Session 1: What Brought On the Crisis?

Kootenai Church

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Well, good evening everyone Welcome to our fall equipping conference the Reformation Conference All right.

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Let's begin our evening with prayer Our father we are most grateful to you for the many rich blessings that you have bestowed upon us

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Certainly, not the least of which is the salvation that we enjoy in your son the Lord Jesus Christ We thank you for the gospel for the glory of it

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For what it has done in the lives of those who have believed and we thank you for your work in preserving it

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Over the years and delivering it to us that we may believe and have eternal life Remind us again of of your work of grace and your goodness to us in justifying us by faith and faith alone

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We pray your blessing upon this time that you would be honored here through this in Christ's name. Amen Don Kistler whom

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I have known of I just met him face to face today But I've known of Don Kistler for a number of years because I have a number of his

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Puritan titles on my shelves I have a number of books that he has edited a book called feed my sheep by John MacArthur and John Piper and Alistair Begg I think has a chapter in that book

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He edits and publishes that so I've had a few of his Books on my shelf and I've read a number of them.

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I read the book that you were given tonight Why read the Puritans several years ago? I read that so I've known who

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Don is and then when we had the Spurgeon conference

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A year over a year ago with Phil Johnson The Sunday after that Dan Kistler Don's brother shows up there that Sunday and he said

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I heard that you had Phil Johnson preaching here So any church that would host Phil Johnson is a church that I should probably attend

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And so Dan has been attending here since then and when I when he introduced himself to me He said you probably heard of my brother

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Don Kistler with solo Dale Gloria publications and read several books And so of course then

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I made that connection Don Kistler is the founder of Northampton Press a ministry committed to reprinting some of the finest

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Christian Titles and works that have ever been published focusing on the Puritans of the 17th and the 18th century

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Dr. Kistler has edited over 150 books and contributed as an author to several others He's the author of a spectacle unto

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God the life and death of Christopher Love and why read the Puritans today? and he is a contributing author to justification by faith alone and feed my sheep a passionate plea for preaching and That is the book that I told you that I have and have read and enjoyed thoroughly

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He currently lives in Orlando, Florida with his wife. Dr. Kistler. Will you please come and teach us? Thank you pastor.

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Thank you for the applause. Usually that's at the end when there's glad I'm done Well, let's begin this conference

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Some years ago Paul Crouch who was the founder of TBN that television network?

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I won't call it Christian television because there isn't much Christian on it But he made this statement about the

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Reformation. I Don't call myself a Protestant because I'm not protesting anything

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Well, I think that's pretty obvious Because just about everything flies on that network

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Why is there a Reformation? What's the big deal?

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Chuck Colson recently stated the issues of the Reformation have long been settled All right, so in this first tonight, it would be basically church history and then tomorrow there'll be sermons and Sunday morning

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Sunday school Sunday school classes who were these Puritans and Then the morning worship service is just another sermon

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Christendom has experienced many divisions during its over 2 ,000 year history

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The separation between what is now called the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Western Roman Catholic Church reached its final stages in AD 1054

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Then the division associated with the Protestant Reformation Was in the 1600 16th century the reformers of the 16th century didn't see themselves as being innovative

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In fact, they leveled the charge of innovation against the church that cast them out Martin Luther once claimed on occasion that the church against which he leveled his criticisms

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Was only about 400 years old and he saw himself as attacking only the papal theocracy in his mind

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He wanted to restore the Church of the Middle Ages Event essentially he was trying to recover uncorrupted

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Christianity Luther considering himself a loyal son of the Roman Church He said

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I didn't leave them. They left me Now in the 1600s the church here the 16th century the church had become an institution

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It owned as much as half the land in France and Germany There's a popular saying that goes follow the money

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You're gonna see where the money was going here The church had become an integral part of the feudal system and had become greatly secularized in the process

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The church prior Luther's day had become a theocracy. You know what that is God's in charge of the government

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That's what they tried to do in Puritan New England It didn't work then either and the ground on which that theocracy rested was the sacramental system

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If you've ever heard the phrase sacerdotalism that is salvation by the sacraments if you're a

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Baptist the ordinances The church claimed to be the director of society not be by virtue of the goodness of the churchmen

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But by the prerogative of the clergy alone To celebrate the sacraments through which alone salvation is mediated

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No layman could perform any of these Ecclesiastical rites and for that reason the lowest priest was greater in power than the king

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But as the church grew in influence, it also grew in excesses You see that today

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Church gets big and then all of a sudden bad things starts to happen The papacy went bankrupt and so the seat of power was transferred from Rome to France For 75 years all the

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Popes were French and with the loss of Italian land finances had to be reorganized and The French Popes invented and exploited every device for extracting money from the local churches and abbeys in The first century there was a book written called the did a

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K which simply means the teaching and it was supposed to be a summary of the

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Apostles teaching and One of the things that said in there was if a minister comes to stay with you

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And he stays more than three days and asks for money. He's a false teacher How many folks on TV would be branded false teachers with that?

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So fees abounded and special offices were devised So that they could be sold to help fund all the projects that the

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Roman Church wanted to do The most lucrative method and the first one was that of indulgences

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You heard that phrase before that word Indulgences were dispensed in order to get money for the constructing of hospitals and bridges and cathedrals and all manner of public projects and The underlying idea behind indulgences was this

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Christ and the saints of the church Had more merit than they needed for their own salvation

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Are you kidding me? They had more merit than they needed

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You see the issue of merit was one of the central issues of the Protestant Reformation By the way,

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Jim, did they all get a quiz? You were given a quiz.

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I Would like you to fill that not while I'm talking I'd like you to fill that out tonight and Then bring it with you the last time and we'll see if you've changed your mind about anything

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But these are the subtle differences between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism and it's very specific wording and It's on what basis do we have right standing with God?

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That was the central information Issue of the Protestant Reformation first was authority

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What's the final authority? the Catholic Church says the church is the

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Reformer said the scripture is And if that issue was settled the issue of justification by faith never would have been an issue

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But the Roman Church says no the Bible means what we tell you it means and The Reformer says no the

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Bible means what the Bible says it means the extra merit

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That will just take pastor Jim here good, man He's been so good That he's not only earned his own salvation, but he's got extra credit

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He didn't need that much. So he got more and Maybe you don't have enough and you could use some of his

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So the extra merit was stored in a treasury placed by God at the disposal of the

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Popes Who could transfer those to people who didn't have enough and how you did this was by buying indulgences

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So you could buy Jim's extra The extremists held that the

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Pope could remit not only penalties, but forgive sins based on indulgences

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The French Popes by indulgences collected an income three times that of the

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King of France one year Historically the spark that lit the

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Protestant Reformation was struck by Luther when he delivered his 95 theses and Nailed them to the church door at Wittenberg not

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Wittenberg Wittenberg They don't Pronounce that W that way now, this wasn't without precedent.

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This wasn't a big deal This was the way a scholar announced his willingness to debate an issue

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That's all he wanted to do is let's talk about this He had no thought of rebellion against Rome, but he was protesting the abusive use of indulgences

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Now what brought all this on was there was a Dominican monk named John Tetzel Who came from Rome to Germany?

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To preach and to sell indulgences the Pope at the time was Leo the 10th He wanted to complete the building of the

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Church of St. Peter in Rome, but he didn't have the money Well, here's a good way to raise some with this in mind.

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He issued a papal bull, which I think is a hilarious That's in that ironic,

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I don't know what else you can call it Granting an indulgence to anyone who would contribute voluntary offerings towards building the

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Cathedral of St. Peter These were being sold and that shamelessly it wasn't so much to escape

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Sincere repentance as to escape from punishment in purgatory that could be obtained by the purchase of indulgences

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Now some of you may find this church history boring and for many people today

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The church history didn't begin till the year Billy Graham was born But there's a whole long period before that It was proclaimed that one's loved ones who were in purgatory

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Could be delivered from punishment by purchasing indulgences Here is an extract from one of John Tetzel's sermons

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Listen to the voices of your loved ones pity us We are in dire torment from which you can redeem us for a pittance

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Do you not wish to? Will you let us lie here in flames?

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Will you make us delay our promised glory? Will you not then for a few coins? receive these letters of Indulgences which you are able to lead through which you are able to lead a divine and immortal soul into the fatherland of paradise what manipulation

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Means basically saying grandma's in purgatory and she's suffering your mother's there.

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Can't you hear her screaming? Don't you want to help her get out early? that may have worked in the 1615 hundreds

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Think today with as many dysfunctional families as there are a guy would say no, I don't want to get her out

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Here's 50 bucks. Keep her an extra thousand years. I Have to say that's not the most manipulative thing

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I've ever heard and the Roman Church does not have a market on manipulation

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When I was a teenager we used to go to church camp in Central, California in a place called

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Hume Lake just above the Fresno up in the mountains gorgeous place and there was always a youth speaker and Of course there was always an invitation

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We're now going to sing 81 verses of just as I am We'll wait the buses will wait.

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Oh, that's Billy Graham. Well, we met in an open -air place on benches open windows and a corrugated metal roof and it started to rain and You can imagine raindrops hitting that roof building.

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You could barely hear the speaker and Here is what he said, you know why it's what rain is That's God crying because you will not accept his son

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Jesus as your personal Savior Don't you want to help Jesus stop God stop crying come forward who can resist that kind of manipulation?

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That's what the Tetzel was doing with his sale of indulgences Luther's protest went beyond his objection to indulgences though.

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He said this is a violation of the gospel of God's grace To teach that you can buy release from punishment for sin and earn your own way into heaven

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He saw that the teaching of Rome concerning indulgences involved the question of how a soul is justified before God It was against this teaching that he protested with all his power and if you don't agree with that you're not a protestant a

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Protestant We should wear that badge proudly and little by little he saw that such teaching did great violence to the grace of God by which alone

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Anyone can be redeemed This is from official Roman Catholic that now by the way

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This sounds very negative and oh you must take Catholics. No, we're talking about ideologies here isms not particular persons

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We're not attacking people. We're attacking their ism The ideology behind all of this.

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This is according to the Catechism of Christian doctrines published by the Catholic Church Those who are punished for a time in purgatory

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Those are punished for a time in purgatory Who die in the state of grace?

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But are guilty of venial sins or have not fully satisfied For the temporal punishment do their sins

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Yikes you should be offended at that.

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There will be no purgatory after the general judgment the souls in purgatory of certain of entering heaven

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Get this as soon as God's justice for sin has been fully satisfied

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Wow, it was the cross What did all that prove if we still have to satisfy some of it ourselves?

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I mean, what did it mean when Jesus said it is finished? It's finished for now a couple of centuries from now.

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We'll pick it up again Indulgences have to do specifically with purgatory now

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Protestants often misunderstand the teaching of the Catholic Church about both of these things Many Protestants believe an indulgence means you pay as a sin

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Or as I'll give you some money and then you let me sin all that way. That's not what it means at all According to the official teaching of the

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Catholic Church is not a pardon of sin Still less is it a permission to commit sin?

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It is rather a release from temporal punishment, which is granted by the church

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To those whose sins have already been forgiven Are you kidding me?

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If my sins have been forgiven what am I doing this for? While grace has been restored to the one who's committed venial sin

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Usually there remains certain unpaid debts of temporal punishment These people can never sing

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Jesus paid at all paid some

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The rest you're on your own Wouldn't that scare you and These venial sins can be eliminated only in two ways first through penance second through suffering and purgatory

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And they teach that the time required in purgatory to pay for venial sins

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Is shortened by the devotion of the faithful. In other words, you can do that If they're in there for a thousand years, you can cut it to 700 by giving a little money

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The faithful on earth. This is a quote through the communion of saints

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Can relieve the sufferings of the souls in purgatory by prayer? Fasting by indulgences and having masses offered for them.

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Where do these indulgences come from and On what ground can they be granted the teaching of the church is that through the centuries a spiritual treasury?

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Has gradually been stored up by the super abundant

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Satisfaction of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saints which they gained during their lifetime, but did not need

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Have you ever heard the phrase super irrigation works of super irrigation that's where you get extra credit and The word literally means better than perfect Excuse me

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You can't do better than perfect Jesus couldn't do better than perfect He did perfect But there are no such thing as better than perfect I like Jonathan Edwards when

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Someone asked him. Did he believe in creation ex nihilo the latin phrase means out of nothing.

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He said no Because there is no such thing as nothing And if I ask you what is nothing and you say well it's the absence of something well

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So it is something he said nothing is what the sleeping rocks dream about Okay, it's not a knee slapper, but it's a little make you smile

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There is no such thing as better than perfect. These can be extended by the church to those who meet the specified conditions

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Indulgences can be gained for yourself or for someone else and No one knows even the

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Pope how long a soul has to remain in purgatory Can you see how they could milk this forever?

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Okay, well you've taken 200 years off grandma's sign, we don't know how much she has left

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You could give some more and that would shorten it some more Now here's just one example and I admit this is a severe abuse of selling indulgences a

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Man named Albert who was not old enough to be a bishop Already hold two bishopric offices and was offered a third if he would pay the fee to be installed

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For this one He asked the Pope how much he would have to pay to secure this position

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Pope Leo the 10th asked for 12 ,000 Dukat's for the 12

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Apostles Albert offered 7 ,000 for seven deadly sins

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They compromised on 10 ,000 hopefully not for the Ten Commandments But in selling indulgences to pay for his bishopric

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Albert publicly demone the deplorable state of the bones of st. Peter and st.

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Paul Which were moldering in all kinds of weather because of a lack of suitable covering

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How did they know they were the bones of st. Peter and st. Paul? Well, we brought him back from the

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Holy Land and those were the only bounds in the whole Holy Land So they must have been

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Peters and Paul So generous contributions were sought to build a mausoleum for the

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Saints which would be a shrine to all Christendom those who gave were promised the remission of all their sins and Apart from any contrition on their part were promised the release of their friends from purgatory the moment the coins clinked in the pot

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Tetzel had a little saying The moment the coins in the coffer ring another soul from purgatory

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Springs. I saw something of this Some years ago.

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I went to Ukraine to teach a group of pastors there and My host took me to a place in the city of he we pronounce it

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Kiev Now on the news, it's Kiev and it was a huge huge campus an

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Orthodox Ukrainian Church Actual gold around the spires and he said we're going underground

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So we walked down and there were tombs and Evidently in the 1800s a bunch of seminary students had taken a vow of celibacy and fasting

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Give themselves to prayer. They went below ground and said we will never come up again.

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We will study pray fast And try to do God's work. Well, they all died down there.

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And what they did was they built little glass tombs for them and These bodies were inside 200 years later

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They were pretty well preserved because no air could get in to cause much damage But here's what people did.

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They made a pilgrimage to this place They would walk down there. They would stop in front of each one of these little glass plastic glass tomb things

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They would kiss the glass cross themselves move to the next one

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Kiss the glass cross themselves move and when they had done this to all 18, they walked out they were saved

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And I couldn't have a thing if only it was that easy Now here's where Luther posted his 95 theses calling for a public debate

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Luther had heard Tetzel speak and And Luther said if God permits

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I will make a hole in that man's drum And we have to keep in mind that Luther still respected the church and the

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Pope. In fact, he wrote I Was at that time a monk and a most furious papist so intoxicated drowned in Roman doctrines

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I would have willingly aided if I could in killing anyone who had the audacity to refuse the slightest obedience to the

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Pope but his heart was ready to catch fire for anything he recognized as truth and Against everything he believed to be error

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He said I was a young doctor fresh from the forge pardoned and rejoicing in the word of the

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Lord Now it's easier to understand what's going on If we realize in 1515 two years before he nailed these theses to the door

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He was immersed in studying and teaching Paul's epistle to the Romans I Don't kill anything

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You can get through that and still believe his doctrines you need to get through that again and he was also lecturing on Galatians and Then he began to see the light of the glorious gospel of God's free grace

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How can you earn it? How can you earn a gift? That conversation between Jesus and the rich young ruler very instructive

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The rich young ruler says to Jesus good sir, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

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I think of that question What can you do to inherit anything? Just stand there and eventually somebody will come and say okay, this is yours.

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What can you do to inherit? You can't do anything to inherit. Just wait for somebody to die and if salvation is a gift

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What can you do to earn a gift? The focal point

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Was the affirmation of the forgiveness of sins through the utterly unmerited grace of God Made possible by the

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Christ and here was what he was hearing from people who came to his confessional at Wittenberg The sins they were confessing were more gross and excessive than formerly adultery licentiousness usury ill -gotten gains and His heart as a pastor ached for them, but he was astonished when the people said

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I'm not going to abandon my sins I'll just pay more to the Tetzel They promised they were not going to change their lives and so he couldn't absolve them

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Then they pulled out letters of indulgence from Tetzel that says we've already been absolved

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Luther replied that he had nothing to do with those letters and said unless you repent you shall all likewise marry now

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We Protestants need to realize That if Luther had not done this There may have been no

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Reformation you and I wouldn't be here right now Luther mounted the pulpit and spoke out against this

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He said my conscience is bound by the Word of God. He had a great saying his mentor

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Cajetan said Luther The Pope has absolute authority over everything

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Luther said except this book this book has authority over everything the

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Roman Church said the church gave us the Scriptures and We say no the

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Scriptures gave us the church Luther said no one can prove by Scripture that the righteousness of God requires a penalty of satisfaction from the sinner

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The only duty it imposes a true repentance. This is sincere conversion

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It is a great error to pretend to make satisfaction for one's sins to God's great righteousness

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God pardons them freely by inestimable grace He says the people who do this should walk apart and separate yourselves

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Says these men are gloomy and have sick brains and they have never tasted the Bible Never read the

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Christian doctrine. They've never read the Christian doctrine. They never comprehended their own

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Doctors and they live right rotting in rags and tatters of their vein of engines

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Luther left the pulpit the war was on We're the men like that today

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One of my great privileges when I used to go to England every year year and a half. I Would always go to Oxford There's a street there called

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Broad Street, Oxford, which the Bodleian Library is on. It's famous right in the middle of that street, it's been paved over but there's a

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Circle about the size of this pulpit head with a red brick cross in the middle and The students ride their mopeds across it and they were bicycles.

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Nobody knows what that's there for Except there's a little sign on the wall over here on the sidewalk

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It was on this spot That Nicholas Ridley Hugh Latimer and Thomas Cronwell were burned alive at the stake for refusing to accept the doctrine of transubstantiation

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I don't know about you, but about the time I saw the skin on my leg go past my eyes. I'd rethink everything wouldn't you?

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No Because truth is never worth selling not even for the sake of your own life and at one point

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Nicholas Ridley began to cry out in pain, gee, I think and Latimer called out to him.

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He says mr. Ridley Play the man By God's grace today, we will light a fire in England that will never be extinguished

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They died for their faith. We don't want to stand up because we don't want to offend anybody

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How come God should be offended just so somebody else won't be it was not the church that Luther was attacking nor was it the

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Pope? He believed he had them as allies and then on October 31st 1517

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Luther walked to the church. They nailed these 35 95 theses against the doctrine of indulgences

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Just going to read a few of them when our Lord and Master Jesus says repent

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He means the whole life of believers should be a constant and perpetual Number six the

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Pope cannot remit any condemnation, but only declare and confirm the remission of God Number eight the laws of ecclesiastical penance ought to be imposed solely on the living and have no regard for the dead the commissaries of Indulgences are an error when they say that by the papal indulgence of man is delivered from every punishment in his save Every Christian who truly repents of his sin enjoys an entire remission of the penalty and the guilt without any need of indulgences

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He who gives He who gives to the poor or lends to the needy does better than he who purchases indulgences

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The treasures of the gospel are nets that in former times the rich and those in easier circumstances have been caught in The Pope cannot take away the smallest daily sin so far as regards the guilt or the offense you had any problem with any of them yet and He was just saying let's talk about this

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There have been two really good movies made about Martin Luther One was made in 1949 both by the

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Lutheran Church, by the way 1949 it was a black -and -white movie. It's the better of the two in my opinion and There's a fantastic scene in there in Which Luther is speaking out against indulgences and the sale of relics the bones of st

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Peter and st. Paul, etc, etc, and his mentor says to him, but Luther If you take away relics if you take away

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Indulgences, what will you give the people in its place? And he pounded his fist said

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I will give them Christ That's always the answer

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Anytime you have Christ plus something else you don't have Christ anymore and in his thesis the evangelical doctrine of a free remission of sins was the first time in his day publicly professed

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Luther sought to reform the teaching of the church It's always true that what we believe really determines what we truly are

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You do what you do because you are what you are and you believe what you believe We should ever be suspicious of an untheological devotion

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Luther saw that the issue of his day as it is in ours is how is a sinful man

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Accepted by God His own incisive comment was in proclaiming justification by faith

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I have laid the axe to the root of the tree church responded with this statement

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Whoever does not accept the doctrine of the Roman Church and of the Roman Pope as the infallible rule of faith

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From which the sacred scripture derives its authority is a heretic

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For the Roman Church, the Bible only means what they tell you it means And if you differ from them, you have to be wrong because you're not them how's that for circular reasoning and He who declares that in the matter of indulgences the

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Roman Church cannot do what it actually does is a heretic in our times too many have forgotten the main doctrine of justification by faith alone and the neglect of this basic truth is senseless shameful and Dangerous I grant the 20th century is not the 16th century, but it doesn't matter what century you live

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Jude says this is the faith that has been once for all delivered to the

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Saints. There's nothing new And if it's new it's wrong it might be new application

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But it's not new meaning the truth of justification by grace through faith needs to be proclaimed as urgently today as it was in the days of Luther Thomas Cajetan was his prosecutor

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He let Luther speak He said the treasury of indulgences does not consist of the sufferings and merits of the

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Saints And he says the man who receives the Holy Sacrament must have faith in the grace that is presented to him

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It's not the sacrament that saves In the Roman Church, you're saved by being baptized

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That's a saving act At the minute the water is put on that infant's head it is a

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Christian Now not everybody who practices infant baptism believes that but the

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Roman Church does That's why when a person is in a car wreck and they're laying there dying on the ground

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They get a priest to give them the last rites That's baptism so that they die in a converted state because they've been baptized and Luther says

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The sacraments don't save anybody it's the grace behind them it saves

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Let me say this if I were to ask you what makes you think you're a Christian and You said because I have faith

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Your faith can't save you for by grace are you saved through faith and That faith is not of yourselves it faith is the gift of God not of works so that nobody can boast

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What are you gonna boast about? I was good today Luther said there are no super saints who have done more good works than was expected of them and therefore there's no super abundance of merits

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Luther said the scripture tells us that God rewards us far more richly than we deserve

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He said the Saints are not saved by their merits, but solely by God's mercy But Luther said if indulgences cannot be granted on the basis of a super abundance of the merits of Saints Those works cannot be any more the abundance of the merits of Christ He said the merits of Jesus Christ are not a treasury of indulgences except exempting men from good works but a treasury of grace that quickens

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Going to skip this next part because it's redundant In 1967

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Time magazine did a article an issue on the Reformation in Luther And they quoted an unnamed

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Catholic theologian who's from America who said Luther was right about indulgences the same

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American theologian said that Luther was right also He said his teaching on justification is more palatable with me to me than that of Thomas Aquinas But if where are we today is anything changed?

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500 years later R .C. Sproul tells this story I Recently visited the city of Rome leading a tour throughout

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Italy in the city of Rome. I Gave lectures on ancient Roman history Roman mythology in the way in which the

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Roman Empire has intersected historically with the emergence of the Christian community

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The people who put the tour together asked me what I wanted the people to see in Rome They said we have to see the

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Vatican. We have to see st. Peter's in the Sistine Chapel Sproul says

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I replied. I don't care about those things People want to see those things that's fine

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The one thing I want to see and what I want the people to see is the ladder in church Where there are those so -called sacred steps

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Martin Luther had his existential crisis here in 1510 when he made his pilgrimage to the Holy City Hoping to receive plenty of indulgences on behalf of his paternal grandfather

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But when he arrived he was horrified by the corruption he saw But he was a good pilgrim.

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So he went to these sacred steps, which allegedly had been the stairs to Pontius Pilate's judgment seat

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How would you know that? how could you prove that and And they were the stairs that Jesus walked on them when he was judged the bloodstains on them were allegedly

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Jesus's blood My head's exploding with all this nonsense

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These stairs were not discovered till the 12th or 13th century and were supposedly brought back to Jerusalem by the

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Crusaders Who somehow were able to say that's Jesus's blood They brought them back and erected them in the ladder in church, which is the official

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Church of the Bishop of Rome I felt I had to go there because I wanted to walk up those stairs where Luther walked

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I Can understand a little bit of that. Do you want to be a part of history? So like Pastor Jim today how that I was telling

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Jim today who does not want to be called Pastor Jim How I went to Yale University where all the manuscripts of Jonathan Edwards sermons are kept and They brought me the original copy of sinners in the hands of an angry

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God the one he held in his hand when he preached from it My hand was shaking.

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I had to hold my hand steady. There was a significant thing for me the man himself held these papers

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That's what Luther Sproul is saying here I went to the ladder in but I couldn't get on the stairs

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The reason I couldn't get on them was there was a throng of humanity Elderly people on their knees with great pain and difficulty

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Ascending the stairs one at a time kissing each one Saying the rosary as they went along in The laborious effort would take them 45 minutes to an hour to get from the bottom of the stairs at the top

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But there was a sign right there that says if you get to the top you have indulgences forgiveness of sins by grant

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Going upstairs they guaranteed indulgences to the pilgrims who made this and sent and Then went on to say there was an additional

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Staircase over to the right -hand side a replica of this one And if you can't get on this one, you can go on this one to get the same deal

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He says I stood there and I watched and I wanted to cry. I thought to myself. What's wrong with this picture?

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Where do you find people in the New Testament gaining the forgiveness of God by ascending stairs on their knees and crossing themselves?

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How far removed this is from the gospel of Christ? Well, that's what brought about the crisis of the

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Reformation Pretty irrelevant to today the authority of the church and The issue of how man is made right with God whether there's any merit in anything that we might ever do

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Can you really earn God's favor? These are still burning issues for the church today.

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And that's why this church is hosting this conference Well, let's take a 15 -minute break then give you a chance to recover and then we'll do the