Purgatory with Dr. Michael Brown

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Well, hello, friends, and welcome to the Reform Rookie Podcast. My name is Anthony Eufenio, and I'm your Reform Rookie host, bringing you all things

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Reformed. The goal of this podcast is to take the deep -rich truths of the Reformed tradition and break them down into smaller, understandable pieces.

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I want to help you see the beauty of these doctrines and the joy you'll experience in understanding them better, and how they're all interconnected.

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Understanding these truths will help us better know the God of the Scriptures and help us to better appreciate the hope and confidence we have in Jesus Christ.

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And to that I say, Semper Reformanda. Now today, I'm excited to have a really special guest on the show.

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I have the distinct pleasure of speaking with Dr. Michael Brown today, who is a Christian apologist and a host, and the host of the

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Line of Fire and Ask Dr. Brown radio show. Welcome Dr. Brown. Hey, great to be with you,

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Anthony. Thanks so much. Could you just give us a brief introduction about you and your ministry? Yes, sir.

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A Jewish believer in Jesus came to faith in 1971 as a heroin -shooting LSD -using hippie rock drummer, 16 years old, when the

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Lord wonderfully saved me. My dad was thrilled to see the change in my life, but said, look, we're Jews, we don't believe in this.

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Brought me to meet the local rabbi, who became a good friend, began to challenge me, don't even know Hebrew, and so on.

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So that's what led to my academic studies, ultimately with a PhD in Near Eastern languages and literatures from New York University, and biblical scholarship undergirds everything that we do.

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But our ministry has three main emphases, three R's. The first is revival, meaning revival in the church, seeing believers truly turn back to God, their first love, and see a great visitation in our nation.

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And then the second is a gospel -based moral and cultural revolution in society. So as Jesus changes us through the gospel, we bring change to the world around us.

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And then the third R, redemption in Israel, working to see the Jewish people saved. And we do that through the various arms of our ministry.

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We have a daily live radio broadcast, as you mentioned, the Line of Fire that's on radio and then airs live on the internet with a video feed as well.

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I normally write about five op -eds a week dealing with the key issues in the world surrounding us.

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And then we've had ministry schools who raised up and sent out folks around the world on the mission field and travel and speak.

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But everything boils down to those three R's, revival in the church, gospel -based moral and cultural revolution in society, and redemption in Israel.

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Amen. Praise God for the work you do, Dr. Brown. Thank you so much for that. So now normally I ask my guests to give their testimony into Reformed Theology or the

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Doctrines of Grace, but that's not going to happen today. Dr. Brown is not Reformed and actually debates against my position.

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In fact, I was a moderator for a debate that he did against a Calvinist. So why on earth would

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I mention this and why would I have Dr. Brown on the show? Well, because Dr. Brown is a Christian and there's much to be learned from him.

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He's a well -respected scholar and an apologist to the Jewish community and elsewhere. He's a staunch defender of the faith and stands against many of the unbiblical issues that we're facing today, like same -sex mirage and transgenderism and abortion.

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He's the author of at least 22 books that I've counted and maybe more. You can correct me if I'm wrong, Dr. Brown. So I'm grateful to him and the work.

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How many? Over 42 now. Oh my goodness. We got to update. You missed a few. You missed a few.

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Yeah. I just went on Wikipedia, that's all. But I'm grateful to him and the work that he's done to advance the kingdom of God.

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So in the spirit of love and unity, I wanted to have Dr. Brown on the show to discuss a recent debate that he did with a

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Roman Catholic apologist by the name of William Albrecht on the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory.

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Now as Christians, Dr. Brown and I can disagree on some issues and yet still love one another and learn from one another in the midst of our differences.

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So with that in mind, I want to turn our attention to the topic tonight, which is purgatory. So Dr. Brown, what would you say, what would be the definition of purgatory?

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Purgatory is, in short, a place that believers would go to after death to receive further purification of their sins, to make them fit for being with God forever, with eternal life in heaven.

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So it is something in the afterlife. It's not something that takes place in this world.

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It does have a duration. It's not eternal hell punishment. But there is purging, there is discipline, there is purification, and it is to make us ready, fully holy, fully pure, to be with God forever.

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Okay. So do you think it's something in Roman Catholic theology that holds that this is necessary?

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Is it something, is there something necessary due to their doctrine of salvation? Yeah, certainly, if you have a defective view of the fullness of justification by faith, of the fullness of what happens the moment someone is born again, of the full efficacy of the blood of Jesus, of the reality of the purification we receive through the cross, all of which qualify us to be with God forever, not because of works we've done, but because of God's righteousness in Christ.

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If there's anything lacking in that view, anything where the justification seeps over into works on some level, then purgatory would make sense.

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That yes, you're saved, you're forgiven, but you're not quite ready. It would make sense based on that logic and based on a deficient view of the fullness of the cross.

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So would this have something to do with imputed righteousness versus infused righteousness?

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Yes, you could say that. Certainly we all believe, when I say we all, those of us who believe that holiness is important say that repentance and faith go hand in hand, that a person who's a true believer will demonstrate their faith through their works.

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We believe that. We believe that we prove our repentance by our deeds, and yet when we stand before God or when we enter his eternal presence, it's not that we reached a certain level in our personal sanctification and that qualifies us to get in.

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It's rather that we've been accepted because of the sacrifice of Jesus. Right.

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So as a Protestant, when we repent and place our faith and trust in Jesus, we get his perfect righteousness imputed to us such that we are declared legally innocent in his sight.

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Now, that's not true of Roman Catholicism, correct? Yes, you would.

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And again, my emphasis, even in agreeing to the purgatory debate, was not even to look at Catholic doctrine.

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It was simply to say, what does the Bible say? Right. That was the full extent of it. So, you know, I've heard

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Catholic scholars say that we misinterpret their views on the cross or we misinterpret their views of justification by faith.

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But to me, the simple thing is to bottom line it and to say, OK, why is it that one person you're saying is qualified at death to immediately go into God's presence to be with him forever, but someone else has to go through a period of purification?

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And it would be because their life has not reached that state yet. Therefore, in terms of why you should be accepted forever in God's presence or why you should have fellowship with him, eternal fellowship, you cannot simply say based on the imputed righteousness of Christ, you can't say that it has to be that plus some level of spiritual development.

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Otherwise, you wouldn't need purgatory. Right. I think even William admitted as much when he said that there may be millions or billions of people who are instantly purified versus other people who have to undergo some temporal punishment.

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Right. So, of course, that begs the question of where that division is.

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It begs the question, as I pressed in the debate as to the thief on the cross, on what basis is a thief on the cross enter instantly into paradise with Jesus?

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Right. Truly, truly, I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise. The man had no time to work out his repentance, no time to demonstrate the fruits of his new faith, and yet he instantly goes to paradise with Jesus.

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Another question I pressed is at the end of the age, when Jesus returns, all who are alive will be caught up to meet him in the air as he descends to set up his kingdom.

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So the dead in Christ rise and we who are alive and remain will be caught up to meet him in the air.

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So we're all instantly transformed. And so we will be with him forever. Right. So why is it that every single person alive on the earth that's a believer in the last generation, every single one could be billions, hundreds of millions?

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We don't know the numbers, but every single one of them goes instantly into the presence of God with no purgatory.

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Why? What's different about that last generation? I mean, obviously, the whole thing breaks down when you press it.

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It's a major inconsistency. In fact, as I was looking up some information on purgatory, the

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Council of Trent taught that there are three realms of hell, purgatory, limbo and hell proper, which is

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Gehenna, the prison, which is eternal. So wouldn't this mean based on their own theology that some

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Christians would go to hell before heaven? Yeah, a kind of hell, right?

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Right. I mean, purgatory is more of a kind of hell than a kind of heaven. I mean, you know,

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William basically sought to say, no, no, you're in the presence of God already or something like that, you know, tried to not push the location issue, but it's a place of punishment.

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It's a place of pain. It's a place of purging, which is not what we think of in the glorious, unfettered presence of God.

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And by the way, just to mention this, I asked my assistant Dylan to retract the emails leading up to the debate and to try to see for those who watched it, why there was such a profound misunderstanding of the ground rules between William and me.

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I don't debate Catholics. It's just not a focus I've had over the years. I don't mean I'd refuse to. I've had endless discussions with Catholics over the decades, but I don't debate

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Catholics. My colleague, Dr. James White, has specialized, among other things, in debating

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Catholics over the years. It's just never been a focus of mine and you can't focus on everything equally. So I was asked by a debate moderator,

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William wanted to debate me on some other subject, you know, very Catholic focused subject.

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I said, I have no interest in that. And then it was proposed, how about is purgatory biblical?

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I said, that I'll do. Sure. We're just going to talk about what the Bible says. Then it was proposed, is purgatory ancient and biblical?

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I said, no interest in debating that. I'm simply going to debate this purgatory biblical. So I thought we had spelled out the parameters pretty clearly.

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In William's mind, you could say, well, we never said you can't use the apocrypha.

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In my mind, if he's debating a Protestant, we're asking if it's biblical, that's self -evident. So that was a mix up there.

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And then I thought it was clear enough that we weren't debating what the church father said. And in many ways, they were misrepresented in a debate, but that's not what the debate was about.

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So I wasn't going that way. I was simply staying with what the Bible says. But it is interesting that I've had colleagues say to me that not only was there gross misinterpretation of scripture by William in the debate, but there was also misrepresentation of church father's positions and misrepresentation of the

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Catholic position on purgatory. So those things are interesting. Maybe we could probe some of those as we go on. Sure.

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Absolutely. Absolutely. And I heard of that Dr. White guy that you talked about. I heard of him.

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Did you know that the Council of Trent pronounces an anathema on Protestants who reject that doctrine?

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It says, if anyone says that after the grace of justification has been received, the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out for any repentant sinner that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be paid either in this world or in the other in purgatory before access can be open to the kingdom of heaven, let him be anathema or excommunicated.

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Did you know that? Yeah. First thing is the Council of Trent wouldn't have even seen us as members of the church to excommunicate, right?

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We're already outside because we're not Catholic. Right. But this is plainly saying that if a Roman Catholic holds to the view that we espouse as clearly biblical, yeah, then we should be excommunicated and notice that there's something remaining of the guilt or the debt of eternal punishment and that there must be some temporal punishment.

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Right. So it is still saying that on some level that you must be punished for your sins before you're capable of entering

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God's eternal kingdom and thus ensure that the blood of Jesus is not enough, that the cross and resurrection are not enough, that our own temporal punishment must be added to it.

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And then, of course, that's a very, very grave mixing of grace and works, a very grave mixing.

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Right. In fact, this was one of the questions that I wanted to hit later, but I might as well bring it up now. If Jesus pays the price for our sins and incurs

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God's wrath upon him for our sins, what punishment are we receiving?

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Are we receiving on their doctrine, are we receiving punishment for sins that have already been paid for?

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It would sound like that. Again, a Catholic apologist would try to approach it differently and speak it differently.

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But that certainly would be how it sounds to my ears in hearing that.

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And here's the other thing. We know that in this world, we can be disciplined by God.

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We know that Hebrews 12 talks about growing in holiness through divine discipline. So we fully understand that trials and tests and difficulties can cause us to draw near to God in this world.

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And we can grow in holiness. And we know that there are times of divine discipline. Hebrews 12 uses the word punishment in this world.

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But it is not for the purpose of salvation or forgiveness, but rather just in our walk with God as children that this happens.

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But it is always as children. And as I pointed out in the debate based on Hebrews 10, already because of what

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Jesus did, we can now enter the most holy place in fellowship with God in prayer. And according to Ephesians 2, we are already seated with Christ in heavenly places.

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Right. So how does that go backwards when we die? How does it get lost? If I can go into the most holy place of all right now in fellowship with God through the blood of Jesus, why can't

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I now step out of this world and be with Him forever? Yeah. Amen. I agree with you. There was one scripture that you had brought up, 2

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Corinthians 5 .8, to be absent from the bodies, to be present with the Lord. And he said that that wasn't the right rendering of that particular scripture.

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So I looked it up and says, yes, we are of good coverage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the

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Lord. So was he justified in saying what he said? How would you look at that scripture?

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Yeah, that quotation received pushback from him and some of the comments from those that were in his camp.

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I didn't look at all of them, but some were just outraged quoting it. But what's Paul's whole point? The end of 2

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Corinthians 4, he explains that our outward body is perishing, but our inward being is renewed every day.

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And we're looking at that, which is eternal, not temporal. Then he starts off the fifth chapter by saying that we groan because we're in this earthly tent and we're longing for the eternal, right?

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In this tent, we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling. If indeed by putting it on, we won't be found naked, so it will be righteous in Him.

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While we're in this tent, we groan being burdened, not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed so those mortal may be swallowed up by life.

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And then we're always of good courage. We know that while we're at home in the body, we're away from the Lord for we walk by faith, not by sight.

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Yes, we're of good courage and we would rather be away from the body and home with the Lord. I mean, it's pretty simple.

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And really, it's not even a big issue because the bigger issue was say Philippians 1 where Paul says,

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I desire to depart and be with Jesus. Not I desire to depart, go through purgatory and be with Jesus.

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And this just backs it up that he understood if he left this world, he's present with the Lord. Just like the thief on the cross, just like those who've been beheaded for their faith in Revelation 6 or before the throne, that that's the

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New Testament mentality. We are awaiting our resurrected body, but in spirit, we would go be in His presence.

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And there's nothing misleading about the way I quoted it whatsoever. That's why I read the whole context. Right. Yeah, no,

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I think that makes perfect sense. I just had never heard that rebuttal to that particular verse.

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And I'm just glad that you clarified it. Obviously, the big one for them is 1

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Corinthians 3, 9 through 17. So I just want to read it real quickly, and then we can go through exactly what it means.

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It says, we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder,

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I laid a foundation and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it.

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For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay or straw, each one's work will become manifest for the day will disclose it because it will be revealed by fire and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.

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If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

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Do you not know that you're God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple,

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God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy and you are that temple. So does this paragraph imply purification or punishment for the believer?

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It implies neither, actually, and it's quite explicit. Some limited to church planters or those that are building the foundation or building on the foundation in other church work.

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But let's apply it to every believer, that every believer on some level is building on the foundation of Jesus.

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And it says that that person's works will be tested. Now, it doesn't say that the works will be purified or that the person will be purified, let alone punished.

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Rather, the works will be tested. There are some passages in which we are judged by our works and there are other passages in which our works are judged.

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So this is saying you work for the Lord in this life. And perhaps everything you did was based on pride or had ulterior motive or greed.

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And you were a famous pastor with a giant ministry and so on. And all that goes up in the fire.

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It's wood, hay, stubble. Notice nothing is purified. Nothing here gets purified. It goes up in the fire, gone.

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The other, maybe you did it all with a heart of love for the Lord, humility. It goes through the fire and it comes out of the fire.

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Gold, silver, precious stones. Doesn't say that they get purified. Not a syllable about it.

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Rather, they go through the fire and they survive. In that case, you receive a reward.

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What happens if everything goes up in the fire? You're still saved, but you lose that reward.

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Nothing about the person's salvation. Nothing about the person's purification. Not a syllable, not a hint at it whatsoever.

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Right. There was one point in the debate where William said that the reward was salvation. So my question would be, what would the loss be?

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Exactly. If the reward is salvation and the loss is the opposite of that, but you are still saved, then what did you lose?

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Yeah. So it's utterly illogical. And it even felt, again, I don't focus on Roman Catholic theology, but it even felt that things were being represented in a certain way to try to rebut my argument rather than to be faithful to the doctrine that he was defending.

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So he tried to combine the person with the works themselves. Why doesn't that work?

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Because the text quite explicitly says the opposite. So in other words, we know other texts where it says, you'll be judged by your works, right?

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Here, it says each one's work will become manifest. It will be revealed by fire.

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The fire will test what sort of work each one has done. And then if the work survives, then he receives a reward.

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So he is not the work, right? You and I are not the work. I don't know how Paul could say it any more plainly, right?

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The work you did will be tested. And based on that test, you'll either receive a reward or not.

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You say, well, what about the final line that if anyone's working, he'll suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

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That means that he has been saved through fire. That's the only syllable in the whole passage that could possibly be interpreted in a purgatorial way.

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Number one, since the whole passage tells us the opposite of that. Number two, since the whole

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New Testament tells us the opposite of that. And number three, since we have an idiom that occurs a couple of times in the

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Old Testament of someone being like a brand plucked from the fire, we know what it means. It's metaphorical for barely escaping.

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So everything you did, think of it, all your life work was mixed motive or something was wrong with it.

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It all gets burned up. What about me? Well, you're still safe as through fire. I mean, you barely made it, but you're still saved.

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It's what Peter quotes from Proverbs in 1 Peter 4. If the righteous are scarcely saved, what about the ungodly?

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So that's all it's talking about. And again, to read it as anything else, when the whole context is telling us the opposite is a gross misreading of the text.

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And in all candor, you mentioned at the outset reformed issues. I fully understand how someone could read the

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Bible and come out of Calvinist. And I fully understand how someone could read the Bible and not come out of Calvinist.

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I cannot understand how anyone could read the Bible and come out believing in purgatory. And in fact,

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I read this passage, memorized the passage for years before I heard that Catholics used it to teach purgatory.

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It's like, what? Are you kidding me? And this is like the big text in the

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New Testament. I was shocked and then equally shocked to hear the others that are used too. It's like, are you kidding me?

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Right, right. You know, as I have meditated on this passage, I recognize that the term gold, silver, precious stones in the

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Old Testament always refers to the materials that they would use to build God's temple, right?

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And earlier in the passage, Paul says that we are God's temple. So I see the gold, silver, precious jewels as being potentially the teaching that the teacher puts forth.

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Are they giving them gold, silver, precious jewels to build up the body of Christ, which is the temple of God.

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And then the other phrase that I see, wood, hay, or straw, those are the things that the

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Jews had to gather together to build Pharaoh's temple. So I see a dichotomy between building up God's people or doing things of the world or sewing in something that's worldly, according to Pharaoh's temple.

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Does that make sense, Rajiv? Yeah, I mean, whether it was building Pharaoh's temple or Pharaoh's city or things like that, it's either many, many different levels on which we could understand this.

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I gave the example of building based on pride and self -exaltation versus just for the honor of the

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Lord. It could be, it's the quality and the reason behind what we put forward, which is not always gonna be evident to others.

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So it could be many things. It could be, yeah, I was the best known teacher on the planet, but it was just really superficial stuff.

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And the people that followed me were not really helped. I was still saved, but it just was unhelpful and it all goes up in the smoke.

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Right, so I think those are good observations in terms of looking for ways to apply it. Okay, one last question about this.

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What I kind of was looking at, the fact that if we're not separated from our works, the way

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William had argued, and our works determines our reward, and when he said salvation is our reward, wouldn't that mean that we are in some way saved by our own works, either by including them or as something that we've done?

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Yeah, it would indicate that. Again, a good point to press because that would be a logical reading of the argument that he was making.

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Right, okay. Now I know you guys - And then even what you read from the Council of Trent still points in that direction that there's something we have to do to avoid further temporal punishment.

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And if it's something that we do, then we have to be punished for it. So there's some lack of work, some lack of work or lack of consecration on our end for which we must be punished.

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So again, it breaks down into a works orientation. It reminds me of Romans 10, they pursued it as if it were by works and not by faith.

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I mean, this is the whole justification by faith issue. It's a very subtle thing. It's a very subtle thing.

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Paul said, the Jewish people had a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. Right, right.

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So, okay, I know you guys didn't, well, not you guys, but you particularly didn't go into the early church fathers.

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But do you know if this passage was unanimously interpreted this way by the early church fathers? No, of course not.

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The first thing, at one point in the debate, I just told people, hey, just get online and search.

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Don't take you long, just get online and search. But at one point he said it's unanimous.

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He goes, no, of course, not all of them talked about it. So in other words, let's just say theoretically that there are 50 church fathers.

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Okay, you know, the most famous. And let's say five of them talked about this passage and interpret it the same way.

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And he'd say all the church fathers interpreted unanimously. That's the kind of misleading statement. Right. And when he said, look,

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I've even referred to the church fathers as the disciples of the apostles. I said, no, no, no, first generation.

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That's how I described the first generation, like a polycarp who was a disciple of John, right?

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What did they say? What did the first generation of the church leaders, the ones that we, you know,

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Justin Martyr and these others that we'd look at, you know, our first or second generation, what did they say about purgatory?

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The only place you go maybe is to origin who then believed in the eternal, the universal reconciliation of everyone.

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He's ultimately, you know, excommunicated for it, you know, many years later, but you just, you don't even find it talked about.

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And then even later on, you find different views being expressed. So it was a gross overstatement to say the least.

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Right. So what would, how would prayer, like you probably know best with regards to this.

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Most people say that the Jews had prayers for the dead. That was a tradition. How would that factor in?

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Is there anything in the old Testament that talks about, we should pray for the dead? Was that just a tradition based on that?

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There's nothing in the old Testament that even suggests that. There's not a single example of anyone praying for the dead.

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And you look, you'd think that this would be recorded because it's such a natural tendency to want to do something when somebody's dead.

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There's so much ancestor worship to this day around the world. There's this desire that, you know, okay, the person's lost.

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Can I pray? Can I pray for them now? You want to do something. So it's human nature. And it's part of a lot of ancient superstitious religions and beliefs.

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And yet not a syllable about it in the Bible. Everything is the person dies and then they rest with their fathers.

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You know, that's it. They're buried. They rest with their fathers. You know, David, when he's going to lose a child, you know,

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I'll go to them. They will come to me again. There's a finality. What's mentioned in Hebrews 9, it's appointed to men wants to die.

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And after this, the judgment would be self -evident through the Old Testament. You've got the righteous and the wicked. You've got life and death.

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You've got blessing and cursing. You've got resurrection to eternal life or resurrection to eternal shame and reproach.

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You know, Daniel 12, it's just either or. It's just laid out like that. So not a syllable about it.

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The passage brought from 2nd Accademy, I didn't want to get into at all because that's not what

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I agreed to debate from the outset. But even there, people press it and say, that's really doesn't support purgatory because even praying for idolaters, which by definition would be lost in hell.

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So that doesn't really support it. And then 2nd Maccabees was never part of a widely accepted

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Jewish canon in the ancient world. It's even disputed through, you know, church history for centuries as far as whether it's canonical or not.

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So, I mean, that, again, he said, well, you are a debate. That's not now, but I could have easily, you know, demolished that view as well.

30:41

But when you just look at what we all agree on is biblical, not a syllable in the Old Testament, not a syllable in the

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New Testament. And as we said, everything going in the opposite direction.

30:53

So you would think it would be recorded somewhere or a teaching either to support it or nothing, nothing, everything to the contrary.

31:02

Even Josephus didn't accept 1st and 2nd Maccabees, correct? Right. Right.

31:08

So, I mean, and if you were to use 2nd Maccabees, idolatry is a mortal sin.

31:15

So that cuts you off of the grace of God in Roman Catholic theology, and there's no prayer that's going to change that.

31:21

Right. Exactly. It's a mute point. Yeah. And for Josephus, you know, he referenced the exact same

31:27

Old Testament, just included like the 12 minor prophets, included them as one book.

31:32

So the number is different. But yeah, the exact same Old Testament that we hold to today.

31:37

And that, you know, what we understand through Jewish history, once there was a received canon, these books. Yeah. I mean, you can even read quotes from Jerome and others talking about the canonicity of the other biblical books and not the apocryphal books.

31:49

But again, I simply refuse to go there. Of course, I get attacked. Well, you weren't prepared. It wasn't preparation.

31:54

That was not the issue. The issue is what we agreed to debate. And I was not going to get off track and go down a rabbit trail.

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But I had already been just even in refreshing my mind on certain things and searching for others.

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I had seen refutations of purgatory based on Second Maccabees that it doesn't work. I just wasn't going to go there.

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Now, when you said the Roman Catholic Church doesn't know if purgatory is a place, doesn't know how long it lasts, or if there's even time associated with it, yet they know it exists.

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How is this possible? Is this just pure tradition? Yeah, I mean, it's traditional teaching.

32:32

You had different views about afterlife. Look, there are all kinds of traditions that Jews and other groups held to.

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We know that there were heretical gospels written beginning in the second, third century. So there have always been heretical views and other traditions and all kinds of speculation about the netherworld and the afterlife.

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So there were ancient speculations, traditions that were not biblical and not from God.

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And then they built on that. Look, where did Dante's Inferno come from? There's imagery, then you build on it.

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You build tradition on it. And then look, if you're Catholic, you believe the tradition is inspired as well.

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You believe that the mother church is the pillar of the truth. And therefore, what the church teaches is the right interpretation of scripture.

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But the idea, let me just say this, having not delved deeply into Catholic theology in the area of purgatory, the idea that you are in the presence of God, so in his eternal presence already, being purged and punished for your sins was something different than I had understood about purgatory up until then.

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But that's what William tried to say. Is that how you heard it? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

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And this leads to their doctrine of indulgences, right? So I looked it up on catholic .org,

33:57

and it says the Enchiridion, which means handbook, and the

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Enchiridion of indulgences is the church's official handbook on what acts and prayers carry indulgences and what indulgences actually are.

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And it says an indulgence is defined as the remission before God of the temporal punishment due for sins already forgiven as far as their guilt is concerned.

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So if an indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment, then time has to be associated with purgatory in some way, shape or form.

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Yeah, I mean, you're praying for the person to get out sooner, right? Or you're paying for an indulgence.

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I mean, this came, you know, was at such an abusive form when Luther protested against it, you know, in Tetzel's sale of indulgences, you know, the moment the coin drops in the, in, you know -

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Coin in the copper ring, the soul from purgatory springs, right? Exactly.

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I mean, so where do those abuses come from? Fine, it was an abuse, but where does it come from? Now look, in traditional

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Judaism, there is the belief that there, you know, it's a purgatory type of concept that's held in traditional

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Judaism, and that, you know, the perfectly righteous go straight to heaven, and the perfectly wicked go straight to hell.

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One goes up and doesn't come back down. The other goes down, doesn't come up. Basically everybody, most everybody is like in the middle somewhere.

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They're not perfectly righteous. They're not perfectly wicked. So they go down for a little while, and then they go up. That's the way it's characterized.

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Now, again, this is because there's no revelation of the cross. There's no revelation of the full work of the Messiah. So it's, again, logical that a

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Judaism would have a belief like this. And the most wicked person would theoretically be punished for 12 months and purified, and then could go into the heavenly kingdom.

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Because no one's really that bad, you know, except for the perfectly wicked. They don't get there. So it's only for a period of 11 months.

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I'm oversimplifying, but that's the basic concept. So if a family member dies, and you're a religious

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Jew, you pray what's called the Mourner's Kaddish. So Kaddish is a prayer sanctifying the holiness of God.

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And you pray it daily for 11 months. And then it helps the person. You know, it helps speed their release.

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But in Judaism, you don't even pray for the person. You don't even say a word about it. And you just praise God and sanctify

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God. You don't say a word about the dead, really. You just praise and sanctify God for his kingdom and so on and so forth.

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And that's it. But either way, the parallel is no cross, no fullness of the cross, no fullness of redemption, hence the need for some type of purgatorial place.

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In fact, that was several years ago. I was in a Jewish temple in Brooklyn with two other men, and we were witnessing to some of the rabbis there.

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And they had brought up this notion of being in some place for 12 months and then being brought out of that into the presence of God.

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And I just asked, where does it say that in the Old Testament? And they didn't have any scriptures for me.

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But the same thing in Judaism, it doesn't have to be in the Old Testament. In other words, according to traditional

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Judaism, the only issue is, is it taught in our tradition? Because the traditions are also inspired on some level.

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So sometimes you try to tie things in with an Old Testament text, but other times we don't need to because we do it by the authority of the rabbis.

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The same way the church would do it by the authority of the Pope. It's a similar kind of concept of, like the historian

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James Parks once said, church historian that the Catholic church is no more the religion of the

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New Testament than Judaism is the religion of the Old Testament. You'd never come to these things just based on the

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Bible. Now, have you ever heard of something called the Sabbatine privilege? Do you know what that is? No, I probably should, but I haven't.

37:57

No, no, you shouldn't. It was something that was taught by Mother Angelica and the Roman Catholic Church never said that it's official dogma.

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But what the teaching was, was if you were wearing your scapula, which you get,

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I think a confirmation. If you're wearing your scapula at the time of death, Mary herself would descend out of heaven into purgatory and bring you out of purgatory on the

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Saturday after you die. Now that was never renounced by the Catholic church. And it was just something that she taught and was accepted.

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So again, it just makes me understand that. First of all, if Mary is descending on the

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Saturday after you died, it definitely has a temporal aspect to it.

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There's time associated with it and it's a place. Yet the Roman Catholic Church says it's not temporal or a place.

38:52

Maybe I misheard sometimes in the debate, you're busy taking notes and looking at what you wanna respond to.

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I thought William was saying no one can give a specific amount of time, put an exact timeframe on things.

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And that was his argument. But certainly everything I've ever known through the decades in the church where I came to faith, most all the people in that little church came out of Catholicism.

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The vast majority were former Roman Catholics, some very devout before they were born again. And then

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I've been to Italy 27 times and worked with the church in Italy for decades. And there's constant interaction in that case with Roman Catholics.

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And I've never ever heard any denial of the time factor.

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In fact, it seems to go on for quite some time. You're really praying this person out of purgatory.

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And again, it can be a good way to make money on top of it. You say masses for the dead, right?

39:54

And finally, what boggles my mind, again, the Roman Catholic church has this doctrine of the treasury of merit.

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It's the treasury of the bank account that the excess merit of Jesus, Mary, and the saints goes into this account and it's applied to you when you die.

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So how could the merit of Jesus alone not be enough to get you out of purgatory and into heaven?

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If the merit of Jesus, Mary, and the saints can't get you directly into heaven, what is it that you could possibly do that's gonna get you into heaven?

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Yeah, well, that's where it would come down to punishment or purification or something. Some type of separation has to be made.

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But ultimately, what's my plea? When I stand before God, on what basis?

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The question you always ask people when you're witnessing, right? Sure. Related to some good part. Well, if you were to stand before God and he was to ask you on what basis do you get to be with me forever?

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You know, the right answer is, well, through the blood of Jesus, I put my trust in him to save me and forgive me and cleanse me.

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And he's my Lord and savior. Because the moment they say, because I did this or I did this or I suffered a lot of good.

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Well, all you have to do is start revealing their sin and the depth of it and the massive amount of it.

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And you realize in a million lifetimes, I could never pay God back for my sins. That's right. And then if I'm gonna suffer for my sins, well, what's the difference between that and eternal punishment, you know?

41:25

Right, right. Yeah, this can really, it is a pernicious doctrine. It can really lead people astray.

41:32

Okay, so two more quick things about purgatory and the Catholic view. And then I wanna go into what the Protestant position is.

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So catholic .org says this. The first thing to note is that forgiveness of sin, of a sin is separate from the punishment for sin.

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Through sacramental confession, we obtain forgiveness, but we aren't let off the hook as far as the punishment goes.

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So this seems to be saying that although we have forgiveness of sins, there's still punishment for sin necessary that Jesus didn't incur.

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Yes, so the question was, was he punished on my behalf? Right. Did he suffer on my behalf?

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Yes, we know in doing so he paid for our sins, but didn't he pay for our sins by enduring the punishment for our sins?

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Didn't he take our place when the Lord put on him the iniquity of us all as per Isaiah 53, six.

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And then it says later in the chapter that it pleased the Lord to bruise him. It's not that one of the same thing that our sin was put on him.

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Therefore, punishment was put on him. Therefore, we are freed from that. If we are punished in this world, as I mentioned earlier,

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Hebrews 12, the one place that uses that according to the Septuagint from Proverbs three, it's in terms of growth in holiness, growth in character has nothing whatsoever to do with forgiveness.

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The notion that anything that I suffer can earn me forgiveness is contrary to the gospel message.

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Isn't that what the word propitiation means? I mean, it turns away God's wrath such that there is no wrath left for us.

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Yeah, it really has a twofold meaning in a propitiation. You know how in terms of God word and us word.

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And yeah, part of it, the one side of the coin is the sacrifice that turns away wrath.

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So it pays for sins, turns away wrath. There are, it depends on context in terms of how you would want to translate it.

43:37

But both nuances are clearly there in the text. Yeah, is that the difference between expiation and propitiation?

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Expiation is towards the sin and propitiation is towards God. Yeah, you could state it like that.

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It's just the Greek word for propitiation has a bit broader meaning. Okay, okay.

43:57

All right, so that basically, I mean, satisfies me as far as the Catholic position on purgatory and I don't see it as being biblical at all.

44:06

So I loved the scriptures that you brought up. What is the

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Protestant position? In other words, when we're justified by faith, what happens? The moment we are saved, we are transferred from the kingdom of Satan to the kingdom of God's son.

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We go from being children of the devil to children of God. We go from being guilty to forgiven.

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We go from being unrighteous to righteous. We go from death to life.

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We not only do that, we are acquitted in God's sight, not guilty, that's part of forensic righteousness.

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But not only that, we go from unholy, children of wrath to now set apart as holy.

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Now we have to live it out. We're called to live it out in obedience and that'll be the fruit of the new life. The truly saved will seek to live this out.

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But 1 Corinthians 6 .11, as born again people, we are washed, we are justified, we are sanctified, which means set apart as holy, which is why

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Paul writes to the Corinthians, for example, 1 Corinthians 1, to the saints, which means the holy ones in Corinth called to be holy.

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So the moment you're saved, if God was writing me a letter, the moment I was saved, I mean, I haven't yet gotten to live out and demonstrate the fruit of the repentance in my heart.

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And repentance is saying, God, I'm guilty, save me from my sin. I'm turning to you to save me from my sin so I can lead a new life in you.

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Before I've done anything to live that out, at that moment, God would call me a saint, a holy one.

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And now tell me, now be holy, now live that out. And we are immediately in the spirit, and this is mind boggling, seated in heavenly places with the

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Messiah. The moment we're born again. My goodness, my goodness. You know, that sounds a lot like good news.

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Once we place our faith and repent of our sins and place our faith and trust in Jesus, I mean, our sins are truly forgiven.

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There is no punishment left for our sins. Again, as we persevere to the end, right, so like you said, we're seated in the heavenly realms already.

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You also brought up Hebrews 10, right? 18 through 22, I think it was. Yes. Yeah, so I started, especially verse 19.

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Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places or the most holy place, depending on your translation, by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain that is through his flesh.

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And since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

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So earlier today, when I was in prayer, I was in the holy place. I was alone with God in my room with the door shut, communing with him, fully cleansed, free, clean, not because of the perfection of my life, not because of the perfection of the previous 24 hours, not because I earned it or deserved it, but wholly through the blood of Jesus, through our great high priest,

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I entered into the most holy place and communion with God. And that happens when we commune with him in prayer.

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Remarkably, as it seems, that's the spiritual reality. And here's what's even more remarkable.

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If I blow it, if I do something stupid, if I lose my temper, if I think a wrong thought,

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Father, forgive me, Lord, that was so ridiculous. Lord, wash me, clean, forgive me. I am right back in that holy place by the blood of Jesus.

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Is that like I'm not like 100 miles away? And when I keep my head down enough and suffer enough, then

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I can get back in. No, we're right back in that place through the blood of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Sounds like good news to me.

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So what would you say to a Roman Catholic who would say, well, without holiness, no one shall see the Lord? I would tell them that's why we pursue it because we're called to it.

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But I would say we have already been set apart as holy. Now, this is what

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God requires of us that we live this out. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see

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God. We are called to holiness. This is the will of God, First Thessalonians, for even your holiness. Second Corinthians 7 .1

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tells us to perfect holiness in the fear of God. So we are now pursuing this because it is pleasing to God and necessary.

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But I stand as holy in God's sight because of what Jesus has done, because of his imputed righteousness.

48:32

What does it say? If in fact, a good verse that I didn't quote, but just worth reading in First Corinthians, the first chapter, towards the end of that chapter,

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Paul writes this, because of him, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification, which is holiness and redemption.

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So that as it is written, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. So you would say if someone turns away from God, rejects his grace, dies in unrepentant holiness, that person was never saved.

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I would say either that or they forfeit their salvation by rejecting

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God's grace and mercy. The bottom line is it's not because you fell short. We would both agree.

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It's not because you didn't pray enough, fast enough. You committed too many sins.

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It would be because you rejected the one and only means of getting into the presence of God, which is the grace of God through faith in Jesus.

49:37

Period. End of subject. Now, I just lost my train of thought.

49:43

I had something that I wanted to say. Probably profound and life changing. That's why

49:50

I like you, Dr. Brown. Good humor. The holiness,

49:56

I'm sorry, here's what it was. The fruit that we produce is just evidence of what

50:02

God has begun in our heart, correct? So the fruit proves that God has changed us.

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Yes. And you would point to verses like in 1 John 2, that the people that left were never really among us or they would have stayed.

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Or 1 John 3, that the person that's truly born again has the seed of God and will not continue in sin.

50:23

That's the proof. Acts 26 20, Paul's message was that people should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.

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Or Jacob James, the second chapter, show me your faith by your works. So this is just the proof.

50:39

We don't earn anything. One of my colleagues was in prayer one day out alone in nature somewhere and just said to the

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Lord, you know, I feel so unworthy. And he felt the Lord say to him, you're always unworthy. On your best day, your holiest, most perfect day, you're totally unworthy.

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But on the flip side, God calls us to walk worthy. So I understand in myself, in a trillion lifetimes,

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I could never earn a place in God's kingdom. I could never work my way into it.

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I could never cleanse my bad deeds enough by my good deeds to elevate myself to that place of holiness acceptable to God.

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But having been made worthy by the blood, he now says now walk a worthy life. Now walk a life that is in harmony with it.

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But that's not earning our salvation. That is the requirement. That's the calling of salvation. So I understand how

51:35

Roman Catholicism can react to what seems like a lawlessness where just you pray this prayer and then you live however you want to live and you're still in.

51:44

But that's not what you believe. No reformed person would hold to that. Because a reformed person would say that the proof of salvation is persevering in holiness.

51:52

Right. A bad tree cannot produce good fruit. No kind of good fruit can produce bad fruit.

51:58

So walking out the holiness would lead to rewards, correct? Yes, it would lead.

52:07

Walking out of holiness, another aspect you could say is obedience to God. Here, look at it like this.

52:13

When we stand before God, Romans 14, 2 Corinthians 5, we're going to give account for our lives.

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So my sins are already forgiven through the cross. That's not going to be in question when we stand before God, 2

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Corinthians 5, 10, we stand before the judgment seat of Christ, Romans 14, 12, giving account to God. That's not in question at that moment.

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Paul doesn't make it that it's in question. But let's say God called me to be a missionary to Africa and to serve the people of Africa.

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That was my life calling. But I started in that direction, but then kind of got distracted.

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I was going to be a medical missionary, ended up becoming a doctor. I had a nice practice. I ended up supporting my church with a lot of money and helping a lot of missionaries and all that.

52:56

Now I stand before God to give account. He's going to say, okay, here's what I asked you to do.

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What did you do? Let's look at it. You know, that's what I'm getting into account. All the parables, you know, this much has been entrusted to you.

53:10

What did you do with it? So this is now receiving a reward for our works accordingly.

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And there are rewards that we receive. How they work out internally, that's

53:23

God's wisdom. That's God's business. But clearly there are rewards for obedience and loss of reward for disobedience.

53:31

But that's not an issue of salvation. Right. So just to be clear, every person, including

53:38

Christians, will be judged. But the Christian is not going to be judged based on whether he's sinful or not.

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He's got the imputed righteousness of Christ. Our judgment is going to be one of works and rewards. Yes, correct.

53:53

Okay. Okay. Well, I know we're winding down. I know you don't have much time. So what

53:58

I want you to do is to speak to the Roman Catholic people who maybe are holding to purgatory or a misunderstanding of what the gospel is.

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Can you present the gospel to them? First, let's understand our guilt before God.

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Let's understand the depth of our sin. Let's understand that. Hey, let's just take your thought life for the last week.

54:20

How about if we put it up on internet for the whole world to see? Well, how about comparing that to the holiness of God?

54:28

Our lives, even at our best, fall infinitely short of his perfection. If we could see the light of his holiness, we'd run and hide.

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Whether it's lust, whether it's greed, whether it's selfishness, whether it's self -righteousness, whether it's pride, whether it's laziness, whether it's lack of compassion, whatever it is, when we see

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God's standard and see how we live, we realize we're guilty and there's nothing we could do to fix that.

54:53

It's like the story about this man that was traveling through an inn in England a couple hundred years ago.

55:00

He stopped, got a little room in the small town, in the inn, and got to his room and the room was filthy.

55:07

The floor was so dirty. So he found this little broom, began to brush with it. The more he brushed, the dirtier it got, because it was a dirt floor.

55:14

That's like our hearts. That's the condition of our heart. And it's like you got black paint mixed with the white, and the more you paint to try to cover it up, the worse it gets.

55:25

So we need mercy. We need forgiveness. In a million lifetimes, we could never pay for our sins or rise up to the level of God's holiness.

55:34

So rather than damn the whole world, every one of us would have been damned, God sent his son into the world to die in our place.

55:41

Because he was perfect, because he was the son of God, because he was sinless and eternal. He himself could pay for all the sins of the entire human race.

55:51

And it says he died for our sins that we might live to righteousness. It says that all of us, like sheep, have gone astray.

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Each one's gone to his own way, but the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of all of us.

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He's called the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. So he pays for every last sin we ever committed.

56:12

He fulfills everything necessary for our redemption. It says on the cross, it is finished.

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And then three days later, he rises from the dead as vindication. And if we will put our trust in him, if you will recognize you can never save yourself, and no amount of purgatorial suffering can ever prepare you for the presence of God, if we could suffer for our sins and pay for them, we wouldn't need the cross.

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If righteousness could come any other way than the cross, then Jesus would not have died for us.

56:43

He simply would have helped us along. No, we are hopelessly lost. And you are hopelessly lost without Jesus.

56:51

But with him, you are gloriously saved. The moment you look down, I know it's contrary to our human thinking, because what do

56:57

I have to do? How many prayers do I have to pray? How many days do I have to fast? How can I climb this ladder?

57:02

What do I do to pay? How do I pay this thing back? It's a gift. It's a gift.

57:09

Jesus died so you could live. You ask God, forgive me, cleanse me, wash me, forgive me through what

57:18

Jesus has done. I put my trust in him to forgive my sins and to cleanse me and to give me a brand new heart.

57:25

If anyone is in Christ, Paul wrote, he is a new creation. The old is past, the new come.

57:32

God will give you, right then and there, a brand new heart. You will be born again.

57:37

You will become a child of God. You will go, as we said, from death to life, from the kingdom of Satan to the kingdom of God.

57:43

Your sins will be forgiven. And now, as his child, you owe him your whole life. Now you belong to him.

57:50

Now you're here to do his will. So get to know him, grow in grace. You say, what happens if I just choose to sin and live however

57:56

I want? Well, then you're not really his child. Then he's not really your Lord. If he's your Lord, you want to please him.

58:01

And where you fall short, he'll wash you, cleanse you, and help you. And whether you die on the spot, the moment you believe, or 50 or 100 years later, you'll be with him forever.

58:13

Amen. There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Amen. Amen. Dr. Brown, just hold on one second.

58:19

I'm going to close the show and then we'll get back to our formalities. Well, friends, thanks again for joining us on the

58:24

Reform Rookie video podcast. Thank you to Dr. Brown and all his work that he does for the kingdom of God.

58:29

I encourage you to listen to his show, Dividing Line. Not Dividing Line, that's James White.

58:34

That's James White. The Line of Fire. And it's Dr. Brown. I apologize for that. I'll put a link to it in the little box underneath.

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But remember, friends, a life performed is a life conformed to the Jesus of the scriptures and to God be the glory.

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Thanks again for joining us. I'll put the links in the bottom of the box to Dr. Brown's stuff and to the website, www .reformrookie