March 4, 2018 Show with Eli Ayala on “Protestant vs. Catholic: Does it Matter?”

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Introducing Eli Ayala and the Protestant-Catholic Question

And today I'm delighted to have a returning guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, someone who is going to be speaking about something this weekend that is near and dear to my heart, being a former Roman Catholic who was delivered from the false theology of Rome by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ and brought to a saving knowledge of him through the true gospel that he offers through the death of his son.

We look forward to having you and the audience join us on the air today with your own questions. We have Elias Ayala today to discuss Protestant versus Catholic, Does It Matter? Elias Ayala is a Christian apologist, a graduate of Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary where he earned his Master's of Arts in Theological Studies and Master of Divinity.

He is a middle and high school teacher at Valley Stream Christian Academy on Long Island, New York, a youth director at Massapequa Reformed Church on Long Island, and a team member at the Historical Bible Society.

He's also a traveling speaker and he is discussing, as I just mentioned, the Protestant versus Catholic debate, Does It Matter?, which is also the theme of a Bible study this Saturday, that's tomorrow, May 5th at 945 a .m. Eastern Time at the Massapequa Reformed Church on Long Island, New York, and we'll give you more details about that.

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trumpet and Zion Radio, Eli Ayala.

Hello, it's a pleasure to be back and I'm looking forward to our discussion.

Yeah, I am as well, and I was a bit tongue-tied in the beginning of the program because I just got off the phone with a potential sponsor, so I incorrectly worded something. Obviously Jesus Christ's son did not die on the cross, Jesus Christ himself died on the cross.

He didn't have a son, it was God the Father's Son who died on the cross. In fact, if anybody saw the movie Mercy Me, the lead character from a pulpit thanked the Father for dying for his sins, so there was a bit of patré-passionism in that comment.

I don't know if that's what the lead singer of Mercy Me said in real life or if that was the butchering of the producer and director and so on that changed the original words, but obviously those are serious issues, but we all say things sometimes accidentally when we're tongue-tied and so on.

But, Eli, why don't you, for the sake of our listeners who have not heard your first interview on Honor, Trump, and Zion Radio, tell our listeners about your role as a teacher there at Valley Stream Christian Academy in Long Island and then also your role as a youth director at the Massapequa Reform Church on Long Island.

Well, I've been a middle school, high school teacher at Valley Stream Christian Academy, which was supposed to teach social studies, but when they learned that I also went to seminary, they allowed me to also teach the Bible class there, which now I teach all of the Bible classes for middle school and high school.

I teach 7th and 8th grade, we go through a textbook that kind of deals with basic worldview issues, and then the 9th and 10th grade, we do, really, we do systematic theology. We'll go through, in a basic sense, the various areas of theology, and then on 11th graders, we do comparative religion, and then the 12th grade, we focus on apologetics.

And so I've been there for 7 years and had a great relationship with the students there and the faculty, and I enjoy working in that context.

Well, praise God. Well, let us know something now about you and your role as youth director at the Massapequa Reformed Church on Long Island. I, all my life, have been passing by the Massapequa Reformed Church on Merrick Road in Massapequa, Long Island, because I was raised in the first town, that would be the first town east of Massapequa, which is in Amityville, and have always wondered about that church, and have had a number of conversations with pastors there over the years, and now the address I have here is Ocean Avenue.

Are you on the corner of Merrick Road and Ocean Avenue? Yes. Yeah, that's why I'm wondering why it's at Ocean Avenue, because I remember driving by there many times on Merrick Road. But tell us about the Massapequa Reformed Church.

I know that it's a congregation within the RCA, which stands for the Reformed Church of America, and that denomination, as you know, can run the gambit from a lot of different theological persuasions, but tell us about that specific congregation and your role as the youth director.

Yeah, well, kind of like you, I didn't know.

Anything about the church except that I knew that I was passing the traffic to get to work quicker once I passed the parking lot. There's a brick house in the parking lot, and just a little ways before that, there's a high school, and so I'd get stuck in the school traffic, the morning traffic.

When I drove past the church, I knew that part of the traffic was gone, and it was clear sailing from there. So I had no idea that I would eventually work there and actually live in the parsonage there, so I live on the church property, and I'm the youth director there, so I had the youth group there.

We have a nice, small youth group, but the kids are really close with one another. They get along great, which is awesome, given that they span a wide range of ages, and you know, the church itself is filled with people that are just really hospitable.

I remember going there, and I don't think they knew that I was actually going for the position as youth director, but I was surprised to just be welcomed by people. Hey, we hope you come back, this, that, and the other thing, and we just felt really welcomed there, and so it's really cool to actually now be a part of the staff there, and there are a lot of opportunities just for myself to learn and to also contribute some of the things that I'm passionate about.

I work under a pastor who has been gracious enough to give me the flexibility to also share the pulpit. I teach on some Sundays, and I'm able to come and just run various Bible studies and other teaching opportunities there that I've just been really appreciative of, and I'm looking forward to see what God continues to do while we're there, and so far there are a lot of changes going on, but they're all good, and we've been having a great experience so far.

Great, and for those of you who want to look up more information about the Mass Epico-Reformed Church, especially in regard to tomorrow's Bible study on Protestant versus Catholic, does it really matter, go to massreformedchurch .org, and that does not stand for the Roman Catholic Mass, that's an abbreviation for Mass Epico, massreformedchurch .org, and hopefully we'll be repeating that later on.

You're also a team member at the Historical Bible Society that was founded by my friend Dan Buttafuoco, attorney at law, and I have been in his presence during many public presentations for the Historical Bible Society.

Why don't you tell us about that ministry? Well, I was connected to Dan through a friend who used to go to a while back, and I met with him and went to his office, and we hit it off, and he's like, you know what, I need someone to write and contribute some articles since I'm, as you know, he's a lawyer, he's very busy, and so he wanted to, he offered to have me write for him.

So I write apologetic articles, do a weekly Facebook Live, you know, videos on the Historical Bible Society Facebook page, and I've been doing that for quite some time. So I also help out when he has events, when he goes to certain conferences and things like that, we'll set up a little, you know, the table with his literature and kind of promote the ministry that he's, that he founded, which really focuses on the accuracy of the Bible, the reliability of the Bible in historical documents, and of course, as you know, Dan has a very impressive collection.

Of old Bibles and manuscripts and things like that. Oh yeah, some of them date back to prior.

To the Protestant Reformation. Oh yeah, I held in my hand a Calvin's Institute from the 1500s, I think it was the 1500s or something like that. Wow, pretty impressive collection. Wow,.

And I don't know if Dan ever told you about how he came to embrace the doctrines of Sovereign Grace,.

Did he ever tell you that story? He may have, although working for him, I haven't seen him much, because he's kind of the guy who put people in place and kind of, you know, is like, hey, you know, you got a good handle on this, go for it.

So I don't see him a lot, because every now and then we'll connect. So I am sure he told me at some point, but I don't remember. Well,.

Dan and I, we, our friendship goes back all the way to 1991, I believe, and he became one of my first advertising clients on WMCA radio, 570 AM, Salem Communications affiliate, and Dan quickly discovered that I was a very aggressive, excited, and enthusiastic promoter of Reformed theology, aka Calvinism.

And I used to constantly proselytize Dan, shall we say, who at that time was a full blown Arminian, from what I can remember, and was constantly giving him things and articles and books and recordings, back then it would be cassettes of Calvinistic teachers.

And I can still remember, he came to the church in Long Island, that we used to, the building that we used to own that we actually eventually sold to a Calvary Chapel, when we merged with another church, some years after we merged with another church.

But Dan used to come to that church in to record commercials. And he came right before Christmas, it might have even been Christmas Eve, or the day before, and I gave him a Christmas present. And that was R .C. Sproul's book, Grace Unknown, which has since had its name changed to something about what is Reformed theology, or something like that.

And I can still remember Dan's reaction, oh give me a break, are you giving me more propaganda for Christmas? I can't believe, alright, alright, I'll take it. And he leaves the building, he called me up, this is probably in the late 1990s or early 2000s, I can't remember exactly when, but he called me up New Year's Day, and he said, I haven't been to sleep Chris, I read this book you gave me about R .C. Sproul from cover to cover, I believe now everything that he said in this book.

And then even years later, a person who was a listener called me up, a listener to WMCA, and said, could I meet with you, I'd like to talk to you about some theology. He meets with me, and he says, I'm having a theological dilemma here, I am a Pentecostal, and I always was an Arminian, but then I started to hear about this Reformed theology from a Bible study in the church where I go, and it's Assemblies of God, but the Bible study teacher is Reformed.

And I said, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, is your Bible study teacher Dan Petifugo? And he said, yes. So Dan was turning this individual by the grace of God, of course, into a believer in the Reformed faith.

But that's just a fascinating story, and I remember I told that story to R .C. Sproul, the late R .C. Sproul, when I interviewed him back in, I believe it was 1996. So that means that Dan must have been saved before 1996.

Actually, I'm sorry, that interview was later than that, that was in the 2000s. But anyway, when I told R .C. Sproul that story, he was very, very pleased that the Lord used that book, because I'm sure he's heard thousands of others' stories, and I'm sure he's learned about even thousands more now that he's in glory with Christ.

Oh, I'm sure. Meeting all kinds of people that came to not only salvation but the doctrines of grace through his teaching.

My first exposure to R .C. was actually his debate over apologetic methodology with Greg.

Bonson. Oh wow, yeah, because I know that R .C. was an evidentialist and not a presuppositionalist, I'm assuming that's what you're talking about. Yeah, it was an excellent debate. Who's this R .C.

Guy? And of course, I later learned that he was a big, top-notch reformed scholar,.

And of course, I've benefited greatly from him. Amen. Well, we all know that R .C. is a presuppositionalist now. Amen. Well, this is, as I said, a topic that's near and dear to my heart, the Protestant versus Catholic debate.

What does it matter, or does it matter? Why did you specifically choose this subject as a topic for this study that you're having tomorrow, Saturday, May 5th, at the Mass of People Reformed Church? Yeah, well, I wanted to...

Why Protestant-Catholic Differences Matter

Controversial issues in the context of a Bible study, first and foremost for the purpose of interest. I mean, I wanted to kind of get people excited about coming together. Before I started doing these Bible studies, I wasn't sure that many of the people in my church were meeting.

And so, hey, let's start something. My wife actually suggested, you should call it Coffee and Questions. And so, I'm like, yeah, that sounds kind of cheesy. But then I called it Coffee and Questions, and people came, we had coffee, people had questions, and then I've been getting requests to record some of them, you know, doing a Facebook Live, which I've also been asked to do the same for this.

And so, I kind of just have it going, you know, every couple of weeks, I'll pick a topic that I think might be interesting to people, and it's for the purpose to encourage people to get comfortable about talking about uncomfortable things.

Because there are a lot of people who come from a Roman Catholic background and really, you know, they don't know the difference. Kind of like, is there just one different phenomenon? You know, it shouldn't be a big deal.

When in fact, as you know, there are very, very huge differences, even though there are many similarities. And so, the differences are really, really important, and I think they're...

Yes, this is an issue that I think is of the utmost importance in the 20th century, because more and more conservative, Bible-believing evangelicals who claim to believe in sola scriptura, and who claim to believe in the inerrancy of scripture, are becoming full-blown ecumenists with Roman Catholics.

And that is of great, great concern to me, because I think the gospel matters. And if the Council of Trent condemned all Protestants in the 16th century as heretics to be anathematized or accursed, and for the very fact that those anathemas, even though they were hundreds of years ago, or they were pronounced hundreds of years ago, they are binding today on faithful Catholics, Catholics faithful to the Roman Catholic Church.

And it seems that the majority of people that I speak with, both the Roman Catholics that I speak with and evangelicals, seem to think that since the Council of Trent is centuries old, and that the way that Catholics speak and teach and behave, including their popes for the last several decades, in an ecumenical fashion, and even actually all the way going back to the mid of the 20th century, we have Vatican II ushering in new concepts to the Church of Rome that we who are Protestant are separated brethren and things like that.

All of those things are not declared ex cathedra. They're not dogmatic. So in other words, the Church of Rome can say a lot of things, and when you may question a more conservative Roman Catholic about that, like for instance my friend Robert St. Genes, who's a Roman Catholic apologist, I have asked him, what about your Catholic catechism?

It says that Muslims worship the same God that you do, and so on, or at least adore the same God that you do. He said, yeah, but that's not dogma. The liberals that compiled that catechism, although there is truth or are truths in the catechism, there are also novel false ideas in there that Catholics are not bound to believe, and that is one of them.

So it's a very confusing day and age. People are seeing a smokescreen, and the fact of the matter is the Council of Trent has never been revoked, and its anathema is against us. But let me, now that I've got that kind of off of my chest there, let me ask you what specifically you intend to be speaking about in regard to the.

Protestant-Catholic divide tomorrow. Yeah, well, again, I think the whole issue concerning the Reformation, those differences that really hit at the core of why Protestantism and Catholicism are so different, and it really is how we are saved and what is our authority.

It's the issue of, you know, salvation by faith alone, and the issue of sola scriptura. You know, people ask me, you know, what is the difference between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism? The answer to me is very simple.

We have two different sources of authority. The Protestant that wants to be faithful to God's Word as the ultimate foundation will say only God's Word is our ultimate authority in all things, whereas the Catholic will extend that authority not only to the Bible, but to tradition as well.

And uninformed folks who don't really know the differences, you know, the knee-jerk reaction when we hear Catholics do, you know, A, B, or C, is, oh wait a minute, that's not in the Bible. And many uninformed Protestants don't recognize that to say that it's not in the Bible does not faze a Catholic one bit, since they don't assume the Protestant assumption of sola scriptura.

They actually will, you know, openly tell you that the Scriptures are insufficient as the sole source of authority, that you need this tradition, this kind of this living voice of the Church to kind of provide, you know, commentary as to what the Scripture means, and that includes, as you know, extra material that we don't find in Scripture.

And so I think that is an important aspect that I want to highlight as to why we differ, and why Catholics believe things that seem very alien to the Protestant.

Our email address, if you'd like to join us on the air, is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com, c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. One of the things that I think we have to get out of the way or clarify is that when we talk like this, or when anybody talks like this, when we bring up the stark differences between Rome and evangelicalism, not that there are not a number of very important things that we both agree upon.

We both agree upon the Trinity. We both agree upon the the virgin birth of Christ. We believe in his total and complete sinlessness and obedience to the Father throughout the entirety of his life. We believe in his atoning death, although we disagree radically on how that atonement and redemption take place.

We agree on his bodily, his physical resurrection and his ascension into heaven, and we believe in his visible and physical return. We believe in a number of things that we have in common with the Roman Catholic Church, but the areas of idolatry and works righteousness, which would be akin to what the Judaizers believed, which Paul declared was a false gospel, and superstition and so on.

These are the things that that very seriously separate us. But we are not saying when we talk about things like this, and I'm sure you will concur, that we are somehow innately better than them. We are not saying that we necessarily are living holier lives than Catholics.

I know Catholics that put me to shame in many areas of life. There are many Catholics that are probably better husbands than I ever was, who are better parents than many evangelical parents, better children to their parents, better neighbors, better citizens, and you could go on and on and on.

So we're not saying that we're better than Catholics innately in our behavior, necessarily, or our makeup, are we?

No, I would say, quite simply, we're not better than Catholics, but we are better off than Catholics, if that makes sense. Right, amen. Because, I mean, given the fact that we are allowing the Word of God to be our ultimate authority, and acknowledging that we do not put our trust in the faulty wisdom of man, and that is what Roman Catholic tradition is, we are in a better position.

Not that we are immune from error, but we are in a better position to be more on track, given the fact that we recognize God's authority over all human decision. And so in that sense, I say we're better off, not better, than they are.

So where do you plan to start.

Tomorrow in this discussion? Say that again? Where in this controversy do you plan to begin your discussion tomorrow in Massapequa Reformed Church at this study? Well, for me, it starts.

With the question, I mean, what, you know, do these differences matter? And the simple answer to that is yes. And so the first thing that I want to draw out is, you know, what quote brings us together?

Where are those areas of agreement, and where are these areas of disagreement, and why are they important? And that, of course, will lead us to the issue of, you know, I give kind of a little background on the Reformation, and what Luther recognized in regards to salvation by faith, and then we will kind of draw that position in distinction to the Roman Catholic position, and show that these differences actually strike at the very heart of the Gospel.

Amen. I just finished listening to that James White did with Tim Staples on the Bible Answer Man. I like how they just laid things on the table. They said, hey, listen, you know, Tim, to be perfectly honest, you understand the difference between Protestants and Catholics is a salvation issue.

You think I'm going to hell, and I think you're going to hell, given that we both are presenting two different Gospels. And they agreed right at the start of it, and I think to acknowledge that is not to step on someone's toes, and we're just doing this to kind of get, you know, one up on the other person.

No, we're recognizing really that the differences between us are of eternal significance, and so it's very important that we bring that out at the get-go, so that people understand that the difference of taste is not just a matter of.

Interpretation. These issues have eternal ramifications. Yeah, that is something that is very rarely heard, that kind of candid discussion, because even amongst your mainstream conservative Catholics, even those that are with Catholic Answers that Tim Staples has joined as a team member, I believe he's still there, but most of the time, even your conservative Roman Catholic, and especially your liberal or moderate Catholic, will call Protestants their separated brethren, and they won't make statements like, you're going to hell unless you repent.

That you'll find more often, much more often, amongst your traditionalist Roman Catholics, those that believe in the exclusivity of the Latin mass and all kinds of other very conservative ideas within Catholicism.

In fact, Patrick Madrid, who many of our listeners may know, he is more in the main line of traditionalist Roman Catholicism, but he said to me that he does not have much hope for me going to heaven unless I repent and return to the Catholic faith, because I was Roman Catholic.

He told me that someone like James White is much more likely to go to heaven than I am, because James White never was a Catholic. Of course, this does depend on who you're speaking with. The Roman Catholic Church is not a monolithic group, as they very often claim.

They somehow claim that their quote-unquote infallible magisterium or infallible pope keeps them from the anarchy and chaos that exists in Protestantism, and that's ridiculous. There, I believe, are more divisions under what goes under the umbrella of Roman Catholicism than under the umbrella of conservative evangelicalism.

I have to stress that, because liberal apostate mainline Protestantism, we wouldn't even call them Christians. So there is a difference in the way that Catholics do view this issue on whether or not Protestants are going to hell or not.

I mean, of course, you even have a pope that is telling a little boy that his atheist father is in heaven. So, I mean, the so-called infallibility of the papacy is really a very nonsensical and it is a teaching that hardly ever comes into play in the lives of Catholics in the 20th and 21st century, because popes very rarely declare anything ex cathedra, which is the only time that they're infallible, for those of you listening who didn't know this.

So anything else they say is merely their matter of opinion, and that's why the Pope Francis is getting away with saying things that would have had him executed by the Church of Rome centuries ago. He's saying things that are absolutely mind-blowing in regard to the liberalism and universalism and so on, that have no basis not only in the scripture, but they don't even have basis in historic Catholicism.

Would you agree with that?

Yes. I mean, and again, the Pope gets a free pass because he's not speaking ex cathedra, yet he is the Vicar of Christ, he is the head of the Church, and it does not seem to be the case that he is held very much responsible for any of the utterances he says.

When he's not speaking at ex cathedra, what he says is still important, and I don't see why he wouldn't be above correction when he utters things that are in disagreement with kind of an orthodox Catholic perspective.

It's interesting to me to kind of observe that. I remember watching that video and I'm like, you know, is he allowed to say that? I mean, people are clapping and things like that, but I wonder, there's a lack of consistency or perhaps a knowledge of what Rome has taught in the past by the average Catholic, that I don't see how people can applaud a statement where a boy's atheist father is in heaven.

Why? Because he had a kid baptized? That doesn't make any sense to me.

Right. And in fact, according to Pope Francis, that was even more noble because he was an atheist. In other words, because he did something that was risky or going against the grain of his own thought rather than just doing something that was rote or expected of him.

I mean, just mind-bogglingly crazy stuff. But we have to go to... Well, it seems to me... In fact, yeah, if you could pick up where we left off right after the break, because we have to go to our first break right now.

If anybody wants to join us, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

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Heard, Pastor Bill Shishko of Reformation Metro, New York, former pastor for many years at the Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Franklin Square, Long Island, New York. He is the one that first referred me to our guest today, Eli Ayala, and he is quite a man of God, is he not, Eli?

Hello, can you hear me, Eli? I can hear you, yeah. I said, is he not Bill Shishko, a wonderful brother.

In Christ and man of God? Oh, absolutely. I love Brother Shishko. He has a pastor's heart and has put up with me asking a thousand questions about theology, and he's been very gracious. I have to check my motives when I meet with him since it's an amazing thing that every time I go to his home, I leave with a bunch of books.

And so I have to check my motives to see if I visit him just to learn and to enjoy fellowship. He's a gracious man, and I definitely look up to him and appreciate.

His time. Yes, and as I was saying, he was the one that first referred me to you and urged me to interview you. So I hope that our listeners begin listening to his program regularly, a visit to the pastor's study every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern time at wlie540am .com or anywhere in the New York tri-state area and in parts of Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts on the AM dial, 540 AM.

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Well, we are now back with Eli Ayala, and we are discussing the theme of his Bible study that he's conducting tomorrow at the Massapequa Reformed Church on Long Island, which is open to the public. And if you could, Eli, pick up where you left off there.

We were talking about some of the important divisions between Protestantism and Catholicism, and there is a lot of confusion, especially in our day and age, because you have even the Pope, Pope Francis, saying things that a Catholic would have been executed for centuries ago.

And that has actually been going back to the beginning of Vatican II, but Pope Francis is far more radically liberal than any other pope that they have ever had. But if you could pick.

Up where you left off there. Well, I was paying so close attention to the commercials, I forgot what I was going to chime in. That's why I tried to chime in before the commercial, so I do apologize. So we can continue on.