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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.
World Religions part 11
Series World Religions 2016
| Sermon ID | 52316172572 |
| Duration | 1:29:28 |
| Date | |
| Category | Teaching |
| Language | English |
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