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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.
Roman Catholicism - It's Heresies
Series No Hope in the Pope
| Sermon ID | 91410194560 |
| Duration | 1:11:57 |
| Date | |
| Category | Bible Study |
| Language | English |
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