WWUTT 555 Soli Deo Gloria?

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For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

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And this is all to His greatness and to His glory, now and forever, when we understand the text.

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Thank you Becky, who is usually here with me in studio on Friday as we respond to questions from listeners, but doing things a little bit different this week in recognition of the 500th anniversary of the

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Protestant Reformation. God willing, she'll be back with me next week. You can always email your questions to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com.

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All this week we've been considering those five fundamental truths that are essential to a doctrine of salvation, summarized by those

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Protestant Reformers all those years ago, and they've become known as the Five Solas.

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We started on Monday with Sola Scriptura, by Scripture alone. It is the

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Word of God, the Bible, that is our sole authority in all matters of faith and practice.

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It is through the Scriptures that we are shown our sin and the glory and righteousness of God. It is through the

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Scriptures that we read about how God effected our salvation through His Son, Jesus Christ.

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And the Scriptures also give us the instructions on how we are to live in this world as disciples of Christ.

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In the Bible we also read the promises that we are granted for glory with Christ Jesus if we endure to the end.

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All of this in the Bible. Then on Tuesday we considered Sola Fide. So it is by faith alone that we are saved.

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Faith is the instrument that God has given to transmit His grace to us.

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And this faith is a gift itself. As it says in Hebrews 12 too,

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Jesus is the author and the perfecter of our faith. He gave us this faith and He is growing us in this faith as well.

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And so it is only by faith in Jesus Christ that we are saved. There is no work that we can do to receive this salvation.

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It is simply by believing in the finished work of God. Then on Wednesday we considered

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Sola Gratia, by grace alone. Grace is unmerited favor. You do nothing to earn the favor of God.

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He gives it to you because He is great. And we have been given the grace of God through His Son Jesus Christ.

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As we read in Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, it is by grace you have been saved through faith.

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And this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God. Not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

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And you can see how all these doctrines are intertwined. It is the scriptures that tell us that we are saved by grace through faith.

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So we have Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia all explained right there in that verse.

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And who is the object of our faith? But Jesus Christ and Christ alone. And that is what we talked about yesterday.

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Solus Christus. He alone bought and paid for us by His shed blood on the cross.

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And it is only by faith in Christ that our sins have been forgiven. We stand before God as justified and will receive as our inheritance

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His eternal kingdom. This is only through Christ. You cannot believe in Christ and also some other way, some other religion or some other philosophy that you think, you know, just to have all my bases covered.

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Because Jesus will say to you at the end when you appear before Him at the great white throne of judgment.

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He says in Matthew 7, depart from me you worker of lawlessness, I never knew you. Your faith and trust must be in Christ and in Him only.

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And the treasure that we are promised eternal life is far more than anything else we could ever ask or imagine, ask for or imagine.

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So it is only through Christ that our sins are forgiven and we are promised we will live forever. And then the final, the last of the five

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Solas, Solideo Gloria. That's what we'll be talking about today. It is to God alone belongs all of the glory.

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And as God says through the prophet Isaiah, I share my glory with no one. All the glory goes to God.

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And this is a common mantra that that people use today. Even if if you weren't aware of what the five

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Solas were, maybe you saw Solideo Gloria on a plaque in someone's home, or maybe they signed a letter with these three letters

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S D G. Well, that means Solideo Gloria, all things being done to the glory of God.

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Let's come back to our main scripture here, and then we'll go from there. Romans chapter three, beginning in verse 21.

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But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

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For there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom

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God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show

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God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

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It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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So we see all five solos of the Protestant Reformation explained to us there in Romans 3, 21 through 26.

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It's not that these Protestant reformers came up with these essential doctrines. They realized them according to what was spoken to us in the scriptures.

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And we see here that Christ Jesus was put forward, verse 25, as a propitiation by his shed blood to be received by faith.

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We believe on the work that Christ accomplished on the cross and we are saved and forgiven our sins.

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All this was done to show God's righteousness. Not because we've done anything fabulous, not even because the church is all that great.

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God is the one who is great. He is the one that all of the glory belongs to.

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It's God's righteousness, not ours, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

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And one of the illustrations that I used yesterday, we use looking past our sinfulness to the righteousness of Christ.

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But this is also Passover language that Paul is using here. Just as the people of Israel before that 10th plague came upon Egypt were instructed to put lamb's blood over the posts of their doors to their homes.

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And then when the angel of death came through Egypt and saw the blood over the doorposts, the angel would pass over that particular household.

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Well, in this case, it's the same situation, only the blood that we are marked with is not the blood of a spotless lamb that we pulled out of our flock, but the blood of the spotless lamb,

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Jesus Christ. His blood on us means that God has passed over our former sinfulness.

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He has not struck us down because of our wickedness, but rather in him we will live forever in glory.

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And all of this was to show his righteousness at the present time. So in his divine forbearance, he passed over former sins to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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You who are in Christ, who have faith in Christ, you now see God's righteousness.

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But before that you didn't. When you were living in sin and in wickedness, you were not giving God glory. You were wanting all the glory for yourself.

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You wanted to unseat God from his throne and seat yourself there and believing that you knew better than God.

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I know what's good for me. I know what will truly make me happy. I know what is better for me than you do.

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I mean, all of these things are self -glorifying statements, blaspheming God, the creator of the entire universe, as though we could possibly know more than he knows.

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So claiming all that glory for ourselves instead of giving it to God. And this is the great blasphemy of the universe.

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This is the very reason why God destroys sinners. It's not be not necessarily because of the particular sins that they did.

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Those sins simply revealed the darkness that was already in their hearts. He destroys wicked sinners because they exalted themselves instead of God.

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And that's why a person will be sent to hell at the final judgment.

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But those who are in Christ, they know they deserve hell. But they have been forgiven by the blood of Christ and now give

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God the glory because of great things that he has done for us, because he showed his love and mercy and grace through his son,

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Jesus Christ, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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God is just. He's the one who is righteous. We could do nothing to merit this salvation for ourselves.

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God did it because he is the one who is perfect. He's also the justifier in the sense that he sent his son,

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Jesus, who is God, laid his own life down, took it back up again. And by this sacrifice, we have been cleansed of our sins.

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We couldn't do anything to cleanse ourselves of our sins. God did that. So he is now just and the justifier.

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There's no way we can take credit for that. All of the glory belongs to God alone.

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And Jesus, even in his earthly ministry, gave all the glory to his father.

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Everything that he did was to the glory of the father. We read about this in Philippians 2, 5 through 11.

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And by the way, as far as memorizing scriptures go, this is definitely one of those sections that you absolutely must have memorized.

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Because Paul says this in Philippians 2, 5. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.

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And oftentimes, when I start to recite this passage, I start there. At the very end of the verse, I say,

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Christ, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.

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But he emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

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Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed upon him the name that is above every name.

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So that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

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And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the father.

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Jesus, the son himself, did all things for the glory of God. So how much more should it behoove us to do all things for his glory also?

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There is no credit that we can take in the story of salvation. All the glory belongs to God alone.

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Paul will go on to say in Romans 11, beginning in verse 33, Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.

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How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways for who has known the mind of the

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Lord or who has been his counselor or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid for from him and through him and to him are all things to him be glory forever.

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Amen. You know, the pastors that I learned from those great teachers that I listened to sermons from online.

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I listened to some of these men who have been teaching the Bible for 30, 40, 50 years or more.

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And all of these pastors have said, I think I've heard all of them say in some way, shape or form that the

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Bible still looks new and fresh and glorious to them every day, that they are still reading the scriptures with new and fresh eyes, beholding the glory of God that is spoken about through these prophets and apostles in the face of Jesus Christ.

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And that's one of those things that's actually very hopeful for me. That's not one of those things I look at and go, oh man,

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I'm going to be doing this for 50 years and I'm never going to understand all the mysteries that are spoken about to us in the

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Bible spoken to us about in the Bible. Anyway, I'm never going to get to the end of this.

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See, that's not my approach to this. I actually rejoice to hear that 50 years from now, God willing,

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I'm still going to be pouring over these scriptures and beholding the gloriousness of God and the love and mercy that he showed us in his son,

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Jesus Christ. The more I come to realize my sin, the more glorious God is, less of me and more of him, that I might learn what it was that John the

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Baptist said, I must decrease and he must increase. And that's what I hope that the scriptures continue to grow me in as I submit myself to them daily, beholding the glory and wonder of God.

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And Paul saying here in verse 33, oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom of the knowledge of God.

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You understand that you would that we have the Bible, which is what something like 750 to 775 thousand words, depending on your translation,

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I suppose. And and yet this is all we have in terms of the revelation of God.

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Just these 700 plus thousand words. And yet God is so much greater than this.

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And yet, even in the little that we've been given. And I mean, by comparison, I mean, there are longer books on planet

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Earth. I think war and peace is longer than the Bible. But even with the limited number of words that we've been given to show

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God to us, yet these words are so deep that that will never come to the end of this.

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We could spend our whole life studying this and never fully grasp even what's written about in these words, let alone that God is that much more glorious and vast and infinite beyond even what we have been shown through his revealed will.

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And that is in the pages of Scripture. You're not going to find it anywhere else. But in the Bible, you could search the entire universe and you will never find a greater description of the glory of God than what we have in the

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Bible. What was shown to God's prophets and apostles. This is the greatness and the glory of God.

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The depth and the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God. Prophet Isaiah. I think it's Isaiah 55 where where God says through the prophet, my ways are higher than your ways.

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My thoughts are higher than your thoughts. Can we ever fathom what is going on in God's mind in any given point of time?

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But God is gracious to reveal to us his mind and heart through the pages of Scripture.

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This is how you get to personally and intimately know God by your commitment to reading the

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Bible. And then you talk to God through prayer, which is still submitting your mind to what you have read in the scriptures that our minds would be shaped to be like Christ.

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Just what we what I had recited to you in in Philippians 2 5.

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So then how unsearchable his judgments, how inscrutable his ways for who has known the mind of the

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Lord or who has been his counselor or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid. And this verse, by the way,

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Romans 11 35 is exactly why sinners prayer evangelism and altar calls don't work.

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Because if it was by reciting a magic prayer that you were granted salvation, you would be able to stand before God one day and point the finger at him and say,

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Hey, I prayed that prayer. I did exactly what I was supposed to do all those years ago when I was like six.

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So because I prayed that prayer, then I've been magically transformed and deserve your kingdom.

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I deserve to be here because I prayed that prayer. Well, who's given a gift to him that he might be repaid.

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God doesn't owe you anything. This is also one of the one of the ways that we know that baptism does not save us.

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If baptism was salvation, you could go get dunked in water. Do that same pitch before God in glory.

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Hey, I got baptized and I was even baptized in the name of the father and the son and the Holy spirit. Or is those one is

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Pentecostal say I was baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. So you owe me heaven. God doesn't know you a thing who has given anything to God that God owes us something or needs to repay us because of any work that we've done or any gift that we think that we have given

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God. I mean how high and mighty we think we are when, when we think these are the ways that we access his eternal glorious kingdom because we did something great.

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We're trying to take the glory that belongs to God alone. You do not get into heaven proclaiming your own glory.

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You get to heaven proclaiming God's glory. And then finally, verse 36 in this section for from him and through him and to him are all things to him be glory forever.

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Amen. I've got no other argument to present than that. And I mean, there are some wonderful glorious verses that we could go to to continue to talk about how great and marvelous

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God is and how all the glory belongs to him. you read about it over and over in the book of revelation, those in the, in the great kingdom is

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John observes them singing the praises of God over and over again. You've got the, the four living creatures that are around the throne and the 24 elders there in revelation chapter four singing,

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Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God almighty was and is and is to come. And then it just keeps on going from there.

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More and more saints being added to these numbers that are singing the greatness and the praises of God all throughout that book.

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God's glory is being proclaimed over and over and over again. You see it also in the prophets in the old Testament and, and in Psalm 19, all of creation, giving glory to God.

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So there is a, there are all kinds of passages that we could go through to continue to further the point.

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But Paul summarizes it this way, very simply in Romans 11, 36 to him be glory forever.

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Amen. And we get to be a part of that celebration. If you are in Christ, Jesus, according to the scriptures, you have faith in Christ.

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You have received the grace of God through this faith that you have been given. You, it is faith in Christ alone and no other.

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It is giving all the glory to God. And then we will all be together in that glorious kingdom one day.

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Singing the praises of God for all eternity. As, as John Newton wrote in that famous him, amazing grace, when we've been there 10 ,000 years bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing

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God's praise than when we first begun. And if you hear a song like that, or you hear a line like that in a song, and that sounds boring to you, my goodness, we're singing praises for 10 ,000 years.

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How dull is that? I must challenge you to question your faith. Do you really love

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God? Do you really desire to worship him? If worshiping him for 10 ,000 years sounds like something that is boring and uninteresting to you that we would behold his majesty and his glory and the pages of scripture.

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And that's where it begins. Sola scriptura by scripture alone. These things have been revealed to us and that we understand them.

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There was a video that I watched earlier this week, this week from a fellow by the name of father

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Mike, and he did a video entitled why be Catholic and not just Christian.

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And I'm going to go ahead and play the video for you here. You're used to the Friday episode of the podcast going along anyway, and respond to the arguments that he presents, because I think that this, this encapsulates well the problem with Roman Catholicism and why understanding these doctrines help to summarize a biblical understanding of salvation so that we can respond to arguments just like these.

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Now, father Mike is a very handsome fellow. Looks like a model out of a toothpaste ad.

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Great smile, good looking hair, very piercing eyes. If he and I were standing side by side and doing this debate together, you would listen to him and ignore me.

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I've got a face made for radio. I do not have the looks that this guy has.

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So they picked a sharp looking priest to do these videos, but he's not a very articulate fellow.

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And you'll notice that there's some words that he says so quick, it kind of stumbles over him and you didn't quite get what he said.

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That's where I have the advantage. So anyway, he's going to, he's going to present these Catholic arguments as to why he thinks you should be

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Catholic and not just Christian. my name is father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents. I get asked a lot of times, um, father, so you're

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Catholic, right? I'm like, yeah, I am. They say, so what's the difference? What's the main difference between like the

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Catholic church and any of the other like Protestant denominations that are non -Catholic churches. Maybe it would be this, maybe it would be authority.

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Um, and I know that's a bad word. Uh, that's in some, many of us, we don't like it. We're like, ah, authority. I don't, that doesn't, that didn't sit right with me.

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What do you mean authority? I would say this, um, that the church has the ability to teach us.

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They teach authoritatively. The church has the ability to teach us in the name of Jesus, in the power of the

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Holy spirit, the glory of God, the father, that the church has the ability to tell us this is true. That's not true.

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That the church has the ability to, um, establish doctrine. And I'm not talking about some invisible kind of like universal body of believers.

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I'm talking about the church that Jesus himself founded. Back in Matthew chapter 16, Jesus looks at Simon and says,

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Simon, your name is not Peter. Rock. And upon this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

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He goes on to say, I'll give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Now, here's the interesting thing. I mean, you may or may not know.

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Jesus came to establish the kingdom, right? But it's not an invisible kingdom. Why? Because we can look at Jesus as the king, establishes the kingdom.

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But when he says to Peter, no, you know, Simon, and now Peter says, I'll give you the keys to the kingdom, et cetera, et cetera.

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He's referencing Isaiah, the book of the prophet Isaiah. And in Isaiah, there is this role in the kingdom.

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There's a role. There's the king, obviously, but there's also the prime minister, the Al -Habait, the one who's the overseer.

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Then when the king is gone, this person is in charge. This person has the authority of the king. It says that in Isaiah chapter 22.

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And there's almost word for word, what Jesus gives to Peter, the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

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Now, it sounds like father Mike is really smart, really knows his stuff. He actually makes a reference coming up here in a little bit that shows he's quite ignorant of the scriptures.

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But up to this point, he's mentioned Matthew chapter 16. And we talked about that yesterday with Jesus asking his disciples, who do people say that the son of man is?

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Peter was the one that spoke up and said, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus answered him, blessed are you,

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Simon bar Jonah for flesh and blood is not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven.

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And I tell you, you are Peter. And on this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

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And as we talked about yesterday, when Jesus says on this rock, I will build my church. The rock was the truth claim that Peter made that Jesus is the

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Messiah, the son of the living God. The church is built on that truth. The church is not built on Peter.

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Peter's not a rock because just a few verses after this, Peter rebukes

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Jesus for saying that he was going to go to the cross and die. And Jesus had to say to Peter, get thee behind me,

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Satan, for you are not speaking with the mind of God, but with the mind of a man, so much for being a rock. And then this is the guy that denies

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Christ three times. And then Jesus reinstates him at the end of the book of John, asking him three times,

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Peter, do you love me? And then Peter is not perfect after that either, because the apostle

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Paul has to rebuke Peter to his face for the discrimination that he showed against the

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Gentiles. And Peter says at the end of his second letter in second Peter chapter three, that the apostle

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Paul's words are just as authoritative as the rest of scripture and the other apostles.

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So Peter has no primacy. There is nothing about Peter that sets him over any of the other apostles.

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He gets called Peter because he's the first one to answer, but he's a little rock. He's a small stone.

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The rock that the church is built upon is not Peter. It's Jesus Christ. And Paul goes on to explain that in Ephesians two, where he says that Christ Jesus is the cornerstone and the other foundation stones are the apostles, but they're set in reference to the cornerstone.

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That's the first stone. That's the main stone. The entire structure of the building is dependent upon the cornerstone.

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And then Peter says this also in first Peter chapter two, that Jesus is the cornerstone upon which we are all built up as a living stones into a spiritual house unto the

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Lord. So we all have a place in this house that we are being built up into in Christ Jesus.

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The apostles were the first, so they're the foundation stones and, and we still submit to their authority even today, considering that every time we open up and read the new

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Testament, we're reading the testimony of the apostles. When you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you are not reading what

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Jesus wrote. You are reading what his apostles testified and was written down.

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And so this is how we continue to submit to apostolic authority. The new

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Testament is the apostolic witness. But again, Peter is not the rock upon which the church is built.

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And, and if you, if you read the rest of the scripture, the rest of the new Testament, you can clearly see that he is not the rock upon which the church is built.

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And there is no primacy that is given to Peter anywhere, even here, because his father,

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Mike went on to quote Matthew 16, 19. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.

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And whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Well, that's not something that Jesus was exclusively handing to Peter.

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And then there's this line of apostolic succession that leads all the way up to the Pope today. And now he holds those keys to the kingdom of heaven, because when you get to Matthew chapter 18, and Jesus is giving instructions to the whole church on how to confront a brother in sin, he says,

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Matthew 18, 18, truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.

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And whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Well, that's funny. He just said that to Peter a couple of chapters ago.

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He wasn't really saying it to just Peter. He was saying it to all the disciples who were present. It was the disciples whom he was addressing.

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Who do people say that the son of man is? And so here is that same gift handed to the entire church.

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It's not a key that is handed exclusively to Peter. It is something that the entire church is responsible to be able to do.

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If a person is walking in transgression, the whole church should call him out for his sin.

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And, and those are the instructions that Jesus gives there in Matthew 18, verses 15 through 20, how to correct an offending brother in sin.

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And then verse 20, at the conclusion of those instructions for where two or three are gathered in my name, there

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I am in the midst of them. So we are doing this with, in the instruction of Christ, according to the authority of his word, not some authority that exists within the church.

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We still submit to the authority of Christ. Even when it comes to disciplinary matters among the brethren,

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Christ has not given up any of that authority. We still submit to his word.

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So father, Mike also referenced Isaiah 22. Beautiful thing is this is exactly where we are in our study of second

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Kings right now. I love the providence of God, how all this is just neatly wrapped up for us. So you'll recognize a couple of these names,

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Isaiah 22, starting in verse 20. In that day, I will call my servant Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah.

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Do you remember who Eliakim is? So Eliakim was the head of the household of Hezekiah, the

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King. During the time when Sennacherib, the King of the Assyrians sent his court official, the

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Rabshakeh to Judah to make threats against Jerusalem and even trying to win some of the people to his side.

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Hey, if you come follow us, we'll have vineyards for you and all this other kind of thing. So that was, that was the

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Rabshakeh. And Eliakim was over the King's household at that particular time.

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So God says through the prophet Isaiah in that day, I will call my servant Eliakim, the son of Hilkiah, and I will clothe him with your robe.

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The your here is Shebna, who used to be the head of that house, but his, his position is being taken from him and handed to Eliakim.

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And I will bind your sash on him and I will commit your authority to his hand and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah.

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And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David. He shall open and none shall shut and he shall shut and none shall open.

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And I will fasten him like a peg in a secure place. And he will become a throne of honor to his father's house.

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Well, the father, father Mike was trying to say that Jesus was quoting this passage verbatim to Peter about these keys that he was handing him to the key to the kingdom of heaven.

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No, this passage is not repeated in Matthew 16. It's repeated one other place, revelation three, seven, where Jesus says the following to the angel of the church in Philadelphia, right?

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The words of the Holy one, the true one who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens.

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That authority doesn't belong to the church. It belongs to Christ and Christ alone.

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When it comes to deciding matters of whether or not a person is walking in the forgiveness of God, or they are still under the wrath of God, we still must rely upon the authority of the word of God to make those distinctions and judgments.

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Authority has not been given to the church. It still belongs to Christ. And we submit to his authority.

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He who holds the keys of the house of David. All right.

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So now we're going to continue to talk a little bit more about the authority of scripture.

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That's where father Mike is going to go next. He gives the church a visible structure and our actual hierarchy.

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And he says, you can actually teach now teach in my name. The Holy spirit will lead you into all truth to be able to teach in my name.

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And this is exactly what happens in the acts of the apostles chapter 15. There's this big crisis. And the crisis is, um, the apostles had been evangelizing the

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Jews. So basically they were all Jews and, uh, they realized Jesus is the fulfillment of Judaism. Jesus is the

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Messiah we've been waiting for. And they've been in that. And so they're sharing the good news with Jewish people. It was awesome.

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But then they realized because Peter had a vision and Paul was called to do this too, that they were called to bring the gospel to non

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Jews, which is amazing and good because I'm, I'm a non Jew and I get, I get to be brought in right to the, to the people of God.

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The question came up, okay, so when you evangelize Jews, all they need to get is baptized because they're already circumcised.

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They're already in the old covenant. So in order to be brought into the fulfillment of the covenant, the new covenant, they just have to be baptized. But if you're evangelizing

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Gentiles, question, do they first have to be circumcised and then be baptized or can they just be baptized?

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Now you can see at least two ways why this would be a very important question. One is if you were an adult Gentile man, this would kind of be a big question.

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He would want answered before you do, I have to do this or is this kind of optional? You want that resolved ahead of time.

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But secondly, and even more importantly, if I need to get circumcised in order to get baptized and I'm not, that means

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I'm not saved. Like, do we have to do this in order to be saved is the big question.

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The problem is Jesus never taught about that. The Bible never teaches about this.

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Well, yeah, it does in several places. Galatians five, among them, Paul says, look, I say to you that if you accept circumcision,

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Christ means nothing to you for in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith.

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I think father, father Mike just misspoke when he said that the Bible doesn't teach anything about this. He was talking about in the context of the book of acts when a

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Gentile was saying, Hey, do I need to be circumcised in order to be saved? But the Jerusalem council was, was not coming up with new doctrine there.

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There was this Pharisee group who was claiming that you needed to be circumcised in order to really be part of the church in order to be saved.

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But the apostles were saying, no, we're not going to submit them to a yoke of slavery because we are no longer under the law, but we are under grace.

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The Catholic church is really more like that Pharisee group saying that you need to be circumcised in order to be saved.

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They're not upon that. They're not among that apostolic core because the Catholic church teaches you have to be baptized in order to be saved.

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You need to participate in the sacraments in the Catholic church in order to be saved. You need to submit to the authority and the infallibility of the

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Pope in order to be saved. Oh yeah. You also need to attend a Catholic church in order to be saved.

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All of this is written down in their catechisms and in their councils. These works that you have to do for salvation.

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What the Catholic church teaches is a different doctrine. And what the apostle

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Paul has to say about them is this Philippians three, look out for the dogs.

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Look out for the evil doers. Look out for those who mutilate the flesh for we are the circumcision who worship by the spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.

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Now at the start of the segment, father Mike said that that Christ has given a hierarchy to the church.

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I agree. I just wouldn't define it the same way that he does. I mean, it starts with Christ. He's the head of the church.

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Ephesians one 22, God put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church.

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And then we get to Ephesians chapter four, verse 11, where it says he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ that Christ is the head of.

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Right? So we have that apostolic authority that is mentioned there. And like I said, we still submit to that apostolic authority.

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Every time we come to the pages of scripture, Peter is not the Pope. He was not the Pope at the Jerusalem council and Peter presented an argument.

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James presented the solution. So all the apostles there are equal in authority. There was, there was not, you know,

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Peter that was above them all. And they had to do what Peter said. That wasn't the case. And we still submit to apostolic authority because we submit to the word of God.

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We don't submit to the Pope a word, by the way, that means father. That's what Pope means.

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And Jesus said, Matthew 23, nine, call no man, your father on earth for you have one father who is in heaven.

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And we have access to the father through Jesus Christ and him alone. There is one mediator between God and man.

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And that is the man, Christ Jesus, first Timothy two, five. This all is according to scripture. This is our authority.

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Sola scriptura, which is what father Mike is going to dog on next. And this is the problem, the problem with a thing called sola scriptura or, or Bible alone.

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You know, one of the, one of the pillars of the reformation, um, was this idea that Bible alone, scriptural, you don't need the church and only need

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Bible alone. What about when the Bible doesn't teach something, what do we do?

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Well, what happened was in Acts chapter 15, the apostles came together and I'm getting, I'm not saying some loose kind of invisible church, but the actual structure of the church, those apostles, the people that, um,

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Jesus himself called Peter as the Pope, Paul and Barnabas. You have this body of the church and the church gets together and they discuss and they debate and they pray.

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And then they decided this. It seems to the Holy Spirit and to us that we should not impose this on Gentiles.

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They should not, they don't, they do not have to be circumcised in order to be baptized. And in that moment, we can see in the

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Bible that the church, again, the visible church, the structure of the church, the governance, governance of the church has the ability to teach and not just to teach, but to teach definitively, not merely optionally.

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And if you're a student of history, you see that this is not the only time. In fact, the church has to do this again and again and again because people pick up the

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Old Testament and pick up the New Testament scriptures, which also the church gave us, another video, by the way, and they say, well,

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I come to the conclusion that Jesus isn't really God. I mean, he's clearly God. I mean, he, he, he came to earth.

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He rose from the dead. He's clearly God. I think he only looked like him. And that was a heresy called docetism. In fact, it was one of the earliest heresies was that Jesus was fully

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God, but he wasn't fully man. In the church, again, not this generic, invisible church, but the actual, physical, structure, hierarchy of the church said, that's incorrect.

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Other people came along and said, well, he's fully human, but maybe he's only like partly God, like quasi, quasi God, like the

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Aryans. And the church came together in Council of Nicaea 325, and they said, no, Jesus is fully God and fully man.

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Two natures, human and divine, in one divine person. Now, every Christian in the world believes that.

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Why? Because in some way, whether they admit it or not, every single Christian in the world, believes that the

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Catholic church has the authority to teach. Every Christian who believes in the Trinity, that God is

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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, co -equal, co -eternal, that no one's greater than the other, believes that because of the authority of the

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Catholic church. Nope. I have never believed in the Trinity because the Catholic church said it.

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I believe it because it's in the Bible. And Father Mike made reference to these councils, like the council at Nicaea.

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They did not come up with any new doctrine there. They came to an agreement on what was already written down in the pages of Scripture.

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And you'll notice the comment that Father Mike made, which he said would be in another video, about how the

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Catholic church gave us the Bible. Uh -uh. No, that's definitely a

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Roman Catholic idea, that the Catholic church decided the books that were supposed to be in canon. That's not how canon is understood.

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That's not how we came about these 66 books. It was not about what books should be in the canon, but understanding the books that are in the canon.

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The Bible was not decided. It was discovered. God had given his words to his prophets and apostles, and we discovered which books belonged in the canon that God had already established.

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The church did not decide it. God decided it. Now, there is a great book on this subject, that is written by Michael J.

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Kruger, entitled Canon Revisited. I highly encourage you to pick up that book. Best book that I have ever read on the subject.

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Although it can be a kind of daunting read. It's not terribly long, and a whole bunch of the back of the book is like cliff notes and references, so you're only talking about 300 pages.

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But in case it's a little academic for you, I would recommend a book entitled The Inerrant Word, which was edited by John MacArthur.

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There's kind of like an abbreviated version of Canon Revisited in the book. Michael J. Kruger among one of the authors, and he's got like 15 or 20 pages, condensing down 300 into just a little over a dozen.

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So, either pick up Canon Revisited, which I'd highly recommend you have that one in your library anyway, or The Inerrant Word that was edited by John MacArthur.

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Now, here's something that Dr. Kruger mentions in his book. Roman Catholicism denies that ultimate authority exists in the scriptures alone, sola scriptura, as we can tell, according to Father Mike, and has consequently adopted the well -known trifold authority structure that includes scripture, tradition, and the magisterium, which is the church's teaching authority.

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The key component in this trifold authority is the magisterium itself, which is the authoritative teaching office of the

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Roman Catholic Church, primarily manifested in the Pope and his bishops. Although the magisterium is presented as only one of three sources of authority, it is distinguished by the fact that it alone has the right to interpret scripture and tradition, and more importantly, it has the sole authority to define what writings constitute scripture and tradition in the first place.

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Thus, as we shall discuss further below, questions are raised about whether the authority within the

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Roman Catholic system is really equally divided among those three sources, or whether it functionally resides in the church or the magisterium itself.

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There is Father Mike's argument crumbling beneath his feet. The Roman Catholic Church believes in sola ecclesia, that the authority belongs to the church alone.

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I mean, the absolute arrogance to say that the church gave us the word of God, and that the

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Pope presides over it as some sort of infallible authority, which is where Father Mike is going to go next to say that we can't even understand the

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Bible if it wasn't for the infallibility of the Pope. Because the church came together in the

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Council of Nicaea, the Council of Constantinople, and all the other church councils, and declared this, that this is the interpretation of the text.

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And we need that. Here's the crazy thing. We need that so badly. Okay, here's a little mental exercise. Imagine that you're a god.

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For some of you, this would not be the first time today that you did this. And it's so important to you that the people you created know who you truly are, that they don't get you wrong.

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So what do you do? Well, you don't want to overwhelm them with your beauty and your power and glory and truth, because then they would have to serve you out of fear.

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You want them to fall in love with you, and you want them to know who you truly are. And so you start small. You start with this guy named

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Abraham, or Abram, you know, turning his name to Abraham. And you bring him slowly and slowly, and then his family, you reveal yourself slowly to his family and to this tribe, and then to this people.

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You call the Jewish people, the chosen people of God, and you slowly reveal yourself to them, and very carefully, because you don't want them to get any part of you wrong.

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And then in the fullness of time, 2 ,000 years ago, you yourself actually become one of them.

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You become a human being. And in that, you reveal who you truly are, and you don't do it as the most powerful one, or as the greatest one, or as the richest one.

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You take the lowest place as a humble, poor person. And you die as a criminal.

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You let yourself be overwhelmed by suffering and death. Why? Because it's so important to you, as God, that people know the truth and depth of your heart.

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And you rise from the dead, and you send your Holy Spirit to the apostles, and then they write down all these things. And while they're writing these things down, you preserve it.

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Why? Because it's very important to you, as God, that they write down exactly what you want them to write down, and no more, no less. And then, over the course of years, as they're translating it, as they're copying it, you, with your

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Holy Spirit, you guide that copying, you guide that translating, so that they don't get you wrong. Why? Because it's very important to you, as God, that no one gets you wrong.

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This is such a crude and irreverent example. Imagine yourself as God, and you would do it this way, and you would do it that way.

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You can't. You can't imagine yourself as God. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

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His ways higher than our ways. Who has known the mind of the Lord? And who has been

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His counselor? You see Father Mike's theology playing out here, that he thinks the

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Roman Catholic Church is over the Word of God. So, of course, you can even put yourself in the position of God.

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It's also a complete rejection of God and His sovereignty, the way that he's talking about, you know, you're going to put people in the right places to make sure that they get this right.

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Philippians 2 .13, It is God who works in you, both to will and to work, for His good pleasure.

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2 Peter 1 .20 -22, No prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man.

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But men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

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Here's this infallible book, right? It's a book that has, it's without error. Now, it's not without scientific error, because it's not a scientific book.

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It's a book of poetry. It's a book of truth. It's a book of goodness. There's a whole other video about that. You just had him say that the

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Bible errors. He just said it. It's a book without error. Well, not without scientific error.

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So, he's admitting there are errors in that book. It cannot be the Word of God, which is why he doesn't submit to its authority.

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He doesn't believe it to be God's Word. The point is, you compile this infallible book through fallible people.

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But you compile this infallible book. Now, if you were God, would it make any sense for you to then say, okay, to anyone, okay, here's this infallible book, boom, take it, read it, tell me what you think.

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No, you wouldn't. Why? Because an infallible book, without an infallible interpreter, is a worthless book.

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Right? The Bible is infallible. But without an infallible interpreter, it's like that's why you have 30 ,000 plus denominations of Christianity in the

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United States. Because, you know, someone picks it up and says, oh, here's what I think. Someone else picks it up, no, no, no, no, here's what

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I think. Oh, class, I know you know the answer to this one. How do we understand what is written in the

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Word of God? We do have an infallible interpreter. It's the Holy Spirit.

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That's how we know what the Word of God says. God doesn't just hand us the book and say, hey, tell me what it is that you think about this.

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What a horrible straw man representation of Sola Scriptura. That's not what it is that we believe or argue at all.

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We understand what the Bible means because the Holy Spirit discerns for us spiritual truths.

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This is in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what

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God has prepared for those who love him. These things God has revealed to us through the

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Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him?

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So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the

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Spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God. That we might understand the things freely given us by God.

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And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit. Interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

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That's how we understand the Bible. Because every single Christian who is a follower of Christ and Christ alone is indwelt with the

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Spirit of God to understand the things of God. The Spirit of God is our infallible interpreter.

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The Pope is not infallible. The Pope airs every time he takes a breath. Because he believes in a different gospel.

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He does not have the Spirit of God, but the Spirit of the Antichrist.

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Here's Father Mike concluding with his final point, then we'll close this out. That's one of the reasons why G .K.

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Chesterton, back in the day, he had said, why he was Catholic, they said, he said, because I don't need a church who can tell me when

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I'm right. I need a church that will tell me where I'm wrong. If you ask, you know, what's the big difference between the

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Catholic Church and all other non -Catholic Christian denominations? I'd say when it comes down to it,

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I think what it comes down to is right there, authority. The only authority that the

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Roman Catholic Church has is the authority that was given to the beast in Revelation 13, 7 and 8.

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It was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation.

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And all who dwell on earth will worship it. Everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the

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Lamb who was slain. This is exactly what the Roman Catholic Church did during the Protestant Reformation.

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Putting to death those who wanted the Bible to be in the hands of the people that they might read the word of God for themselves.

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So William Tyndale translated the Bible into English. The Roman Catholic Church strangled him and burned him on a pike in the public square.

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You had John Rogers did the same thing. The Roman Catholic Church burned him at the stake. You had Jan Hus, who was also executed by the

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Roman Catholic Church. Over 300 Puritans on and on the list goes because they believe that they have the supreme authority even over the word of God.

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This is exactly why you should not be Roman Catholic. Leave that false church and look for one that truly submits to the authority of the word of God and preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ from the pulpit.

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For I am not ashamed of the gospel. For it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

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Let us pray. Lord God, I thank you so much for your word that we might know this precious and glorious gospel that the

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Protestant reformers fought to defend and recover and proclaim.

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Some of them even being put to death for it or were shamed because of it. But their reward was not here on this earth.

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It was in your glorious kingdom above for all who endure to the end.

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We thank you for this word. And I pray that a guy like Father Mike would hear the true word of God proclaimed.

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He would be convicted, cut to his heart. He would turn from Roman Catholicism and understand the truth of the

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Bible. That anybody who is under the influence of that Antichrist, the

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Pope in Rome, would be rescued out of the darkness of the Roman Catholic Church that still creeps across this country and around this world today.

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And that they would see the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

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Christ gave apostles and prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, to build up his body until we attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the

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Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we would no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every shifting wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes, but rather speaking the truth of God's word in love.

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We grow up in every way into him who is the head and to Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow, so that it builds itself up in love.

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Make us a body of loving believers, to your great glory, that we do all things, looking forward to that day when we will be with you in glory, proclaiming your glory forevermore.

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In the name of Christ Jesus. Amen. This is When We Understand the

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Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. There are lots of great Bible teaching programs on the web, and we thank you for selecting ours.

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But this is no replacement for regular fellowship with a church family. Find a good, gospel -teaching,

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Christ -centered church to worship with this weekend, and join us again Monday for more Bible study, when we understand the text.