Roman Theology (part 2)

Our great God, our Father in heaven, we come before you this morning with praise, with joy, with thankfulness.

We thank you that you are who you are, that you have condescended to reveal yourself to us not only through your son, the

Lord Jesus Christ, in whom we have all blessings, but also through your written word.

Father, we thank you for that, that you have preserved it, that you have even permitted us to have it in this day, that it is not chained to any pulpit, it is not restricted by law, that we can have it freely and fully, that we can preach it, that we can read it, that we can have multiple copies of it.

What a blessing. Father, we want to pray for our brothers and sisters around the world who do not have this blessing and who are under constant threat of arrest and attack because they would name the name of your son.

Father, we pray that you would bless our time this morning as we look to your word, that you would encourage us toward evangelism and toward really just rejoicing in all the goodness that you have provided for us.

In Christ's name we pray, amen. Well how many of you don't have a copy of the quiz from last week? Because I have a few copies here floating around.

And maybe Scott will make, I'll give him the original. And you can tell the original because I print them on really nice paper.

The other ones, not so much. Okay. Well that's okay.

Yeah, but you weren't here last week so you got a copy. Yes. Scott will get some more.

And what really motivated me to just do a little bit about the church at Rome and call it the

Roman quiz is really this quote from the

Pope, where did I put that? It's in here somewhere, wherein he just talks about how we shouldn't evangelize people, that it's wrong for Christians to evangelize other people.

And I thought that's just a bizarre thing to say. You know, he says the church never grew by means of evangelism.

As we talked about last week, I don't know, that's what the story of Acts is all about, right? How the church grew by the power of the

Holy Spirit, but also through evangelism. So just by way of review, we'll go through the first few briefly.

Number one, true or false, when we partake of the Lord's table, we are doing so because the Lord instructed us to do so in the

New Testament. That is true. Gave a couple of examples of that last week. Number two, true or false, when we partake of the bread and cup, in some genuine way, we are partaking of his body and blood.

That is false. But the

Roman Catholic catechism says this, which by the power of the Holy Spirit and by the words of Christ have become the body and blood of Christ.

Christ is thus really and mysteriously made present. So they believe they are actually taking in the body and the blood of Christ.

Number three, true or false, followers of Jesus know that the church does not grow as a result of evangelism.

False. I mean, how about the Great Commission? But the Pope said, you know, I have to live in accordance with my faith and it will be my testimony that will awaken the curiosity of the other, the non -believer, who says, but why do you do this?

And that is where I can talk. But listen, never, ever advance the gospel through proselytism.

If someone says he is a disciple of Jesus and comes to you with proselytism, he is not a disciple of Jesus.

We shouldn't proselytize. The church does not grow from proselytizing. So I didn't make that up.

That's Pope Francis. Number four, true or false, the cause of the assumption is named after Christ's ascension into heaven.

False. That's after Mary's assumption into heaven. And they have a whole, I called it with Janet this morning, we were talking about a sub -religion about Mary.

Number five, true or false, Mary loves her son so much that she continues to draw people into saving faith.

False. But the Roman Catholic Catechism says this, taken up into heaven, she did not lay aside this saving office, what they call her the co -redemptress and all that, but by her manifold intercession continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation.

Therefore, the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the church under the titles advocate, helper, benefactress and mediatrix.

Now there are some people who call the

Roman Catholic Church an apostate church, an apostate church. I tend to think it leans more towards a cult.

What's the difference between an apostate church and a cult? Okay. I would agree with that. An apostate church is one that followed the truth at one time, then fell away from it.

So I think we would see like a lot of Methodist, Lutheran and other denominations being like that.

We don't need to go down the Southern Baptist road. Yes. And you were going to say, yeah, okay.

Okay. False to begin with. But what are some of the marks of a cult?

Okay. They're the only ones that have it right. What does the Roman Catholic Church teach? They're the only ones with a proper understanding of the

Bible, and they're the only source of salvation. What else do the Roman Catholic Church, what else do they teach that might sound cultish?

Okay. Right. Only the priest can interpret the scripture. You can't understand it for yourself.

Anything else? Okay. Excellent. Church teaching and church tradition are the only means by which you can interpret the scripture.

So what does that mean? It means you can see what it says, but you can't take it literally unless the church says that you can take it literally.

You have to interpret it as the church does. So if you see something like the angel saying to Mary, blessed are you among women?

Well, you can read that and just go, Mary was blessed. Mary, in a lot of ways, is a woman,

I guess other women could emulate or even other Christians could emulate in terms of just being willing to submit to the will of God, right?

I mean, the angel comes and says something pretty outrageous to her, and she just says may it be done to me, right?

But the Roman Catholic church takes that and says, well, this shows that she's a perpetual virgin.

This shows that she never had any sin. This shows, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They extrapolate all these things from a few words in the

New Testament. So they have the magisterium.

They have church tradition. In other words, they have church teaching, church tradition, and both of those ultimately supersede what the

Bible says. That's a problem. Cults do this. Cults have, for example, the

Book of Mormon. And if the Book of Mormon comes into conflict with the Bible, the Book of Mormon wins. If a prophet says something in the

Mormon church that contradicts what the Bible says, well, the prophet wins because that's God speaking to us today.

The watchtower, same sort of thing. And so we have the Pope saying, you don't evangelize people, why don't you evangelize them?

Because that's not how we win people at Christ. But we have Jesus saying, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations.

Who do we believe? Well, the Pope. That's cultish, in my opinion.

You know, cults also teach what? That salvation is not by grace alone through faith alone.

It's by works. And there you have Rome again, joining in that.

So number six. I mean, you'll have to decide for yourself whether it's a cult. I kind of tend to think it is.

Number six, true or false. One may get to heaven apart from faith in Christ. And again, this is something that maybe a cult would say.

And they say, ostensibly, they say that's false.

But listen to this. This is from the Roman Catholic Catechism. Outside the Roman church, there is no salvation.

They're the only way. This affirmation is not aimed at those who through no fault of their own.

What's wrong with that statement? Through no fault of their own, do not know Christ. What's that?

Whose fault is it? Well, and not only that, what does the Bible say in Romans one, right?

It doesn't, you know, when you get to heaven, you're not going to be able to say, you know, when you get to heaven.

When you get to Judgment Day, before you get to heaven, when you get to Judgment Day, you're not going to be able to say, Lord. The only reason

I didn't believe in Jesus is because I never heard. Because the

Bible says that you suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

It doesn't say, well, if you didn't know, I mean, this is, Paul addresses that, that very idea, this idea that, you know, well, what if I was an

Aborigine and Australian and I never heard, you know, or what if I was secluded in some cloister in Italy and I never heard, you know, it doesn't matter.

All men are without excuse. Okay. Right.

Through no fault of their own, do not hear the gospel or do not know the gospel or his church, but who nevertheless seek

God with a sincere heart. Again, what's the problem with that? The Bible says no one seeks and moved by grace, trying their actions to do his will as they know it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

I mean, this is salvation by works. Number seven, true or false? Those who sincerely hold the faith of Abraham, Jews, and Muslims will get to heaven by virtue of believing in the same

God. It's what the Roman Catholic catechism says. So new material, number eight, true or false?

Baptism removes original sin, thus renewing the person to a neutral position with God.

Okay. But listen to the Roman Catholic catechism again. By baptism, all sins are forgiven, original sin and all personal sins, as well as all punishment for sin.

That's a pretty stunning statement. I mean, when you think about it, that's a logical thing to do, right? Live your whole life, wait to get baptized so that your sins are all wiped out and all punishment for sin.

I mean, if that is the case, it really makes you, you know, well, if that was the case, that would be pretty amazing.

Every baby therefore, you know, why do they try to baptize babies in the hospital?

To remove original sin. And it's actually kindness that they're trying to do. But is that true?

Is that what the Bible teaches? It's salvation. I mean, if you have, if baptism removes all your sins from you just by virtue of being baptized, then what does that say about faith?

Unnecessary. It's the act of being baptized that does this for you. Roman Catholic catechism also says this baptism not only purifies from all sins, but also makes the neophyte, the new believer, a new believer and adopted son of God who has become a partaker of the divine nature, member of Christ and coer with him and a temple of the

Holy Spirit. Now, what is baptism becoming a proxy for here? Sounds to me like Jesus, Jesus should have said to Nicodemus, therefore, you must be baptized, right?

Because these are things that are true when you are born again, right? Not by virtue of being baptized.

This is salvation by baptism. Again, the Catholic catechism through baptism, we are freed from sin and reborn as sons of God.

We become members of Christ and are incorporated into the church. Just be baptized.

Number nine. True or false? Historically, it was the Jews who defined the

Old Testament canon and the Roman Church which defined the canon of the New Testament. False, but they would like you to believe that that's true.

One of their apologists, Albert Nevins, said this. Few Protestants stopped to realize that it was the

Catholic Church which defined the Bible, selected the books found in the New Testament canon, and kept this word of God free from error.

Any problems with that statement? Okay. They added the apocrypha, which is completely spurious.

But I wanted you to focus on the last bit there, that the

Roman Catholic Church kept the Bible free from error.

How did they do that? Mark? By using their own

Latin translations. Pure as the driven snow. I mean, what does that sound like?

The church kept the Bible free from error. Trey? Okay, I really like that last part, that they have more power than God.

The church kept it free from error. God? He might have let it go down the drain.

The church, the perfect church, yeah, don't get too close to me,

I might get hit. Few Protestants, I mean, there's just a shade of arrogance here.

Few Protestants stopped to realize it was the Catholic Church which defined the Bible, selected the books found in the

New Testament canon. I mean, it really does, it reminds me of, you know,

I've mentioned this anecdote a few times. I had a friend who went from, a co -worker that went from being a

Lutheran to a Mormon, and then sometime later he claimed to be a born -again

Christian again. But while he was in his Mormon phase, he and I were out in the gym, and he knew

I was a former Mormon, so he says to me, while we're out there working out, he says, isn't it great that we have a prophet in Salt Lake City who can tell us what

God is saying to us today? I said, you know what

I think is great? What's great is that we have a God who is powerful enough to preserve his word against all manner of attack and attempts to subvert it, right?

That's what's great. And the idea that a church or the Roman church is somehow the one who kept it free from error, listen, the

Bible says it is breathed out by God, inspired by God. It doesn't say it is protected by the church.

I mean, we could go through a number of errors in the Roman Catholic Church, even in its history, times where it had up to,

I mean, one of my favorite stories is something called the Babylonian captivity. Anybody familiar with the

Babylonian captivity? And no, I'm not talking about the Jews being carried off into Babylon.

Are you familiar with the Babylonian captivity? This is where there was a period of time where the

Roman Catholic Church had three, kind of three popes. And for a period of a few decades, they spent a lot of time trying to kill each other, you know, to establish themselves as the true vicar of Christ on earth.

There was about, I think this lasted probably about, I think, close to 100 years where there was all this infighting.

One of the popes was in southern France, two of them were in Italy, and it was really bizarre.

But this is the church that preserved the Bible. Okay. Number 10, true or false?

Because the gates of Hades cannot prevail against the church, it is infallible. That's Matthew 16, 18, right?

And the gates of hell, the gates of Hades, yeah, I just think it's false overall.

I mean, here's the question. And let's look at Matthew 16, 18 for a moment, because it is an interesting, yeah, it is.

It's a Kierkegaardian leap of faith, one might say. I'll just read to give us a little context here, starting in verse 13 of Matthew 16.

Now, when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say that the son of man is?

And they said, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

He said to them, but who do you say that I am? And of course, the leader,

Peter, verse 16, Simon Peter replied, you are the

Christ, the son of the living God. Excellent. And Jesus answered him, blessed are you,

Simon Bar -Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven.

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Now, Rome says that that means that Peter is the first pope.

Rome says that that means that there is an unbreakable chain of popes from Peter forward because of this verse.

Rome says that the church at Rome is infallible because of this verse.

I mean, there's a lot that they important that and you can read it. I don't care how many times you read it. You will not come to that same conclusion.

Goes on, verse 19, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. Now, I think it's interesting because they invest all that authority into.

To the Roman church there, but we don't see any mention of Rome or anything else here. These are all things that they've just sort of added to it.

And the point wasn't so much that Peter was tremendous. And we know that because just in a few verses, he says, what

Jesus says to him? Get behind me, Satan. So it's not the infallibility of Peter that he's talking about here.

He's talking about his statements. That statement is true, and only

God could have revealed it to you. It's not something that you came to on your own. That's the point.

None of that other stuff. But this is what Carl Keating, one of the more popular theologians of Monarch Catholicism, says.

He says, we know the church is correct because Christ promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against the church.

The church would be indefectible, its official teaching would be infallible.

To the church through Peter, Christ gave his own teaching authority.

All of that comes out of those verses. I mean, that's a lot.

Thoughts or questions about that? Yeah, Paul rebuked.

I say, yeah, Paul goes to him when Peter is associating with the

Judaizers, and he says, I confronted Peter, this is my own translation, confronted

Peter to his face. I was like, that makes Paul the most amazing man in the whole

New Testament, because he went right to the Pope, right to his face, told me he was teaching false doctrine. I don't know, kind of crazy.

And again, we never get the idea that, certainly we would never see in the

New Testament the idea that Peter was established in Rome and became the Pope or anything like that. There's no hint of Popery in the

New Testament, only Rome teaches that. Other thoughts or questions?

Yes, Mark. Yeah, because, you know, here's,

I think, you know, of course, this is me, fallible Steve speaking, but I think this is a decent application of this verse, because I've used it.

Mormons teach, for those of you who don't know, that there was a falling away from the truth, a complete apostasy from the truth.

And I had a cousin arguing that with me one time, and I said to him, I said, well, let me ask you this. Jesus said that nothing would stop him from building his church.

Joseph Smith says that the church did not exist for 1700 plus years until he reestablished it.

In other words, the gates of hell prevailed against it for 1700 years, stopped it dead.

So either Joseph Smith is a liar, or Jesus was wrong.

Which one do you like? And he goes, well, you know, many plain and precious parts were removed from the

Bible and I just kind of probably, that's their excuse. You know, it's probably a mistranslation. But the idea that the church is infallible is not contained or that, you know, somehow

Peter is invested with everything because he's given the, you know, the other question.

I mean, there are multiple questions here that are not so easily sorted out. Like what does it mean, and I don't intend to address that this morning, that I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.

I mean, what does that mean? You know, is that to Peter specifically?

Is that to Peter as the first Pope and then to all the Popes in succession?

There are a lot of questions there. And it's kind of glib to just say that, what they say.

And erroneous to say that Christ gave his own teaching authority to Peter and then to the unbroken chain of Popes, all from those verses.

All right, number 11. The Roman Catholic Church denies the sufficiency of the

Bible. Absolutely true. Let's look at 2

Timothy 3, or chapter 3, verses 16 and 17, 2

Timothy 3, verses 16 and 17. Would somebody read that, please?

2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17. Okay. Now, that's pretty basic.

So how does Rome get around the idea that, you know, the

Bible is sufficient? This is what they say. The Bible claims to be profitable, but it never says it is sufficient.

Scripture is important, but it does not contain all of God's Word. Catholics point out that John 20, 30, which says, you know, if all the things that were...

If all the stories were written about Jesus, all the books in the world couldn't contain them. Therefore, they say that there are other passages that not everything

Jesus or the Apostle said or did was recorded. Therefore, the argument goes, Scripture alone cannot fully contain the truth about God.

Well, how do we know? Would we agree with that? That Scripture alone cannot fully contain all the truth about God?

God is infinite. Well, he's... I mean, even if you just stop there, God is infinite. In other words, there's, you know, when will we stop learning about God?

Never. I mean, that's going to be ongoing for all of eternity. So that part is true.

That doesn't mean... That has nothing to do with the sufficiency of Scripture. What does it mean that the

Bible is sufficient? It's all we need.

It doesn't mean that that's all that there is. It just means it's all that we need. Now, why would a church go around denying the sufficiency of Scripture, saying it's not all you need?

So that the tradition of the church and the teaching of the church can supplant the Word of God so that you need them, right?

I mean, what would Rome, Salt Lake City, all these other places, what would they have?

How would they keep people hooked to them if they said, well, you don't really need us? And they wouldn't.

They wouldn't have that hook. Number 12, true or false, the

Roman church denies the inspiration of the Bible. Okay, I have a false.

I mean, it'd be pretty hard to deny it, right, since the Bible says it's inspired.

But listen to what Keating says. He says, in fact, no

New Testament writer seems to be aware that he was writing under the impulse of the Holy Spirit. With the exception of the author of Revelation, then he goes on to say, the church tells us the

Bible is inspired and we can take the church's word for it precisely because the church is infallible.

So it's not that the New Testament says that it's inspired, it's that the church says that it's inspired.

That's why it's inspired. Is there a place where maybe the

Bible says that it is inspired? Exactly.

Yeah, in 2 Peter, I think, chapter three, he said, you know, they distort

Paul's letters as they do other scripture, right? So yeah, the

Bible does say that it is inspired. I mean, we could go to other places to look at that.

But the idea that the church says that it's, you know, again, just think about it. The church says the church, the church of Rome says it preserves

God's word from error. It says it declares the Bible to be infallible.

It says it is the one who established the canon, you know, the measurement for all the

New Testament books and chose them. Again, it's this idea of taking ultimately the place of God.

Number 13, true or false. The Roman church says the Holy Spirit prevents church tradition from being corrupted.

True is correct. True is correct.

And of course, let's look at John 14, 16 for a moment.

You know, it's interesting. One of the other signs of a cult, and I'll leave it to you to decide whether Rome is a cult or not, is that they do something called proof texting.

What is proof texting? Okay, taking scripture out of context to make a point.

Sometimes the context doesn't even really matter. A lot of times, I mean, you know, for example,

Mormons say that they baptize for the dead because the Bible says to baptize for the dead.

Is that true? If it is true, why don't we do it?

And they would say, you don't do it because you're not a true church. And the true church was gone for 1 ,700 plus years.

But here's why they do it. 1 Corinthians 15, 29. Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead?

If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? Now, those verses are difficult.

In fact, I think I stopped counting at like 35 or 40 different interpretations of that.

But does that mean that we should do our genealogy so that we can find out who our ancestors were who were not baptized?

Be baptized for them in proxy because when they go, when they die and they're in heaven, they need somebody to be baptized on earth for them so that they can hear the gospel in, actually it's called spirit prison.

So that they can believe the baptism will be counted for them and then they can go into heaven.

That's Mormon teaching. It's clear as it could be from 1 Corinthians 15. This is the kind of thing that cults do, right?

They twist scripture, they give it a meaning that nobody could possibly extrapolate. And then they say, well, of course, that's what it means.

So John 14, 16, somebody read that. Okay, so from that, this is what

Keating says. He says, it means that the church's tradition is guided by the

Holy Spirit who protects tradition from corruption. Again, this is the kind of thing where you read something and you know,

Janet and I were talking about it on the way in. This is like, how many of you are familiar with the legal reasoning behind Roe v

Wade? I'm not gonna talk about abortion. I'm just gonna talk about reasoning here. The idea behind Roe v

Wade, the idea that you have a right to privacy was the first part. But the second part is, part of that privacy is that you have the right to an abortion.

And they called it the emanations from this right of privacy, emanations from the

Constitution. Like the, I think it's called the perturbations. It's the vibrations, you know, the echoes that come from the

Constitution. And so it's like from the echoes of John 14, 16, you know, this idea that somehow that's going to prevent the church from the traditions being corrupt.

I don't know how you get that from, I want Jesus saying he's going to ask the

Father who will send the Holy Spirit and he will be with you forever.

I don't know how that works exactly, but that's what they teach. Number 14, true or false?

The Roman church, and I didn't put the TRF there before 14 and 15, terrible. Shameful. True or false?

The Roman church claims scripture and tradition depend on each other.

True, because I have to put in a true every now and then. Listen to the Second Vatican Council.

There exists a connection and a communication between sacred tradition and sacred scripture for both of them flowing from the same divine wellspring.

In a certain way, merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. Therefore, both sacred tradition and sacred scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence.

Now, what's the practical outworking of that? Of saying, you know, I'll just get rid of all the mumbo jumbo.

Of saying that tradition and scripture must be considered equals.

What's the practical outworking of that? Okay, it's at least as powerful as the word of God, right?

Larry, when it's scripture plus, plus always takes over.

So if it's the Bible plus tradition, what does that mean? It ultimately means tradition.

If the two are in conflict, who wins? Tradition, right? It's like if, you know, for any,

I can't help myself. For any cult, you know, if it's the watchtower and the

Bible, well, what ultimately wins? It's the watchtower. Any set of false teaching, they're going to bring some other authority.

And that's one of the main, one of the main facets of a cult is, don't believe your own eyes, believe us, right?

Don't believe what the Bible says, believe what we teach about the Bible. And that's the idea.

Tradition, sacred scripture, and, you know, true or false, this is a bonus question. Church tradition and church teaching in Rome has changed over time.

They will say that's absolutely false. It's never changed at all. And yet, how can that be? If you look back at the history of church teaching, for example, on Mary, it has developed over time.

It has become more refined over time. And she's gotten quite a bit more veneration over time.

And they can call that whatever they want. I'd say that that's change. And, you know, now that you have a pope who says, people don't become

Christians by hearing the gospel. They become Christians by seeing my holy life and asking me questions about it.

How can I be as holy as you, your holiness? I mean, there's a certain humility that attends that,

I think. Yeah, I mean, and they did hold to the tradition of men.

And certainly, you know, here's what they say in defending. You know, let's get to that.

The Roman Catholic Church defends tradition. Now, are there good traditions? I think there are, right?

Can you think of a church tradition that's a good one? Pop Providence, excellent. I was holding out for corn dog, but I'll take corn dogs.

I'll take... I mean, we do have church traditions, right? I mean, some of the things that we do are traditional more than...

I mean, you can't exactly... Well, for example, you know, we have some form of methodology for church membership.

There's nothing laid out. It's clear that we are to belong to a church, but there's nothing in the

Bible about, for example, a membership class, right? I'm trying to think of a really good example of a church tradition other than having a really bad parking lot.

What's... Singing hymns, except, you know, it is biblical, right? Singing hymns and making melodies and encouraging one another with those kind of...

That's certainly biblical. I'm trying to think of something that we do that... Yes, Jody.

No, there wouldn't be. In fact, I've tried to encourage Pastor Mike to just one week start with the sermon just to upset the latecomers.

Yes, sorry. I'm just confessing my sin right now, so... Oh, okay.

I was just getting a silent amen from the back. Yeah, which is fine, right?

I mean, some churches do communion every Sunday. I think that's a good tradition to have.

I mean, there are traditions that are not wrong. The question isn't, is all tradition wrong?

The question is, you know, is tradition...

If tradition comes in a conflict with Scripture, which one should win? And the answer should be

Scripture. They would say, well, there is no conflict.

You just don't understand Scripture properly. And then they will, you know, change the clear meaning of Scripture.

So, number 15. The Roman church says only it can correctly interpret

Scripture. What does that tell you?

You know, I mean, suppose Pastor Mike got up this morning, and he won't, by the way, and he said, you can only trust me.

I am the only one who can rightly interpret Scripture. I mean, you should be gone.

But listen to what Rome says. Sacred tradition, sacred Scripture, and the teaching authority of the church are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others.

Two of the three legs on the stool can change and have the ability to reinterpret the third. That's me.

But the Bible does not have that ability. In practice, then, the Bible is interpreted in light of tradition and the magisterium, which is the church teaching, rendering it effectively third as a source of revelation of God.

So, you know, they say only we... I mean, for centuries, the

Roman Catholic church didn't want people to have access to the Bible. Why? Because they knew if they weren't the only arbiter of truth, if they knew that if other people had the ability to study it on their own and saw a conflict between what they taught and the

Scripture, that there would be problems in the church, that there would be what they called schisms.

And what is the Reformation but a schism? They don't want anybody else to interpret

Scripture. And again, you know, I think that is a classic element of a cult.

Only we have the truth. We are the exclusive arbiters of what truth is.

You know, Bethlehem Bible Church, we would say this, that we think that there are Presbyterians, that there are

Baptists, that there are a lot of different people in different denominations who proclaim the truth.

Even some Anglicans and some other Reformed folks who preach the gospel correctly, we wouldn't agree with them on everything, but there are primary and there are tertiary matters.

Now, if I say to you that somebody denies, for example, the penal substitution theory of the atonement, that is to say that our sins were placed on Christ and he died on the cross for our sins, the payment for our sins.

If somebody denies that, would you say that that person is a good teacher? I would not say that and I would not recommend that person to you.

What's that? Because it's a non -negotiable, it's a primary aspect of the gospel.

There can't be any negotiation with that. But if somebody teaches a different eschatology or, you know, some other secondary or tertiary level element that isn't critical, well, that's okay.

And I wouldn't say, you know, don't listen to anything they say. But when it comes to Rome, Rome says that it alone dispenses the truth.

It alone dispenses salvation. It alone is able to interpret scripture.

I mean, there are so many alones, they should have their own solace, you know, but they'd all wind up with the church alone.

The church alone can do this and can do that. And they really usurp a lot of the authority of Jesus Christ himself.

And it's a very arrogant way of looking at things.

Any questions or concerns? I mean, you know, in light of the email sent out last night from Ken and Laura, I would just say this about, you know, how do you evangelize then

Roman Catholics? And I think the key with almost any unbeliever, and most

Roman Catholics, the vast majority of them, are not believers. I mean, there may be a few believers in the

Roman Catholic Church, but that would be the exceptions. But I think the key with any unbeliever is this, how are you going to get to heaven?

You know, how does your church teach that you get to heaven? And anybody who actually understands the

Roman Catholic teaching understands this, that they have to be baptized, that they have to take communion, that they have to do all these different things, right?

They have to do these things to get to heaven. And even then, guess what? They have no guarantee.

Because the...what's the council? Council of Trent. Thank you. Council of Trent says that if you know, if you have assurance of your salvation, if you know that you're going to heaven, then you are condemned.

But John writes in his gospel that these things are written so that you may know that Jesus is the

Son of God, and that by believing in him, you have eternal life. There's a real problem with the church at Rome.

And the only way to really engage Roman Catholics is to drive them back.

A lot of them don't know what the church teaches. So it's important, you know, once they can articulate what the church says, and you can show them from the

Bible that that's not what the Bible says, then they have to defend for them, you know, they have to decide for themselves.

They have to either defend Rome or not. But I think the more involved they are with researching what the church teaches, the more they should wind up thinking, this doesn't sound right to me, because it's not right.

Any thoughts or questions about the church at Rome? And I really have, I mean,

I have a special aversion to it, not only because so many people out here are just duped into thinking that they're good to go because they were baptized.

I mean, again, just thinking about what Rome teaches about baptism. Wipes away original sin and every sin you've ever committed.

Well, if that's what you think of baptism, then you can pretty much live the way you want, especially if you just read that as, okay, my past sins as a baby, right, my future sins.

Or even if you just look at it this way, that wipes out original sin and whatever sins I commit during the course of my lifetime, well, guess what?

I can pay for those in purgatory. So is it any wonder that a

Roman Catholic would think I can live however I want? Because that's kind of what the church teaches.

So I think it's important if we're witnessing to these folks to just drive them back to the Bible, to present the gospel to them as the good news and then say, well, that's really not what your church teaches.

And I just don't think Roman Catholics, by and large, know enough about their church to even be able to defend it.

Anyway, if there are no questions, we'll just close in prayer. Yeah. Well, I mean, has anybody been to a mass?

I mean, for the most part, these little...

And when I go to funeral masses, I'm pretty much horrified because, you know, we hear things like that we know this person is in heaven because they got baptized and they did, you know, they'll have a list of good works that they did while they were alive.

Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. But for the most part, I've never been to a regular mass.

So correct me if I'm wrong, but there's some kind of random. I mean, it's not completely random, but a reading of some scripture or another.

And then just a homily. But it's, yeah, it's pretty fluffy.

And they never get into church teaching per se. You probably have to go to some kind of seminary or something to really get, you know, into the nitty gritty.

So, yeah. Yeah. But I mean, again, what is it? Yeah. And, you know, you just kneel before Zod.

You kneel before the priest and you get your wafer and you're, you know, you're on your way. So it's a it's a very shallow.

It's just very much a and if you think about it from the Roman perspective, this is that this is their tradition.

Let's keep the people ignorant about what we teach, because as long as they don't understand what we teach, they'll just keep coming week after week and doing their duty.

And that's all they want. So, yes.

Well, yeah, terrified to the point where they would just burn people at the stake for doing it, for putting the Bible into the common language.

Well, let's go ahead and close in prayer. Father, we thank you for the truth. We thank you for your word.

We thank you for the gospel of Jesus Christ. We thank you that sinners are saved not by what they do, but by what

Jesus has done. Lord, give us the the grace and the strength to proclaim the gospel to our

Roman Catholic neighbors, friends, family. And just to even press back on their claims that they're

OK. And ask them if they really know why they're going to be going as they presume to heaven, that they're going to get past, as they claim,

St. Peter at the gate. Lord, open their eyes. Let them see the great peril that they're in.

Even as we think about Ken and Laura's family. Just open their eyes to the reality that the

Catholic Church is a Christless, truthless, gospel -less church.