RLL 65.Romeward Bound

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You're listening to Radio Looks Elicit, I'm your host Steve Matthews. Thanks for joining me today for episode 65.

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The title of this episode is Romeward Bound, Joe Biden meets his boss Jorge Bergoglio.

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Well before I get into the the main topic today I just wanted to start off by wishing everybody a very happy Reformation Day.

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What's Reformation Day? Well it is tomorrow October 31st and on that day we celebrate the anniversary of Martin Luther's nailing his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg.

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That took place on October 31st, 1517. Now a lot of people call October 31st, they call that Halloween, but if you love the

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Reformation and you love the Lord Jesus Christ you call that Reformation Day. And I'd like to talk a little bit about Reformation Day here today as well and we'll get into that in just a moment here.

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One thing I had to I did want to mention this up front too before I forget about it. I had a wonderful opportunity today to do a live stream for the

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Trinity Foundation and we did that. It was actually a speech, a presentation was given by Timothy F.

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Kaufman who's someone that he's done a lot of work for the Trinity Foundation in the past and he's written for them, he spoke at conferences, and it was it was a really a pleasure to be able to to be a part of that today.

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And he gave a talk, it was about an hour and a half talk today, it's called the Sands of Rome. And in it he discussed three ways in which the

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Church of Rome has built its house on sand. You think about that figure of speech that Jesus used at the end of his

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Sermon on the Mount. He talked about the foolish man who builds his house on sand compared to the man who heard the words and believed the words of Christ and built his house on a solid rock.

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And the three ways just from a very high level that Timothy talked about, he talked about one way was was papal supremacy.

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A second way was the the sacrifice of the mass was a second way.

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And then a third way is Rome's placing of tradition in place of the doctrine of scripture alone or is that the reformer something's called it sola scriptura, that's just the

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Latin version of scripture alone. Or another way of saying that is the sort of the, I guess you call it the slogan of the

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Trinity Foundation, the Bible alone is the Word of God. That is is a Christian doctrine, but it's something that's rejected by the by the

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Church of Rome. So anyway, it was it was a wonderful opportunity to to hear him talk and do a little question and answer session afterward.

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I'm going to go ahead and include a link to that. It's a there's a live stream that's out there on the Trinity Foundation YouTube channel,

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I'm going to include a link to that. I also Lord willing, hopefully sometime this next week, we'll get a edited mp3 version of that and edited podcast version of that.

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And we'll put that out as a podcast as well on the on the foundation's website. So anyway, there's some some good things happened here today.

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And it was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the 504th anniversary of Reformation Day or of Martin Luther's nailing his 95 thesis to the

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Wittenberg door church, Wittenberg church door. Yeah, I'll get that right. Yes, it's been a long day.

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I can't talk here. So talking a little bit about Reformation Day, I wanted to share with you a little something here about about Reformation Day that I've always found pretty interesting, or I should say a resource maybe for Reformation Day is the way

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I'm saying it. Here's a book that that I've read. Yes, just a nice red cover. I'm going to turn it on that side.

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Maybe you can see the title of that. It's called Here I Stand and camera get focused. It's called

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Here I Stand. It's by a gentleman named Roland Bainton. And this is considered the the standard biography of Martin Luther.

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And if you've never read it before, I would highly recommend it to you. I mean, if there's one book you want to read on Martin Luther, this

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I think maybe is that book. It was originally let's see is originally a copyrighted in in 1950.

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So it was done about 70 years ago. But this is it's it's really some some good scholarship.

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And it's very readable. I mean, this is not something that's, you know, you don't have to be a, you know, have a have an advanced degree in church history or something like this to read this book.

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I mean, it's written for people who would like to learn something about about Martin Luther.

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It's very approachable book. It's a very interesting book. It's very entertaining a lot of places. Martin Luther himself was actually a pretty, pretty entertaining guy.

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Yeah, I had this this sort of vision of of Martin Luther before I read that book, you know, he was, you know, this quiet contemplative sort of fellow, but no, he wasn't like that.

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I mean, he was actually this kind of really, I'd say almost a larger than life type of personality kind of outrageous at times, he could be funny at times, he could be, you know, he was a really a big personality, and very interesting time that he lived in.

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And the work that he did was, was really extraordinary. He changed history, and he changed it for the better.

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He brought us a whole new civilization. It's one of the things that a lot of times, people don't understand is when we talk about Western civilization, what we're really talking about is a civilization that was built on the

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Protestant Reformation. He started a whole new civilization.

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In fact, here's something, this was, this is from another book, I'm just going to read this briefly here. This is a book called

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Christ and Civilization by John W. Robbins, which I think is just a wonderful booklet. As you can see there,

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I turn it on its side, it is just a booklet, you can actually sit down and read this in a single sitting if you're interested.

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And what he does in this book is he shows, the title Christ and Civilization is a little bit of a hint of this, but what

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John Robbins shows in this book is how the doctrines of the Reformation produced the civilization that you and I live in.

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I mean, if you live in the West and you love economic and political liberty, you enjoy that because of the

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Protestant Reformation. There's no Protestant Reformation, there's no Western civilization.

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And let me just go ahead and read a brief portion out of Christ and Civilization. This is page 38.

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This is a quote here, Martin Luther's courageous rejection in the name of written revelation, logic, and freedom of this faith, works, religion laid the necessary theological foundation for the emergence of a free, humane, and civilized society from the ancient and medieval paganism of Christendom.

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The result was religious freedom and her daughters, political, civil, and economic freedom.

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Now notice what he says here, and this is very, very important. He talks about the result being religious freedom, and it's religious freedom that gave rise to the other freedoms that we have, political, civil, economic freedom.

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So it really was the reform of Christianity, it was the emergence, the rediscovery of the doctrines of grace after a thousand years or more of being buried in Roman Catholic tradition that set free the nations of the world to which the

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Reformation came. If there's no Protestant Reformation, there's no United States of America. And that's not something that's really very well understood.

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And John Robbins goes into that, he shows the relationship between Christianity and the

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United States, or just maybe the West more broadly. And so I'd really encourage you to read that, because that's not something that, even if you go to a

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Protestant church, a Bible -believing, conservative church, that teaches the word of God, that teaches the doctrine of the gospel of justification by belief alone, even if you go to a church like that, you're probably not going to get that message.

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And I think it's really important that as Christians that we connect our Christian heritage with the economic, the political, the civil liberties that we enjoy.

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We need to make that connection. We need to remake that connection. Prior generations of Christians understood that, but it's really largely been forgotten in our own time.

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That's a very important book that John Robbins wrote. Well, what I'd like to do is turn to my original topic.

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I mentioned the biography, Here I Stand, by Roland Bainton.

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And I wanted to just read a couple of excerpts out of this, kind of give you maybe a little sense of the book itself.

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And here is, this is actually from, oh gosh, let's see here.

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Yeah, here the discussion is basically some of the events that led up to Martin Luther's nailing of the 95 thesis to the

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Wittenberg church door. And one of the things that a lot of people don't understand it, I didn't know this before I read this, the book,

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Here I Stand. I hadn't realized this, but it was actually the construction of St.

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Peter's Basilica in Rome. The great big basilica that you always see the Pope, he's leaning out the window and there's the thousands, tens of thousands, or however many hundreds of thousands of people out there in St.

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Peter's Square. And he's looking, he's overlooking them. And it's this huge basilica in Rome with the gigantic dome there in the

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Vatican. And it was actually the construction of that basilica that kicked off the

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Protestant Reformation, or at least helped, that was a factor that the Lord used to bring about the Reformation of the church.

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And I think that's a pretty remarkable thing. So every time you see St. Peter's Basilica, you might want to think about Martin Luther, because that's the thing that kind of triggered him to do what he did.

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Now, I'm just going to read here, this is Roland Bainton and what he had to say about how

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St. Peter's factored into the Reformation. Leo, and he's talking about Pope Leo, Pope Leo X.

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Leo at the moment was particularly in need of funds to complete a project commenced by his predecessor, the building of the new

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St. Peter's. The old wooden basilica, constructed in the age of Constantine, had been condemned, and the

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Titanic Pope Julius II had overawed the consistory into approving the grandiose scheme of throwing a dome as large as the

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Pantheon over the remains of the Apostles Peter and Paul. The piers were laid,

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Julius died, the work lagged, weeds sprouted from the pillars, Leo took over, he needed money.

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So, you know, here's St. Peter's, it's been started, you know, they laid sort of the foundation of it, and then they ran out of money.

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And, you know, kind of think about that parable that Jesus used in Luke, you know, he talked about, you know, what man doesn't, before building a tower, doesn't first sit down and decide whether he has enough money to finish the tower, you know, lest he start building it, and he has to stop, and then people go by and mock him and say, ha, you know, look, this guy started building a tower, and he couldn't finish it.

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You know, that's kind of the position that the Pope Leo found himself in, you know, he had this partially finished magnificent structure, and had weeds sprouting out of the pillars, and that's just not a good look.

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So what he did is he went on this campaign of selling indulgences.

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How do you raise money? Well, you sell indulgences. And he hired one of the guys that he hired to sell these indulgences, he was this

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Dominican named Johannes Tetzel. And I'm just going to read to you a little bit about Tetzel, and this will kind of give you a little flavor of how good of a salesman, indulgence salesman,

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Johannes Tetzel really was. This begins on page 59 of Here I Stand.

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Quote, The proclamation of this indulgence was entrusted to the Dominican Tetzel, an experienced vendor.

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As he approached the town, he was met by the dignitaries who then entered with him in solemn procession.

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A cross bearing the papal arms preceded him, and the Pope's bowl of indulgence was borne aloft on a gold -embroidered velvet cushion.

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The cross was solemnly planted in the marketplace, and the sermon began. And this is

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Tetzel speaking. Listen now, God and St. Peter call you. Consider the salvation of your souls, and those of your loved ones departed.

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You priest, you noble, you merchant, you virgin, you matron, you youth, you old man, enter now into your church, which is the church of St.

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Peter. Visit the most holy cross erected before you, and everyone imploring you. Have you considered that you are lashed in a furious tepest amid the temptations and dangers of the world, and that you do not know whether you can reach the haven, not of your mortal body, but of your immortal soul?

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Consider that all who are contrite and have confessed and made contribution will receive complete remission of all their sins.

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Listen to the voices of your dear dead relatives and friends beseeching you and saying, pity us, pity us, we are in dire torment, from which you can redeem us for pittance.

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Do you not wish to? Open your ears. Hear the father saying to his son, the mother to her daughter, we bore you, nourished you, brought you up, left you our fortunes, and you are so cruel and hard now that you are not willing for so little to set us free.

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Will you let us lie here in flames? Will you delay our promised glory? Remember that you are able to release them for as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.

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Will you not then for a quarter of a florin receive these letters of indulgence, through which you are able to lead a divine and immortal soul into the fatherland of paradise?

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That's Johannes Tetzel. Now, I mean, I have to admit, that's a pretty good pitch. Johannes Tetzel, I'm sure, he was an indulgence salesman supreme.

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He was a top dog. And it was this kind of sermon, this kind of preaching from Tetzel, this is what set

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Martin Luther off. So you have the Pope and he needs money to build St. Peter, so he sends out this

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Johannes Tetzel to sell all these indulgences, and he's out there giving this sermon, oh, release us from paradise by the indulgence, you know, pity on your poor father and mother.

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You know, he's really preying on people's emotions with this kind of sermon.

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And this is what set Martin Luther off. And this is what prompted him to write the 95th thesis and to post them on the door of the

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Wittenberg Church. And again, that's all, those are all excerpts out of Here I Stand. So if you want to read a good book on Martin Luther, get that book.

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It's not that long of a book. And as I said, it's very entertaining, very interesting. It's real history.

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And I'd highly recommend it to you. Now, what

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I wanted to do, and this kind of gets to the title of today's podcast, you know,

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Romeward Bound, Joe Biden Meets His Boss, Jorge Bergoglio. And of course, I'm talking about the big meeting, big summit or meeting or whatever you want to call it between Joe Biden and Pope Francis I on Friday.

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That was on, let's see, that was on October 29, 2021. It was the first time that Joe Biden had appeared in before, had an appearance with Pope Francis.

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And I'd like to read through some of the coverage of this particular meeting in the press and maybe comment a little bit on it as well.

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Let's do this here. We can do a little screen share, I think. Let's see here.

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Let's see if this gives us what we want. Yeah, there we go. Okay, so let's just go through a few stories here.

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This is the first I'm going to comment on here. This is a story from the Washington Post.

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And if you look at the headline here, it says, Biden says Pope Francis called him a good Catholic and said he should keep receiving communion.

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And you read through the article, Vatican City, meeting with Pope Francis on Friday for the first time during his administration,

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President Biden said he was told by the pontiff that he's a good Catholic, who should continue to receive communion, even as some conservative

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U .S. Catholic leaders argue he should be denied the sacrament for his stance on abortion. So basically, our president, well, at least the putative president of the

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United States went over to Rome and he got patted on the head by the Pope. And I guess the

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Pope told him he was a good boy and a good Catholic and shushed him on and gave him his marching orders and sent him out.

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I think it's kind of interesting because, of course, one of the stories that surrounded the meeting between Biden and Pope Francis is, oh, you know, there's this big divide, you know, because a lot of conservative

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U .S. bishops are angry with Joe Biden because he supports abortion and, you know, abortion is really an important doctrine and they want to deny him communion.

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So, you know, he goes over there and, like I say, the Pope pats him on the head and sends him out and, you know, gives him his good housekeeping seal of approval or something like that.

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Now, you know, in my opinion, I think that the chances of the Pope actually taking action against Joe Biden is zero.

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Zero. And the reason is because Joe Biden is, he's the

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Pope's tool in the White House, you know, and he is doing his utmost to carry out the political

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Romanism of Pope Francis. I mean, he's just doing, he's making, he is, you know, all of the stuff that you see going on in the

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United States of America is essentially political Romanism. Whether you're talking about all of the stuff with the, on the southern border, the mass welfare migration that's going on, this is something, this is the

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Pope's stance on immigration. This is the papal immigration policy. I mean, the

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Pope and the Popes have always wanted to destroy the United States of America, and Joe Biden is the

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Pope's willing dupe. And there is zero chance that the Pope is going to embarrass his boy in the

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White House by withholding communion from him. That's, it's just silly to think that that would actually happen.

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But, you know, the mainstream press and reporting on this, they don't understand, you know, who the Pope is, and they don't understand, you know, what his, what his program is.

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And so they actually seem to think, or at least want people to think that there was somehow some chance that the

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Pope wasn't going to give, endorse Joe Biden.

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Another thing that's very interesting about this meeting, this is kind of moving on to a, no, let's see here.

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Is that the right one there? Oh, no, here's, here's the story that I wanted. There's a, this is a story from Religion News Service, and the headline in that particular story is, unusual secrecy attends

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Biden's first meeting with Pope Francis as president. The unusually veiled meeting is stoking speculation whether the two will discuss the incendiary debates going on among U .S.

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bishops over the second Catholic U .S. president's abortion stance. Well, okay, so here we have a case where the president of the

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United States goes to Rome, and he has this secret meeting, and a very long secret meeting.

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It's reported as being about 90 minutes long, which is much longer than I think any of the recent presidents had.

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So he goes over there, and he meets in secret with a Jesuit Pope, and even the, the arrival, and this, a lot of the normal pomp that goes with receiving a foreign leader was, was eschewed in this particular case.

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You know, and, and this type of thing goes on, and, and there's not a peep out of the, out of American Protestants about this.

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You know, this is just considered just well, and good, and fine, and, and it's, it's perfectly acceptable that the president of the

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United States can go meet in secret with, with a Jesuit Pope, and we're not supposed to think there's anything amiss about that.

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That's supposed to be, that's just, just perfectly great, and, and good, and fine, and, and wonderful.

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So let's take a look here at this, yeah, let's take a look here at this particular story.

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It says, when President Ronald Reagan visited St. John, St. John Paul II, they call him, yeah,

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St. John Paul II in June of 1982 with First Lady Nancy Reagan, the press trailed the distinguished group as the

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Pontiffs squired the couple and their staffers to the Vatican's inner sanctums and looked on, according to a

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New York Times reporter, as a group of 200 American seminarians and priests suddenly erupted into a prolonged roaring ovation, followed by choruses of America the

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Beautiful and God Bless America. No such display awaits President Joseph Biden as he arrives at the

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Apostolic Palace on Friday, October 29th, to huddle for the first time as president with Pope Francis, or at least not one visible to reporters.

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Instead, Biden will be greeted in the palace courtyard by a monsignor and taken inside, where the president and Pontiff will exchange greetings out of sight of the public.

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The press will watch Biden's entrance from beyond shouting distance, and even the cameras that normally broadcast the pope welcoming world leaders live, the

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Vatican announced Thursday, will not be rolling. The unusual clampdown surrounding what is expected to be a roughly hour -long conversation is all the more curious as this pope and president are perhaps more aligned in world affairs than any combination since Reagan met the equally anti -communist, socially conservative

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John Paul II. And given that Biden is a Catholic and one who supports abortion rights for women, the odd silence has only stoked interest in what

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Francis will say, if anything, about the debate among U .S. Catholic bishops of whether such a president should receive communion.

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So I think it's interesting here, you know, one of the other takeaways that this particular article has is it says that that is this pope and the president are perhaps more aligned in world affairs than any combination since Reagan met equally communist, socially conservative

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John Paul II. So what they're referring to is there are three main things where where the pope and Joe Biden really really are aligned.

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There's immigration, the more of it the better, according to both of them. There's climate change, and of course the more onerous the regulations, the better.

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And then there's COVID. The more lockdowns, masks up, and vaxes people have, the better.

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In other words, both of them support an authoritarian approach to everything. This is one of the things that's interesting too when you study the papal politics and economics.

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The answer is always world government. Whatever the question is, the answer is always world government. So if you've got an alleged climate change caused by the activities of man, well you need world government to solve that.

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If you've got problems with poverty around the world and migration, well you need world government for that too.

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If you've got a pandemic, supposed pandemic, well you need to have world government. Quite obviously, you silly goose, you have to have world government to solve this.

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There's no other possible solution. If you have a financial crisis, well yeah, world government too.

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You got to have world government there. And that's the pope's stance and the catholic church's stance on politics and economics.

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It's always world government. That is always the answer. And of course

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Joe Biden is a committed globalist. I mean, once one of his first acts as president, he put the United States back into the trees in his

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Paris accord. And of course now he's headed to Scotland and they can get together with all the other globalists and Dr.

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Evils and Bond villain wannabes and discuss the ways that they can steal our property and destroy our liberty.

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In fact, there was even some talk today about, they all wanted to get together and yuck it up and backslap about the wonders of a global minimum tax.

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They were talking about that. I saw a story on that today. So yeah, the answer is always world government.

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And Joe Biden is a willing dupe, a willing tool of Pope Francis to go out and to push these things.

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As I said, there is zero chance. And I mean, if it could possibly be less than zero. I know mathematically you can't have a chance less than zero.

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But if it were possible in any way, that would apply here. There is no chance that the Pope is going to do anything to discipline

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Joe Biden. No chance. It's not going to happen. Let's take a look at the next story here.

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And this is from, let's see, the Gray Lady, the New York Times. Headline here is,

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Biden eases fray with France and savors meeting with Pope as Europe trip begins. And Mr.

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Biden sought to mend ties with France's president over a sabotaged French submarine contract and express gratitude toward Pope Francis after a 90 -minute meeting.

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So let's see here what we have in the good old New York Times. Let's see here, scroll down a little bit.

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Okay, so let's just read through a few paragraphs here. But his trip, he's talking about Joe Biden, but his trip began with a private audience with Pope Francis at the

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Vatican. A diplomatic meeting at the president, who is grinning broadly as he emerged from his presidential limousine, seemed to enjoy.

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After spending about 90 minutes with Francis in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, Mr. Biden told reporters that the

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Pope had called him a good Catholic who should keep receiving Holy Communion. The apparent show of support would mark the first time the

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Pope has explicitly pushed back against the campaign by conservative bishops in the United States to deny Mr. Biden, a fellow

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Roman Catholic, the sacrament because of his support for abortion rights. As if two had spoken about abortion, the president said no, but the topic of receiving sacrament had come up.

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We just talked about the fact that he was happy that I was a good Catholic, Mr. Biden told reporters, and I should keep receiving

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Communion, and he should also keep carrying out the Pope's program as well. So yeah, you know, like I say, it was a good old attaboy there, and Joe Biden was sent packing on his way with his marching orders.

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Let's see, here's a report, this is from the Vatican News. Pope Francis meets with U .S.

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President Joseph Biden, and let's see here, a

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Holy See press office communique said that during the cordial talks they dwelt on their common commitment to the protection and care of the planet, the health situation, and a fight against COVID -19 pandemic, as well as the issue of refugees and how to provide assistance to migrants.

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Well, of course, they in both, you know, there was a story out this past week, I don't know if you caught it or not, but I think they were talking about paying each migrant who was separated from his family,

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I think up to $450 ,000 a piece, not to the family, but a piece apparently.

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And I think it was interesting that that story was released right, just days before he goes over to meet with his boss, days before Joe Biden goes over to meet with his boss,

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Jorge Bergoglio, over there in the Vatican. And of course that's outrageous, it's theft, but I'm sure the

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Pope would approve of that because that's what the Roman Catholic Church approves. The Roman Catholic Church approves of pillaging the

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American people in order to pay for welfare for citizens who are not

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Americans. And it's not something they just do, it's not just unique to the United States, but they do that all over the place with any countries.

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I mean, they've been flooding Europe with migrants as well, and they're doing the same thing to the United States. You know, all these migrant caravans, you know, the big one that's rolling up through Mexico, even as they do this podcast, it's principally the doing of the

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Roman Catholic Church. These migrant columns, I mean, they stay at Catholic churches, they receive the support of Catholic bishops, and they're constantly defended by the

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Roman Catholic Church. I mean, I think even there was a year or two back that Pope Francis gave us like $500 ,000 to support migrants who were supposedly part of their

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Remain in Mexico program that was instituted under Donald Trump, I guess, to help support them while they waited for entry into the

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United States. And of course, you wonder, I mean, when you see the Pope giving that much money publicly, you wonder about, you know, what's being done privately under the table without any reporting.

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And I suspect that there's quite a bit that goes on. But you see here, I mean, the

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Pope and Joe Biden, they talk, you know, here again, you know, and this is right from the Vatican, this is the Vatican news service, they talked about the common commitment and care of the planet, so that's environmentalism, that's climate change, that is globalism right there.

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The health situation, the fight against COVID -19 pandemic, that's also globalism. And then of course, there's the issue with refugees and migrants, that's also globalism.

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You know, the answer is globalism. All of these so -called problems, the answer is always globalism, always.

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And of course, you and me, I mean, we're expected to pay for this. And one of the things I think is always so interesting is you hear these prelates, whether they're bishops or cardinals or popes or priests or nuns or what have you, and they'll get out there and they'll talk about, oh, we have to do something about all, you know, this migrant situation, we have to do this and we have to provide that.

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But they never really quite get around to saying who the we is. You know, and of course, what they mean is you and me.

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I mean, you don't think the Catholic Church is actually going to give up its own money. Yeah, I don't think so.

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I mean, that's sacred. You know, I mean, by golly, you know, they're not going to give up their own money. Okay, yeah, I mean, sure, they're give a little bit publicly.

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I mean, he gave that $500 ,000 out of Peter's Pence, but $500 ,000 to the Pope, that's nothing.

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That's pocket change. What they do is they expect the American taxpayer to tune to billions of dollars a year to pay for their own dispossession by welfare migrants.

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And in many cases, these are Roman Catholic welfare migrants. So I mean, it's not only are they bringing in migrants, but I mean, they're bolstering the church's numbers in the

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United States. That's what they need to do. Steve Bannon talked about that. And I've quoted Steve Bannon several times on his podcast and in some of the blog articles

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I write, you know, that, you know, they do this to, you know, the Roman Catholic Church pushes this stuff.

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They have to have immigration to increase their power, to at least maintain or increase their power.

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Steve Bannon's a Roman Catholic, and he knows that, and he's honest enough to admit it. And there's another article

32:51

I have where Steve Bannon calls him one of the worst instigators of all the migrant caravans, and he's right about that as well.

33:00

I mean, I've always, you know, at least appreciated Steve Bannon's honesty in that area. I mean, and he's absolutely right.

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But yet you don't very often, I mean, he's more honest and more truthful about that than most Protestants.

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You know, I can't think of, and I'm sure that there have been some people who've talked about this, but I can't think of too many or really any other

33:19

Protestants who've pointed out the Pope's role, the Roman Catholic Church's role in the current migrant caravans.

33:29

The best article that I've ever seen written by a Christian on this particular subject was written called Romanizing America Through Illegal Immigration.

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And again, it's another article that I've talked about quite a bit. It's by Pastor Ralph Ovadol. It's an excellent piece. I highly recommend it to you.

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Maybe I'll go ahead and put a link in today's show notes again before I've, I've put it in show notes before, but I think it really is such a good article.

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And it's an eye -opener that you, it's a, it's a must read. I mean, if you want to understand where all these migrant caravans are coming from, you've got to read that article.

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You got to read that article. So anyway, so much for the Vatican news.

34:06

Let's, let's move on to the next one here. Let's see, what do we got? This is, this is USA Today.

34:12

So this is another pretty mainstream source. It says, Biden says

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Pope Francis okayed him receiving communion, calling him a good Catholic amid abortion debates. So you kind of can see a, a, a theme here.

34:28

Let's see. President Joe Biden said Friday that Pope Francis told him during a private meeting at the

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Vatican, he should continue to receive communion, raising doubts about the future of a movement by some conservative bishops to punish politicians who support abortion rights.

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Biden told reporters that the abortion, that abortion, a subject on which they disagree, didn't come up during a nearly 90 minute meeting.

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Instead, Biden said, we just talked about the fact that he was happy that I was a good Catholic and I should keep receiving communion.

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And it continues here. This is a, this is a detail that I haven't seen in other stories. Biden said the Pope blessed his rosary and said, and, and that he said a prayer with the

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Pontiff. And he said one for me. So, so, you know, what you have here is a Jesuit antichrist praying for the president of the

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United States. I mean, let's just state that very bluntly. That's what's going on. And see, this is, this is one of the things

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I want to stop here and just, just park on this for a moment. This is one of the, the, it's, it's astounding to me to watch what goes on.

35:29

You know, you've probably heard that, that saying that, you know, saying about, you know, boiling frogs.

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They say, you know, that if, if you, you put a frog in a, in a boiling water, he'll jump right out. But if you put a frog in water and you kind of slowly turn up the temperature, the frog doesn't, doesn't know he's being boiled until it's too late.

35:49

I don't know. I've never actually tested that myself or read of any study to find out that that's actually the way frogs behave, but it's, it's kind of a common metaphor.

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And I think we can probably at least grasp what the point is, you know, and that is that, that incremental changes can easily be missed by people.

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You know, when you go back to say John F. Kennedy in 1960, he had to go out of his way to separate himself from any influence of the

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Church of Rome. You know, there's actually a video where he went down and gave a speech before his minister's convention in, an evangelical minister's convention in Houston, Texas, and he talked very explicitly, you know, that, that he was, was, you know, as president, he would not let his, he would not bring his

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Roman Catholicism into the presidency. People were really concerned about it. Well, you fast forward,

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I mean, what are we, 60 years, 61 years later, you know, you've got the president of the

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United States meeting in secret with a Jesuit Pope. And again, nobody even seems bothered by this.

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And, and to me that, that is astonishing how far really the, the evangelicals,

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Protestants in the United States have fallen in the last 60 years. You know, that we look at this now and we go, huh, ho -hum, you know, and there was even an article, and this was back in 2015 when, when

37:16

Pope Francis came to the United States, you know, he came here, he spoke before Congress. That was the first time a Pope had ever addressed

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Congress. And there was an article that was run at that time in Christianity Today. And then there was titled,

37:28

From Antichrist to Brother in Christ. And it was all about how evangelical pastors had, you know, views had changed to not only not being concerned or denouncing the

37:40

Pope, but actually welcoming him as a brother in Christ, you know, which is, is of course, is, is not true.

37:48

You know, the Pope is not a Christian. You know, I think that's probably pretty shocking for some people, for me to say that, but that's true.

37:55

He is not a Christian. You know, Roman Catholicism is not Christianity. And when we say that, that's not something that I'm saying to be nasty, or to be mean, or to be bigoted, or because I hate

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Roman Catholics, because I don't, you know, as Christians. I mean, I know many wonderful Roman Catholic people.

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They're good people. They work hard. They're patriots. They're patriotic Americans. They, you know, they do the right things.

38:23

They love liberty, economic liberty. They love political liberty. In fact,

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I would even say that there are a lot of American Roman Catholics that are way more Protestant in their thinking, probably than what they realize.

38:40

But Roman Catholicism is not Christianity. And I say that because Roman Catholicism denies the gospel of justification by belief alone.

38:50

That is, you know, how does one become acceptable to God? Well, we don't become acceptable to God by doing good works, by anything that we do.

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It's through faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ, in his finished work. It's his righteousness, his law -keeping that is ascribed to us when we have faith in him, that God credits to our account.

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That's what saves us. That's the gospel. That's the good news. You and I don't have to go out and do good works. You and I don't have to go out and leap tall buildings in a single bound to be saved.

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All we have to do is trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. But that's not what Rome teaches. And because Rome fails to teach that,

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Rome is not Christian. And that's why as Protestants, we say what we say about the

39:41

Church of Rome. Let's take a look here.

39:47

Let's see. Is there anything else? Let's see. We had the blessing of Joe Biden's rosary.

39:56

I guess that's really a pretty good survey of the activities of Joe Biden in his meeting with the

40:07

Pope. And of course, you know, I'm sure there's going to be more of these things in the future. At least I would strongly suspect that that would happen.

40:15

He talked about this being his first meeting. And as I say, I strongly suspect it's not going to be his last meeting with the

40:22

Pope. And of course, just a couple of weeks ago, Nancy Pelosi went over to get her marching orders as well.

40:27

So we had two of the top political politicians in the United States take over to Rome to get their marching orders from the

40:36

Pope. And it's remarkable how much Joe Biden agrees with the political program of Pope Francis.

40:45

In fact, I wrote a blog article on this a few weeks ago called The Political Romanism of Joe Biden, and they're like two peas in a pod.

40:54

It's really an amazing thing. Maybe I'll put a link in the show notes for that as well. Well, anyway, that's about all

41:00

I had today. I was going to talk about a few other things, but you know, it's been a long day. I'm tired.

41:07

And it's really been, let's say, a wonderful day for me to have an opportunity to think about the

41:15

Reformation, to talk about the Reformation, to hear someone else really give a wonderful lecture on the

41:21

Reformation. Of course, I'm talking about Brother Timothy Kauffman. And again, I really hope that you have an opportunity to check out his talk.

41:29

As I said, I'm going to go ahead and put a link in the show notes to the Trinity Foundation live stream we had today.

41:36

So I hope you have a chance to check that out. So that's about all for this evening. At this time, I wanted to say thanks again for everybody who is listening in on the live stream today.

41:45

Appreciate having you here. And I wish you, as we prepare for Sunday, a blessed

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Lord's Day and Reformation Day. And we'll talk again next week. And until next time, may the spirit of truth guide you in all truth.