June 16, 2026 Show with William Webster and David T. King on “Who Is My Brother? Where Should Christians Draw the Line with Ecumenism”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on the 16th day of June, 2026.

I'm so thrilled to have two very dear friends of mine that I've known for decades. I've known one of them even before I knew James White. So I'm talking about going back to the early 1990s, at least, maybe the late 80s, and that would be William Webster, author and pastor of Grace Bible Church of Battleground Washington.

It's great to have you back on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Bill Webster. Good to be here, Chris. And by the way, you might want to turn up your volume a little bit more because you're lower than me. You were lower than you were earlier when we were doing the test.

All right. And before I introduce our other guest, Bill, please let our listeners know about Grace Bible Church of Battleground Washington.

We are a Reformed Baptist church, been here since 2002, no, 2001, committed to the Word of God, committed to the gospel, committed to trying as well as we can by the power of the Spirit to glorify the Lord.

In the preaching of his Word.

Amen. And a number of you may recognize William Webster's name, especially from his writings refuting the false teachings of Roman Catholicism. That's not all he writes and talks and preaches about, but that has been something that has dominated his ministry, at least in years past.

He's written books on the subject for Banner of Truth and even books that he has published himself through Christian Resources. And tell us about this new book that you're actually writing for the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

Yeah, that's our hope. It's a book on the subject of the law of God and whether the law of God is still applicable to new covenant believers in Christ. I'm of the firm belief that the law of God has not been abrogated, the moral law aspect of it.

Christ fulfilled the ceremonial aspect of the law. The civil law has been set aside because Israel is no longer a nation under God. That leaves the moral law and the primacy and the importance of that law as a governing principle of life.

It has a number of functions in the Word of God. No one is saved by the law, but the issue is, what about the Christian's relationship to it afterwards? And so we have to talk about what is sanctification, what is holiness of life, how do you define that?

And I believe the New Testament's very clear. We are not under the law as a means of attaining salvation, but as a governing principle of life, we are under it. Just as we are under the rest of the Word of God to walk in obedience to it by the power of the Spirit.

Amen. Well, I want to give our listeners the websites relative to your ministry, and I will repeat them later, but Grace Bible Church of Battleground Washington can be found at gracebiblebg for Battleground Washington, gracebiblebg .org, gracebiblebg .org, and also Bill's Christian Resources Publishing Ministry can be found at christiantruth .com, christiantruth .com.

And now my second guest that I am thrilled to have back on the program, David T. King, and I've known David going back to 1996, and the reason why I remember that specific date is because I will never forget the answering machine message that I received when I walked into my office for WMCA one day, saying that he was a pastor in Georgia at the time, and he wanted to attend the James White debate, and that's what gave birth to a long-lasting friendship that has continued to exist and grow ever since.

And it was because of William Webster that that debate even occurred, because I didn't know James White personally at the time, and 1995 is when I first started arranging the debate, and I had initially invited Bill Webster to be the debater to face off with Jerry Matytix, a former Presbyterian ordained minister who converted to Roman Catholicism, and Bill said, oh, no, you don't want me, you want James White, and that's what launched the Great Debate series on Long Island, and David attended at least one of those debates.

But David King is not only the assistant pastor of Christ Church, which is a congregation in the Presbyterian Church in America, of PD, Texas, but he is also the co-author, along with William Webster, of the groundbreaking, massive, 900-page, three-volume work, Holy Scripture, the Ground and Pillar of Faith.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Our Trip in Zion Radio, Pastor David T. King.

David T. King. Thank you, Chris. It's good to be here with my dear friends this afternoon.

Chris. Tell our listeners something about Christ Church in PD, Texas.

Well, as Chris indicated, Christ Church is a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. We are certainly a very conservative church, and our secondary standards being the Westminster Standards, we adhere to them, the Confession of Faith, and larger and shorter catechisms.

And we are a church that preaches the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Lord has blessed our church. We've been in KD for about 25 years. We just recently celebrated, I think, our 25th anniversary of the founding of the church, and so we have been here for quite some time, and it's a very solid, Reformed congregation.

And I can honestly say, without fear of being guilty of the sin of flattery and exaggeration and hyperbole, that David T. King is one of the finest preachers I've ever heard, a very bold and powerful preacher.

And Baptists will not be disappointed when you come here and preach. No dry, professorial lectures from David King, a bold man of God. So, I hope that anybody listening who is from the KD, Texas area, or if you have family, friends, and loved ones there, or if you're traveling through there on vacation, go to cckpca .org, cckpca .org.

Who Is My Brother and Why Ecumenism Matters

Well, brethren, I wanted to discuss an issue with you both today, especially since I know that the both of you are in harmony with me on this issue. First of all, you two are a living, vibrant example of how biblical ecumenism can and should be done.

Here we have today a Reformed Baptist pastor and a Presbyterian pastor who disagree with each other on at least one of the ordinances of the church and on church ecclesiology, but they share in common the same gospel and are boldly cooperating together, powerfully cooperating together in ministry in any way that the Lord will enable them to and open up the door to join efforts together, including they were both speakers a number of years ago at one of my Iron Trip and Sign Radio Free Pastors Lunches.

But, sadly, the issue of ecumenism for quite a long time has become an area where the church no longer is solely linking arms and identifying as brothers in Christ those who have the same gospel, but it has gone so far as professedly Reformed Christians and even academics and pastors and authors linking arms with Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, claiming that they are their brothers in Christ.

Now, of course, we know that there are some of God's elect in those false churches that are there for reasons perhaps only known to them. We don't believe that that is a correct way of living, to remain in union with these false churches, but at the same time, there are even Reformed Christians that share our theology out there who will make blanket statements about Catholics being our brother, the Catholic church being a true church that has some flaws rather than a false church that has some truth.

First of all, Pastor William Webster, how grieved are you over this? Is this nitpicking that we're involved in today? Are we trying to count the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin, or are these issues truly serious to the point of being life-threatening?

And I'm speaking of eternal life here.

I think if you read the epistle of Paul to the Galatians, he makes it quite clear that the gospel that he preached, the gospel that Christ preached, because he calls it the gospel of Christ, and he gives a very severe warning, a very sober, profound warning to all those who handled the Word of God that we must be very, very careful that what we are proclaiming to men is in fact true to what the Word of God reveals the gospel to be.

The gospel is a particular message, has a particular content doctrinally to distort anything in that gospel. And you're talking here about who is God, who is Christ, what is the work of Christ, how is that applied to an individual who comes to Christ for salvation, what does the gospel, what is the gospel, what is salvation?

What does it mean to be a Christian? All of these are supremely important because it's the foundation, literally, for the entirety of the New Testament and all of its teaching. Christ's ministry is all about the gospel and getting it right and addressing that which is false in the Word of God has a great deal to say about what is false.

So when Paul addresses this issue in Galatians, he is addressing a particular set of circumstances with a particular group of men who are proclaiming a certain message that they claim is the true gospel.

They profess Christ, but they're coming against Paul, saying that his gospel is deficient and they are coming behind him to the churches that he established to influence believers with their teaching that Paul clearly says is under the curse of God because they are distorting, he said, perverting the gospel that was given to him by Christ.

So this is a huge issue. It's been a huge issue all through church history. This is why, when you look at the teaching of Christ and his ministry to the Jews, you go into the history of the church, this issue of the gospel, it is all about the gospel.

Spiritual warfare is all about the gospel, and that's why the Reformation is so important. Roman Catholicism is a false gospel. It has not improved over time. There's a reason why God raised up the Reformers to proclaim the message of Paul and Jesus, coming back to the authority, sola scriptura, of the Word of God.

What is that gospel? What is salvation? And there are two basic errors related to the gospel that Paul addresses, that the New Testament addresses, legalism and antinomianism. Those are the defining issues that distort the gospel message.

And so in our day, then, we have to be very careful with that message and make sure that we are true to that message and not distort it. And if we do, we end up deceiving men as to their spiritual life, their spiritual state before God.

It's very, very serious. Paul says those who declare a false gospel are under anathema. That is the curse of God. That's how important that is.

And Pastor David King, there are churches today that will even say on their websites that they are apostles' creed Christians. Now, the church where I'm a member, Trinity Reformed Baptist Church, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, we as a congregation, and the only time where we may appear to be a liturgical church, a couple of times, well, perhaps more than a couple of times a year, but not every Sunday, but probably once every two or three months, we will recite, usually toward the end of the service, the Apostles' Creed and sometimes the Nicene Creed.

But as good and as true as those summaries of teaching, of Christian teaching are, would you say that they are really sufficient to stand alone? Because other than the fact that they do teach the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, the deeper and vitally important issues involving the gospel itself are absent from those creeds.

Chris, would you agree with me on that? And what do you have to say in response to what I said?

Yes, Chris. The creeds are not sufficient, really, to define the extent of the gospel, because you have in Roman Catholicism so many accretions, so many additions to what the Bible defines as the biblical gospel of Christ.

And over the centuries, although Roman Catholicism claims the authority of the magisterium, the scriptures, and tradition, you find that there are so many accretions that they've added in terms of what's defined as dogma.

And of course, when something reaches the level of dogma, from the perspective of Roman Catholicism, dogma is something that must be believed in order for one to be saved. And they consider all dogma to be part of the gospel.

That in itself is another gospel. It's not the gospel that we have in Holy Scripture. The gospel says that we are justified on the ground of the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the only means whereby we appropriate the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ to ourselves as Christians is by faith, and by faith alone in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ alone.

And given the reality that Rome has added so many unbiblical doctrines, doctrines that can't even find support in alleged tradition, so to speak, that they claim to be an authority. But these are Christians that have developed over time.

And oftentimes the question is asked, well, Pastor King, why is it or when was it that Rome departed from the gospel? And my answer is that such churches do not become bastions of heresy overnight, but they become that gradually as more and more they depart from the biblical gospel.

For instance, if you look at the church that the Reformers spoke against in their day, Rome has even adopted even more accretions to what they define as dogma than that which you had in the day of the Reformers.

So Rome today is even farther removed from the gospel than the Roman communion was in the time of the Reformers.

Now, I'll go to Bill this time. Pastor Bill, some have said that when Rome officially or formally became apostate was at the Council of Trent. I don't know if you would agree with that, but the issue of modern Roman Catholic apologists today who are trying desperately to woo evangelicals to not be angry with them and fear them and be more likely to even join them eventually, they will claim that these anathemas are not in any way, shape or form, directed towards us.

They're only directed towards Catholics who are still in the Catholic church, who depart from their teaching. And some would even say that they're not even for Catholics, they're for the audience of the 16th century when they were proclaimed.

Is this valid to claim such things in an effort to be more ecumenical with evangelicals and others, to basically say, don't worry, this is not an anathematizing of you, a cursing of you? Is this actually valid?

Well, if Paul said, anyone who preaches another gospel other than the one you've received, let him be anathema, that only applies to the specific people in that particular historical situation that he's speaking to.

Has nothing to do with us today. That is just a clever way of getting around. But the obvious is, the Council of Trent, all of these councils, Vatican I and Trent are the two major councils that have dogmatized what Roman Catholicism is today.

And both of them are very clear that the anathemas that they are communicating, promulgating, they have to do with teaching, and they have to do with anyone who teaches.

It says that, the very anathemas, if anyone, if anyone, if anyone. If anyone says.

So what they are, they're dealing with what they consider heresy. They're dealing with the Reformation and what the Reformers teach about the gospel. They're dealing with what they believe about the authority of the Word of God.

If you, if you denigrate tradition and make it subordinate to the ultimate authority of Scripture, you're condemned. If you, well, I'll give you an example, in Canon 10 on justification, the Council of Trent officially condemns the teaching of imputed righteousness by Christ as the basis for our justification.

They move that from Christ to the believer so that it's the righteousness, the works of the believer that justifies them, not Christ. And it specifically says, if you deny what we're saying and you affirm that justification is based on imputed righteousness, not yours, it's a gift of God, it is that which Christ alone has accomplished on our behalf because of the holiness of God and what he demands, you are under anathema.

You're cursed of God unless you repent. And this is true of all the anathemas in the Council of Trent in Vatican 1. Yeah, this is what Rome stands for. It's never changed. I mean, it's an ecumenical move to try to get men to accept the teaching of the church, the authority of the church.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches it is alone the one true church established by God for the salvation of men. And unfortunately, like the Jews of old, they became apostate, and it's still an apostate organization because its teachings have not changed.

Now, the anathemas of Rome—first of all, Council of Trent, was it not a council that was held specifically in response to the Reformation? I guess I'll have David respond to this. Was it not specifically in response to the Reformation?

And when it anathematizes clear elements of the gospel that were taught by the Reformers and are still taught by us today who consider ourselves heirs of the Reformers, there's no way you can say that the gospel of the Roman Catholic Church is in harmony with the of the evangelicals.

If Rome declared anybody who believes in our gospel is accursed. Does that make any sense, David?

From the Roman perspective, I would say that even though many of our modern-day apologists would deny that accursed means condemned to the flames of hell, you can go back even further than the Council of Trent.

You can go back to the Council of Florence and the Cantata Domino. It declared in that council that not only Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but it goes on to say that they will depart into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and the angels, unless before the end of life the same had been added to the flock, and of course the flock here means the Roman communion as they go on to say, and that the unity of the ecclesiastical body is so strong that only those remaining in it are the sacraments of the church of benefit for salvation and do fastings, almsgiving, and other functions of piety and exercises of Christian service.

They don't produce eternal reward, but that no one, whatever almsgiving he has practiced, even if he has shed blood for the name of Christ, can be saved unless he has remained in the bosom and unity of the Catholic, and read here, the Roman communion.

So they teach that we are indeed heretics that are under that condemnation, and Rome has never lifted that particular decree from the Council of Florence. It still stands today long before the Council of Trent.

The Council of Florence took place in the year 1441, and it just gradually departed. Now, when you look at the reformers, the response of the Council of Trent was in response to the reformers. We speak of the three arms of the Counter-Reformation, and the three arms of the Counter-Reformation were, first of all, the Council of Trent, the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits, and the Inquisition.

That was the three arms of the Counter-Reformation, and they made it clear that we who profess the Reformed faith are not included within the confines of salvation, and oftentimes I think it's simply nothing more than an ecumenical pitch that Roman apologists try to argue that we're not under an anathema that condemns us to the everlasting flames.

But when you read something like that particular bull from the Council of Florence, it makes it absolutely clear that we are consigned to the flames. So there is, in reality, until that has been rescinded, and they have never rescinded that declaration from the Council of Florence, then it, along with Trent, we still stand under an eternal anathema, as long as we remain outside of the flock of the Roman Communion.

So even though they like to refer to us, they no longer call us condemned heretics, but separated brethren. It just isn't so if you compare it to what their official documents.

Have declared in history. Now, isn't it impossible for them to renounce Trent because it is dogma, and dogma is permanent and can never be changed,.

According to Rome? Well, they look at Trent as an ecumenical council, and from their perspective, all ecumenical councils are infallible. Right. So it would be an admission,.

If they were to ever renounce the Council of Trent's anathemas, it would be an admission that they weren't infallible, and it would be a collapse.

Of the whole system. Exactly. One of the things that Rome boasts of is the Latin term semper adem, always the same, and yet it's not always the same. You come along and you look at someone, even after the Council of Florence that I just read from, you come to someone like Pope John Paul II, and he makes a comment such as this, that every true prayer is inspired by the Holy Spirit, who is mysteriously present in the heart of every person, and through the practice of what is good in their own religious traditions, and following the dictates of their consciences, members of other religions positively respond to God's invitation and receive salvation in Jesus Christ, even though they may not recognize him as Savior.

There you have the teaching of the anonymous, so-called anonymous Christian. He says the attitude of the church and of individual Christians with regard to other religions is characterized by sincere respect, deep kindness, and also where it is possible and appropriate cordial collaboration.

And he goes on to say in so many words that we can be included in that salvation. But that is a far cry from the gospel as defined by the Apostle Paul in verses 8 and 9 of Galatians chapter 1. It's just, it seems to me, they tried to have it both ways.

It just seems to me to be doublespeak.

Amen. And we have to go to our first commercial break. If anybody would like to join us with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.

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Their theme will be for the two days, Can True Believers in Jesus Christ Lose Their Salvation? That will be next Thursday and Friday right here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Make sure you mark your calendars.

The Gospel, Anathema, and Roman Catholic Claims

We are now back with our conversation with William Webster and David King, two dear friends of mine, one a Reformed Baptist, one a Presbyterian, and we are discussing who is my brother and where should Christians draw the line with ecumenism.

If you have a question of your own, please submit it to chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. Pastor Bill, before the break, David was speaking about how there are Roman Catholic apologists today who try to soften the blow of their anathemas by saying that it has nothing to do with cursing people to eternal hellfire, but merely claiming that they can't be members in good standing of the Roman Catholic Church.

That's all it means. What do you have to say about that?

Well, yeah, it is true you cannot be a good member in standing with the Roman Catholic Church if you believe doctrines that are foreign to what has been dogmatized by Rome. Vatican I makes that very clear.

You do not have saving faith. If you reject even one dogma, this is what it says, that has been promulgated by the Church of Rome. That would include papal rule, papal infallibility, the immaculate conception of Mary, the assumption of Mary.

Just, you know, a handful of certain doctrines that are dogma, those must be believed. They're part of saving faith. They're the ultimate authority of the Church, the legitimacy of Roman Catholic tradition in addition to Scripture.

Tradition is the inspired unwritten Word of God in addition to the inspired written Word of God. They're both of equal authority, which basically just says the Church of Rome is the determining factor for what is Scripture and what is tradition.

The ultimate authority is Rome itself. This goes far beyond what they're trying to say, that you are free to be part of this church and hold on to your particular views of Scripture and the gospel. We're all brothers.

We're all in this together. We're here to fight a culture war. We need to unite. We need to come together to oppose the, well, the overall corruption of our culture. We need to be moral. We need to come back to the fundamental truths of what it means.

As far as Scripture defines certain behaviors, we need to fight against abortion. We need to fight against homosexuality, transgenderism, whatever those particular…and there's an element of truth to that.

But that is not the gospel, and I cannot come together and claim that a particular organization or individual is my brother when they fundamentally deny the truth of the Word of God and what the gospel is, because the gospel is the ultimate answer to all of the ills of our society.

It's not legislation, and it's not a political movement. It's the preaching of the gospel, because the gospel alone is the power of God to salvation that can transform the heart and bring man into a right relationship.

With his Maker. But going back to the original question, though, the claim that these anathemas had nothing to do with cursing people to hellfire, that's a patently.

False claim, isn't it? Well, you understand, to qualify the statement, you are under anathema, and David made this point. You're under anathema, and you will go to hell if you don't repent. Right. There is room for repentance, to repudiate what you say you believe and come into the fold of mother church.

But in order to do that, you have to agree that the teachings of Rome are what is true, and you're going to turn away from these other doctrines that define what the true gospel is. You become an apostate, in other words, from the true gospel if you go into Roman Catholicism.

But if you are believing in those very things that the church of Rome has anathematized, if you continue believing in them, you will go to hell, at least according to the original intent of those gathered at the Council of Trent.

Right, because in their view, the church is salvation. In order to be saved, to be in the body of Christ, you have to be in the church. If you are not in the church, fully embracing its teachings, you are outside of Christ.

You have no salvation. And that involves doctrine. It involves practice. It is very clearly defined in Trent and Vatican I through the history of the church. Now, Vatican II tries to modify that, to mitigate that in a bit, in saying that we are not under condemnation.

We're a separated brethren. But if you're changing your position, as you indicated earlier, the church says it's infallible. It cannot change these anathemas because they're rooted in doctrine, and what you're going to end up saying is that if you change your mind about this, our whole view of doctrine was wrong.

So there's no way they can change that position and still hold to the fact that the church is infallible.

And it's interesting and very revealing that even as liberal as Pope Francis was and his successor is, they have never even hinted that they will recant Trent or renounce those anathemas.

No, I don't see how they could.

No, they can't. But it's just a revelation that they're not really as ecumenical as the masquerade will appear.

No. And those apologists who were speaking on behalf of Rome do not speak on behalf of the magisterium. That's their personal opinion. The magisterium of the church is very clear. Rome is the only true church.

It's the only source of salvation. You cannot be saved apart from it. Historically, that is what the church has always taught.

Now, Pastor David, on many occasions when friends of mine or even acquaintances will react to my statements that as much as I like them or love them and enjoy their company and admire them for their wonderful qualities, I cannot extend to them the title or even the role of being my brother because they have a different gospel if they are faithful to the church of Rome.