The Ruinous Ruse of Rome

Let us begin our final session tonight. This is entitled The Ruinous Ruse of Rome. I want to try to do a little alliteration. The Ruinous Ruse of Rome, specifically the Roman Catholic Church. And the problem with the Roman Catholic Church actually begins with that very picture.

That is St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, and Catholics believe that Peter served as the pastor of the Church of Rome, the Bishop of Rome, if you will. There's actually no evidence in Scripture that Peter was ever in Rome.

In fact, it's interesting, when Paul writes his letter to the Church in Rome, in Romans chapter 16, he has this long greeting. Beginning in verse 3 of chapter 16, he greets a ton of people. He greets Prisca and Aquila and Appianitus and Andronicus and Urbanus and Herodian and Junia and Tryphena and Tryphosa, Asencritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Philologus, Julia, I mean, on and on and on.

He greets about 30 people by name, and many of them their families as well, and entire.

Households.

And so if you add it up, he greets dozens of people, and yet never gives Peter a shout-out. I mean, if Peter was in Rome, you would think the Apostle Paul would have said, oh yeah, greet Peter too, but he makes no mention of Peter at all.

And so the problem with the Roman Catholic Church actually begins with that very picture. But before we get into the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, I want to lay a little doctrinal groundwork here, just in general.

Bring your attention to 1 Timothy chapter 4, as Paul talks about the importance of doctrine. Beginning in verse 13, Paul says, until I come, give attention to the public reading of Scripture. The public reading of Scripture was a central part of synagogue worship, and we see Jesus doing this in Luke chapter 4.

He goes into the synagogue and he reads from Isaiah chapter 61, and the early church did this as well. They would publicly read Scripture, of course the Old Testament, but they would bring into their Old Testament readings apostolic teaching as the New Testament was being compiled.

So the public reading of Scripture, very, very important, that's why we do the public reading of Scripture in all of our worship services. And then he continues to exhortation and teaching. Exhortation is the challenge to obey what is taught.

Obey what is taught. Not to be hearers only, but to be doers of the word, per James chapter 1. The exhortation and teaching, that word teaching is didaskalia or didache. In fact, my podcast is entitled Didache, which simply means doctrine, teaching.

And then he continues, do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed on you through the prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery. Take pains with these things, be absorbed in them.

And it literally says in the Greek, that word absorbed is just supplied by the translator, but Paul just says, be in them. Be submerged in doctrine, in teaching. It is doctrine in teaching, doctrine theology is to be the air we breathe as Christians.

So that your progress will be evident to all. Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching. Pay close attention to yourself, to your life, to your conduct, and to your teaching, to your doctrine.

It's not an either or, it's a both and. Have good doctrine, have good theology, but make sure you live a life of holiness that is commensurate with that sound doctrine. Persevere in these things, for as you do, you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you.

The stakes could not be higher. Without sound doctrine, there is no salvation either of ourselves or those who hear us. And that is why James says in James 3 verse 1, he says, let not many of you be teachers, my brethren, knowing that we will incur a stricter judgment.

The stakes could not be higher. We are talking about matters of eternity. Salvation is fundamentally a work of deliverance. Psalm 144 verse 2 says, the Lord, Yahweh, is my deliverer. In Romans chapter 6, Paul speaks of being obedient to the doctrine and being freed from sin.

Salvation is a work of deliverance in which God delivers us from our sin and the penalty of that sin. Sound doctrine delivers, false doctrine destroys. Sound doctrine delivers and false doctrine destroys.

There are people today who you find that it's rampant in the charismatic movement, you see this even in some Southern Baptist circles, a lot of Southern Baptist circles, that there's a de-emphasis of doctrine and theology.

And you may have heard someone express a sentiment, something like this, well, I don't need doctrine, I don't need theology, I just love Jesus. But that is something that is foreign to the Word of God.

The Bible never separates knowledge of God and love for God. In fact, it combines these things. Look at what Paul says in Philippians chapter 1, in this I pray that your love would abound still more and more in what?

In knowledge and discernment. You see, the Bible never separates knowledge of God and love for God. It always combines these things. And so people who profess to be Christians and yet do not have any concern for doctrine and theology, then I would submit to you that they do not love Christ nearly as much as they profess to love Him.

Doctrine is of paramount importance. Watch your life and your doctrine closely. This is a biblical truth, please do understand this. One can have sound doctrine and live an ungodly life at the same time.

Unfortunately, that does happen. And unfortunately, we have seen that in even our circles and even quite recently. It is possible to have sound doctrine, very sound doctrine, and yet live an ungodly life.

But what is not possible, it is not possible to live a godly life without sound doctrine. Without sound doctrine, you cannot live a godly life, a life that is pleasing to God. Does that make sense? So watch your life and your doctrine closely.

There are deadly dangers of false doctrine. The Apostle Paul, writing in 2 Timothy chapter 2, beginning in verse 14, Paul says, Remind them of these things and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words, which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers.

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth, rightly dividing the truth of God's word. But avoid worldly and empty chatter, for it will lead to further ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene.

Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, men who have gone astray from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already taken place, and they upset the faith of some. I want to bring your attention to these highlighted words and phrases here.

The ruin of the hearers, it will lead to further ungodliness, it will spread like gangrene and upset the faith of some. The ruin of hearers in verse 14, that word ruin in the Greek is the word katastrophe.

Katastrophe, and you can even hear it in the word, can't you? Katastrophic. Bad doctrine is literally katastrophic to those who hear it and imbibe it. It's the same word that's used to describe what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Testament.

That was catastrophic, right? God rained down fire and brimstone and completely destroyed those cities. It's the same word here, the ruin of hearers. It leads to catastrophic consequences. To unbelievers, by presenting a false gospel, which the Church of Rome does, presents a false gospel, and a false gospel does not save.

And unsound doctrine, false doctrine, can be catastrophic even to believers, at least in a temporal sense, because false doctrine to believers can cause confusion, discouragement, and at least for a time, disobedience.

Now, a point of caution, God will bring his own out of false doctrine. And some of you have heard me say before, I said it in Sunday school last week, can a true Christian be in a Roman Catholic Church?

A very qualified yes, a very qualified yes. The only Christians you would find in the Roman Catholic Church are very, very young, very, very immature believers who have heard the gospel somewhere, not in the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church doesn't preach the gospel, but maybe they heard it on the radio, maybe they were just reading their Bibles by themselves and got saved.

And as a brand new believer, they don't have their theological legs underneath them yet. So they may stay in the Roman Catholic Church for a season, but not indefinitely, not indefinitely. The Lord will sovereignly bring them out of that deception.

But false doctrine is catastrophic to unbelievers and it can cause even the young true believers a lot of confusion, discouragement, and disobedience. In verse 16, it leads to ungodliness. Bad doctrine always yields bad fruit.

A bad tree cannot produce good fruit. Bad doctrine yields bad fruit. And Paul says, it spreads like gangrene. Error always begets more error. And that's why we, as Christians, that's why Rob and I, as your elders, that's why we have such an emphasis on confronting false doctrine because it's dangerous.

And left unchecked, it spreads like gangrene. Error always begets more error. Show you this quote from Rick Warren, a man who has, unfortunately, been called America's pastor. If he is America's pastor, we're all in a lot of trouble.

But Rick Warren is a false teacher. He says this, we have far more in common than what divides us. When you talk about Pentecostals, Charismatics, Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Catholics, they would all say we believe in the Trinity, we believe in the Bible, we believe in the resurrection, we believe salvation is through Jesus Christ.

These are the big issues. So let's just all hold hands and sing Kumbaya, everything's okay. You know, we're all on the same team. No, we are not all on the same team. The differences between Roman Catholics and us as Protestants are literally matters of eternity.

We'll see as we go through this session tonight that Roman Catholicism has a different Jesus and has a different gospel. These are not minor issues. So I want us to talk about the five solas of the Reformation.

This is when, as Pastor Rob was talking about in his session, the Reformation was begun in earnest, kind of like the official date was October 31st, 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door at Wittenberg.

And the Reformation had these five solas, the five cries of the Reformation. Sola gratia, which simply means grace alone, sola is alone, gratia. So grace alone, salvation is by grace alone. Through faith alone, sola fide.

Solus Christus, in Christ alone. Sola dea gloria, for the glory of God alone. And sola scriptura, as recorded in scripture alone. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for the glory of God alone, as recorded in scripture alone.

Scripture is our final authority. And the Roman Catholic Church, as we are about to see, has anathematized all five of the solas of the Reformation. So I want us to go through these, beginning with sola gratia, grace alone.

Now I'm going to put these little charts up, and if you want to kind of keep these, and you can, you know, take a picture of them or whatever with your iPhones. But sola gratia, salvation is by grace alone.

I'm going to contrast biblical Christianity on the left with Roman Catholicism on the right. In biblical Christianity, salvation is of the Lord, Psalm 37, verse 39, in Titus chapter 211. Titus 211 says, for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men.

Salvation is the monergistic work of God. Mono means one, the word ergon in the Greek means work, so monergistic salvation is the one work of God. We have no part to play in our own salvation. It is God's work and His alone.

However, Roman Catholicism teaches that salvation is of the church. The Roman Catholic Church dispenses salvation to those who belong to it. And there is no salvation, true salvation, outside of the Church of Rome.

Biblical Christianity holds to what we call total depravity or total inability. Now, total depravity, we believe, as Bible-believing Christians, Scripture teaches that men are totally depraved. Total depravity does not mean that every person is as bad as they possibly could be.

But what it does mean is, in a better way to describe it or name for it, is total inability. In that, left to our own sinful nature, there is nothing within us that will cause us to seek after God. This is the crystal clear teaching all throughout Scripture.

Romans 3, 10 through 11, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have gone astray. Together, they have become worthless. So there is nothing in and of ourselves, left to our own vices, left to our own sinful nature, that will cause us to seek after God.

We do not seek after God. God seeks after us. Crystal clear teaching in Scripture. And yet, the Roman Catholic Church rejects total depravity. In fact, just a few weeks ago, I was on an airplane and I was sitting next to a friar.

I guess a friar is kind of like a junior monk. First, you become a friar and then you become a monk. And it was obvious he was a friar. He had...his head was shaved except for a ring of hair around his head, and that's to symbolize the crown of thorns.

And he was wearing a Catholic robe and his little beads and all that. So I was talking with him and we got into a theological discussion real quickly. And he told me, I was talking about total depravity, total inability.

And he said, oh, we don't believe that. He said, there's good in everybody. No, there's not. In fact, Jesus said to the rich young ruler, the rich young ruler came up to him and said, good teacher, what must I do to be saved?

And Jesus said, why do you call me good? No one is good except who? God. God. Jesus was affirming his deity, by the way, not correcting him. But the Roman Catholic Church rejects total depravity. In biblical Christianity, grace is unmerited favor bestowed by our sovereign God.

Unmerited favor. And yet, the Roman Catholic Church, they will talk about grace, but they have the Inigo Montoya approach to grace in that, you know, they'll use the word, but it's like, okay, you keep using that word.

I do not think it means what you think it means. They will use some of our lingo, dear friends. Understand this about the Roman Catholic Church, is in the last 15 or so years, they have begun to adopt some of the evangelical lingo.

Used to, you would never hear a Catholic talk about grace or being saved, certainly not being born again. Fifteen plus years ago, you wouldn't even hear a Roman Catholic call themselves a Christian. You know, we're not Christian, we're Catholic.

But now, they've kind of begun to adopt some of our lingo. But be very careful with Catholics, even though they use some of our lingo, they do not mean by those words what you and I mean by those words, more importantly, what Scripture means by those words.

According to the Roman Catholic Church, grace is a thing or a force that is merited, earned by us when we do works obtained through the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church. And the Roman Catholic Church has seven different sacraments, baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, confession and or penance, anointing of the sick, marriage, and holy orders.

And when you participate in these seven different sacraments, then you are earning, okay, listen to this, you're earning grace from God. Hold on. If you're earning grace, it's not grace. Okay? It's not grace.

Grace is unmerited, unearned favor. So, they may use the lingo, but they do not mean by that what Scripture means by it. You have to be very, very careful. Justification, the great doctrine of the Reformation that Pastor Rob was just preaching on.

Justification, just so you can see this in written form, is a divine act by which God declares a sinner to be innocent of his sins. It is a judicial act of God in which the sinner is declared righteous as though he is perfectly satisfied the law of God.

It's a forensic endeavor. It is a judicial, a legal act by which God looks at us and He declares us to be righteous. When He saves us, when He grants faith, grants repentance, our sins were imputed to Christ on the cross, His righteousness imputed to us, and God sees in us the righteousness of His own Son and He justifies us.

He declares us to be in a right relationship with Him. It is a judicial act of God. Romans 11, 6, Paul says, but if it is by grace that it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.

Roman Catholics teach that justification is earned. The Bible teaches that justification is given, is granted by God. Now, I want us to contrast what the Bible says about grace and what the Roman Catholic Church says about grace.

Romans 5, 8, and 9, but God demonstrates His own love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.

How are we justified? By His blood, and that saves us from the wrath of God. Titus 3, so that having been justified by His grace, we would become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. So, justification is the monergistic work and act of God.

Not so according to the Roman Catholic Church. Now, I'm going to read you an excerpt from what is called the Council of Trent. The Council of Trent was a council that was held by the Roman Catholic Church beginning in the year 1545 through 1563.

That's a long meeting as an 18-year council. But the Council of Trent was the Roman Catholic answer to the Protestant Reformation, basically. The Protestant Reformation began in 1517 in earnest. You had the reformers preaching salvation by grace alone through faith alone, and the Roman Catholic Church began to scramble.

We've got to come up with an answer to what these reformers are saying, and so they held the Council of Trent. And they said this in Canon 14 of the Council of Trent. Now, read this with me. If anyone saith that man is truly absolved from his sins and justified because he assuredly believed himself absolved and justified, or that no one is truly justified but he who believes himself justified, and that by his faith alone absolution and justification are effected, let him be anathema.

In other words, the Roman Catholic Church literally anathematized salvation by grace alone. Now, I don't want you to miss what the word anathema means. This is from Pope Zachary. He reigned from the year 741 to 752.

He said this, "'Wherefore, in the name of God, the all-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing in heaven and on earth, we deprive himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the communion of the body and blood of our Lord.

We separate him from the society of all Christians. We exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother, the church in heaven and on earth. We declare him excommunicated and anathematized, and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate.'".

That's what anathema means. If you are anathematized by the Roman Catholic Church, according to the Roman Catholic Church, when you die, you will go to hell. You will not pass go, you will not collect $200, you just skip purgatory altogether, you go straight to hell, and you're there for all of eternity, if the Roman Catholic Church anathematizes you.

More from the Council of Trent, this from Canon 12. "'If anyone saith that the justification received is not preserved and also increased before God through good works, but that the said works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not a cause of the increase thereof, let him be anathema.'".

Okay, works are fruits and signs of justification obtained. When God justifies us, there will be evidence of that, and that evidence is fruit. That's what works are. And yet, the Roman Catholic Church takes that very biblical definition and says, if you believe it, you're anathema, you're going to hell.

Consider what Scripture says, Romans 11, 6, "'But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, since otherwise grace is no longer grace.'". The Roman Catholic Church has literally anathematized salvation by grace alone.

If you believe it, you will go to hell, according to the Romish, quote-unquote, church. Let's go to the second sola, sola fide, faith alone. Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone. Another chart.

Biblical Christianity on the left teaches that we are justified by faith alone. This is imputed righteousness. As I said a moment ago, imputed righteousness is that righteousness which comes when we place our faith in Christ.

When Christ was on the cross, our sins, the sins of his people, the elect, were imputed to him. And God treated him as though he were a sinner, even though he was not. Our sins imputed to Christ, the wrath of God poured out, Christ satisfied that wrath.

And when God grants to us faith and repentance, his righteousness is imputed, is counted towards us. But the Roman Catholic Church rejects that, saying we are justified by faith and works through the sacraments.

This is infused righteousness. Dear friends, please understand there is a difference as wide as all of eternity itself between imputed righteousness and infused righteousness. Imputed righteousness is what Scripture teaches.

Romans 4, verse 5, but to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness. That's pretty clear, right? Righteousness does not come by works, it comes by faith.

But according to the Roman Catholic Church, you get righteousness, you obtain righteousness through the works in the seven sacraments of baptism, confirmation, penance, marriage, anointing the sick, holy orders, and the Eucharist.

That's how you get righteousness. It is infused to you. The Roman Catholic Church, when you look at the doctrine of the mass, they believe, and we'll get to this a little more in depth in a second, but they believe that when you take communion, when you take the wafer and you drink the wine, that you are eating literally the flesh of Christ and drinking the blood of Jesus, that those elements literally turn into those things.

That's their doctrine of transubstantiation. And so, when you eat the cracker, when you drink the wine, you're getting a shot of Jesus. You're getting infused righteousness. It's the theological equivalent of spinach to Popeye.

You remember the old Popeye cartoons? And Popeye was this, you know, kind of average old Joe, not real strong. And Bluto, he was a bad guy and he's, you know... Popeye's arch nemesis and he was really big and strong and he would beat up on poor old Popeye and Popeye's down for the count.

You know, he's a goner. And then at the last second, somehow he gets some spinach in his pipe and he eats the spinach and then he gets all big and strong and he beats up Bluto. Think of it that way. Righteousness in the Roman Catholic Church is the theological equivalent of spinach to Popeye.

You get a shot of Jesus, you're good to go for a while until you go out there and you start committing some sins and then righteousness wears off and you've got to get some more righteousness. Romans 3, 27 through 28.

Where then is boasting, it is excluded. By what kind of law?

Of works?

No, but by a law of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law. Faith alone. Romans 5, verse 1. Therefore, having been justified by what?

Faith.

Not works, faith. We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Crystal clear teaching from scripture that the Roman Catholic Church has literally anathematized. Council of Trent, Canon 9 says this, if anyone saith that by faith alone the impious, the sinner, is justified, let him be anathema.

If anyone saith that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ's sake or that this confidence alone is whereby we are justified, let him be anathema.

Well, yeah, that's what faith is. They literally define faith. Yes, faith is confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ's sake. Yep, that's what faith is. If you believe that, you're anathema.

You will die and you will go to hell. John Calvin stated, point of caution here, John Calvin stated this, quote, I wish the reader to understand that as often as we mention faith alone in this question, we are not thinking of a dead faith which worketh not by love but holding faith to be the only cause of justification.

It is therefore faith alone which justifies and yet the faith which justifies is not alone. In other words, yes, we are justified by faith alone, but true faith, dear ones, is never alone. True faith always results in works.

We are not saved by works, but when we have true faith, works will follow that genuine faith, always. Every Christian bears good fruit, not some, not most, all of us. If you are a Christian, if you are attached to the divine Christ, you will bear good fruit.

The third sola, solus Christus. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Our chart, again, biblical Christianity on the left, 1 Timothy 2 .5 says, there is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, one mediator, but not in the Roman Catholic Church.

In the Roman Catholic Church, there are many mediators. The pope, bishops, cardinals, priests, they are all mediators. You see, in the Roman Catholic Church, if you want to get to God, you've got to go through one of their mediators.

You've got to go through your priest or a cardinal or a bishop, the pope himself with his blessing. You've got to go through a man to get to God. We do have to go through a man to get to God, but that man's name is Christ Jesus.

No bishop, no priest, no pope. In biblical Christianity, there is one redeemer, Christ Jesus. Not in the Roman Catholic Church, however. In the Roman Catholic Church, Mary is a co-redemptrix with Christ, co-redemptrix with Christ.

In biblical Christianity, there is one sacrifice for sins. Jesus himself was our one-time sacrifice for all of sins, but not in the Roman Catholic Church. In the Roman Catholic Church, when they have mass, they are sacrificing Christ every single time they have mass.

That's why they call it the sacrifice of the mass. You see, Catholics believe when they take the wafer, the cracker, the host, when the priest offers it up, that cracker literally, not symbolically, but literally turns into the flesh of Jesus.

And that is the true presence of Christ. Christ is in the cracker, and the cracker becomes Christ. This from the Catholic Catechism, paragraph 1367. The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist are, note this, one single sacrifice.

The victim, now I want to pause right there, victim. They believe Christ is a victim. They call Christ a victim. Dear friends, Christ never was, is not now, nor will he ever be a victim. He is the ultimate victor.

His life was not taken, he gave it. But it says, the victim is one and the same. The same now offers through the ministry of the priests, who then offered himself on the cross. Only the manner of offering is different.

This sacrifice is truly propitiatory. Now that word propitiatory, propitiation, that word means in the Greek, elosmos, it means a wrath-removing sacrifice. An appeasement of God's wrath. God's wrath was appeased on the cross, dear ones, forever.

But not in Roman Catholicism. In Roman Catholicism, every single time they have mass, every single day, they believe that that mass is appeasing the wrath of God. They are literally sacrificing Jesus over and over and over and over.

It's kind of ironic that Roman Catholics, at least when it comes to abortion, they say that they're pro-life. That's what they say. But when it comes to Jesus, they're pro-death. They believe they are killing him over and over and over and over and over and.

Over.

Dear friends, the only way that Jesus' sacrifice on the cross could not have been enough to permanently satisfy God's wrath that burns against sin is if his offering of himself was not perfect. You see, a perfect person offers a perfect sacrifice.

If Jesus' sacrifice on the cross did not perfectly appease, propitiate the wrath of God, the only way that's possible is if his person was not perfect. And if his person was not perfect, then he was not God.

The only one who is perfect is God. And so even I would push back. I've even heard some men in our circles, men that I like and have benefited from, and they're very much against the Roman Catholic Church.

And I think they just haven't thought it through enough. But I've heard some people even in our circle say that Roman Catholics affirm the deity of Christ. They do on paper. But I would submit to you, when you look at what they teach about the mass, they don't because the mass, by definition, undermines the deity of Christ.

If Christ was God, he was perfect. If he was perfect, he only had to offer himself as a sacrifice once for all. And so I would submit to you that when you take the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church out to their logical conclusion, they deny the deity of Christ.

The Bible teaches imputed righteousness, not infused. 2 Corinthians 5 .21, he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Our sins imputed to Christ on the cross.

God treated his own son as though he were a sinner, even though he was not. And his righteousness imputed to us when we trust him for our salvation and repent of our sins. For Christ also died, how many times?

Once for all. The just for the unjust. Dear friends, Christ's sacrifice is never to be repeated. And I'll bring your attention to a few verses in the book of Hebrews. Hebrews 10, verse 10. By this, we will have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ, how many times?

Once for all. Hebrews 10, verse 12. But he, having offered how many sacrifices? One sacrifice for sins, for how many times? For all time, sat down at the right hand of God. His work was completed. He sat down.

What did Jesus say on the cross? It is finished. Finished. Not it has begun, not to be continued. It is finished. For by how many offerings?

One offering.

He is perfected for all time, those who are sanctified. In Hebrews chapter 7, 26 and 27. For it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens, who does not need daily like those high priests to offer up sacrifices.

And yet, what does the Roman Catholic Church do? They offer daily sacrifices. First for his own sins and then for the sins of the people. Because this he did once for all. When he offered up himself on the cross.

How much more clear could you be? I honestly do not know what the Roman Catholic Church does with the book of Hebrews. I really don't. It's almost like the Holy Spirit of God in his infinite wisdom foresaw and knew that there would be a cult to develop just a few hundred years after Christ's ascension that would denigrate the sacrifice of Christ.

It's almost like he knew that. And it's almost like he inspired his word to give us a systematic theology as to how to refute the claims of this cult that would come along. And what do we have? The book of Hebrews.

The book of Hebrews to the Roman Catholic Church is like kryptonite to Superman. It is a tour de force that absolutely dismantles Roman Catholicism. Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1378. Worship of the Eucharist.

Worship of the Eucharist. In the liturgy of the mass, we express our faith in the real presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine. The Catholic Church has always offered and still offers to the sacrament of the Eucharist, the cult, their word, not mine, the cult of adoration.

Isn't that interesting? That's their own catechism and they call it a cult. I mean, I'm reading from their stuff. The cult of adoration. They believe that Jesus is in the host and they have perpetual adoration, perpetual worship, you know, because they don't want to leave Jesus by himself.

So a lot of Catholic churches, they have 24 -7 worship of the Eucharist, thinking Jesus is in the cracker. It's a cult, all right. I want us to look at what the Catholic Church teaches about purgatory.

Undoubtedly, you've heard of this place. Purgatory, according to the catechism of the Catholic Church, is the final purification for all who die in God's grace and friendship, the elect, but still imperfectly purified so that they may achieve the holiness necessary to enter the joy of heaven.

So purgatory is this place of fire, burning, and pain that pretty much everyone has to go to at least for a while to have all of their other sins that Jesus did not pay for burned up so that they could be pure enough to get into heaven.

So if you go to purgatory, it's kind of like a bad news, good news kind of thing. The good news is that you'll eventually get to heaven. The bad news is you've got to burn for a while before you get there.

How long?

We don't know.

You know, who knows? Months, years, decades, centuries, who knows? More sins you have, the more time you've got to spend in purgatory, though. It's an abomination. The Bible clearly refutes purgatory.

Some of the few verses we could cite, Hebrews 1, verse 3, referring to Jesus, who having accomplished cleansing for sins, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. Jesus accomplished cleansing for sin, who gave himself for us so that he might redeem us from some of our lawlessness, all lawlessness, and purify for himself a people for his own possessions, zealous for good works.

Christ redeems us from all sin, and he purifies us for himself. He doesn't leave us dirty. He purifies us. Why does snow? Dear friends, if you are a Christian, if you know Jesus as Savior and Lord, do you know that when God looks at you, he sees in you the righteousness of his own Son, the Lord Jesus Christ?

Oh, we are still sinners in a practical sense. We still sin. We still commit sin. Martin Luther described Christians as snow-covered dunghills. Yes, we still have the dung. We still have sin, but we are covered with snow.

We are covered with the righteousness of Christ. But if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from some of our sin.

All.

All sin cleansed, dear ones. When you got saved, you were forgiven, judicially speaking. As far as your righteousness is concerned, you are forgiven of all of your sins, past, present, and future. In Romans 8, verse 1, there is now, therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

None.

That airplane ride I was on, I was mentioning a moment ago, with the friar, he called himself John Paul. And when you become a friar, you choose your own names. And he called himself John Paul, I guess after Pope John Paul.

And he, I mean, it was obviously he was Catholic. Kathy and I saw him when we pulled up to the airport. He and a bunch of his people with him piled out of a Baptist van. The van that they were in had like something Baptist Church on it, First Baptist Church or something like that on it.