Bunyan Conference Houston 2008: Session 1B

Now, what about the issue with Roman Catholicism and its incipient forms in the ancient world?

There is no single start date of Romanism, and I know the Roman Catholics are somewhat offended to use the term

Romanism. The problem is, I can't think of a better term for a religion that is focused upon one bishop in one city.

Especially when nothing in the New Testament, in any way, shape or form, demonstrates that that city was somehow supposed to be the be -all and end -all of all things.

And when you speak with Roman Catholics and Roman Catholic apologists, and every time you raise the issue of Scripture, it comes down to Rome's authority and the

Bishop of Rome's authority, I think it's an accurate term. Today's Roman Catholicism is the end product of many, many, many centuries of development.

And the way things have changed, even since the days of Vatican II, and the speed with which it's changing, really makes me wonder what

Roman Catholicism is going to look like in the not -too -distant future. As it is today, I think the greatest challenge to any

Bishop of Rome is holding together what is, in fact, an extremely wide variety of viewpoints.

I mean, you talk to a Roman Catholic in southern Mexico, and Mary's right next to the deity,

Our Lady of Guadalupe, you know what I mean? And everybody's going, yeah, I know what you mean. But you go up to Boston College and talk to some of the professors there, and to even try to say that the religion of the priests in southern

Mexico and that of a professor at Boston College is on the same planet is difficult to assert, let alone to say it's the same religion.

Roman Catholics love to talk about how unified they are, but get three of them in a room and you'll have a fight over at least ten different perspectives.

So, it's very difficult to identify. I mean, you can identify the historic

Roman Catholic position on many levels, but whether that continues to be the position today is very much dependent on who you're talking to and where you're talking to them at.

And basically what John Paul II did was, if you sort of step back and look at his pontificate, one year he sent out a very conservative apostolic letter.

And all of the liberals would just be screaming from high heaven and thinking that the world would come to an end and the

Inquisition was about to start and they were going to be burned to the stake and blah, blah, blah. And the next year out comes a much more moderate or even liberal.

And the conservatives are going, what happened? You know, this is not what the apostolic church is. And the next year something very conservative. So, you keep throwing something to the conservatives and throw something to the liberals and that's how you kept them all together.

I don't know how long you can keep doing that, to be perfectly honest with you, especially when the conservatives are remaining just as conservative as they are.

And the liberals are getting more and more and more liberal as they're going in that direction. How far can that rubber band stretch before it breaks is the question that I would have to ask.

And it's interesting that the movement to define Mary, it's called the

Fifth Marian Dogma. If you're familiar with what the Marian Dogmas are, the

Fifth Marian Dogma is the idea that Mary is co -redemptrix, co -mediatrix, and advocate for the people of God.

Rome already teaches that no grace accrues to anyone except through Mary.

Mary is the neck that turns the head that is God's grace. And all grace flows through her to humankind.

The exaltation of Mary over the past couple of hundred years has been truly an incredible thing to observe, especially when

Rome tries to say that she's the ancient church, and yet she believes as dogma things that nobody in the first 500 years of the church had ever even heard of.

And yet now it's allegedly a part of the gospel. It's an amazing thing. But where she's going, hard to say.

Many people saw the election of Benedict as a turn to the right because Benedict was known as der

Panzerkardinal. He was the head of what is the modern incarnation of what is called the

Inquisition. And you thought that was gone. No, it still exists. It's not called the

Inquisition, Sacred Doctrine. It's a congregation of Sacred Doctrine, but he is known as a fairly conservative -minded individual.

But still, there are many bishops, many cardinals, many in the theologians of the

Roman Catholic Church that are in essence universalists, that are inclusivists at the very least, the ideas that were very clearly present in the papal syllabus of Ares in the middle 1850s, just not really popular amongst many in Roman Catholicism today.

So even defining it, you have to define it on the basis of the person that you're talking to today.

In history then, over and over again, do you have

EWTN on your cable? I've got one person saying yes. The Eternal Word Television Network, Mitch Pacwa has sort of taken over from Mother Angelica on that.

And Mitch Pacwa and I have done five debates together. He's truly a

Roman Catholic apologist for whom I have respect. He's never engaged in personal attacks.

He's never dodged things. The debates I've had with him on the mass justification of the

Solus Fractura, the papacy, and the priesthood, I think are some of the best that we've done because they were only on the subjects we were debating, rather than upon me or him or whatever else it might be, and I appreciate that.

But he is the primary person you see on EWTN. If you watch that at all, and I don't, but once in a while I have to watch something, they will have not only something as a

TV, I guess sometimes some of those say, if someone's on, you might want to see what they're going to have to say, they have a coming home network program.

And when you listen to converts, Jerome Cathal also, over and over and over, it is a broken record.

They say, I read the early church fathers and they made me come home to Rome.

Well, I'm not sure what early church fathers they're reading. But if you actually read the patristic sources, and they're readily available to us.

They're online at ccel .org. The Urban's set now published,

I think Henderson's now published a 38 -volume set, that is generally available, and sometimes actually on sale you can get it.

It looks great on your bookshelf, by the way, it looks very good. But, do you have that,

Cathal? You do have it, I was going to say, it would be a great gift for your elders, and your pastor, and things like that.

I'm trying to help you out though. We'll come up with something on it later on. But if you, the material is there.

And if you take the time to read the early church fathers, and you will discover that it's sort of like going to a modern

Christian bookstore. A modern Christian bookstore can be one of the most dangerous places spiritually you can ever go.

Because you let your guard down when you walk through the front door. And what you need to think of is that as you're walking down those aisles, there are coiled cobras waiting to strike at every corner.

Let's face it, unless that bookstore has some doctrinal standard, which some do, but let's face it, most don't.

The big chain stores, you know, the old Berean Christian bookstore, for example.

You'll find anything in there. You will find such a wide variety that it's absolutely amazing.

I mean, it would be sort of like archaeologists 2 ,000 years from now finding a

Berean Christian bookstore in a state of great preservation buried under something. What in the world would they think we as Christians believed

When you dig out of the ground hodges, systematic theology, next to many hymns, good mornings, and you try to put them together into a coherent whole, good luck.

And that's what so many people end up doing with the early church writers, is when they want to talk about, well, the early church believed this.

But who specifically? Could you be specific as to who you're talking about? Because the fact of the matter is, just as you're going to have good books in a

Christian bookstore, and you're going to have some really bad books, and you're going to have some in the middle, and you're going to have some very learned people, and you're going to have some people who have no clue what they're talking about, but they self -published anyways and made some money.

The same thing was happening at that time as well. And so even in the apostolic fathers, you're going to find some that are eminently orthodox, and then you're going to find others that just...

Justin Martyr, for example. Justin Martyr was an apologist in the second century. He was a martyr, and you've got to give somebody credit, who's willing to die for their faith, but there are

Muslims who are ready to die for their faith too, and that doesn't necessarily mean they're right. But he died for his faith.

But there can be no question whatsoever that Justin Martyr was far more influenced by Plato than he was by Paul.

And especially in that early period of time, this is a period of persecution. You can't start a seminary, you know?

Getting trained, and even having the entirety of the New Testament. There are many churches that didn't have all the books of Paul, or they might be missing something from John, or something along those lines.

And so you get a real wide variety of perspectives being expressed during that time period.

And so to try to take all that stuff and synthesize it and say, oh, this has been the universal position of the church.

I will honestly tell you about the only thing that I think you might be able to make somewhat of a case, was a universal belief, was monotheism.

That was about it. I think on any other issue you can find all sorts of folks who disagree about all sorts of things.

And many of them, simply out of ignorance, many of them, we want the early church to answer every question we have today.

Well folks, the fact of the matter is, they weren't thinking about all the same questions that you and I are.

And when we read them talking about questions that don't even bother us, we sort of wonder, what was wrong with these people? But we need to have a better perspective about these particular subjects, and be careful about these things.

And unfortunately, Rome has not been careful. Rome's own dogmatic statements, for example, about the papacy, talk about universally held positions, now modern

Catholic. Well, they didn't really mean that. Well, I'm pretty sure they didn't. I've heard, for example, most

Roman Catholic apologists, not all of them, but most of them, are former Protestants. And they love to give their

Pauly, you know, Damascus Road conversion story. They're all Paul, and they all know how to do it, and they all end up disagreeing about how to do it.

But one fellow by the name of Tim Staples, who's now one of the primary apologists for Catholic answers in California, he and I had two debates.

One on social terror, and one on papal infallibility. Well, I was debating papal infallibility, he was debating something else.

Anyway, watch it. Well, I wish you could watch it. They did videotape it, but they won't give us the videotape. But it's available in MP3 format, and it was an interesting evening.

But I've heard him saying that all the early church fathers interpret Matthew 16, 18 the way the modern

Roman Catholicism does. That's just bogus. I mean, it's so easily documented that that's not the case.

But these are the folks that are just repeating this over and over again, and how many people are actually checking it out? That's the problem we come up with.

So, speaking in generalities here, keeping those issues about church history in mind here, as non -biblical traditions gained popularity, and this took place faster in some areas than it did in others, the centrality of biblical authority, by necessity, had to be denied.

Because if your traditions really are not biblical, but you want to hold on to them, what you need to do is to begin lowering the ultimate authority of what

Scripture really says. And many times, those traditions developed out of someone who thought they were trying to do something good.

They saw a particular problem in their area, they tried to address it, and instead of being patient, letting the

Holy Spirit of God work through the church and through the proclamation of His truth, they sort of tried to fix things on their own.

And we may say that they started off with the right idea, but very quickly it turned negative.

For example, Ignatius of Antioch. You could read all of his genuine letters in just a matter of minutes.

You really could. I would highly recommend it to you. There's excellent works out containing the writings of the

Apostolic Fathers. And Ignatius writes seven letters as he's going to Rome to be martyred in either 107 or 108

AD, so very, very early on. And what you're writing as you're going someplace to die is probably going to be pretty clear to the point.

You know what I mean? You're going to be focused on stuff that's important. All the fluffy stuff when death is facing you just sort of goes out the window.

And I've been to Colosseum in Rome, and some traditions say that's where he died. Not everyone's absolutely certain of that.

But to see that place and to think about the faithfulness of that man. And yet Ignatius is coming from Antioch.

And when he writes to the church at Rome, Ignatius never mentions the bishop of the church at Rome.

And the reason he never mentions the bishop, when he writes to other churches that have a single bishop, he specifically mentions them.

But he doesn't at the church at Rome. Why? Because Roman Catholic and Protestant historians all agree there was no one bishop of Rome until about 140

AD. The church at Rome didn't think it needed what's called a monarchical episcopate, that is a one bishop leader, that you make a distinction between bishop and presbyters.

Presbyters becomes a lower office. Biblically there is no distinction between those two offices.

They are one. And in Rome, that's how it was up until 140 AD. So for over a century at the time of Christ, there in Rome, the church, once it was founded, did not believe they needed to have one bishop.

I'm not sure if they believed in something called papacy if they didn't think they needed to have one bishop. And when

Ignatius writes to them, he recognizes this. And he doesn't address any particular bishop, he addresses the church as a whole.

And there are multiple elders. Well, I would argue that the multiplicity of elders is the biblical perspective.

I have defended that. In fact, Robin Holman has a book, Five Perspectives on Church Government, and I wrote the section on the plurality of elders.

Now, that viewpoint ends up basically being erased over time in the

West. But here's Ignatius. Ignatius believed in only one bishop.

He held the monarchical position. But he didn't tell the Romans they were wrong. But over time, his position superseded the other.

So you can see both of them existing side by side in church history. You don't try to change one into the other just to try to protect your particular perspective.

You go, you let Ignatius be Ignatius? This is what he believed. Can you disagree with Ignatius? Go honor his death?

Yes. I think it's one of the problems we have with dealing with church history is if you find one thing that you disagree with, man, that guy was a rascal.

Probably wouldn't even be a Christian. Well, you're not going to find very many people who have been Christians before you.

I sort of feel sorry for those folks because they keep drawing the circle smaller and smaller and smaller.

And eventually, they're the ones standing in it. And they've got to get on one foot. That's a small, small world to live in.

I feel sorry for those folks. When you look at church history, let the people of church history be who they were.

I don't know about you, but 50 years from now, 100 years from now, if someone's looking back on my life, I hope they're going to be fair in evaluating me.

I want them to allow me to be who I was and say what I said. And if they disagree, fine. Hopefully, they'll still see something of value in the life that I led in service to Christ.

So, I think we need to do the same thing when it comes to church history. Unfortunately, a lot of folks don't do that.

Just one illustration is the way that Dave Hunt deals with church history. Oh, my goodness.

Just, you know, sort of the same way Sherman marched in the South. About the same level of kindness for the subject being addressed.

You've just got to, just can't let that get in the way. So, we can see the progression of these non -biblical traditions over time.

And at the same time, there's all sorts of statements. I highly recommend to you a three -volume set of books called

Holy Scripture by David King and Bill Webster. Three volumes, 1 ,100 pages on the subject of soul scriptura in the

Scriptures and in the early church. I know both the gentlemen. I watched that set being written over the course of six years because David King is a regular in my chat channels.

I had most of those 1 ,100 pages posted in my chat channels at some point in time while the book was being written.

Very, very useful work. You can still find people affirming the ultimate sufficiency and authority of Scripture, even when they themselves are not overly consistent in doing so.

And isn't that the case with us today? It's not every generation called to examine its own traditions and the life of Scripture.

I mean, speaking of Dave Hunt, the scariest thing Dave Hunt ever said to me as we were doing a radio discussion. I was actually hosting it on a radio station in Phoenix.

And he made some comment about John 6, and it was an isogenical comment. It wasn't substantiated by the text.

And I said, Dave, that's just your tradition speaking. And Dave Hunt said to me, and you can listen to this.

He makes it available in Sotawik. He said to me, James, I have no traditions.

And I said to him, Dave, the man who thinks he has no traditions is the man who is the most enslaved to his traditions.

We all have our traditions. Believe it or not, thankfully, all you can throw at me here are chairs.

You can't throw handles. Baptists have traditions.

Baptists have traditions. And if you don't realize that, then those traditions can end up taking the place of the

Word of God. And I think that's one of the most serious things I can say about Brother Dave is that in his experience, his traditions have become equal with the

Word of God. He can't even see where the tradition stops and the Word of God ends any longer. That's a dangerous position to be in.

Well, that happened over time. It didn't happen overnight. There wasn't some church council that came along and said, okay, here's tradition.

Even today, Roman Catholicism cannot really even define for us what tradition is. They can give you nebulous concepts.

They can talk about the early church being the vehicle of communicating these things.

But the fact of the matter is, if you ask your own Catholic church, can you tell us what the non -inspired, non -inscripturated traditions are upon which you have defined papal infallibility, the bodily assumption of marriage, the

Immaculate Conception, these things like that. Where can we find this? They can't tell you.

Because it doesn't really exist. They get to choose what is and what is not tradition out of this vast amount of writing from the early centuries and even later centuries of the

Christian church. And so that leaves us in the amount of time we have left. Let me see what

I had here. Let me just give you this one quote, just as an example of this, by the way.

I had mentioned to you that you will find people continuing to affirm very clearly the ultimate authority of Scripture.

Here's Gregory of Nyssa. He's writing at the end of the fourth century. We make the

Holy Scriptures the canon and the rule of every dogma. We have necessarily looked upon that and received alone that which we have made conformable to the intention of those writers.

This is not the voice of modern Rome. This is not the voice of the person who says the

Scriptures alone will lead you astray. You need to have the magisterium to interpret these four things for you, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

The Holy Scriptures are seen to be the canon, the standard, the rule of every dogma, and the dogma that is not consistent with that inspired text cannot be accepted.

Now, of course, Romans say, well, every dogma we have is consistent with Scripture. But what they mean by that is that you can look at Luke 1 .28

and you can take a greeting of an angel who says to Mary, kakar temenem, you who are greatly favored, you have received grace from God, and you can build a mountain of theology based upon just that one angelic greeting.

And that's what Rome, of course, has done and continues to do. And if she ever defines the fifth

Marian dogma and the pressure continues to exist, millions of positions have been turned in to define

Mary, the fifth Marian dogma, as the co -redemptrix, co -mediatrix, and advocate for the people of God.

Co -redemptrix, co -redeemer, co -mediatrix, co -mediator, co does not mean equal.

They will very quickly point that out. But the idea being that she is involved in the work of mediation, she is involved in the work of redemption, she is advocate for the people of God.

It would be the final step in the perfect parallel of Jesus by Mary in modern

Roman Catholic theology. There's a book back in 1998 or 1999 called Mary, Another Redeemer?

that lays all of that out and goes through what that particular movement is. You might find that to be,

I think, an excellent example of what happens when you deny solus patera.

This is what you are open to when you deny solus patera. Modern Rome is a mishmash of old traditional beliefs and post -modern concepts.

It is the Vatican's greatest task to hold together the massively disparate viewpoints represented by Roman Catholicism today.

There is no question of that. Let's take a look. Oh, I did need to do this.

Oh, man. Well, that one hasn't ruined it. Let me just quickly throw these in here because I was asked to do so.

The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Jehovah's Witnesses, by the way, have fallen on hard times.

Do you know that? Their growth rate is negative. They are struggling.

Their baptisms are pretty much down to what would be called natural growth, which means you baptize your kids.

They are really hurting. And that's because they don't fit well in post -modern society.

But they're still out there and they're still very dangerous because there are very few people. An active

Jehovah's Witness would be spending five hours a week preparing to deal with you. How many hours a week are you preparing to deal with them?

Your average Jehovah's Witness who goes door -to -door is more than enough for your seminary -trained pastor.

And so I say to you, if you are not memorizing the Scripture and you could not give me a decent definition of the

Doctrine of the Trinity right now, and you could not give me off the top of your head a minimum of ten passages that teach the deity of Christ, do not invite them in.

Now, that should not be a positive thing. We should be willing to invite them in. We should be willing to give the

Gospel to them. But do not expose you and your family to spiritual danger if you're not prepared to do it. Take that as a challenge.

Be prepared. It's easily done. If the juniors at NCA can do it after reading...

Did I get that right? Yes, I did. If the juniors can do it after reading the

Doctrine of the Trinity, you should be able to as well. But they can be very challenging. These people know their

Scriptures and their Scriptures are a perverted Scripture. The New World Translations, Jehovah's Witnesses, I have a whole presentation here on that too, is

I consider to be the most dangerous anti -Christian literature ever produced. Because you change the

Bible, you change the faith. And most of us can't deal with the fact that they've changed the Bible and be able to point those things out to the average

Jehovah's Witness. I'll never forget the first time I spoke to Jehovah's Witnesses for a lengthy period of time.

I was a second year Greek student. And I had a Jehovah's Witness lady who was a housewife give me a five -minute pre -memorized presentation on the significance of the lack of the definite article of the

Third Clause of John 1 -1. Five -minute pre -memorized statement. I carried with me the

Nesialon Greek text. No English in the Nesialon Greek text. And so I handed it across the room to her and asked her to show me a

Greek article. She didn't even know which way to hold the text. Now we may laugh at that, but the fact of the matter is she had taken the time to memorize what her religious authority had presented to her and how many homes that she walked into where that had never once been challenged.

Not once. Dangerous group. They claimed to believe in falsehoods of truth.

But, as in so many groups, not only through the perversion of scriptures in the

New World Translation, but through the exaltation of the authority of the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses in Brooklyn, New York, they have effectively created an authority system, even more authoritarian in its control over the interpretation of scripture than Rome itself.

You cannot even begin to question the Governing Body. You can never raise alternative viewpoints in a congregation or you're in deep trouble.

You will be disfellowshipped at the drop of a hat. Now, the Watchtower is struggling these days because their people, especially because of the internet and cable

TV and things like that, they used to be able to really control access of information to their people.

That's very difficult for them to do now. And the future of that organization is very much up in the air as to how they're going to maintain their particular positions.

But, while they claim falsehoods of truth, through the belief in what's called the

Governing Authority, that God has an organization that speaks for them, then they deny that authority and then even to the point of being able to pervert the scriptures, to mistranslate them and to change their message.

Obviously, the Mormon Church does not believe in the ultimate authority of the Bible. They do believe, of course, in scripture, but they have four canonical works, the

Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Prophetic Products, and the King James Version of the Bible. And they are taken in that order, in essence.

They believe that the Book of Mormon is the most perfect book of any other. And that Doctrine and Covenants and the

Prophetic Price came through the prophethood of Justice Smith. In the eighth article of Faith, the Mormon Church says, we believe the

Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. Whatever in the world that means to the individual

Mormon you're talking to. For some Mormons, that has basically meant that they could dismiss anything that the

Bible said. Other Mormons are a little more well -read and not quite as quick to dismiss the scriptures.

But Mormonism is no friend to the conservative view of the inspiration of the text of scripture for many, many reasons.

The most obvious would be that they are polytheists. They believe in many gods, at least three gods on this planet, the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And there are many gods before them, the faith of Mormon man -beliefs. And I'm speaking of the traditional beliefs.

I realize that even Mormonism is developing its liberal branch these days. But the traditional

Mormon believes that the Mormon male who was sealed to his wife for time and eternity in the Mormon temple upon death and resurrection will become a god and populate his own planet.

That is how God the god of this planet became the god of this planet. He once lived on the planet and was married and had children and so on and so forth.

And so when you are a polytheist, that's about as far as you can be removed from Christianity. In fact,

I have many times said, listen to what I'm saying here carefully. Islam is closer to Christianity than Mormonism is.

Islam is closer to Christianity than Mormonism. Because the most fundamental, definitional level of religion is whether you believe there is one true

God, self -existent, creator of all things, or whether you do not. Islam and Christianity both believe that.

Joseph Smith said in the King Paul funeral discourse in June of 1844, we have imagined and supposed that God was

God from all eternity. I will refute that idea and take away the veil associated with Islam. He also said the same

King Paul discourse. And I posted all this on my blog last year when Mitt Romney was running. So if Mitt Romney ends up as Vice President of Japan, he might want to read it again.

That's that it is the most basic principle of the gospel to know that God is a man like you and I.

And so keep those things in mind since you start at that very foundational level of difference. Then clearly how you view

Scripture for example, Mormonism has never produced a critical, meaningful commentary on the Book of Romans.

How can they? How can they? It's not that they lack scholarship. They have lots of scholars.

BYU is cranking them out all the time. They can know the biblical language from the whole nine yards. But when you're a polytheist you can't deal with a monotheistic

Scripture. And I don't believe they ever will produce that kind of scholarship.

They simply can't. So from their perspective, not only do you have an expanded canon, but you also have the concept of laudatory revelation.

And even though that has become very unpopular, Mormons still believe in it. They just don't do it. It is very important for Joseph Smith to be able to have laudatory revelation, bring all these revelations out and things like that.

But now the church is deafened. And it almost never happens anymore. So again,

Mormonism likewise is in trouble. Her growth rate is again down to the natural growth rate.

There was a time back in the late 70s, early 80s when Mormonism was growing so fast. When I first started studying it, there was about 3 .4

million. Now it's over 12. But there was a time around 1980 when the average

Southern Baptist church had 274 members. In an average week, 273 Mormons became...

Southern Baptists became Mormons. That's one church every week converting

Mormons. That's not the case anymore. Again, they're struggling with post -modernism.

And they're struggling with the way that they present themselves. Very quickly, Neo -Orthodoxy and Liberalism I've already addressed.

We live in a day where the idea that God has spoken in one way and not another way.

The idea that there is one revelation that's true and another revelation that's false is simply dismissed as wishful thinking.

The idea that you can examine a revelation for consistency. The idea that you can look at the entire canon of Scripture.

You can see the voice of God in all of Scripture. Even though Isaiah is addressing one issue. Jeremiah is addressing another issue.

And Paul is doing his thing. And even though we can detect their own context and all that. The idea that God is bigger than that and you can use that orchestra to create a symphony of truth.

No. Today, everybody has to be a soloist. You can't have a Beethoven orchestra anymore.

A symphony. You have to look at everyone and tear it apart. You even have to look at each individual and tear him apart.

You have to set Paul against Paul. That's what Liberalism has done. It is so sad.

And you do need to realize that for example, the brother mentioned the potter's freedom, which is that on the table there.

That whole issue of whether God is sovereign or not is salvation. Is utterly irrelevant if you don't believe

God has spoken with enough clarity to know one way or the other. In other words, in many seminaries, the whole reason that subject is not even addressed is that they don't even have a high enough view of Scripture anymore to care.

You all do realize that in the vast majority of seminaries, systematic theology is no longer the central force.

Systematic theology has moved out of the theology department to the history department. It's a history discussion now because they don't any longer believe that the

Bible is sufficient to give you a systematic theology. And you wonder why many of those coming out of seminaries have no authority in their preaching and their teaching because this is what they're being exposed to.

I saw it. Of course, I don't fool. But I would see people come into the campus, and I did it through Phoenix, and it's more conservative in the extension campuses than the main campus by a long shot.

Thankfully. Mainly because you have people who are already in ministries. They're a little bit, you know, they're not into the puffy cloud, ooh, let's speculate about things that happens on a main campus.

But anyway, I saw people come into Fuller during my years there who came in actively involved and conservative.

And when they left, they had a master's degree in confusion. They did. They had a master's degree in confusion.

They had not had a proper foundation when they went in. And when they went out, it was sad to see.

It was sad to see. For me, it was great, like I said, because it was a training ground. I was fighting all the time. But for most people, that's not really an overly good thing.

So, with just a... Ugh. Forgot about that one down at the bottom.

Obviously, very rarely. I don't know about you, but it makes me disgusted.

Absolutely disgusting. To watch on the internet a man named Todd Bentley mocking the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That man will answer before a holy God. If you don't know who I'm talking about, it's some guy in Lakeland, Florida who kicks people for Jesus.

And it's just a talk about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. Amazing stuff going on there, but what is the constant refrain of what he's saying?

God spoke to me and said. Well, if you really believe that, then you'd better expand the leather on your body and make that knee the book of New Testament.

Because if God said that, is it thea mustos? Is it God breathed or is it not? You tell me.

And the fact that there are so many who allow for that terminology all the time, and who in essence compromise soul scripture and say, well,

God hasn't given us enough in scripture. We need to have all this other stuff. The fact that that continues on and is allowed has led to...

Well, just think over the past decade, all the wacky movements, you know, the laughing revival, the

Toronto stuff and now Todd Bentley running around and how much dishonor has been done to Jesus Christ.

You want to see how this works? Go to my Muslim opponents on YouTube and watch their videos where they say you better be careful when the

Christians come along because they want to give you the Holy Spirit and watch what the

Holy Spirit does. And all of God do is switch to TVM. And here's people running around rooms and doing this themselves and Todd Bentley is running across stages and mean people with colon cancer and all the rest of the stuff, all in the name of the

Spirit of God. It's an apologetic issue because you have to, sadly because there are so few people and I guess it's just because I'm mean and ugly

I go, excuse me, that's not my religion. Don't hold me accountable for that.

I reject this man. But that's not really popular today. Oh, you're not being lovely.

You're not being acceptable. Blah, blah, blah. Well, there you go.

So the idea of, well you know, the Spirit speaking. I'm not one of those people.

I believe that the Spirit of God is actively involved in gifting his church.

He's involved in the church and the Spirit of God is involved in evangelism and all these things and we can do nothing apart from the

Spirit of God but none of that means that what is found in Scripture is insufficient for our day and age.

That doesn't mean the canon has to be reopened and we keep adding stuff to it. I mean seriously, if they're going to say that, they need to have a bigger

Bible. And the fact that they won't do that demonstrates to me they really don't believe it.

But they certainly act upon it and the result is almost always a little bit better. Now, let me do, as we end,

I'm always most comfortable in the text of Scripture. Let me make sure we understand something here.

Turn with me in your Scriptures or just use the screen if you can read well enough or whatever. Or if you just really like Bible works or whatever.

Same thing in the chapter 3. Classic passage. Nothing surprising here but I love to finish by emphasizing

God's truth. This text and Acts chapter 20,

I love these two texts because in both situations, in Acts chapter 20 Paul was called these heathen elders himself.

He's told them he's never going to see them again. These are men who spent three years training and he's warned them that difficult times will come.

There are going to be people who are going to rise from their own ranks. Not come in from outside the church. They're going to rise from within the church.

They're going to be dressed like us. They're going to talk like us. They're going to claim to be Christians. But they are false brethren. And they're going to bring destructive heresies in.

They're going to draw people off to themselves. The apostle said that was going to be happening during his lifetime.

Should we be surprised that it's happened ever since then? It's amazing how many people go, just get back to the apostolic times.

You mean the days when Paul's fighting heresy on every side? No, seriously.

I mean, people think that oh, if we get back to the primitive church when everyone was united.

That happened for about 12 minutes, I think. It's not God's will that the church sit back in fluffy clouds of news.

Every generation is called to stand for the faith once we're all delivered of sins. We all have our challenges.

We can stick our head in the sand if we want to, but that's the way it is. You can wish that it's different, but history shows us it's not.

Scripture shows us it's not. And so the Ephesian elders, he says difficult times are going to come, and then he commits them to God and the word of His grace.

Not to the successors of Peter and Rome. He doesn't say wait until 1930 when I reestablish my church in upstate

New York. That's Mormonism, by the way, so those who don't know. Nothing like that.

He says I commit you to God and the word of His grace. We're here as Paul's writing to Timothy. His child in the faith.

And he knows this is going to be his last communication with Timothy. He knows that his life is going to be coming to an end.

So once again, just like Ignatius, what you write in the face of death is very clear, and what you emphasize at that point is very important.

And so he writes to him and he warns Timothy that difficult times are coming.

You read 1st, 2nd Timothy in Titus. What do you see over and over again? There's going to be false teachers.

There's going to be people promoting false doctrine. You, however, stand to whole doctrine.

Sound doctrine. Literally healthy doctrine. Doctrine that's balanced. Over and over again.

It's hard to find a New Testament book that does not contain apologetic material. And here he says in 2nd

Timothy 3, but evil men, imposters. What's an imposter? Someone who claims to be something they're not.

Paul called them false brethren. Pseudo -delphoi in Galatians chapter 2. Will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving, leading astray, and being deceived themselves.

You, however, Timothy, difficult times are coming. You're going to have to be fighting.

As a shepherd, you're going to have to be protecting your people. So how do you do it?

You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned it.

You see, sometimes Roman Catholics will say, well, you just think it's you and the Bible in the woods.

That's not the soul's fraternity. The soul's fraternity does not mean you and the Bible alone in the woods.

This is the same apostle who ordained elders in all the churches. This is the same apostle who had the high view of the local church, so that in 1st

Timothy 3, he called the local church the pillar and foundation of the truth.

I'm a churchman. I'm not one of those apologists that runs around and is never in a local church.

I preach regularly. I teach regularly in the local church. I think that's absolutely necessary.

And that's where God has ordained the proclamation of His truth to take place and to conform

His people to the image of Christ. So it's not you alone out in the woods with your

Bible. And you can learn from other people. That does not make those other people inspired.

You still have to examine them in light of apostolic teaching. I'm not talking about when people either jump off one side or the other side.

Either it's me and my Bible alone in the woods, or I need a boat. Isn't there anything in between? No. Is there a spectrum here with the

Bible? No. You continue the things you have learned because of knowing from whom you have learned them and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.

And remember, folks, Timothy didn't have a New Testament. He was getting part of it here. But he didn't have a

New Testament. The sacred writings were his, what we call the Greek Septuagint today. The Greek translation of the

Old Testament. And yet, Paul directed him to that which was able to give him the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.

This then becomes the context of the key word, the key verse.

And though I highly recommend the New American Standard Bible, I've worked as a critical consultant on that particular translation.

At this particular point, I don't think the NASV is necessarily the best. And though there are places where the

NIV sometimes goes off track, it's pretty good here as is the ESV.

And of course, the ESV is nothing but the NASV without semicolons, anyway. It's just my personal opinion, but I think

I can defend that. Anyway. All Scripture is breathed out by God.

The NIV, God breathed. God breathed. Now, inspired is a tricky term.

The Latin means to breathe into, and that is not what Paul said. If you really want to dig into this,

B .E. Warfield's article on the meaning of Theonostos of 316, even though it's 100 years old, is still extremely useful and really hasn't been nothing changed in that area.

I would recommend it to your reading. Paul's not saying that Scripture are the words of men that God has breathed into.

He describes Scripture, not the men who wrote it. I know we always talk about Paul as inspired.

That's not a biblical phrase. I know we use it, and I know what it means. And it's okay to use it as long as we're careful about that, but that's not a biblical word.

The only thing that's said to be Theonostos is the Scripture itself. You see, when you say

Paul's inspired, you can say certain musicians today are inspired in their writing.

But that's not what Paul's talking about. Not here. The actual result of their writing, that which they have written, is

God breathed. If you put your hand in front of your mouth while you're speaking, you feel that breath.

That's what it is. It's God speaking. And he says, all

Scripture is God breathed, profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.

All the things that the man of God, Timothy, I know false teachers are coming, and I know that they're going to say all sorts of wild things.

But Timothy, I'm going to address you to the one source that you will always find sufficient and unchanging.

You want to be able to teach as a man of God? You want to be able to correct as a man of God? You want to be able to train in righteousness as a man of God?

Timothy, go to that which is Theonostos. Go to that which is God breathed. The Scripture is so that the man of God may be competent, perfect, capable, equipped for every good work.

Now, I know the temptation that exists in the church today. You look down the road, and you see this guy, his church is five years younger than yours, and he's already got 3 ,000 people.

And you're struggling, and you're fighting, and maybe you've had some disappointments in your ministry.

Maybe you've had some church splits, and you've had some discipline issues, some holiness issues, and all the rest of that stuff.

I know the temptation is so strong to start grabbing hold of things that God has not ordained to be used in the church.

But the result is always bad. We've only been given one source, and it is sufficient.

And it is that which is God breathed. I go to the texts that we, believe it or not, have actually used up our time.

And you're going, do you believe it or not? Especially those of you sitting on those bleachers. You're like, oh yeah. You've used up your time, and I haven't done in 15 years.

I'm just showing you my Texas kindness by sitting here. We could go to other texts.

There are some tremendous texts. Peter's description of Scripture being men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

Holy Spirit. It's the same document. Paul taught it. Peter taught it. Jesus taught it.

When he said to the Sadducees, have you not read what

God spoke to you saying? Then quoted from a book that was 1400 years old.

That was Jesus' reading of Scripture. And I've never understood liberals who want to say nice things about Jesus.

Oh yes, I trust Jesus as my Savior. But you don't trust what he himself believed about Scripture.

That's interesting. You'll commit yourself to him for your eternal soul, but you think you're wiser than he was about Scripture.

I haven't quite figured that one out. Maybe I'm just not smart enough to get it. Or maybe it just doesn't make any sense.

One of the two is possible. So, got into a little preaching there toward the end.

But, but, this is a foundational issue because we can talk about the

Trinity until the cows come home. I am a Biblical Trinitarian. I believe in the

Trinity because the Bible forces me to believe in it. And once you no longer believe in the Bible, there's a reason why liberal seminaries could care less about the doctrine of the

Trinity. And there's a reason why they could care less about justification by faith. There's a reason why they could care less about the doctrines of grace.

Because if you don't believe the Bible is the word of God, you're not going to really care about synthesizing it and being harmonious with it and active with it and listening to what it has to say.

And that's the situation we face in Western culture today. We have forgotten history.

For most evangelicals today, church history goes back about 20 years. I mean, Billy Graham is ancient church history.

And Martin Luther? It was just a shame that that man shot him. Am I not the one?

Honestly, folks, if you gave a quiz, if you gave a quiz in churches today, how many people would identify

Martin Luther as a civil rights activist? Are we thinking 50 % at least?

I think so, sadly. Even if they did know that there was a work missing in the name, could they put the real

Martin Luther anywhere near where he really lived? And could they actually tell you anything about what he really did believe?

Probably not. Probably not. And that's a shame. It's an exciting study.

I don't know about you, but realizing, when I look back at a man named Athanasius of Bishop Alexandria in the decades after the

Council of Alexandria, and I see him defending the deity of Christ in the very same way I do it today, with liberals and Jehovah's Witnesses and others,

I don't know about you, but realizing that God's been building this church for 2 ,000 years is pretty neat. I like knowing

I'm not alone. It's also good for your ego. In this sense, if God's been doing that all along, you know what?

He can probably get along without me. I am not the most important thing on the planet. And if a Mack truck runs over me while I'm riding my bike when

I get back to Phoenix, the kingdom is going to go on. There's a few people who need to be reminded of that. And when we see ourselves standing in that stream of church history, we don't have to turn that stream of church history into inspired people to still recognize the

Spirit of God was working amongst them, and He continues to work to this day. And I don't know about you, but when I look at all the troubles around us, it's really easy for me to get discouraged.

But you know what? Things have been a whole lot worse in the past. And yet people continue to be faithful in their service to Christ.

That's what we need to do as well. Let's blow their time away. Indeed, our

Heavenly Father, we do thank you for the opportunity you've given us this evening to gather in this place of freedom and safety, to be able to say what we need to say, to be able to speak the truth without fear.

We thank you that we have this privilege, because we know there are many of our brothers and sisters in this world that do not have the privileges we have, so we thank you for that.

We ask that you would help us truly to be thankful, to touch our hearts with the recognition of your goodness and worth.

And as we've thought about your word this evening, all the different viewpoints that people have taken, we pray that just as those disciples on the road to Emmaus, as they walked with the resurrected

Lord, felt their hearts warmed when

Jesus opened the word to them and showed them Lord, that you for us, by your

Spirit, would once again inflame our passion for Scripture. That you would make us to be people who, like the psalmist in Psalm 119, longs for your word, loves your word, meditates upon your word.

May we be people who hear you as you speak to us in that word. And despite the rampant unbelief around us, by your

Spirit, build us up. Establish us in our faith, so that we may be people who with clarity proclaim the gospel to the dying.

thank you and pray Christ's name. Amen.