If you have your Bible there, look up Psalm 119 if you would. Psalm 119 and verse 89. We have been looking at this topic, Spot the Difference. We have been considering the cults and the isms and the schisms that have impacted church history. In particular, we've been thinking more about modern history, relatively speaking, from the 1800s to the present day. We've thought about Mormonism, the Christian science movement, Seventh-day Adventism, and the Jehovah's Witnesses. And we want to conclude this series of messages tonight, which has fallen very well in terms of present events, in that we are considering the matter of Roman Catholicism. And one verse of Scripture tonight I just want you to read as we look into our topic this evening. Verse 89 of Psalm 119. Sorry, did someone come through the door there a second ago? Oh, Shirley, okay. Ah, fair enough. Just heard that door squeak. When we get our new church built, we have to have a squeaky hinge so that we know if people are coming in or out. It's very handy. Anyway, Psalm 119, verse 89 says, Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. Shall we pray? Father, we thank Thee tonight for the opportunity to come together as Your people, to come apart from the normal business of the week and to focus our minds upon the Word of Truth. And Father, we understand tonight that Your Word is forever settled. that, Lord, that you change not, and that from everlasting to everlasting, you are God, the same yesterday, today, and forever. And Father, we thank you tonight for that constancy, for that immutability, that we are not tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, but we have a sure word of prophecy in the form of the Scriptures that will help us and guide us through the quagmire of heresy and false teaching in these last days. So, Father, I just pray tonight that you would help us as we focus upon Roman Catholicism. Lord, help us to remember that our issue is not with the Roman Catholic people, but with the Roman Catholic system, and that particular religious belief system, which we understand is contrary to the very clear teachings of the Word of God. So we ask that you bless us tonight, instruct us and enlighten us for Jesus' sake and His glory. Amen. Well, here the psalmist writes that the word of the Lord is settled in heaven. Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. And the truths of God's word are unchanging. They remain the same. And as we've already seen in this series, one of the hallmarks of a cult is fluctuating doctrine. They have a very fluid doctrinal position and their doctrines are often built upon a foundation of shifting sounds. We saw that for example with Mormonism which at its outset taught polygamy at its outset had a very racist attitude and position in case within their doctrinal format. And of course in later times renounced polygamy and even in more modern times have begun to recess and revise their view concerning the races. We saw it with the Jehovah's Witnesses. who had multiple revisions on their dating for Armageddon and other issues. We even saw it with the Christian Science Movement, which taught us that all of our ills and pains and problems should be resolved by prayer and faith. But simultaneously you may, if you wish, visit a dentist, an optician, or have a bone set if you break one, because it's very hard to fix a bone in that particular manner. And so there was a renunciation of medical help on the one hand, but then a shifting sound that said you could receive medical help on the other. And all of these teachings of these cults were subject Now, the very nature of a cult is such that their prophecies, their visions, and their feelings of men are really what cements their belief system. They don't really come down to the Word of God and say that it's forever settled, that thus saith the Lord will do. They have all of these other avenues of revelation, prophecies, visions. the words of leaders and so forth. Now nowhere is this truer than in the Roman Catholic system. No group has added more to Scripture under the guise of tradition as has the Roman Catholic Church. And for many Catholics, church tradition is far more important to them than even the revealed Word of God. Just as Jehovah's Witnesses were taught by their founder that the study of the Bible privately on its own, apart from any external influence, would lead to greater and greater darkness, so Roman Catholics historically have been discouraged from studying the Bible under the premise that they need a priest or a theologian to help them truly grasp its teachings. And yet what is the Bible saying? It says that the Christian should study to show himself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed. What does the Bible say? It says that the men who challenged or at least tested the teachings of Paul by studying the Scriptures daily were to be commended. What did Jesus say? His express words, search the Scriptures. And so that's what we're going to do tonight. We're going to search the scriptures. Now Roman Catholicism claims for itself apostolic succession going all the way back to the Apostle Peter himself. And last week when we considered its history, we saw that the best they could legitimately do perhaps, and it's a stretch, would be to go as far back as the Emperor Constantine. But in reality, their history doesn't truly develop until you come to a very influential theologian and thinker by the name of Augustine, who was around in the late 300s and early 400s of the 5th century. Augustine was a Latin-speaking philosopher, and he was a theologian whose writings were tremendously influential in the development of Roman Catholicism. He is also, you might be interested to hear, the father of Calvinism. And that may surprise you, but actually if you hang around Calvinists long enough, you'll often hear them quoting Augustine. Calvin based his teachings upon the teachings of Augustine. So really a Calvinist is an Augustinian, in my view, and is not really a Protestant in the technical sense of the word, but is very much locked into the ancient Roman Catholic system. So, Augustine has a lot to answer for. Protestantism is the birth child of Catholicism, so to speak, and as such bears many of the characteristics of that particular religion. Now, understand that Augustine, whilst he is often referred to as an early church father, is not an early church father in the sense of the New Testament church. He deviated from the teachings of the New Testament Church. In fact, I would even go as far to say he perverted the teachings of the New Testament Church and he became the architect of many, many false doctrines that developed into Roman Catholicism and later reformed Protestantism. Now in the summer of 386, after reading an account of the life of St. Anthony of the Desert, It's a great name, isn't it? Augustine was later led to have a conversion to Christianity. He abandoned his career as a lecturer, as a teacher. He gave up any ideas of marriage, and he devoted himself entirely to serving God and to the practices of the priesthood, including, listen for it, celibacy. Ever wonder where celibacy came from in the Roman Catholic Church? Why priests aren't married? It goes back to our friend, Augustine. Now, Augustine believed that the church was rightly a mix of believers and unbelievers. The Bible, of course, teaches that the church ought to be a gathering of believers. But nevertheless, he thought that they were a mixture of the both. He supported the death penalty for those separated Christians who were rebaptizing new converts. He believed that they should be corrected. and that they should be chastened at the point of a sword, that they should be put to death if needs be to have them conform to his teachings, and he sought to impose the stamp of state religion upon all those who disagreed with him. He saw salvation as being within the church, and the church he viewed as the dispenser of the grace of God. He said this, now listen to these words, So, unless I were moved to do so by the authority of the Catholic Church. Now, that's quite an interesting statement. What he's saying is, I don't really care what the Bible says unless the church gives its approval to that statement, then I'll believe it. Now, if you think that's far-fetched, there's many Roman Catholic people of that mindset. I remember witnessing to a lady many, many years ago, and I was really emphasizing with her the necessity of the new birth, that she needed to be born again. She's a Roman Catholic lady, and I'll never forget her words to my dying day. She stopped me and she says, look, she says, if Jesus Christ himself were standing here telling me I had to be born again, I still wouldn't believe it. And I thought, my goodness, what a statement to come out with. But that's effectively what Augustine taught and what his position was. Now to this day, the Catholic Church still believes that salvation is found within her system, within her church. And of course, we know better than that. We know that salvation is off the Lord. It's not about being in church It's about being in Christ. Being in Christ is far more important than being in church. And church is secondary in regards to the issue of salvation. In fact, it's inconsequential in regards to the issue of salvation. Salvation is entirely of the Lord. It is the gift of God. It comes by His free grace. and not by any religious system. Sir Robert Anderson, a well-known Bible commentator, reminds us that the Roman Catholic Church was molded by Augustine into the form it has ever since maintained. Of all the errors that later centuries developed in the teaching of the Church, scarcely one cannot be found in embryo in his writings. These errors include infant baptism for regeneration, the necessity of baptism for the forgiveness of sins, purgatory, salvation in the Church alone through its sacraments, and the persecution of those who reject Catholic dogmas. Augustine was one who favored the inclusion of the Apocrypha writings into the canon of Scripture, although he admitted and acknowledged that the Jewish people had long since rejected those writings. He was one who promoted allegorical teaching of the Bible. He said the Bible couldn't be taken literally. That you had to allegorize it, spiritualize it. It couldn't be taken as read. And he also, therefore, became the father of amillennialism. He taught that actually the Church of Rome had been privileged to usher in the Millennial Kingdom. So as far as he was concerned, the 1,000 year reign of Christ was not a literal event that was yet future, but was something that was allegorized in the existence of the history of the Church and that we are now in the Millennium in the Church. Okay? Doesn't feel much like the Millennium to me. Do you know what the Millennium is? In fact, I kind of laughed, Brother Glenn was telling me last week, he was at his first Bible study at his new church, and one of the elders got up and began to take apart the idea that Israel had a future, and so on and so forth. And he rang me up, I was going up to Sunderland last Wednesday, and he rang me up and said, this doesn't sound right to me. And so I gave him a little impromptu Bible study on the M6, and I was glad that he had enough Bible teaching to smell a rat. But anyway, nevertheless, if this man Augustine is a church father, then you can see the corrupted theological gene pool out of which the Roman Catholic Church was stemmed. And so the Roman Church came along, and based upon his theology, based upon his philosophy, they began to add to his teachings, and to develop his teachings, and to bring error and error. And add error and error, one upon the other, until we have a system today that is so far removed from biblical Christianity, it would be unrecognizable to the apostles. Now let's consider some of the heresies, and so this is all we're going to do tonight, look at some of these heresies, and I want you to consider them in the order in which they came, more or less, okay? And the first one I want you to notice is that a man by the name of Boniface III was considered officially as the first pope. Now there were other popes before him, but he is recognized historically as the one who first officially had that office and was maintaining that office in a historical sense. Now, regardless of whether he's the first pope or not, the fact of the matter is there is no place in the New Testament for a papal figure. None. Okay? Jesus is our pontiff. What does pontiff mean? Last week's study. No? No? Oh dear, oh dear. Who said high priest? High priest, okay. That's what Rachel was going to say, wasn't it? Yes, well done Rachel. I knew you were going to say it. The answer was written on your face. But anyway. It means high priest, okay? So this week when the Pope comes to Britain, you'll hear him referred to as the pontiff. Listen, we have but one high priest, Jesus Christ. He's the one who intercedes for us. God is our Holy Father. The Pope is not the Holy Father. That's a blasphemous title that has been afforded to him, one among many. Look in Matthew chapter 23 for a moment. Matthew chapter 23. Matthew chapter 23 and verse 9, what the Lord Jesus teaches, He said, So Jesus specifically told us not to use the word father in relation to spiritual headship. He's not saying you don't call your physical father your father. That's not the issue. He's talking about calling someone a father in a spiritual sense, okay? And he says to us, listen, don't do it. Don't call any man your father. That's why, you know, as a pastor, I would never use that title father. I must say I've had to get used somewhat since I've come to England being referred to as a vicar, which is a bit annoying, but nevertheless. I'm not even a vicar coming to that, but certainly the term father is one that I would have to absolutely and outrightly reject. I reject the word vicar as well, but if you called me a father I'd have to punch you in the nose. It's as simple as that. Anyway, the point being that here comes the Pope and he says, I'm the pontiff, I'm the holy father. And the Bible says, no you're not. Jesus Christ is our Great High Priest and God the Father is our Holy Father and we don't answer to you. Now, they say Peter was the first Pope. Well if Peter was the first Pope, he knew very little about it. First of all, he was married. In the Gospels we read, even in Mark, we've read already in our Sunday evening studies, how the Lord came and healed Peter's mother-in-law. Well, he has a mother-in-law, obviously he has a wife. And it's interesting, as we mentioned last week, Paul even alludes to that fact when he says that house of Cephas got the power to bring about a wife, as others have. So he specifies Paul in that regard. He was not infallible. when it came to issues of doctrine. He tried to stop Jesus from going to the cross, after which, in Matthew 16, Jesus accused him of being under satanic influence. That's not a good place for a pope to be, okay? He was under satanic influence. When the disciples argued among themselves as to who should be their superior, well, here's a clear opportunity for Jesus to say, well, let's settle this argument once and for all. Peter is the pope. But what did Jesus say? Let's have a look in the Gospel of Luke in chapter 22. Luke chapter 22, verse 24. It says, And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest. And he said unto them, The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so. But he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he that is chief as he that doth serve." So Jesus didn't set one apostle above the other. He didn't set one disciple at the head of the apostolic group. And nowhere in Scripture are we taught that the one who was to become the Bishop of Rome should have any primacy over the other bishops. Again, that's another term that's often applied to the Pope. You hear him called the primate, don't you? Meaning he has primacy. He has authority over all the other bishops and cardinals in the church. In fact, here's an interesting thing. If Peter was the first Pope, he was not only a strange Pope because he was married and because he was accused of being under satanic influence, but actually nowhere in Scripture does it even tell us that Peter was in Rome. You can't find Peter in Rome. Now you'd think if he was going to be the Pope he ought to turn up in Rome once in a while, wouldn't you think? But he doesn't show in Rome. And it's interesting, when Paul comes to the conclusion of the book of Romans in chapter 16, he gives a salute to all kinds of Christians who are at Rome, and guess who's not mentioned? Peter. Well you'd think if he was saluting Christians in Rome, and Peter was the Bishop of Rome, and was the Pope, He ought to at least give him a little mention, don't you think? But not a word. Peter isn't there. Peter also rejected the notion that men should bow before him or give him reverence. Look at Acts chapter 10. Now again, you're going to see this in the news in the next few days. All kinds of politicians and clerics and others are going to come, cow-tailing to the Pope, bowing before him, kissing his ring, reverencing him as the great Holy Father, as the prince of the apostles, as the head of the church, and on and on ad nauseam. But notice here when Peter encounters Cornelius, who incidentally is a centurion of the band called the Italian Band. Quite possibly he had been to Rome. It says, and as Peter was coming in, verse 25, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshipped him. And Peter said, bless you, my child. Is that what it says? No. Peter took him up saying, stand up! I myself am also a man. He says, we're just equals, we're peers. I don't want you buying to me. You just need to speak to me as another man. So Peter never accepted that kind of adulation. He has never called Pope. He has never called the chief pastor. He's never called the head of the church, the prince of the apostles, the supreme pontiff. He was simply called an apostle. He was simply called a servant of Jesus Christ, a fellow elder. And some argue that Peter avoided these titles because he was, well, he was just too humble and too modest to accept them. But if he was the first Pope, well why then do modern Popes not imitate him and be equally humble and modest to accept those titles? But as you're going to see in a few days, Modesty is not going to be the order of the hour, as the present Pope is ushered onto our island, and the roads are closed, and he's charging through in his bulletproof Popemobile, waving to the crowds. You're not going to get the idea, here is a humble, modest individual. It's not going to be the picture, okay? Now, here's another interesting thing. If you do want to pick a Pope from the Bible, and from the New Testament, I think Paul has a better shout than Peter, okay? If you actually look at Paul, he's a better champion of the papacyte in terms of his characteristics than Peter. Paul wasn't married. That helps. Acts talks about Paul more than it does about Peter. Paul rebuked Peter, but Peter never rebuked Paul. Paul cared for all the churches. He had the care of the churches upon him. Paul said he was not behind in any apostle, or with any apostle. So, you know, in that regard, Peter never made such a claim. Paul wrote three quarters of the New Testament. Peter wrote two little books. First and second Peter. Peter cited Paul's letters as having authority. Paul did not cite Peter's letters as having authority. Now Peter's letters, let's be clear about this, are still written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, but we're just talking in terms of who would make the better Pope if you were going to pick a papal figure. And scripture expressly tells us that Paul was in Rome. whereas Peter was never in Rome. And Paul, we are told, his labors exceeded all the other apostles. But of course, Paul was no more a pope than Peter, and Peter was never a pope to begin with. So we put to bed this notion of the papacy, the idea that the church should have a pope. Then there's the worshipping of images and relics. Now this is a clear breach of the Second Commandment which prohibits us from making any graven image, from bowing down to it and worshipping it. And also even in the New Testament, the Apostle John said in 1 John 5.21, little children keep yourselves from Now, I know that we're living in a fairly secular society and we're living even in a society that is Protestant historically and therefore we're not greatly exposed to the idolatry of Romanism. But if you can get into an area which is predominantly Roman Catholic, You don't have to go too far to see the evidence of idolatry. A number of years ago, Hazel and I and our family, we went to a place in Spain, Mija, down near Benalmadena in Malaga. And there was a shrine up on a hill to the Virgin Mary and it was the most grotesque thing. You went in there and the shrine was covered, the inside of the rock, it was a cave, was covered with human hair. And the deal was that the young girls of that area would, in sacrifice to Mary, cut their hair and they would wedge their locks of hair into the crevices of the rock in a veneration of this idol. In Ireland, you can go and pray to the severed head of St. Oliver Plunkett. Or indeed, further south in Ireland, there is an entire body of a boy encased in glass and preserved, which again is deemed to be a holy object that people pray to and honor. In Belfast, there is a church that has some statues outside, and if you don't have to stand very long, you'll see Roman Catholic people coming up and kissing the feet of these pieces of concrete. That's idolatry and the Bible tells us not to engage in that kind of behavior. What about the use of holy water? Well, holy water is now permanently retained at the entrance of Catholic churches. It's blessed at the start of each lunar month and sprinkled over patrons to the church as they enter. This practice was created really to supplant the pagan celebration of the new moon, and that was in keeping with the Council of Constantinople, 691 AD. But the earliest modern uses of holy water wasn't until the 9th century. You look at the roots of this thing, and you consider the New Testament's silence on the matter of holy water, It can only be concluded that the tradition of holy water was created purely for putting a gloss, a Christian face, so to speak, on a pagan ceremony and putting that ceremony out of commission. So the Bible nowhere, and certainly the New Testament nowhere, makes mention of holy water or encourages us to adhere to that kind of notion. Again, if you get into Catholic countries, you'll see holy water receptacles just about everywhere. If you look from people's private homes to church entrances, as we've mentioned. At the Knock Shrine in County Mayo in the west of Ireland, they have holy water on tap. It's very handy. The Pope blessed at its source, and there is a huge concrete structure with holy water taps along it, and people go down with little plastic bottles, which are conveniently labeled holy water in case they make their tea from it, and they can top up their water bottle and bless themselves and do whatever you do with holy water. But again, it's paganism. It's pure idolatry. What about canonization of dead saints? In the Roman Catholic Church, people are canonized, that's the word, so as to become saints. Now, if you have a Church of England background, you're probably used to having heard the word canons, haven't you? Canons in the Church of England. You know what you do with a canon in the Church of England? Fire them. But anyway. The jokes are just getting worse, aren't they? They're getting worse. Anyway, in Catholicism, they canonize people. Now, what does this mean? It means that they found a figure who is deemed worthy, and first of all, they decide they would like to make a saint of this person. But there are steps of doing that, and you've got to go through various procedures in the Holy See and with the Pope and so on. And one of the things they do on the route is they beatify a person, which means he has the title, the Blessed. prefacing his name, so he becomes the blessed so-and-so. So he's not quite a saint, but he's not entirely a sinner, if you know what I mean. He's halfway to sainthood. Now to become a saint, they have to find, I think it's two miracles at least, associated with that individual, which can be confirmed by somebody, somewhere, somehow. So, one of the things that Pope is doing this week when he comes to Britain is he is going to beatify Cardinal Newman. They're looking to make him a saint eventually, and I kind of smiled at myself yesterday. Thank you, Paul. I kind of smiled at myself when I read in the newspaper that they had found that Cardinal Newman cured someone of a back problem. And I thought, well, how do you find that out? You know, he's been dead for over 100 years. It's not like, you know, the person with the back problem comes out and goes, hey, you know what? That card, I'll tell you that back, it's the best ever. You've been playing squash, everything, golf, you wouldn't believe it. It's a nonsense. It's silliness. Okay? But nevertheless, that's the way it works. Now the word saint doesn't mean someone who's died and who is now specially selected by the head of the church for particular attention and sanctification, but rather it just means one who is set apart. One who's sanctified. And all Christians are sanctified. Now here's the good news. You're all saints if you're saved. So you don't need the Pope to come. Waste of time. Okay? The country's coming down with saints, okay? And they're all living saints. We're seeing better than dead saints. But nevertheless, all Christians are sanctified by the Lord at conversion. And that's why Paul, writing to the church at Corinth, referred to these people as saints. Look in 1 Corinthians, chapter 1. It's very interesting, I picked this particular church for a very obvious reason, because when you think about a saint, if I say to you, our Paul is a saint, what would that mean to you? I mean, I was lying, wasn't I? You would say, he's a good lad. He must be very good if he's a saint. But here we are at the church at Corinth, the most carnal church of all the New Testament churches, the church that was squabbling and striving one with another, taking each other to law, being excessive in the use of the gifts and so forth. And here Paul writing to these people who are not dead but alive and who are very much misbehaving themselves. In verse 2 he says, unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus. Called to be what? Saints. Is it just them? No. With all that in every place, call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours. No, it's not. It's italicized. So it's just called saints. Not called to be saints so it's a future event, but called saints. So that's what they were called. There in the end, as badly behaved as they were, they were called saints. Okay? And no one had to beatify them, canonize them, or find some miracle associated with them. That had to do with their standing as believers. Okay? Now, here's the next thing. Fasting on Fridays and during Lent. That came in 998 AD. Now, we're Baptists, so we don't do fasting. Amen? Actually we should do fasting and we do do fasting sometimes. We do have fast days at our church and we have fasted and prayed even in the last year we've had days of fasting and prayer. So there's nothing wrong with fasting per se. The problem here is making the fast obligatory and in the case of Lent it's linking a fast in with a pagan In the Mystery Babylon religion, they observed 40 days of abstinence during Lent, which led up to their annual festival of commemoration of the death and resurrection of Tammuz. And so they mourned for Tammuz 40 days. And Catholicism adopted that pagan teaching, again Christianized it, and made it an obligation. to those who follow this particular belief system. There is no call for us to observe Lent at all. No biblical warrant for that whatsoever. It's a Catholic teaching, but again I want to stress we're not opposed to fasting and praying. There's nothing wrong with that as such, but certainly there's no obligation to fast every Friday or indeed at a period known as Lent. Celibacy of the priesthood. We'll not take long in this. What does the Bible say? A bishop must be blameless. What? The husband of one wife. Problem solved. If you're a bishop, you should be the husband of one wife. End of. So, no problem. Why do they have this celibacy? goes back to our friend Augustine. Augustine believed that by being celibate you could be more spiritual, devote yourself to God, and so on and so forth. The use of prayer beads, the rosary beads. And again, this is also a carryover from pagan religion. You can look at other pagan faiths, Hinduism and so forth. Even Islam, you'll find the use of rosary beads. A number of years ago, I took a young people's trip from Southern Ireland to Belgium. En route, we stopped at the British Museum. We looked at some of the mummies in the museum and one of the mummies was lying with her hands up and beads around the hands and one young girl who had a Roman Catholic background just about had a fit because it was exactly what she identified as being in her Roman Catholic upbringing. And she saw that this ancient Egyptian religion mirrored the present Roman Catholic religion in this particular area. And again, there's nothing in the Bible that tells us we've got to count beads. In fact, the very opposite is true, because the counting of beads is about fey and repetition, saying our fathers, saying our Hail Marys. And Jesus explicitly told us not to vainly repeat ourselves in prayer, thinking that we'll be heard. Transubstantiation. This is a wonderful doctrine. The idea that the bread and the wine of the communion table are substantially changed into the actual body and blood of Christ. That is, they physically become no longer bread and wine but actually human flesh and really human blood and specifically the flesh of Christ and the blood of Christ. For that reason, and because of their doctrine on baptism and the original sin, they believe that Christ in the Mass is sacrificed over and over again. Every time a Catholic priest performs the Mass, he will say something along the lines that the Lord should accept this sacrifice for his sins and for the sins of the people. He is sacrificing in his mind Christ afresh. Now, the Bible teaches no such thing, but some people will point to John 6. Let's look at John 6. And when I ministered in Southern Ireland, more times than enough I had knowledgeable Catholic people. present me with this particular passage, and they say, well, no, no, Jesus did say the bread became his body and the wine did become his blood. Let's look here at verse 49. Let's start there. It says, Jesus said, I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven that a man may eat thereof and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give his flesh to eat? Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the Living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not as your fathers did eat manna and are dead. He that eateth of this bread shall live forever." And so the Catholic person will say, see? See? Jesus said it quite clearly. The bread is his body. The wine is his blood. We are actually eating his flesh and drinking his blood. And this is important if we're to receive eternal life. Was Jesus speaking literally in this context? Well, look in verse 63. Notice what he says here. It is the Spirit that quickeneth, that brings away. The flesh profiteth nothing. The actual physical actions are of no value. The words that I speak unto you, they are what? Spirit. He says, I'm not speaking to you literally. I'm speaking to you in spiritual terms now. See, even the Bible does use allegory. It flags it up. And here Jesus is using an allegory. And he comes back and says, no, don't take this literally now, this is allegorical. So in that regard, Catholicism is wrong to point to this passage as proof of transubstantiation. Also, the doctrine of the Mass teaching that Christ's death is somehow insufficient, that he has to be offered over and over again as a sacrifice for sin, is blasphemous. Look in Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews 10 says here, By the witch will we are sanctified, made saints, set apart. How? Through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ. How often? Once for all. And again, for all is italicized, so it's really just once. And every priest standeth dearly ministering, and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this man, Jesus Christ, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down in the right hand of God. Verse 14. For by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. Now we remember what the Lord Jesus said on the cross. As He was dying, He said, it is what? Finished. It's done. I've laid my life down and that's the end of the matter. And there'll be no repeat. But Catholicism says, no, no, no. That's insufficient. We have to keep sacrificing Him over and over and over again. And really what they're saying is what Jesus did on the cross, failed. that it was insufficient, that it didn't work, that it wasn't entirely effective. Now if you believe that the bread is the actual body of Christ and the wine is the actual blood of Christ, well then that would logically make the bread and the wine sacred things, wouldn't it? Wouldn't it? Which brings us to our next false doctrine, the adoration of the host. Now the host here is not someone who is putting on a dinner party. The host here is the bread. What they do, particularly at certain festivals, Corpus Christi day and so on, they take a piece of bread that is blessed by the priest and is therefore considered now to be the actual flesh of Christ. And they place it into a receptacle, known as a monstrance, which often times is shaped like the sun. They put it on a great big pole, and they hold it up. And people who are devotees of Catholicism believe that in that receptacle is actually a piece of Jesus Christ, of His person. And so, as this receptacle is paraded among the people, they buy in deference, reverence, and worship to that piece of bread. Isn't that amazing? I mean, that's just pure and utter superstition. Total superstition. What a religion. It manages both blasphemy and idolatry in one sitting. Then we come to the doctrine of purgatory. The doctrine of purgatory was in 1445, I think was the doctrine, but nevertheless, it comes from the Latin word purgar, which means to make clean, to purify. The Catholic Encyclopedia defines purgatory this way, as a place or condition of temporal punishment for those who, departing this life in God's grace, are not entirely free from fenial faults or have not fully paid the satisfaction due to their transgressions. In other words, Catholicism teaches that purgatory is a place where you go to be cleansed of your venial sins, that's your minor sins, before you can be allowed into heaven. Now here's the irony. It says of this person that they have departed this life in God's grace. And yet with all, no sooner do they say that, they say, but they're not entirely free from their faults. and that they have not fully paid to the satisfaction of their own transgression." Well, hold on a minute. Who paid for the satisfaction of our transgressions? Jesus did. And so when we're saved by trusting His death, His burial, His resurrection, our sins are forgiven, heaven is our home, and when we die we are absent from the body, present with the Lord. So the Bible knows nothing of purgatory. When Jesus taught Luke 16 about the rich man and Lazarus, he didn't talk about, you know, hell and paradise and purgatory in between. It was just hell or paradise. It's only one of two places you can go, heaven or hell. And, you know, this whole idea of fenial sins and mortal sins and original sin, that's Augustine. All right? The Bible says sin is sin is sin. And that the wage of sin is death, that all sin incurs the same price. So whether you just told a lie or whether you just bludgeoned your grandmother to death, you're still going to hell. And yet Jesus came and dealt with our sin. Okay, all of our sin when he put himself to the cross. What have we got next? The doctrine of the seven sacraments. Sacraments are considered a means of God's grace. In other words, these rituals or these actions result in God giving you more and more of his grace and aiding you on your journey towards salvation in heaven. What are the seven sacraments? Well, they're broke up into three groupings. The sacraments of Christian initiation. Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist. So a child is baptized, that's a sacrament, he gets the grace of God, he is cleansed of his original sin. Oh, maybe 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, somewhere around there. They have confirmation. And you've all seen, or maybe you haven't all seen, but little girls dressed in what looks like wedding dresses going down to the Catholic Church for confirmation. And then once they have confirmation, they enter into the Eucharist. They're now allowed to come and partake of the Mass, which, of course, each time you come to Mass, well, that's a little bit more grace. That's another brownie point on your heavenly record. And it means you spend less time in purgatory, which doesn't exist. But nevertheless, it's good to know, just in case. So those are the initiation rites. Then there's the sacraments of healing, penance, and reconciliation. You've got to go to confession. You commit a sin, you go to confession. You tell the priest what you've done. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned." And he asks you what you've done, and you tell him what you've done. Sometimes he'll ask you for more detail, particularly if it's something rather scandalous. He's rather interested. That sounds good. Tell me more, my child. Write this down. Could be useful for blackmail later on. But here's the irony. You have one center confessing to another center, and the other center is claiming that he has the right of God to forgive you of a sin that is not against him, but against God himself. And actually, only God can forgive sin. Okay, there's the anointing of the sick, the last rites sometimes called. You have an accident, you're sick, you're dying, you're in the hospital, the priest comes along, he anoints your head with oil, he says a prayer over you, maybe an Our Father, maybe whatever, he says, I don't know what he says exactly, and ultimately, and I know this for a fact, he gets down, he whispers in your ear, it's now between you and God. Well that's handy to know at this late stage. How terrifying must that be though? You know, here you've been relying on the Catholic Church all your life to get you into heaven. You get to the last and the priest says, you're on your own, see ya. Then you have holy orders if you become a priest. Well that helps with purgatory a little bit. If you become a bishop, that's even better. If you're a cardinal, even better yet. And if you're the Pope, well you only have to burn in purgatory for maybe 4,000 years or something like that and you'll be okay. And then you may all be pleased to hear this one, matrimony. That's the seventh sacrament. If you get married, of course if you go to the Catholic church to get married, what's one of the things you do? Take Mass. You have Mass. So in the marriage ceremony, you receive a sacrament and you are also a recipient of further grace from God. So all of that, of course, is unbiblical and without scriptural warrant. Then you have the Ave Maria. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb. Jesus, Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us poor sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. You know where this verse is? You know where it's found in the Bible? Nowhere. It's an entirely made up prayer. Nowhere in the scripture does anybody pray to Mary for anything. It's a completely false teaching. You have the only papal tradition being given the same status as the Bible. Happened in 1545. This is no different than the Latter Day Saints telling you that the Book of Mormon has the same status as the Bible. It's no different than the Jehovah's Witnesses telling you that the Watchtower and the teachings of the Watchtower represent the profit of this hour and are equal to, and even better than, the teachings of Scripture. It's the same thing. Then you have the apocryphal books added to the Bible. If you get a Catholic Bible, you'll find you have the Old Testament like we do, the New Testament like we do, and in the middle there's a section called the Apocrypha. The Apocrypha was favored by by Augustine, and these books were added by the Catholic Church during the Reformation period in what is sometimes called the Counter-Reformation. Bear in mind, here's the Reformation period comes along. Martin Luther comes along with his fiery hymns and others are coming along and they're They're denouncing Rome, and they're denouncing the Pope as the Antichrist, and people are being saved, and trusting Christ, and seeing, you know, for the first time what the Bible says, and Europe is ablaze with Reformation fire, and the Pope's in trouble. He's on the ropes. And so what do you do when you have a Pope on a rope? Shower. Take a shower. Our Bible says you need to be more serious. But anyway, what you do is you come up with something to try and bring the faithful back. So what the Roman Church did was they came up with the Apocrypha. Look, we have more scriptures than the Protestants do. We have more Bible. You say you're Bible believers? We've got more Bible than they have. Look, we have these extra books. But you know what? Long before this time, the Jewish scribes, and remember the Apocrypha is dealing with largely Jewish history, the Jewish scribes discarded the Apocrypha. as scripture because they saw that there was errors within it and God is not the author of error. So he's obviously not the author of the Apocrypha. Then you have the Immaculate Conception of Mary. You know, a lot of Christian people believe this teaching has to do with the virgin birth, the conception of Christ in the womb of Mary by the miraculous act of the Holy Spirit. In fact, this teaching, believe it or not, teaches that Mary herself was virgin-born and that she herself was sinless. The Bible doesn't teach that about Mary, does it? Let's look at what the Bible does teach about Mary. Luke chapter 1 and verse 47. Luke chapter 1 and verse 47. Here's Mary's song, the Magnificat, sometimes it's referred to, and this is her rejoicing in the choosing of God, of her, to bear the Christ child. And she says, it says in verse 46, and Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God. What's it say? My Savior. Who needs a Savior? Sinners need a Savior. You'll never hear Jesus referring to God as His Savior because He is the Savior and He was without sin. But here is Mary, the mother of Jesus, referring to God as her saviour. Evidently, she understood she was not virgin born, nor was she sinless. Look across the page in chapter 2, in verse 21, we come now to the time shortly after Christ has actually been born. And Mary and Joseph having had their son circumcised now come to the temple to fulfill the law. In verse 21 it says, And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcision of the child, his name was called Jesus, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb. And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him, Jesus, to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. As it is written in the law of the Lord, every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord, and to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons." All right? That's the Jewish, the Old Testament sacrificial system whereby a person brought a sacrifice in acknowledgement of their sin. So again, we see Mary and Joseph. And Mary is, of course, the person that we're particularly concerned about is acknowledging her own sinfulness. Look at Mark chapter 3. Remember this from our studies on Sunday evenings? Mark chapter 3. fearing for his life, seeing that there were those who were trying to trick him and accuse him and so forth. Mary comes to visit Jesus in the hope that she can dissuade him from his activities. And in verse 31, there came then his brethren and his mother. And standing without, sent unto him, calling him. And the multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee. And he answered them, saying, Who is my mother or my brethren? And he looked round about on them, which sat about him, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren. For whosoever shall do the will of God, the same as my brother, and my sister, and my mother." In other words, the Lord Jesus was really rebuking Mary here for her effort to dissuade him or to detract him from his mission. And the Lord says, you know what? I don't really have a mother. in this sense. He's God. He's come as the Messiah. And so he's basically saying, you know, she has no authority over me. And that's very important. Nor is Mary, by extension, our co-redemptress, which Catholicism teaches. It teaches that she also redeemed us from our sins. Nor is she the co-mediator, saying that she's a go-between God and man. What's the Bible say? It says there's only one mediator between God and man. Who is it? The man Christ Jesus. That's what the Bible says. Here's the doctrine I love, the infallibility of the Pope. Get a load of this doctrine. The infallibility of the Pope. It's not often that Britain hosts an infallible person, but we're doing it this week. No, they still hold to it. But understand there's a lot of confusion about it. The Pope is not considered to be infallible in everything he does. So, you know, he sometimes makes mistakes. Assume the times crossword, he doesn't just get all the answers instantly. So he's not infallible in that sense. By the way, this is also a Muslim teaching. The Muslims teach that Imams are infallible. Did you know that? Same teaching. Here's what I found on a Muslim website. It says, if a divinely appointed leader is not infallible, speaking of imams, he would be liable to errors and to deceive others as well. In such a case, no implicit confidence may be placed in his sayings, commands, actions. A divinely appointed imam is the most liable person to rule as the head of the community, and people are supposed to follow him in every matter. So they regard him as infallible. But the Roman Church teaches that the Pope is infallible, and this is the condition, the category, when he speaks ex cathedra, meaning when he speaks on matters of doctrine. Now, he can't just do this off the top of his head. He can't just come out one day and say, you know what, I just thought of this brilliant doctrine. From now on, Mary has wings. He can't do that. He can't just come up with things like that. But the way this works is that he is part of the Roman church's magisterium, or the teaching authority of the church. And they say that this teaching authority was given to the Mother Church in order to guide her infallibly. And so this teaching authority is made up of the Pope's infallible teaching ability, the infallible teaching ability of the church councils assembled under the authority of the Pope and the ordinary magisterium of the bishops. Now the ordinary magisterium involves, among other things, all the bishops in various places beginning to teach the same particular doctrine. So let's say the local parish priest here in Milton starts today and he says, you know what? Mary had wings. And down the road in some other Catholic church, another priest gets wind of this and he says, you know what? Mary had wings. And pretty soon this teaching starts to develop and one of the bishops comes out and says, absolutely, Mary had wings. And another bishop says, yep, Mary had wings, and another, and another, and it starts to spread. And all the bishops are now saying Mary had wings. This is now seen as the directing of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Spirit has revealed something through His bishops. And so now the Pope gets wind of all of this, because all the bishops are coming and the cardinals are saying to him, you know what? Mary has wings. So he steps right onto the basilica and he says, listen, Mary has wings. And everybody goes, oh hail Mary, the winged one. And on and on it goes. And that's the kind of nonsense you're into. It's just incredible. I mean, it is just a nonsense. Now, does the Bible teach that the church has some infallibility outside of the scriptures? Does it teach that pastors and elders and deacons are infallible? That they can't make mistakes, that there won't be errors, that there won't be falsehoods? Actually, it teaches the exact opposite. It teaches that as church history goes on, there would be apostasy, and there would be falsehood, and there would be wolves coming among the people. So we were warned to look out for them. Now as for the infallible Popes, well, let's think about some of their decrees in history. Pope Liberius said Jesus was less than God, and that the Son was less than the Father. Does that sound infallible to you? No, it sounds like heresy to me. Innocent I, always watch the popes who are called innocent, they're the worst. Innocent I taught that unbaptized babies went straight to hell. Does that sound like a biblical teaching to you? And Pope Gelasius taught that baptized babies only went to hell if they never had communion. Do you ever think about that? Stands to reason if you're going to baptize a baby, he's entitled to communion. Did you know that the Russian Orthodox Church not only baptize babies, but give them communion as well? Force it down their throats. Pour wine down a newborn baby's throat. Innocent III, here we go. He stated that every cleric must obey the Pope, even if he commands what is evil. So the Pope says something evil, well, he's infallible. and you've got to obey him. Pope Urban the second decreed that heretics were to be tortured and killed. Well that's in the Bible isn't it? You remember reading that verse don't you? The man that is a heretic, killed. Take him out, burn him. Boniface VIII and his people Bull, Unum Sanctum in 1302 claimed authority over all temporal powers, made absolute obedience to the Pope a condition of salvation. Gregory XI said that people dominion over the entire Christian world, secular and religious, was required and he excommunicated all who failed to obey the Popes and to pay them taxes. It was confirmed by subsequent Popes and in 1568 Pope Pius V swore that it was to remain an eternal law." So there's an eternal law that says everybody in the secular world has to pay taxes to the Pope. Do we pay taxes to the Pope? Hope not. I guess it's not an eternal law then. I guess he failed. And if you think it's all those guys back in the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages who said these things, even up to the last Pope, Pope John Paul II, he declared that sacred images have power. And he said, the devout contemplation of such an image thus appears as a real and concrete path of purification of the soul of the believer. In other words, by looking at images and icons and devoting yourself to them, your soul is purified. Well, that's just as far from Bible truth as you can imagine. Alright, this one's good. The Assumption of Mary. What's the Assumption of Mary? The idea that Mary ascended into heaven. Where's that in the Bible? Not there. Not a shred of evidence for it. And this of course is one of those things declared by the teaching authority of the church and it must be accepted without question. So Catholics celebrate Assumption Day when Mary ascended into heaven. That's quite an assumption, isn't it? Mary then is proclaimed Mother of the Church in 1965. Once again, she's given a title that exalts her far above her station. Now, we don't want to dishonor Mary. Mary was a fine servant of the Lord, a chosen vessel of God. We love her as much as we love the other apostles and disciples of the Lord. We respect and reverence her memory and her history. We don't want to say anything that takes away from her one iota. But to call her the Mother of the Church is actually blasphemous. Nowhere does the Bible teach that Mary is the mother of the church, but I wonder do you know if this title is ever given to anyone? It is. Galatians chapter 4. Do you know the Bible talks about the mother of the church? Oh, Brian has an interesting look on his face here. It's not often I get Brian looking like that. He's usually one step ahead of me. Galatians chapter 4 verse 26. Notice what it says. But Jerusalem which above is free, which is what? The mother of us all. Jerusalem which is above. What's that? Jerusalem what's above? Verse 26. The heavenly Jerusalem. All right, the capital dwelling place of God. So it's interesting that this comes up in this chapter because this is the last time that Mary is mentioned in scripture, in this chapter. She's mentioned not by name, but she is mentioned in verse four. And notice the title that she is given. But when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his son made of a, what does it say? A woman, not the mother of the church. You know, it's like God's always one step ahead, isn't he? It's like he always sees it coming. He says, you know, sometime down the line they're going to call her mother of the church. So I'm going to sort this out here and now. She's a woman, and the heavenly Jerusalem is the mother of the church. And what he's saying to you is that the church was mothered not in Mary's womb, but in the will and mind of God. that the church is his idea, his concept, he brought it into being and it was birthed by the sending of his spirit to regenerate men and to indwell us. So once again Rome manages to present tradition over scripture and in so doing deludes the souls of men. Now what all of these studies have shown us is that when any other source of authority is treated as being of equal weight as the Bible, then that secondary authority often and ultimately supersedes the Bible as the authority. So the Book of Mormon, we're to believe, is an accurate revelation from God, but the Bible is only accurate insofar as it's been accurately translated. Jehovah's Witnesses. Oh, well, we're a Bible-believing group. But if you study the Bible on your own, it'll only increase under more and more darkness. You need to study it with the watchtower. And now we come to Catholicism, and Catholicism says, yes, the Bible is the Word of God, but we don't just believe the Bible, we have to believe tradition also. And if there's a conflict between tradition and the Bible, well, every good Catholic knows he's got to fall back on tradition. So what I'm going to say to you tonight is quite shocking. In that, of all the cults we've looked at, this one is the biggest cult of them all. It's got far more false teaching than the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormons, the Seventh-day Adventists, or the Christian scientists put together. You know, these other groups have been at it for a hundred or so years. These guys have been at it for 1,500 years. And yet this week, in a couple of days, the media is going to be packed with news of Pope Benedict's historic visit to our land. The Queen is going to go and meet him. Presumably there will be high-ranking politicians hanging around somewhere to meet him. Ambassadors will be there and all the rest of it. And, of course, this week much of the attention is going to be on the child abuse cases and all of that, but bear in mind as much as the abuse scandals will come up, there will also be a measure of celebration in his visit. There will be those who will treat it as something to be celebrated, even in the media, even among the government, even among the welcoming party, I suspect there will be those who call themselves evangelicals. even those who call themselves Baptists. In fact, I just read today that the Evangelical Alliance said that the visit of the Pope is a good thing, that we should welcome it because it is cementing religious liberty around the world. Well, my word, Roman Catholic Church and religious liberty, those two phrases do not go together. Let me tell you something, if the Roman Catholic Church ever gets into the ascendancy again, you can forget religious liberty. You can forget it. They'll put you back to the stake. So I want to say, and I say this with all due respect to Roman Catholic people, that we would give him no welcome. He's a deceiver and he's an antichrist. And his religion has done more to send our forebearers to an early grave and lost souls to a Christless eternity than any other religion since time began. The church and her cohorts shall fall in one hour, according to Scripture. Then shall the heavenly cry rise. Rejoice over her, thy heaven, and ye apostles and prophets, for God hath avenged you on her. And with that, we'll close our study this evening.