Andy Stanley Separates Incarnation and Redemption; Paul Falsely Accused; Tim Staples Reviewed

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Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. It's sort of pretty close to the normal time.

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We're actually, I guess, a little bit early for a Thursday, but we're just very variable about things like that.

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Well, he did it again. I was directed to the comments of Andy Stanley in a sermon called

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Who Needs Christmas? And look, I look in channel

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Coogee. That's not how you spell Coogee. My goodness. I mean, if you're going to make fun of stuff, at least spell it correctly.

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Here, I'll kick you using the proper spelling there. C -O -O -G -I.

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Coogee. It's Australian. Okay. Let's just try to restrain the

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Coogee envy out there. I know that a lot of you struggle. I'm not trying to make you struggle more, but that just doesn't mean that I have to keep mine locked away and hidden away when it's finally cool enough to wear them.

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I only get to wear them for like six weeks out of the year. I live in Phoenix. If I tried to wear them for eight weeks out of the year,

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I'd die. So let's just be nice. Okay. I'll move this. I'm going to actually move this a little closer.

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How's that? Is that nice? Okay. Yes. Anyway. So Andy Stanley is sitting on his chair and he's got some

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Christmas trees behind him. Holiday trees.

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Oh, okay. Are they holiday trees? No, I think he'd probably call them Christmas trees. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this.

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I just want to point something out. You ready to play this? Okay. Let's listen to what

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Andy Stanley had to say. Hey, one of the challenging things about the Christmas season and one of the challenging things about the

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Christmas story is, in fact, the Christmas story. The Christmas story is it relates to the birth of Jesus. Because there's so much miraculous.

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There's so much amazing. There's so much that's really unbelievable about it. And a lot of people just don't believe it. And I understand that.

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And maybe the thought is, hey, they had to come up with some myth about the birth of Jesus to give him street cred later on.

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Maybe that's where that came from. It's interesting because Matthew gives us a version of the birth of Christ. Luke does.

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But Mark and John, they don't even mention it. And a lot has been made of that. So before we jump in,

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I just want to say one thing about that whole thing. And you've heard me say some version of this a million times, so this will be old if you've been around for a while.

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But see, if somebody can predict their own death and then their own resurrection, I'm not all that concerned about how they got into the world.

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Because the whole resurrection thing is so amazing. And in fact, you should know this, that Christianity doesn't hinge on the truth or even the stories around the birth of Jesus.

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It really hinges on the resurrection of Jesus. And yet, as unbelievable as this birth narratives are, and as unbelievable as the accounts are that we find in Matthew and Luke, when you get the back story, when you get the whole story, this unbelievable story actually becomes a remarkable story.

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Because the story... Okay, let's just, that was the primary thing that people have been looking at.

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And again, illustrates a lot of what we mentioned a few months ago, when

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Andy Stanley was basically attempting to say that in our modern society, what we need to do is we need to personalize the claims of Scripture.

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Instead of saying the Bible says, say this guy named John, who had this type of a personal story that you can relate to, said this.

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Or this guy named Paul, who didn't like Christians at one time and then became a Christian, he said this.

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To somehow replace the concept of God speaking in a coherent whole, which a large portion of what calls itself

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Christian theology doesn't believe in today anyways. But to replace that idea that Jesus used a lot.

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The Scriptures say God has said, but that was a different culture. So we need to recognize

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Jesus was talking to a different culture, different people. So we need to do things differently than Jesus did and the apostles did.

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And so we need to personalize things and get rid of this overarching authority type thing God has spoken and get it down to more of a human level.

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And we pointed out that that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. And in fact, is self -defeating.

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And what we have now is this statement that was just made that, hey, if someone predicts their own death and their own resurrection, it really doesn't matter to me how they get into the world.

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And there was sort of a little bit of a, hey, you know, maybe, you know, some mythology, people say there's some mythology and, you know, some street cred and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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He doesn't say he believes that, but he says, I can understand how some people would, you know, view it that way and so on and so forth.

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But what you just heard, what immediately, when I first saw this, the first thing across my mind and hopefully the first thing across your mind too, is the disjunction that immediately exists between what

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Andy Stanley is saying about the resurrection, what he says about the incarnation. The one, you know,

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Christianity doesn't hang on that. It does not hang on the incarnation. This is an incoherent theology.

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You can't, are you telling me that any resurrection would do of anybody? How about Lazarus?

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Anybody else? No, it was who was resurrected, having done what?

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And so you can't separate the resurrection from the cross and you cannot separate the incarnation from the cross.

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They're all of one whole. It's one fabric. What makes the sacrifice so absolutely central is who makes it and then the acceptance of it in the resurrection.

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It's all one story. It's all one fabric. You can't just take scissors and say, you know what, we're going to make this target really, really little for people to shoot at.

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And so we're just going to say this is the most important thing. And we can't talk anymore about, well, yeah, you know, the one who gave his life happened to be the

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God man. And think about what this does to the whole fabric of Christian theology.

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One area that a lot of people, I think, especially this time of year,

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I love this time of year, okay? Say I'm not a Puritan if you want to. Fine. I don't care about that kind of stuff.

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I love this time of year because it's one of the only times when Christians start to rebalance themselves in the

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West. What do I mean by that? Well, there's an imbalance between the East and the West in the emphasis that Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity has.

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And there's an imbalance in the East on incarnation.

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There is the opposite imbalance in the West on incarnation.

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The East is heavily Trinitarian and properly so, but does not have nearly an appropriate anthropology and soteriology.

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The West tends to be primarily monotheistic and not functionally

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Trinitarian. And so at this time of year, I love, sometime

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I'm going to take the time to do it. I love, have you ever noticed that Christmas hymns, if you look at like the second, third, or fourth stanza are normally just an amazingly deep

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Trinitarian theology, incarnational theology, hypostatic union, just the whole nine yards.

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Those are the parts that never get played when K -E -Z goes to all Christmas music and they skip that stuff.

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That's too religious. But even in our churches, we very frequently, if you even sing those hymns once in a blue moon, sort of skip over, the loneliest place in the world is to be the third stanza of a hymn in a

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Baptist church. Except in our Baptist church where every stanza is treated equally and every hymn is treated equally and having an amen at the end as well.

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So including back when we had the red Trinity hymnal and the young people like to sing

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El Shaddai. Only people in the history of the Christian church to sing amen at the end of El Shaddai.

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Anyway, I'm obviously wondering at the moment. I love this time of year because we start to see an appropriate emphasis upon the amazing reality of the incarnation.

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The Christian life should be one that is lived in daily amazement at the incarnation.

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It really should be. It should not be a seasonal thing. It should be every day we should wake up and be amazed once again at the fact that God entered into his own creation.

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That is such an amazing statement on the part of the

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Christian faith that its level of amazement should always be something that causes us to just experience wonder and awe.

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But even if it does have to be a season that draws our attention to this particular reality, at least it's there.

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And when we think about it and we put it together with the rest of Christian theology, let me give you just one illustration.

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I've talked many times about the fact that Jesus had to be the God -man to be the one who could bear the sins of all of God's people in himself because of that necessity of there being the union of those people with him so that his death can be their death, his resurrection, their resurrection, and that the

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God -man becomes the locus, the center, the focus of not only human history, but also of redemptive history.

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The cross becomes that place, but the cross could not have functioned that way if the one on the cross was not

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Emmanuel, God with us. If he was not the fulfillment of all those tremendous prophecies beginning in Isaiah 6 all the way through Isaiah 11, just this whole series of incredible texts that the

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New Testament authors all draw from and apply to Jesus, identifying him as Jehovah in human flesh.

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It's amazing stuff. But likewise, in the same way, when we talk about how we're made right with God, the righteousness that is imputed to me,

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I was just talking with a Roman Catholic on Twitter, and I asked a question.

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It's one of the standard questions I ask Roman Catholics is, who is the blessed man of Romans 4, 7 through 8?

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And the Roman Catholic has no consistent response to that. If you want to see a learned

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Roman Catholic priest with two PhDs spinning in circles on it, go watch the debate we did with Peter Stravinskis on that topic.

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And when I first asked him, who's the blessed man of Romans 4, 7 through 8, he said it was

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Jesus. Yeah. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.

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Yeah. Well, right. Jesus' sin wasn't imputed. No, no, no. So I gave him an opportunity to sort of rethink that one since it was such a really bad response.

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And then the only response he could come up with later on was, well, I hope to be. Because in Roman Catholicism, there is no non -imputation of sin.

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If you commit a mortal sin, it's imputed to you, you lose the grace of justification, you have to go to the sacrament of penance to be re -justified.

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If you commit a temporal sin, it is a venial sin, the temporal punishments of those sins are imputed to you.

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There is no non -imputation of sin. So the great exchange does not exist.

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You don't have a finished work of Christ to have that great exchange in the first place. And so there is no answer.

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The biblical answer is every single believer in Jesus Christ is the blessed man,

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Romans 4, 7 -8. That's the whole point of what the gospel is. The non -imputation of sin because the fact it's been imputed to our sin bearer, his righteousness is imputed to us, not infused into us by baptism, imputed to us by faith.

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That's the whole point of Romans 4. Well, what's the nature of that righteousness? Is it just, see, we have the, and I think again, it's a necessarily biblical distinction between the active and passive righteousness of Jesus Christ.

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You have his passive righteousness in his voluntarily giving himself on the cross of Calvary, and then you have the fact that he lived a perfect life.

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The commandment of Scripture, the greatest commandment is you're to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind and strength.

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None of us in this audience, myself included, have ever done that for even a small period of time, let alone the entirety of our lives, except for Jesus Christ.

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Now, how do we come up to the positive commandments of God if we do not have one who lives that perfect life in our place?

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So the righteousness that's imputed to us is not just a removal of sin. That's why

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I believe the N .T. Wright, Federal Vision, New Perspective on Paul stuff is so dangerous.

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I know Dr. Wright says he can still get us there, but by a different route. Well, I disagree, obviously, and don't think that you actually get there that way.

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But I acknowledge that he feels that it's necessary that we do get there. Okay, so I get that.

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But the point is that the beauty of the gospel is that the righteousness that is mine is not just the removal of sin, it's the positive fulfillment of the commands of God in the full, active, and passive righteousness of Jesus Christ.

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Well, that means that who he was before the cross and resurrection is vitally important.

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And so to stand in front of 40 ,000 people, okay, sit in front of 40 ,000 people on your little bar stool thingy and say, you know,

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Christianity doesn't hang on what you think it's all about the resurrection.

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This minimalization is not just minimalization. It chops the faith up into separate parts that cannot function any longer in a meaningful fashion when they've been separated from everything else.

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Because what makes the resurrection so important is the cross and the nature of the one who died on the cross and who hence rises again, and hence his sacrifice is accepted by the

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Father, and he ascends into the presence of the Father, and he's now the mediator, the intercessor.

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You can't chop that stuff up and say, this is the only thing that's important. We think we can defend this.

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So hey, if you all think this is all just mythology over here, that's all mythology over there, hey, you know, it doesn't really matter.

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It's okay as long as we got this. No, I'm sorry. You don't even have that if you don't have all the rest of it.

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You've chopped it up into pieces and you've destroyed it. So, you know,

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I'm sure that Andy Stanley wants to try to tell people, you know, there's this great redemptive story and all the rest of that stuff.

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But man, when you start off by saying, hey, it doesn't really matter, the imbalance is what we saw before.

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And many of us responded to it. And we found it to be very troubling.

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And there's a reason why we found it to be very, very troubling as we needed to.

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I'd like to invite you to look at the Bible with me for a little while. My son asked,

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I don't understand the El Shaddai hate. I don't hate the song.

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It just was obviously never intended to have an amen at the end of it. And you could just see

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Pastor Fry wilt just a little bit each time during hymn singing when the young people would,

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El Shaddai, you know, this is like, you could just tell. Peter J.

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Mitchell is obviously experiencing Coogee Envy.

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He says, can't hear your words. You're being drowned out by your jumper sweater coat of many colors. Obviously that's not,

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I note that it's colors is spelled C -O -L -O -U -R -S and no one over here would say jumper.

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So obviously this is a British European type thing. And certainly

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I understand why British people could not handle Coogees because they can't even handle hot sauce.

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The idea of flavor in food, color in clothing, just a little bit beyond the

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British experience. And so I understand. So Peter J. Mitchell, we feel for you, sir.

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And if you ever come over here to the States where there's color and flavor and stuff, then maybe

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I'll let you borrow one for a while. Just simply because I can tell that you really wish you had one.

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It's gray. That's right. That's exactly right. Yes. Anyway, what were we saying?

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Yes. First Thessalonians chapter four. I'd like to just spend a couple of moments and look at the scriptures with you.

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And some people tune out at that point, but I'm going to be playing a video after this of a non -Christian attacking the

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Christian faith based upon a misunderstanding.

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Well, not misunderstanding, but just simply ignoring. Oh, Peter J. Mitchell is Australian. Now that means

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Peter, now you have no excuses at all. This is one of the greatest exports of Australia.

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So yes, you do need to learn how to spell color. But how can you possibly not recognize one of the national treasures of Australia?

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That is just shocking to me. It really is. I just don't even know what to do right now.

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My words are almost taken away. So let's get back to something important here. First Thessalonians chapter four.

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Now as to love of the brethren, you have no need for anyone to write to you. For you yourselves are taught by God to love one another.

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For indeed you do practice it toward all the brethren who are in all Macedonia. But we urge your brethren to excel still more and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend your own business and work with your hands just as we commanded you so that you will behave properly toward outsiders and not be in any need.

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So here is a text where the apostle is writing to the church at Thessalonica.

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This is maybe one of the very earliest epistles of the apostle

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Paul. And it's very, very practical.

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Very practical. Working with your own hands, living peaceably. This is what the

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Christian life is to be about. Lead a quiet life, tend your own business, work with your hands, love one another, fellowship with the saints, et cetera, et cetera.

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And then he says, but we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.

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So in other words, already since Paul's time of ministry amongst the

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Thessalonians, there have been people who have believed in Jesus Christ who have then passed away.

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They have died. And so the question has now come to the apostle

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Paul, what about those who have died? What is their state? And this is all in light of the recognition on the part of all of the apostles that Jesus Christ had promised to return again.

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And if you know the gospel stories, if you know the narratives, then you know that Jesus taught a parable about the 10 virgins and their lamps.

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And in this parable, he was communicating, he communicated this in a number of different parables, this is just one of them, the necessity for believers to always be prepared for the coming of their

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Lord, because they don't know when it's going to be. And so one of the more important aspects of the

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Christian faith is its expectation of the return of Christ and the imminence of that.

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Despite Harold Camping and people like him, the reason that we're not given a time and a date, the reason that we're not given information to say, ah, here it is, is because every generation, every believer is to live their life in expectation of the coming of the

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Lord, because the Lord's going to come for you in one of two ways. You don't know what tomorrow is going to bring for you.

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And oh, we are so arrogant, are we not? We get into these metal contraptions that accelerate us up to, well, it depends on if you're on city streets or freeways, but if you're on the freeway, you're doing 75 miles per hour, and the potential energy now stored in your body, if you understand physics at all, is immense.

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And the fact of the matter is every single day people die in one of those contraptions. And we all get into them, and most of us don't give it a second thought, but the reality is each one of us could meet the

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Lord suddenly and quickly every single day, every single day.

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So you're either going to meet him in that fashion, or he's going to return, and as a group, those who are alive and remain will meet him.

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But the point is that every generation of believers is to live with the expectation.

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That's why I have a problem with certain forms of eschatological speculation, because some of them, quite honestly, some of them, quite honestly, can come to the point of saying, no,

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Christ can't come right now because this hasn't happened, that hasn't happened, that hasn't happened. This, this, this, this, this needs to be rebuilt, and then, you know, this has to happen.

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No. Christ can return at any point. And so we are to speak and think in that way.

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And that's what Paul does here. He says, but we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you not grieve as do the rest who have no hope.

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And boy, I'm fighting the very strong temptation to preach on that one because the issue of hope and grieving, but that's way too heavy for today.

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Anyway, for if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.

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So in other words, here is the promise, same promise that Jesus gave to the thief on the cross.

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Today you will be with me in paradise. You know, when Jehovah's Witnesses ask me, where is heaven? I say, it's where Jesus is.

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For the Christian, it's where Jesus is. If he's your life, if he's your all in all, then you want to be with him where he is.

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And that's, that's what Paul believed too. For me to live as Christ, to die as game. And he clearly had the confidence that if he were to die, he would be in the presence of Christ.

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He wasn't going to be separated from him. It wasn't going to be soul sleeping. Wasn't going to have to wait to the resurrection to see

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Christ again or something along those lines. So if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus, for this we say to you by the word of the

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Lord, that we who are alive remain until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep.

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Now this text is often used to say, see,

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Paul was, Paul was wrong here because he says, we who are alive and remain until the coming of the

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Lord will not precede those who fall asleep. So, so see, Christ will return in my lifetime. Well, how else would you expect him to speak?

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If, if he's, if, if he's, if he's speaking to Christians as a fellow Christian, there's only one, there's only two ways he can address them.

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We who are alive because he's still alive, or he can deny that Christ could return during his lifetime and say after I've died, but he doesn't know that.

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So how else is he supposed to say it? That's what just, it just, it drives me nuts when

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I see a sense of ostensibly Christians who will look at these texts and they'll just fall into this gaping hole of unbelief and say, well, yeah, obviously

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Paul was wrong about that. And you're just like, what else do you expect him to say? What, what, how else are you supposed to put it?

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I don't get it. But that's what happens when you chop the Bible up and adopt certain presuppositions about scripture that unfortunately are very, very popular amongst liberals and others.

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This is to say to you by the word of the Lord that we who are alive and remain until the coming Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

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Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we shall always be with the

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Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words. And so this is practical exhortation.

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The church has asked, what's the state of those that we've lost, who've died in the faith?

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And of course, this is, this is the very first generation of believers. This is the very first few decades.

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And so here these believers have passed away. What's, what's their state?

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What, when will we see them again? What's, what's going to be our relationship to them, et cetera, et cetera.

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And you have the promise of the resurrection. You have the promise of being united with Christ to meet the

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Lord with the air and in the air. And the, the, the most important part that gets passed over by people is, and so we shall always be with the

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Lord. So we shall always be with the Lord. Isn't that what Jesus himself promised to go to prayer place for you?

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Where I am there, you may be also. This is, that's why Paul says by the word of the

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Lord, the commandment of the Lord, he knew that Jesus had made these promises that his, his followers would be with him.

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And that is the confession of faith of every single generation of believers, no matter how long the

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Lord tarries. To take that and say, oh, see those that, you know, those first generations, they didn't get it.

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And then slowly they figured out, oh, there's going to be a long time. And they were just, they were just dumb and were much smarter.

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Why is it that rather than every generation should speak with the same level of expectation as that generation did?

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Another text, first Corinthians chapter nine, first Corinthians chapter nine.

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I am not speaking these things, Paul says, according to human judgment, am I, or does not the law also say these things?

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For it is written in the law of Moses, you shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing. God is not concerned about oxen, is he?

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Or is he speaking altogether for our sakes? Yes, for our sake it is written, because the plowman ought to plow in hope and the thresher to thresh in hope of sharing the crops.

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If we sowed spiritual things in you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? If others share the right over you, do we not more?

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Nevertheless, we did not use this right, but we endure all things that we will cause no hindrance to the gospel of Christ.

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Now what's going on here? Backstory, of course, is the conflict in the church at Corinth with these super apostles, these people who claimed an authority even above that of the apostle

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Paul. And even though the gospel had come to them through him, now they were claiming a superior authority and were, in essence, pointing out problems in the apostle

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Paul and saying that, see, he's not really up to par because of this, that, or the other thing.

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And so in this context, the apostle is talking about the fact that those who proclaim the gospel have the right to get their living from the gospel, but he says, if others share the right over you, do we not more?

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Nevertheless, we did not use this right, but we endure all things that we will not, so we will cause no hindrance to the gospel of Christ.

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Paul is saying, even though we had the right to do these things, I worked with my own two hands and I did not want to cause stumbling.

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I did not want to cause a hindrance to the gospel of Christ.

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And that's going to remain the most important thing in what Paul is saying, is removing hindrances and being willing to do whatever it takes to be able to communicate the gospel of Jesus Christ to the widest possible audience.

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So he says, do you not know that those who perform sacred services eat the food of the temple and those who attend regularly to the altar have their share from the altar?

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So also the Lord directed those who proclaim the gospel to get their living from the gospel. And so here you have direct, straightforward presentation of the reality that there are going to be those in the church, those who proclaim the gospel are to get their living from the gospel, that there is to be a support of these individuals, etc.,

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etc., coming directly from apostolic authority. But Paul says in verse 15,

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I have used none of these things and I'm not writing these things so it will be done so in my case, for it would be better for me to die than have any man make my boast an empty one.

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For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for I am under compulsion, for woe is me if I do not preach the gospel.

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So Paul has a special calling and he is clearly consumed by the

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Lord. His life is taken up fully in the proclamation of that gospel.

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And you look at his life, you look at what happens to him, stoned and shipwrecked and imprisoned and everything else, plainly his was not an easy life.

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It was a life of suffering. It was a life of servanthood. He is under compulsion.

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He says, woe is me if I do not preach the gospel, for if I do this voluntarily, I have reward, but if against my will,

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I have a stewardship entrusted to me. So I desire the reward, but even when the desire is not there,

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I'm going to be obedient. I'm going to do what I've been called to do. What then is my reward?

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That when I preach the gospel, I may offer the gospel without charge so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel.

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And so Paul, knowing his, especially his, particularly controversial role, founder of churches, the one fighting against incipient

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Judaism and the possible division of the church into Jewish and Gentile portions, the hatred expressed toward him by the

36:52

Jewish leadership, following him around, seeking to find a way of plotting his death.

36:59

These are all things that are documented for us. And so he recognizes he is under special restraint, shall we say, in light of the calling that is his.

37:14

For though I am free from all men, now here's, notice what he says, though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all so that I may win more.

37:23

So this is a, this is in Paul's mind, part of his duluo, his servitude, his slavery, part of his service is to panton, pasen, emauton, edulis.

37:47

I have made myself a servant of all in order that I may win even more.

37:55

And so what he's saying is I have certain rights, but I've laid those rights aside.

38:01

I have certain freedoms, but given the calling that is mine, then

38:08

I can't exercise all those freedoms. And I have set this as my priority rather than the exercising of these freedoms.

38:19

Okay. So for though I am free from all men,

38:25

I've made myself a slave to all so that I may win more. And then he says to the Jews, now that's directly in the context of saying,

38:35

I have made myself a servant of all men. What does it mean to be a servant of all men?

38:41

To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews. To those who are under the law as under the law, though not being myself under the law, so that I might win those who are under the law.

38:52

So in other words, I'm not going to flaunt my freedom when I am seeking to win those who are under the law, even though I myself am not under the law.

39:01

I am willing, remember he did the Nazirite vow. I am willing to do things that are not necessary for me to do, but they are helpful for me to do to remove any hindrances to my presentation of the gospel to these individuals.

39:19

It'd be like my saying that if I were going to go out, well, and I've done this, and you can ask the the

39:30

Muslim folks that I've had lunch with or dinner with as a part of debates,

39:38

I've said, you tell us where we can go where we can have food that will not cause you a problem.

39:47

Find halal food. So I'm not going to ask my

39:52

Muslim debater friend to have dinner with me and then order pork.

39:58

Why would I do that? Well, because it's my freedom. Yeah, it's my freedom, but I can voluntarily suspend the eating of pork so that I have an opportunity to express my heart and my compassion and my concern for that person, right?

40:19

I don't have to eat pork. I don't have to order a double bacon cheeseburger.

40:26

We can go someplace where they can go and we can speak about spiritual things without silly physical things getting in the way.

40:37

Now, do I believe then that we should allow ourselves to be put under bondage to food laws?

40:45

No. Jesus declared all foods clean. There's Mark chapter 7. There's no question about it. But there's a difference between saying this is a freedom that I have and saying

40:57

I will always practice this freedom even if it limits my ability to proclaim the gospel to such and such a person.

41:11

So that's what he's saying that I might win those who are under law to those who are without law as without law though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ that I might win those who are without law.

41:21

So he speaks to the pagans. He speaks to the Gentiles and he doesn't require them to observe the law before he will talk to them.

41:33

He will talk to unregenerate sinners. He's not going to engage in sinful activity.

41:40

He's under the law of Christ and that law of Christ is going to limit what he can and cannot do, but that doesn't mean that he's going to demand that others do what he has to do.

41:53

So he speaks to those who are not under the law as if he himself is under the law. He's not demanding, well,

41:59

I would like to tell you about Christ, but you need to, you know, you need to do

42:04

X, Y, and Z and, you know, clean yourself up this way first or something along those lines. To the weak

42:12

I became weak that I might win the weak. I become all things to all men so I may by all means save some.

42:19

I do all things for the sake of the gospel so I may become a fellow partaker of it.

42:30

To partake, participate, fellowship, to partake together.

42:38

I want to become that fellow partaker of the gospel. I do all things for the sake of that gospel.

42:47

Now reading this in its context without any kind of just wildly unfair prejudice would lead one to go, wow,

43:04

Paul is really willing to put himself second, to put others in front of himself, to serve others.

43:15

That'd be a commendable thing. But it's amazing, those two texts you're about to hear cited by a

43:25

Muslim apologist, Zakir Hussain, who I debated in London on whether Muhammad is prophesied in the

43:34

Bible. Now I've criticized Zakir in the past. What he does is he throws out a large number of unfounded statements, refutable statements, but he throws out so many of them you could just never get to all of them.

43:51

It's a scattergun approach and it's not the appropriate way to do debate, not serious debate anyway. It may impress your homeboys, your audience that you want to get to, but it's not really the way to do it.

44:09

I've exhorted him to reconsider this and that when you make statements in debate, look, let's just be honest, everyone who engages in debate has to make a decision going in whether you're going to respect the truth, your opponent, and the audience or whether you're just going to seek to impress your crowd.

44:37

As a result of that, you make a purposeful decision in how you present your materials and how you respond to people as well.

44:56

I think it is disrespectful to your opponent and to the audience to just simply throw out all sorts of statements that you know the other side could refute if they had the time to do so.

45:10

But especially when you do this toward the end of a debate, it just so dilutes the focus of the debate and the meaningfulness of the debate that it's really sad.

45:25

You and I just spent a few moments, and some of you started to tune out, I could tell, spent a few minutes looking at the context of Paul's comments in 1

45:36

Thessalonians 4, recognized there wasn't any other way he could say what he said to try to accuse him of deceptiveness, just grossly unfair.

45:54

Then 1 Corinthians chapter 9, where he is clearly stating his willingness of self -sacrifice, his willingness to serve the gospel in any way he can.

46:09

Yet we're about to see Zachariah saying, he was deceptive. He was lying to the Jews. He was lying to those who weren't under the law and those who were under the law.

46:17

He was trying to deceive these people. What we've seen by simply walking through the text is that these are both absolutely unfair, unfounded accusations.

46:33

Yet it's not just Zachariah Hussein who makes them. Every Islamic apologist that I've ever heard addressing this subject has made the same errors.

46:46

There is an amazing willingness on the part of Islamic apologists to buy into any type of anti -Pauline writing.

47:02

There's a lot of it out there. It makes perfect sense because so much of the application of Christian truth to sexuality, marriage, so on and so forth, whose pen does it come from?

47:16

The Apostle Paul's. If you want to attack what the Word of God says, he's the prime person you have to go after.

47:24

Liberal theology, of course, cuts him up into pieces and places the earlier Paul against the later

47:30

Paul and all that kind of stuff we've talked about many times before. With those texts having been examined, let's take a look at what

47:42

Zachariah Hussein had to say on this very subject. Regarding Jesus speaking about false prophets to come after him will deceive people, it's actually interesting that that passage applies to Paul more than anybody else.

47:54

Number one, Paul openly admitted to deceiving people. He said in his letters, to a Jew, I'm a

47:59

Jew. To one under the law, I'm a law. To one who's not under the law, I'm not under the law. In other words, he'll act like anything to gain converts.

48:07

Now, that's a deceiver. Okay, so there's the same. That's a deceiver. Why? Where was there anything in what

48:18

Paul said in its context? I do all things the sake of the gospel so that I may become a fellow partaker of it.

48:25

Where was there anything about deception? Where was there anything about lying to someone? What Paul was saying was,

48:30

I will not demand the exercise of my freedoms when it would stand in the way of the proclamation of the gospel.

48:38

That's all he was saying. That's the only fair way of reading it. Zachariah Hussein, to my knowledge, has never provided a counter exegesis to that text, and I don't believe he's capable of doing so.

48:48

Because any fair reading, and by the way, I think I can fairly make this complaint because I'm one of those people who has been thrown under the bus by fellow

49:07

Christians who minister to Muslims as well. Because I will not engage in the same kind of accusations toward Muhammad and the early

49:20

Sahaba, the early followers of Muhammad, those first generations.

49:26

I think it's necessary to try to be fair in looking at their context as well.

49:37

And so you will hear all sorts of arguments, rather emotionally charged arguments that immediately raise tremendous barriers to any type of meaningful discussion about Muhammad.

49:53

You don't hear me making those arguments because I want to try to stick to the key issues and I want to try to be fair.

50:02

So I try to be fair, and I think...

50:08

where did it go? Slowly but surely, my supply of my own books down here just dwindles over time.

50:19

I think most Muslims who would even take the time to read whatever a

50:26

Christian needs to know about the Quran would have to say, okay, I don't necessarily agree with you, but you really tried to be fair in your reading of the text, in your handling of the text.

50:40

And what's the basis of that? Because I know how unfair

50:46

Muslim apologists are in their handling of the Bible. And so if I'm going to point to, right now,

50:53

Zakir Hussain, who's a nice young man. He's seen other people doing this.

50:59

His community approves of his doing this. It shouldn't. I wish that there were some older, more mature imams who would take him aside and say, have you really thought about the approach that you're taking here?

51:15

Not to discourage him from doing But are you using the same standards in examining the

51:25

Christian scriptures as you would with the Quran? And the answer to that is, no, not. I could wish that that would happen.

51:33

I like Zakir. I really do. I'm trying to help him here. I'm trying to show concern for him.

51:38

I pray for him. I want to see him come to know Jesus Christ. I want to demonstrate to him.

51:46

I do not hate him in any way, shape, or form. I am concerned about him.

51:53

I pray God's blessings in his life. But those blessings need to be blessings that bring him to truth.

51:59

And this is not a truthful way of approaching these texts. Zakir, if you and I sat down with a

52:06

Bible between us and we walked through those texts, you could not defend the idea.

52:11

This is dishonesty. This is deceptiveness. So why are you doing this? This is not an appropriate way of approaching these subjects.

52:23

It's just not. But there you have the accusation being made in regards to deceptiveness on the part of Paul Spaulding.

52:33

If I recall correctly, the next section Moreover, the book of Deuteronomy tells us how to test the false prophet if they give false prophecies.

52:41

Paul in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 claimed that Jesus would return within his lifetime and his followers.

52:48

Did that happen? No, it's been 2 ,000 years and it's a false prophecy. Now, so we just saw, so what

52:55

Zakir is saying is this is a prophecy in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 when in reality there wasn't any other way in light of Jesus' own teaching that the

53:06

Apostle Paul could have said what he was stating. He was not saying Jesus will return before I die.

53:12

What he was saying is we don't know when he's going to return and all of us have to live in light of the imminent reality that he could return at any point in time.

53:20

There was no other way he could say what he said than the way he said it. So it is a false accusation against Paul to say he was being deceptive and it's a false accusation to say he gave a false prophecy.

53:30

I don't care if Mike Licona doesn't know what I just explained to everybody. I'm afraid

53:36

I just have to say Mike Licona is involved in a spectrum of theology that does not have a coherent whole understanding of what

53:46

Scripture is teaching. That's what happens when you move past a certain line and start getting out there into other areas and that's why liberals don't do apologetics because you can't.

54:00

Once you don't have an objective truth, there's really no way of defending it anymore anyways. So you may say, what does that have to do?

54:07

Well, right before this in this video was a clip of Mike Licona on 1 Thessalonians chapter 4.

54:15

So pretty much first hour on that particular subject.

54:26

We have a new setup here for those of you. I sort of like it. I feel a little bit freer. There's more space.

54:35

I only have one computer now. I don't have to, I won't even go through. Well, okay.

54:42

This is my new MacBook and it's wonderful and it's powerful and it's big, but I'm doing a ground up reinstall on it.

54:53

I didn't use the migration assistant because this is number five going back to 2008 and stuff collects.

55:03

You know what I mean? I mean, Google Earth hasn't worked for two MacBook Pros in a row and I need

55:09

Google Earth. I'm a cyclist. I need Google Earth. It really, it's one of the greatest tools I've ever seen. I mean, some of the routes that I've mapped out that way.

55:16

And you can also go boom, boom. Oh, look, that's 474 feet of climbing.

55:23

That's a lot of climbing. You know, it's really nice to be able to know stuff like that. Well, it broke two MacBook Pros ago.

55:29

I've had to use windows to be able to do that. That's just wrong. That's terrible. And I tried to fix it. Believe me,

55:34

I de -installed everything. I wasted. All right. Guess what?

55:40

If you don't use migration assistant, Google Earth works. Yes. Anyways, so I'm in the process and you know what this means.

55:51

It means literally taking a notepad and looking at all the apps and going, okay,

55:57

I do want that, do want that. Because if it's not in the app store, okay, I'm going to have to go find the registration code for that one, download the install file.

56:04

That's what I'm doing right now. But I've gotten iTunes working, got my music, and I've gotten mail working.

56:14

So as long as I've got my email and all my Bible programs, Accordance, Logos, all that stuff is working.

56:20

And I moved all my documents over to Dropbox. So it's happy and fine and stuff like that now too.

56:27

So that's why it's sitting there, but that won't be there in the future.

56:33

It's just sitting there right now because I'm moving stuff from here to there slowly and surely. But it's going to be cool. But what the problem is now is that the channel is right here and Twitter is right there.

56:49

And so I see stuff. And our Roman Catholic friend just said, got to head out, love the sweater commentary.

56:57

But what does Romans 4 -8 have to do with the topic of papal infallibility? It had nothing to do with it. I was pointing out to you what a real question would be.

57:06

It has nothing to do with papal infallibility. It has to do with the fact that Roman Catholicism presents an understanding that is, well, what's the mark of the church?

57:17

Apostolic. Well, if you're not teaching what the apostles taught, then you're not apostolic, are you? No. That's what

57:23

I was talking about there. But the big thing is, let's see, Bill Cockrell or Cockrell, enjoy listening live, but need coffee before White wears his coogee again.

57:36

You got that one? And then Micah, Micah comes in channel and says, that sweater, all in all capitals, sheesh.

57:49

And stuff like that. So you know what this does?

57:55

It causes me to look more coogee sweaters. That's what it does. Yeah. Yeah. We're going to have to hit eBay again.

58:06

And I've talked to Jeff Durbin. We may do another coogee DL before Christmas.

58:13

Yeah. Go ahead. I can hear you. So, well, first of all, I do have a question.

58:19

Is eBay the only place in the universe where you can find a coogee? Cheapest. Certainly can't imagine it ever being, you know, on Amazon or certainly not at Ross.

58:34

No, no, not anymore. My first coogee I got was purchased for me as a gift at a very high end fashion store in Scottsdale Fashion Square.

58:42

Yeah. Is that place around anymore? I'm sure it is. Oh, well, just curious.

58:48

What can I say? And you know, your plaid shirts are available pretty much at every

58:55

Walmart in the world. Yes, they are. Yes. Of course, this is Eddie Bauer. So. Okay. At every Eddie Bauer in the world.

59:00

Yes. And Eddie Bauer is not Walmart. No, not. You couldn't tell the difference by looking at it.

59:06

But, you know, back to Andy Stanley for a second. It occurred to me that. Andy Stanley wears Eddie Bauer.

59:12

I doubt it. Oh, that looked like Eddie Bauer. Did that not look like Eddie Bauer to everybody else?

59:17

Anyway, about Andy Stanley, my question for him would be, since he seems to be naming all the different things that Christianity doesn't hinge on, what does

59:31

Christianity hinge on? Resurrection. What's that? Resurrection. For now. No, no, that's, that's, no, no.

59:38

It just seems to be a list. I would never expect it. Things getting eliminated, right and left, you know? This is, this is minimalism.

59:44

This is mere Christianity. This is make that target as small as possible. Make your argument as tight as possible and hope for the best.

59:55

That's, yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, that's what you're dealing with there.

01:00:00

So, let's see. DeWayne says, bro, don't let them hate on your sweater.

01:00:06

It's fresh. Fresh. Well, that's interesting. I've never heard.

01:00:13

My, my kids introduced me to the term metal. You look metal. Now, they would never say it about my coogies because they're embarrassed by my coogies.

01:00:21

But there is a picture we took next to a lake, Kelly and I, this past summer.

01:00:28

And Summer's comment was, you look metal. And I had to write back and go, is that a, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

01:00:38

That means tough, means good. Yeah. Yeah. Now somebody in channel says, wow, those things are expensive.

01:00:49

Yeah. They're each one unique. Yeah. That's, that's, that's the whole point. Anyway, we press on, believe it or not.

01:00:57

Don't hit that music. We, we have, we have much more to do here. We have much more to do here.

01:01:04

We are completely changing gears, however, and some of you are going to be excited about this. Uh, we announced, and you know what?

01:01:14

I talked to Mike, but they must not have gotten their internet installed in their office in time or something.

01:01:20

What? Oh, he said he told you. Oh, okay.

01:01:30

Lovely. Okay. Um, was your sweater made by Doppler effect scientists?

01:01:41

I love color folks. That's all there is to it. You can hate on my coogies and it only makes me love them more.

01:01:48

Okay. You know, so just go ahead. It's all right. I may wear them year round now.

01:01:55

I just may be just be, you know, just constantly anyway. Um, so my can't be on today.

01:02:02

Uh, we are going to be, we're going to have them on eventually, to talk about the, well,

01:02:08

I'm doing two, I'm leading two Reformation tours in 2017. One in May with the

01:02:16

Masters Academy International Group, where we will do part of the tour before the

01:02:23

Shepherds Conference in Wittenberg. Dr. MacArthur will be speaking as will

01:02:29

I. Um, no one will care about the fact that I am, but he'll draw the crowd. Um, and then it will continue afterward down to Geneva and Zurich.

01:02:44

Uh, very much looking forward to that. I was in Zurich last year. It was a sobering thing to stand on the bridge from which many of the

01:02:53

Anabaptists were given their third baptism. Uh, once again, reminded me of the importance of reading more, uh, than just the big books on the

01:03:09

Reformation. Hey, Don Lord in Oklahoma says hello. Remember Don? Do you remember Don Lord at all? You never met

01:03:15

Don? Okay. Hey, Don. Good to see you. Hope you're doing well. Um, but, um, then after we do

01:03:27

Zurich and Geneva with TMAI, then I'll be flying to Kiev and teaching again, which means

01:03:35

I'll get to see Brother Nick again. And while probably seeing him, I'd assume he'd be in Berlin for the

01:03:43

Shepherds Conference too. I imagine. Will you, Nick? Hope so. Hope you will be. Uh, because I'm not teaching in Kiev without Nick.

01:03:51

I'm just laying that down as law right now. Nick is my translator, period. If it's into Ukrainian, Russian, whatever,

01:04:00

I accept only one translator and that's Nick because basically what happens is

01:04:07

Nick and I just plug a USB cable into our brains and I don't even have to talk.

01:04:13

I just think and it comes out. So, um, anyway, um, uh,

01:04:23

I'm, I'm being distracted by, uh, by the possibility of a dialogue with Roman Catholics on via Twitter.

01:04:30

That's really not a fair dialogue. Um, look up that, just look up the conversation between me and, and, and Peter Stravinskas on Romans 4, 7, 3.

01:04:41

You'll see what I mean. Uh, my point is that how you're justified before God is central to our conversation.

01:04:48

Asking a Reformed Baptist minister if he accepts the book of Acts as scripture and reliable is not.

01:04:54

It's a given that I do. My confession of faith says that I do. That's why it was silly. Okay.

01:04:59

That's, that's the whole, whole point. Anyway, um, then in September, uh, with sovereign experiences, sovereign events, there's so many sovereigns

01:05:14

I've lost track of all of them, but with, with Michael Fallon, uh, Alvin Omega and Josh Bice from Praise Mill Baptist Church, G3 Conference, uh, we will be doing a, a

01:05:29

Reformation tour that will also include those same areas. That'll be in September and, uh, will not include my teaching in Kiev or a

01:05:38

Shepherd's Conference in the middle. We announced also just a few weeks ago that the pre -debate, the pre -conference debate before G3, uh, will be, um, a debate on the permanence of salvation, whether you could lose your salvation with a

01:06:02

Catholic apologist, Trent Horn, staff apologist at Catholic Answers. And so obviously 2017 is going to bring a great deal of discussion and focus, uh, back upon issues that used to be the constant bread and butter of everything we did.

01:06:21

You may recall a couple of months ago, we did a fairly lengthy series on Sola Scriptura.

01:06:30

We played through, uh, the comments from Catholic Answers Live, standard, uh, argumentation against, uh,

01:06:41

Sola Scriptura from a Roman Catholic perspective, responded to that very fully. And a lot of people really appreciated that, uh, that experience because the fact that it had been so long since we had done anything like that, that for a lot of folks, that was new material.

01:06:59

And you have to understand when you've been involved in apologetics for as long as I have, my first debate with a

01:07:06

Roman Catholic was in August of 1990. Um, so coming up on, well, we've passed, you know, a quarter of a century of doing this.

01:07:17

I've covered all that stuff over and over and over again. That's part of my recollection, but have to keep in mind, it's not a part of everybody else's.

01:07:26

And so this year is going to bring a lot of opportunity to discuss the key issues of the

01:07:39

Reformation. Well, I was out in the East Valley, uh, on Tuesday, and you simply cannot get from the

01:07:52

East Valley to the West Valley after three o 'clock any longer without just sitting in a parking lot.

01:07:59

Um, it's just, there's no way to do it. Um, especially if you take either the 17 or the 10, uh, especially the 10 through downtown, you are just going to go bumper to bumper at one mile per hour for miles and miles on end.

01:08:19

So thankfully I have a thing called a radio in my, um, in my car, and I choose to spend some of that time doing some studying, uh, specifically, uh, listening to Catholic Answers Live.

01:08:36

And that's where I heard, uh, the comments that had been made against Sola Scriptura a number of months ago.

01:08:47

Well, it just so happened that I tuned in while Tim Staples was hosting that hour of Catholic Answers Live.

01:08:59

And I, I missed the initial question, but I caught the vast majority of the comments.

01:09:05

And I want us to listen. It's all, it's 10 minutes, but it'll take the whole hour easily, if not more.

01:09:12

Um, I want you to listen to Roman, to, to believing

01:09:20

Roman Catholicism. I think today there is, I have a concern in light of the wishy -washiness of Pope Francis.

01:09:35

Who am I to judge? Of the who am I to judge judge? Um, that a lot of people really do believe that the

01:09:48

Reformation is over with. Certainly the children of the

01:09:56

Reformation, those who technically would trace themselves back to the

01:10:02

Reformation, but certainly those who would be the children of the

01:10:08

Reformation are so divergent from the Reformers now as to the focus of their faith and the importance of certain elements of, of biblical teaching that in one sense, you can say the

01:10:24

Reformation's over, we need a new one. But on the other hand, I would say, no, the

01:10:29

Reformation is not over. We need, part of the, of the very message of the

01:10:35

Reformation was semper reformanda, always reforming. We're never going to arrive.

01:10:43

And so they're, they're, every generation has to, just as, just as every generation has to, um, agonize the gospel, make it their own.

01:10:58

That's what makes it theirs. You, you cannot live on your parents' gospel in the same way.

01:11:07

That's what we're facing. But the issues very often that absolutely animated the

01:11:19

Reformers and their opponents to many today seem really blasé or irrelevant.

01:11:31

And I've bemoaned the fact that especially in a secular world and in a world where we hide ourselves from death, we don't, we don't think about our own mortality.

01:11:43

Doctrines such as justification, um, John Murray said a long time ago, simply do not ring the bells of men's hearts because why should we be overly concerned about whether we are right with God, um, when we really aren't, aren't thinking much about the fact that we're ever going to face him anyways.

01:12:06

And so as a result, I think a lot of Protestants are susceptible to an aggressive, believing

01:12:19

Roman Catholic attack. Um, and that's, that's what you get from Catholic answers.

01:12:28

Now, whether that's consistent with the Catholic Church, not their issue.

01:12:34

And that's obviously one of the, one of the, one of the topics that needs to be discussed. Um, Pope Francis is pretty tough on, on, um, the old style

01:12:45

Roman Catholicism, but it's still out there. And Catholic Answers is on many radio stations.

01:12:52

They're doing a fun drive right now. I, I happen to have noticed over the past few days. And, uh, but they're out there and sadly, many of the people calling in with questions either demonstrate that the people they're talking to really do not know their stuff at all.

01:13:08

Or when quote unquote Protestants call in very often, they just have no earthly idea, uh, what they're actually, actually talking about.

01:13:18

I've, I've bemoaned the fact many times that most Protestants are Protestants of taste,

01:13:26

Protestants of preference, not of conviction. They don't know what the issues are and they're not a

01:13:32

Roman Catholic, not because they know what Rome teaches and reject it because they don't know what Rome teaches, uh, and reject some, uh, picture they have that they just don't like.

01:13:44

So with that in mind, I wanted to listen to what Tim Staples has to say here so you can hear, uh, believing

01:13:53

Roman Catholicism and then provide a response to it, obviously, as well. Um, especially because Tim and I have engaged a number of times before.

01:14:03

We've done, uh, three formal debates, two in public, um, in Fullerton, California, uh, one here on the dividing line on purgatory.

01:14:14

And then I think two, am I correct in remembering two Bible Answer Man broadcasts?

01:14:22

I think, I think twice we were on the Bible Answer Man broadcast together. Uh, those aren't debates, but as far as encounters go, that would be, what, uh, five.

01:14:31

So we've, we've sparred a number of times before. And in the book he put out a couple of years ago,

01:14:38

I mentioned, I responded briefly to a number of the citations that he had of me in regards to the subject of Mary.

01:14:46

So with that in mind, if I don't get to this, we're never going to get going. Uh, I'm going to be playing this at 1 .2.

01:14:54

Again, it's a little bit faster, uh, than, uh, uh, normal, but, uh, just enough to help us get through this just a little bit quicker.

01:15:04

This is from just, this is from the, um, sixth, I believe.

01:15:09

Yes, it's the 6th of December, uh, open forum, show number 7789, if you really want to check out for yourself.

01:15:17

Uh, here we go. Yes. Okay. Well, it's, it's a great question. I, I, there's quite a few books

01:15:23

I would recommend, but one of them is a book by our good friend, Steve Ray called

01:15:28

Upon This Rock. Excellent book. Bad book, really bad book.

01:15:34

I mean, shallow book. I'm sorry, but here Tim is, is not suggesting high end

01:15:42

Roman Catholic apologetics. It's the, it's the low end. Focuses on the biblical and historical evidence that Jesus Christ established the church founded upon Peter as the rock of Matthew 16, 18 and 19 and his successors, the

01:15:58

Popes. It's an excellent book. It goes into great detail, both biblically and historically, but I think to, to focus here now on the biblical evidence,

01:16:07

Martha, you're, you're talking to someone who is a former Protestant, uh, youth minister. And I came to the

01:16:13

Catholic faith. In fact, one of the reasons was my research on this very topic. I'm sorry, but every time someone, um, puffs their, their, their, their resume with youth minister, look,

01:16:32

I, I understand that there's some churches are large enough to have ministers who specifically work in that particular area, but let's be honest in the vast majority of churches.

01:16:40

And he was a Southern Baptist then in assemblies of God, uh, in the vast majority of churches, youth ministry is just the young guy in Bible college.

01:16:49

Who's young enough to keep up with the kids, but also young enough to mess them up because he doesn't know what he's talking about.

01:16:57

And I've seen people on the Dean show, you know, converts to Islam. And the, the, the biggest, biggest, uh, credential they had was they were a youth minister.

01:17:06

And I just, I just chuckle, um, because I've, I've told the story about when I did the, uh, role play with the youth minister at a large

01:17:15

Baptist church in Florida. And I hadn't spouting heresy within 30 seconds of starting the role play.

01:17:21

It's just, yeah, I, I, anyway. There's more than that, but it was very importantly, this topic.

01:17:27

And what I found, is in fact, Jesus Christ did establish one church, the body of Christ that Paul speaks about, and it had a hierarchy.

01:17:36

In fact, Peter and the apostles, this is a matter of history. Jesus established them as apostles.

01:17:42

He didn't make everybody apostles. He only made some apostles and the fought those whom they baptized and they brought up in the faith had to submit to their authority.

01:17:51

You see this clearly, for example, in Ephesians chapter four, verses 11 through 15, where St.

01:17:57

Paul talks about how God placed in the church, apostles, prophets, pastors, evangelists, nothing about cardinals and sub deacons and popes, uh, and any of the massive development within Roman Catholicism that goes far beyond any of this.

01:18:18

When you listen to this, um, keep in mind, this is, this is why church history is so important.

01:18:26

This is why studying church history is so important. Keep in mind the fact that what you have in Roman Catholicism are people who are looking backwards and projecting into earlier centuries, things that they are told dogmatically by their ultimate authority that they must see.

01:18:48

When, when Rome says this has been the universal faith of the church, what are you supposed to say?

01:18:55

You are, you will now find that in the early church because if you don't find the early church, then you are saying that your church is false in what it's saying.

01:19:04

And so when you listen to the claims of believing Roman Catholics who really believe that there's always been a papacy, there wasn't historically, that's just, that's the fact of history.

01:19:19

There's, there's no monarchical episcopate, a single, a single bishop ruling over the church of Rome until about 140.

01:19:25

There's a plurality of elders before that. Um, it develops over time.

01:19:31

There clearly, I mean, I, all you gotta do, look, we've debated this subject a number of times, not, not me and Tim.

01:19:39

Um, he and I debated, uh, papal infallibility and it's fascinating.

01:19:44

In one year, I debated both Tim Staples and Robertson Jennings on the same subject. It was within 12 months. I'm not sure if it's the same calendar year, but it was within 12 months.

01:19:52

Huh? That may have been okay. Anyway, fascinating the, the vast difference between the two and how they defended the same thing because papal infallibility is a, a doctrine that has no meaning because it's, it's non -falsifiable.

01:20:08

Um, if the Pope made a mistake, he wasn't speaking as the Pope. So, so great.

01:20:13

So if the Pope ever errs, it's because he's not speaking as the Pope at that time. That's, that's nice. That, that really helps a lot. Anyway, listen to them, but I've not debated, uh,

01:20:21

Tim on, on the papacy, but I have debated, uh, Jerry Matitix on the papacy and Mitchell Pacwa on the papacy.

01:20:32

And I would highly recommend, uh, over seven hours of debate with Jerry Matitix.

01:20:40

And this was before he went off into Sedevacantism and the Illuminati and all the rest of that kind of stuff. Uh, this was in 1993.

01:20:47

So, um, this was fairly early on. Um, but listen, listen to those debates.

01:20:55

They were, they were absolutely fair debates. Uh, I just would highly recommend to you, uh, a fair listening to those debates and you will be able to see that anyone who knows church history at all will be able to stand absolutely toe to toe with any

01:21:14

Roman Catholic and point by point demonstrate that the lengthy chain of argumentation necessary to establish the claims of papacy is challengeable at every single point, every single point, all the way along the line.

01:21:33

Um, that's just, that's the reality of history. And, um, yes, sir.

01:21:38

I was going to just say, anyone wanting to listen to those, we'll find them on our sermon audio channel,

01:21:45

Alpha and Omega Ministries, in the Roman Catholicism section. They're all there. Um, good quality sound.

01:21:51

Not everything was videotaped back then. The, uh… No, the Pacwa, the Pacwa debate was. The Pacwa debate was and it is on YouTube.

01:21:59

Um, but the Syngenis debate, um, the video was kind of wonky.

01:22:04

So, but the audio of that is also up there. Right. Right. Yeah. A lot of those, the nineties ones are primarily on, on audio.

01:22:12

Yeah. Unfortunately. So, uh, take, take a, take a look at what we did back then.

01:22:18

And teachers for the work of the ministry for the building up of the body of Christ. And why does he do that? Because verse 14, it says, so that we henceforth be not children tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine.

01:22:28

So Jesus established a church with a hierarchical authority and so radical.

01:22:33

Now what's the assumption here? The, the, well, the assumption, interestingly enough, he's talking about the apostles. Um, you don't have apostles anymore, even though they claim to be apostolic.

01:22:42

Well, what's the only way that the church can be apostolic today? It's to teach the same thing that the apostles taught.

01:22:48

Now in the Roman Catholic idea, it is the concept of succession, but it's a contentless succession because if you don't teach what the apostles taught, then how can you claim to be their successor?

01:23:01

Well, it's, we could, cause we can draw a line through history. Yeah. And anyone who has studied the history of the papacy, anyone who knows anything at all about the earliest centuries understands

01:23:11

Cyprian, all of the controversy that exists at that time, those early councils,

01:23:19

Leo, the pornocracy, the Babylonian captivity of the church,

01:23:25

Council of Constance, anybody who knows anything about history of the papacy knows that it is, it is taking darts and blindfolding yourself and just going, ah, that's the true

01:23:36

Pope there. That's the true Pope there. That's true. And you could have thrown them someplace else. Um, the idea that there is some clear, compelling line of succession that has some content to it is simply absurd.

01:23:50

The only way to claim to be apostolic today is to teach what the apostles themselves taught.

01:24:00

That is to be biblical, thoroughly biblical, believingly biblical, far more conservatively biblical than the

01:24:10

Roman Catholic hierarchy is. I assure you, I assure you of that far more than the current

01:24:16

Pope. I am so far to the right of the current Pope. In my view of scripture, it's not even funny, not even funny.

01:24:23

And so are most of the Roman Catholic apologists. That must make them feel uncomfortable. Was this authority that Jesus says in multiple places, for example,

01:24:32

Luke 10 16, Matthew 10 40, he says, if they hear you, they hear me. If they reject you, they reject me.

01:24:39

In fact, St. John, who was one of the apostles. Now, how do we hear them today? In the scriptures.

01:24:45

Not through someone who claims some absolutely untenable line of succession, but we hear them in the scriptures.

01:24:53

They have given to us their teaching. That's how we know. That's the only theanustos revelation that we possess.

01:25:01

But you see, Tim Staples is talking within the context of Roman Catholicism. He's talking to a friendly audience.

01:25:07

And so he can just assume that there is going to be a translation of these concepts into the

01:25:17

Roman Catholic context. We have to be the ones that challenge that and understand where those errors are.

01:25:23

1 John 4 6, he says this. He says, this is how we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

01:25:29

He who hears us is of God, and he who does not hear us is not of God.

01:25:36

St. Paul will talk about in Romans 10, when in verses 9 and 10, he talks about, if you believe in your heart, the

01:25:42

Lord Jesus Christ, and confess with your mouth, you shall be saved. For with the heart man believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

01:25:49

I just cited there verses 9 and 10. He then goes into a little discourse where he says, but how shall they believe in him whom they have not heard?

01:25:58

And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?

01:26:04

It's a very important text there. Because in the early church, in the New Testament, you see, people could not just go out and start their own churches.

01:26:12

This is a phenomenon that just did not exist until the 16th century. Now, notice the amazing transition here, from the fact there is a gospel and the apostles of Jesus Christ are authoritative in the defining and the preaching and the teaching of that gospel, to now all of a sudden, well, people just go out and start their own church in the 16th century.

01:26:42

Again, to people who have only heard Immaculate Heart radio versions of church history, they might think that at least up till 1054, there was just this wonderful unity and no divisions and all the rest of that stuff.

01:27:04

They might actually think that. But the fact is that if you know church history, then you know names like the

01:27:18

Donatist controversy. You know of so many of the early schisms in the church due to persecution.

01:27:27

You know what happened in 1054. You know the wide variety of theological expression.

01:27:35

You know the debates that took place. And the idea that just going out and starting a church started in the 16th century, the idea being

01:27:47

Reformation, was also utterly anathema to the reformers themselves, who did not argue that they had the right to go out and start a church.

01:28:00

That was not their argument. If you want to see why this is such a surface level presentation of the history, and you want to do some reading, all this is available online.

01:28:15

ccel .org is a good place you can find a lot of this stuff.

01:28:22

But track down the exchange, the correspondence between the former bishop of Geneva and John Calvin.

01:28:41

Fascinating, because the former bishop wrote, was that Sadaletto? I think it was

01:28:46

Sadaletto. I didn't put any of this in front of me, but I recall it was Sadaletto. That's the name that's ringing a bell at the moment in my mind.

01:28:54

I wasn't going to go here. But anyway, the correspondence, the bishop had written to the church exhorting them to come back to Rome, come back to submission to the

01:29:07

Pope. And then Calvin's response to that, which interestingly enough, if I recall correctly, he wrote, and again, off the top of my head,

01:29:17

I'd have to double check this. But my recollection is that he wrote this letter while in Strasbourg, having been kicked out of Geneva.

01:29:33

The Genevans didn't want him. He was too strict. And so he was living in Strasbourg and was, quite honestly, happy to be gone.

01:29:45

And they didn't have anybody in the church in Geneva that could answer this epistle. And so they appealed to Calvin.

01:29:51

And so despite what happened in their having basically kicked him out, he wrote an almost classic, well, it is a classic response to the claims of Rome.

01:30:05

Check it out. I think it's fascinating to read what was going on at that very time, especially when you remember that what you wrote at that time could lead to your physical death.

01:30:16

If you wandered across the wrong place or ran into the wrong group of people or whatever else it might be. These were life and death issues.

01:30:23

Tim Staples and I can debate, but Tim's not going to kill me and I'm not going to kill him. So a little bit different situation back then.

01:30:32

You know, Martin Luther, Calvin and the reformers, the idea that you can just go out and start your own church. Now, of course, which they never ever held to, they believe that they were very much in line with the early church and that it was

01:30:46

Rome that had broken away from apostolic teaching and apostolic example.

01:30:53

So disagree with them if you must, but don't misrepresent them. They weren't saying, let's go start our own church.

01:31:00

Because of the fact that of the Reformation, we have such confusion over the last 500 years.

01:31:05

We have thousands and thousands of denominations today. We have these independent little churches started in living rooms and such, but all of that is completely foreign to the

01:31:15

New Testament because Jesus established a church. Jesus established a church and the vast majority of those alleged denominations do not believe in what he's going to identify as an error of sola scriptura.

01:31:27

This is why we covered what we covered just a matter of months ago to once again, make sure people understand, can recognize where modern

01:31:37

Roman Catholic apologetics will twist what the position is and what the foundation is so as to make it an easier argument on their side, which is why again, this is one of the reasons why debates are a good thing is because when you only have monologues, you only get to hear one side.

01:32:01

And even what I'm doing right now, even though I'm playing his side, it's still not as good as a debate because he doesn't get to respond at this particular point in time.

01:32:10

It's better than a monologue, but it's still not as good as the full -on thing.

01:32:20

Now notice, there's nothing about in union with Peter anywhere in the

01:32:31

New Testament. That's a later development, much, much later development. And even when it developed, even when you see

01:32:38

Cyprian referring to the Cathedra Petri, the chair of Peter, all bishops sit in the

01:32:45

Cathedra Petri, not just the Bishop of Rome. In fact, Cyprian is specific on that because of his conflict with the

01:32:54

Bishop of Rome. So even when the concept develops, it's not the current Roman Catholic concept, even though what

01:33:00

Rome will tell you is, this is what we've always believed. No, it's not. But the vast majority of Roman Catholics and sadly

01:33:07

Protestants don't read enough in early church material to know what's actually going on there.

01:33:14

You rejected Jesus Christ, and that's how the church functioned basically for 1500 years until Luther and Calvin come along.

01:33:21

Now we had some splits, but the idea of just going out and starting your own church and such was...

01:33:27

Which Calvin and Luther never held to... Novelty to the 16th century and this idea that, well, anybody can start a church and we're all members of the body of Christ.

01:33:39

There's no difference between anybody. Now, again, this is not a fair presentation.

01:33:47

The Reformers recognized bishops. They recognized ordination.

01:33:53

They recognized the need for organization in the church. They recognized authority in the church.

01:33:59

These comments are relevant to certain of the Anabaptists, not all of them.

01:34:06

Anabaptist, unfortunately, as we've commented in recent abuse of these words. The term

01:34:12

Anabaptist, if you ever want to read just a huge magisterial work on the subject, the

01:34:20

Radical Reformation, multi volumes, and what you'll discover very quickly is that Anabaptist was a term, a derogatory term, that lumped so many people together with so many different views that it's just not...

01:34:38

It's hardly even descriptive. You have to get so specific. The sad thing is the most brilliant Anabaptists rarely lived long enough to develop a thoroughly consistent and thought through systematic theology because they lived in a day where to question the practice of paedo -baptism and sacralism.

01:35:08

It wasn't that paedo -baptism was the big thing. It was that that was the connection to the state church and hence the connection between church and state, the tax rolls, etc.,

01:35:20

etc. That led to a lot of death, a lot of death and destruction and things like that.

01:35:30

You did have the Zwickau Prophets, and you see what Luther's response to the

01:35:35

Zwickau Prophets was when he went back to Wittenberg, where you do have the overthrow.

01:35:42

You basically have ecclesiastical anarchy, and the Reformers stood against that. The idea being presented here is, ah, you just go start your own church whenever you want to, type thing.

01:35:54

Roman Catholic apologists aren't overly good at accurately representing the strongest challenges to their positions from the other side, partly because they frequently are dealing with people who don't present the strongest challenges,

01:36:10

I suppose. But it's sort of similar to someone like myself. I deal with all kinds of Islamic challenges to Christianity, but I'm not going to constantly represent

01:36:22

Islam by the worst of Islam. I'm going to try to deal with the whole spectrum as fairly as I can.

01:36:31

And that's not true. Now, while it is true, as you point out, all of those who are different members in the body of Christ, as I said, and so we as lay people, for example, must submit.

01:36:46

Look at the book of Hebrews. Now, listen to this, because we have a standing position in this ministry.

01:36:56

If we do outreach in some context, when we used to go out to the temple, go to Salt Lake City, we wouldn't let you pass out tracts with us if you were not a part of church.

01:37:07

And we would ask people, specifically Hebrews 13, 17, be in subjection to those who have the rulership over you.

01:37:15

Who is that? Well, in the context, it's the local elders of the local church, not a bishop of Rome.

01:37:22

It's not the Roman Catholic hierarchy. There's nothing of that in the book of Hebrews, absolutely nothing.

01:37:30

The New Testament establishes the local church, 1 Timothy 3, 15, the pillar and foundation of the truth, the local church.

01:37:38

And the apostles went amongst the local churches, establishing and strengthening them by doing what? Establishing them under the leadership of the bishop of Rome?

01:37:46

No, by establishing elders, bishops, elders, bishops, and presbyteroi, they're all the same.

01:37:54

In Roman Catholicism, eventually the presbyteroi become priests, but that's not New Testament. He keeps talking about New Testament here.

01:38:01

That's an evolution away from New Testament teaching. The local church,

01:38:07

Hebrews 13, 17, believe it, but you can always pervert anything. For example, in Hebrews chapter 13, verse 7, as well as verse 17, the

01:38:18

Scripture says to submit to those who are over you in the Lord. You know, never do you have this idea that people can go out and start their own church.

01:38:25

No, you submit. You know, where does the New Testament ever say, not only can you leave the church, but you can start your own church, as Martin Luther did in Calvin and these guys.

01:38:33

Again, more misrepresentation. This is why, if you talk to a

01:38:38

Roman Catholic, this is what they've been taught. This is what they've heard over and over again. You just have to recognize there are going to be barriers in the way, barriers of understanding.

01:38:47

And the vast majority of us haven't read enough of Luther or Calvin to be able to say, no, that's not what they felt that they were doing.

01:38:53

That's not what they were teaching that they were doing. That's not a part of their presentation whatsoever.

01:39:00

They're the ones saying that it's Rome that has abandoned the early church. Calvin was a patristic scholar.

01:39:07

That's why, you know, and the funny thing is, poor Calvin, he gets it from every side. Here he's getting it from a Roman Catholic.

01:39:13

But how many times are the Dave Hunt fans going after John Calvin? Because when they read

01:39:18

Calvin, they read him, hey, he's quoting Augustine and the early church fathers, and Proto -Roman

01:39:23

Catholic, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Poor guy, he gets it from every side.

01:39:30

And I say that as someone who knows he would have had me kicked out of Geneva. I fully, fully recognize it. That's where the error comes in.

01:39:36

And I think that's where the confusion is, where people say it like you just did, that, well, just everybody is a member of the church, and nobody has any different authority than anybody else.

01:39:45

No, actually, that's not New Testament theology. In fact, as a historical fact, Jesus established the

01:39:51

Catholic church. I had to kind of truncate the last part of the argument when it comes to the

01:39:58

Catholic church being that church that Jesus established. I just wanted to mention that there's no doubt, biblically speaking, that Jesus Christ did not give us a book.

01:40:08

He didn't establish the church, build it upon a book. The whole idea— Now, I want you to hear that.

01:40:14

Jesus did not give us a church built upon a book. Now, anyone who listens to Jesus's teaching carefully will recognize that in every argument that he has with the

01:40:28

Pharisees, the final authority is God has spoken. Scripture says it is written.

01:40:37

The idea, again, what you're hearing here is since Rome teaches so many things as dogma, the apostles never taught, found nowhere in Scripture.

01:40:48

She must attack the sufficiency of Scripture and attack the doctrine of sola scriptura because she believes in sola ecclesia.

01:40:54

We went over all this just a few weeks ago in the sola scriptura series where we established the positive claims of Rome that she determines what

01:41:06

Scripture is, how to interpret Scripture. She determines what tradition is and how to interpret tradition. She's the ultimate authority.

01:41:11

She cannot be challenged. She cannot be corrected by anything outside of herself. And so what you have to do is you have to present a red herring or a straw man.

01:41:24

You have to—here we go—the straw man version of the

01:41:29

Protestant position. Well, it's based on a book. Well, actually, it's based upon God's divine revelation.

01:41:35

And the church, as the bride of Christ, wants to hear the voice of Christ, and she finds that in what is theanustos, in Scripture.

01:41:45

And so the Scripture is not based upon the church. The church is based upon the

01:41:51

Scripture. This is a fundamental difference between Roman Catholics and Protestants, absolutely foundational, fundamental, even if the vast majority of both

01:41:57

Roman Catholics and Protestants today don't know that. It is. What is more primary?

01:42:03

And when it comes to issues of authority, the church has divine authority, but she derives the content of her doctrine from that which has been revealed to her.

01:42:17

She does not claim to be able to reveal these things in of herself. And so there's never a confusion of the voice of the bride of Christ and the voice of Christ.

01:42:28

There is in Roman Catholicism. In fact, you don't have the voice of Christ any longer. It has become muted, because you have an infallible church that controls what is and what is not

01:42:38

Scripture, what it says, what is and what is not tradition, and what it says, and has then claimed infallibility for itself.

01:42:45

And so that has become a monologue. The church is in a monologue with itself, which is why you cannot have—if there could be any reformation of Rome, there would have to be recognition, for example, that the last dogmas that have been defined by Rome—let's just say from 1854 onward, immaculate exception, bodily assumption, papal infallibility—these are not apostolic beliefs by any measure.

01:43:12

They are indefensible. The only way you can defend them is by reverting into the circular authority claims of Rome.

01:43:23

Rome gets to define these things. But on any other basis, they are not apostolic.

01:43:30

They are not biblical. It's as plain as the nose on anybody's face. And by the way,

01:43:35

I understand, I just got news. I don't have the information in front of me. I'm sorry, but yesterday—well, actually,

01:43:40

I got news a couple weeks ago from Tony, but then Chris Arnzen just put out news that there will be a debate coming up fairly soon.

01:43:49

I think—I forget what the date is. I don't have the information in front of me. Maybe you can pull it up on Facebook. But Tony Costa will be debating

01:43:58

Bob St. Genes. And I think, is it on queen of heaven or bodily assumption?

01:44:07

It's one of the more advanced Marian dogmas. And again, I've got to give

01:44:12

Bob St. Genes props here. You know, Bob and I have crossed swords, and a couple times

01:44:18

I really think Bob has misbehaved in our debates, and other debates he's not. When he and I debated papal infallibility,

01:44:27

I'm very thankful that that evening it was the nice Bob St. Genes, because we didn't have a moderator that night.

01:44:33

And he realized that I was put in a spot of having to both moderate and debate. And he could have taken advantage of it.

01:44:39

He didn't. Props to Bob St. Genes, okay? Props to Bob St.

01:44:44

Genes for having debated me on the bodily assumption of Mary. If you want to see a clear example of solo ecclesia, the only way you could do it was by asserting solo ecclesia and going to Acts 15.

01:44:53

That was in Santa Fe. What was that, 2010? For some reason, 2010 comes to mind for that particular debate.

01:45:02

But anyway, sounds about right. But Tony Costa and Bob St.

01:45:08

Genes are going to be debating in, I think it's Carlisle, Pennsylvania. You got it up there? I can't hear you.

01:45:16

I have some of it here. Here's the announcement. Let me see if I can link over into it. No, I'm just getting the

01:45:21

Carlisle Theater. But Catholic versus Protestant debate, let's see here.

01:45:27

Friday, January 13th, January 13th, 7 p .m., Carlisle Theater. Mary, sinless queen of heaven or sinner saved by grace,

01:45:36

Robert St. Genes versus Tony Costa. Okay, so what was that, January 13th?

01:45:41

January Friday, January 13th. Okay, all right. There you go. By the way, before you put that back in your down, you need to make room here at the tail end of the show because Michael Fallon has surfaced and should be calling in soon.

01:45:59

He has surfaced. He has surfaced. It sounds really weird.

01:46:05

Okay, we will try to do that. But I was just going to say,

01:46:11

I'm really looking forward to this because there are, A, Bob, if you see this,

01:46:21

I hope you will be the Bob St. Genes of the papal infallibility debate and the bodily assumption debate, not the, what was that, mass debate on Long Island.

01:46:34

And secondly, there's no one that I could recommend more highly to do this debate than Tony Costa.

01:46:43

I love Tony Costa. He is just as solid as they come, and he'll be ready, and he'll do a great job, and it'll be very, very useful.

01:46:52

So I'm really looking forward to that debate that's coming up. Prayers for Tony and for Bob, that it's a good debate, but obviously, we know which side

01:47:04

I'm on. And so we want the truth to be very clearly proclaimed. And I would love to see

01:47:09

Bob St. Genes come to understand that. Alpha and Omega, this is Rich. Your microphone's on, sir.

01:47:17

Thank you. That's Alpha and Omega, and that's Rich. And that's what everybody hears when they call here.

01:47:24

So anyway, okay, so that's coming up. Let's try to get this done, and then we'll try to get Michael Fallon on here, too.

01:47:32

Sola Scriptura, the Bible alone as a sole rule of faith, is actually completely unbiblical. He established a church, not a book, and it would be the church that would write.

01:47:41

Now, if you want to hear me and Tim Staples debate Sola Scriptura, we did so in 96,

01:47:47

I think, in Fullerton. Sounds about right, 1996, around there. We'd love to be able to show you the video of that, but they wouldn't give it to us and make it available.

01:47:57

But it is out there. Preserve and canonize the New Testament. In fact, without the church, you don't have a

01:48:04

New Testament at all. So direct claim there against the early church fathers who recognized that they were passively receiving the scriptures.

01:48:14

They did not have the authority to canonize anything. There you have this specific claim. We canonized the scripture.

01:48:23

The church did it. There's Sola Ecclesia right there. Now, more careful people won't make that kind of claim.

01:48:30

I've heard Tim Staples make a number of really wild claims that were not very careful that maybe later he'd back off.

01:48:42

So can't get a clean line, really? Okay. All right. Well, we'll get to him.

01:48:49

We'll have him eventually. But there you have the claim. And this is why, how many times have

01:48:54

I said to you, Michael Kruger's materials, I linked on Facebook. I mentioned it again.

01:49:02

Reformed Theological Seminary Charlotte has posted available for everybody to either listen to or if they're videotaped, watch the entire class that Dr.

01:49:15

Michael Kruger teaches on canon. And when I linked to this stuff on Facebook, I said, make the time, push other stuff out of the way, make it a priority, listen to this stuff.

01:49:30

Because I'll go out on a limb here and I'm not trying to schmooze Dr. Kruger, but Rome doesn't have anybody who can compete with Kruger.

01:49:39

In this area, they just don't. For many reasons, but the primary reason being

01:49:46

Kruger is going at history from a believing biblical perspective. And that's the best perspective to go out because it's the

01:49:53

God of the Bible who's running that history. But track it down and track down that class.

01:50:01

It'll be extremely useful to you. But as a matter of history, then what you see is Jesus Church that he established.

01:50:07

He didn't give it a name. He didn't say, call it the Baptist Church. I mean, I think Jesus is smarter than that. Anybody can go out and call the church whatever name they want.

01:50:15

So he didn't name it. He defined it. Jesus revealed to us the church would be one, holy,

01:50:21

Catholic, and apostolic. Where? It is one because we're all indwelt by the

01:50:27

Holy Spirit. It's holy because of the finished work of Jesus Christ, not the repetitive work of the mass.

01:50:33

It's apostolic in the sense that we believe what the apostles taught. None of that, what I just said, is what

01:50:39

Rome means by that. There you have the importance of being able to define these terms in a proper way, in a proper fashion.

01:50:49

It is one, but that's not the enforced oneness of the

01:50:55

Inquisition or of the papal wars against the Waldensians or something like that.

01:51:02

It is a oneness derived from a common confession and the common possession of the Holy Spirit of God.

01:51:08

It's not oneness that is derived from force. It is holy, which is why the pornography forever disqualifies the line of Rome.

01:51:22

It is holy, but only because of the work of another and the imputed righteousness of Christ, which is denied by the

01:51:32

Roman Catholic Church. And again, it's only apostolic when it's listening to the teachings of the apostles, which it finds in Scripture, not when it claims that its own words are apostolic.

01:51:45

That's what we see in sacred Scripture. One, John 10, 16, he says there will be one fold and one shepherd, that shepherd being fulfilled in Christ and in Peter.

01:51:55

There is nothing in John chapter 10 about Peter being the shepherd, the good shepherd, because what does the good shepherd do?

01:52:04

He lays down his life for the sheep. And in fact, look at the early church's interpretation of feed my lambs.

01:52:15

It's not feed your lambs, first of all. It's feed my lambs. And then look at the early church's interpretation of that.

01:52:21

The early church did not view that as the establishment of the papacy. Again, check out the extensive debates we've done.

01:52:29

Gerry Matiticks, Mitchell Pacwa, on the subject of the papacy. Have we done any others on the papacy?

01:52:35

I can't think of any others right now. Though somewhere in the back of my mind, there's a little bell dinging that there might have been another one, but I can't remember what it was.

01:52:51

I'll have to think some more about that. He makes shepherd over the universal body in John 21, 15 through 17.

01:52:57

He said it would be holy. What does that mean? He said prophetically of the church that we would be holy as he is holy or as the father is holy.

01:53:07

So we have a church that is, in fact, holy. Now, that doesn't mean everybody in the church is holy. No, we are sinners.

01:53:13

But what we have is a testimony down through the centuries in the lives of the saints of the greatest men and women that have ever lived throughout the centuries that is inexplicable other than the holiness of Jesus Christ being communicated to them.

01:53:25

Now, again, we don't have time right now. We're getting toward the top of the hour, and I've just got about a minute left of this.

01:53:34

The problem is what? Oh, fastigi. Yeah, okay. Well, we did papal infallibility.

01:53:40

Yeah, it wasn't a papacy. But yeah, yeah, those are pretty short. Anyway, and I had hair back then.

01:53:47

Anyway, notice that the holiness here now is attached to the idea of saints.

01:53:54

And this, again, is where the Roman Catholic system collapses because they can't explain who the blessed man of Romans 4, chapter 4, verses 7 through 8 is.

01:54:06

They don't have a non -imputation. They don't understand. They will confess, well, all Christians are saints in a sense, but there's a real sainthood, the functional sainthood.

01:54:15

No. If you don't have the imputed righteousness of Christ, you don't have non -imputation of sin, can't even begin to start using

01:54:21

New Testament categories. Can't even begin. And that's where the problem is. Catholic. The idea is that the church would be universal.

01:54:29

Jesus talks about how. Oh, yes. I'm sorry. Of course, the papacy debate, Boston College, St. Janice and Butler.

01:54:36

I knew there was one other. And that was a long one. That was a long one. Really good one. If you want to see, well, it was a really good one in one sense.

01:54:47

I think Rob Zins and I got to really lay out a strong case about the early church.

01:54:54

The response is not so good, especially when Scott Butler started spitting at me. You can literally see it on the video.

01:55:02

He's just melting down. I knew there was another one. I knew there was another one. Yeah. So we have had another.

01:55:08

So Vestigi, that one. Man, how many hours is that? We've spent a lot of hours of debate on the subject of papacy.

01:55:14

Check it out. Check it out. I mentioned earlier, we would be 11. That would spread throughout, right?

01:55:19

City upon a hill. We hear a lot about that with reference to the United States, but that's not really with reference to the

01:55:25

United States. That's the church. The church prophetically, even back to the Old Testament in Daniel chapter two, verse 44,

01:55:32

Daniel seven, verses 13 and following would prophetically be said to begin in Jerusalem, begin in the context of the

01:55:41

Roman empire and would spread throughout the world. And that's since she's Catholic. But also there's another meaning of that term

01:55:46

Catholic. It comes from katahalos, according to the whole. That's why Roman Catholic is a contradiction in terms.

01:55:54

Katahalos, according to the whole, universal. You can't then attach that to a specific place, but it has been, which again, is just illustration of the idea of focusing authority in the

01:56:06

Bishop of Rome was not apostolic, was not a part of the early church. It was a development over time.

01:56:11

You can watch it in history. There's no question about it, but only by looking at it anachronistically and by forging enough documents as Rome did in its own history.

01:56:21

The pseudo is a Dorian decretals, the donation of Constantine. These are you. He keeps talking about history.

01:56:27

Let's talk about history. Let's hear Tim Staples talk about the pseudo is Dorian decretals. Let's talk about the donation of Constantine.

01:56:35

That's the history. The catechism of the Catholic church points out, I believe that's in paragraph 430 or right around there.

01:56:41

The catechism talks about the word Catholic. It comes from two Greek words, which means according to the whole, and actually this idea of Catholicity there, that which is according to the whole has its root right in Ephesians chapter one, verses 22 to 23, where St.

01:56:56

Paul says of the church that the church would be the body of Christ, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

01:57:03

In other words, the church is Catholic and as much as she is the fullness of Jesus Christ extended into this world.

01:57:08

So the church was Catholic in that sense on the day of Pentecost before she ever spread throughout the world. It's because in fact the church is the fullness of Jesus that she does fulfill that second meaning of the word

01:57:19

Catholic. Now, by the way, I just have to point out very, very quickly. I have said many times before,

01:57:24

I repeat it right now, it's something I would defend and debate. No one at the Council of Nicaea believed what you have to believe to be a

01:57:32

Roman Catholic today. They did not believe in papal infallibility, did not believe in the bodily assumption of Mary, the Immaculate Conception, et cetera, et cetera.

01:57:38

They didn't believe those things. So how can that be Catecholos? How can that?

01:57:44

That's it. That's a fundamental historical denial of what Catecholos would mean.

01:57:50

And yet that's what you have with Roman Catholicism spread throughout the world. But then also apostolic. We see that Jesus says in Matthew 28 20 low,

01:57:58

I will be with you all days, even to the end of the age. Jesus says, I will be with you and he specifically speak to the apostles to the end of the age.

01:58:05

So apostolic in the sense that we would have the successors of the apostles that would spread throughout the world.

01:58:12

And it is the Catholic Church alone that has the fullness of that apostolic succession. Okay, this is just all claims, but no argumentation to back up the claims.

01:58:23

How do you deal with the fundamental contrast between the teaching that we possess of the apostles and that of the

01:58:33

Roman Catholic Church? How do you contrast Pope Francis with what we have in Romans, for example?

01:58:40

And what do you do with that? From Rome's perspective, you go with Francis. Of course, we have successors, not only of all the apostles, but in particular, the chief apostle

01:58:49

Peter. Only the Catholic Church has remained faithful to the successors of St. Peter in that context of apostolic succession.

01:58:56

So again, and again, just read J .N .D. Kelley's History of the Popes, whatever, blows so many holes, sinks that ship so fast, it's not even funny.

01:59:06

To Mary, I say that the Catholic Church is the fulfillment of the prophecies of Jesus Christ and the

01:59:12

New Testament concerning the church. And so we say that the Catholic Church is that church to which all

01:59:18

Christians ought to belong because it was established by Jesus Christ. So there's the claims. That sounds so good until you know the

01:59:27

Bible and history. And then it's not so good. But unfortunately, knowing the

01:59:33

Bible and history is not big amongst evangelical folks these days.

01:59:40

And so there's the problem. Glad we had the opportunity of dealing with that.

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Lord willing, we will be back again on Tuesday of next week.

01:59:52

Yes, Tuesday, the regular Tuesday program here on The Dividing Line. Thanks for watching.