We're talking about the doctrinal disagreements between Protestants and Roman Catholics. We mentioned that they had extra books, non-inspired books. They claim that they're... This, by the way, they didn't officially edit until... You know, I mean, you had guys like Augustine as early as 360, 370 A.D. who thought they should be edited. But he was not a Greek and Hebrew scholar, Jerome was. Jerome very reluctantly, in the Latin Vulgate, very reluctantly added the apocryphal books because he did not believe they belonged there. So you had guys on both sides of the issue throughout the centuries, but it wasn't until the Counter-Reformation, 1546 to 1566, the Council of Trent, where Rome gave full canonization to these other books. And so it was just kind of one more incentive for Roman Catholics not to become Protestants. We'll anathematize you, kick you out of the church, and damn you to hell if you accept justification by faith alone. Oh, and by the way, if you join them, you don't even have the complete Bible. They're missing these books. Okay? And then the ultimate authority, we Protestants Say, well we have the five solas. Sola, Scriptora, Sola Fide, Sola Gracia, Sola Christi, what's the, oh, Sola Gloria. God gets all the glory. This means solo means alone, solely, alone. God gets all the glory. We're saved by God's grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus alone, and the scriptures alone are the final authority for our faith and our beliefs. I mean, for our beliefs and our practices, okay? That, if we take this as that which defines the Reformation, then a lot of independent church pastors like myself would say, okay, then I'm willing to align myself with the Reformation. Now, if you look at the Reformers, almost all of them were rather Calvinistic in their thought, at least monergistic. so some guys will kick me out because I don't hold to... so you're not really a Protestant because you reject Calvin's view of election. Well, I'm not even sure Luther held to Calvin's view of election. He certainly didn't hold to security of the believer like Calvin. But whatever the case, if this defines the Reformation, then sign me up today. the five solas. But that sola scriptura, you know, so salvation by God's grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus alone, God gets all the glory, but he who boasts, let him boast in the Lord. And then sola scriptura, the Bible alone is, and it doesn't mean, sola scriptura doesn't mean that truth can only be found in the Bible. That's actually what I would consider a cultic view called scripturalism. If truth can only be found through the Bible alone, okay? And then if I threw this marker at your head and you ducked, you weren't submitting to the Bible. The Bible didn't tell you that. You need to duck your head. So there are things we can learn, not only about ourselves and about life outside of the Bible. You want to be a good electrician, you better study more than just the Bible. But we can learn things about God. The Bible teaches that God reveals himself to us through nature and in our conscience and stuff like that. So it doesn't mean that all truth comes only from the Bible. But what it means is the buck stops here. This is the final authority. God has spoken to us in his written word. This has been tested. Every word of God has been tested and has been proven to be flawless. Proverbs 30 verses 5 and 6. Don't add to his word unless you've been proven a liar. This is what we test everything with. That's Sola Scriptura. Okay? It doesn't mean you're anti-tradition, but it means you're going to test the tradition with the Bible. And some of the tradition might not contradict the Bible, but it might not be what's best for you. Like, let's say you developed a tradition of watching every, taping every Seahawk game and watching it four times. Okay? That's not necessarily contradicting anything in the Bible, But is it really something that you ought to be doing? Should you be spending that much time on it? So, but if a tradition is like, you know, we take a day off from school to celebrate President's Day. Well, the Bible doesn't tell us to do that. So that's not a bad tradition, but Sola Scriptura just says, look, when it comes to our faith, our beliefs, and our behavior, you know, our worship, the Bible has the final say. We're going to test all things with the Word of God. Now we might have some extra biblical traditions that enhance our walk with the Lord. Well, the Bible would promote that which enhances our walk with the Lord. And it might be a practice that might enhance your walk with the Lord, but not the next guy over here. But you can't be dogmatic about that. because it's not from here. And so, it's kind of like this is our Constitution and bylaws. Okay? But with Roman Catholicism, the final authority is scripture plus church tradition. So scripture plus the unified voice of the church fathers. Now what's the problem when you look for the unified voice of the church fathers? You won't find it. They disagreed on everything. So, I mean, you can get a core, you can get the core essentials of the faith that they agreed on, but outside of that, and the only reason why you have the unified is because the guys that went outside the unified core doctrines, they got kicked out. And I think for good reason. How does the Catholic Church correlate? I mean, if I got Irenaeus in Augustus, would they ruin it up a theological knife fight? So it's a blatant contradiction. So they're telling me that tradition is a teaching or an infallibility to propose part of the teaching of the Catholic Church. How do they answer that? Yeah, you know what? I don't even know if I turned this on. Yo, wow. You're on top of it. Yeah, there's an awful lot. They'll act like At the outset, when I've dialogued with Roman Catholic priests, the Church Fathers are really unified. Then, within minutes, they're unified on the core doctrines. And I'd say, well, maybe my core doctrines, but not your core doctrines. And then after a while, they'll allow even a little bit more muddying of the waters. But in the end, what's going to even swallow up not just the scripture but tradition is the teaching magisterium and what that is that the Bible is the Word of God but only the teaching ministry the teaching magisterium of the church can rightly interpret it and that's under the headship of the infallible Pope now by the way Roman Catholicism has always taught that the church's teaching arm, the teaching magisterium, is infallible. The question was, does that come from, does that infallibility ultimately rest with the College of Cardinals, kind of the super bishops, College of Cardinals, or does it rest with the Pope? And in 1870, Vatican I, the Roman Catholic Church ruled that it rests with the Pope. So in other words, they've always viewed the church as being infallible, meaning the church leadership, but nobody was quite sure if it was the Bishop of Rome or the College of Cardinals, and then they established that it was the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, in 1870. Yeah, the Jesus had only one blended nature and they were heretics. Yeah, and I believe I note that in some of my, in some of the notes there when I deal with the fallibility of the Pope. Yeah, and the other thing is too, When the Pope speaks ex cathedra, when he speaks from the seat of Peter for the entire church in areas of faith, the Holy Spirit will prevent him from erring. That's their doctrine. That's kind of like the way we view inspiration, that God guided human authors to record his word without error. So Peter can write two infallible, inerrant letters inspired by God, but if he wrote a letter home to his mother-in-law asking for some money, he's running out of money on a missions trip, there's no guarantee that that letter is inerrant. And now, If you get 50 Roman Catholic theologians in this room, and you ask them, how many times has the Bishop of Rome spoken ex cathedra, you might get 50 different answers. And then also, a Roman Catholic Pope could rule tomorrow that priests can marry. and I don't think that would, that's practice. They make a big distinction between Catholic dogma, dogmatic doctrine, and practice. That the Pope will guide shepherds flock and guide them in practice but he can change that. But Catholic dogma can never change. And so Catholics are so big in their tradition there's a lot of Catholics who would call a Pope an anti-Pope if he started allowing priests to marry or allowing nuns to become priests and then some Catholics would say no that's not really dogma that's practice but if the Pope were to say that Jesus is we no longer acknowledge the Trinity and we don't acknowledge Jesus as God most traditional serious Roman Catholics would say, okay, well then this is an anti-Pope. So that's the crazy, the Pope is infallible when he speaks ex-cathedra, but what if you have a Pope who speaks ex-cathedra and he teaches heresy? Then they say, well then he's not a real Pope, he's an anti-Pope. That would be like me saying, when I preach from the pulpit, it's infallible except when I say something that's unscriptural. Well, then that means I'm not infallible. You know, so whatever the case, there's a lot of catch-22s there, but that's obviously a difference. You know, we don't preach an infallible pope. We don't preach even an infallible pastor. We preach an infallible and inerrant Word of God. Okay, that's Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura cannot peacefully coexist with papal infallibility. So they take Scripture plus tradition. Oh, by the way, the only one who could rightly interpret either Scripture or tradition is the Church's teaching arm, which is headed by the Pope and that's where the infallibility rests. They reject justification by faith alone. Now, keep in mind, initial justification is by grace alone, but they're just talking about baptism. Full-blown justification is not by faith alone because you're not technically saved unless you die with saving graces. And so, it's kind of like this with Roman Catholicism. with Roman Catholicism and we'll put under Protestantism the independent churches as well. Okay? You have the Cross of Calvary and you have the believer. Okay, we'll call the Roman Catholic believer. Okay? In Protestantism, the saving graces of the cross of Calvary come directly to the believer through faith alone. Okay? Whereas the Roman Catholic will say, well I agree. The salvation is only through Jesus' death on the cross. That's what our Mass is, the Catholic Mass is all about, Jesus' death on the cross. However, the saving graces of Calvary come to the believer, yes, through faith, but also through God-empowered, meritorious works through the seven sacraments, which have to be administered by the Catholic priesthood. So the main difference is how we receive saving grace. Yeah, in, in the, what I would say though, because obviously the Judaism which rejects Jesus, these Roman Catholics are supposed to accept Jesus, but it's, what I would say is this is, this is a, this is what the Judaizer called the Galatian, heresy, what New Testament legalism, different names for the same thing. What that kind of developed into over the ages is the idea that you have to be saved through faith in Christ plus the law, works of the law. And they spell out the works of the law differently than the Old Testament priesthood. We're told that there's a priest as a mediator. First Timothy 2.5 says, for there's only one God and one mediator also between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. So Jesus is the one mediator and Yet, not only do they have a priesthood of mediators. Now, the Bible teaches that all believers make up a priesthood. We're a kingdom of priests. But what that means is we offer sacrifices. We offer our bodies as living sacrifices to the Lord. Romans 12, 1 and 2. So we live. We use our strength and our energy and we live for the Lord, not for ourselves. And we pray for the unsaved. And so that's what a priest does, a meteor, he represents the people to God, whereas a prophet represents God to the people. And so it's kind of a resurrection of the Old Testament priesthood, which did have a divinely inspired purpose. to lead to Christ, but now that Christ is here, the substance, we no longer need the shadow of the works of the law, the feast days, the dietary laws, things of that sort. That's Colossians 2, 16 and 17. That now that Christ the substance is here, don't judge anyone in reference to feast days or Sabbath days or diet. These were just a shadow of that which is to come and Jesus is the substance. You know, you had the temple. Jesus told us, the Samaritan woman said, we're not allowed. We Samaritans are not allowed in the temple. So we worship on this mountaintop. Who's right? Us or the Jews? So there's a question that's implied there, even though it's not stated. Jesus said, a time is coming and now is. He said, you Samaritans worship what you don't know. God didn't tell them to build an alternative temple. We Jews worship what we know. God did tell them to build a temple. But a time is coming, and now is, when you'll need to worship God on this mountaintop or in the temple for God is spirit and those who worship him is worshiping spirit and truth. Jesus was saying the old temple order is passing away. Stephen got that quicker than the apostles did. And Paul Once Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus, he realized, I was wrong for stoning Stephen to death. You know, Stephen was a young guy. I do not think Paul would have... I do not think Saul would have given his thumbs up the approval, as a rabbi, to the stoning to death of this young man, this young brilliant man, Stephen, if Paul had defeated him in debate. in the Greek-speaking synagogues in Jerusalem, if Paul had defeated him in debate, Paul would not have agreed to stoning him to death. Because it was like, hey, the guy's been refuted, so he's either going to become one of us or nobody. I humiliated him. I think Stephen defeated Paul. It was Saul at the time. So I think Saul said, man, I'm a pretty brilliant guy. If you, a layman, can refute this young, brilliant rabbi, Saul, you must be demonically empowered. We're going to have to get rid of you. So then after he sees Jesus on the road, and I always thought, Lord, why? Why would you let Stephen die? Look at all the potential he had. He was young. He could have straightened out the whole Jerusalem church. They could have given up on their legalism. Why? He had so much potential. Who could ever fill his shoes? And then I realized, oh yeah, the guy holding the cloaks was also a young guy at the time. And you see a lot of Stephen's sermon in Paul's preaching. So I think Paul remembered remembered that, but all this, that's why when Francis Beckwith, who was the president of the Evangelical Theological Society, returned back to Roman Catholicism, I disagreed. When Doug Beaumont, one of the professors of Southern Evangelical Seminary, and then he had another guy too, I can't remember his name, but, oh, Jason Reed, I think? I'm not sure. When these other guys started returning, going back to Rome. Oh no, I don't even know if Beaumont and the other guy were not Catholics originally, I don't think. But Francis Beckwith was. To me it's like, over here I get Jesus. The Pearl of Great Price, okay? Now, I can hop over the fence and go back into Catholicism, where I found Jesus in Roman Catholicism, in a very Protestant, Catholic, charismatic, back-to-the-Bible movement within Catholicism, and then I came out of it. But for me to jump over the fence and jump into the pig pen with all the mud, I could still have the Pearl of Great Price there, but it's so hard to find, because they've got all this mud and slop and garbage all over it. Why in the world would I want to leave my pure walk with Jesus to go back over to that? And I think, to me, that says, hey, I think I need Jesus plus something more, you know? And so the seven sacraments and the Roman Catholic priesthood, how one receives God's grace. See, what's more, do you realize a deacon, if my father had accepted the position of deacon and went for the training, he could have preached the gospel in the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, I don't even think there's anything that says you have to be Catholic to preach the gospel in a Roman Catholic Church. Okay? They can just decide, hey, we're going to bring in a, you know, we're going to do our readings, the required readings, and then we're going to ask, you know, the mayor to come in and if he wanted to. So I don't think, I could be wrong, but I don't think you have to even be a Catholic to preach the gospel, you're supposed to, it doesn't always happen, but you're supposed to comment on at least the gospel portion, if not the Old Testament readings and the other New Testament reading. They read from the Old Testament, an epistle, and the gospel itself, one of the gospels. But to be a Catholic priest means you have the, you don't even have to be a priest to give somebody communion. But what you can't do, you could be a Eucharistic minister like my dad was. But in order to transform the host into the body and blood of Christ, you have to be ordained as a priest. And that gives you the power to transform the host into the body and blood of Christ. And they always, they will always consecrate more hosts than are needed at that particular Mass so then they lock up in the sacristy on the altar the remaining host and that's why Roman Catholics are supposed to as they come down the aisle, genuflect to make the sign of the cross because that's Jesus there, the body and blood of Christ. And my understanding of the Old Testament, the Ten Commandments, Exodus chapter 20, that's idolatry. So they get called, you know, things venerated, but that's idolatry. And, um, so if I go to a Catholic mass with my dad, when my dad was alive, I would walk down the side aisle. Now you're still, from the side aisle, you're still supposed to genuflect in a diagonal line towards the thing, but most Roman Catholics don't know that. So they just, so if I go in and sit down, it doesn't create disruption. I also like it, I don't believe that it's literally the body and blood of Christ, so I don't want to receive communion with him, but it makes it, made it easier for me to explain it to my mother. My mother said, oh, you're not going to receive communion, huh? And I opened up the Catholic missalette and I pointed to what John Paul II had said, and I said, I'm just, I'm in your boss's building. I'm going to play by his rules. I'm just obeying your boss. You don't want me to, you don't want me to disobey your boss, do you? And then... So what did you decide to do? There was a line in the Missoulettes back then in the 1980s saying that if you're not Roman Catholic you shouldn't receive communion and they make a few exceptions and The Anglican Church can receive same view of the Lord's Supper, and I'm not sure where they stand on the Greek Orthodox Church, but my dad did tell me, and he knew his theology, that if you can't find a Roman Catholic Church, I think he was actually okay not just with going to an Anglican Church, but even a Greek Orthodox Church. Now, he never went to either one. But he was saying, rather than jeopardizing committing a mortal sin, because by the way, that's one thing I pointed out to Drew McCullough, if you miss Catholic Mass on a Sunday for less than a good reason, that is a mortal sin. You have lost saving graces, you will go to hell if you don't confess it and do the penance before you die. And so you talk about legalism, Oh yeah, the Pope just basically said that for the most part he didn't want any non-Roman Catholics receiving communion. I think Anglicans and Greek Orthodox might be able to do that. So he gave, he basically said if you're not Roman Catholic don't receive communion with us and even to be To receive communion, you've got to go to your first confession as a Roman Catholic, too. But then they noted, they see such and such a document for exceptions. And then those exceptions, they would bring in the Protestant or Greek Orthodox groups that share almost an identical view of the Mass. And so there's not enough separation from Rome. But basically, for a Baptist to go and receive communion at Catholic Mass. Number one, they're not doing what... I celebrate the bread and the fruit of the vine as a metaphor, as symbolic, so that I can remember and think about and commemorate Christ's death on the cross for my sins. The Lutheran view is much closer to the Catholic view, but it's still not quite there. And in fact, the more and more you read about the Lutheran view, it's almost like they want to stay, like, within arm's reach of Rome, but they come very close. What it is, is the body and blood of Christ are contained and around the bread and the wine. Yeah, it's called consubstantiation rather than transubstantiation, which is Roman Catholicism. But as you said a few weeks ago, the Lutherans have a sacramental view of Christian life in general. So there's kind of a communion with the body and blood of Christ, the presence of Christ in a But whatever the case, the Roman Catholic view is to the point where you genuflect before the host. Because it literally is the body and blood of Christ, though it retains the appearance of bread and wine. So I told my students, if you examine the host under a microscope, could you disprove this? And the smarter ones realize and say, no. Because you'd just be getting a closer look at the appearance. But that's still the realm of appearance. And so it's kind of a mystical view, where God has transformed it into the literal body and blood of Christ. But see, if Jesus wasn't using a metaphor, and he said, this is my body, when he held up the bread, and he said, this is my blood, when he held up the fruit of the vine. If he wasn't using a metaphor, then that was literally his broken body and his... and it's like, I don't see where you get that. You know, and they say, well he's not saying this is like my body, this is like my body. Well, he said I'm the vine and I'm the branches. He used a metaphor, not a simile. He didn't use the word like or as. So, if he could use a metaphor there, he could use a metaphor here. So, it seems to me, if we take Jesus literally, then it seems like there's two ways of salvation. Trusting in Jesus and receiving communion. If we take it as a metaphor, John 6.35, I am the bread of life, he who comes to me will not hunger and everyone who believes in me will never thirst. So coming to Jesus and believing in him is how a person is saved and it's symbolized by eating his flesh and drinking his blood. Yeah, and that's why I'm not in their folds. But I would still say I would just go right back to what I just said and said John 635 I said we could settle this dispute if we let the preacher Explain to us what he meant and I see it very clearly. He says I'm the bread of life He who comes to me will never hunger. He believes in me will never thirst and So he's equating coming to him and believing him with eating his flesh and drink his blood now if I had my Well, I thought I had it on the board. My Roman Catholic former student studying for the priesthood, he's going to disagree with my interpretation. If I had my Lutheran student, he's going to disagree and the Eastern Orthodox guy is probably going to disagree. So you've got to have good men disagree on it. But what I'm getting at though is if you don't hold the transubstantiation, you shouldn't, yeah, you can't be a Catholic and you shouldn't be receiving communion at a Catholic Mass. Now let me say this though too, piggybacking on what you said, you can't be a Catholic, that's what Slusher was saying to me when after two years he was convinced that I was the most serious Roman Catholic he ever met. It wasn't so much a statement about me because he knew I left the Catholic Church. It was a statement about the vast majority of Roman Catholics are not really Roman Catholics. Even the ones that go to Mass don't even know what they're supposed to believe. Now I will say this, that's getting, for the sake of Roman Catholicism, that's getting better for them. They are putting more emphasis on training. The 1994 Catholic Catechism, the Catholic apologetics movement, which really isn't so much to prove Catholicism to atheists as to try to convert Protestants into Catholicism, Carl Keating and I think Patrick Madrid and several others, but it's actually been, during John Paul II, an awful lot They found out, the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy found out that there were an awful lot of Roman Catholics converting to Protestantism. And they had to do certain things to shut those doors. One of the first things they did was, I got saved in the Catholic Charismatic Movement in 1981. By about 1988 or 89, John Paul II started demanding that the head priest of each Catholic Church had to start attending these See when I went to the Catholic charismatic meeting If a Catholic from the church got invited to the prayer meeting on a Tuesday night If they came in and while we were praying they said a Hail Mary they would Be disciplined and told you're not supposed to pray to Mary and and I objected to that because I thought look it's a Catholic Church we need to just talk to her in private afterwards and tell the lady why we don't pray to Mary so the Pope figured out that hey Catholic Charismatic Movement is nothing but a halfway house between Catholicism and Protestantism we gotta burn that bridge down so once the priest started coming in all of a sudden they were leading Hail Mary's and saying the rosary and it went instead of being a back to the Bible movement it became more of a traditional Roman Catholic movement though it did embrace the gifts of the Spirit you know in tongues and prophecy and things of that sort. So that was one thing that had to be done the next issue was Our people don't even know what you know we felt comfortable baptizing them as infants as long as they come to mass on Sundays We think everything is fine, but if they don't know what they're supposed to believe they're getting blown away by these Protestants so the 1994 Catholic Catechism so they you know Catholics could really start understanding what they're supposed to even though they were taught this stuff and when they were younger, but they might not have had a good teacher, maybe they didn't pay attention, and they were a lot younger anyway. And then there was the big Catholic apologetics movement as well. So, in other words, When we Protestants, instead of sharing the good news of salvation through Jesus, we just kept slamming them for infallibility of the Pope, and kept slamming them for praying to Mary and praying to the saints. A lot of Catholics, the only reason why they argued with us was because they thought, well if that's what Catholics are supposed to believe, I better defend that. But a lot of times we actually educated Catholics in the heresies they were supposed to believe, because they didn't even care enough to know themselves. So, but Rome is in no rush to excommunicate lukewarm Catholics. You get a guy who's baptized as a Catholic and it hasn't even been confirmed. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if I'm still on the Roman Catholic rolls. Because I was baptized as a Catholic in 1960 in New Jersey. And so, But they see the seven sacraments as ways for the saving graces of Calvary to come. I'll just run through them real quick. You got baptism, and they believe in baptismal regeneration. Baptism gives you saving graces. You have communion. Penance, where you confess your sins to a priest and do the penance. Then communion, which is transubstantiation, where it literally becomes the body and the blood of Christ. You've got matrimony. It's actually you receive saving graces if you get married in a Catholic Church. What about those who don't? Well, if you want you can receive holy orders, you know. Catholic Church has to, you can be ordained a priest, a brother, a nun, or a sister. The Catholic Church has to really, you know, I got an aunt and uncle that is Catholic, is probably more Catholic than the present Pope, and he's 92, she's about 85 or 86, and they've never been married. They're just my father's brother, one of the brothers and one of the sisters. They never got married. So they stayed home with their parents until their parents died. Then they inherited the house. And so whenever they move to a new area people think they're husband and wife. But it's no. They're just brother and sister. And there's nothing weird about it all. But sometimes the Catholic Church has to go out of the way to remind Roman Catholics you can still be a really good Roman Catholic if you're never married. and times passed it was your job to get married. If you weren't going to become a priest, you're going to want to really be holy, you don't get married, you're celibate. But if you want the next notch, you should do your duty and get married and you should have as many Catholic babies as you can, you know. And that was traditional Catholicism. If your wife had a hysterectomy, in the old days they used to recommend sleeping in separate, some priests sleeping in separate beds. Now it's good because Thomas Aquinas' view of the main purpose, and there's a debate about this, but the main purpose of the sexual union was to procreate, and the secondary purpose was joy within the marriage. Well some guys, some Catholic priests blow that out of proportion, and it's almost like no, you've got to become celibate like I am, If if you can't reproduce, but that's pretty much old-school I don't I think you'll find that very common in the 50s in the 60s I don't think you see that today, but matrimony and holy orders I know you got extreme unction Last rites You know, one last time to receive communion, have a priest absolve you of your sins. You know, sometimes you're not able, sometimes you're bleeding to death, you can't receive communion, but the priest gives you last rites. Now they do it kind of like as a prayer for healing, but it's just basically just one last confession, one last absolution of your sins, just to make sure you're going to purgatory and not hell. And what's the one I'm leaving out? Oh, confirmation. Catholic Church realized that at one point. You make your first confession and your penance and your first communion when you're like seven or eight years old. You got baptized as an infant. This guy's 30 years old. Does he still believe what he believed when he was 7? We don't know. Let's confirm it. When somebody's about 14 years old, we'll have them make their confirmation. We'll teach them. So if you get baptized as an adult, they're going to bring you through the catechism. They're not going to teach an infant the catechism, but then they'll teach you when you receive communion, but you're still only a little guy. So let's confirm that at least at age 14 that you do believe. And even there, you know, I learned a lot. I had a lot of head knowledge and could answer the questions, but by the time I was 18 I renounced everything that I said I believed, you know. And then So those are the seven sacraments. We would see, most Protestants would say, no, just baptism and communion. And some would say they're sacraments. In some sense, saving graces are given to us. Other Protestants would say, no, they're just ordinances. Their baptism symbolizes our identification with Christ and his death, burial, and resurrection. And we say that we want that to count for us, and we publicly confess Jesus as our Lord. And then the Lord's Supper, we do this symbolically, we do it in remembrance of Jesus' body broken for us and blood shed for us. Some Protestants would take more of a sacramental view, but, I mean, you've got to get pretty close to the Anglican Church before you find Protestants really following, you know, the Catholic line on the sacraments there. Okay, so also the Seven Sacraments and then of course the Mass, which is all about transubstantiation. It's, you know, there are a lot of A lot of Protestants who say that you Catholics re-sacrifice Jesus on the cross every Mass. Okay? If a Catholic says that's what he believes, it's not what he's supposed to believe. Catholics are supposed to believe there was just one sacrifice Jesus on the cross for the sins of all mankind. Okay, now sometimes you'll find church fathers not talking like Christ is being re-sacrificed, but technically they're not supposed to believe that Jesus re-sacrificed every mass. They refer to it as a re-offering, an unbloody re-offering of the one sacrifice of Christ. You still read the book of Hebrews, he offered himself as a sacrifice once for all. There's only one offering of it. Okay? But see, what I'm keying on is when you refute a Roman Catholic, refute the view they're supposed to hold. First find out that they really believe that. And then refute the view that they hold, not the view that you think they hold because you heard some Baptist evangelist you know, talking about holy wafers or whatever, you know? And usually there's an element of truth behind what the guy's saying, but if you slam people for stuff that they don't technically believe, you're going to lose all credibility with them. Okay? It's kind of like Bart Ehrman, the leading anti-Christian New Testament scholar, he recently spoke at an atheist conference And all these atheists were mad at him because he believes the evidence is overwhelming that Jesus of Nazareth actually existed and died by crucifixion around 30 AD. And so finally he said, look, I'm just telling you, take it or leave it, but I am just telling you, if you want to go around and say that Jesus of Nazareth never existed, you have lost all credibility in academia. So, I mean, you want to argue like that and try to provide your evidence, and he said too, he said too, I'm not saying you guys are wrong and I'm right, but what I'm saying is all of scholarship is against you. So when you oppose all of the experts, You need to make a really strong case, and until you make that case, if you want any credibility in scholarship, just drop the argument and acknowledge that he actually existed. When Bart Ehrman said that, I thought, well that's really fair, because that's the way I tell Christians about creation. When we teach creationism, we're going against, and we teach that evolution didn't happen, we're going against the vast majority of scientific experts today. Okay? Now, part of that problem is if you're a scientific expert and you embrace creation, you get kicked out of the scientific expert club. So it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy there. But all that means is we don't, not that we embrace evolution, but we need to build a very strong case for creation. We don't, if we just accept whatever the experts say, that's an appeal, that's a fallacy, that's an appeal to authority. So there's time when we need to question the experts. But all I'm saying here with this is if we don't understand what Catholics actually are supposed to believe, we will lose all credibility with them if we constantly use strawman arguments. A strawman argument is when instead of, if I'm debating Tim, instead of debating Tim's views, I create a strawman to represent him and his arguments and then I knock that down. Okay? So a strawman argument It's like making a cardboard cutout of Mike Tyson and beating up the cardboard cutout and then telling everybody you knocked out Mike Tyson. Okay? And by the way, that goes on all the time. Especially in political correctness. We Christians are not only guilty of using strawman arguments, we're the biggest victims of strawman arguments nowadays. You know, so But okay, also the Roman Catholic ecclesiology, their doctrine of the church, they believe the Roman Catholic Church is the one true church. Now they used to anathematize anybody who was outside the Roman Catholic Church. In fact, they have authoritative writings that say that there is no salvation outside the church. Okay? What they've done though is they've kind of expanded their definition of the church. They said the Roman Catholic Church is the one true church, but there are Protestants that are separated brethren that are kind of part of the extended church. Okay? Now technically I don't know any way that they could say I don't know any consistent way that they could argue Protestant Christians into heaven because what they define as mortal sins we commit all the time because we don't go to Catholic Mass. We don't receive communion from them so we don't have our sins absolved by them. But whatever the case, their definition of the church is basically the Roman Catholic Church. I think the biblical definition of the church is every true believer. Now local churches is when we assemble at local churches. There's probably some believers there and there's probably a few non-believers too. But the true universal church is every true believer. And that's the kingdom of priests. Okay? What they've done is They've said no, you've got to do more than believe, you've got to be a Roman Catholic and play by our rules. Oh, and then our priesthood isn't even all Roman Catholics, it's just this specific group who get ordained to the priesthood and it's just not biblical. Then their Mariology, another doctrinal difference, they teach that Mary was an ever virgin, whereas Matthew 1, 18-25 said that she remained a virgin until Joseph kept Mary a virgin until after Jesus was born. Which basically means after Jesus was born they resumed a normal marriage where they had sexual relations. But it's kind of that Roman Catholic frowning upon sexuality. It's almost like it's a necessary evil to repopulate. you know, to populate the earth. No, it's a good gift from God, the sexual union of a husband and his wife. They also teach that Mary was immaculately conceived. Do you know that I went through all my years as a Roman Catholic, every time I heard immaculate conception, I just glazed over and assumed they were talking about Jesus. And Mary immaculately conceived Jesus. That's not what the immaculate conception means. In order for the Roman Catholics to explain how Mary could inherit her humanity from, I mean, how Jesus could inherit his humanity from Mary, yet not inherit original sin, they then say that Mary couldn't have had original sin. Well, that's baloney, because then Mary's parents wouldn't have had it either. And then their parents, and you go back to Adam, and then you destroy the Roman Catholic doctrine of original sin, one of their good doctrines. So the idea that Mary was conceived without sin is not true. She even refers to God as her savior. And then they talk about Mary as the mother of God. This is really weird because in the debate about whether or not Mary was Theotokos, the God-bearer, the issue wasn't Mary's status. The issue was, the Nestorians were saying Jesus is two persons, a human person and a divine person, so Mary was only the mother of the human person, Jesus, not the divine person, Jesus. Mary was not the mother of God. So those who disagreed with his stories said, no, Mary was the mother of God because they understood you can't separate Jesus's humanity and divinity in the realm of personhood. That Jesus is one person with two distinct natures. And so they were actually arguing for Jesus's full deity. They were not trying to promote Mary. Now, as time went on, Mary, as the God-bearer, took on a whole life of itself. Well, if she gave birth to God, she's got to have some kind of exalted status. Yeah. And it might be why God had apparently Michael the Archangel bury Moses' body because maybe the Jews might have venerated Moses' body. Who was it? King Joash? Actually had the bronze staff with the serpent on it, had it destroyed. When God told them to build that, and if they look at that, and they're bitten by a poisonous snake, if they look at that, trusting in Yahweh to heal them, they'd be healed. It was a God-ordained, God-built thing. But the people had turned it into an idol, and he said, you know what? I think we'd be better off without this. Let's destroy it. And God seems to speak highly of him for doing that. So, whatever the case, yeah, we can all be used as instruments. God can speak through a donkey if he wants. But the worship goes to God, not to the vessel that just represents him. Mary is referred to as the Queen of Heaven. You read Jeremiah, the Queen of Heaven is a false Canaanite goddess that a lot of the ladies worshipped. By the way, my father believed the apparitions of Mary, the supposed appearances of Mary, were real appearances of Mary. I don't think that was the case at all. I think that could be a comeback of a high-ranking demon that impersonates a female deity and this could be the Elevation of Mary veneration, and I'll explain what that is in just a minute, the Elevation of Mary in Roman Catholic circles could end up bringing about a merging of New Age type goddess worship and all. And then it's taught that Mary, even though you could visit her grave, but Mary supposedly never died. She was bodily assumed into heaven. So you start seeing this desire to replicate in the life of Mary aspects from the life of Jesus. Almost like we're trying to turn Mary into another Jesus. Then, and by the way, the bodily assumption, I think it was in the 1850s at the Catholic Church, I think it was in the 1850s where they made a dogma, the bodily assumption of Mary. Mary is now called co-mediatrix and co-redemptrix. What that means is a co-redeemer and a co-mediator. Now let me say this, that's not Catholic dogma, but You have Catholics that are okay with that kind of language as high up. As, um, I think John Paul II was okay with it. I mean, he credits his healing from the assassination attempt to praying to Our Lady of Fatima. And, um, um, but co-redeemer? It's like, no, no, we have one mediator. There's no co-mediator. Mediatrix is just feminine for mediator. and Redemptrix is just feminine for Redeemer so there's no there's only one Redeemer there's you know so you see if we come right out and say you Catholics worship Mary that's not what they don't view it they just view it as veneration but we can dissect what they mean by veneration and then show in the Bible that's synonymous with worship okay but you can't just go right to, you know, your conclusion, you've got to go through the fourteen premises, because they don't see themselves as worshipping Mary. So they venerate Mary. Veneration or dulya, veneration means, it's kind of the highest level of religious respect you can have for someone without worshiping them. That's the way they define it. So they venerate the saints. You can hyper-venerate Mary, but you only worship God. Problem is, how have they historically venerated Mary and the saints? They've knelt down the statues of them and prayed to them. And praying to them, prayer by definition is communication with God. So what you have is, in theory, they're not worshipping Mary and the saints, but in practice, you go by biblical definitions, they pretty much do. I mean, look at the Ten Commandments. Look at Exodus chapter 20. starting at verse 1 and God spoke all these words saying I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage you shall have no other gods before me Protestants say that's the first commandment Catholics say that's part of the first commandment then they're going to defy the tenth commandment you shall not covet your neighbors you shall not covet they'll say They'll break them down. You shall not covet your neighbor's goods. And then you shall not covet your neighbor's wife. They'll make them separate ones. We know there's ten. It's the Decalogue. But they separate. They combine the first two. So we worship only one God they say. The Triune God. That's the only God we worship. But actually the first command is you shall have no other gods before me. The second command is, you shall not make for yourself a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth, you shall not bow down to them, nor serve them. For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God. Okay? Now, there are some Protestants who act like that. If you just If you just have a cross in your home or a painting of Jesus that you violated this command. No. Because it's not just an image of God. It's an image or likeness of anything in heaven or is on earth below. So any form of artwork. You could paint a picture of your favorite football player. That would become an idol based on that definition. The definition for it to be an idol, it's got to be the likeness, an image of something that's in heaven or on earth below, or in the water beneath. Just basically an image of anything. So any kind of a statue would suffice for that part. But then you've got to bow down to it. and pay religious worship to it. So if you, if you have a, that's why I'm not as opposed to, you know, some Protestants, if they see a crucifix with Jesus on the cross, ooh, Jesus is not on the cross anymore. He rose from the dead, and blah, blah, blah, and we're supposed to freak out. It's like, calm down, calm down. Because we Protestants, we think we're better because we have the cross. Because Jesus rose from the dead. He's off the cross now. Yeah, but it wasn't a piece of wood that saved us. It was Jesus who was on the cross. So I'm okay with crucifixes or crosses. I usually don't buy crucifixes because it offends my Protestant brothers. Okay? But I'm okay with Jesus on a cross. But if I bow down before it and pray to it, I'm violating the second commandment. If there's a I like this beautiful statue of Jesus and I put it on my, which I don't by the way. The reason why I stay away from putting statues of Jesus or saints and stuff like that is because the tendency of the humans to start viewing those things as sacred. But the statue in itself isn't the problem. So, you know, There's some guy right now on this earth making a statue of a dolphin. That's not idolatry. If he's just doing it as a work of art, now if he bows down and worships that statue of that animal, that's idolatry. So when the Roman Catholics make statues of somebody who's in heaven or on earth and then bow before it, Pray to it and they said what you don't understand. I'm not praying to the statue I'm praying to the person That the statue represent. What do you think the pagans were doing? Do you really think a pagan was worshiping a statue? I mean The prophets like Isaiah would mock them because it's a dumb idol. It can't talk and all blah blah blah but that same prophet Isaiah will sometimes Attack the demon that really does exist Behind that idol and most pagans aren't that stupid They're also worshiping with so on I'm telling when I first accepted Jesus as my Savior I first trusted in him for salvation the Catholic charismatic movement when we sing praise songs to Jesus I went to the I Went to the Christian bookstore, and I bought this little card and painting a Jesus. It was kind of a white dude smiling Jesus. And I thought, yeah, that's probably what Jesus looked like. After years of education, Jesus didn't look like that. But I would sometimes hold that picture to get me focused on Jesus. But you know what? That was a little bit of idolatry early in my walk with the Lord. Now having like that little picture of Jesus and taping it to the wall to remind me I need to live for Jesus not for myself I don't think that's bad but if I walk up to that thing and start praying to it or singing praise songs while looking at it that's that's what this is talking about okay so so basically what I'm saying what they call veneration and hyper veneration the Bible calls paying religious respect that involves kneeling, bowing before, praying to, the Bible calls that worship. Okay? So there is a... this is why my definition of Roman Catholicism is a hybrid. It's a blending of biblical Christianity with Roman paganism and Roman state power. That's why, you know, I wish my Protestant friends would relax a little bit. Yes, listen to what the Pope says, but keep in mind he probably said it in a different language. It was probably translated by a journalist who wasn't trained in theology and probably not even that good at his translation work. So wait a little while before you slam the Pope for saying something, but keep in mind when he speaks, he speaks not only as the Catholic's number one theologian, but he also speaks as the Catholic's political leader. So, like when George W. Bush said that Al-Qaeda and the Taliban hijacked Islam, which is a peaceful religion. Well, that's not true. I mean, if you go to Mohammed and the Quran, Islam is not a peaceful religion. So there's a whole lot of peaceful Muslims that aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. But if you're the President of the United States, sometimes it's better to say, you need diplomacy, sometimes it's better to say a falsehood, a lie, rather than tell the truth and start World War III. And so sometimes the popes do that, but the paganism of Rome, the state power of Rome, all blended with biblical Christianity. And so I agree with R.C. Sproul that it's an apostate form of Christianity. The counter-cult guys thought I was a heretic because I refused to agree with them that Roman Catholicism is a non-Christian cult. Part of the definition of what a cult is, it starts out as a smaller heretical offshoot of a larger religion. The Protestants You could use the word cult, by the way, in a good sense, just like a smaller offshoot. Protestantism started as a cult, in that sense. But when you leave, Christianity started that way. We were a small culture that broke off from Judaism, actually got kicked out of Judaism. So the present state of Judaism, the apostate. If they had stayed true to their Judaism, they would accept Jesus as their Messiah and Savior. The present state of Roman Catholicism, theologically speaking, it's an apostate form of biblical Christianity. Over the years, with the changes that it made, it has fallen away. from true biblical Christianity. But I think we should actually just do away with the term cult, because nobody even knows what you mean. When you say, when you tell a Mormon, well you're in a cult, they think you mean a brainwashing cult, and that they torture people or whatever. Sometimes when you call people a cult, it implies it's a really small group. Another 40 or 50 years, there's probably going to be more Mormons on earth than there will be people who adhere to the Jewish faith. So, I mean, at what point does a cult get big enough to where it's no longer considered a cult, it's considered a newer religion. So then, prayers to Mary, veneration of Mary, you're moving into idolatrous terrain there. Possible appearances of Mary, Anytime, you know, let me say this. There are too many Protestants. There are too many Protestants that are too friendly with Catholicism. And there are too many Protestants who, if the Catholics like it, we gotta hate it. Okay? I mean, there are some Protestants that if you preached a message about Peter and you spoke positively about him, they'd accuse you of being Roman Catholic. If you said something positive about Mary, I doubt that God would say, I want to become a man, I want to pick the lousiest lady on the planet Earth. You know, I'm telling you, you could have a whole lot of respect for Mary without turning her into an idol. And the Catholics go too far. But I doubt, if we can speak highly of Moses and Elijah, what makes us think that we're going to win a few points with Jesus by badmouthing his mother? okay so just because we're not into venerating Mary doesn't doesn't mean that to prove we're not Roman Catholic we got a bad mouth Mary let me tell you I know guys who even though they know that I'm a Christian they would never bad mouth my mother to my face for fear of what I might do why in the world would I want to bad mouth Jesus' mother okay So you don't have to, to prove that you're not Roman Catholic, you don't have to hate Peter, and you don't have to hate Mary. Some Protestants get upset that I argue that Peter was pretty much the leader of the Apostles after Jesus left, until he fled Jerusalem, and then James, the half-brother of Jesus, was the leader, and they act like I've given it all away. It's like, no, no, he could be the first leader of the early church. To be Roman Catholic, you've got to give him infallibility. And then you've got to give infallibility to all his successors. And I'm not going to do that. But it's just like, sometimes we Baptists, and I'm exaggerating here, but it's like, don't smile or cry during the praise and worship. We have visitors today. They might think we're Pentecostals. you know I mean let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater is what I'm saying and just because you get a little emotional about Jesus doesn't make you a bad Baptist and and but sometimes we think we've got to distance ourselves so much against Rome that believe me there's a lot of ugly stuff you got to dig up on that you can dig up on the Jesuits but that doesn't mean that you have to embrace the conspiracy theory that the Jesuits are trained assassins and you know I mean it just you know way the evidence look at the things but but just because you're opposed to something doesn't mean you have to hate everything it stands for. There might be a lot of good in it. I mean Roman Catholics are supposed to believe in the Trinity. Does that mean we should trash the Trinity? I know some guys who don't want Peter ever in Rome. So they'll deny a very early church tradition that he was executed in Rome and they'll deny some pretty good evidence that he was in Rome even earlier than that. Which by the way If Peter was in Rome in the mid-40s AD, then it's possible to date the Gospel of Mark to the early to late 40s AD. Yeah, we have to, all I'm asking for is fairness. And obviously what I've listed, I've actually accused a large portion of the Roman Catholic Church of idolatry. So that's about as bad as it gets, but I've been fair. I've taken what they call veneration and compared it to the scriptures and show that it's one in the same of what the Bible calls worship and if you're worshiping anybody but the triune God that's idolatry but that's what I'm calling for is fairness not I'm gonna take every argument against Catholicism and use it even if some of those arguments contradict themselves I remember a guy He was kind of a lay apologist, but he was very famous. He was based out of Oregon. And I remember when he came and spoke in, I think it was in Port Orchard, about 600 people there. But he was claiming that Peter could not have been the Bishop of Rome because he had never been there. By the way, I'll go so far as to say wherever Peter was, wherever Paul was, wherever James the half-brother of Jesus was, and wherever John was, automatically they were in charge. And if more than one of them were there, the two of them were in charge. So wherever Peter goes, if Paul, James, or John, I mean if John's there, John's going to submit to Peter as his elder. So he'll share the leadership with James the half-brother of Jesus, and he'll share leadership with Paul. But other than that, he's in charge. And that's not being Roman Catholic, that's just understanding not only church history, but church history is spelled out in the Book of Acts. I can trace, by taking the traditional authorship that the early church gives us, I can trace the authorship of all 27 books to the authority, not that they actually wrote it themselves, but to the authority, some of them they did write themselves, of Paul, the Apostle Paul, Peter, James, and John, whom Paul referred to as the pillars of the Jerusalem Church. So the three biggest guys in the Jerusalem Church and the Apostle to the Gentiles, all 27 books can be traced back to their authority, either written by them or somebody who had been one of their co-laborers and served the Lord under their authority. Okay, and then, uh, so then, uh, the appearances of Mary, I don't think they're, I don't think it's Mary that's appearing. Oh, by the way, that guy in Port Orchard from Oregon who came up and was speaking, very famous guy, his books have sold in the millions. He went to be with the Lord a few years back, but, uh, he was saying Peter had never ever been in Rome. Yet he was arguing that from the Book of Revelation, Babylon is symbolic of Rome. It was code for Rome, because they didn't want to get persecuted by the Romans. But Peter identifies himself, uses the word Babylon for Rome, the place of his residence in one of his epistles. So you can't have it both ways. If Peter was never in Rome, Babylon is not code for Rome. Babylon itself was uninhabited in the first century AD. So sometimes I'll use every argument I can against Roman Catholicism, even if my arguments contradict each other. And it shouldn't be that way. And then of course, by the way, the appearances of Mary, you test the messenger by their message. And it pays some lip service to Jesus, but then Mary They need to pray the rosary, which is ten Hail Marys to every Our Father. If the planet's going to be saved, then trust in Mary to bring peace to the planet Earth and stuff like that. The appearances of Mary, if you compare them, this is crazy. I'm going to give a talk in California in April on what I call paranormal apologetics. Something we need to do more of. If you compare the appearances of Mary with alien abductions, demon possession cases, and even sometimes Bigfoot sightings. You're going to find some similarities going on there, where after a while you're going to start thinking that they might all be related and they seem to be demonic in nature. But whatever the case, the apparitions of Mary, I think it's more likely You know, what we Protestants want to do, we want to say that's impossible because the dead can never come back and communicate with us. God sent Samuel the prophet back to communicate with Saul, pronounce judgment on him and Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus when the apostles were there. So we can't just rule it out based on that. What we got to do is test the message and the message time and time again is kind of like all religions leading to God but somehow marries the the main character pay a little lip service to Jesus make it sound real make it a good counterfeit but it's still a counterfeit and so it's not far from the UFO messages the alien messages that Jesus is just one of the space brothers we all the space brothers created life on planet earth we're not only your creators we're your saviors you need to trust in us because we're going to come back and save your planet and Also, Roman Catholic, another disagreement, praying to the saints, bowing before statues, venerating the saints, praying to them. This is all things that we should only do to God. And we don't even bow down. If I made a statue somehow of the triune God, I don't know what that would be. But, you know, maybe a dove, Jesus, a dove, and a rainbow or something like that. If you bow down before it, you're an idolater. See, idolatry We often think idolatry equals worship of false gods. Well, that is idolatry, but that's not all idolatry is. There's another way to do idolatry, and that's to worship the true God in a false way. Yeah, you try to worship the true God in a false way. We often think, well the Jews got in trouble because they worshiped that false God, the golden calf. They called the golden calf Yahweh. They said when they were worshiping it, they were worshiping the God who rescued us from bondage in Egypt. See, what was happening was Moses was on the mountaintop getting instructions for how the Jews were to worship him. They got impatient. They thought maybe he died. So in the meantime, let's worship Yahweh, who rescued us from Egypt, the way the Egyptians worshiped their gods. Oh yeah, one of the things, they made a golden calf they used to worship. Let's make a golden calf so we'll worship Yahweh the way the Egyptians worshiped their God. So they were trying to worship the true God in a false way. That's as much idolatry. So we Protestants, we're right to get upset when a Roman Catholic kneels before a statue of Mary and Joseph and prays to it. But we better not. bow down before a statue of Jesus or even a cross on the wall and bow down to it and pray. We're being as idolatrous as them. It's not just worshiping things that are not God, but it's trying to worship the true God in a false way. That's also idolatry. Okay, then purgatory and indulgences This idea that, let me tell you, when you die you are not worthy enough to go to heaven. So what the Roman Catholic Church has considered a problem is a non-problem. What they consider an issue is a non-issue. None of us, we couldn't live the perfect life to save ourselves to begin with. We cannot live the perfect life to retain our salvation. So the perfect life that protects us and keeps us saved is presently being lived by the Lord Jesus at the Father's right hand as he intercedes for us. So this whole idea of purgatory, what it does is it demotes, it diminishes the work of Christ on the Cross of Calvary. Jesus died once for all for the sins of all mankind. Your past sins, your present sins, your future sins. Okay? So you are covered with the righteousness of Christ. Now, you're going to reap what you sow. So, you know, if you decide it would be a good idea to try to jump off a four-story building, you're going to reap what you sow. So if you do stupid sinful things, you can read what you sow here and now, you might lose eternal rewards. If you choose to live for yourself, not for the Lord every once in a while. But the idea that when we die, Paul said, prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Now my father used to tell me, now this was just kind of more Catholic mythology than anything, I don't think it's Catholic dogma, that his view of purgatory was that purgatory would be far more painful than hell. It's just that you know it's going to end and you can eventually get to heaven. Now why would Paul say, prefer purgatory, the sufferings of purgatory, is better to die and go to purgatory than to live on in the flesh you know Paul said prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord when the believer dies he immediately goes into God's presence and then indulgences that's that Roman state power to be honest with you where it's kind of like look we got the power to forgive your sins If you pay us X amount of dollars, we'll give you either a full or a partial indulgence. You'll have less suffering. In fact, if you pay us enough, we'll give a partial indulgence to your wife and to your brother. And so you start selling salvation basically. But let me say this though. Are we evangelicals any better when Just heard from a guy a couple days ago that a church not far from here not in this town But they just brought on one of the Rodney Howard Brown type heretic preachers to speak And they shut down a vacation Bible school program because they didn't have the funds they said so they're not going to do that this summer, but they spent $13,000 to bring in a heretical preacher and who's a celebrity. He didn't know the name of the guy. He heard it from a good source, a member of the church, and now they want to try to bring Rodney Howard Brown up. I mean, it's just like, I don't know. So, but we Christians can do that too. We're, you know, I mean, you make your living speaking, you got to make enough money each talk and give enough talks to provide for your family, but You know, we suffer from the cult of celebrity and evangelicalism today. So, okay, well let's take a five minute break and then we'll just have to finish the last 25 minutes. Instead of starting Islam today, I think we'll just talk about some of the debates throughout the history of Christianity and then a final note on Christianity and then we'll get to Islam next week.