I wish to deal with the recent history of the Catholic Church. In a previous presentation I dealt with the early history right up to the time of the Reformation. And now I wish to deal with the recent events, particularly from 1798 up to the present Pope Benedict XVI. Now, I was in a highly academic order. We boasted as Dominicans that we were the most educated religious and priests in the world. Of course, the Jesuits boasted also that they were the most intelligent, but there was this rivalry. I was in the Dominican order for 30 long years, and 22 of those years I was a priest, and I knew very little of the events that were happening even in my own lifetime during the Second World War and afterwards I knew very little of the Roman Catholic involvement even though I was highly academic and I lived during the latter part of what I'm going to deal with. So it's a thing that is necessary that we understand history because if we do not understand history we will proverbially repeated. I say 1798 because that was a pivotal time in Roman Catholicism. In the earlier presentation I dealt with how the political power had grown, and while it had been thwarted gravely by the Reformation on the spiritual aspect of the Gospel, overpowered it and overpowered it even physically in many nations where we have nations now that were mostly biblical nations. Even though that happened, it was still a power that was civilly recognized and still had spiritual recognition right across the world. But it was in 1798 that a huge event took place. It was the armies of Napoleon entered Rome and entered even the Vatican and took the Pope off his throne so that they divested him of his civil power and took his civil power from him. And that was the generals of Napoleon who took from the Pope the civil power and it was what Bible believers saw as the wound that had been prophesied in Daniel. the wound took place in the system that had withstood the gospel and true Christianity. So this was a remarkable event, but the popes did not give up, and there was a huge still craving for power and a craving for dominance, even while they had been divested of civil power and civil authority, they still try to build up their power structure. And particularly Pope Pius IX, Pio Nono in his Italian name, Pius IX was famous because he set about the dogma of having it proclaimed officially in Rome that the Pope was infallible. Now we had a avalanche of opposition even inside Rome, whereby many recognized that there were heretical popes in the history of Rome, some of which had been decreed to be heretics by general councils of the Catholic Church, some popes had condemned other popes as heretics, And many of them, the historians, Catholic historians, knew this to be true, and that it was going to be very difficult to show any biblical base for it, because it's not anywhere in scripture. And historically, and in actual fact, it was anything but infallibility on the papal chair. So there was huge opposition. We had Dallinger and the whole separation of what became old Catholicism, the breakaway. Many of the bishops at the council, First Vatican Council, left in protest because they were not going to sign. When the vote took place, the bishops remained who agreed with the Pope and it was established the infallibility of the Pope became a dogma. And that was to get the centrality of Rome into the figure of the Pope, not only of having the authority of Christ as Vicar of Christ and purportedly sitting on the chair of Peter, but now that in faith and morals what he said was absolutely inerrant in faith and morals, and that was decreed in 1870 at Vatican Council I. It is a remarkable study and a famous Roman Catholic Archbishop wrote a book on it called How the Pope Became Infallible, Bernard Hassler. He was just about two years older than me and very well known in the Catholic Church. a very untimely death, whereby he died. This book, which was quite famous here in the United States and worldwide, it was in most libraries and very easy to purchase. Now it's a rarity to find this book. You can go on Amazon.com and get some rare copies of it, but it is a most valuable book to have, How the Pope Became Infallible, because he shows the history and the intrigue of what went on in the Declaration of the Pope's Infallibility. A Roman Catholic himself showing how ludicrous it was that even in 1332, I forget the exact date, but it was John XXII, Cri Corundum was the official name of the document where he had made a decree the so-called infallible pope, in the past, decreeing that if anybody taught the doctrine that the pope was infallible, he's teaching a doctrine of devils. An infallible pope declaring that the popes are not infallible. So we have that sort of contradiction in our hand, and Haskell brings that out on many other absurdities. But, nonetheless, Rome established this and is now a central dogma in Catholicism. Very late in the history of the Catholic Church, 1870, but it is one of the essential dogmas. And then we had in later times, in 1917, the work of Pacelli. as he was known before he became Pope and then Pius XII in establishing the code of canon law. He put into effect a body of canon law. This is the present revised version of that canon law from 1917 and this was to bring the centralization and the rules of Rome into black and white perspective so that people bow the knee to Rome right across Christendom. And that was another establishing of Roman power where they centralized all their laws in one code of canon law, and that was done in 1917. The power of Rome was accepted civilly to where they were dethroned, where it was re-established as a civil power took place in the year 1929. In 1929 we had another huge turning point in Roman Catholic history. because the political power that she lacked and the civil authority that she lacked was given back to her. And it was done by a Roman Catholic dictator, Mussolini, in Italy, under the famous Lateran Treaty. He gave to the Pope and the Church of Rome the Vatican Hill and he also gave territory on the seven hills of Rome to the Roman Church, the most famous being St. John Lateran. And we have many territories then right across the city of Rome and on Vatican Hill itself that now belong to the Church of Rome. And we have the civil state that is purportedly the Roman Church as a state, a civil power. And so the Church of Rome was reinstated as a civil power in recent history, 1929, by Mussolini. This was the beginning of many concordats, that is, civil legal agreement between states being made. The most famous probably of all was between Pius XII, the famous Pope of the war years, and Hitler. He made a concordat recognizing the Nazis and having established Catholic law and religion in Germany and part of the finances for the church coming through, government tax and many other things that helped the Catholic Church financially and in religious aspect and in education in Nazi Germany and of course why Pius XII remained silent all throughout the war years because he had instigated relationship with Hitler. and why the bishops did not object and why so many Catholics went into the army and went into the Nazi movement and fully supported it. So the beginning of intrigue by civil powers began with that 1929 Latin agreement with Mussolini. The whole Hitler conflict went on and the war and the atrocities from 1933 to 1945. The involvement of the Vatican with Mussolini went from 1922 to 1943. With Francisco Franco in Spain from 1936 to 1975, that's one of the longest. reigns, in which we had atrocities right across Spain, and of course the Roman Catholic Church utterly established right across the nation of Spain, with very little traces whatsoever of what we call biblical faith under Franco. And then Antonio Salazar in Portugal, similar history from 1932 to 1968. and Juan Perón in Argentina from 1946 to 1955. And probably the most horrendous of all was Anton Pavlik in Croatia from 1941 to 1945. Hitler was in power because of Bavaria in southern Germany, where we had a predominance of Roman Catholics, not like the Protestants or by believing North, it was the South, and it was mostly Roman Catholics that joined the army and came into the Nazi party. Over half of Hitler's troops were Roman Catholic, and they were accustomed to the autocratic rule of Rome, so when it came to obeying Hitler as the Führer, they were quite accustomed to centralized power and they bowed their knee now civilly to Hitler as they had to the Pope. It was Pius XI who was the first one, even before Pius XII, to recognize Hitler in 1933, even before the Concordat was made by Pius XII following him. The Vatican archives where the history has been maintained of all the war years and all the atrocities is not open to historians, but even without the most valuable history which is still secretive in the Vatican archives, there's still enough history to show of the horrors that the Catholic Church was involved in with these dictators, Catholic dictators, right across Europe in modern times. And the most notorious of all was the totalitarian regime that was set up in Croatia during the war years, the Second World War. Anton Pavelich, head of the nation-state carved out of Yugoslavia during the war, reigned only for four years. of four years of atrocious slaughter and torture. And it was with the help of the Catholic prelate, the Archbishop Alois Stepanak, they pursued a policy of convert or die. And the Roman Church, unlike the time of the Inquisition where they always had the civil power to do their dirty work, A lot of the Ustaki, the people who perpetrated the crimes, were actually priests or monks and there were, at the time, 900,000 Greek Orthodox Serbs and Jews and others from true Christians in Croatia. These were commanded to convert to Catholicism. And it was literally convert or die. And we had a time whereby 2,000 purportedly got converted to Rome and actually came into the Church of Rome, but we had 700,000 who chose to die. And a lot of those dug their own graves, were tortured before they died. and some were burnt alive and others were shot. The atrocities of the Ustaki and what happened in Croatia. I made a search on the internet under this, the Ustaki and Croatia, and I was aghast at the photographs I saw of some of them. I just stopped looking at it. Even the actual physical photographs that we were talking about recent times and were the photographs of some of these atrocities, it was unbearable to look at, and this is what happened. We see priests taking a leading role. in demanding submission from the Orthodox to become Roman Catholics. Priests and other moustaki supervised the concentration camps where they were tortured so that they would become Roman Catholic. This is documented in many books, one of the most famous being Edmund Parris's book on Convert and Die. Now a lot of this history, while it is so clear and you can find it out easily, has been put under wraps by the general media. even in leisure problems in Croatia and other parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1991. The press and television and even the different media in the United States have all favored the Croat side. It has been amazing how the world media for news has been in favour of Croatia. And a famous writer in a London secular newspaper, The Telegraph, wrote about that in September 1991. He said, in the present crisis, almost the entire Western media has chosen to champion the Croats. This was a secular news writer writing about the fact that most of the news media have favoured And he went on to say, orthodox serfs were promised protection if they converted to Catholicism and were killed after they entered the churches as the priests looked on. Even one or two secular newspapers did write about the truth, and you can still dig out the truth, but for the most part the media tried to cover over the atrocities that the Roman Church was involved in in her own time. I was alive and well during those years and I knew nothing of what was going on in the very church that I served. Now while the atrocities of the war years and of the Ustakhe in Croatia have ended and the dictatorships have all come to an end, the Catholic involvement in civil powers has by no means come to an end, by no means. In actual fact it has become much stronger after the war and across the world. And this has been documented by even some of the leading Catholic writers. One of the most famous being Jean-Guy Villeneuve, associate professor of sociology in the University of Montreal. He has a famous book called Papal Power, a study of Vatican control over late Catholic ethics. And after perfunctory remarks about burning of heretics and the crusade and the holy wars, which he just said were two more extreme forms of hierarchical coercion during a late feudal period, that's how he dismissed the Inquisition, then he goes on to talk about recent times. 1798, the Roman Church was no longer able to use its repressive power of the state. Church authorities became more and more interested in using the legion and ideological power of the state through the laws enshrined in Concordat. through education of youth in schools and in universities, and through welfare services such as hospitals and charity organisations. In fact, the Church increasingly became the ideological apparatus which fulfilled for the state and for the ruling class the functions necessary for their own growth and reproduction. Inside the church the bishops and priests became functionaries of the central organisation with little freedom of their own. An awakening laity was turned into a pawn for the papacy's frantic efforts to regain its position as absolute power of Europe. That is a professor in Montreal writing about Roman Catholic power in concordance. And so while physically the Pope of Rome can no longer decree torture and no longer instigate torture and death like they did in the 605 years of the Inquisition. And they no longer are in league with the dictators and the atrocities of the war years. And they are no longer in power in that physical sense of having a league with Catholic dictators and a league with death. an extermination of like the Orthodox in Croatia. While this no longer happens, they are still a civil power legally in terms like it never was before. And we have concordats being made in recent times right across the whole world that we never had before. That is a civil agreement between the Vatican called the Holy See, that's the official legal term for the Vatican State, the Holy See and a particular nation. Even the United States of America has ambassadors to the Vatican State and receives ambassadors from the Vatican. From 1984 when President Reagan reinstituted it, even though it had been forbidden by Congress before that. So even the United States of America, while not having a concordat, has the preliminaries. legal representation with the Vatican and receives ambassadors from the Vatican as nuncios and sends ambassadors to the Vatican. And we have concordats set up all over the world. I mentioned the most famous of them with Hitler and Pius IX and the Hitler's Pope is one of the most famous books that have been written about that by John Cornwall. One of the most famous books in recent times exposing the Vatican, written by a Catholic himself, one of the Catholics, Hitler's Pope. But that Concordat, which is quite famous, but other ones right across, now even the Middle East, Asia and Africa, we have these decrees being made. The Vatican ambassadors called papal nuncios are now sent to 174 nations of the world. They are represented in this legal way like they never were before. And their nuncio, dressed in papal robes, as a cardinal or an archbishop, often is the of ambassadors. So if they have a meeting, the dean, the one in charge, the one who chairs the meeting, is often the Vatican representative in all his roles, because they claim to be the oldest state, and it's the custom in many nations that the oldest state is the one that takes the role of being the chairman of the meeting that the ambassadors have together. So we have this anomaly that the Vatican is not only in 174 nations but often has a leading role when these ambassadors meet together. It is extremely important to note that the present Pope, formerly called Ratzinger and now known as Benedict XVI, in one of his first official talks, May 12, 2005, His first official talk to the diplomats from these nations represented before him called on nations who have not legal agreement with Rome. to sign legal agreements. He is treated with them. And Vatican authorities have spelled out who these nations are that have resisted becoming civilly involved. They're China, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam. That was May the 12th. Some Islamic nations have held out and have not signed concordats. But because Rome is so careful now to uphold Islam, as a form of life that brings people to God, and I will quote later on its official words, there are Islamic nations that are beginning to recognize Rome in a civil way. The changes that took place at Vatican Council II in Vatican II documents were not doctrinal. The Catholic Church still holds sacramental system, ritualism as a means of giving grace, but they were huge changes in how the Catholic Church operates. Before it had condemned pagan religions, it now thought it more politically correct to accept pagan religions, and this was a huge turn of face The church that had condemned pagan religions now officially recognized the Muslims, recognized the Hindus and the Buddhists. And then before, Bible believers who were called heretics were no longer called heretics, they were called separated brethren. And there was a huge movement gone to woo in Bible believers to an ecumenical movement that was to evolve right across Europe, take Britain first of all and then of course come into the United States and particularly through Charles Coulson and Richard Newhouse in Evangelical Catholics Together, have really succeeded in beguiling many Baha'i believing churches. So, the Vatican changed its policy and it has been quite successful. The plan of salvation for the Catholic Church now is the influence of Muslims. I was looking for the book, its Vatican 2002 documents as they were put into a catechism. Ander Ratzinger, present Pope, He was the one who was the one who compiled this book called the Casinal Catholic Church and that is the creed in paragraph 841, it's always quoted by paragraph and not by page numbers, small sections on different pages. Paragraph 841 says, the Church's relationship with the Muslims, the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, The first place among whom are the Muslims, who profess to hold the faith of Abraham together with us. They adore the one merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day. So the Catholic recognition of the Muslims. has taken place in recent times. The same Vatican who had sent the crusade against the Muslims now recognises them as having the same faith of Abraham as we have, so they say. And then they endorsed Buddhism and Hinduism They said in this decree, the Catechic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions. She has a high regard for the manner of life and conduct, precepts and doctrine, which though differing from many ways of her own teaching, nevertheless, reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all man. So they see in Hinduism and Buddhism They see a ray of truth which enlightens all men, a way of divine illumination they saw in these religions. So pagan religions become acceptable and the Roman Catholic Church has succeeded in negotiations with the Hindus and the Buddhists and has been quite successful with them in her ecumenical efforts. And so she tries to win the world and the Muslims, who are nearly equal to number, as her own, and the Buddhists and the Hindus, and also Bible believers, and she has done this by famous decrees in the Vatican II documents. One of the most famous of these decrees was a document by which she purports that the laws of the Catholic Church are laws of ecumenism and that they are to be held in such a way is that people are brought back into the bosom of the Catholic Church, that they are, quotation, dialogue is not an end in itself, it's not just an academic discussion, she says in document number 42, Vatican Council 2 documents. It aims at preparing a way for the unity of faith in the bosom of a church, one and visible. She's leading Bible believers back into the bosom of Mother Church. remarkable success from Vatican II, whereby a lot of Vatican ecumenical efforts have been upheld by some famous evangelicals. Last, Pope John Paul II was adamant in upholding Catholic canon law. He revised the 1917 law into what became the 1983 Code of Canon Law and was far stricter than the laws of the past. Some of these laws are adamantly with a flavor that smells of the Inquisition. It is not put into effect, but it's right in print of what could be put into effect. For example, under John Paul II's teaching in the Code of Canon Law, Canon 1311, the Church has an innate and proper right to coerce offending members of the Christian faithful by means of papal sanctions. It doesn't say the faithful, as the Catholic Church has said, but the Christian people. They can coerce Christian people by means of papal sanctions. Now she, in actual fact, doesn't physically do that, but she claims this power. And then in Canon 1371, the present-day Catholic teaching says, the following are to be punished with a just penalty. A person who teaches a doctrine condemned by the Roman pontiff. And Canon 1312 outlines the specific penalties that have to be carried out. The law can be established in other expiatory penalties which deprive a believer of some spiritual or temple good and are consistent with the supernatural end of the church. That is a direct quotation from that canon. And so we have the free of Rome again for power over believers and a power of coercion and imposing paper penalties. Now she doesn't have the authority or the means to do that but she still claims what she did at the time of the Inquisition. Now it is not just in the 20th century that we had in the war years and before upholding of dictatorships. We've had in more recent times a further devastation of nations because of Catholic economic teaching. And this is a whole subject where so many Bible believers are totally ignorant. The effect of Catholic social teaching on the Congress of the United States and of the Senate and its effect on other nations right across the world is documented. John Paul II, of course, addressed the United Nations and many other world bodies on law and on property. on how the Catholic Church operates in different nations. And the Catholic Church has endorsed, again, new teachings from Vatican II. New teachings in that they were purportedly now advertised and highlighted again, but in actual fact were old Vatican teachings that were made modern and taken up in modern times. And this is to do with property. and to do with the power, legally, to steal. I'd like to quote from the Gaudium et Spes, from Vatican II documents, and a famous decree, Gaudium et Spes, and it's paragraph 69, quotation. The right of having a share of earthly goods sufficient for oneself and one's family belongs to everyone. The fathers and doctors of the Church held this opinion, teaching that men are obliged to come to the relief of the poor and to do so not merely out of their superfluous goods. If one is in extreme necessity, he has the right to procure for himself what he needs out of the riches of others. That is word for word official Catholic teaching. If one is in need, he has the right to procure for himself what he needs out of the riches of others. That dogma went out from Vatican II and was taken up particularly in South America. We had a famous conference of Bishop and Medellin in 1968 where they gave the pronouncement of a preferential option for the poor, where the bishops tried to influence Latin American nations to have a preferential option for the poor. And John Paul himself wrote many of his encyclicals on the same principle that was in Vatican Council too. And we had the whole liberation theology movement spreading across South America, the Philippines, and into the West Indies. I saw some of it myself as a priest and I was involved in some of it leading up to the revolution we had in 1970 in Trinidad. And so the Catholic Church has actually gone back in its modern teaching to Thomas Aquinas, the most famous Catholic teacher. He's called the Angelic Doctor of the Church. And they, in actual fact, quoted from Aquinas in their Vatican II teaching. And I'd like to quote directly from Aquinas' teaching. I'm quoting from the Summa Theologica Secundi Secundi, Article 7, quotation. Whatever certain people have in superabundance is due by natural law to purpose the suckering of the poor. In cases of need, all things are common property, so that it would seem to be no sin in taking another's property. The need has made it common. It is lawful for a man to sucker his own need by means of another's property. by taking it either openly or secretly. Nor is it, properly speaking, theft or robbery. It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly or use another's property in case of extreme need. Because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need. In a case of like need, a man may take secretly another's property in order to succor his neighbor in need. So two principles established by Aquinas and taken up by Vatican II, that not only can you take secretly from another's property when you're in need yourself, but if you see your neighbor in need, you can go and take from somebody's property to give to him. the old Robin Hood principle, to rob the rich to feed the poor. And this is legally in Thomas Aquinas' teaching within official Catholic teaching and in Vatican II. So we had some of the atrocities that have happened in South America in the liberation theology movement that is called devastation in nations where the fantasy of trying to relieve the poor of capitalism and bring them into equality and socialism. I remember preaching that myself as a Catholic priest to come into the land of freedom, out of the land of slavery and capitalism. and come into the land where all things are in common. I remember preaching that myself as a priest in a movement that did not succeed, but it did succeed in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas. And it succeeded in other countries. And it succeeded finally in bringing devastation, even when it politically took over government, it did not change the lot of the poor. And we have had in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, just to name a few of the nations that have been devastated by this social teaching of Roman Catholicism. There's a most important book that is a must to read by a Bible believer. It's John Robbins, the Bible believer himself, writing Ecclesiastical Megalomania. It shows the official teaching going back to Aquinas and others, coming up to the last Pope, John Paul II, and now the position of the Catholic Church, but it shows all the official decrees and how they were lived. Ecclesiastical megalomania. And it shows the involvement that the Catholic Church has had civilly with governments across the world. And it's documented. It's profusely footnoted. And so, an eye-opener, if you want to understand how our Congress can be affected with social teaching of the Catholic Church, read John Robbins' Ecclesiastical Megalomania. It is the most interesting book. And we have the Robin Hood principle has been endorsed in the Vatican and we have had a the living out of Roman Catholicism in modern days, whereby the horrors of the Inquisition have not been again evident, but other horrors that are quite equal to them, with dictators and with the devastation of the economy that is taking place in many developing nations and even in Africa because of the social teaching of the Catholic Church and a social teaching that can become accepted if we, Bible believers, are not schooled up in what it means to have biblical principles of economics and biblical principles regarding politics Christ Jesus said, give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. We have to work out what that means politically. Christ Jesus spoke about what belonged to Caesar and what belonged to God. And Christ Jesus talked about stewardship of giving account of goods. in the parable of the talents and many of the other teachings of Christ of what it means to be a good steward of goods, economic goods. And we have many biblical principles in the Bible that we have as Bible believers got to be really aware of. Otherwise we can be caught in the avalanche of Roman Catholicism whereby we are overtaken in a nation like the United States. by Roman Catholic teaching. And we have so many famous talk show hosts like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingram and others, famous talk show hosts and even on Fox News, some of the anchormen there we know, famous Catholic anchormen who are purportedly for for Catholic political teaching, a political teaching and a moral teaching that represents 20% of Catholicism and does not represent Catholicism as it's really lived out. And we are really in danger of being indoctrinated with Catholic social teachings, even on political news channels like Fox News and on radio talk show hosts. And so the implications of this are profound, that we as Bible believers have to get back to Christ, Jesus' words and the words of the Apostle Peter, that every soul be subject, I beg your pardon, of Paul and later on of Peter. Paul said that every soul be subject to higher powers, for there is no power but of God. the powers that were ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisted power resisted the ordinance of God. And so the recognition of civil power and just how it stands biblically, how we interpret Romans 13 and how we understand that in our Bible-believing churches is utterly important in our day. and how we understand what the Apostle Peter said, subject yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king as supreme or unto governors, as unto them sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. And so the understanding of political, biblical, political principles, we've got to go back to these scriptures. And there we have John Robbins' book about biblical principles and how they have been thwarted by the Church of Rome. But it's important to understand this, particularly here in the United States. Why? Because the United States was founded by, most part, by Christian believers. And they had a Declaration of Independence and a Constitution that recognized the depravity of man and so the separation of power from the judicial, legislative, and executive power. So we have a nation founded on biblical principles. But to live those biblical principles and not be overcome by the power of Rome, it means that we have to be well educated in things, political and biblical understanding of civil power and where it starts and where it ends. And so I urge that we be very politically astute and biblically learned and that we understand the age in which we live because some of the very principles of this nation was founded on could be subject to attack as we live in a world that is now becoming more and more Roman Catholic One of the most frightening papers that I've ever written, I've written it together with Michael's assembly and with people, Rome and the European Union. One of the most frightening papers, we have it in booklet form, it's available and it's also on our internet webpage. It is frightening to see the power behind the scenes as the Roman Catholic Church has concordance with most of those nations that are part of or becoming part of the European Union and is decidedly trying to bring back the Catholic roots of Europe. It is frightening. And to see how civil law in Belgium and France has been lived out already, where Bible-believing radio stations and some churches have been closed down, it is frightening to see And we pray that we'll never touch the United States of America and other free nations. But it is frightening to see the power that Rome had. And as European Union becomes a super state with more political power than the United States and bigger armies in future as it's building up these things, it's frightening to see the place that the Vatican has to play. And I would urge you to read that book that I have written. Now, how do we deal with this? Just as how do we deal with the first section of the Roman Catholic Church history? We deal with it by going back to the Gospel, and what Christ Jesus said. He said, if the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed. If the Son sets you free, if you believe on Him whom God has sent, you're free. You're free from all power purporting to be spiritual and political and to take God's place, and you're free by God's grace to accept salvation so that you have a personal relationship with Christ Jesus. Unless you become like little children, Christ Jesus said, you will by no means enter the kingdom. It's not any institution, any church, That makes you right with God. It's by believing on a person. And that's what we say to the precious Catholic person listening or here in our midst, is look to the person of Christ Jesus. Look to his finished work. Look to his absolute perfect life and believe on him. And that alone not only wipes out your sins, but gives you a right standing with the All-Holy God that cannot be taken away, because justification is a legal act of the Almighty God, recognizing you in the Beloved, accepted in the Beloved, as Paul said in Ephesians 1.6. It is the glorious Gospel. And that is the answer, the Gospel, the power of God unto salvation. We trust in the Lord alone and we come into a personal relationship and we come into a Bible-believing church where the Word of God is truly taught. And we stand strong in that word, giving praise to the one Lord and Saviour. And we know that He is able and capable. I know who I'm believing and I'm persuaded that He is able to keep that which I've committed unto Him against that day and the day in which we face. And so may we be strong believers. And may those of you who do not know Christ come to the glory of trusting Him alone and that together we will be a body of believers praising and spiritually worshipping our God. To the glory of His name. Amen and Amen. Praise God. This Reformation audio track is a production of Stillwater's Revival Books. SWRB makes thousands of classic Reformation resources available, free and for sale, in audio, video, and printed formats. It is likely that the sermon or book that you just listened to is also available on cassette or video, or as a printed book or booklet. Our many free resources, as well as our complete mail order catalog, containing thousands of classic and contemporary Puritan and Reform books, tapes, and videos at great discounts is on the web at www.swrb.com. We can also be reached by email at swrb at swrb.com. by phone at 780-450-3730, by fax at 780-468-1096, or by mail at 4710-37A Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6L 3T5. You may also request a free printed catalog And remember that John Calvin, in defending the Reformation's regulative principle of worship, or what is sometimes called the scriptural law of worship, commenting on the words of God, which I commanded them not, neither came into my heart, from his commentary on Jeremiah 731, writes, God here cuts off from men every occasion for making evasions, since he condemns by this one phrase, I have not commanded them, whatever the Jews devised. There is then no other argument needed to condemn superstitions than that they are not commanded by God. For when men allow themselves to worship God according to their own fancies, and attend not to His commands, they pervert true religion. And if this principle was adopted by the Papists, all those fictitious modes of worship in which they absurdly exercise themselves would fall to the ground. It is indeed a horrible thing for the Papists to seek to discharge their duties towards God by performing their own superstitions. There is an immense number of them, as it is well known, and as it manifestly appears. Were they to admit this principle, that we cannot rightly worship God except by obeying His word, they would be delivered from their deep abyss of error. The prophet's words, then, are very important, when he says that God had commanded no such thing, and that it never came to his mind, as though he had said that men assume too much wisdom when they devise what he never required, nay, what he never knew.