June 1, 2016 Show with Tony Costa on “Mother Teresa: A Saint to be Revered or A False Teacher to be Exposed? A Legendary Figure to be ‘Canonized’ by Rome Under Scrutiny”

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this first day of June 2016 and it was about this time yesterday that those of you who were listening to me live actually heard an event that never had occurred on Iron Sharpens Iron in all of its broadcasting history.

A gnat or fruit fly flew directly into my throat as I was giving the announcements for the program and began to choke and had to grab a swig of coffee and I had actually said that it flew into my mouth yesterday but it actually flew directly into my throat and that is why

I'm even further convinced of the actual meaning of Beelzebub, lord of the flies.

I think that Satan sent one of his flies to stop my program yesterday. You never know what you're going to hear on this program,

I'll tell you what. Yes, but I want to let you know that today we are continuing our two -day examination of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

As many of you may know, the Church of Rome has declared that this fall she is to be canonized officially as a saint and yesterday

I aired a rerun of a program that I conducted in 2008 with a

Roman Catholic, a traditionalist Roman Catholic in good standing with the

Church of Rome, not a member of a schismatic group, not somebody under discipline, somebody who believes in the historic doctrines and dogmas and disciplines of the

Church of Rome and he is Mark Michael Zima. I interviewed him back in 2008 over a two -day period on his book

Mother Teresa, the case for the cause is Mother Teresa of Calcutta a saint and he in that book gave a resounding no for the answer to that question.

He, even though a Catholic, made a very convincing case from thorough documentation that Mother Teresa was not only not historically or biblically a

Christian, judging by what she has written and said over the course of her life as a nun, but she was not even a

Roman Catholic if you truly judge her by what Rome actually teaches in their dogmatic statements.

But we aired that as a rerun yesterday because of the fact that since that interview had taken place

Mother Teresa was declared to be canonized as a saint this fall, something that Mark Michael Zima actually did not think was ever going to happen.

He was taken by surprise by this, even as liberal as his own church has become, even in his estimation, he was surprised that the

Church of Rome took this step and he could not be with us for another live interview due to a work schedule that he has.

So we aired a rerun and today I wanted to get an evangelical Protestant, somebody who is actually like myself a

Reformed Baptist actually, Dr. Tony Costa. I wanted him to assess our interview yesterday and I wanted him also to give his insight on why that is an important discussion to have publicly and why it is a very important thing to make clear to the public that the

Church of Rome is not a true church according to how the

Bible describes a true church and that we as born -again

Bible -believing Christians should not be having fellowship with Roman Catholics in a religious sense and that is not to say that there are not truly born -again

Catholic individuals, but they would be either acting in defiance of their own church's dogma or in ignorance of it in regard to the gospel and those things that separate them from the

Reformation. But first of all, let me introduce once again

Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

It's great to have you back on Iron Sharpens Iron, Tony. It's always great to be with you,

Chris. Looking forward to it. I am as well and my co -host as of late is the

Reverend Buzz Taylor. This may be the first time that he had been my co -host since I interviewed you last.

I'm not quite sure, but it's great to have you back in the studio, Reverend Buzz. Thank you very much. And we do have a little bit of an audio problem today with Reverend Buzz's microphone, and perhaps that will be straightened out.

You thought it was safe to keep me soft. Well, perhaps before the end of the program we'll have that rectified, but I'm sure that everything will be fine, especially since I understand you and so does

Dr. Costa. But Tony, before we even go into the subject, let me, first of all, let me announce our email address.

If anybody listening would like to ask a question, our email address is

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com,

and please include your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

If it makes you feel more comfortable to remain anonymous, you may do so. I know that there may be Roman Catholic listeners who don't really want to identify themselves when discussing a very controversial issue like this.

Mark Michael Zima, as much as I disagree with him on dogma, and as much as I disagree with him on some very vital issues that separate the

Church of Rome from the Reformation, Mark Michael Zima is a very honest man, a very humble man, and a man who basically acted with a lot of courage in writing this book, a very critical book about Mother Teresa, knowing that it would alienate him from many of his fellow

Catholics, and it has. He got a lot of negative feedback for writing this book, which unfortunately is out of print.

But before we even go into the heart of the matter, I want to hear more about your work at Toronto Baptist Seminary, Tony, and I'd also like to find out a bit about your testimony.

I know that you were a Roman Catholic and you came to embrace the gospel of grace, the gospel of the

Reformation at some point in your life, and I would love to hear more about both of those things. Sure.

Well, let me begin with the Toronto Baptist Seminary. We are a Reformed Baptist Seminary that works out of Toronto, Canada, and I've been teaching there for,

I'd say, probably close to 10 years now, and I teach in particularly in the area of apologetics, so I teach students how to defend the

Christian faith and how to articulate that defense, and I'm also involved in teaching them comparative world religions.

I teach them the differences between the world's religions and Christianity. I also specialize particularly on Islam because of its rapid growth today and its effect on society and the

Church, and also on Roman Catholicism. I teach in that area, and also various other topics like the

New Atheism and morality and ethics and so forth. It's not restricted only to apologetics.

I also teach theology ,ismatic theology, and New Testament and Old Testament survey, but it is primarily in the apologetics field, though there's always a need for that in the

Church. And I was raised in a Roman Catholic home, a very devout, very religious

Roman Catholic home. We have relatives in our family who are priests.

My great -uncle was an ordained Roman Catholic priest. He's now deceased. I have a cousin who resides in Portugal who is still officiating as a priest, although he's in his 70s now.

And I was raised in that atmosphere, a very religious, devout atmosphere, and went to Mass every

Sunday, did my confession and prayed my rosaries, and I took the light in it.

I found comfort in that, and the one thing that I never had in that experience is

I never really knew for sure whether or not my sins were forgiven. I did not know whether or not

I would enter into the presence of God. I hoped that scenario would be to go to purgatory and purge away the venial sins, etc.,

and hopefully after a number of years or whatever time would be allotted,

I would eventually enter into heaven and so forth. So I never really had that personal relationship with Jesus.

Jesus was something that I identified as a very angry judge, and I would ask

Mary to intercede on my behalf and ask the saints to intercede on my behalf because the idea was that Christ was too holy for me, too holy for sinners, and that we would need the heart of his mother to approach him and to intercede for us and obtain mercy.

And it wasn't really until I was about 15 years of age that two of my cousins came to know

Christ. They were also Roman Catholics, and they came to know the Lord, and they started sharing the gospel with me, and they started becoming very critical of Roman Catholicism.

Well, I went on the defensive, and as a young 15 -year -old, I thought I would prove them wrong.

So I purchased a Bible for the first time in my life and began to read it from cover to cover with the intent of proving them wrong, and lo and behold,

I was reading the Word, and God convicted me. He actually not only confirmed what they were saying, but he granted me repentance.

He showed me grace. He drew me to salvation, and I came to know the Lord Jesus at a young age of 15.

And from there on, the Lord directed me into the ministry of apologetics, and I followed that leading, and eventually

I went into higher education, completed a bachelor's and master's degree at the

University of Toronto, and then I completed a Ph .D. in New Testament Theology at Radcliffe University in the

Netherlands, and I'm also an ordained minister of the gospel. So I do both pastoral and academic work, and I've been serving the

Lord in the field of apologetics now for about, let's say, about 30 or so years.

So I really resonate with this topic, because of my background in Roman Catholicism, and also a large part of my family is still within the

Roman Catholic system. Now, how have they responded to your conversion to biblical Christianity?

Well, I know that my parents in particular are very offended. I come from a

Portuguese background, and my parents virtually took that as an abandonment, not just of the

Roman Catholic faith, but an abandonment of our very culture and identity. So my parents were very opposed to it.

It was a measure of persecution. I remember my mother walking into a little Baptist church that I was attending, literally walking into it in the middle of the service, and demanding that I come with her and leave, because I was a

Baptist Catholic. And my grandmother, my mom in particular, was very hostile towards me.

But here's the grace of God, the amazing thing, Chris, that in the end, my mother and my grandmother both came to the Lord.

Wow. So that was wonderful. My father, near the end of his life, my father's deceased as well, my father near the end of his life began to inquire and ask questions, and he began to see a couple of chinks in the armor of Roman Catholicism, particularly the papacy.

And so I just pray that my father made that decision for Christ, and I don't know, hopefully one day we will find out.

But it did have an impact on my family, but for the most part, they are still in that system.

Well, are you Canadian? I am. I'm part of the Frozen Chosen up in the north.

Okay. And well, that is quite a remarkable story, especially about hearing about your mom's coming to Christ with certainty.

Mine did as well. I was raised Roman Catholic, was an altar boy, went to private

Catholic school from first through eighth grade, and became a believer by the mercy of Christ in the true gospel in my mid -twenties.

And my mom, who went home to be with the Lord in 1995 due to pancreatic cancer, she also clearly understood the gospel and trusted in Christ's sacrifice on Calvary alone for her salvation while she was on her deathbed in the hospital and actually at home as well.

And she renounced prayer to the saints, and she found her only hope in Christ and told me very clearly that she was going to heaven only because of what

Jesus Christ had done for her on the cross and that her works, which were many, my mother was a very godly woman with a life filled with works, self -sacrifice.

A lot of people say that kind of thing about their mother. It's very true with my mother, a woman who never used vulgarity and just was a very warm and loving and forgiving person, even prior perhaps to her regeneration.

I guess I don't know exactly when that occurred. Obviously, only God knows. But she made it clear that she embraced the true gospel to me before departing this earth and even

Peter Jeffrey, a world -renowned Reformed Baptist pastor and author from Wales, he was visiting the

United States providentially while my mother was on her deathbed, and he visited with her privately and came out of that sick room after leaving her side and said to me with his very thick

Welsh accent, I don't know what you're worried about. Your mother's going to heaven. She's born again. So that was very comforting and encouraging to hear that from Peter.

My dad also is just like yours. It's not as crystal clear, although the

Lord did leave me with a lot of evidence that I would have reason for hope, great hope that he did come to know

Christ. In fact, for the last three, at least three years of his life, perhaps even longer than that, he would come to my church, the church where I was a member,

I should say, every Sunday evening, even if he knew that I wasn't there. So there were a lot of signs that the

Lord was drawing him. But this issue that we're discussing, we're discussing

Mother Teresa, and this is the kind of thing that gets a lot of people angry.

It doesn't only get Catholics angry. It gets evangelical Protestants angry who are ecumenists or who seem to be very fond of pointing to Mother Teresa as the ideal hero of Christianity, at least from the 20th century, that we should revere and imitate and so on.

And of course, mainline Protestants and people crossing the religious spectrum revere her as a hero.

Even Hindus and Buddhists and others look upon her as a champion of faith and love and mercy.

And of course, we don't want to rob her of any of the things that she did in her life that were wonderful acts of mercy and kindness.

But the thing is that people get very upset when you put under the microscope somebody like her, because they think this is all about hatred.

It's all about self -righteousness and arrogance. How dare you criticize this woman when you have never cleaned the sores of lepers and you've never given people with highly contagious diseases on their deathbed a drink of water and that kind of thing?

And you've never ministered to the sick, hopeless, and dying the way Mother Teresa did. How dare you bring a single word of criticism against her?

How do you respond to that kind of a response from those who are either

Catholic or ecumenically -minded or who just view her as a hero, no matter what religion they happen to be a part of?

Well, what I would say, Chris, is that there are atheists that are humanitarians. There's agnostics that are humanitarians.

The most evil person can do a good deed. And that's not the issue. As you properly said, we're not judging

Mother Teresa for the works of mercy and charity that she did, but that's the way man looks at things.

That's the worldly view. The way God looks at things is that works, of course, do not save us.

We're not saved by good works. We're not saved by helping the poor. As I pointed out, atheists who don't believe in God are known to give charitable amounts of money to help the cause of the poor and the oppressed and so forth.

But that does not save your soul. It may alleviate temporal suffering or illness of any sort, but it does not solve the eternal problem, which is the relationship with thought.

And I think what people generally want is they want a common denominator. They want to say, as long as you're nice, as long as you're good, as long as you engage in social justice.

And if you notice, even in evangelical circles, this idea of social justice is beginning to take over, particularly among the young people.

And what social justice does is it reduces the gospel to just exactly that, just social gospel, which is just feeding the poor, clothing the naked, and so forth.

There's nothing wrong with that. That is simply a subset of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's a benefit.

But it is not the guarantee that will save our souls. Because at the end of the day, should

God admit an atheist or a blasphemer into his heaven because he helped the poor and all of these things?

No, of course not. Because the spiritual problem was dealt with by the death and sacrifice of the most perfect person who ever lived, and that was the

Lord Jesus Christ. And so, the problem here is that when we say things against Mother Teresa, when it comes to her faith or her theology, people assume, and I think this is the problem,

Chris, the problem is that we have placed orthopraxy, that is, right living, above orthodoxy.

And we have emphasized orthopraxy to the point that you will hear people say today that theology really doesn't matter, that what really matters is if you eat the hungry, give water to the thirsty, and take care of the sick, and so forth.

But they've got the cart there, they've got the cart in front of the horse, because our orthopraxy naturally flows from our orthodoxy.

Why do we love our neighbor? Because of what Christ did, what Christ has said. God made Jesus in his image.

So our orthopraxy must follow from our orthodoxy. What you'll notice today is that most people will dismiss orthodoxy, and they will say it's all about orthopraxy.

And of course, a Bible -believing Christian should be challenged and even embarrassed at times, or put to the test, if you will, when someone who rejects the genuine gospel of Jesus Christ, rejects the historical and biblical

Jesus, actually does have a life filled with good deeds, works of mercy and charity that makes ours pale into insignificance.

So we're not saying in arrogance that there's nothing worthy of of praise, if you will, or there's nothing worthy of having any kind of place of gratitude in the hearts of men for someone like her, just because she was not a

Christian in our assessment from the clear evidence. Would you agree with that?

Absolutely. I mean, I think we would praise any human being who cares for another and and takes care of the needy and so forth, but that is not the issue.

The issue here is the spiritual issue concerning our relationship with God, and whether God or not has spoken in that regard, and has

God spoken about how we ought to get right with Him, and how is it that we ought to treat the gospel?

And so that's the issue that is being swept aside, is we're trying to find, again, that common denominator, that we should be good, we should be nice, it doesn't matter what you call

God, God is known by many names, which is in fact what Mother Teresa also said, whether you call Him Allah or whether you call

Him Vishnu or Brahman, to her she says the same God. And that's the problem, is we're delving into the area of pluralism and universalism, which is what

Mother Teresa taught, actually. Right, and as if this program wasn't controversial enough,

I might even also add into the dialogue, just so people can understand where I'm coming from.

I think that there is an American hero that deserves a place of honor in the minds and hearts of patriotic

American citizens, who is Dr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a very courageous man who peacefully demonstrated for the freedoms and rights of black citizens of this country, as well as other minorities.

Did so at the taking of his own life.

He obviously, as everyone knows, was assassinated because of the strong public stance he stood against discrimination and so on.

And there were many, many things admirable about his life and the things that he said and did.

He, in many ways, kept peace in the midst of an era when the

Nation of Islam and other militant black groups were rising that were calling for violence.

So there are many things that people of all races should be thankful in regards to Martin Luther King, Jr.

But he, although he was a minister, a Baptist minister, he made it clear from his doctoral dissertation, which you could actually read online, it is available online.

And unless Dr. King recanted of this dissertation and repented of it, and actually became a

Bible believing Christian in reality, we cannot, judging from his own words, view him as a

Christian, a fellow brother in Christ, because he denied nearly all of the essentials of the faith.

He denied the deity of Christ. He denied substitutionary atonement of Christ.

He did not believe that Christ's death paid for the sins of men.

He believed that it was an example of humility and sacrifice that we are all to imitate.

And there are many other things. He denied the virgin birth, which actually makes Muslims more orthodox in their theology than he was.

So there's an example of what I'm speaking of. Does that make sense to you, Tony? A hundred percent, a hundred percent.

And this is the point. If someone claims to be an American citizen, and then proceeds to deny the

Constitution, and deny the Bill of Rights, and deny freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of thought, etc.,

etc., are you an American? Well, no, you cannot claim to be an American, pledge allegiance to the

Constitution, and then proceed to dismantle the Constitution. And so the same applies to the

Christian faith. You cannot claim to be a believer, and then proceed to deny the triune God, the deity of Christ, his virgin birth, his sinless humanity, bodily resurrection, and his charismatic atonement.

You cannot be a Christian. You can be a professing Christian, but you're not a genuine

Christian in the biblical sense. We're going to be going to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own for Dr.

Tony Costa, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, city, and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the USA. And please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal or private issue.

Like, for instance, if you are a Roman Catholic and are uncomfortable speaking ill of its view of Mother Teresa, or something to that effect where you do not want to identify yourself.

That's completely understandable. But we look forward to hearing from you and your questions for Dr.

Tony Costa after these messages. So we ask of you also during the station break to get a hold of your family, friends, and loved ones, especially if they're

Roman Catholic, and have them listen to this broadcast at ironsharpensironradio .com.

ironsharpensironradio .com will be right back after these messages, so don't go away.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Lawrence. And if you just tuned us in, we are interviewing today

Dr. Tony Costa. Dr. Tony Costa is a professor of apologetics at the

Toronto Baptist Seminary. And we have just been informed that for some reason we are not on the air.

But we're going to continue with the program because we're recording it and we will be airing it at some point in the very near future.

And we are discussing, as I said before, the announced canonization of Mother Teresa of Calcutta by the

Church of Rome. And the fact that not only has a group of Roman Catholics, they are probably in the minority, but not only have they opposed this because they, knowing what

Mother Teresa of Calcutta actually believed and taught and wrote that she was not only not a

Christian from the definition of what the Bible teaches about that, but also was not even truly a

Roman Catholic. And if you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. The, well, first of all, we had a listener,

Tyler from Mastic Beach, who was listening yesterday. And he did not know that that was a rebroadcast of a previous interview from 2008 when

I was airing Mark Michael Zima's interview, actually two interviews back to back on the issue of Mother Teresa.

He did not realize that we were not live. So he sent a question that I will read to you now.

Basically, he said, what are we to make of Mother Teresa?

Keeping in mind that she said, I have helped a Muslim be a better Muslim.

Was she a religious pluralist like Oprah Winfrey, besides her heretical soteriology?

Yes, and the famous quote is that she did not want to make

Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus become Christian. She wanted to make

Muslims better Muslims, Hindus better Hindus and Buddhists better Buddhists. But if you could comment on that, this is

Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York's question. Yes, well, her actual quote here

I have in front of me, she says, quote, I've always said we should help the Hindu become a better Hindu, a Muslim become a better Muslim, a

Catholic become a better Catholic. And elsewhere, she also said, and I quote, I love all religions, close quote.

When she was asked about whether she converts or not, that's exactly what she said, that she converts not people to Christianity, but converts

Hindus to be better Hindus and Muslims to be better Muslims. So the presumption here is that all religions are true, all religions lead to God, and that whichever

God these people pray to is the same God that Christians and biblical believers worship as well.

And so the problem here is that even Mr. Zima recognizes that this flies against clear statements of scripture, where our

Lord taught that he is the way, the truth, the life, no one can come to the Father except through him. And then, of course, the testimony of the apostles in Acts 4 .12,

neither is there salvation in anyone else, for there is no other name given among men whereby we must be saved except the name of Jesus.

So she was a pluralist, she believed that there were many roads that led to God, and she was also a universalist.

That is to say, she believed that eventually everyone, regardless of their faith conviction, everyone would eventually make it to heaven, because she also taught that we are all

God's children. She believed in the universality of all people being God's children.

So I'm proud of the fact that Mr. Zima sounds more evangelical than some of our evangelical friends when it comes to Mother Teresa, which is quite shocking.

So I think the next step is that the Lord grant him repentance and bring him to salvation. Yes, he is actually an

Orthodox Presbyterian convert to Roman Catholicism. Okay, we'll take him back.

And his brother is in the Reformed faith. His brother continues to pray for Mark's conversion or repentance and return to Orthodoxy.

And Mark is also unusual in that he is an authentic Augustinian in regard to his understanding of predestination.

He would have a view very similar to John Calvin's understanding of predestination, not on the gospel.

I'm not going to exaggerate Mark's Orthodoxy, but on the one issue of election, he believes in the genuine

Augustinian understanding of that, which of course you and I would believe is the biblical understanding of that.

And he said they do exist, but they're obviously a very, very tiny minority out there.

Well, let me ask a question here. Considering Mother Teresa, has she made any, you seem to have some exact quotes available, which is good.

Has she made comments that would indicate that she feels that her work is somehow meritorious, that she is earning her salvation, or is salvation a non -issue to her altogether?

Yeah, just for the sake of the listeners who may not have heard Buzz clearly because of his microphone problem, did

Mother Teresa believe that we need to earn our salvation or was salvation not even an issue?

Well, obviously she believed in heaven, so there must have been some concept of salvation in her mind, but it was obviously very pluralistic.

But if you could, Tony. Yes, yes. She did also hold to a...

She was influenced as well by the idea that all is God, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, etc.

All have access to the same God. That's quite ironic because classical Buddhism is atheistic.

The Buddha rejected belief in any God or gods. That's why Hinduism does not consider

Buddhism a bona fide religion because one of the fundamental things that the

Buddha did was he refused or denied any belief in God or the gods.

So she believed that God was also in everything. So here's another example.

She says here, and I quote, the dying, the crippled, the mentally ill, the unwanted, the unloved, they are

Jesus in disguise. Through the poor people, I have an opportunity to be 24 hours a day with Jesus.

And then she went on to say about the AIDS victims she was treating, she said, quote, every

AIDS victim is Jesus in a pitiful disguise. Jesus is in everyone.

So I think it's important to realize that she actually thought that in her charity work, she was actually, as she says, serving

Jesus 24 hours a day. She was spending that time serving

Christ. One of the very controversial issues here, and this is actually something that the late atheist

Christopher Hitchens brought out, was that Mother Teresa would not use medicine in terms of alleviating pain.

She believed that pain was meritorious, and that by allowing the infirm to suffer through their pain, they were, if you will, identifying with Jesus.

And in a sense, they were earning their salvation. And as you know,

Chris and Reverend, that in Roman Catholicism, the view that suffering is meritorious is very prominent.

This is the concept behind self -flagellation. This is the concept behind, coming from a

Portuguese tradition, I would see Roman Catholics falling in processions on their knees until they bled, or even up here in Canada, in Montreal, there's a

St. Joseph's Oratory where people will come from around the world and will literally climb up the steps up to this church on their knees.

And the idea here is that pain is meritorious. In the Philippines, every Good Friday in the

Philippines, Filipino Roman Catholics will have themselves literally crucified to crosses with nails to their hands.

And again, this all goes back to the idea that Christ's suffering is really not final.

It's not perfect because you have to supplement it, either with the thesaurus meritorium that the

Pope can grant you through indulgences. And so this is the blasphemy against the gospel, that Christ's perfect work was not complete, and that you have to augment your own pain, your own suffering, to that of Christ.

And that is what the Bible sees as another gospel. By the way, we are back on the air, so I have no idea why we were temporarily off the air, but I've been, it has been confirmed.

Must have been a Vatican conspiracy. The prince of the power of the air, right?

But now let me ask you to differentiate something that I will give the benefit of the doubt to Mother Teresa in part.

And perhaps you could compare what I mean to what she actually intended by that view of meritorious suffering.

The great Calvinist Anglican bishop of the 19th century,

J .C. Ryle, one of his quotes that is my favorite from the booklet you could get from Chapel Library and other places,

Sickness by J .C. Ryle, which is actually a chapter from a larger work. I think it's from the Upper Room or one of his larger books.

But the quote that I'm just reading, and I'm remembering this off the top of my head,

I don't have it in front of me, but J .C. Ryle said, I'm almost certain I'm getting it correctly.

He said that Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

None have such an opportunity of learning the mind of a suffering Savior as suffering disciples.

So I can agree with one aspect of Mother Teresa in that as far as what

Ryle said, which I believe is completely biblical, may be a part of her sentiment, but she took it much further than that, didn't she, according to the way you described it?

Yes, yes, she did. Because what she was saying is that it did something, it added something to her position with God.

And of course, I think what our brother Ryle had written has to do with,

I think, what Peter says, that Christ has suffered, leaving us an example to follow in his footsteps.

And so that suffering is a suffering by association with Christ. It's not a suffering that adds to Christ's perfect work.

It's a suffering by association. And so the Lord Jesus said, Blessed are you when men revile you, and when they persecute you, and they insult you for my name's sake.

So there is a sense in which believers do share in the sufferings of Christ, but that's by way of association, by belonging to them.

But it is not in any sense of the word an addition or a supplement to what

Christ has already done for us in procuring our salvation. And let's go back to another thing that was brought up during my interview with Mark Michael Zima.

There were Catholics who were complaining that it was not her specific job, if you will.

It wasn't her calling. It wasn't her role. It wasn't her purpose to be specifically a teacher or an evangelist.

Her primary reason for being, in her mind, was to comfort the poor, sick, and dying, and to give them hope.

And therefore, we should not be nitpicking and straining out gnats and swallowing camels over her life because she was a simple woman who really just loved the

Lord and dedicated her life to serving Him by taking care of those that many people would never even physically approach within 10 yards or more.

So therefore, we should just knock it off, get off our high horses and stop being critical of her because that was not her function to be an evangelist or a teacher.

How do you respond to that kind of comment? What I would say, this is the old argument that she had good intentions, that this is the argument that she was just being genuinely sincere.

But the problem here, again, is that she may have been sincere, but you can't be sincerely wrong.

And good intentions, it's been said that the way to hell is paved with good intentions. Now, again, we're not saying anything against her work of mercy and charity and so forth, but the issue here is if she was not a theologian or if she was not a representative of the

Roman Catholic Church or an official representative of the Roman Catholic Church, then it was not her position to make theological statements about God, about salvation and so forth.

In fact, she should have just deferred to the priesthood or to the papacy and so forth.

But the fact of the matter is that the Bible holds all human beings morally responsible. We are all morally accountable to our

Creator in what we say and what we do. And therefore, it's not that we're dealing with someone who was completely ignorant of what she was saying on a spiritual level.

She knew what she was saying. She, in fact, repeated it a number of times. And so we cannot simply dismiss this moral accountability.

Mother Teresa was morally accountable to her Creator just as much as we are. And once again, if she did not want to make statements on theological positions, then she should not have made those statements.

But the fact is, she did make them. She did influence a lot of people. And she actually practiced what she preached.

In fact, there's even a picture available online where Mother Teresa, back in October of 1975 in Calcutta, she actually joined in a

Buddhist worship ceremony. There's a picture of her bowing with Buddhist monks praying towards the statue of the

Buddha. So her actions followed what she said.

And so she is a morally responsible human being to her Creator, just as we are.

So we can't just make the excuse that, well, she's not a theologian. She's not a scholar. And she had good intentions.

But then again, the Mormons have good intentions when they go to the local food bank and help out. And the

Jehovah's Witnesses have good intentions when they come knocking on your door, believing that they have the truth, and want to save you from all the getting.

So this is the... Yeah. No, go ahead. Go ahead. I'm done. Well, what I was just going to add, and Reverend Buzz has a question for you as well.

But it is the role, it is the duty, it is the obligation that every

Christian who is truly born from above, every person who has the

Holy Spirit indwelt within them, proclaim a true gospel. And also, not only is it a duty or an obligation, but it is a necessary fruit of someone who is truly born from above.

So this is actually something that reveals whether or not she is a Christian, regardless of whether or not she has a life filled with deeds of mercy.

This is a litmus test as to whether she is what she claims to be, a

Christian. Am I right? Correct. And none of us are immune from the judgment of God in terms of His Word.

We are accountable to what God has spoken and what He has said. And therefore,

Mother Teresa is just as subject to the discerning judgment of God's Word as any other human being.

Reverend Buzz? Well, also, referring back to your statement about this is just a simple woman that's serving mankind.

Was she just a simple woman? Didn't she have some kind of training? Yeah, but Buzz, just for the sake of our listeners, because of his microphone problem, he is asking, was she not an educated woman rather than just a simple woman who had no knowledge of what the

Church of Rome or the Bible actually taught? Well, I wouldn't say she was on the level of a theologian, but she did understand basic Roman Catholic principles.

In fact, she spoke very highly of transubstantiation. She spoke about the fact that the priest had the authority and the power to cause the elements of bread and wine to become the

Body and Blood of Christ. And so, she did have a basic theological understanding of Roman Catholicism.

And also, interestingly enough, Mother Teresa also was one of the proponents that was asking for Mary, the

Mother of Jesus, to be declared by Pope John Paul II a co -mediator with Christ.

And as you know, it is Pope John Paul II in particular, and I know that Mr. Zinner brought this up, that Pope John Paul II has canonized more saints than any of the popes put together.

And he's the one who's fast -tracked Mother Teresa's canonization as a saint.

So, the idea here is that Mother Teresa was aware of some of these cardinal

Roman Catholic doctrines. So, to say that she was just a very simple kid really doesn't do justice.

Did she have formal training in theology at all? Did she have formal training, to your knowledge?

Not that I know of. I think she had some basic understanding, but not any formal theology.

But once again, when you publish materials, I mean, she won the Nobel Peace Prize as well. She became a very public figure, made it to the front cover of Times.

Well, when you become a public figure, and people look up to you, and people listen to you, you know, what did the

Lord Jesus say? That we will be accountable for every word that we speak. And so, if she was not in a position where she felt that she could not speak on theological matters, then she should not have spoken in those areas.

But she did, and those words have had a profound influence on many

Roman Catholics. Well, one thing that takes away, in my view, and I'm sure yours as well, from her acts of mercy is that one of the most merciful and loving things that you can do when someone is about to depart from this planet and enter into eternity is to plead with them to repent if they are in a false religion, or if they do not yet know

Christ as their Savior, and to lull someone into a sense of peace and comfort while they're dying when they open their eyes, they will be in hell, is not, in reality, it is not truly an act of mercy or kindness or grace.

We should be willing to even upset those lying on their deathbeds, even if it disturbs their comfort while they are perhaps anesthetized and so on, and are waiting to meet their

Maker. We should be willing to even rattle their cage and get them upset in what we say, rather than whisper sweet, comforting words in their ears like, unfortunately,

I don't want to broad brush, there are many wonderful Christian people involved in hospice care, but there were also, from my own witness of them when my mother was dying and having spoken with other hospice workers, there are many who have a false, a dangerous spirituality, and their goal in life, they believe, it is just to give comfort and to remove the fear from the hearts of those dying when these people very well may be entering into hell for eternity.

Right, right. Well, it's interesting you say that, Chris, because there was actually an interview that Christian News had with a nun who worked alongside of Mother Teresa, and they asked a question of this nun in regards to, what do you do with Hindus that were under your care?

And this is what this nun who worked with the Missionaries of Charity said, she said, quote, these people are waiting to die, excuse me, this is the interviewer, these people are waiting to die, what are you telling them to prepare them for death and eternity?

And the reply that this nun gave was, and I quote, we tell them to pray to their gods.

Well, and Mother Teresa herself admitted that when people of different faiths were dying, what were the rituals that were administered to them?

And this is what she said, and I quote, this is actually from Mark Sima's book, and I quote, for Hindus, water from the

Ganges on their lips, for Muslims, reading from the Quran, for the rare Christian, the last rites, close quote.

And so again, she does not see here the gospel as definitive.

It's not the gospel that saves. If you're a Hindu, then we will accommodate your religion.

If you're a Muslim, we'll read to you from the Quran and so forth. And so this is the issue here, is that even at the point of death, where people are on their deathbed, and they could hear the gospel for one last time,

Mother Teresa would not do that. She would not give the gospel to Hindus or Muslims. She would give them whatever was relevant to their particular faith.

We're going to another station break. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. Tony Costa and our examination of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

This is Chris Orns. And if you've just tuned us in, our guest today is Dr. Tony Costa.

And he is not only evaluating the life and teachings of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who has been declared by Rome as someone to be canonized as a saint this fall, but we were also assessing the interview that we did yesterday with Roman Catholic author

Mark Michael Zima, who was vehemently opposed to her canonization.

And his book clearly documents that she was not only not a Christian, as the

Bible would describe and define one in regard to a belief and understanding of the gospel, but she was not even a

Roman Catholic, if you were to use the official dogma of Rome as a litmus test.

And by the way, I just want to announce that our friends at Harvey Cedars would love to hear from you if you are inquiring about a perfect place for your next church's conference or your own personal vacation or any other

Christian gathering. If you are calling them or emailing them, please mention that you heard about Harvey Cedars on Iron Sharpens Iron radio.

And also we wanted to announce, because of the fact that our mutual friend,

Dr. Acosta's mutual friend, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, who you just heard in that ad for the

New American Standard Bible during the station break, he has the highest regard for our guest today and has really publicly declared his appreciation for Dr.

Acosta's gifts and abilities in the debating arena, something that I think that Dr.

White would not say too freely or liberally or a thing that he does not take very lightly because that is one of his great gifts in his own life.

And he is probably debating more Muslims and Roman Catholics than any other evangelical alive today, especially the

Muslim faith today is his focus, as the Church of Rome at one point was, but he is running out of people who are willing to debate him who are

Catholic. But also obviously because of the current events and the current climate of the globe in regard to Islam, the focus was redirected out of necessity,

I believe. But we do have a listener in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Christian, who asks,

Why are you even concerned over who the Church of Rome canonizes as a saint when you as Protestants do not even believe in such a thing as canonization?

Very good question. Obviously, we don't even give merit to anyone that the

Church of Rome would declare any kind of a canonization over.

But if you could respond, Tony. Yes, let me first say that the whole process of canonization in the

Roman Catholic Church is something that is first and foremost unbiblical. The Bible tells us that it is the triune

God himself that makes us saints. In 1 Corinthians 1 -2, we're told that believers are called to be saints by God, and that this is something that God the

Holy Spirit does when he regenerates the elect. The Roman Catholic view is that the papacy in particular has the authority to proclaim who is a saint and so forth.

Again, number one, that's unbiblical. Now, why do we mention this? Why do we mention the canonization of Mother Teresa if we don't believe in the authority of Rome to do such a thing?

Well, it's, I think, to show that the Roman Catholic Church has changed profoundly since Vatican II in the 1960s.

And they are canonizing someone who has made statements to the effect that violate what has historically been known to be

Roman Catholic doctrine, official Roman Catholic doctrine, which is that the

Roman Catholic Church is the one true church that Jesus Christ established through Peter, and that the truth of the gospel, from their perspective, is only found within the

Roman Catholic Church. And Mother Teresa has said things that go in direct opposition to the historical official position of the

Roman Catholic Church. And that's what I think Michael Zima, in his book, is at pains to explain, is that why are you canonizing someone who has said things that are directly contrary to the position of the

Roman Catholic Church and violates its fundamental theological positions?

So that's what we're doing. We're calling attention to the inconsistency here, and also to the fact that the

Roman Church today has changed dramatically from what it used to be.

And this is why we have, I think, the Vaticanists who are arguing that the present -day papacy is apostate and that they await the re -establishment of the proper pope and so forth.

Now, obviously, we who are Bible -believing Protestants, in some sense, all of us around the world who are

Bible -believing Protestants, can sigh with relief that the

Church of Rome is not the way it used to be, because if they had the power and authority that they once had, we may all be beheaded or tortured, at the very least, or disemboweled, perhaps, for our beliefs.

So there's one side of the liberalism of Rome that we don't object to.

But obviously, one of the reasons why this is an important subject is because of her legendary status,

Mother Teresa I'm speaking of, her legendary status and her being considered a poster girl, if you will, for lack of a better term, of Christianity.

She is the ideal model that many people will point to as how a

Christian should live and behave, a level of Christianity that none of us, or very few of us, could ever reach.

And you will have people who are even evangelical, or who are considered evangelical leaders, like Billy Graham and many others who will praise her name.

I can remember the late Chuck Colson frequently bringing her up as some great heroic model of a

Christian woman that people everywhere should revere.

But Reverend Buzz... Even in general conversation with other evangelicals, you have the same sentiment that, well, how dare you talk down this wonderful Christian lady?

Right. Yeah, the common view of your average evangelical would be they would be aghast, they would be shocked, they would be disturbed that we were having this discussion just as much as Rome's ardent followers of Mother Teresa are, because they would view her in a similar light, that she is a hero to be revered, not somebody to be examined and exposed as a heretic and as a false teacher.

That really brings us to the heart of the matter, Tony, in that the whole reason why we expose error, heresy, things that we would believe are in opposition to the scriptures that militate against the very teachings of our

Lord Jesus, the reason why we do that is not because we want to hurt people's feelings, not because we think that we're innately better than anybody else, but it's because the truth matters.

As James White is fond of saying, theology matters, and the issue of eternal life or damnation is at stake here, isn't it?

Well, absolutely. In the time that our Lord ministered, there were many well -to -do, there were many pharisees who kept the law, dotted their

I's and crossed their T's, and I'm sure there were many of them who were admirable. But our

Lord was not about pleasing men's feelings. He did not go around making people feel good. He gave them the truth, and he taught that it is the truth that shall set you free, and that humans are enslaved to sin, and they need to be set free.

He went to the heart of the matter. And so I think what really matters here at the end of the day is the gospel.

In Galatians 169, Paul says that if anyone preaches a gospel other than the one you received, let him be anathema, uses the strongest word in the

Greek New Testament that denotes being under the curse of God, being under the judgment of God. And we have to understand something, that when

Paul was attacking the Judaizers in Galatia, the Judaizers would have agreed with him that Jesus was the

Messiah, the Son of God, and so forth. But you will notice that what Paul does is he goes to the heart of the matter.

It's the gospel. If you're not preaching the gospel of grace, it's not the gospel anymore.

And therefore, it's not about charity, being good to your neighbor, and so forth.

All of that is commendable. But when it comes to our relationship with God, the nature of the gospel is fundamental, and that can never, ever be compromised.

Right. Well, the Judaizers that Paul spoke so harshly about, who he publicly condemned and said that they were to be accursed, from what we know of the

Judaizers, they had more in common with Bible -believing Christians than the Church of Rome does.

Is that an exaggeration? From what I understand, the Judaizers agreed with Paul on possibly everything, except they insisted that Gentiles be circumcised in order to become

Christians. That's right. So notice that there's no evidence to the attachment that the

Judaizers debated the deity of Christ, or whether they challenged the Messiahship of Jesus.

That wasn't the issue at all. What they were doing was basically saying, you have to become Jewish before you become

Christian. And that is where Paul said, look, if you add anything to the gospel, whether it's circumcision, or whether it's baptism, or whether it's sacraments, whatever it may be, if you add anything to the gospel, it's no longer the gospel of grace.

And again, that is the issue. And the language there, the language of a person, anathema, is extremely strong language.

And that is why we cannot compromise on this central point. Yes. And that just reminds me of a debate that I organized between Dr.

James R. White and Fr. Mitch Pacwa, who is a Jesuit priest and apologist, and a very, very kind man, an honest man, a man who

I actually respect in many ways, and enjoy his company, and so on, but a man with a lot of integrity, but he's just dead wrong on some very vital issues that have eternal consequences.

But during their debate, James White had brought up the Apostle Paul's anathema against the

Judaizers, saying that how can he basically consider a

Roman Catholic who believes in Trent's definition of the gospel, how could he consider them a brother?

And Fr. Pacwa said, ah, yes, but we have to look at what the Church of Rome believes about what anathema really means.

And James said, well, if the Church of Rome has a different definition than the Apostle Paul, who is clearly indicating damnation, then you got a big problem there.

Right. But so the issue is that there are many, not only

Catholics, but there are many evangelicals who are trying to be nicer than the

Apostle Paul. I mean, there's really no other way of looking at it, is there? No, there isn't.

And what they're doing is they're playing the ecumenical game. They're playing theological footsies, I guess.

And they're trying to warm up to Rome. And at the end of the day, what are we accomplishing by doing this?

We are betraying the Reformation. We're betraying Luther, Calvin, Knox, Zwingli.

We're betraying Melanchthon, Wesley, Spurgeon, so forth by doing this. And these men, historically, these men clearly denounced the gospel of Rome.

They clearly understood that it was another gospel. And the development of modernism, and this is what

Spurgeon was warning about at the turn of the 20th century, was that the spirit of modernism was entering to the

Church. And that this post -modernism that we now see today, as you can see, is having disastrous effects upon the

Church. We're, again, watering down the gospel, and we're looking for that common denominator that love is everything, and as long as you love one another, that's all that matters.

What the Apostle Paul said, we're tearing down strongholds in every lofty thing and taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

Right, right. And in today's society, as we see, there's a dangerous trend where even in the

United States, I look at what's going on at the universities where free speech is coming under attack, where we're slowly seeing the deterioration of the constitutional rights of the

United States, where truth now has become the new hate speech. And that is a very, very scary sign.

Very scary sign. Yes. And, you know, one of the things that makes this very ironic, this whole discussion, is that people understand that outside of the realm of religion, that these types of debates are very appropriate in other spheres of life.

You know, if you're going to have people who are relentless and unrepenting of their heroin addiction or other things, even who are very reckless about their eating habits or whatever, whatever it is in life that they are doing that makes it clear they're being destructive, self -destructive, you're going to have those who love that person or people be very openly critical of them and urge them to flee from that behavior or mindset, etc.

You're not going to just give your heroin addict friend a hug and pat them on the back and say, keep up the good work.

And what is more important, getting somebody to be cleaned or cleansed of a heroin addiction or to have someone, to see somebody rescued from the very clutches of Satan and damnation?

Eternal damnation. Right. And, of course, even beyond offending the great reformers who some of us uphold as heroes,

I don't know how concerned most evangelicals would be today about offending

Luther and Calvin or anybody else, but this is an offense to Jesus Christ to declare that the gospel is a matter of less importance than good physical deeds are.

Right. Right. Now, it's interesting, isn't it, that when Jesus multiplied the fish and the bread, everyone was happy, everyone was content because he met the physical needs, but then when he started telling them how he is the bird of life who came down from heaven and that they need to come to him so that they will never hunger again or thirst again, and then he made the profound statement that no one can come to me unless the

Father draws them to me and I will raise them up on the last day. And you will notice that at the end of his discussion in John 6, the response of the people was, well, we can't endure this.

This is hard teaching and we can't take this in. So they would offend him.

And this is the issue, is that our Lord was trying to teach that it's not so much the physical filling of our stomachs that's temporary.

We need the bread of life. We need that personal relationship with Christ that can only give eternal life.

And that's what's at stake here, Chris. Another thing

Mother Teresa taught that I think was very, very serious was she actually believed that man is not born evil, that man is basically born good.

And this flies right in the face of the doctrine of original sin, which is also taught by the Roman Catholic Church.

So if man is not born evil, and God is in everybody, Jesus resides in everybody, then at the end of the day, why do we even need the

Roman Catholic Church? Why do we need baptism? Because it's all holy oxen free. We're all going to make it.

I haven't heard that phrase in a long time. Well, since you were a kid, when you were a kid.

I'm sure people under 30 and in our listening audience have no idea. We're staying our age.

Don't get me started on Leave it to Beaver and all the other shows we used to watch. Yeah, this is the point that Mother Teresa basically helped with a very universalistic view that all people would eventually go to heaven.

And it's a pluralistic view that all roads lead to God. And both those views are clearly unbiblical.

Yes. And one of the other things that was, one of the other issues that was raised and confirmed by our

Roman Catholic guest yesterday, Mark, Michael Zima, was that Mother Teresa believed she was demon possessed and had at least two exorcisms upon herself that were, it is apparently, according to Mr.

Zima, very highly documented fact that these occurred. Can someone who has the indwelling of the

Holy Spirit become demon possessed? Well, absolutely not. The Holy Spirit and Satan did not make good roommates.

The Holy Spirit does not live on the second floor and Satan is on the first floor. There is nothing, the

Bible says, what does the temple of God have in common with the temple of idols? There is no concord. There is no agreement, no fellowship.

No, they cannot be possessed. They can be oppressed by demons and Satan, but they cannot be possessed.

Because once the Holy Spirit takes residence in the believer, that believer is the temple of the

Holy Spirit. And the temple of the Holy Spirit is holy. And the temple of the

Holy Spirit is the property of God himself. So no, that we do not hold to that view.

Right, and by the way, I forgot to mention when you were bringing up her denial of original sin, even the

Church of Rome condemned Pelagius as a heretic. And he was most famous for denying original sin and that was the core of the debate between Augustine and Pelagius, correct?

That's correct, that's correct. And also Mother Teresa, the nuns who worked at the charity there, as I said before, they would administer certain rituals that they believed were commensurate with the faith of the people.

And this flies again against Rome's doctrine of baptismal regeneration, that baptism is an essential sacrament for salvation.

So again, how someone can be canonized in the Roman Catholic Church as a saint and go against official

Roman Catholic doctrine is absolutely, it's staggering to even conceive of that.

Right, well, see, this is where the difficulty is. As you know,

Dr. Tony, that as one who gets into the debating arena with Catholics yourself, you know that it is very difficult these days to have a clear, logical, rational conversation with your average mainstream

Roman Catholic. I'm not even speaking necessarily of a liberal Catholic who is, you know, teaching yoga classes and Zen Buddhism.

I mean, the Long Island Catholic, where I'm from on Long Island, the Long Island Catholic was the dominant

Catholic newspaper, and there would be ads in there posted by Roman Catholic priests who called themselves yogis and were teaching

Zen Buddhist meditation. So I'm not even talking about those kinds of Catholics, but your average mainstream

Catholic answers variety of Roman Catholic, even that would be considered more of a conservative

Catholic, it's very hard to have rational conversations with them because they try to speak out of both sides of their mouths.

They try to maintain Vatican I and II simultaneously. They try to uphold and defend the dogmas of Trent that anathematize

Protestants, and at the same time, uphold the fact that Vatican II declared us separated brothers.

And the fact that their catechism teaches that even Muslims adore the same one true

God as we do. So there's a lot of confusion where you really can't logically follow a train of thought very often when having these discussions with Catholics, can you?

Well, that's what happens, Chris, when you abandon Sola Scriptura. You see, when you have two sources of authority, the

Bible and church tradition, when you hold to Sola Ecclesia, the church alone, then it doesn't matter what the

Bible says or what the church has said because the church is the final arbitrary in everything.

So yes, Vatican I said this, but Vatican II said that. At the end of the day, it's what the church says.

And it's interesting because I've tweeted a couple of items about Pope Francis' two Catholic answers on Twitter, and their response is always the same.

I asked him, why don't you critique the Pope when he goes contrary to church doctrine? And they basically said that that's not what we do.

So they don't want to even address issues where Pope Francis said things that are diametrically in opposition to historic

Roman Catholic doctrine. But this is what happens. What ends up happening is, you see, if you start critiquing the canonization of Mother Teresa, then you're calling into question

Pope John Paul II's judgment, who beatified her, and was fast -tracking her canonization.

You're calling his authority into question. And so this is why the default position is always to step back and say, the church is infallible.

When Rome speaks, it's settled. And that is the problem. It's the same problem that our Lord and the apostles faced with the first century

Pharisees, who also argued a two -source tradition, the Bible and the tradition of the elders.

And this is why our Lord faced intense opposition, because our Lord did not follow their tradition, the tradition of the elders.

And for this, he was also persecuted and maligned. Reverend Buzz has a question, but we're going to a break right now, so he can ask that when we return.

This is our final break. And if you'd like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We will be right back after these messages.

Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, for am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am

I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

We are a Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.

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Or visit linbrookbaptist .org. That's linbrookbaptist .org. Welcome back.

Before we go to some of our listener emails, the Reverend Buzz Taylor had a question for you.

Well, it seems like it's pretty much a given that this is the direction things are going to be going as far as the canonization of Mother Teresa.

But how do you see this as an effect on evangelical witness?

Do you think it's going to be something that's going to make it easier for us, more difficult? What do you see happening as a result of this in our circles?

Well, I think that we should use the materials that we've just covered and use it,

I think it'd be a wonderful witnessing tool. And first of all, what defines what a saint is?

A saint is someone who has been set apart by God. But that person who's been set apart by God has to be someone who walks in accordance with the revealed

Word of God. I personally think that this is a wonderful opportunity to share the gospel and show the distinctions between the gospel of grace and the gospel according to Rome.

So I think it's a great opportunity for witnessing.

Yeah, Romans 8, 28, all things work together for the good of those who love

God, who are the called according to His purpose. And obviously, even in a circumstance like this, the gospel is given an opportunity to be defined and proclaimed and defended in light of error as throughout history.

It seems to have been the catalyst for things being more clearly defined, even in the

Catholic Church's history at their more biblically orthodox councils and so on, where we as Protestants even agree with things that were clearly stated and articulated at some of the earlier councils before Trent.

We do have Tyler again in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York, listening to us live today.

He submitted a question to us yesterday, and he is listening again to us.

Tyler in Mastic Beach, Long Island says, Luther clearly said that Roman Catholic councils have contradicted each other.

How can evangelicals, for the good conscience that God has given them, call

Roman Catholics brothers and sisters when really they serve the enemy of our souls?

Very good question. And before you answer it, Dr. Costa, I would like to say that I believe that there are some

Roman Catholics who are our brothers and sisters, as I said earlier, because they either, through opposition to their own church's dogma about the gospel or an ignorance of their own church's dogma on the gospel, they believe in the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

And the question would be, why are they still Catholic? God only knows why they would remain in such a religion if they have a different gospel.

But if you could comment, Tony. Yes, I would agree with you too, Chris, because when

I was saved, I was still officially in a Roman Catholic church, and it took a while to wean me out of that and eventually join a

Bible -believing church. Now, of course, even attending Mass when I was already a believer, I already realized there was issues, there were problems there.

I could not say the creeds and prayers to Mary and so forth. And I think it's also very important to note that the

Reformers, Luther and Calvin, were still within Rome when they were saved. They were still in the

Roman Catholic church, and they had not yet parted ways. Yeah, and in fact, Luther didn't even want to leave the

Catholic church. He fled at the risk of his own life or to spare his own life because they were...

Right. Absolutely. He, in fact, didn't want to leave. He wanted to reform the church.

He was calling the church ad fontes, back to the fountain, to the source of Scripture. And it was not until the

Pope issued the people a bowl, ex... I think it's domine, ex turge,

Lord Arise. And there he officially declared Luther to be a heretic and banished him from the

Roman church. And Luther, in turn, burned the bowl of the pulpit. Lutheranism came out of that as a result.

Now, in terms of them being brothers and sisters, well, I believe that there are Roman Catholics who do come to their...

They do come to a saving altar of Christ. But what I have seen from my own experience and others is that they don't stay within the church of Rome.

They eventually will leave. You want, you know, it's like a child who wants food and wants to be nourished.

And so you want to go where the Word of God is provided. Now, I do agree as well that, no, our Roman Catholic friends are not our brothers and sisters in Christ.

If they do not, if they're not regenerate, if they're not holding to the gospel of grace, then they have fallen from grace and they don't hold to that saving knowledge of Christ.

And therefore, I don't think it's correct or proper for regenerate Borningan believers to pray with Roman Catholics.

I know a church here up in Canada, just north of Toronto, there was a church, a Wesleyan church, where I'm surprised the pastor's still there.

He's completely apostatized. And just recently, he had the whole congregation pray the

Hail Mary. So, um, yes, yes. So, so this is the issue here is that if we don't hold to the same gospel, if Paul could say to the

Judaizers that I wish that they would cut themselves all the way. And in Philippians 3, he would refer to them as the dogs who want to, who want to boast in your flesh.

That's very strong language. In fact, if that goes over the head of our listeners, he was basically saying

I would rather them castrate themselves. Yeah, when they circumcised, yeah, that they should just castrate themselves.

But for him to call them dogs and to basically refer to them as false brethren, I think is extremely important.

And so while I do respect many of my Roman Catholic friends, I cannot fellowship with them.

Right. And if you could define fellowship, because obviously, excuse me, obviously, there is nothing sinful about being in the company of Roman Catholics, enjoying a meal with them, having them over a home for the holidays, et cetera, et cetera, having them in our backyards for a barbecue, going to a sporting event with them, and, you know, really loving them and enjoying their friendship.

There's nothing wrong with that. No, no, to answer your question, Chris, fellowship is really a bunch of fellows in the same ship, right?

So, fellowship, or as the King James puts it, communion is the word koinonia. And of course, this fellowship has to do with in Christ, in fellowshipping, that is, holding things in common in Christ with the same spiritual family and so forth.

And therefore, Paul says, look, you shouldn't be unequally yoked with unbelievers. And yes, he does refer to that in some way.

And to some degree, he does refer to marriage as well. But what he's saying in that context of 2 Corinthians 6 is as Christians, you're not supposed to be worshiping in the idol temples.

You should not be participating in their rituals and so forth, because there is no agreement between Christ and Belial.

There is no agreement between light and darkness. And so you're right. When it comes to spiritual worship, no.

When it comes to sitting down, having a meal together, enjoying the ballgame together, whatever, of course, that's totally appropriate.

But fellowship here means spiritual connecting and sharing in the family of God. We have an anonymous listener from Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York, who says, why do you keep insisting upon using the

Council of Trent as a litmus test as to whether or not you embrace someone as a brother?

That is your opposition to the Council of Trent's definition of the gospel.

When the church has, I'm assuming this is the Catholic church, has progressed much farther since then as Vatican II clearly reveals.

And our guest has just accidentally been disconnected. I'm sure it was accidentally.

So we're going to hopefully get him back on the line very quickly. Our email address in the 15 to 20 minutes that we have left is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. I didn't think that our listener offended you that greatly,

Tony, that you hung up on us. I'm only kidding. I think it was one of the flies.

But I don't know if you heard the whole question. But basically, for some reason,

I lost connection. So if you could repeat the question, basically, it seems that this may be a

Catholic and anonymous listener that says, why are we using an opposition to Trent's definition of the gospel as a litmus test as to whether we embrace a person as a brother in Christ?

Because of the fact that this person says that the Catholic Church has basically gone way beyond that, that the

Vatican II is really clearly, in many ways, pointed harmonious relationships between Protestants, Catholics in a different direction than Trent.

Well, I'd respond to that by saying if you read Vatican II, which is available online on the

Vatican website, Vatican II has not repudiated Trent at all. In fact, Vatican II cites

Trent. It quotes throughout the document. It quotes from Trent as an official declaration, which is still recognized by the

Church. So Trent has not been repudiated. It has been affirmed. And the former

Pope, or if we can call him Pope Emeritus, Karl Ratzinger, who was known as Pope Benedict XVI, who was a theologian, an academic, openly admitted that the

Roman Catholic Church has not— he made this public— that the Roman Catholic Church has not dismissed

Trent and that the Roman Catholic Church still affirms to be the one true church, the unique church that Jesus Christ has set up, and that it is incumbent on Protestants as separated brethren to return to Mother Church.

So Trent is very much alive and well today. And by the way, just in case some of our listeners start looking up the

Council of Trent on the internet or other places, we as Bible -believing

Christians don't reject everything in Trent because there are some essential Christian doctrines in Trent, like the deity of Christ and the

Trinity and many other things like that, that we would affirm. But there are anathemas declared against things that are uniquely

Protestant in that Council that condemn all of us who consider ourselves heirs of the

Reformation. So therefore, that is a crucial document to point to when we are trying to hash out these differences that we have.

And it is obvious, Dr. Tony, why people are confused about Vatican II when it is compared to the

Council of Trent, because it appears, with the language of separated brothers and other things, that there is a departure from Trent.

And in some ways, they're wanting to have their cake and eat it too, aren't they? Yes, yes.

A lot of that has to do with Pope John, I believe the Pope who spearheaded

Vatican II wanted to make the Church a lot more ecumenical.

But again, the question is, what is the motive behind ecumenism? The motive is to try to regather the

Protestants and regather them back under the mantle of the

Mother Church, which is Rome. So there have been successes, for example, with Anglicanism, where Benedict XVI actually invited

Anglican clergymen who were disenfranchised with the way the Church of England is going with it, liberalism and so forth.

He actually invited them to come and join the Roman Church, and they wouldn't have to, they could remain married and become priests of the

Roman Catholic Church. And many of them crossed over to the chagrin of the

Archbishop of Canterbury. And so the motive, again, is to recapture, to bring back, if you will, all those separated children and bring them back to Rome.

Interestingly enough, even people like Rick Warren, when he was in Rome, he actually, it seemed like he was not, he was wading in the

Tiber River there, but he was actually saying and referring to the

Pope as our Holy Father, and speaking of him as if he's ours. And this is the official position of the

Roman Church, that the Pope, whether you recognize him or not, is the pastor general of the whole visible church around the world, whether you acknowledge him or not.

And we see that, for example, Rick Warren was acquiescing to that.

And also, even the late Robert Shuler publicly made it clear that we should return back to Rome, back to Mother, Mother Rome, Mother Church.

I didn't even know that Robert Shuler died. Oh, yes, he has. Yeah. Okay. You remember the famous glass cathedral?

Yes. You know, you know the old saying, those who live in glass cathedrals shouldn't throw stones. But anyway, but that's the whole motive of ecumenism, is to bring the separated children, if you will, back home.

Yeah. And you can't help but wonder if this is just a PR ploy that the church developed, just like the

Mormons, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, when they knew that they would be imprisoned and lose all of their property in the 19th century, they recanted polygamy.

And when they learned that they were going to lose tax -exempt status, at least in their schools and so on, they recanted a segregation in the church.

They denied priesthood, Mormon priesthood, to blacks.

Right. Prior to the mid -1970s, I mean, people don't even realize that it was only the 1970s that they welcomed those of the black race into all offices and opportunities of the

Mormon faith. Right. But it seems like this is what Vatican II, you can't escape if they did not recant

Trent, which they couldn't without denying papal infallibility, Right.

How could they possibly affirm or reaffirm Trent and yet introduce novel understandings of their faith that were never believed or taught in the history of their church prior?

Right. Right. And I think you're right. I think it's like a new PR program because it also involves,

I mean, it speaks very well of the Jews. In former years, the Roman Catholic Church would actually have prayers even during the

Lenten season, during Good Friday, praying for those perfidious Jews that they would repent and come to faith and so forth.

And of course, the Muslims now, the Muslims worship the same God we do. It even goes so far as to say that even the atheist has a chance of being saved.

And it's very strange because the Bible says that he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is the reward of those who seek him.

So the fact that that the Second Council, Vatican II, could actually say that atheists have a shot at it is quite interesting.

And also at that time, Chris, I don't know if you recall, but prior to Vatican II, the Masses were said in Latin and the priests would face the altar.

They would not face the people. They would face with their back towards the people. Vatican II, of course, changed all that.

The Mass was to be said in the vernacular of the laity and the priests now would face the people during the

Mass. So there were these changes that took place. And this led, of course, to, as you can see, the

Sadie Baconists have reacted to this. And they see Vatican II as the apostasy of the

Church of Rome, abandoning its historic roots. And so, yeah.

For those of our listeners who don't know that term, it's basically a traditionalist group of Roman Catholics who, although they affirm that the papacy is a dogma, and that it is a...

they affirm the infallibility of the papacy. They believe that there hasn't been a true pope since at least the early 60s, the 1960s.

And so basically, that's where the term Seda vacant is. That seat, the seat is vacant.

The seat of Peter is currently vacant. And they use the excuse that that is not bizarre or out of step with Roman Catholic teaching or history, because they say even when a pope dies, that seat is vacant.

So, you know, even within the understanding of all Roman Catholics, there is a time when that seat is vacant.

And somebody who's very famous, who at least at one time, I'm not sure what he is now, but Mel Gibson, the world -renowned actor and the producer and director of the

Passion of the Christ film. He was at least at one time a

Seda vacantist, and his father was. I'm not sure if his father is still living. But anyway,

I'd like you to really unburden your heart and leave our listeners with what you most want etched in their hearts and minds before we run out of time today.

Well, what I would like to leave our hearers with is that whether you're a Roman Catholic or whether you're an evangelical or a

Protestant or lapsed Roman Catholic or a lapsed Protestant, at the end of the day, the gospel message is that God sent

Jesus Christ into the world to save sinners, and that His salvation is by grace, it's freely given by a gift of God's grace, and that it was very costly.

It cost the life and death of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and that you can come to know

God personally. You don't have to go through a priest. You don't have to go through a pastor. You don't have to go through any form of sacraments.

It's a gift of God, and God has made that available, and you could receive that today if you are convicted in your heart to turn from your sins and to call in the name of the

Lord Jesus Christ, trusting Him alone for your salvation, repenting, turning from your sins, and trusting

Him, because at the end of the day, you're not going to be accountable to the Pope. You're not going to be accountable to the bishop. You're not going to be accountable to the priest or to the pastor or whoever it may be.

At the end of the day, you're accountable to God, and so if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.

Receive the gospel, receive Christ, and receive eternal life. Amen, and one thing that I'd like to ask you before we run out of time as well is that one of the major attractions to both

Catholics and Protestants who are ideologically conservative and politically conservative, who have in common biblical moral values and ethics is they see this ecumenism as being a very essential and crucial thing in a day and age that we are living in when people are being celebrated for getting sex change operations, men are marrying men and women are marrying women, abortion, the numbers of babies being murdered in the womb are going through the roof and continue to climb.

Our culture is becoming more and more satanic overtly in many regards and that is insane of us, it is foolish of us who believe that our governments, both yours there in Canada and ours here in the

United States, if we want to see them return to sanity and respect for biblical morals and values and ethics, that we should be linked arm in arm with each other, meaning

Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants, because these things that we are talking about are ivory tower discussions.

These things are, they might be important in one way or another, but they are not as vital as those issues that are destroying our culture.

How do you respond to that? Well, again, I would emphasize the importance of the gospel and getting right with God and so forth.

Now, and when it comes to social causes like abortion and euthanasia and physician -assisted suicide and all these issues,

I have no problem arm in arm going up against, protesting against government, whether that person is a

Roman Catholic or a Jew or a Hindu, whatever it may be. These are fundamental values that God has infused into us as his image bearers.

And I think that if we don't stand for these basic values, we are in danger of losing them.

I know that in my work on Islam, when I deal with Islamic Jihad in particular, there's a friend of mine who happens to be a

Jewish rabbi, we've been on the Trinity Channel before, engaging

Muslims on this whole issue about Jihad. So there's something that I could work alongside of him in protecting

Western democratic values against Islam and its destruction of such values. So I don't have an issue with that,

Chris, but I think that we must never forget the centrality of the gospel.

And I'm assuming when you say that you don't have a problem with the co -belligerence as it were with the

Roman Catholics and others who do not believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ, as the Bible defines it.

I'm assuming you mean that you don't oppose that if it does not require that you put your gospel on the shelf.

There are pro -life organizations and again, our mutual friend,

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, who is adamantly pro -life as every

Christian should be, but he had to step down from involvement years ago in a pro -life organization that forebode him from sharing the gospel with Roman Catholics who were marching on the same protest lines and so on, that were praying the rosary and all that kind of thing.

He was forbidden from correcting them and sharing with them the gospel as if they were not

Christian. Now, I'm assuming that that kind of a compromise is not something that you would be willing to make. No, not at all.

Not at all. If it is a protest against abortion or euthanasia or physician -assisted suicide, that's fine.

But if it involves the rosary and areas where now we're dealing with worship and fellowship with people who disagree with you, that's a different case.

So I would have done the same thing Dr. White did if I faced the same type of situation.

Well, I know that the website for Toronto Baptist Seminary is tbs .edu,

tbs, for torontobaptistseminary .edu. What other contact information would you like to leave with our listeners?

Well, if they'd like to visit my website, it's Tony Costa, all one word, tonycosta .webs

.com. If you could repeat that just one more time. Yes, tonycosta, all one word, w -e -b -s .com,

tonycosta .webs .com. Thank you so much, Dr. Tony, for being our guest today.

I eagerly look forward to having you back very soon on this program. I also eagerly look forward to having you come to Pennsylvania, here in Carlisle, where I live, to be involved in debates with Roman Catholics, Muslims, liberals, and others.

And I am really enthusiastically anticipating what God has in store for us.

Thank you very much, Chris. It's been fun. And thank you, Reverend. Thank you very much. Good meeting you. Well, I want everybody to always remember for the rest of their lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner.

God bless, and we look forward to hearing from you the next time with your own questions for our guests on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.