Examining Ecumenism (part 3)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Father, we thank you for those who are able to make it here this morning and to do so safely.

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We thank you for all the things that you provide for us, even a building to shelter us from the cold, snow plows to clear the roads, and technology that makes it even possible for us to meet here.

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Father, we praise you for all things, but more than anything else, we praise you for reconciliation, for declaring us righteous through the work of your

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Son, Jesus Christ. Lord, would you be pleased to bless our time this morning as we discuss things of, again, of ecumenism and the things surrounding that, and Lord, I pray that you'd bless this time in Christ's name.

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Amen. Well, it's been an interesting few weeks.

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I wonder, I was just talking to Peggy, I wonder if you've had this experience before. And maybe you haven't, maybe you're just better than me.

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Have you ever, which is entirely possible, have you ever been accused of being, oh

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I don't know, let's see, what exact, let me see if I can bring the exact phrase to mind, well, a fundamentalist.

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Has anybody been accused of being a fundamentalist? Have you been accused of stopping your thinking processes, shutting off your brain, failing to use reason and logic, being very narrow -minded, arrogant,

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I'm sorry, intolerant, so there's a good one, know -it -all.

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The funniest thing to me, I mean, I just had a so -called Christian, you know, accuse me of being a fundamentalist and everything, and I said, you know, this is what ends all debates.

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I said, if you mean fundamentalist in the sense of the essays written and edited by R .A.

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Torrey in the early 1900s, well then I, and they just, what are you talking about,

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I have no idea what you're talking about, so it's, you know, if you're going to throw around terms it's good to have that snappy repartee and just shut them down.

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Why do people, what is it that offends people the most? Even people who refer to themselves as Christians, what is it that just turns them off?

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Pam. How dare you say, or kind of infer, that you're the only person who has the proper interpretation of the

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Bible? Brian. Claiming that the

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Bible is absolutely true, claiming that it is absolute truth. In fact, this so -called Christian, you know, basically was trying to defend evolution, trying to say, you know,

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I mean, there's this whole, you know, conversation about predestination, and I'm like, you know,

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I'm so, really, if you get to know me you'll know this is true. I'm pretty simple -minded, and when

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I come to the Bible and it says, God predestined, or before the foundations of the world he chose us, and you know, it uses that sort of language,

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I read it and I go, oh, well I guess that means before the foundations of the world, in other words, before anything was created,

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God chose us. I don't know, that's just, you know, if that makes me a literalist, a fundamentalist, narrow -minded, well, that's what

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I am. And that is, like, that is to say, you know, it's like John Dillinger standing in front of bank presidents in the, what was it, the 20s, 30s, help me out,

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Mark, when was that? Look for the youngest guy in the room and point to him.

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I mean, it's like him standing up in front of the bank presidents and saying, you know, thus saith John, I mean, people, people, you are enemy number one if you dare say anything like there is truth and it can be known.

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Or you know what, scientists don't know everything, I mean, this whole, I will get to this thing in a minute, but it just struck me, just reading about global warming this week,

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I just started thinking about it, I'm going, you know what, here's the basic, first of all, the idea that carbon dioxide, which makes life possible, is a pollutant, is kind of a unique thought.

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But the other thing is, when you think about carbon -14 dating and how they do it with tree rings and everything else, well, how do they know exactly, because if you just take a bunch of tree rings from all around the planet and you can more or less figure out what the temperatures were allegedly by the amount of carbon inside the tree rings, follow me, how do you know exactly when those trees ceased living exactly?

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And how do you know exactly, how do you then, with no error whatsoever, map it out all over the place and you say, well, you don't have to be exact, you can, you know, it can be 98, 99 % accurate or whatever, well, okay, if it's 98 or 99 % accurate, that means what, the temperature could be off by half a degree or so, well, what are we talking about?

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We're only talking about, well, temperatures have gone up half a degree over the, anyway,

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I digress. Scientists don't know everything. And to illustrate that point, I just say, you know what, how long ago was it that they thought the

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Earth was the center of the universe, etc., when, and, you know, if you talk to an evolutionist, they'll say, that's stupid, nobody believes that now.

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Okay. And I say, in a thousand years, everybody will look back at evolution and go, that's stupid, nobody believes that now.

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They'll have something else, they'll have something better. All I have to say, all I wanted to say, the main thing was, if you stand for truth, you are seen as old -fashioned, is it luddites, luddites, is it luddites?

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Nobody knows. What are you, a bunch of luddites? Anti -technology people is what that means, you know, the electronic light bulb was the end of the world as far as they were concerned.

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But I just kind of want to get us in the mindset, you just need to understand, and I'm sure you do, the world in which you live is one that doesn't like people who say, well, this is what the

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Bible says, and I believe that. And this is true even among Christians. With that said, we've been talking about ecumenism, we've been talking about the

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Manhattan, I think it's document, or Manhattan Declaration, not the Manhattan Project.

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I don't normally teach about nuclear weapons in class, although I think we did mention it, but, yeah.

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And we're down, we're on page six, does somebody want to talk about nuclear weapons?

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We're on page six, we've been talking about this idea that is being promoted now, and it's interesting to me, and we'll talk about this, the source of this promotion,

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I think, but this idea that's being promoted that evangelicals, Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and I think it's important to note that the document says over and over again, you know, we as Christians, and then we go forward and we talk about the things that we as Christians need to do, and to me what this does then is it defines what

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Christians, what that term means. Well, what does it mean? If it means, as I found out with my

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Roman Catholic friend, here as I was interacting with him on the internet, he said, well, you know,

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Rome, the Church of Rome doesn't have a really hard and fast definition of predestination.

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I'm going, well, I find that fascinating. How could that be? Well, because it would get in the way of other things that they want to teach.

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But to define Christians in the most broad way so that we can get to what's really important, to solving the world's problems.

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And believe me, it's not going to stop with gay marriage. It's not going to stop with abortion.

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It's not going to stop with any of these things. It's going to go further. We're going to get involved, and we've already seen this in some evangelical mindsets.

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We have to get rid of poverty. We have to stop global warming. We have to preserve this. We have to do this.

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We have to do that. It's all about social justice, about ending mosquito attacks in Africa.

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I mean, literally. Let's get rid of malaria for just $21 a month. Okay? Some of these are very laudable, good goals, but the question is, is it what we do because we want to help people because we care about their physical needs, or is it about the gospel, about being a

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Christian? So, I don't know exactly where we left off, but let's start with Phil Johnson.

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I remember we started his question, so we'll just kind of scan and catch up on that because of the storm and me going to Rhode Island.

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I think we're maybe a little bit foggy on some of these things. No pun intended. Questions from Phil Johnson in the middle of page 6.

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Do you see, note well my wording, scriptural warrant for applying the word Christian to anyone other than one who is yoked as a student to the words of Christ and his apostles, who affirms the gospel as described in number 2 above,

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Acts 26 -28, and who has been spiritually regenerated by grace alone through faith alone, 1

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Peter 4 -16, 1 Peter 1, 3 -5, et cetera, et cetera.

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I'm sure we can come up with other scriptures. Do you see a warrant, a scriptural warrant for applying the word

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Christian to anyone other than someone who actually is biblically defined as a

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Christian? And again, we get to that idea of narrow -mindedness, of saying, well, you know what, this is what the

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Bible says about being a Christian, about being a follower, a disciple of Christ.

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You know, did Jesus set the bar low, or did he set it high? Did he just say, anyone who wants to say they're a

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Christian, come on, let's go? He did exactly the opposite.

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He chased people away. In terms of church growth, Jesus didn't know anything. You know, if you listen to the current experts, he had thousands and thousands of people following him, and he taught really hard doctrines so that they weren't following him anymore, as we see at the end of John chapter 6.

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They left. Maybe if he'd, you know, offered to clean their camels or whatever, you know, stuff they had, they would have stuck around, but that's not what he was doing.

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Point J, do you see, again, note well my wording, this is Phil Johnson, a scriptural warrant for applying the word Christian to anyone who would distort and oppose that gospel, either personally or by aligning himself directly as a supporter, let alone promoter of such institutional distortion and opposition?

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K, I'm going to read this, and then we're going to go to Galatians 1, verses 6 to 9.

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Do you believe that distortion of that gospel is a damning heresy, such as falls under the thundering apostolic condemnation of Galatians 1, verses 6 to 9?

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Let's read that, and if you recall, of all the churches in the

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New Testament, even the Church of Corinthians got a pretty warm welcome.

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The Church of Galatians gets, essentially, a shotgun blast to the face. I'm going to read this because I want this to have the proper kind of sarcasm here.

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Paul writes, I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another, only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.

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But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed.

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As we have said before, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed.

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Now, accursed in modern terms means, apparently, that you lock arms with him and you march down the street.

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I'm not saying that we should just, you know, walk around and every Catholic we see say, cursed, cursed, cursed, cursed.

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That's not the point. He's talking about people who proclaim this, and so what is this Manhattan Declaration all about?

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It's about leaders of the Roman Catholic Church. I mean, we have Catholic cardinals, bishops, orthodox leaders, bishops, and then evangelicals of various denominations.

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All signing onto this, and rather than highlighting the differences, what it does for everyone, for believer and unbeliever alike, is it blurs those differences.

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It's not the Galatians 1, they're condemned, we need to evangelize them, we need them to repent.

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It's kind of like, well, you know what? Those are secondary issues. Those are matter of trivia doctrine.

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You know, little, if we could have Bible trivia, trivial pursuits, and just kind of roll the dice and answer those kind of questions, it's for pinheads to worry about, not really that important compared to gay marriage, abortion, really.

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So I said a few weeks ago, if we could stop every abortion in America, if we could outlaw gay marriage entirely, how many extra people are going to heaven?

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The answer, of course, is zero. Our objective isn't to make this a better planet, it is to change lives.

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Are we in charge of the planet as men generally, mankind generally? Yes. Are we to be stewards?

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Yes. Are these things trivial, you know, poverty, abortion, of course they're not trivial issues, they're important issues.

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But we make a mistake when we, under the banner of Christ, we join with people who are not

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Christians. Now he writes in L, do you believe that Roman Catholicism's official formulation of the gospel is such a damning heresy?

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If you don't believe that, skip down to M, can a church be a

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Christian church if it has the gospel wrong? I mean, these are just like, these should just be duh.

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N, what do you believe the Reformation was about? Well, what was the Reformation about?

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Was it about trivial issues? Brian, was it about even indulgences,

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Becky says. Brian, it was about the restoration of the gospel.

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Why? Because Rome had wandered far afield, you know, from the point or to the point where you could, as Becky was even talking about, buy an indulgence to get somebody out of purgatory, you know, win a coin into the coffer springs, clings, yeah, it's clings.

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Win into the coffer, coins, spring, clings, you know, soul from purgatory springs, whatever, you know, that was the whole idea, you know.

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I mean, just imagine, again, I've talked about this before, the whole idea of the Pope kind of being the gatekeeper to purgatory.

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And so that, you know, you go, well, your holiness, how much will it cost me to get Aunt Betty out of purgatory?

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If I was the Pope, I'd go, hey, financial secretary, what's Steve's giving, you know?

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And well, he gave X. Okay, well, let's make it fine to get the indulgence to get

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Aunt Betty out of purgatory will be one half X. Half of what I gave last year, yep, you got to step it up, pal.

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On the other hand, if the Pope is really Christ's vicar on earth, in other words, his representative on earth, how can he just stand by idly while people are suffering in purgatory?

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Why wouldn't he have compassion on them and just let them all out? Anyway, what do you think the

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Reformation was all about? Well, it was about the gospel. Let's see.

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Oh, this is for me. I'm trying to figure out what SC stands for, that's Steve Cooley. True or false,

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Luther said justification was, justification by stopping gay marriage is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls.

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Well, it's false. I mean, we're just, you know, this whole movement is just lost in the weeds.

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Point number six, several significant evangelicals did not sign the documents and their reasoning,

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I think, is helpful. Let's see what R .C. Sproul said on page seven.

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In answer to the question R .C., why didn't you sign the Manhattan Declaration? I offer the following answer.

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The Manhattan Declaration confuses common grace. What is common grace? What's that?

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Grace given to everybody. He causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. Okay? Manhattan Declaration confuses common grace and special grace, special grace being that which is only given to those who are saved by combining them.

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While I would march with the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, and an orthodox prelate,

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I guess that must be a high -ranking office, to resist the slaughter of innocents in the womb,

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I could never ground that co -belligerency, in other words, working together on social issues on the assumption that we share a common faith and a unified understanding of the

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Gospel. The framers of the Manhattan Declaration seem to have calculated this objection into the language of the document itself.

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Likewise, some signers have stated that this is not a theological document. However, to make that statement accurate requires a redefinition of theology and serious equivocation on the biblical meaning of the

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Gospel. Again, I think

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I cited it earlier in the notes, you'll have to look back and see it, but it says, and you can look it up online certainly and see it, but it says, as Christians, we, you know, the undersigned, etc.,

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etc., so it is definitely singing songs, carrying signs, marching under the banner of Christ.

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Sproul continues, the Roman Catholic Church has a long history of using studied ambiguity in order to win over opponents.

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Studied ambiguity, what does that mean? It means kind of nebulous terms or, you know, asking questions like, what does is mean?

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Things like that where, you know, you're really fighting over small definitions and terms and it doesn't really matter ultimately.

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He says, or she does, let me be unambiguous, let me be clear. Without a clear understanding of sola fide, that is salvation by faith alone, and the doctrine of the imputation of Christ's righteousness, you do not have the

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Gospel or Gospel unity. Let's look at 2

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Corinthians 5 .21. This is a verse that we should know well because it's absolutely one of my favorite verses in the

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Bible and a great passage talking about the reconciliation, the reconciliation that Christ accomplished.

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Who has 2 Corinthians 5 .21? So I can get a drink of water. Brian Bartlett, would you read that please? Good. Now, if we just analyze this a little bit, this is talking about, as R .C.

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said here, the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us.

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He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf. It's imputation of our sin to Christ and then if we read other places, we would see clearly, you know, we are saved by his life.

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We're saved by his righteousness. So it's both. He takes our sin, we get his righteousness.

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Is that what Rome teaches? Let me go to my Roman Catholic expert in the corner.

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Is that what Rome teaches, Brian? No. Thank you for that succinct answer. No, they don't.

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They teach not imputation. In other words, an actual transfer, you know, like, let me make it a crass analogy, taking money out of the account of Jesus and putting it into our account.

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In that same way, we get his righteousness transferred from his account into ours. His unlimited merit is transferred to our account.

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Something that we can never earn. By contrast, Rome teaches infused righteousness.

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Anybody care to explain in some manner or form? Infused versus imputed?

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We're actually made righteous, Brian. Okay, the soul becomes beautiful to God and so in an infusion, as you do things, listen to that again, as you do things, as you are baptized, as you partake communion, and I think when you get married, last rites, and I think there's maybe one or two other ones, there are several sacraments that actually infuse righteousness into you, actually make you righteous.

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But then what happens? You sin and you lose it.

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You lose your righteousness, so it's like the glory of the Lord fills you and then leaves. You know, it's

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Ichabod. No, that's right. It's not Christ's righteousness, it's your own, which when

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I was talking to this Roman Catholic on the board, it was just bizarre because he kept wanting us to be righteous in and of ourselves and I couldn't really get it and that's why.

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You know, God judges us on our righteousness and I'm like, I hope not. I mean, that would be really,

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I mean, it's like I had this friend and we were doing this yard sale in our old house in California and our friend was over there because he was kind of selling some stuff at our own yard sale.

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Don't even ask me about that. Anyway, we're sitting out there and these two little

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Mormon missionary gals come strolling along and, you know, they've got their sister, whatever name on, and they're checking out the yard sales and all that.

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And so my friend says, hey, what are you guys doing here today? And I said, oh, we're just going around the neighborhood giving people the good news of Jesus Christ.

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And so my friend says, well, that's interesting. Why don't you, what is the good news? And so they explain it really, you know, kind of in their own way, but basically to manage a do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

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He says, that's not good news. That's horrible news. You know, you're walking around the neighborhood giving people spiritual strychnine.

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Stop it. And they're like, he goes, here's the good news. And they're like, they had no idea.

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But this idea of being good or being righteous or doing something to make yourself more pleasing to God, that is the essence of every false religion.

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Back to what R .C. Sproul says here. The ECT initiative, what is ECT? Evangelicals and Catholics together.

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It's not some kind of mouthwash, which is what I initially thought. The ECT initiative repeatedly avowed that the signatories had a unity of faith in the gospel.

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This included, and by the way, they did that by redefining, I think it was justification, but justification because they left out by faith.

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It was just justification. Nicely done. And that's what he means by studied ambiguity.

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If you just kind of tweak the words a little bit, you can kind of bring everybody under the umbrella. This included

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Roman Catholic signers who affirmed the canons and decrees of 16th century Council of Trent, which anathematizes sola fide.

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Let me read that again. This included Roman Catholic signers who affirmed the canons and decrees of the 16th century

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Council of Trent, which anathematizes sola fide. Now, what is true about a

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Roman Catholic church council? Who knows what those councils do?

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They get together in the council, obviously, but what is a result of a Catholic council?

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Yeah. Joni says they interpret the scriptures for all who are going to be hearing them. Is it something that the church takes seriously?

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Again, this Roman Catholic that I was talking to wanted to present councils, and I'm like, I don't really care about councils.

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Are councils inspired by God? They say, the

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Roman Catholic church says that they're infallible, that these councils cannot be wrong. Here's what

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I say. I say that Jeremiah 17 .9, the heart is deceitful and wicked above all else, who can know it?

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I say that sin hangover, even if in the best church council, is going to be imperfect.

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Why? Because it is written by men, not necessarily, especially with Trent, but not necessarily even attended by the

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Spirit of God, but certainly not said anywhere to be inspired. The difference between the

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Roman Catholic church and any evangelical church is, just to be succinct about it,

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Roman Catholic church has church tradition, church teaching, and scripture as its sources of knowledge.

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And when scripture conflicts with tradition or teaching, which one loses? Scripture. Keep that hand low.

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And it's interesting, again, because it's says that, now, so the

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Council of Trent, they would say, is still in force, it is infallible, it is true, it is right, its declarations are correct, and it anathematizes sola fide, which means, if you believe that salvation is by faith alone,

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Rome says, you're cursed. Rome says, you are bound for hell. Of course, they've sort of stepped back a little bit from that, realizing that they no longer rule the world.

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We aren't going to see too many Roman Catholics walking around with, I subscribe to the Council of Trent t -shirts.

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That's not, you are anathematized. Sproul goes on, he says,

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I believe there are true and sincere Christians within the Roman Catholic and the

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Orthodox churches, but these people are Christians in spite of their church's official doctrinal positions, because the church teaches a false gospel.

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Point number three, down there at the bottom of page seven. Lastly, I stand with the sentiments expressed by my friends

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Alistair Begg, Michael Horton, and John MacArthur, and I appreciate their willingness to say no to the call to get aboard the band, this bandwagon, as they continue to stand firm in their proclamation of the gospel and the whole counsel of God as it pertains to all matters of faith and life, including the sanctity of life, the meaning of marriage, and the nature of religious liberty.

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It is only in our united proclamation of the one true gospel of Jesus Christ that any heart, any mind, or any nation could truly change by God's sovereign grace and for his glory alone.

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This is exactly what I've been saying. The essence of it is we need to keep the gospel pristine.

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We need to protect it. We need to guard it. What we don't want to do is confuse unbelievers to confuse people who may be believers that are within the larger

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Roman Catholic or Orthodox community. Confuse them by saying, listen, you're against abortion, we're against abortion.

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Sorry. You're against gay marriage, we're against gay marriage. You want to save the environment, we want to save the environment.

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You want... But, can I talk to you about where we disagree?

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Why? You've already said that we're all Christians. You signed that document that says we're Christians. Why would you now tell me that I'm not a

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Christian? Very mixed message.

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Michael Horton, recently interviewed by our own Pastor Mike on No Compromise Radio, you can look it up.

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He says, this is on top of page 8, this declaration, talking about the Manhattan Declaration, continues this tendency to define the gospel as something other than the specific announcement of the forgiveness of sins and declaration of righteousness solely by Christ's merits.

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Something other than that. Why? Because, again, if we have Rome and we have the

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Greek Orthodox or whatever other church there that teach a different gospel and we all say that we're

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Christians, we've just completely given away the gospel. Given it away. The document recites a host of Christian contributions to Western culture, which

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I think is fine. Maybe it should be in a book somewhere. Adding, this is from the document itself, like those who have gone before us in the faith.

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Listen to this language. Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the gospel of costly grace.

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Now, what part of the gospel is this? Listen. To protect the intrinsic dignity of the human person and to stand for the common good.

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I think those are fine things, but it is in the gospel. In being true to its own calling, the call to discipleship, the church through service to others can make a profound contribution to the public good.

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I think it's fine to contribute to the public good. I just don't think we, again,

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I don't think we should mix that up, dilute it in terms of what it means to be a Christian.

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The declaration concludes, it is our duty to proclaim the gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in season and out of season.

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May God help us not to fail in that duty. Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, we all should not fail to proclaim the gospel that we don't agree on.

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Horton concludes in an interview, Mr. Coulson repeatedly referred to this document as a defense of the gospel and the duty of defending these truths as our common proclamation of the gospel as Roman Catholics, Orthodox and Evangelicals.

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Having participated in conversations with Mr. Coulson over these issues or over this issue,

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I can assure the readers this is not an oversight. He shares Pope's John Paul II and Benedict XVI with them the conviction that defending the unborn is a form of proclaiming the gospel.

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Although these impressive figures point to general revelation, natural law and creation in order to justify the inherent dignity of life, marriage and liberty, they insist on making this interchangeable with the gospel.

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Again, these are good things. It is a good thing to protect babies. It is a good thing to protect marriage.

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It is a good thing to protect religious liberty. It is not a good thing to make this a part of the gospel or to unite, to yoke ourselves with those who teach a false gospel.

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Comments or questions, Joni? Joni says, why do they keep having these councils if they're infallible?

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And she says, also if you go to a Catholic mass, I speak for a living, they kind of cut, they don't cut and paste necessarily, but they don't read large sections of scripture.

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It's just a verse here, a verse there. And I think, though, that that's true in a lot of Protestant and broadly evangelical churches as well, where the study,

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I mean, I was just talking to a pastor this last week, and it was funny but sad, because I was asking him basically if he would marry a believer and an unbeliever.

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And he said to me that no, he wouldn't, and he outlined the reasons why. And then he said, though,

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I said, so if someone was, let's say, a Catholic who went to church once or twice a year, a

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C &E Catholic, would you then marry that to somebody who attended your church, that person to someone?

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And he said, well, probably not. We have a very strict discipling process and everything.

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But if he made a profession of faith, you know, and I'm like, he says, you know,

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I started doing this thing, and he said, if he made a profession of faith, I wouldn't judge him on his church attendance or lack of attendance.

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Okay. I'm not going to say that I know everything.

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Here's what I do know, that the Bible says if you love Christ, you love the brethren.

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You know, the Bible says if you are born again, you're a new creation in God, you know, the old things have passed away, new things have come.

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There's a change in affections, a change of direction of your life. And so if we look at somebody before the profession of faith and after the profession of faith, and we go, you know,

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I can't really see any difference. Maybe there wasn't a difference, but he wouldn't even, you know, make that leap.

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But I really wasn't in a place to kind of instruct him on that. Probably not a good idea anyway.

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But I just found the whole thing kind of deflating, that he would have this view of that.

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Let's, yeah, Charlie. Yes, the

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Roman Catholic Church has done a lot of horrible things and burned a lot of Protestants at the stake, but it was for the purity of the church.

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So, listen, I mean, it's, I mean, that's what they'll say.

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You know, I mean, they wouldn't say that now, but if you look back in history, that's what they'd say. You know, Mary Queen of Scots, you know, putting

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Protestants to death. One of the favorite objections of atheists, you know, to Christianity, and Christianity must be an evil religion, they say.

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Why? Because the Crusades, Spanish Inquisition.

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And I always like to say, who exactly was in charge of those things? Was it, you know, was that Martin Luther, John Calvin, were they leading the

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Crusades? Did, you know, was Zwingli, was he running that whole

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Spanish Inquisition thing? Of course it wasn't. But they were done in the name of Christ. Well, that's fine.

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Lots of things are done in the name of Christ, as we're talking about this morning. It doesn't make them Christian. I mean, that whole thing about,

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I hadn't heard that before, about, you know, monks being willing to assassinate people and the Pope promising them heaven.

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I mean, what does that sound like? Sounds like Islam. Sounds like the terrorists we're facing right now.

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So, I mean, that whole idea, you know, as soon as, and again, you know, getting back to the

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Roman Catholic view of Scripture, which is that we have tradition, we have church teaching, we have

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Scripture, and when one of these two conflict with Scripture, they don't put it this way. In fact, what do they say?

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You know, I'll be the Roman Catholic for a minute, and they say, well, wait a minute. How can anyone possibly understand

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Scripture apart from, now I'm being a moronic Catholic, apart from church teaching and church tradition?

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That's what they say. You know? I mean, my voice was being stupid.

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But they'll say, how can anyone rightly understand what Scripture teaches?

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You know? In other words, translation, the Holy Spirit isn't enough. You need the Roman Catholic Church to infallibly tell you what the

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Bible means. You cannot understand it for yourself. And, you know, that's why they tried to lock up.

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There are actually periods of time where it was a sin to have a Bible, to read the

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Bible, anything, because they didn't want schisms. They only wanted church teaching and church tradition to define doctrine.

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I didn't even get to the main point I wanted to get to. Blame it on the snow.

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You know, well, let me just, let me just, let's go to page 9, because I do want to wrap this up this morning.

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Down at the bottom of the page, number 8, the

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Roman Catholic position on ecumenism. Resistance is futile, is what

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I came up with. And, you know, I once said that I wanted to do a thesis on, you know, comparing and contrasting the

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Roman Catholic Church with the Borg from Star Trek. You know, resistance is futile, because they come, if you go to the

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Roman Catholic Church around the world, it's different. You know, if you go down to Central America, they will just kind of absorb whatever local voodoo or other traditions, you know, bizarre practices.

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If you go down to Brazil, you know, what's that religion where they kill chickens and kill

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Santeria? I mean, that's been kind of melded in with Catholic teaching. If you go over to Japan, you've got whole other influences on Roman Catholic teaching, so it just kind of adapts.

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But, you know, ultimately, resistance is futile, meaning they just kind of, they will do whatever they need to do to just kind of take over that part of the world.

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But ecumenism is a good thing from a Roman Catholic point of view. Look at the top of page,

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I think, 9. They want to, or I'm sorry, it's the top of page 10.

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The Catholic Church, Roman Catholic Church, sees itself as the one holy Catholic and apostolic church founded by Christ himself.

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Its teaching state the proper church of Christ is identical with the Catholic Church, thus excluding all other

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Christian religious groups and churches. You know, they say, well, you guys are too narrow -minded.

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Well, according to their own teaching, their own councils, they are narrow -minded. It's not an accident that the

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Council of Trent anathematizes everybody who doesn't agree with the Roman Catholic position. But ecumenism takes it as its starting point that Christ founded just one church, not many churches.

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Hence, the Roman Catholic Church has as its ultimate hope and objective that through prayer, study, and dialogue, the historically separated bodies may come again to be reunited with it.

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Here's how Rome pictures itself as the great shepherd. And all these sheep, all these

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Protestants have gone astray, and they are working to bring the flock back in, and they're doing pretty well.

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Church of England, you've got problems. We will take, you know, your leaders back in as Roman Catholic priests.

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Lutheran Church is kind of being slowly marching back towards Rome.

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I like to say that no one, Martin Luther, would not join the Lutheran Church of today because they've given up the gospel.

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Their objective is to get Protestants to bow the knee to Roman Catholic doctrine and to join back with it.

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And this is part of it. Why would Rome be interested in a document like the Manhattan Declaration?

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Because it sets aside the gospel and kind of unites us under the banner and gives

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Rome a legitimacy that we ordinarily would not grant it. Even before the

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Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church defined ecumenism as relations with other

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Christian groups, listen, in order so that with the purpose of persuading these to return to a unity that they themselves had broken.

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Pursuit of unity thus understood was always a principal aim of the church. That's what they want.

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And just in closing, point number nine, the biblical position on ecumenism resistance is vital.

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It's not futile, it's vital. Jude 3 and 4 say what?

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Contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. We don't, these aren't minor issues.

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As I note here, contend can be defined as exerting intense effort on behalf of something.

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When it's used in an athletic injury, injury, imagery, it indicates for the most part either that one, the one against whom is, one is contending or the person or thing upon whom or which depends on one's support for, anyway, it just has to do with rivalry, debate.

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Listen to what the MacArthur Study Bible says. While the salvation of those to whom he wrote,

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Jude, was not in jeopardy, false teachers preaching and living out a counterfeit gospel were misleading those who needed to hear the true gospel.

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Jude wrote this urgent imperative for Christians to wage war against error in all forms and fight strenuously for the truth like a soldier who has been entrusted with a sacred task of guarding a holy treasure.

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That's the issue. And even looking back at Galatians 1 .8,

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another gospel has this idea of a gospel thrown alongside of it, a different, it's not a different as in we'd look at it and go, oh, that's completely different.

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No, it kind of runs parallel. It has a lot of similarities in it, but it is not the same.

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Listen to what Grimacki says. He says, the evangelistic sermon of any preacher must match the

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Pauline gospel exactly. Talking about, remember how Paul pronounced these anathemas, these cursings on those who teach a different gospel.

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It cannot parallel or approximate. It can't just look like it, can't seem like it, can't sound like it.

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No foundation for salvation can be laid other than the person and redemptive work of Jesus Christ.

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Paul assured the Galatians that they heard from his lips the full gospel. Nothing was added or left out, and that's what we have to do.

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My Manhattan Declaration would be this. We declare to Roman Catholics, to Greek Orthodox, to Armenian Orthodox, to every

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Orthodox group out there, that we would like you to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

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To put aside any illusion that your works can make you righteous before God, that you can actually be righteous.

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We say, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and his finished work for your salvation, not what you do.

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We will not unite with you, we may agree with you, we will not unite with you under the banner of Christ to do social work.

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Are we interested in social causes? Yes. Can we work on social causes?

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Yes. Should we link arms and make it so that we are united as Christians, proclaiming the gospel, as this document says, when we don't even agree on what the gospel is?

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Absolutely not. We cannot, we must not do that. We cannot give up the higher ground of the gospel so that we can worry about the evil of this world.

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God's going to take care of the evil of this world. We need to proclaim the truth.

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If Paul said that he wasn't interested in anything else when he went to the Corinthian church other than Christ and him crucified, how can we do anything less?

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We need to be concerned about the gospel. Let's pray. Father, thank you this morning for the clarity of your word.

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Thank you even for the clarity in the Roman declarations, the Council of Trent, other councils where they have anathematized, where they have said that what the

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Bible says is not enough, that other things must be done. They have declared themselves by their own doctrinal positions to not be

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Christians. Lord, would you not allow us to somehow think that those are points of secondary or tertiary importance?

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Father, I would pray that you would bring about an end to abortion. Father, we know that you hate it.

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We hate it. Lord, I would pray that you would put an end to gay marriage. There is no such thing.

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It is a contradiction in terms. But Father, we know that you have allowed and even decreed that a lot of bad things, a lot of evil, a lot of sin would come into this world.

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Not because you delight in it, but because you don't. And because your purity and your holiness stand in stark contrast to the depraved imaginings of men.

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Father, would you not let us get so distracted by the activities of men that we forget what our activity is to be, which is proclaiming the truth to a world that no matter how holy we can make it, we can only change the outside.

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Father, you change the inside. Lord, we thank you for your Son, Jesus Christ, for forgiveness of sins, which we ought to proclaim in Christ's name.