Arminian Proof Texts and Steve “Jerusalem Jones” Ray

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602, or toll free across the

United States, it's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is

James White. Just got it all done there, well I didn't get it all done, I don't even have my little tablet

PC online yet to look at calls, but we'll get that done and you won't even recognize that I'm doing it, except when

I start talking like this because I'm trying to enter a password or something.

It happened to me once, I remember I was using a computer to preach from, and somebody shut it down as I got up to the pulpit, and ever tried to speak while entering your passwords for various programs and things like that, and actually try to make it look natural?

It's not a whole lot of fun. Anyway, welcome to The Dividing Line on a, that's

Tuesday morning, yes, I'm just looking at my screen wondering why BibleWorks left half of its frame on top of my

Adobe Edition screen. Why does that happen? I don't understand that.

I know, I hear all the Macites going, because it's a PC, that's why, and maybe that is the case,

I don't know. Those Macs are looking better and better after experiencing

Vista, but anyway. Don't you blaspheme in here. Well let me tell you something, after experiencing

Vista, you know, I sat down at the FIRE conference, I was trying to get some wireless to do something, and the thing comes up and says,

I can't boot! I can't start what you want me to do! Can I fix myself now?

Like that new commercial for the Mac, where the guy says, I've been error free for a week. I've been error free for a week.

I've been error free for a week. Yep, yep, that's... SaveXP .com!

Yeah, service, let's go for Service Pack 4, alright, woo!

Let's start a Service Pack 4 movement, that's what we should do.

Let me tell you, aye yi yi, and I've already done Service Pack 1, I remember when Service Pack 1 for Vista came out, they're all like,

Vista's now as fast as XP was, and they're all excited, it networks as fast as XP now, and it's like, oh man, who was the project coordinator on that one?

Anyway, well, that's lots of fun, but yeah, now all the geeks are going, just use

Linux, I'm like, yeah, right, okay, sure, and anybody who says anything about Linux, I just mark a little thing next to their name going, geek, just watch this one, might be axe murderer in other life, who knows, yep, that's how it works, yeah,

Vista's now as fast as 3 .11, I remember Windows, I remember that, and what's worse,

I remember DOS 3 .1, yeah, DOS 2, yeah,

DOS 2, DOS 3, writing batch files, and when you tried to get me on Windows, I remember saying to you, who would ever need to use more than one program at a time, anyways, yes,

I remember the first Windows, Windows 1 .0,

which could do nothing other than, you could put Windows up, but you'd have a clock in one, and something down here, and that was really about all it could do, and it was on a monochrome screen, wow, that was beautiful, that was great stuff, uh -oh, did

I just date myself, I think, I, yeah, mm -hmm, big time, well, welcome to Dividing Line, what

I was doing, the reason I was rushing about so quickly there at the end is

I was trying to get a recording of this Steve Ray stuff, and unfortunately, there was no, at least not that I found, a link that would just allow me to grab it,

I didn't look at his blog, maybe it was on the blog, but a friend out in Cyberland sent me the link directly to the program, and so, since there wasn't any way for me to just download it,

I had to be live recording it, so fired up Total Recorder and started live recording as best as I could, and I got about 23 minutes worth of stuff in, as we could, but once again, you may recall a few weeks ago, we were looking at some of the stuff that Steve Ray was saying, and Steve Ray likes to go around, and in case you're wondering who

Steve Ray is, we like to say he pretends he's Indiana Jones, and in fact, that's what the

Catholics say too, in fact, let me play for you the introduction from the host of the program, and listen to what they refer to him as.

Steve Ray, convert, author, speaker, our own Jerusalem Jones is going to be joining us for the second installation of his series,

Versus I Never Saw. Jerusalem Jones, Jerusalem Jones, so that's not just, he's, you know, people say, well, you know, he just wears the hat, man, it's no big deal, it's, you know, you shouldn't pick on that, or hey, that's his stuff, man, we're just going with what he himself says, okay, and he's the one who has tried to create this persona, and so on and so forth, so, you know, don't, you know, that's his thing.

As a Protestant, and Steve wants to share with you his journey into the Catholic faith, he studied his way into the church, and of course, now he is considered one of the top

Catholic apologists, and did you catch that? All these guys are getting promotions, man,

I mean, I don't know what they did, but from a mere convert to now, one, let's see, what was it two weeks ago?

Tim Staples, one of the foremost biblical scholars in the church, and I'm just like, wow, when did that happen?

Wow, okay, and so now we've got Steve Ray, and he is, you know, and I sit back, and I think about the things that this man says, and the way he presents the other side, and I go, this is the, is one of the best they've got?

Wow, amazing, things have really gone downhill since the 1980s, you know,

I'm sorry, but you look at the challenge that a Gerry Matytix used to present, and at least here's somebody with some scholarship, some knowledge, you know,

I mean, it's twisted all over the place, and, you know, it's very difficult to, you know, point all that stuff out and debate, but, you know, we certainly have done our best to do that, but Steve Ray won't even debate.

I mean, this is, you know, Jerusalem Jones saying that Jerome was the only one who ever believed these things, and then all you got to do is just quote here, quote here, quote here, quote here, and what does he do?

He runs off, and he hides behind Gary Machuda, and he challenged him on this, and he runs behind William Albrecht, or somebody like that, you know, and you go, this is, this is top -notch stuff?

Wow, things are not well in Rome when this is one of your top -notch people.

There's, there's no, no two ways about it, just absolutely amazing, but hey, they're the ones making the claim.

I mean, if, if, if this man's going to sit there, and he's going to allow this kind of verbiage to be used of himself, then

I think it's perfectly fair to hold him to the standard that his own

PR department is providing for himself, and I'm sorry, but the, the stuff that I hear from Steve Ray is, is so often so horribly bad, and so shallow, and so on, so forth, that it's, it's, it's difficult to say.

Now, as I said, I was, I was trying to record this stuff, and what that meant is,

I'm running into the, into the studio five minutes before the program starts with the file on a jump drive, and so what that means is,

I didn't get to go in and do what I like to be able to do, and that is pick out the specific clips, mark them off in the editing program, so everything's nice and clean, and, and things like that.

It didn't, didn't work that way, so when we get around to this section, which interestingly enough is on the Eucharist, I'm gonna have to skip around some, and play a little bit, and it doesn't sound overly professional, but you know, that's the way we do things here, and that's why you listen, and why you're not listening to a really dry, boring lecture right now, because you never know what's actually going to happen at that type of thing, but it looks like, unless my computer is confused, that we already have a caller, and so I, since it's on a completely different subject,

I'm gonna take that call first, and then we'll go back to, to Steve Ray, so let's talk with David.

Hi David. Hello sir, how are you? Doing good. Good. You know, I have to say, I've lost a lot of respect for you though, with your dissing on Linux like that.

Okay, David, mark this down Rich, David, North Carolina, geek and possible axe murderer.

That's right, yeah, that's all very true. Record this one for use by the

FBI. No, we broadcast our sermons and stuff on Linux. Oh, so you're a church to geeks?

Yeah. Oh, okay, all right. What is the gospel for geeks?

That's what I would like to hear, exactly how do you... It's mixing it with the gospel for axe murderers that really gives the pastors difficulty, but they do the best.

I understand, okay. How did you get on this topic? I'm not sure, yes. So, I am suffering the common affliction of newbies.

I am a very new listener to the show, and you were, and I'm sorry, what was that? I'm sorry, it's actually, it's probably better for you.

The people who've been listening for many years are really, really odd. Well, it's all up from here, right?

Yeah, well, I don't know. We'll find out. Well, so you were commenting on somebody who was quoting

Matthew 2337 on a podcast the other day, and he had misquoted it.

He left out the bit about the children, and you called him on that, but I didn't quite follow the argument of how that changes the

Calvinistic. Apology for that text. Well, that likewise proves that you have not listened to the

Bible Answer Man broadcast with George Bryson, and you haven't read The Potter's Freedom, and so we now know that while you do use

Linux, you are not up on your current reading. So, we're going to have to work on that one. Can I just hang up now?

No, no, you cannot. I'm not sure how I could keep you from doing that, even if I wanted to. Did I say my name was David?

I think it was Bob. Bob from Florida, yes. Okay, I understand. No, actually, there is a chapter in The Potter's Freedom called

The Big Three, and it deals with Matthew 2337, 2

Peter 3, 9, and 1 Timothy 2, 4, and that's because they are just the most common verses, and the reason

I went over it very quickly is because over the years, we have, well, what even prompted the writing of The Potter's Freedom was

Dave Hunt's book, what, well, I'm sorry, it was Norman Geisler's book, and Dave Hunt, at that same period of time, he had misquoted

Matthew 2337 in his written newsletter, and we had talked about that when

I interviewed him, and we had our radio discussion. It was not a debate. I was the host of the program, and then we started, as we would be listening to people who were attacking

Calvinism over and over again, we kept documenting people misquoting this same text.

It is amazing. We even caught poor R .C. Sproul misquoting it once, and obviously, he wasn't doing it for a traditional reason, but so many times, we have caught people who oppose

Reformed Theology dumping that phrase, and the reason's very, very clear. For those who are new, and we have to recognize there are, you know, a few of you, but it's, don't worry,

I'll grow it, it's not anything to be ashamed of, Bob, but the text says,

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her, how often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were unwilling.

By taking that out, the application they make is, how often I wanted to gather you, and then he just assumed this means, how often

I wanted to save you, but I couldn't, because you were unwilling. But that's not what

Matthew 23, 37 is about. If you look at it in context, all of Matthew 23 is, by far, the most strong, strident denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees in all of the

Gospels. It is a lengthy diatribe pronouncing judgment upon these religious hypocrites, and this is the conclusion, and the address is made to all of Jerusalem.

You go back and see how many times Jerusalem was addressed as the head of the Jewish people in the prophets and so on and so forth, and that's exactly what it says, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her.

So it's not just that generation, but it has been this stiff -necked people all along. And what is

Jesus' point here? Is he even talking about God's permissive will or salvific will or anything?

No, he's talking about the fact that these people, even though the very incarnate Son of God is walking in their midst, are still just as unwilling to hear

God's messengers as they have ever been, and they are intent upon standing in the way of God's purposes.

If you read the whole thing, and go back especially up to, I like to go up to verse 13 and show the parallel between this and the conclusion that Jesus offers.

He says, But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people, for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.

So one of the woes that is pronounced upon them was the fact that they are the exact opposite of what they claim to be.

They claim to be the very guardians of the kingdom of God, the very epitome of what it means to be a person who is right with God.

But not only do they themselves not enter into the kingdom, but they even actively seek to keep other people from entering into the kingdom of heaven.

And so in that context then, I go back to verse 37 and say, What is being said here? What is being said is an announcement of judgment.

Look at what verse 38 says. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate. And what's the next chapter in Matthew 24?

Obviously the Olivet Discourse, destruction of Jerusalem, etc., etc., etc. That's how this is functioning, is saying,

All right, you are absolutely opposed to the purposes of God. Just like the unforgivable sin, you can see the very activity of the

Holy Spirit of God and go, Oh, that's the devil. This is the kind of perversity that calls white, black, light, darkness, etc.,

etc. that you see in Isaiah. Now is the fulfillment of all these prophetic oracles that have come against Jerusalem.

Then you have the transition to Matthew 24 and the coming destruction of the city of Jerusalem that the disciples go,

What? Look how beautiful the temple is. How could that ever happen? And so on and so forth. So it's just a gross misuse of the text to go,

What's actually being said here is that we're talking about God trying to save people when we're actually talking about Jesus condemning the scribes and Pharisees and fulfilling all the prophetic oracles against the people of Israel.

And by leaving out that one phrase, they are changing who it is, who is the object of the gathering.

And of course, they're reading something into the very idea of gathering to begin with that isn't part of the context. But even leaving that aside, they're changing who the object of gathering is into the ones who are unwilling and then creating out of this a proof text that,

Well, God can try, but the ultimate determiner is you, whether you want to do so or not.

Instead, the real weight of the text is the amazing willingness of religious people.

And this is the same thing in the unpardonable sin of religious people in the name of God to literally stand in God's way and stand against God's purposes just simply to protect what we might call their turf, their priorities, their prerogatives, whatever it might be.

And the strongest words of condemnation in all the scriptures are directed at them.

I think Matthew 23 and Galatians 5 are probably the two roughest texts in all the

Bible that I know of as far as language is concerned. And what are they addressed to?

They're addressed to religious hypocrites. In Galatians 5, it's the people who are trying to... You have been severed from Christ.

You have fallen from grace. Who? You who are seeking to be justified by law, by what you do.

It's exactly what these people are doing. They're hypocrites in so doing, and they are condemned for so doing. So there's a much fuller discussion of it that goes through the context of Matthew 23 and stuff in the

Potter's Freedom. But that's what we were talking about was how many people determine what

Matthew 23, 37 is about. And therefore, the actual phrase, gather your children together.

See, these are the rulers. Their children would be the people of Israel. The very ones that Jesus was the one who was always ministering to.

What was the thing that always made the scribes and Pharisees mad at Jesus? What was one of the first things that caused them to reject him and to reject his claims is he's hanging out with the wrong people.

He's hanging out with the harlots and the sinners and stuff like that. Well, that's the very same distinction that he introduces here.

And yet by ignoring it, they turn into a proof text for something that is not even close to the context.

And so it is amazing to hear how many times I know, I know they're probably just going off memory.

But that's the whole point. Sometimes when you quote something from memory, it's one of the clearest ways of revealing what your traditional understanding of it is.

And sometimes that's not actually what the text is talking about. All right.

Yeah, I guess I got it. You guess you got it. You don't sound like you fully get it. I think

I followed that argument. And now it seems like an Arminian could come back and say, well, what we're talking about here is the sovereignty of God and the free will of man.

So, OK, maybe I'll give it to you that he's not directly saying how often I would want to gather you together as a hen gathers her brood and you would not.

Maybe it is talking about them. Well, think about it. Ask this question. The phrase, you were unwilling.

What were they unwilling to have done? Is it to repent, to believe, to be saved?

No, it was they were unwilling that the people they had religious authority over were to enter into the kingdom of God.

They were standing against that. And that's exactly what's said in verse 13. So the main error then is when it's talking about gathering your children together, an

Arminian would say that is the calling of salvation from God, which you can resist if you want.

And the reformed perspective would be, no, that is simply the common ministry of the gospel, which can be rejected and, in fact, can be hindered by people in authority who have the power to kind of put a stop to that.

Which is happening all over the world today in the name of Islam.

Right. You should write a book on that. You know, but who would buy it? Obviously not people who use

Linux. Well, you should send those people a free autographed copy. Oh, that's another thing

I've heard about Linux users. Well, anyways. Thank you, sir. Thanks, David. Well, I guess it's becoming

Arminian text, Arminian proof text day instead of Steve Ray on the Eucharist Day.

We'll take one more and then I'm going to do Steve Ray. I didn't do all that work to get Steve Ray lined up. We'll have to keep this one short.

Let's talk with Dale in Indiana. Hi, Dale. Hey, how's it going, Dr. White? Doing all right.

Yeah, it is Arminian proof text day, I suppose. Hey, I used to debate on a particular forum a lot.

It was everyone's Baptist, but there was several. One Arminian in particular used to always throw out 2

Peter 2 and 1, versus even denying the master who bought them. And I think

I caught the end of a program the other day where somebody else asked that same question. And I apologize if I'm asking the same question

I was just asked a month ago, but I went back and tried to find it in the archive and never found it. So what do you think that's referring to there?

Well, I even have a little pop -up that I play and channel whenever anybody comes in and asks about this.

There is an entire article at AOMin .org in the

Reformed Theology section. It's under what we call vintage AOMin .org, which is a nice way of saying all the stuff we haven't bothered to get switched over to the nice way.

Yeah, there's a very lengthy article there on 2 Peter 2 and 1 that goes all through all sorts of in -depth arguments.

It may be a little bit more than you're actually looking for, but I will at least give you the quick outline of what

I pop up for folks when they come into our chat channel. Sure, I can go find that and read the whole thing. Well, that's okay.

But since you've now mentioned it, there's going to be folks who for some reason might not find it or whatever. Let me just briefly point out that, first of all, the first point

I make is we should derive satirological truths from satirological passages, and this isn't.

That is, the specific subject here, again, has to do with God's judgment upon false teachers, and it's always best, if you're going to provide a proof text, to pull it from those texts that are actually about the subject you're talking about.

This is an inference based upon one particular interpretation, and that particular interpretation has some major problems with it.

And what are some of the major problems? Well, let me read the text. But false prophets also arose from among the people, just as there also be false teachers among you who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them bring swift destruction upon themselves.

The phrase, denying the master who bought them, is interpreted by many to be a reference to Jesus. The purchase is his death, and therefore

Jesus died for people who are false prophets and who will go to hell. It also probably would, of necessity, militate against the concept of the perseverance of the saints or the security of the saints as well, because many of these false teachers are clearly in the church at one point, made professions of faith, so on and so forth.

So, the real question, is everything okay there? Yeah. Sounds like someone, sounds like a dump truck just came up to you and buried you in sand.

Oh, I'm sorry, it was, there was a, I just put my daughter down for a nap, so I came outside for the night call.

Oh, okay. Well, I'm glad that you're not buried in sand. That would be very, that would be somewhat distracting to the rest of what

I have to say. Okay. So, the phrase, even denying the master, that's in the

New American Standard, I believe other translations say, Lord who bought them. Yeah, it says master, it's the

ESV. Yeah, it's the Greek term despotis, and that's a sovereign title. It's not kurios, which is the normal satirological title used of the

Lord. That's the second thing to keep in mind, and that also raises the question, who is in reference here? Is this the father or is this the son?

Despotis is a term that would be very easily used of either one. Thirdly, the third point is that question, is it the father or the son?

Can it be proven? You'd have to actually prove that this is the son in light here to be able to make that particular interpretation hold.

Number four, the term bought is agaradzo, and you'll notice it says, who bought them?

Not bought them with a price. No purchase price is mentioned, which would be the only time that that happens in the

New Testament if this is a satirological reference. In other words, in every other place in the

New Testament, when the term agaradzo is used of redemption, of the giving of the sacrificial price of the blood of Christ, that in that context says purchased with precious blood, the life, the purchase price is mentioned.

This would be the one place in all the New Testament where that wouldn't be the case. And thirdly, fifthly,

I'm sorry, the passage says the master did not potentially purchase these men, but that he did in fact purchase these men.

And so that would fully impact what you believe about what redemption actually means.

And you would have to come up with an idea that the person who has been redeemed can yet likewise be condemned for the sins from which they had been redeemed from.

So that would point back to a sovereign action here, not a redemptive action here, and the father doing so.

If you look at Deuteronomy 32, 5 through 6 for a parallel use in the Old Testament, you can find that there.

And finally, the idea of deriving the extent of the atonement, it's best to do so from Hebrews that discusses that specific issue, not from 2

Peter's reference to false teachers and a rather dubious interpretation that requires this.

How many different steps, or at least three different steps that have to be taken, each one of which can be questioned, for you to come to the final conclusion that in essence what's said in Hebrews chapter 10 isn't true, and that is by one sacrifice he is perfected forever those that are being sanctified.

So one is, you know, Hebrews is addressing that specific issue, Peter isn't. When you're taking one text, reading it in only one way, not even really dealing with the other possible ways of reading it, and then using that to overthrow clear teaching, that's a good indication that you've missed the boat someplace along the road.

Yeah, because the way the guy was using it, I didn't know how to answer him, and yet it would completely contradict much more clear elsewhere.

Well, that's part and parcel of doing exegesis. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, anyway,

I won't keep you any longer, but thanks for... I appreciate it, and I'm glad you missed that truckload of sand.

Yeah, sorry, I'll go look at that article too. All right, yes, thanks a lot. God bless, bye -bye. All righty, well, believe it or not, our calls have taken us all the way to the point of our break, and so what we'll do is

I'll just say right now we're not going to take any more phone calls, because I've got at least a half an hour's worth of stuff with Steve Ray to look at, and probably won't even get through all that.

So after the break, dive into Steve Ray trying to tell us about life as a

Baptist and what we don't see in the Bible, including things like transubstantiation. We'll be right back. Hello, everyone, this is

Rich Pierce. In a day and age where the gospel is being twisted into a man -centered self -help program, the need for a no -nonsense presentation of the gospel has never been greater.

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All right, let's get back to Jerusalem Jones, one of the foremost Catholic apologists.

You know, we only deal with the best folks here on The Dividing Line. Jerusalem Jones and Tim Staples, one of the foremost

Catholic, biblical scholars, not just an apologist, but a biblical scholar.

And I'm just going with our own PR, man. I'm just trying to help Catholic Answers out. We're getting the word out that Tim Staples is one of the foremost biblical scholars in the church today.

And that's a great thing to know. And I personally think that sort of ups the requirements of accuracy on the part of these folks.

And so, now that Steve Ray is one of the leading Catholic apologists that's around today, then

I will expect that he will stop making silly comments about Jerome and things like that.

But let's, this is where I'm going to have to, you know, I should have during that break unplugged and found my next clip.

But I was too busy taking a drink of Lipton green tea with citrus to try to get a cough.

It's dry around here. And I've noticed that as I've been trying to get more miles, and I'm trying to get to 2 ,500 miles by June 13th.

It's been a bad year for riding. 3 ,000 miles last year, 4 ,600 the year before that. But I'm barely going to get to 2 ,500 this year.

But I've been doing some longer rides. And, boy, you get done with all those things and you've sucked in a, you know, 30 -mile long tube of really, really, really dry air.

And my lungs are going, hey, where'd the humidity go, man? All right, let's see what we can find here.

We're going to have to jump around a bit. So, you know, stick with me here. Mr. Protestant, that is Steve Ray, is going to be joining us in just a few minutes.

I want to ask for your prayers as we head into this week. Well, I'm going to start out the talk like I'm a Baptist preacher.

There we go. Here's where Steve tells us about what kind of talk he's going to be giving.

And this is, I'd love to see this. I wonder what would happen if I showed up at one of his meetings.

I don't hide well. I'd love to show up at one of these where he's pretending to be a

Baptist minister and put my hand up and say, I'll tell you what, Steve, how about you let me be the Baptist minister since I actually is one, and you never was one.

And we'll see how different my presentation is from yours. Wouldn't that be fun?

All right, so here's the way he's describing how he's going to be giving this presentation up in Michigan.

Well, I'm going to start out the talk like I'm a Baptist preacher. Back in my former life when

I was an evangelical, I would have challenged Catholics about the Eucharist, which

I did. And we referred to it as the cookie Christ. Now, immediately, that tells me a lot about Steve Ray's background.

Steve Ray has made it abundantly clear that his form of Protestantism was not exactly the deepest and the result of a lot of meaningful study.

Now, of course, he'll try to make that claim when it's useful to do so. But that very

I mean, you've listened to me. How many debates have I done in the mass? Lots of them. And have you ever heard any type of that kind of terminology?

No, you haven't. Don't don't need to. I understand what it's saying, and I understand that genre of rhetoric and so on and so forth.

But I think the only reason he says that is, you know, shock value. Try to make those Baptists look even more backwards than Steve Ray is.

Or it was idolatrous. And of course, we read in the Bible that now, by the way, you can say that the

Eucharist is idolatrous without using that kind of language about a cookie Christ, right?

I mean, if in point of fact, the Bible makes it very plain that the death of Christ was a once for all event and that the long extended analogy he's going to give later in the program, trying to turn it into an eternal event that pops into the bubble of time.

That's what he actually says. Despite all that. That to bow down before bread and wine and identify it as your

God, body, soul, blood, divinity is to give worship to that which the

Bible nowhere which inspired Scripture, which the Holy Spirit of God nowhere has given any indication of or approval of would be idolatry.

And if the dogma as defined at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 is not true, then the

Roman Catholic would have to admit that what they are doing is in fact idolatrous, which is why they have to invest ultimate authority in the church and ultimate authority in the infallibility of the church and the councils of the church, so on and so forth, and why they cannot hold the

Sola Scriptura. Very obvious. But again, we do have new folks who maybe haven't listened to all the debates we've been doing since 1990 on issues like this.

And hence, good to go back over some of these foundational issues. Jesus was crucified once and for all.

So why do you Catholics keep crucifying and offering him as a sacrifice over and over again on your altars every week?

So... And it's important for people to understand. And again, dealing with Roman Catholicism is like dealing with any more.

It's like dealing with Jell -O, trying to nail it to the wall. You get so many different interpretations and so many different understandings.

And it's interesting, the apologists do tend to give you the older, more conservative styles.

But if you end up going to your local Catholic church, and it's not a conservative parish, but it's more middle -of -the -road to liberal parish, you're going to get all sorts of other interpretations and understandings that are going to be presented to you at that particular point in time.

And issues like purgatory and the actual meaning of the Mass and things like that. Yeah, you know, up before Vatican II, it was pretty easy to determine exactly what the

Roman Catholic Church meant historically on that issue. That really isn't the case any longer. And you may have spoken to Roman Catholics who have just all sorts of wide varieties, including priests and so on and so forth.

That's the nature of Roman Catholicism that we deal with today. I'm going to come at it from the way

I used to present it, as a Baptist or as an Evangelical Bible teacher. I would love to hear some of the tapes of Steve Ray's teaching as an

Evangelical Bible teacher, Baptist pastor, whatever he claims he was. I'd like to hear some of the tapes he did.

I remember very clearly when Jerry Matitix, I was having a phone conversation with him back in 89 or 90.

I think it was probably 1990. And I was asking him, so Jerry, you say much about your anti -Catholic activities, how you were an anti -Catholic

Protestant. They all want to do the Paul on the road to Damascus conversion story routine.

It sells books and things like that, or at least tapes anyways. Back then, now I guess it would be

CDs. But I wanted to ask you, so I asked him, I said, Jerry, could you show me any, could you send me, how can

I get hold of some of the books you wrote against Catholicism? Well, I didn't write any books. How about some of the articles you published?

I didn't write any articles. Tracts, certainly you wrote tracts to be able to witness to Roman Catholics.

No, I didn't write any tracts. Well, how about some tapes of seminars you did on witnessing to Roman Catholics and the errors of Rome?

And well, no, I didn't do anything like that. So why exactly do you call yourself an anti -Catholic?

Well, I didn't believe Rome was right. Oh, so that means you were a Protestant. You know, if you just came out saying,

I was a Protestant, but now I've become Roman Catholic, that is not going to get you a big group of people at your meetings.

And so you have to fluff it. You have to make it bigger. You know, if I were to convert to Roman Catholicism, at least

I'd be able to sort of present some credentials that I once opposed the

Roman Catholic Church. Most of these guys can't. And I would like to invite Steve Ray. I would love to listen to what his arguments were, because given the level of argumentation he uses now,

I can just imagine the level of argumentation that he used then. I would have to identify

Steve Ray has not advanced beyond the Jack Chick level of apologetics, even as a

Catholic. He's still using the same mindset that Jack Chick uses against Roman Catholicism.

And so I bet if there is anything, and I don't know that there is, but I would certainly love to hear it, it would partake the same kind of argumentation.

When I would challenge Catholics, and then after I present it that way, I'm going to turn my guns back on my old self and show why what we believe as Catholics is the truth has been the truth and always will be the truth.

So it makes it a little more interesting when people in the seats are going to feel under the fire of a

Baptist preacher about their view of the Eucharist, and then we're going to turn the guns on and help them understand what the

Bible teaches about the Eucharist and why we believe it is what it is. Now, how much do you want to bet that Steve Ray's presentation on the subject of the

Eucharist will not even begin to approach anything that has been presented by myself, by Eriks Fenson, by individuals who write on these issues in reformed publications and things like that?

What do you want to bet it pretty much is reworked, Jack Chick -style,

Arminian, Fundamentalist, Baptist type of material? Anyone want to take a bet on that?

Maybe someone goes to say, actually, I think this is today's program, even though it was sent,

I think the link was sent last night, so that might be this weekend. So if anyone's up in that area and knows where, and it's probably on Steve Ray's blog if someone can look real quick and look at Steve Ray's blog to see if he has an indication of that.

If someone's in that area and can track down the presentation, I would love to hear it. Because how much do you want to bet that there's not going to be anything out of Hebrews other than the once for all passages?

There's not going to be anything about extent of atonement, nature of atonement, intercession, issues like that.

Just my guess, given Steve Ray's character. What first started you to really,

I know the people have heard you before, they obviously know your testimony and how you were trying to disprove and save your friend

Al Cresta from being back in the Catholic Church, so you studied your way in trying to prove him wrong, but when did the

Lord first start to speak to you on the Eucharist? And when did some of these verses that you didn't see before as a

Protestant all of a sudden come along to you? Well, it all began, it was all... I'm hoping to get to, I'm going to try,

I may have to skip to it because we only have a half an hour to deal with it today, but I want to get to these texts because one of them, believe it or not, is from the road to Emmaus and that when

Jesus broke and blessed the bread to the disciples, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, their eyes were opened to recognize him.

They had been supernaturally kept from recognizing him until that point in time, and so since it was in the breaking of the bread, that somehow is a demonstration of the

Eucharistic sacrifice and transubstantiation. And yeah, you know what?

I'm a Protestant, I missed that one, but I missed it because I actually read the scriptures in the context in which they're written, for the purposes and things like that, and that's sort of why

I missed that. But there is a whole list that we'll get to, and they're the standard ones.

Anyone who's dealt with Roman Catholicism at all in the past knows what the standard ones are, and somehow we don't see.

Of course, what it means is we interpret them differently, and the question is, who does so consistently?

Well, which of the two sides, again, keeps denying the consistency and sufficiency of scripture to define these things, and which one doesn't?

Yeah, that's sort of important. Kind of in a whirlwind, when we realized there was something seriously wrong with Evangelical Protestantism.

The Eucharistic event is tentative. Steve may give his talk defending the Eucharist. You are what you eat.

Yeah, Rich just looked at me. Excuse me.

Yeah, you are what you eat. Well, hey, I can't really blame Steve Ray for that.

I've got to blame Scott Hahn for that. Scott Hahn is the one who introduced to the entire realm of would -be

Catholic apologists the use of the most corny titles and subtitles known to mankind.

I mean, it is a disease. It is an affliction that has infected them all, and that's where it came from.

But thank you very much, Algo, who is just back from being banished to Siberia, where he's been banished many times before.

But we continue with Steve Ray. And that was where our journey began. I never saw anything attractive about the

Catholic Church in the beginning. The thing that convinced me that the Catholic Church was wrong more than anything else were the

Catholics that I knew. I've always heard it said that the best argument against the Catholic Church are

Catholics. And that was certainly the case in our situation.

And it wasn't until we saw the serious problems and weaknesses of Evangelical Protestantism and when

Al came up and said that he was becoming a Catholic, he absolutely shocked us. And I remember saying,

Al, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. You're too smart to be a Catholic. But then in our attempt to argue with him, going back to the

Fathers of the Church and going back and looking at the Bible with different eyes, so to speak, looking at it deeper and richer and taking off my

Baptist glasses, I guess is the way I like to describe it. Once I took off my Baptist glasses, I could look at the

Bible without that very restrictive prism or tradition.

Yeah, and you don't want to look at the Bible with tradition. Right, Steve? Oh, no, no, no, no.

His actual argument is, I was looking at it with the wrong tradition. He's got to admit. Well, what I did is I took off my

Baptist glasses. And given what he's described as Baptist, he is talking about an

Arminian, fundamentalistic, narrow -minded viewpoint that doesn't even allow for someone to think about any other viewpoints, let alone actually enter into any dialogue with them or cooperate with them or anything else.

That's the kind of Baptist he was talking about. And that is a set of glasses.

There's no two ways about it. You want the attitude that he had when he was a

Baptist? Remember when I said to Dave Hunt? Now, Dave Hunt's not a Baptist, but he's out of the

Plymouth Brethren, but very similar attitude. Remember I said to Dave Hunt, those are your traditions speaking? And his response to me was,

James, I have no traditions. Okay, that's what he's talking about there. But clearly, what he's claiming is, what you need to do is you need to switch which glasses you're wearing.

Because obviously, he put on the Roman Catholic version. And then over a period of time, it was really not just the

Eucharist, but it was the papacy and Mary and salvation and purgatory and all of those big issues that divide

Catholics and Protestants. All of those came rushing at us. Yeah, purgatory always comes rushing at everybody.

And we took them one at a time, and we struggled with them. And we pulled all our books out. And you know, we have a lot of books in our house, like 20 ,000.

We were pulling books off the shelf and researching and looking at things up. Man, he's got a library about twice the size of mine.

That's very impressive. I wonder what's in that library. This word, mean enough. The earliest

Christians think of this, and before you knew it, the Eucharist was not one of the difficult ones for me.

Because once I realized the authority of the Church, a lot of the issues collapsed.

Because really, the authority of the Church rose high. And I realized that she has been right.

She was smarter than I was. Yeah, as we have said many, many times in the past, once Sola Scriptura falls and you accept

Roman authority, hey, that is it. You know, once you sign over your mind and say, you know what,

I am going to believe whatever I'm told by this particular group. And it can be Rome. It can be

Salt Lake. It can be Brooklyn. It can be Mecca. You know, whatever ultimate authority you want to sign your responsibilities over to, the rest of it does become fairly easy.

Because, you know, now you have your ultimate authority, and what the Scriptures say, what they said in their original context, what they mean, the consistency of Scripture, all that stuff, is no longer relevant to the final conclusions you're going to come to.

Imagine that. And so the Eucharist, once I realized that the biblical accounts and what we learned from the

Bible about the Eucharist is not all complete. It doesn't tell us exactly what to do on Sunday morning.

It doesn't give us a detailed theology, step one, two, three, four, like laid out like a systematic theology book or a catechism.

There were bits and pieces given there, and then we had to take the pieces and put them together like a puzzle.

And that's what theology is, actually, is going to Scripture and tradition and putting the puzzle pieces together.

And when I realized that the Bible was not enough to actually answer the question of what the cross of Christ accomplishes, and I went to tradition, and of course

I let somebody else determine for me what tradition was, and of course that would be ignoring other things that could be called tradition, but hey, this particular group to whom now

I have committed myself defines tradition in a particular fashion, and so they told me this is what to believe, and therefore it's what

I believe. Very, very first Christians all believed that it was a sacrifice.

What goes on on Sunday morning up there on the altar was a sacrifice. In fact, the early Christians had an altar, which we didn't, though in our

Baptist church all we had was a podium. So now you have the assertion that because the early

Christians following the Bible use sacrificial language, that you can then ignore what the

Bible actually said about that, that is the completedness of that sacrifice, the result of that sacrifice, and now you can take a theology that develops a thousand years later, and anachronistically read it back into, just as we demonstrated, proved over and over again, and those who have attempted to defend

Steve Ray's misuse of Ignatius' epistle to the Smyrnians, by the way, like Ben Douglas, have only proven once again that this is exactly what's going on, is you have an ultimate authority outside of the actual reading of the text that defines these things for you, and then you can just plug them in wherever you find them, and that's the source of the abuse of the early church writers, and I say it is an abuse to assert that they believed things that they did not believe, and that's exactly how it functions, that's exactly where it comes from, and that's what we're hearing presented here.

And then there was a table up front that was not an altar because we never believed there was a sacrifice.

Altars are places where sacrifices are offered, and we never... Or, of course, the sacrificial language is in reference to the finished sacrifice of Christ, and therefore if you're going to do an anamnesis, a remembrance of a sacrifice, then you're going to use that kind of language.

The question still remains, are you re -presenting a sacrifice that is perpetuatory in nature, or are you giving remembrance of a sacrifice that was perpetuatory and perfect in nature and is past tense?

That, of course, is the question. ...never had those. So when I realized that the very earliest

Christians had altars, and they believed that what they did there with bread and wine was a sacrifice, and that it became the real body and blood of Jesus, it changed, then how am

I to... What am I supposed to think that... Well, if I deny all of those things, when did my new idea start?

Actually, my idea wasn't the one that was there in the beginning. The one in the beginning there was Catholic.

So if I disagree with the very first Christians, then where did my ideas come from?

And I realized what was happening is that I was really practicing a different religion.

I was not practicing... I thought we were separated, brother, and not a different religion.

Tsk, tsk. ...the same religion that the very first Christians had. We had some things in common.

We all believed Jesus was God, and there was a trinity, and he was man and God, and there was a church and all these things, but there was a distinct difference enough that it was actually a different religion.

So when we discovered that, that's when we had to make our move to becoming

Catholic out of intellectual honesty. I really say that the... Hey, you know, one of the cool things about being in channel while doing this is

David King's in channel, and he just posted this. I'm going to go ahead and read it. Theodoret 393 -466 says,

It is plain to those who have been instructed in divine things that we do not offer any other sacrifice, but we make commemoration of that one saving sacrifice.

So the Lord himself commanded us saying, Do this remembrance of me and this we do in order that by contemplation we may call to mind the figure of the sufferings which he underwent for us and may stir up our love toward our benefactor and await the fruition of good things to come.

And that is from John Harrison, whose are the fathers. It's in Patrilobia, Greky 82 -734 -738.

Thank you very much, David King. I just get the feeling that maybe in his studies,

Steve Ray missed that one in his 20 ,000 volume library because he had 20 ,000 volumes.

How are you going to find that one? I mean, you know, just because it talks about commemoration and not a different sacrifice.

But anyway, thank you very much. Apostolic Fathers were the guys who did it to us.

And when I made our DVD, Apostolic Fathers, Handing on the Faith, I say that it was like these guys grabbed me and they bushwhacked me.

They twisted my arm behind my back and dragged me into the Catholic Church. Yeah, somebody bushwhacked him, but let's not blame the other church fathers for that.

You know who says that, too? And I know you've talked to him before, is Dr. Francis Beckwith, who's been on Journey Home and been on my program and Al's program.

Ah, here we go. More celebrities, celebrity conversions. And once again, what did

I say last summer when I broke this story? Because I was the first person to go public in mentioning

Beckwith's conversion. And, of course, I took it on the chin for being so mean and terrible and nasty and horrible.

And what was one of the things I said? Not only did I call for him to resign, because I felt it was completely improper to be a

Roman Catholic as the head of the Evangelical Theological Society, because that means you are not an evangelical, no matter how you want to redefine yourself.

And but I also said that when someone does this, the celebrity conversion syndrome kicks in.

And whether you actually were a convinced Protestant and whether you actually knew anything about the comparative, you know, the

Reformation, the theology of the Reformation, a comparison of the teachings of Rome versus that of Reformed churches or Lutheran churches or the

Anglican church or whatever, it doesn't matter whether actually that was a part of your expertise or not.

The very fact that you function in that way, which is primarily, by the way, an administrative guidance position, not anything else.

The very fact that you held that position is going to be used as an example of, see, here's someone who was a convicted, convinced evangelical who's become a

Roman Catholic. And I took a lot of heat for pointing out that even as Beckwith spoke, he demonstrated over and over again that his leaving

Roman Catholicism, that philosophically, that on a worldview level, he had never left the viewpoints of Rome in regards to such issues as the nature of the will of man and grace and things like that.

And that this was not his area. And that when he got pinned down by Greg Kokel on important issues, he demonstrated that to that point, even having converted, he did not have meaningful answers to the serious objections to Roman Catholicism.

And I told you at that time that that was going to happen and that that was going to be ignored and you're just going to have the conversion thing.

And so a year later, talking about his reversion to the faith. And he's a former head of the Evangelical Theological Society.

And he started to study the book again at the early church fathers. And he's like, well, where am I coming from if these guys, you know what

I mean? And this is a former head of the Evangelical Theological Society. Right. And so there are these verses in the

Bible that we on the issue, say, of the Eucharist and yes, Dr.

Beckwith and I've been corresponding with him now. In fact, I asked him about what he how he talks to his other friends.

And that's one of the things I do is give him crossing the Tiber to catch that Beckwith is telling

Steve Ray's hanging out Steve Ray's book. Now, I'm sorry. I have very, very little respect for Steve Ray as an apologist and his materials all secondhand.

And the man has no firsthand. I'm sorry. He's just it's bad.

Are we out of time? How did that happen? Oh, my goodness. Ah, well, we're going to continue this.

I'm nine minutes and 45 seconds into this thing, and I've still got 14 minutes to go. So we're going to continue this on Thursday, because here we have

Steve Ray. Hey, you know, he's handing out my stuff. That shows how solid it is. Well, honestly, if Beckwith's hand that stuff out, that only reflects very, very poorly on Beckwith's study of the of the issues.

But we will continue on Thursday with your phone calls, more about Steve Ray and his claims on the

Eucharist and everything else around the dividing line. See you then. God bless standing at the crossroads.

You let this fall away. We must contend for the faith.

We need a new Reformation day. It's not.

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