April 17, 2017 Show with Bill Webster, Tony Costa, Anthony Uvenio, and George Jensen on “Roman Catholic Lures to Dissatisfied Protestants”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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, Lake City, Florida, 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 Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 17th day of April 2017.

I hope you all had a very blessed, safe, and joyful Easter weekend as we who are believers in our risen

Christ celebrated that resurrection, and I am so glad to be back on the air with you the day after Easter Sunday.

We have perhaps what is a record -breaking Iron Sharpens Iron Radio program today in regard to the number of guests we have on.

I don't think we've ever had four, or actually, yeah, four guests and one host make five participants, and this is going to be a fascinating program on the theme,

Roman Catholic Lures to Dissatisfied Protestants, and today we have on the program

Dr. William Webster of Christian Resources, Dr. Tony Acosta of Toronto Baptist Seminary, Anthony Uvinio, who'll be joining us a little later from New York Apologetics, and in studio with me is

Reverend George Jensen, who is the pastor of Enola First Church of God in Enola, Pennsylvania, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you all to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, my brothers and friends.

Greetings. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be on. Greetings to you,

Chris. Thank you. Okay, and what I'm going to do is first, I'm going to announce our email address if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own about Roman Catholicism, about the problems that exist within Evangelicalism and Protestantism that make members of those groups susceptible to the lures of Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, and of course other cults and religions, false religions, but we are specifying or focusing our attention today on Roman Catholicism.

I want to start with a little bit of a testimony of our in -studio guest,

Reverend George Jensen, who's pastor of Enola First Church of God in Enola, Pennsylvania, and not long ago he wanted to meet with me because he was starting to question whether or not the

Roman Catholic Church had valid claims to their authority and to their biblical faithfulness and to their soundness, and I'm going to let him explain in his own words in little bit regarding how seriously he may have considered conversion, but those are things

I'll let him say in his own words. But before I do that, I'd like to get a little bit of your background and testimony,

Pastor George. Tell us about your upbringing in your home, what kind of a religious atmosphere, if any, you had, and how eventually the

Lord providentially drew you to himself, and how you eventually became a pastor in the

Church of God denomination. Why thank you, Chris, I'd be happy to share that. I was raised near here over in Perry County, Pennsylvania, in a wonderful Christian family.

My mother and father shared the gospel with me, and I became a believer, was saved in our living room home, and at a later point,

I was eight years old at that point, and later I was baptized as a believer, and continued following the

Lord after that. Of course, had some ups and down times through my teenage years, and since that time

I had a desire, a calling, I guess I should say, to be a pastor, and I guess the calling came about because of different things

I'd seen in life, and just wanted to help people and be a blessing to others, and I thought God was calling me and drawing me, so I submitted to the call, and went to college, taught in a

Christian school for two years, and then went on to our denominational seminary, Weinbrenner Theological Seminary in Findlay, Ohio, and became pastor in two small churches northeast of here, and then in 2001 came to the

Enola First Church of God, and been there ever since. Now is the Church of God, the Findlay, Ohio denomination, is that the faith that you were raised in, the denomination you were raised in?

Since I was 12. Before that, we had gone to a number of different churches, yes, but we'd always been solidly evangelical, but I consider my solid upbringing since the age of 12 with the

Churches of God Findlay, Ohio, yes. And just because of the fact that there are a number of different churches of God, as you know, some are

Pentecostal, some are not, would you say that a fair description of the

Church of God Findlay, Ohio would be Wesleyan Baptists, or very close to Nazarenes, would that be an accurate summary?

I believe that would be, yes. We came out of the Second Great Awakenings, a revival that occurred in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

The founder, John Weinbrenner, was of that persuasion, so yes, we are of a revivalist group since the early 1820s, and I think your description is accurate.

A non -Pentecostal, non -charismatic denomination. That's right, and we are, as far as we know, we are the oldest and the very first group to ever take on the title

Church of God. Before us, individual congregations did, but the research shows that we're the first denomination to take that title, yes.

And this area that I now live in, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and more specifically

Carlisle, this area is saturated with Church of God Findlay, Ohio congregations. I mean, is this the most popular denomination in this area of Pennsylvania?

I don't know about that, but one of our pastors, James Moss Sr., did a study, and Cumberland County, Pennsylvania is the most saturated county in the country with Churches of God Findlay, Ohio people.

Because how many congregations in that denomination do you have right here in Carlisle? Well, I'm not sure, but yeah, we have an ample amount.

You are correct. Okay, and tell me why you, not long ago,

I think it was back perhaps in October of 2016, or somewhere near abouts there, you contacted me and said you wanted to meet with me because you were beginning to have questions about the

Church of Rome, things that seemed to be appealing to you, and you were wondering how much of their claims to authority and biblical orthodoxy and harmony with the

Christian faith of all ages they really had. You started to see something attractive about them, and I'd like you to basically say it in your own words.

Yeah, I think that's accurate. I'd call it more of a curiosity. It was never that I was going to make a decision to convert or anything like that, but I will be honest with you.

I, like a lot of people, have become disillusioned with some trends in evangelicalism.

In some cases, the dumbing down of doctrine. Doctrine doesn't seem as important.

There's a lot of emphasis on church growth and wisdom to pack the church and to satisfy people.

And just some other things, too, some things we see in our society where even some of the moral stances with the changing of the definition of marriage by the

Supreme Court, even some evangelical groups are, I guess, at least tempted by that, or some have decided to go that route, and it's very troubling.

And the other thing, too, I would say, Chris, is how much of evangelicalism seems to be disconnected from some of the historical traditions in the church and the

Reformation. And you go to a lot of churches, and it may feel like a rock concert more than a worship service, and we see these trends throughout evangelicalism.

And I had found out through just some of my research,

I was stunned at the number of people who were evangelical Christians, even pastors, who were considering or downright converting to Catholicism, and it made me pause.

It's kind of like if your local mall gets a new store, and you're walking along in the mall, you don't go into the store, but you stop, and you're like, what's that?

And you look at it for a moment because you're curious. So yes, I was curious about this to find out what is this all about, what is going on?

And so you're one of the ones I contacted, because in my research, I watched several of the debates that you hosted with James White and others, and when

I found out you were in the area, I said, oh, that's great, I'm going to call this man and talk to him. And it was a wonderful conversation, and I'm so glad that I actually met you.

It's been a blessing to me personally to have you begin as acquaintance and have this grow into a friendship, and I'm looking forward to what the

Lord may have in store for this friendship in the future. But Dr. William Webster, you are a founder of Christian Resources, and just to give a little bit of background on you, would it be safe to say that your church that you are actually a pastor of, and your theological makeup would be

Baptistic and Sovereign Grace believing, Reformed, but not identical to perhaps the

Westminster Standards or the London Baptist Confession, somewhere in that orbit? Yeah, we would be, you know, more or less embrace what

Charles Spurgeon would be. We're Reformed Baptists. The only distinction you would find between us and the

Westminster Confession would be the whole issue of paedo -baptism. But we are solidly

Reformed, very committed to the Gospel and the authority of the Word of God. And for anybody listening, if they want to look up Dr.

Webster's website, it's christiantruth .com, christiantruth .com.

And many of our listeners know that I have a longtime friendship with Dr.

James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, and that I have orchestrated many debates between Dr.

White and Roman Catholic apologists. But many of you don't know that my friendship with Dr.

William Webster began prior to my having ever met Dr. White. And in fact, that very first Roman Catholic debate that I was challenged to help organize,

I was challenged by a Roman Catholic friend of mine by the name of Greg Lloyd, who is a very conservative, traditionalist

Catholic in the eastern right, not eastern orthodoxy, but eastern right of Roman Catholicism.

And he challenged me to find a Protestant debater to face

Jerry Matitix in a debate. And Jerry Matitix was the first pastor in the

Presbyterian Church in America, PCA, to convert to Roman Catholicism.

Well, whether or not he was a pastor or not, I don't know, but he was an ordained minister, I should say, in the PCA. And Bill Webster was the very first person

I called, and it was Bill Webster that said that Dr. James R. White would be the man for the job.

But Bill, I know that you have a very thorough knowledge of church history, that you have many recordings of lectures and sermons and messages explaining the origins of Roman Catholicism, the doctrine and beliefs of Roman Catholicism, the history of Roman Catholicism.

This claim that is very alluring to Protestants, that they are the ancient church, going back to Christ who pronounced that the

Apostle Peter was to be their first pope, and that everything that they believe and do and practice today has its roots in that ancient church of Jesus Christ himself.

Now, this is really fiction, isn't it? For lack of better terms.

Well, you do have the historical claims of Rome. You have to take them seriously, because Rome basically makes the claim to be the one true church of Jesus Christ.

It's interesting, the Orthodox make the same claim. By that, I mean Eastern Orthodox. There's a big split between the two.

They use the same arguments to assert that they alone are the true church. The Orthodox actually have more historical validity than the

Roman Catholic Church does. But when it comes to Rome and the claim for unanimous consent of the fathers, by which they mean that their teachings can be traced all the way back through the centuries to the apostles, as you examine the actual historical evidence, you find that they are spurious claims.

The Council of Trent makes the statement that it is illegitimate, unlawful to interpret scripture that is in any way contrary to the unanimous consent of the fathers.

If you look at the passage of scripture upon which all of Roman Catholicism really is built, that is the foundation for its authority claims, it is the passage from Matthew 16 of the rock, the attribution of that rock to Peter, that Peter then has successors in the bishops of Rome, and that the

Roman Church then is built upon the person of Peter whom Christ claims is the rock.

But when you look at the exegesis of the early fathers of the church, unanimously they assert that the rock upon which the church is built is not the person of Peter, it is his confession of faith.

Augustine, the greatest theologian of the church for the first 1200 years, the greatest father in the western church,

Augustine interprets the rock of Matthew 16 probably more than any other church father.

You have more comments by him on that particular passage of scripture than any of them. But he makes a statement in interpreting what the rock means, and he says

Christ did not build his church on a man, but on Peter's confession.

That interpretation is basically consistent with what the eastern unorthodox church believes, and what the reformers of the protestant church believed.

It is utterly contrary to the Roman Catholic point of view, but the interpretation of that passage by the fathers themselves is contrary to that which is put forth by the

Roman Catholic Church, in particular at Vatican I, where it dogmatized the particular

Roman view of the interpretation of Matthew 16, Luke 22, and John 21, establishing the foundation of Roman primacy.

But that did not take place in the church for many centuries. But the facts historically of exegesis, as you investigate what the early church taught, completely repudiate the

Roman Catholic view, and because that is the foundational passage for the authority claims of the

Roman Catholic Church, it's clear they contradict their own counsel at the

Council of Trent, and the historical facts are opposed to the teaching of Rome.

And Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary, you recently were involved in a public moderated debate here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, that I orchestrated.

You debated a friend of mine that I've known since the 1990s, Dr. Robert St.

Genes, who's a Roman Catholic apologist, the founder of Catholic Apologetics International. You debated on the theme,

Mary, Sinless Queen of Heaven, or Sinner Saved by Grace. And during that debate, it was quite obvious very quickly on that the core of this difference that you have with Dr.

St. Genes, in fact, that the heirs of the Reformation had with Rome, is sola scriptura, that the scripture alone is the sole, infallible, inerrant authority for the church.

And if you could tell us a bit more about that, about why that is such a central and important and vital theme when it comes to this whole question about whether the

Church of Rome and Eastern Orthodox are sister churches, whether they are true churches with some falsehood, or false churches that happen to have some truth.

Dr. Costa? I think that, yes, during my debate with Dr. St.

Genes, if you will remember during the debate, and it is posted online as well for the hearers who want to check that, it's available on YouTube, during the debate it became very clear that Dr.

St. Genes obviously did not espouse sola scriptura. The position that he took at the end of the day was, of course, sola ecclesia.

He never used that terminology, but if you remember during the cross -examination and during the rebuttal period, whenever I brought up scripture, he would say, well, who cares?

He seemed to just toss the idea of the authority of scripture out the window, because to Robert, the scriptures alone are not the sufficient rule of faith and practice.

Right, he even said, who cares when it comes to the Apostle Paul describing the scriptures to Timothy as being

God -breathed? He said, so what? Exactly. That's right, and yet it's interesting when

I challenged Robert to show us any literature outside of scripture that is called theianostos, and of course, theianostos is the word used in 2

Timothy 3 .16, which is translated God -breathed, or in some translations the King James and New American Standard Bible as inspired or given, all scripture is given by inspiration, but the word theianostos is a hypoxylogomena, meaning it appears only once in Holy Scripture at 2

Timothy 3 .16, and that term is used of scripture. It's never used of the tradition of the Church or any other source.

And so what Robert St. Genes was demonstrating was, we don't need the scriptures to establish doctrine, and yet that's exactly what 2

Timothy 3 .16 -17 says, that it's profitable for teaching, instruction, and so forth to fully furnish the man of God.

And also, just to add to what Dr. Webster mentioned, if you will remember that when

I quoted from the text of Pope Pius IX, the official dogma that enunciated the

Immaculate Conception, it's interesting that that papal document asserted that the view that Mary was immaculately conceived has always been the teaching of the

Church, it has always been accepted by the fathers, and so forth. And then, of course, when we dig deeper and investigate the claims of the fathers and what they had to say about Mary, the

Blessed Mother of our Lord, you will notice that many of them actually did not agree unanimously with the so -called doctrine of the

Immaculate Conception. They believed that Mary was guilty of certain sins, like ambition, and pride, and so forth.

And, in fact, the idea of the sinlessness of Mary had become such a heated issue that the

Franciscans and the Dominicans were battling each other over it, and then even appealing to various Marian apparitions to justify their respective positions.

And so, when you have this type of history in the Church where anyone can investigate for themselves and then set that against the claims of Rome, what you find over and over again is that the evidence just does not add up, it does not confirm the

Roman position that she has always held to these various doctrines. And so, that is a major problem, extremely a major problem.

And, of course, this is what the Orthodox Church also believes.

Now, the Orthodox Church does not believe in the Immaculate Conception of Mary simply because the

Orthodox Church does not believe in original sin, it does not believe in the imputation of original sin.

And so, the Orthodox Church also maintains the same position on tradition, it denies

Sola Scriptura, and it affirms its various doctrinal positions also on sacred tradition that they use to buttress their own unique doctrine.

So, just out of curiosity, do the Eastern Orthodox believe in the sinlessness of Mary?

Is that something that she ever achieved in this life, in their opinion? Well, they refer to Mary as the

Panagia, the All -Holy, the Pure. And so, they believe that Mary lived a sinless life.

They don't believe in original sin, they believe that the issue is not so much original sin. So, they sided with Pelagius on that.

Yes, indeed, indeed. And so, they would claim that Mary was sinless, but they would not assert that or connect that with the

Roman Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. So, basically, you guys are both saying that when a

Protestant is faced with a dilemma like Pastor George Jensen faced about the corruption of the faith that is rampant in Evangelicalism today, where you have all kinds of bizarre and unbiblical and anti -biblical and heretical and, dare

I say, perhaps even occasionally blasphemous things going on, it is not as if the

Church of Rome would be the first place to run because their beliefs are comparatively, even though some of them are very old, centuries old, they're comparatively much more modern innovations and developments and mutations of what the

Church began believing in the first century. Am I right? So, they are not like the faithful, historically pure option to run to when we notice problems within Evangelicalism.

I mean, would you agree? Oh, I agree. Dr. Tony Costa speaking here at this point.

So, I just wanted to add that just because Evangelicalism, some parts of Evangelicalism are going south or sinking, it doesn't make the

Roman Catholic Church true by default or the Orthodox true by default because apostasy is nothing new in the history of the

Church. The New Testament writers were keenly aware of the apostasy.

Paul talks about how, in the latter days, many will turn away from the faith and so forth and give heed to seducing spirits and people will want to have their ears itched and so forth and turn away from the truth and turn to myths.

The idea of apostasy is nothing new, and I think we are clearly seeing that definitely in Evangelicalism.

Now, in Roman Catholicism, we also have, there's a lot of liberal theology in the Roman Catholic Church as well, and so the real question that we really need to ask is this, is if Evangelicalism, if parts of Evangelicalism seem to be going down a very dangerous, heretical road, the option isn't just to jump out and go into the

Roman Catholic Church without examining the content of its theology. The content of Rome is still another gospel.

Rome does not preach, nor the Orthodox Church. Rome nor the Orthodox Church preaches the gospel of grace.

Yeah, if you could actually be very clear, Dr. Costa, and then I'll go to you, Dr. Webster.

Dr. Costa, if you could be very clear and succinct about what is different about the gospel of Rome and the gospel of the

Reformation, the gospel that we have as heirs of the Reformation accepted as biblical truth, because obviously the

Reformers are not the authors of truth. The Bible is where we find our sole authority for faith and practice, but if you could tell us what succinctly is the difference.

Right, the difference is that the biblical gospel, as per Galatians 169, is the gospel of grace, in that it is the good news of Jesus Christ's death, burial, resurrection, and the gift of eternal life, based on God's free grace, not on our works.

It's not something that we merit. The gospel that Rome preaches, and that the Orthodox Church preaches, is not the gospel of grace alone.

It is a gospel that involves grace, but it is not grace alone.

You need to add sacraments to it, you need to add merits to it, and so forth.

Let me just quickly quote here, Chris, the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This is number 1459.

It says here, and I'm quoting, "'Raised up from sin, the sinner must still recover his old spiritual health by doing something more to make amends for the sin.

He must make satisfaction for, or expiate his sin. This satisfaction is also called penance."

And so, in the gospel of Rome, the sinner works alongside of God. It's a synergistic view that it's you and God working together to make satisfaction, to make expiation for sin.

The Orthodox Church holds to the same view. And so, the gospel of grace that the Reformers preached and taught was that this was

God's saving of the sinner, based on nothing else but the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary.

The gospel of Rome and the Orthodox Church is not that Calvary is sufficient, but that you have to add to what

God has already done. And that, as Luther said, that is the hinge upon which the

Church, the door moves in terms of the doctrine of justification. So, Christ hanging on the cross and receiving the punishment that sinners are due as our substitute, that was essential, required, but it is insufficient and inadequate, according to Rome, correct?

Correct, correct. And that, of course, contradicts Hebrews 10, verse 14 and following, where we're told that Christ, by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

So, the gospel of grace says that Christ, by one perfect sacrifice, has perfected, finished, for all time those who are being sanctified.

And so, it's a finished work, it's a perfect work. And when we look at the golden chain of redemption in Roman faith, it's very clear that those whom

God calls and predestines are those whom he will ultimately glorify. But Rome and the

Orthodox Church cannot make that claim. They could claim that people receive justification at baptism, but they do not believe in eternal security, that that person will be ultimately glorified.

And so, in the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Church, the chain of is broken. All right, we're going to go to a break right now.

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Relationship Between Church and State. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Reitman, and welcome to Iron Sharpens.

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United States in 1999. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune into A Visit to the Pastor's Study every

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Eastern Time for a visit to the pastor's study, because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back, this is

Chris Arnson. If you just tuned in to today's episode of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, we have a packed house here.

We have Dr. Bill Webster of Christian Resources, Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary.

We are going to be joined, God willing, very shortly by Anthony Uvinio of New York Apologetics, and in studio we have

Rev. George Jensen, the pastor of Enola First Church of God in Enola, Pennsylvania.

If you'd 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.

Dr. Bill Webster, one of the things that you commonly hear from Roman Catholic apologists in regard to the fact that although Roman Catholicism has been tainted with liberalism, and he even has a pope that is more liberal by far than any pope in their history, in reality when it's boiled down to the nuts and bolts of things, it doesn't really matter, because the pope can say basically anything he wants to say, unless he proclaims ex cathedra or defines it as dogma, something that the faithful must always believe.

His opinion is merely only his opinion, and they think that gets them around the accusation of developing liberalism and even apostate notions of things.

They will say, whereas we in the Protestant world, the evangelical world, we are our own popes, and we have a blueprint for anarchy known as sola scriptura, and that when we use only our

Bibles without a magisterial authority, we will be led into all kinds of heresy, and they think that they have some kind of superior edge on us with an infallible magisterium.

But if you could comment on that, Dr. Bill Webster. Well, the ultimate authority for those who are true to the

Reformation, and as Tony pointed out, apostasy is no guarantee for anybody.

I don't care if you're Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or Protestant, you're going to find apostates.

If you have a doctrinal standard established by Rome, and they have many of them, you have many apostates within the

Roman Catholic communion. The same is true of Eastern Orthodoxy. The ultimate authority for Rome is the

Church, and the infallible declarations of the Church in counsel or ex cathedra statements by or teachings by the bishops of Rome.

Those ex cathedra statements or teachings or dogmas are very few.

Within the history of Roman Catholicism, you find a handful of dogmatic ex cathedra declarations by the bishops of Rome.

Obviously, the councils themselves are infallible. For the

Protestant, for the Church, you come back to the whole issue of what is the Church. Is the

Church an organization or an organism? The true

Church is made up of those who are spiritually united to the person of Jesus Christ. He is the ultimate authority.

He's the Lord of Lords, King of Kings, but he's also given us the Word of God, and this is where we come back to the ultimate authority for the

Protestant Church, again, that is true to the Reformation, because the Reformation was grounded upon a recovery of the authority, the primacy of the written

Word of God, but that goes back to a unanimous, patristic understanding and perspective as well, because in the early

Church, the ultimate authority for the early Church was the Scriptures, and the writings of the

Church Fathers are saturated with these affirmations of the

Word of God. The recovery of that perspective and that commitment in the

Reformation is one of the distinctive characteristics of the Reformation. It is the

Word of God that is the ultimate standard of authority. Therefore, you have an objective standard by which to measure where you have apostasy, where you have a denigration of truth and a watering down of the

Word of God. Yeah, the Evangelical Church is full of what you would look at today as apostasy, but if you go back to the

Old Testament in Judaism, you look at Jesus Christ, and when the Lord was called to minister as the

Messiah to the nation of Israel, He came to minister to almost an entire nation that had fallen into apostasy.

I mean, He could say to the religious leadership of Israel, you are of your father the devil.

So this is nothing new, but you always have a remnant, and within the

Protestant Evangelical Church today, those who are serious about the

Word of God and about the Gospel are grieved to the core of their being to see what is taking place in the

Church, but the answer is not going back or crossing the

Tiber and going to Rome or going to East and North Odessa because they're no better. They don't have the

Gospel. They do not have an ultimate commitment to that ultimate authority of the

Word of God. What we have to do is come back to the revelation of the truth of the

Word of God and what the Gospel is, because the Gospel is the power of God to the nation.

The Gospel is what Christ promised He would use to build

His Church and build it, and then through the proclamation of the

Word of God, He will build it up. It always comes back to the Word of God. How you deal then with the corruption of Evangelicalism, you stand and you proclaim the truth of the

Word of God. There's always a remnant. So within the Church that is Evangelical today, you have that which is true.

You have that which is utterly committed to the authority of the Word of God. Unfortunately, it is a remnant.

But you pray and you ask God to move in a mighty way upon men's hearts in Roman Catholicism, in the

Eastern Orthodox, within the Evangelical Church to bring men and women back to that ultimate commitment to the authority of the

Gospel and the Word of God. Amen. And Dr. Tony Costa, would you not say that although the

Roman Catholic Church and Roman Catholic apologists will use this in their rhetoric very often, they have been stalwarts in defense of the life of the unborn, in defense of the permanence of marriage, and many other things, or a number of other things anyway, that are integral parts of biblical morality and faithfulness.

But when you militate against the Gospel, when you begin to offer prayer and adoration to men and women who are finite sinners, men and women of flesh and bone and blood like you and I are, these are atrocities in the faith that are just as serious, just as damnable as things that we would consider products of liberalism, are they not,

Dr. Costa? Yes, absolutely. I mean, we could also mention that those who fight for the unborn and those who fight against euthanasia and those who stand up for the permanence of marriage, the

Mormons hold to that as well. But I don't know any Roman Catholic who would say, well, therefore, if we unite with Mormonism, we should accept the theology of Mormonism, because Mormonism has another

Gospel and has very significant heretical teachings about God and the

Lord Jesus Christ and so forth. So, yes, we can agree that, of course, abortion is wrong. We can agree, yes, that marriage is a sacred ordinance that must be maintained in society.

But, you see, we have to be careful that we don't fall into the trap of so -called mere

Christianity. You'll hear this word, of course, C .S. Lewis made it famous, but you'll hear the term mere

Christianity tossed around. And even recently, Hank Hanegraaff of CRI, as many of you know, has converted into the

Eastern Orthodox Church, he will throw this term around. And what does mere

Christianity mean? We agree on the fundamentals, we agree on the creeds of the

Church, the Nicene Creed, the Apostle's Creed, the Creed of Chalcedon, and so forth. But what it's not saying is, it does not necessarily define the

Gospel. Those are theological confessions about who God is, who Christ is, the Holy Spirit, the

Church. But the Gospel itself is the central point here of our discussion, because Galatians 1 -69, the

Apostle Paul used the strongest word in the New Testament, the word anathema, to describe anyone, or even an intelligent messenger, who would bring any other

Gospel than the Gospel that he and the Apostles had preached. He says, if anyone preaches any

Gospel other than the Gospel that you received, let him be anathema, a very strong word, denoting the judgment of God, the damnation of God upon someone.

And so, I think that it's important to realize that even though we may have common ground in terms of moral issues, this does not, and should not, detract from the central point here, which is the dividing line, and that is the

Gospel of Grace. And just to add something as well, I mean, we were talking a little bit about the remnant, and this has always been the case.

God has always had a witness for Himself in the world. The remnant has always been there, and you will notice that the remnant has always been small, the remnant has always been the minority, never the majority, and in fact, the

Lord Jesus Christ Himself, I think in Luke 13, verse 3, referred to His Church as the little flock.

They're not little flock, it is my Father's will to give you the Holy Spirit. So the remnant has always been

God's chosen instrument in the world, and this reminds us of the days of Elijah, when

Israel was in a national state of apostasy, to the point that the prophet

Elijah thought that he was the only one left, and in fact, that's what he said. He said, they've killed all your prophets,

Lord, and I am the only one left, and I'm not better than my fathers, take my life. And the

Lord God had to remind Elijah that Elijah was not on the throne, Elijah was not the sovereign of the universe.

The Lord had to remind Elijah that he still had 7 ,000 in reserve that had not kneeled to Baal, and therefore, we must always remember that apostasy has always been part and parcel of the people of God.

There have been those who've fallen away, they're the tares, they're not the genuine, regenerate believers, they are professing believers like Judas Iscariot, who have the outward form of being

Christian, but in actual fact, they are not. And so, apostasy has always been with the

Church, it has always been with ancient Israel, and it will get worse and worse as the days proceed, as we approach the coming of the

Lord. Darrell Bock And I just want to check to see if my friend Anthony Uvinio has joined us yet. Are you there,

Anthony? Anthony Uvinio Chris, I'm here, and I'm absolutely delighted to be on the program today.

In fact, I'm reconsidering my position on cessationism, because me being on a program with William Webster and Tony Costa is a miraculous act of God.

As educated as these men are, I'm honored to be on the same radio show with them. Darrell Bock Well, Anthony Uvinio, for our listeners who are unfamiliar with him, he is co -founder of New York Apologetics.

He's a dear friend of mine and a phenomenal supporter of Iron Trip and Zion Radio, and I thank

God for him. And before you give us a very brief summary of the event that you are organizing, which is going to be taking place in just a couple of weeks on Long Island, New York, tell us an abbreviated version of your own conversion out of Rome to biblical

Christianity. Anthony Uvinio About 33 years of my life, and it wasn't until God intersected my life and brought me into this man's basement who was witnessing to me and started speaking to me and had me read

Psalm 51, where God actually, it was a Lydia experience, God opened my heart to believe.

It was then that I came to a true saving knowledge of who Jesus was, and it was proposed to me that I could do it my way.

And at the end of Psalm 51, it says, bulls will be slaughtered on your altar. And what those men in that room didn't know was that I had followed horoscopes my whole life, and I was a

Taurus. And, you know, I idolized bulls, and it kind of really does represent my personality.

I'm obstinate, ask my wife, thick -headed, point me in the direction, and I will run through any wall to get there.

So this resonated with me when I heard that young bulls would be slaughtered on his altar. And it was at that moment that God opened my heart and enabled me to believe and saved me right then and there.

And from that moment on, it was fast forward, because I was the type of person who had to know the answers that people were going to ask me.

You know, growing up in New York, especially on Long Island, there was two things

I learned how to do as an Italian -American growing up on Long Island. I learned how to eat, and I learned how to argue in many ways.

Although I'm not classically trained, I do have a distinct advantage over these men, because I grew up in New York, and I continually argue with so many people.

But be that as it may, as I started to read the scriptures and see that they were true, you know, the grass withers, the flowers fade away, but the word of the

Lord stands forever, I recognized coming out of Catholicism that they held to four sources of authority.

They held to holy tradition, the teaching magisterium of the church, the pope and his infallibility, and scripture.

Now again, from my point of view, I asked the question, well, which source out of all of those four sources is the only perfect source and will never fade away, will never change?

Well, obviously, that's scripture. Tradition can change because it's based on men, and men can and do change their minds forever.

So, if something is taught by men that is necessary for salvation and isn't included in scripture, well, then that contradicts 2

Timothy 3 .16, and then scripture is not sufficient for me to be complete as a man of God.

So, I see that there are things that the Catholic church teaches that is necessary for salvation that are not in scripture, such as believing that Mary was sinless and believing that without Mary, we wouldn't have

Jesus, which, I mean, was brought out in the debate with Tony. That we wouldn't have salvation without Mary.

There is no salvation without Mary. That's what the Catholic church's position was in the debate between Roberts and Dr.

Tony Costa. And I read this, a doctor of the

Roman Catholic church, his name is Alfonso Gori, he says in his book, Devotions to Mary, I worship you, great queen, and give thanks for the many favors you have bestowed on me in the past.

Most of all, I thank you for saving me from hell, which I have so often deserved.

I promise ever in the future to serve you and to do what in me lies to win others to your love.

In you, Mary, I put all my trust and all my hope of salvation. So, when a doctor of the church is worshiping

Mary and putting all of his hope and faith in her for her salvation and acknowledges that she is the one who saved her, him, from hell, all

I can conclude is this man doesn't know the Jesus of scripture that I know. I don't need to be, I don't think just how far off these people are when it comes to Mary and these doctrines.

I think any power put into the hands of man is eventually going to go astray where scripture never will. Yes, and lest a

Catholic listening say, well, you have kooks in Protestantism too who say all kinds of crazy things.

Well, this is, Alfonso Gori was canonized as a saint, and people pray to him right now.

So, there's a bit of a difference between some evangelical nut job, and we all know that they're out there. They take up at least 80 % of the content on Iron Sharpens Iron when

I'm trying to have guests refute them, but this is a full -fledged saint, according to the

Catholic Church. But anyway, we have to go to a break right now, and if you'd like to join us, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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That's wrbc .us. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned in, our guests on Iron, Sharp, and Zion today are

Dr. Bill Webster of Christian Resources, Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary, Anthony Uvinio of New York Apologetics, and Rev.

George Jensen of Enola First Church of God in Enola, Pennsylvania. We are talking about the

Roman Catholic lore to dissatisfied Protestants. And our email address, if you have any questions that you'd like to join us on the air with, the email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Well, we are back to our program today, and I'd like just Anthony Uvino, again, if you could let our listeners know something about New York Apologetics and about the special event that's coming up in a couple of weeks.

Sure, thanks Chris. New York Apologetics is a teaching organization dedicated to defending the truth claims of Christianity.

You know, one of our taglines is making the invisible God visible to you in reality. So what we want to do is look at natural revelation, look at biblical revelation, and show people how it all points back to the one true

God of Scripture. So we go to high schools, we go to college campuses, we'll even go to churches and present to them the truth claims of Christianity in such a way that they can convey them to their family, to their relatives, to the fellow students or co -workers, so that we can not just know the truth, defend the truth, but also advance the truth.

That's the ultimate goal is to build the kingdom of God. In fact, April 28th and 29th at Smittown Gospel Tabernacle in conjunction with Smittown Christian School, we're holding an apologetics conference, and as you know,

Frank Turek is going to be there, Greg Kokel from Stan Terezan, and Mary Jo Sharp, who's a professor at Houston Baptist University.

We're going to hold an apologetics conference on those two nights. Friday night is going to be a two -hour question and answer session where you can bring your questions, they're going to answer them, and on Saturday from 9 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon, we're going to have upwards of 15 different apologetic presentations on various topics relevant to Christianity, the problem of evil, science, and the existence of God, all different things that you would normally expect at an apologetics conference.

If anybody wants to come to the conference, you can go to the website which is newyorkapologetics .com

backslash conference, and for anybody who is a listener on Chris's show, if you type in the code

IRON, you'll get $10 off of your ticket, and I really appreciate you allowing me to announce that,

Chris. Hey, my pleasure. That's newyorkapologetics .com, newyorkapologetics .com,

and you have to spell out the words New York, do not abbreviate them. All right, before I go back to my in -studio guest,

Pastor George Jensen of the Nola First Church of God here in Pennsylvania, because I want him to give more of an update on where he now stands theologically in regard to his questions about Roman Catholicism, I want to read a couple of questions that have come in from our listeners, and I'd like both

Dr. Bill Webster and Dr. Tony Costa to respond to them. First, we have

Joe in Slovenia who says, Dear Brother Chris, my question about Roman Catholicism has to do with syncretism.

I've noticed that Rome is very adept at incorporating pagan beliefs and practices of the local society in any given era or area.

She readily absorbs and adapts unbiblical beliefs and practices into a mixture with quasi -Christian beliefs and practices.

Is this one of the major attractions for the religion of Rome? Are multitudes around the world drawn to this religion in part because it legitimizes local pagan customs as it baptizes them into an unadulterated, counterfeit

Christianity? Thank you for leading us constantly back to Reformation, and I'll start with Dr.

Bill Webster on that. Well, I think, you know, if you look at Roman Catholicism historically as it's gone into different cultures, you definitely find that they will take pagan practices and Christianize them by simply renaming them, so that people can become nominally

Christian and yet still hold on to a lot of their different pagan beliefs.

This is historically what you find. In the more modern age, where you have

Roman Catholicism here, you know, in the

United States, Rome tends to try to adapt itself to different cultures.

So if you go to Mexico, you'll find a much more blatant form of very traditional

Roman Catholicism than you will find in the United States. It will try to adapt to different cultures.

Here in the United States, it's much more, has the face much more of an evangelical, and that is purposeful.

But you can go to other cultures where you will find a much more blatant form of what

Roman Catholicism really stands for. And Dr. Tony Costa, any further comments on that?

Yeah, I think the question is a very good one, and I would agree with Dr.

Webster, that the Roman Catholic Church is like a chameleon. It adapts itself to the local environment, and wherever you see

Roman Catholicism dominant, particularly in South America, Central America, you'll notice that there seems to be also a compatibility with the occult as well.

So in Brazil, for instance, where Roman Catholicism is the major religion there, there's also a very high rate of Macumba, which is a form of occultism.

You look at Haiti, you have voodooism. In Italy as well, there's various occultic practices, superstitions as well.

Here in Canada, we have the Native American people here. In Canada, we refer to them as the

Aboriginal peoples. I believe in the United States, you call them Native American Indians.

But here in Canada, the Roman Catholic Church will actually accommodate various Aboriginal practices in the

Roman Catholic mass. I think this goes back in history to the attempted assimilation of the people into the

Roman Catholic view of Christianity by adopting their pagan practices.

So, for instance, in the pagan world, various gods were considered the patrons, or the ones who would rule over a certain area or a certain trade.

For example, the Roman god Volcan was believed to be the patron god of coppersmiths and silversmiths and so forth, and Aphrodite was the patron goddess of lovers and so forth.

Well, it's no surprise that in Roman Catholicism, you have various saints who are the patron saint of this trade or the patron saint of this occupation, the patron saint of this country or this state and so forth.

Saint Anne, for instance, Luther called on Saint Anne because she was believed to be the patron saint of those who were sailors at sea who got lost.

And so, Luther cries out, Saint Anne, save me and I shall become a monk, which he did after that spiteful experience in the lightning storm in Germany.

But also, I think the Bishop of Rome in the 7th century, I believe, if you remember, he took the

Roman Pantheon, which still exists today, he took the Roman Pantheon, simply removed all the various gods from that Pantheon, and replaced them all with the saints.

And so, in some respect, the saints in the Roman Catholic Church today, the patron saints of various areas, are simply the replacement of these various pagan gods of ancient

Roman Greece. And so, they've come down to us in this Roman Catholic tradition.

I mean, is there any other way of explaining the fact that the veneration of statues, to use a less objectionable or insulting term,

I mean, we know that in reality, it is worship. But to give the

Catholics a benefit of the doubt that they have that in a different category from veneration, the veneration that is given to statues and icons and relics and remains, human remains like bone and so on, there is no way that we could either from the or church history, attribute this to biblically orthodox or sound practice, this would be practice that is abhorrent, both to the

Jews of the Old Covenant and to the New Testament church, this, this in the Old Covenant would probably have gotten wouldn't not even probably would certainly get individuals stoned to death for doing these kinds of things.

I mean, isn't this the only way we can explain things like the veneration of statues, icons and relics?

Dr. Webster. Dr. Webster. Okay. Now, I think you're absolutely right,

Chris, the call of the Old Testament, the call of the New Testament is that you worship the one true and living

God alone. You do not need other mediators to come to the

Lord Jesus Christ and to God the Father. He alone is the mediator between God and man.

True worship is worship in the Spirit through Jesus Christ. This is the very fundamental issue that has to do with the gospel.

Men are to turn from all of that idolatry, that paganism, these are pagan practices.

And we are called again to the ultimate authority of the Word of God, to the revelation, the inspired revelation of God in the scriptures.

How you approach him, how you know him, how you worship him is exclusively through Jesus Christ, the

Spirit of God, and your relationship with them alone. I need no other mediator.

I don't go through, I don't pray to a saint. I don't pray, especially to some visible object such as a statue that would represent the

Apostle Peter, the Apostle Paul, the Virgin Mary. All of this is idolatrous.

We are to come to the Lord Jesus Christ by the Spirit of God on the basis of the gospel alone, to worship

God alone in the Spirit. And Dr. Costa, if you could not only give your own comments on that, but also comment on Rome's attempts to get around what we are talking about by saying there are different levels of veneration, and that worship is something that they only give to God, and the dulia and hyperdulia that they offer to the saints in Mary is something that is completely legitimate, in fact, very much necessary.

Well, what I would say is Anthony brought up the text, the

Glories of Mary by St. Alphonsus of Liguria, and right there in the devotion,

I believe it's page 580, he says, and he's addressing Mary here, he says, I worship the Great Queen and give these thanks for the many favors that was bestowed on me in the past.

Most of all, I thank you for having saved me from hell, which I had so often deserved. Now, I want our Roman Catholic friends who are listening to listen to that again.

St. Alphonsus Liguria, a canonized saint, a doctor of the Church, says, I worship the

Great Queen. Now, this is a saint in the Church, a doctor in the Church, saying he worships

Mary. But our Roman Catholic friends keep reminding us, no, no, no, no, we do not worship Mary.

We venerate Mary. Yes, it's a hyperveneration, it's a hyperdulia, but we don't worship her.

We only worship God, the Trinity. Not so. That's not what St. Alphonsus Liguria said. So, I think that our

Roman Catholic friends have to have to deal with that fact. Now, the argument about adoration and veneration, worship, and service that the

Roman Catholic Church argues that adoration or Latria is only to be given to God, but Zulia, the

Greek word for slave, doulos, and servile service, they say can be given to the saints and to the icons and to statues, but Mary, because of her elevated position as the mother of Jesus, she receives hyperdulia.

All of these terms, Chris, are all artificial, they are all arbitrary distinctions that were made at the

Second Council of Nicaea in 787 AD, and these terms are never, ever discriminated in that fashion in the

Bible. In the Bible, and in my book, if you don't mind me just mentioning, maybe put in a plug for my book, the book that I wrote, called

The Worship of Jesus, The Worship and the

Risen Jesus in the Pauline Letters, I discuss all of these various Greek words that are used in the

New Testament that translated words like proskuneo, words like latria, words like doulia, and so forth.

These are words that are used interchangeably in reference to the worship of God.

The New Testament writers and the Old Testament writers had no understanding of distinguishing these types of terms in the context of worship.

And so, what Roman Catholics are arguing for in the distinction of the worship of God and the veneration of saints and images and so forth, is something that is not supported by Holy Scripture.

The Holy Scriptures use the word doulia and latria synonymously, interchangeably, in reference to the worship of God.

And so, for example, in Matthew 4, 10, where the Lord Jesus Christ rebukes

Satan and basically says, get thee behind me, Satan, it is written, you shall worship the

Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. In that one verse alone, Chris, Jesus uses the word latria and doulia to refer to the worship of the one

God that Satan was asking Jesus to submit to him. So, this type of distinction between these various terms are arbitrary and are not based on Scripture and would not be supported on Scriptural ground.

And this book you spoke of that you wrote, is this the one that Peter Lang published? Yes, it's the one published by Peter Lang, 2013,

New York. And you could go to cvbbs .com if you want to order that book, anybody listening.

That's cv for Cumberland Valley, bbs for Bible book service .com, who are sponsors of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Before I go back to any other listener questions, I want to get an update now from our in -studio guest,

Pastor George Jensen of the Enola First Church of God in Enola, Pennsylvania.

What were some of the things that really solidified in your mind, no, Rome is not an alternative option for me to even consider at all in regard to a body of believers faithful to the

Gospel, faithful to the Scriptures, and faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ. What were some of those pivotal moments or things that the

Lord used to close that door and nail it shut? Well, Chris, it began with Scripture.

The difficulty that many of us face, and I'm not a professor or have the degrees that these other gentlemen that are on the show with us today have, but for those of us that serve the

Lord faithfully week after week, it can be kind of daunting to know that you are preaching one thing and there's a church with a fine born -again evangelical pastor down the street that's preaching something different, and so the question you question yourself is, well, what is the ultimate authority?

We believe it's Scripture, but many people have decided that we need more than Scripture, we need an infallible interpreter, and that's the lure for many to go into Catholicism.

There have been some, I guess you'd say some pretty renowned conversions into Catholicism.

Ulf Eichmann, the pastor of one of the largest megachurches in Sweden, he's a recent convert in a very large church there.

We've heard of guys like Scott Hahn, Peter Kreft, Kirsten Powers, who was on Fox News. She's not a minister, but she made that step as well.

And there's a TV show dedicated to this on the Eternal Word Television Network where a man named

Marcus Grodi, a Presbyterian minister, had these same struggles. You know, how do I know that my

Presbyterian teaching, and I'm teaching one thing and the Wesleyan pastor down the street may have a different take on a different text or a doctrine, who is our ultimate interpretive authority?

And so he says, Marcus Grodi and others who are going into the Catholic church are saying, well, the

Catholic church is. So I investigated this. It started with Scripture, Chris, that I said, well,

I'm curious about this. Where are these guys coming from? Is there any truth to this at all?

And I was reminded of James chapter one, verse five, that says, if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask

God who gives generously to all without finding fault and will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt.

So I took it on faith. I'm going to pray, God, you will give me wisdom. You will give me an answer.

And for anyone that's listening that may be thinking of becoming a Roman Catholic that went down the road further than I ever went, and or even if you are at that point, you're ready to go into the

Catholic church. Keep in mind that this is in the Catholic Bible, too, and it's not one of the texts.

I tried to research it. I don't believe it's one that was ruled upon and interpreted in some other way by the

Catholic church to say this is only for popes or for bishops or cardinals. No, in fact, I have the

New American Bible here and their commentary on it. They believe, at least according to this commentator, the way we do, pray to God, ask for wisdom and believe you're going to get it.

So what happened was I started listening to different debates on doctrine and different some of the ones that you hosted,

Chris, and they're on YouTube. You know, they're all over the web and read Dr.

Webster's book, The Church of Rome at the Bar of History and some many other resources.

I have a bag of books here that were and I also read the Catholic side, too. And so basically for someone like me, it's like, well, you have two sets of arguments here.

And which way which way does this go? And so what came to my mind was where I think

God, I believe God gave me the wisdom was how do you handle this with a cult, for example, with a

Jehovah's Witness or a Mormon? One time I had a Jehovah's Witness at my door and I was in like a 20 minute debate with the individual over the meaning of the word

Stavros, which is the word for cross in the New Testament, because they don't believe Jesus was crucified on a cross.

It was a stake or something like that. And any time they come to my door, it just goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

But the one thing you can do with them is you look at their literature, look at what they've claimed, look at their leadership.

And if you can find out that what they've said and what they predicted, what they prophesied is false, you can knock the foundation out from underneath it.

And it's pretty much a knockout punch in round one with Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, in my opinion.

With Catholicism, it's a little tougher. They do believe in the triune God as we do. And with the papacy, it's a little more difficult to have a knockout punch, at least in my mind.

But what I did then was I looked more deeply into the claims of the papacy and the interpretation of Matthew 16, 13, and 19, which was mentioned earlier by one of the other gentlemen, one of the other doctors.

Yeah, Dr. Bill Webster actually wrote a book on the Matthew 16 controversy. Well, there you go. I unfortunately didn't get to read his...

I didn't know about that, didn't read his book, but some other resources, basically James White's book, Roman Catholic Controversy.

You can't say that this interpretation of Peter being the rock, and not only

Peter but therefore perpetuating some sort of magisterium down through the ages, it's ahistorical.

It just is. And then I started thinking, well, is there anything more?

And what really puts the nail in the coffin is when you look at the history, almost like the secular history of the papacy.

One book that was very helpful to me was Catholicism, East of Eden by Richard Bennett, and I have that here.

He's a former Roman Catholic priest who converted to evangelical Christianity. Yes, he is.

And he quotes some very ancient books, I understand, that aren't in print anymore, and things like a regular run -of -the -mill pastor like I wouldn't have access to, and he shows very clearly how even the establishment of the different patriarchies in the early church at Antioch and Jerusalem and Rome and where was the other one,

Athens or somewhere like that, I probably misquoted where they were, but the four places that were set up to be the centers of the church, that was set up by the

Roman government. When Constantinople came along, that was set up by the emperor as well.

And the nail in the coffin for me was this idea of the supremacy of the Roman bishop came about by the

Roman emperor. There's no question about it. It was one of the emperors there in 527,

Emperor Justinian I, according to what I see here, that established the supremacy of the bishop of Rome.

So what I'm seeing is you're seeing a system here where the Christian church or Christendom at that time is basically in cahoots in an unbelievable way with the government, and therefore it doesn't look like a spiritual matter directed by the

Holy Spirit, but rather a political thing. That was the nail in the coffin for me, and I had to say as I was thinking, is there any truth to this?

And I made it my hobby beyond still preaching the gospel, but what are these people talking about? And I had to say, no, this is not a road that I could ever get on.

And of course, you're not talking about the United States government. You're talking about the governments of centuries past.

Yes, I am. Yeah, forgive me for not clarifying that. I'm talking about the Roman government at that time. Right, right. And Dr. Bill Webster, the dogma that Rome defined of papal infallibility, that was a recent innovation, wasn't it?

I mean, it was not that long ago. I always forget which one was the last dogma.

Was it the assumption of Mary in the 1950s, or was that the papal infallibility?

I always get them confused. Papal infallibility was 1870 at Vatican I.

The last one was Pius XII in 1950 of the assumption of Mary. Right, right, that's right.

So, you know, it was dogmatized, the view that the bishop of Rome, when he speaks ex cathedra, speaks infallibly.

That became dogma in the Church of Rome in 1870 at Vatican I. There is absolutely no teaching of that in the early

Church at all. And you can, in fact, go up until probably the 13th century, somewhere in that area, where this view of the infallibility of the

Pope began to surface and began to have some sort of teaching in the

Church. It's a slow process until it eventually evolves into what is proclaimed at Vatican I.

But Brian Tierney is a Roman Catholic at the Catholic University of America, a

Church historian. He wrote a book on the whole issue of infallibility. He basically has demonstrated that prior to around the 13th century, there is no teaching whatsoever on papal infallibility.

The fact of the matter is the Third Ecumenical, the Three Constantinople, the Sixth Ecumenical Council, which is viewed by the

Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholics as being infallible, condemned Pope Honorius, the

Bishop of Rome, as a heretic. So it's very clear that going all the way up into the 7th century, the late part of the 7th century, that the

Church, neither the East nor the West, had any concept whatsoever that the

Bishop of Rome was infallible. Even if you want to put through the definition of ex cathedra, which is a very, as Tony mentioned a little while ago, about arbitrary, the distinctions on latria and dulia, hyperdulia, those are arbitrary distinctions.

Well, the whole issue of ex cathedra is a very arbitrary distinction. The early

Church did not believe that the Bishop of Rome was infallible. In fact, when you look at the rule of faith, this is part of the issue with Roman Catholicism, with respect to the

Reformers, with respect to Protestantism today. The Roman Catholic Church is today

Roman Catholic. You have in the early centuries the Catholic Church. It was not

Roman. The Church has morphed into what we call today Roman Catholicism.

And the core issue there is the Bishop of Rome, whether the Bishop of Rome has universal jurisdiction over the

Church, papal primacy, and whether he is indeed infallible when he teaches ex cathedra.

The early Church taught none of that, but the Roman Catholic Church today teaches these doctrines are necessary for salvation.

Whenever you have a dogma within Roman Catholicism that is added to the rule of faith, it becomes part and parcel of the gospel.

I cannot be saved unless I am submitted to the Bishop of Rome and adhere to the teaching that he is indeed ex cathedra.

I cannot be saved unless I believe that Mary was assumed into heaven body and soul.

These are all dogmas. Well, they are extra biblical, and they were never taught in the early

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That's the Thriving Story. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arns, and we are now returning to our discussion on the lures of Rome to dissatisfied

Protestants. And Dr. Tony Costa, I think that we must include in our discussion something that is vital, because I think this is one of the chief lures that Rome casts out on the lake, trying to snag dissatisfied

Protestants, beginning to question their faith. That is the assumption that Rome makes that they are a monolith, that they are a unified body that has been unified for centuries.

They will even make claims that the Church Fathers were unified, and that they today are unified in carrying on that apostolic tradition and that patristic tradition to today, and that the

Protestant world is divided 30 ,000 times over or more with fragments and splinter groups and sects and different denominations because of the unworkability of sola scriptura, which just leads to anarchy.

But isn't this just an out -and -out lie that Rome is a monolith? Aren't there not many divisions within Roman Catholicism, among Roman Catholics, that separate

Rome or Rome's adherents just as much as Protestantism and Evangelicalism has?

Yes, yes, indeed. But before addressing that, let me just quickly assert that, just of proof that I'm not infallible, earlier

I said Matthew 4 .10 has the word dulia and latreia. After checking in the Greek text, it's latreia and toscaneo.

But anyway, these are two words. I just wanted to say that to prove that I'm not infallible. Well, we all assume that already.

Yeah, so, mia culpa, mia culpa. In reference to your question,

Chris, I just thought I'd throw a little bit of Latin and Italian there for Anthony. In reference to your question.

You're welcome. Grazie. In reference to your question, no, the Roman Catholic Church is not a monolith.

It claims to be a monolith. I think the problem here, Chris, is we have to distinguish between uniformitarianism and unity.

Unity is not the same thing as uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism is everyone walks the same way, we all dress the same way, we all say the liturgy the same way, we have always the same reading, so forth and so on.

Unity is not the same. The unity that we see in Christ, for instance, Paul describes it as there are

Jews and Gentiles in Christ, there's male and female in Christ, there's slaves and free in Christ, even though they are one in Christ, we are still male and female, we are

Jews, we are Gentiles, and so forth. And therefore, unity is not to be confused with uniformity.

And if we look at the early Church, the early Church was united, of course, in its dogma positions about who

God was and what the gospel was, but it continued to struggle with various schisms, as we see, for instance, in 1

Corinthians 1. So, when the Roman Catholics say, well, you Protestants, you have 30 ,000 so -called denominations, and that number tends to inflate here and there.

That number, incidentally, has been overly exaggerated. They would throw

Jehovah's Witnesses into the mix, Mormons into the mix, and various other heterodox groups into that mix.

The Roman Catholic Church has its share of divisions. I mean, we have the steady vacanists. Gary Mattis was part of that movement now.

Dr. Reagan Mel Gibson used to be. Yeah, Mel Gibson and his father. They would have the mass, right, and they would have the mass in Latin and so forth.

They want to go back to pre -Vatican II. They see Vatican II as an absolute disaster. They see it as apostasy in Rome.

They believe that the present pope is illegitimate and that they have to return. The seat of Peter is vacant.

And then, of course, within Roman Catholicism, you have tons of bishops who do not hold to the creeds.

There are bishops who deny the deity of Christ, who deny the resurrection of Christ, and so forth, and other clergymen.

You have a lot of Roman Catholics out there who do not believe when you ask them about transubstantiation.

Most Roman Catholics that I know and have met do not properly define transubstantiation, and some don't even believe in the doctrine of transubstantiation.

Some don't believe in the view of birth control that is advocated by Rome, that only natural birth control should be practiced.

And then you've got the Uniate churches. These are churches that are part of the Eastern Rite, but they've come under the

Bishop of Rome. But these churches still hold a distinctive calendar.

They follow the Julian calendar as opposed to the Gregorian. They hold to more of an Orthodox liturgy, not so much the

Western liturgy, and so forth. So within Roman Catholicism, there are many divisions.

So the claim that it is this monolith, it always reminds me, whenever I deal with the

Mormon missionaries, they keep telling me that the Mormon Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints is, it's this monolithic church.

And then you remind them of the reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, and the fundamentalist

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, and the Church of Christ, and all these other groups, all these polygamist winter groups that have broken off from the

Mormon Church, and so forth. So these are just claims that Rome makes to enhance herself.

But I think that when we actually study Church history, and study the various groups that have left

Rome, or have opposed Rome, like the city baconists, I think it'll be very clear, Chris, that just like their claim to consensus of the

Fathers on papal infallibility and the Marian dogmas, we find that this is simply just an over -exaggerated claim on Rome's part.

Yes, to say the least. And Dr. Bill Webster, isn't it true that even clerics in the

Roman Catholic Church, in good standing with Rome today, there are some that are believing and teaching things that perhaps would have gotten them very seriously punished centuries ago, perhaps even tortured and executed?

I mean, you have theistic evolutionists among them, you have all kinds of aberrations from earlier

Roman Catholicism, you have Pope John Paul, too, kissing the

Quran. I know of conservative Catholics that are not even as extreme as the baconists, who would say that although the modern

Catholic Catechism contains some vital truth, that there are elements in the modern

Catechism that are absolutely heretical. They do not view the modern

Catholic Catechism as some kind of infallible guide to practice and faith, or faith and practice. What are your comments,

Dr. Bill Webster, on what I just said? Well, I think if you go back to your tridentine, very conservative

Roman Catholic dogmas, you have a - you know,

I was raised Roman Catholic, okay? I was catechized. I had a general understanding of what

Roman Catholicism stood for, but if you were to really press me on issues, can I define this, can

I define that, I would not be able to. And so you find within the broad spectrum of Roman Catholicism, you have a lot of people who, they really don't have a clue what they believe.

They're just part of the church. There is no gospel. You're catechized with dogma.

And so you have an overarching, sort of general teaching that most people identify as Roman Catholic.

Underneath that, you've got a lot of room for different perspectives. Although I must say that when you look at very conservative, very sincere

Roman Catholics today, they're extremely concerned because they do see a move from Vatican II on, especially into the day in which we're living now with the present

Pope, you're watching a departure from very conservative

Roman Catholic understanding of what Catholicism is supposed to stand for.

And it's becoming more and more liberal and it's moving further and further away from what you would look at in terms of the dogmas that were defined by the

Council of Trent, which was the answer, the official Roman Catholic answer to the Reformation.

So you're seeing all these changes come into the church in different perspectives. But I do believe that there are many within the

Roman Catholic Church today who hold views that are very contrary to what would have traditionally been held to be true

Roman Catholicism. I used to live on Long Island and there is a very prominent, or at least there was, it's not in publication anymore and I think it still may exist on the internet only, but the

Long Island Catholic newspaper was the Catholic periodical for Long Island, New York.

And they would have advertisements placed in there by Catholic priests named such as Yogi Father Bill Riley is teaching

Buddhist meditation and yoga at his parish and so on. I mean, this is insane, you know what

I'm saying? This is not a monolith. But anyway, my friend here,

Pastor George Jensen, has a question or comment. Yeah, very quickly, Chris. I'm fallible too.

Those four patriarchs are Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Rome, and later Constantinople. So I made a boo -boo there too, sorry about that.

But what I was going to say is regarding this point of the monolith, this is one of the things that was troubling to me is regarding purgatory.

Very quickly, if you go into a Latin Rite church and you read the literature there by Saint Maria Faustina, it's a very horrific view of what happens for a believer who is waiting to go into heaven, the temporal punishment, the expiation of sin with fire and punishment, whereas the

Eastern Rite, who they were once Orthodox and came under the Pope, I guess at the

Treaty of Brest or whatever that is, they have a much more docile form of purification.

It's very docile indeed. And I asked one of the apologists about that and he said, well, we're not going to argue over that.

The catechism just says that there is a purification and we're not going to argue. I said, well, that's a big deal.

You want to know if you're going to go into some waiting room before you get to heaven, wouldn't you want to know if it's going to be docile or horrifically painful?

Yes. In fact, at my mother's wake, my mother became a believer in the true gospel of the scriptures, the true

Christ of the scriptures. She was trusting in the finished work of Christ on Calvary alone for her being worthy of heaven and she went home to be with the

Lord after a bout with pancreatic cancer. But she was raised Roman Catholic and never officially in any sense left the

Roman Catholic Church, even though she left them mentally and ceased to pray to Mary and the saints and ceased to trust in their gospel and so on.

But she, after she passed away, my father, being still Catholic, had a

Catholic mass, funeral, and also before that a wake. And the prayer that was being prayed for my mother by the

Catholics was, Lord, deliver Virginia from her prison of darkness and torment.

That was referring to purgatory. Sure. Lord, hear our prayer was the response. I, of course, did not.

Hence, I did not repeat that because I was in vehement opposition to that notion. But this is a very disturbing concept.

But anyway, before we run out of time, I'm going to go to another one of our listeners, Chris in Runnels, Iowa.

Thank you for putting this unique episode of Iron Sharpens Iron together. I have a twofold question.

In light of paragraph 1472 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states in part, on the other, on the other hand, every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth or after death in the state called purgatory.

This purification frees one from what is called the temporal punishment of sin. These two punishments must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin.

Is it fair to say that there is, in fact, no forgiveness of sins in Roman Catholic theology, only a change in the way which they can be purified?

I'll have Dr. Bill Webster start with that and Tony Costa add to it. Well, within Roman Catholic theology, you do have the work of Christ on the cross.

But the work of Christ on the cross is not sufficient to deal with the totality of the penalty of sin.

Biblically, obviously, you go to the Word of God. His sacrifice is once for all.

It is sufficient. As Jesus said on the cross, it is finished. That sacrifice is complete.

As Colossians 2 says that as far as our sin is concerned, God took the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us which was hostile to us.

He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. He's taken it out of the way.

He's annihilated it. The totality of a man's sin was dealt with by Jesus Christ at the cross of Calvary.

In Roman Catholic theology, you do need the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ to deal with all the sins that were committed up to the point at which a person is baptized.

Once that person has accepted that work of Christ, he then is infused with grace.

And by that grace, he now is enabled by Roman Catholic teaching. This is according to Roman Catholic teaching.

He's now enabled to live a life of works by which he can increase his justification.

But if he sins, those sins have to be dealt with in addition to what

Christ had done on the cross. They now have to be dealt with in addition to the mass by a person actually expiating his own sin by his own works, by penances, fastings, the giving of money, all sorts of different things that a person can do.

He goes to confession. The priest hears his confession. He's then assigned a penance to do and that penance has to be added to the work of Jesus Christ.

Then you have the issue of purgatory, which is a later development.

It's really more of a medieval development within Roman Catholic theology of the whole issue of sin and purgation and expiation.

Again, it is a depreciation of the sufficiency of the atonement and the work of Christ on the cross of Calvary.

This is all extra -biblical teaching. It is a denigration of the teaching of the

Word of God and the finality and the sufficiency of the work of Jesus Christ. Man cannot expiate his own sin.

There is only one way to deal with sin and that is in the atonement of the

Lord Jesus Christ. The guilt of my sin is such that apart from Christ there is no forgiveness.

There is nothing any man can do in order to make himself more acceptable to God and expiate his own sin.

That's why we look to Christ alone. It's grace alone. God alone doing for man what man cannot do in himself to be delivered from the guilt and the power and the dominion of sin in his life.

And Dr. Tony Costa, if you could comment as well. Yeah, so I think the Scriptures are very clear that at the end there's only two places.

There's a smoking section and the non -smoking section. There is no divine waiting room.

There is no place of purgation. We're told in Hebrews 1 .3 that after Christ had made purification for our sins in his own blood, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, which indicates that the work of purification of sin was perfected.

He was finished. That's why Christ sits down, which is the posture of rest, which means

Christ has completed his work and now he sits as the perfect Savior, the great high priest of his people and so forth.

And therefore, because Christ has made perfect purification for us and he has forever sanctified those that draw near to God through him, there is no need for purgatory.

Purgatory is a blasphemous doctrine. It insults and scandalizes the perfect work of Christ on the cross.

When Jesus cried out on the cross at the last night, he did not say to be continued. He said it is finished.

It is consummated. It is paid in full. And so the doctrine of purgatory was actually the main doctrine that helped build the

Basilica of St. Peter because that Basilica in St. Peter's Square today was built on the monies that were gathered for indulgences for those who wanted to escape the temple punishment of purgatory and also to help their loved ones who were in purgatory.

So it is a horrible doctrine. The church has made great profit on this on the backs of the poor and of the ignorant.

But most of all, it is a great blasphemy against the perfect work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Dr.

Bill Webster, I know that you have, in addition to your writing exposing the heresies of Roman Catholicism, you have written exposing the heresies of evangelical

Protestantism, especially in regard to easy believism. And one of the things that Chris in Reynolds, Iowa has asked, let's see, is the lack of the heralding of the law of God in evangelical churches leaving its hearers susceptible to Rome's false gospel?

Can you repeat that? I'm sorry. Is the lack of the heralding of the law of God and evangelical churches leaving its hearers susceptible to Rome's false gospel?

In other words, you know, the Roman Catholic Church has often claimed that they basically are slandering all of Protestantism by saying that we all really adhere to easy believism, that all you need to do is recite a prayer and you've got a one -way ticket to heaven.

Obviously, we don't all believe that, and that is not even a historic teaching. No, there is within evangelicalism a teaching about the gospel that is utterly heretical, it is not biblical, it is contrary to the

Reformation. I'm as much aggrieved about that as I am about the legalism of Roman Catholicism.

You have antinomianism that is rampant in evangelicalism, but that is because of a perverted gospel.

The gospel, you know, you go back to the Reformation, the clarion call of sola gratia, sola

Christus, faith alone, Christ alone, it's all about how you are made right with God and reconciled to God, how you are delivered from sin.

The Reformers had a full -ordered understanding of salvation. It was not just about justification and imputed righteousness.

Faith was conjoined with repentance. You will never find any

Reformer who ever taught that you can just believe in Jesus and not have a transformed life and not be sanctified.

That does not exist. This aberrant teaching today of easy believism that says, well, you give an intellectual nod to Jesus by faith, and you accept the fact that his atonement is sufficient for you and he died for you, and you come to Christ and you believe that, but there's no repentance from sin, there is no understanding of the law of God.

Because of the deficient preaching of the law of God, there is a deficient understanding of what sin means.

Because there is a deficient understanding of what sin means, there is a deficient understanding of repentance.

Repentance must be part of saving faith, biblically and in the gospel declaration to men and the call of men to Christ.

Jesus Christ is the Savior from sin, not just guilt and not just hell.

When Christ saves a man, he justifies him. The moment a man comes to Christ and comes into union with Christ, it's all about relationship with the one who is the living

Lord and Savior. Once a man is united to him spiritually, that man is instantly justified for all eternity.

He is imputed with the righteousness of Christ, but he is also sanctified and regenerated and converted.

He is delivered from the state, the power, and the bondage of sin.

His life becomes submitted to the Lord Jesus Christ. If that has not taken place, that man is not justified.

He does not know Jesus Christ. His life basically is going to give very eloquent manifestation to the fact that he has a half -truth gospel.

That is the terrible state of affairs that we see throughout the church and the day in which we're living right now, the evangelical church.

We need to return to the full biblical teaching of what it means to come to Jesus Christ. When Jesus called men into salvation, he called them into relationship with himself.

He called them into a discipleship relationship with himself, into first love relationship with himself, into submission to him as Lord.

That goes back to the application of the law of God, where you understand sin and your rebellion against God and the need to repent of that sin so that you no longer exist in a lawless state.

Well, we are out of time, and I thank all of you for being on this program today. I want to repeat all of your websites.

Dr. Bill Webster's website is christiantruth .com, christiantruth .com.

Dr. Tony Costa, who is on faculty at Toronto Baptist Seminary as professor of apologetics, that website is tbs .edu,

tbs, for Toronto Baptist Seminary, .edu. Anthony Uvinio, who is co -founder of New York Apologetics, his website is newyorkapologetics .com,

newyorkapologetics .com. And my friend, Pastor George Jensen of the

Enola First Church of God here in Pennsylvania, his website is enolacog .com,

and that's e -n -o -l -a -c -o -g .com. I apologize to all of you who wanted to have your questions asked and answered.

We ran out of time, and hopefully we'll get to you. I'll save those questions for a return of our guests who will hopefully continue the same topic.

I want to thank everybody who listened today. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater