to their whole life that only gets them to purgatory, not to heaven, and they're dependent on their friends and family buying candles to get them out of there. Isn't that amazing that anybody would allow that to go on one more day? If the Pope was the Pope, he should just clear out purgatory. He has the treasury of merit, he could do it tonight. But it's the system that has to be maintained that's not in the Bible. So let's bow for a word of prayer. Father, I thank you for the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ, that the grace of God that bring us salvation has appeared. And that was you, Lord Jesus. And you came and you said, if you'll come to me, you have life. instantaneously, a new heart, a new spirit, and that you open our eyes and you turn us from darkness to light. You set us free from the power of Satan onto God. We receive instantaneous forgiveness of sins and an inheritance as you sanctify us. Thank you for our great salvation, and I pray that you'd help us to be diligent Bereans, to know your word, to study doctrine, and be able to defend the truth of the gospel. I pray that you teach us as we study the history of your church and the errors that are all around us. And we ask for your blessing in the name of Jesus and for his glory, we pray. And all God's people said, amen. God bless you as you go.