Is the Roman Catholic Church a Cult? Examining Doctrine, History, and Authority

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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00:01

Can you show me because we're gonna use some hermeneutics Can you show me anywhere in the

00:06

Old Testament where that word perpetual is not perpetual because again, I understand you're appealing again

00:12

Sure Wait a minute, I thought

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I was gonna get to have a talk here. You asked a question. Hang on a second, sir Be quiet. Okay. Well, there you go.

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It's not I will mute you because it's not your show you asked a question I'm gonna give you the answer Genesis 6 for the word

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Olam is used referring to those who were of old Deuteronomy, I'll get just rattle off all the ones where it's used not referring to perpetual

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Genesis 6 for Deuteronomy 32 7 Joshua 24 to 1st

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Samuel 27 8 Job 22 15 Psalm 24 24 7 24 9 25 6 41 13 77 9 90 verse 2 103 verse 17 106 verse 48 119 52 1 43 3rd verse 3

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Proverbs 8 23 Proverbs 22 28 Proverbs 23 10 and Ecclesiastes 1 10 should

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I go on for more? Bob blah blah blah blah To answer your questions your host from striving for eternity ministries

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We are live apologetics live here to answer your most

01:42

Challenging questions that you have about God and the Bible on this program

01:47

We can answer any question that you do have about God in the Bible and to challenge us with that All you have to do is go to apologetics live

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Com On here every Thursday night that we're here eight o 'clock

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Eastern Time You can come join the discussion ask your most challenging question. Just remember one thing

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I don't know is a perfectly good answer This is a ministry of striving for eternity

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The topic tonight is the Roman Catholic Church a cult

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We're gonna examine some of its doctrines its history its authority and This is something that started because I put a post out on On social media saying well declaring that it is a cult and a lot of people pushed back

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Thinking no, it's not. How are you defining a cult? How could you say such a thing? There's believers that are in the

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Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is Christian all kinds of arguments and Maybe the problem is that those who claim to be

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Protestant meaning they're protesting have forgotten what they're protesting the

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Protestants are protesting against well the Roman Catholic dish distortion of Christianity and That is a lot of what we're going to talk about tonight now drew and Tom cannot be here

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So luckily I brought in the atheist nightmare here. Mr.

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Chuck Carpenter. So Chuck welcome Hey, thanks for having me on again

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Not to my typical wheelhouse, but I'm excited to discuss the topic Yeah, and so we're glad to have you on and you're almost becoming a regular

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But I have I have to ask a question now those listening on the podcast Will not see this unless of course they go to the striving fraternity

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YouTube channel and Check it out, but you're wearing an orange tie Why might that be sir?

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well Although I am an Astros fan and don't hate me for that I'm wearing orange tie tonight because orange is associated with Protestantism and So this is typically in the context of Northern Ireland and parts of Western Europe and this was primarily because of William of Orange King William the third of England Scotland and Ireland.

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He was a Protestant Prince from the Netherlands. He became King of England in 1689 after what was called the glorious revolution which overthrew the

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Catholic King James the second and his victory at the Battle of Boyne in 1690

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Cemented the Protestant dominance in Ireland and there's also in Ireland is called the

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Orange Order founded in 1795 the Orange Order is a Protestant fraternal organization that takes its name from William of Orange and it celebrates his legacy in defense

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Protestantism particularly in Ireland and Scotland and at our church when some of the

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Irish When some of the Catholic type holidays come up We will almost on that Closest Sunday some of us will wear orange, you know, just sort of just sort of in fun

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But so I like to wear it as a symbolic Representation so you don't wear the green because that represents the

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Catholic Church, huh? Traditionally, yes. So that so there you go. So a little bit of history there already so the you know, a lot of people were pushing back and so I Will say this for those who are watching

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I encourage you to share this out where wherever you are watching right now or on whatever social media you have with the hopes that someone who is

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Part of the Roman Catholic Church may pay attention Tune in maybe even come in for discussion

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But at least hear the truth of from God's Word and that's what we want Ultimately, I will let you know you may be watching us on some of the other things that we are also streaming on matter of theology so we're out there and The I think we may be on I don't know if we're on open -air theology

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But those are two ministries that are the that my co -hosts are part of so we stream on there as well

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So let me let's start off and I'm gonna read right out of my own book and because I told some people on social media, they they asked how

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I define a occult and It was a little bit longer to be able to express

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The details of it in than in in writing on a Facebook post. So I I thought it'd be better to do here

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So that I can express more what it is when I when I say a cult now Ultimately as we look at things a cult is gonna be a

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Group that is controlling There's a definition that I not from my book, but I do like it is the it has the

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The words bite, you know, and it's all about control. So the first is behavioral control intellectual control

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Forget what that T is And then the third is the fourth is emotional control

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But that it does cover the idea of it that a cult is something that is controlling

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That's ultimately the thing when it comes within religious cults

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I'm being more specific especially within the Christian cults that the first one that I list in my book

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What do they believe and you can get a copy of what do they believe at our website at striving fraternity org? But the first one is what

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I would say is is scripture twisting I'm sure that and I'm gonna place an article up in a little bit.

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That is from Chuck's Church Did you write it Chuck actually?

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Yeah, okay, that's what I had thought I looked at it last week But so it's an article

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Chuck had had written and and you'll see some of the scripture twisting that we'll talk about But scripture twisting is it is

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I say is and the de facto assertion of extra biblical revelation That's the first mark of a cult scripture is often used with a disregard to context to justify an unbiblical or extra -biblical doctrines

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So we're gonna go through these things one at a time later but I want you to see the number one thing that when

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I say some a speaking of a religious cult I'm gonna talk about scripture twisting.

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They're going to recognize the Bible as God's Word But they will do one of two things either they change the meaning of things

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They'll they'll teach the opposite to what it does teach something. It doesn't twist those words to make it seem like it's saying something other than what it's clearly saying or What they often also will do is claim some extra biblical revelation whether it's the

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Book of Mormon Whether it's the Watchtower Whether it is the church magisterium or their traditions in Roman Catholicism Whether it's the

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Quran Whether it's the Talmud Whatever it is.

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They add some extra biblical doctrines extra biblical revelation

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That is beyond what scripture is To the scripture. Okay, so that's number one

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So when we see a religious cult a Christian cult, it's gonna start with with scripture twisting

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Why does it start with that very simple the cults start with this because of the fact?

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That this is how they're gonna get the their authority to do everything else. They're gonna do the second one is authoritarianism

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So they need to twist the scripture because they use the scripture to claim an authority that they don't actually have

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So under authoritarianism I say in the book, what do they believe? Individual interpretation on subjects are not allowed only the cult leader or leaders can interpret and They are accountable to no one most of the time a person or organization

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Becomes the authority on the proper interpretation of scriptures Some of these cults will state that only they can properly interpret the scripture and therefore they can twist it and explain the

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Explain that the average person cannot understand it without the cult Therefore if a person disagrees with the interpretation based on a normal reading of scripture

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The cult can have an answer That the individual cannot know on their own

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Authoritarianism allows the cult the authority to twist the scriptures. So with that I hope you see why twisting the scriptures is first It allows them to then

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Justify their twisting of scripture they will claim an authority and you'll see as we go through this with the

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Roman Catholic Church and yet one who's listening right now that Is knowledgeable on the

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Roman Catholic Church, you know That is a core doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church that you cannot have a private interpretation.

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In fact This was a major thing Historically that was the argument against Martin Luther The Pope that was in the council that was convicting him

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Challenged him on this private interpretation and they warned that if people would be allowed to have a private interpretation you'd have many who would who'd interpret the

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Bible wrongly and then People would be led astray To which

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Martin Luther's argument was better to have the truth out there Where error can also be than to deny the truth altogether

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Because that's what he recognized the Catholic Church was doing and they were trying to silence the truth In their desire to have them as the only ones that could speak on how to interpret the

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Bible the number third number three the third thing that I have in the book is a clue exclusivity and This is the argument that only the organization has the truth and all others are excluded from it

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What they they will do is say if you are outside of their camp You cannot go to heaven

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If you this is something you'll often see a reason why so many people when they are in a cult it is so difficult for them to stay outside of the cult a lot of times what happens is they will leave and Come back and there's a couple reasons for it one most cults will do love bombing

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They give you such an overwhelming thing of emotion that you feel you're missing something when you leave

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That's mostly because of the next thing we're going to talk about but The exclusivity of it is the idea that people have this feeling that if I leave the group

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I Can't be saved. I can't be right with God and that is the controlling factor that keeps them within so you have the

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Authoritarians whether it's an individual or a group of individuals or the organization itself

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That says they have the right to interpret scripture. So if you Don't agree with them then you're outside of truth

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This leads to the fourth one that I alluded to which is isolationism and and this in this I say in the book

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What do they believe? members of the organization are not to speak to Outsiders about doctrines unless to convert them the organization often states

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That it has the truth and wants to protect its members And this is where they will often do the love bombing love bombing is where they give an over emphasis of emotion and expressions of Love if what they would call it to where you have this emotional response to them a feeling of community a feeling of Fellowship that and this is why

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So many that I have counseled and worked with that would leave a cult

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Many of them will try to return. I Before finally leaving for good and they would return in every time they return it

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It makes it all the more harder to leave this isolationism can work in many different ways one way

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It could be that they actually isolate you from the world. There are groups that They they live together in a commune and in that setting everyone works together.

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Everybody Goes to church together their life is together There's some groups that will they'll try to move into the same town so that everybody is

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There together your whole life is wrapped up with that group and that makes it very hard to leave again

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What's the goal of it control? Keeping people locked in so that the theologically you feel like you can't leave

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Because if I leave I'm I'm leaving the truth if I If the isolation if I leave

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I have I'm leaving my friends and So, you know and let's not take, you know, think lightly on the issue of friendship

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The reality is is that You will see like they for example during kovat a lot of churches were shut down and When that when we saw that There were a lot of people that started going to good churches.

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Hmm. Why? Well what you saw in that was that there were many people who knew the church that they were attending was bad

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But they wanted so badly to be to have that friendship

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That they continued to be in a church they knew was bad

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Now during kovat what happened well the church shut down people were not there and they were able to go visit other churches and make other friends and Then change churches.

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So those those relationships that isolation what it does is keep people in that group and And The idea of when someone is brainwashed as you don't want them to hear the truth

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This is why if you ever try to take a gospel give a gospel tract or anything to a Jehovah Witness they will not take it and And they will argue.

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Well, you know, we're told we're not to you know, we're they they I've heard actually heard different reasons and so The thing is is why don't they take it?

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Well, I always tell them the reason they don't take it is because they've been brainwashed and it is a control factor

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And I will always quote for them 2nd Corinthians 13 8 Which says for we can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth

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Why do I quote that because if they actually had the truth they would be able to take whatever I give them

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Compare it to what their church or group states and know whether I'm telling something not true

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When someone has to tell you no, no, no, you can't read this. You can't you can't check this out

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Because they're afraid you might learn something other than what they're teaching you that is a controlling and a cultic behavior the last one

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Endangerment I Say in the book, what do they believe? another trait that may include a mate that may include is

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Endangerment it is true that most cults teach teachings do not lead to either physical or emotional endangerment of its members

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This one trait may not be true for all cults So the idea here is that the endangerment is more clear when you have cults that will use practices such as You know,

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I know some groups that will make people they're not allowed to eat I knew of one cult that what they would do as a punishment if you

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Questioned their through one of their three leaders You might have to spend up to three days sometimes even a week

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In a chair tied to a chair in a barn with lights on all all day all night with music playing and Sometimes all you'd get is water

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That's endangerment That's something that you end up seeing

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That now there's also an emotional danger then this is sometimes tied to the isolationism

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That people feel I can't leave If I leave

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I lose everything there are there is a We've dealt with a cult on this program and that we went into great detail of a church out in Iowa and We had a woman who came on with a pastor because she was not married the pastor actually argued that he was the father figure for her and Therefore when she was working

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Her paycheck had to be deposited into a bank account that he controlled for her and He would give her an allowance and one of the things that set her to realize this was problematic was when she ended up wanting to get a new sofa and the pastor told her that That wasn't a wise use of money.

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He didn't think that she should use her money for a new sofa He felt the sofa she had was fine and he would not give her her own money

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For a sofa now what ended up happening was she realized in order to leave the church.

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She had to lose her savings Because he's the one that had control of it

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He also did other things Emotionally by making people write down all their worst sins and in doing so he had them in a file so he could always bring them up and There were many people that were afraid to leave because the fear of blackmail of things

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They said they had done in the past that they didn't want people to know but is his style of repentance they had to bring these things out and write them down and Give them to him and he kept a file of them and he would remind them that he had that file

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These are the when we speak of The endangerment these are the emotional endangerments that that we're speaking of so Chuck you had mentioned when

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I couldn't remember what the tea was was thought to control in the bite and I Need to look it up.

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I think you're right with that Which makes me wonder what is the what the I was because then the I wasn't the because there there's definitely behavior

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There's the thinking there's the emotion and so there was one other and I couldn't remember what that is but I will have to I used to I used to have it here on the desk in case

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I ever needed to remember it and as Folks if you could tell I've been packing up where we're gonna be selling the house so notice this week last week you guys saw that there was nothing on the bookshelves, but Well coffee, but now there's not even a bookshelf back there

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And as you could see that my desk is being broken down you I don't have the the big part on top of it so Information control

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Thank You sister Tara. She she had it so information control That is the

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I and and so that goes the information control is part of as you look at those four things

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When you have behavior control That's gonna fit under that and the emotional control fits under isolationism and some of the exclusivity the authoritarianism a bit

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Thought control definitely the authoritarianism that the twist scripture twisting You know the information or sorry the thought

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Information I mentioned those two kind of and then you know when you think of the emotion

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You know we mentioned that so but ultimately that's that I wanted to take this time

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You can get a copy of my book What do they believe you can see the more detail that I have for that?

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But I knew that I wasn't gonna bail easily to answer this And go into the detail that I wanted to on a

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Facebook post Just because well social media being what it is if I try to go

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Short then it's hard to it's easier for people to start misrepresenting What you're you're trying to say so I didn't want to do that and so I decided to do it here

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So Let me start Now that we have that I would like Chuck you

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I want you to talk a bit. Well first let you talk about anything that You know anything any comments you had from what

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I said And then after that we can get into the article that you wrote and I'll give the link for that Okay.

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Yeah, sure So can real quickly concerning the Jehovah's Witnesses He's he is dead -on correct about the information control, and they won't be able they won't accept any literature from you

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Although that's their whole job is handing out literature to people right? Yeah, so they won't take it in so that is definitely information control that they're under I love the from living waters the million -dollar bill tracks

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I've given a few of those out to some Jehovah's Witnesses and they didn't know what they were getting and so and we're so we'll be discussing my

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Catholicism tract here in a moment But if you go to five solas net evangelism, you'll see that I have two tracks there

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Concerning the Jehovah's Witnesses once just for Jehovah's Witnesses and ones is Are you considering joining

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Jehovah's Witnesses and that is because the one for Jehovah's Witnesses all it has is

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Quotes from the New World Translation, which is their mistranslation of the Bible and and it also has quotes from Jehovah's Witness Resources its primary source

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Documentation from the Watchtower, and so what you can do is you can pull this up And they should see it as non -threatening you could even say you know this it doesn't say anything

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Bad here about about Jehovah's Witnesses Can you can we go through these points and you can confirm if what this says is true or not and so hopefully they will be open to Go through those points with you, but you need to look at the

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Are you considering Jehovah's Witnesses? Track so that when you get to point when you get to point number six you know what to say because point number six is not in the actual

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Jehovah's Witness track because it It does talk about how the

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Watchtower discredits itself as the you know the one true Authority because they contradict themselves, and but if you look through it, and so that's how the the tracks work

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And so that's how that works for the Jehovah's Witnesses as well as the Roman Catholicism and so for the

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Catholicism tract and If you go to five solas net Slash Catholicism And so you may have heard of what's called a syllogism argument

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Which you give two premises and then a conclusion and the conclusion follows from the premises well

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This is technically not a syllogism. It would be called a poly premise argument, so you've got

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Five premises, and then the sixth point is going to be your your conclusion and just in a nutshell

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And you can so with your Roman Catholic Friends and family and neighbors you so you can pull this up and again ask them

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You know is this true you know are these these facts right so point number one is the

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Bible is the Word of God and I and so it gives it's going to give a Bible verse and then it's going to also give some quotes from again from primary source documentation official

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Roman Catholic teaching Quite a bit of it from the catechism itself So yeah, you know point number one is the

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Bible is the Word of God And they'll say yes, and then point number two is God does not contradict himself

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And they'll say yes, and again. There's quotes from Roman Catholic sources as well as Bible quotes, and if you click on a

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Bible quotes the Bible quotes are Hyperlinked if you click on click on the Bible quote it actually goes to the

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Vatican VA And so it's it's done. It's actually goes to their New American Bible So the quotes in these tracks are from their primary sources

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Documentation just like the Jehovah's Witness track all those Bible verses are from the New World Translation So they should have a problem with it, so yeah point number two is

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God does not Contradict himself and in number three is the leaving the living teaching office of the church also speaks for God And so there's no

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Bible quotes for that, but there's Roman Catholic quotes from the catechism paragraph 85 88 888

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And then there's another quote so so yeah, they will agree that the living teaching office of the church also

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Speaks for God and then point number four is going to be the leaving living teaching office of the church

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Teaches faith plus works for salvation and there's a quite a few quotes from there and the last two quotes you see is from the

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Council of Trent sixth session and and this was a This is where they they they laid the hammer down.

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They said if you believe in Justification they didn't just say salvation which you know salvation can be different from justification

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Because salvation is a whole sort of a process if you will if you understand what the ordo salutis is and justification is

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Part of that ordo salutis, but but they say yeah if you believe in justification

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By faith alone without works you're anathema you were to be cursed right? And so this was the conflict

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Between the Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church and in point number five is the

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Bible teaches salvation by faith alone and it gives it quotes three

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Bible verses Ephesians 289 Romans 328 and Romans 320 and then

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Below that it says also reference and it gives a bunch more that clearly and unmistakably teach that Justification is by faith alone through Christ alone and so then so those are your five premises and then the conclusion the final point is

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Number six and here's the final point It says if the Bible is the Word of God point number one and God does not contradict himself point number two

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Then the Roman Catholic Church Which claims to also speak for God point number three discredits itself as the one true religion or the one true?

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authoritative Authority of religion because it contradicts the Word of God by teaching faith plus works for salvation point number four when the

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Bible which came first clearly and unmistakably teaches faith alone for salvation and Then and then it goes into the biblical gospel that you can share with your friends and you know,

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I just want to End and in this in that is saying that you know, we're not here bashing

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Roman Catholics We love them and we want them to come to the truth We hate the

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Roman the Roman system. The Roman system is is really bad and it's leading them down the path of destruction

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Yeah, and this is important folks to what you heard Chuck say several times original source material

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That that's what I did with my book. What do they believe and the advantage of doing that of quoting their sources is as Chuck said a

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They should be able to to take it and read it. You can I've had had

31:30

Joe witnesses, I give him a copy of my book and the way I'll get them to read it Say, please read this section on Jehovah Witnesses and tell me if anything in there is wrong

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Tell me if there's any corrections needed I haven't had anyone tell me I need corrections yet, and that's why

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It becomes important to not misrepresent what a group believes

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Because if you accurately represent what they believe and they recognize that Then they can trust that you've you're you understand their position right, if I if someone comes up to you and you're a

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Believer in Christ and they tell you you believe in three gods

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You go yet you don't understand Christianity Because Christianity doesn't teach there's three gods.

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It teaches. There's one God. There's three persons father son and spirit, but one

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God and When they argue for three gods, are you gonna trust anything they else they tell you about how wrong

32:37

Christianity is No, why? Because you know, they don't understand it

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And if we are not gonna take the time to understand what these different religions believe and we go and misrepresent them

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Well, are they gonna believe what we say about their religion? No Now you say but I don't have time to study all these things fine.

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You talk to someone you ask them what they believe let them explain and Then you can just ask clarifying questions and you could do is as what you saw

33:12

Chuck kind of do is he's he could do That conversationally. Well, do you what do you believe about who who has got the authority to interpret

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Scripture? You need the church. Oh Well, if you need the church, but doesn't the

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Bible say it's the authority Well, if I need the church, then doesn't the church become greater authority than the

33:32

Bible? So, how could they be equal in authority with like you're saying they are right you could do that with people very

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Conversationally, but take the time to understand what they believe That's why actually I wrote the book.

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What do they believe so that you could I spent 14 years of my life Reading it their documents and systematizing it so you don't have to but what do

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I do? I give you the the Portions of their of what they call

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Scripture and I give you sometimes larger portions so that you can see that it's not out of context

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I try to do that Why because I don't want any of us that are defending the true faith to be accused of taking someone else out of context so Let's get into a little bit of what

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Catholicism believes and I'm gonna kind of go through some of the things that are in my book, what do they believe on the chapter 2 on Catholicism and Again, I'm just gonna ask folks if you don't if everyone would do me a favor right now and share this out

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Wherever you are watching or wherever you whatever social media you have the the hope is that we might be able to get someone who is part of the

34:45

Roman Catholic Church to hear this and hear the distinction Now before we start saying how we disagree with the

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Roman Catholic Church There is something that Chuck alluded to that we need to start with the

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Council of Trent Clearly stated that believing what we believe as Bible -believing

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Christians that we believe in justification by faith alone in Christ alone In by grace alone, right that it's not by works

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Vatican to say a Trenta. Sorry said that that was anathema That's cursed you you can't according to Roman Catholic doctrine

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You cannot be saved. You cannot be right with God and believe in justification

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Alone, but if by faith alone you need works so when

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I say I don't believe that someone that Believes understands and believes

35:49

Roman Catholic doctrine that they cannot be saved Understand I'm saying that knowing that they say the same thing about me

35:58

The difference is I don't get upset when they tell me I'm going to hell in their opinion

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Because their church says this That's being consistent with their doctrine. I Don't sit there and go.

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Oh, no, you're wrong. You're wrong. How could you say such a thing? That's their belief

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But they get upset when I say the same thing about them strange but true so They would tell you that I could not go to heaven now

36:32

Catholic Church in recent years John Paul the second for most part has softened a lot of this he has

36:39

Taken it on to To be where you know now Muslims can be saved and things like this

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But they've never Ratified what was stated in Vatican in the council in at that council, so at Trent What you have is a declaration a document that states that we are damned to hell for what we believe

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They've never gone back and stated that there's an update a change to that in any way

37:16

To say that oh, well that was wrong So if that's still in play then according to the

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Roman Catholic Church believing that Christ's death and his death alone Just was satisfy sin

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Would be accursed This is Mormon Islam would say that believing

37:36

That Jesus is God is accursed. I don't get upset when they tell me I'm going to hell according to their beliefs and What can

37:44

I do I could take their beliefs compared to scriptures that they say they believe and see where they're wrong and so I Want to go through some of Catholicism, so let's and I'm just trying to also

38:02

I do want to look through the comments if anyone wants to join just go to apologetics live .com

38:09

Just scroll down to where you see the stream yard icon it's a duck click on that give permission for your browser to use your

38:18

Microphone at least but mine can camera and then you can you could join I see you and I'll add you in We'd like to have some discussions.

38:26

Actually, it's always better to have discussions here than when we're just discussing it in chat, which

38:32

You know happens a lot and I can't always see the chat when my co -hosts aren't here

38:40

Let let's let's start with what is the authority within the

38:45

Roman Catholic Church And So, let me see

38:51

I am looking here let me read this comment because I was seeing Keith that you're responding to this

39:00

Johnny Rulon says I Would say to be honest that there is a bit of a misrepresentation on some

39:08

Catholic positions here I do appreciate the sentiment and understand them, but I think there are inaccuracies

39:16

And and so John if you wouldn't mind I mean it'd be really good if you came in or Johnny I I'm guessing if you could come in and explain what those inaccuracies that you think are

39:28

It it would be good to be helpful Let's see, he's and he's saying here

39:37

Andrew had me on and if he wants me to come on to be happy to do so. Well, anyone can come on anytime. So You know, we don't

39:46

It's it's a show open to anyone So, all right So let me go to my book on what they believe on the

39:54

Roman Catholicism now the Roman Catholic Church And and I'm saying Roman Catholicism or Roman Catholic Church and not

40:01

Catholics. I'm making a clear distinction Just as you have many

40:06

Bible believing Christians that don't understand Christianity So you have many Muslims that don't understand

40:12

Islam you have many Roman Catholics that do not understand Catholicism So I'm not speaking to the about the individual people

40:24

I'm speaking of the Organization and its doctrine and that's why

40:29

I use the word Roman Catholicism referring to the doctrine the Roman Catholic Church referring to the organization

40:37

Now my source that I used because when you look at the Roman Catholic Church It has a long history and tradition and all of the councils are authoritative.

40:46

So That's part of the tradition. So it's a lot to research but because They could have you know things they've said in the past they could change so I Wanted to go with their latest

41:03

Authoritative work which was the the 1995 Catechism for the

41:09

Catholic Church. That's where all my quotations in my book come from I don't know if I how many of the

41:16

I'll use tonight, but What you see is they will hold to three three things as a equal in authority

41:25

The first is tradition Second scripture and third is the church or what's called the magisterium

41:34

Now The issue that I have they would say that these are equal in authority but for those who are regular here, you've seen me talk with folks who are

41:47

Roman Catholic and They they will say that yes, they're equal in authority.

41:54

No qualms there the issue though that I always ask and I think this is a just Logically a good way of going about it and thinking of it if somebody is saying that you need an organization or a tool

42:15

Something to interpret scripture. In other words in this case The question

42:20

I will ask people that are part of the Roman Catholic system is to say Do we need the

42:27

Roman Catholic Church to interpret the Word of God? That is an important way to understand it.

42:36

This is what Martin Luther fought with when he was on trial Because what you see is that They will say yes, you need the church

42:53

Okay If they say just and this is no different than the the drove witnesses will say well you need to have the

43:03

You need to have The watchtower to interpret you you can't you can't interpret on your own now remember what

43:12

I said about a cult, right? The cult is going to be looking to keep people

43:20

Controlled by their thinking they're gonna try to keep them where they are not

43:28

Able to get other information and So in that process

43:34

They don't want you to Be reading something on your own you need their organization

43:44

Well, if I need the organization whether it be the watchtower of the Roman Catholic Church The prophets of them the

43:52

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints who whoever it is What you see is that that thing that organization whatever it is that Becomes a greater authority than Scripture And the reason it becomes a greater authority than Scripture is because That because you need that to be able to understand

44:17

Scripture So if you need it then Just logically that becomes a greater authority

44:25

So they can't be equal Okay now I and I and Johnny is backstage for folks who are in the chat

44:33

So, you know, so I'm gonna bring them in top of the hour Because I do want to make sure I get through making my case

44:38

Which he's gonna disagree with and I'm okay with that of why I think that the Catholic Church is a cult the first one though is

44:47

The fact that what you see here is the authoritarianism You're gonna you know, maybe we'll get into discussion with Johnny on whether works are necessary for salvation

44:59

But what they're gonna do there is twist what James to the meaning of James 2 so what

45:07

I'm gonna argue is their their claim for authority is Also going to be twisting certain scriptures to give them that authority now

45:18

What was already referenced in some of their their past councils would state that if you're outside of the

45:25

Catholic Church You can't be saved. Well, that's exclusivity Okay Now the the fourth one that we have is isolationism

45:38

Does the Catholic Church? isolate people well

45:44

When we think about the isolationism now, there's there's a couple ways

45:49

I mentioned it right there There is the group where you know, yes They they stay together within a group and they do love -bombing you don't see that so much in the

45:58

Catholic Church in America Okay But you do see in some areas not in America where Catholics will not be allowed to speak out to others outside There is this keeping them within the group as Far as where they get their their teaching from and things like that Are they

46:29

Do they cause endangerment well Now we get into historical

46:35

Catholicism versus modern American Catholicism modern American Catholicism I would say they do not

46:41

I don't think that you see the physical and emotional Endangerment but Throughout history.

46:53

Well, yeah, they killed people that weren't Catholic So yeah, I would say that over the the course of the of history of the

47:02

Roman Catholic Church Yes, they had the endangerment. Okay, so I spoke a lot Chuck I want to give you a chance to respond to anything any of what

47:10

I had just shared Well when you talk about damage there's gonna be eternal damage for sure if they if they don't get out of the system

47:20

So that's very important to understand and that's why we're here You know, like I said earlier we love our

47:26

Roman Catholic friends and family and neighbors, right? We don't hate Roman Catholics We just we hate the system it's just a really bad system that's leading people down Many people down the path of destruction and so we just want to want to be the light here

47:44

To shine the light on on the errors of that Demolishing the stronghold of the

47:49

Roman Catholic system and just giving them Jesus Christ. He said that I he said that His yoke is easy and his burden is light and under the

47:58

Roman Roman Catholic system There's you just got to keep working and working and working to either attain or maintain your salvation and And we maintain that scripture clearly teaches that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone

48:13

Yes So Amanda said hey just got here what I miss a lot

48:21

You'll have to go back on the podcast and listen But Amanda you're basically what we pretty much did was I defined what a cult is from my book

48:28

The good news is striving for eternity would love to come to your church to spend two days with your folks

48:36

Teaching them biblical hermeneutics. That's right the art and science of interpreting

48:41

Scripture The bad news is somebody attending might be really upset to discover. Jeremiah 29 11 should not be their life first to learn more

48:50

Go to striving for eternity org to host a Bible interpretation made easy seminar in your area but do they believe and then

49:01

I kind of went through just briefly what the you know why

49:07

I think the Roman Catholic Church fits that now what I'm gonna do is Bring Johnny in so we can have a good discussion here on this

49:19

Because I think it would be it's it's helpful, especially if I if he says I misrepresented something.

49:24

So Johnny welcome Hey, can you hear me?

49:30

No, we don't hear you at all. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I always like responding to Hear you to know to answer that question, right?

49:42

Yeah I had someone that was I had a job once at the government and the system admin set up my email

49:51

So he sends me an email that says did you get this and I responded? No, I didn't can you send it again?

50:01

No He walked over he walked over to me and laughed he was like, all right, that was funny

50:09

Because some people will actually send it again that's like, okay I know I know if I'm deal with some with a sense of humor or not, right?

50:16

But let folks know I think if I remember correctly, you'll correct me if I'm wrong

50:22

Would you be and I hope I don't mispronounce pronounce this but I might would you be a? sort of a campus

50:30

Catholic or Yeah, no, no, I'm I'm uh, I'll give a 15 second background.

50:37

Yeah Reformed sacramental Baptist. Okay, and I I've actually been going on a lot of Catholic apologetics forums and I've actually just challenged a couple of people for debates prominent

50:51

Catholic first people so I Have spent a long time studying.

50:57

Okay official Catholic teachings I just thought maybe you're one of the

51:04

Catholics that I had that had come in in the past and because we get a lot Of this I grew up. I grew up Catholic and then obviously

51:10

I became a Protestant became again But in the last few years, I've definitely changed my mind about Catholicism as I've studied about it

51:18

You could kind of count me in with your Gavin Ortlund's Okay, and the kind of thing but I do think the majority of Protestants misrepresents

51:26

Catholicism in a form of antagonism because of our history rather than the fact and That's sort of like why

51:34

I I think it's it's important like when we say something like faith plus works I do think that's really important to be very clear about what we mean by that Because when a

51:44

Catholic hears that they hear the same thing that if they were to say Oh like Protestants just have 40 ,000 denominations and you guys just are a mess.

51:54

Obviously. We're like, well, not really, right? You know what? I mean, we have our responses. We know that that's a caricature I do think this faith plus works thing is slightly misrepresented

52:03

Especially because we almost pretend like they don't read Ephesians 2 8 and 9 and Romans 5

52:08

That's what I feel like. Okay, so that's on the comments like how do they you know, how do they possibly arrive at that conclusion?

52:14

So so when you said I was you thought I was misrepresenting you thought it was with the faith plus works

52:21

Misrepresenting I think that Maintaining something like the church is an equal authority to scripture. I don't think that they would affirm that I think they recognize the magisterial authority of the church

52:31

But they recognize the ministerial authority and there's different kinds of authority. So when we use one word authority,

52:36

I think that that's Blowing it too far into that one direction where I think solo scriptura doesn't go into and I've debated solo scriptura with Catholics publicly and they've actually come around more to understand the position where I think like when we say scripture is our only authority.

52:53

I actually think that's very that's actually wrong I think that's actually not solo scriptura and I would actually say that's a very

52:59

Baptist American Baptist formulation of it I think that not even Luther or Calvin would have agreed with that.

53:05

And so The other passion that I have is the fact that the Protestants largely have ignored church history. You go to an average church

53:11

They don't study church history. They don't even care about church history this is a big problem, right because I've had people convert over to Catholicism and hoards and orthodoxy because they started reading church history we don't cover it and They as a result think everything is

53:26

Roman Catholic, right? So That's that's what I'm like trying to correct in our apologetics so that we don't have the same mistakes in in our approaches

53:36

So to them. Yeah, so let's let me deal with some of it So you the you say to admit that you think it's a misrepresentation to say that they believe in that the church the scriptures and Tradition are equal in authority

53:53

Yes this is out of their their document that the sea I'm just gonna say

53:58

CCC for as I mentioned is the The Catechism of the Catholic Church is from 1995 version

54:04

This is the one blessed by Pope John Paul the second, but it says this paragraph 95 it is clear therefore in the extreme extreme the supremely wise arrangement of God sacred tradition sacred scriptures and the

54:19

Magisterium the church are so connected and Associated that one of them cannot stand without the others

54:26

Working together each in their own way under the action of the Holy Spirit They all contribute effectively to the salvation of souls

54:36

Yes, so that it when I say that they are equal in authority. It's it's based on things like that that very clearly state

54:44

So you can't have one without the other ask you a Protestant question now, okay when you go

54:49

To your pastor on Sunday, right? Would you say your pastor is preaching the Word of God?

54:57

Well, if my pastor, yes, I mean I've had some pastors that I'd have to say no I've heard pastors that that preach out as the newspaper and and you know poems.

55:10

So yeah When when your pastor is preaching the Word of God, would you say that he is?

55:17

Ministering the Word of God to his people meaning he's the conduit by which the Word of God is being applied to the people

55:23

Through this. Okay, I can agree with that and you see the harmony behind the authority of the pastor and the authority scripture

55:30

They work together in a ministerial fashion Right in a ministerial fashion not in a magisterial fashion

55:38

This is what the Protestants argued for in sola scriptura the magisterial authority No man has other than the original describers of scriptures

55:46

But the ministerial authority we do have actually when the Word of God is preached a lot of Presbyterians Would say that the

55:53

Word of God being preached in church is the Word of God preached. It's the same equivalent It's no different yeah, but but I'm disagreeing with the fact that I would say that the that my pastor has

56:05

Has that ministerial Authority I wouldn't say he has it.

56:11

It's the Word of God that has the authority and as long as he's faithful to it What he's declaring would be would be is fine, but it's it's the

56:20

Word of God. That's the authority So when your pastor is preaching the

56:25

Word of God and so the what the Roman Catholic Church in that thing You're saying is a authority of harmony

56:31

So when the Christians did set in I see a one for a first council and I see I was to define the

56:36

Nicene Creed As a true Terry they said that it was inspired by the Holy Spirit and had the similar binding authority that Jesus gave to the church as The as passed down by the

56:47

Apostles that was my co1 right would you agree with that that was that's what it said Say that again

56:56

Like my co1 had the binding authority of the church when it was declared so much so that it was considered

57:03

Inspired by the Holy Spirit. I can give you some quotes if you want But it was considered inspired by the Holy Spirit not in the equivalent way scripture was but in the same

57:12

Binding way that scripture was in the sense that here's a good way the Protestants kind of deny themselves Can you be a

57:18

Christian and not believe in the Trinity? Well, I guess the issue there is if people were saying that nice that the council was your confession that comes out of that was inspired

57:35

I'm gonna have to ask you what you mean by inspired because I think we're using the same word two different ways

57:41

Because if you're gonna say it's inspired I'm gonna say the the way we understand the word inspired the the the

57:50

Greek that we have in in 2nd Timothy 3 1617 that is the first usage of that word and it's

57:57

God's great As far as the Protestant position that's actually what I wanted to get to I agree with you 100 % at that point

58:05

Nothing after scripture is to understand. So I actually agree with you on that However, there is an authority outside that protects and guards and that authority was given to by Jesus to the

58:18

Apostles and then forward right and Unless you just think that no one has authority outside of the

58:25

La Apostle John dying then no one in the church has any authority whatsoever No, there's that there's an authority within the the pastors or elders of a church

58:37

There's an authority they have over their local body. What is the authority they have? Well, the authority they have would be a spiritual one to care to protect

58:47

Basically to shepherd their sheikhs communicate based on doctrine I Would say that anyone in the church has that that's the magisterial authority now you just no no

58:59

Because anybody you just said every believer has the ability to excommunicate a person based on doctrine Yes, so it's not it's not just the the ministers or the the pastors that have the authority because the issue is is that you there's a process that you go through for excommunication and And they do it based on doctrine.

59:19

Can they excommunicate someone on the base of doctrine? Can I do okay. Can you declare someone as anathema on the basis of doctrine?

59:29

well based upon what scripture teaches I Say Can you define to me what a heretic is can you say who's a heretic right now who would be considered a heretic?

59:42

Well, then I'm gonna have to ask what you mean by heretic because some people define your definition as I'll go with that.

59:47

Well The there's two definitions broadly one one in the way

59:53

Matt slick he likes to describe it is is damnable heresy versus non damnable heresy because There is there's heresy that puts you outside of the camp of Salvation, which is how it sounds like you're using it.

01:00:06

But heresy is is in a simple sense is any false teaching and In that you know, what is how do you know what's false teaching?

01:00:17

Well? We would only know it from a faithful understanding of scripture, but if I would have finished the sentence

01:00:23

I was gonna say We are all Heretics by that definition because all of us

01:00:30

Every single person no one has perfect theology everyone a lot of people think they do

01:00:37

But so if the if the definition of a heretic is false teaching There's we're all going to have something that's false and will be corrected by Christ So now say that So when we what most people when they use the word heretic

01:00:57

You asked me who's a heretic what they're thinking is Whose false teaching is?

01:01:04

Is so bad that it it corrupts the gospel so that people that believe it could not go to heaven

01:01:11

Right, I would say with the Roman Catholic Church And any man -made religion any religion that teaches that you have to add works to salvation

01:01:23

That's what it's gonna be constitute a man -made religion and when you do that that adding of your works diminishes the gospel of Christ and puts you outside of Believing in that puts you outside of the camp of Salvation so you can't not saying that you can't get saved you can't get saved

01:01:47

Believing in your works to save you. Um, I think your guests had a thing to say

01:01:55

Were you gonna say son Chuck Well, I would

01:02:01

I mean there's something I do want to say but I'll go for anything Okay. So as Protestants we would understand that our pastors and elders when they're preaching and teaching

01:02:11

That they are they can be fallible. They can be wrong what would the Roman Catholic Church say about the magisterium when they're when they're

01:02:23

Teaching and giving Talking about scripture and defining it. Yeah.

01:02:28

Well, I think I would disagree So I've debated this topic about how people infallibility is basically a modern invention

01:02:34

That was not historical by any stretch of the imagination And this is actually one of the biggest reasons why a lot of Roman Catholics ended up leaving

01:02:41

Part of their own Catholic Church, and then they took it back about I can do So I would not say that the

01:02:47

Roman Catholic Church has uniquely any sort of authority there's universal but the the thing that the

01:02:53

Protestants seem to think is that Almost like every little church around the corner that's just a church plant has its own authority that links itself back to the

01:03:03

Apostles and I would probably disagree with that and You know, dr. Jordan Cooper and a bunch of other

01:03:09

Protestants cleaved antiquity. I was on this debate I was in this channel a few days ago debating

01:03:14

Greek Orthodoxy They would all agree with that these like historical Protestants would have disagreed with this idea that you could have just formed your own church

01:03:20

And just done whatever you want, but there should have been still links that led back to the Apostles right

01:03:28

Okay, so so my original question was Did the Roman Catholics Under that system as the magisterium

01:03:36

Considered can they be fallible or they infallible they they say that through the power of the Holy Spirit They said the magisterium is

01:03:43

Infallible they apply the consensus of the holy the church that had in the early church

01:03:49

Which is that they said that for example, like these are orthodox believe that the ecumenical councils are infallible So did the

01:03:54

Roman Catholics they both believe that right? They applied that both to the Roman pontificate going forward now we as Protestants We derive a lot of our theology from the ecumenical councils

01:04:07

We could actually say there's a sense of infallibility to them in some of the dogmas, right?

01:04:13

Well, we would compare those ecumenical councils against the Word of God This is where I would kind of disagree

01:04:21

I don't think the Protestants practically do this. Well, it depends on what you defined as Protestants, right?

01:04:28

That's a whole range of you know, Protestant churches out there. Well, we're not even churches. So what would you say you are?

01:04:35

I'm reformed like Baptist Presbyterian Just pure reform

01:04:41

Dutch reform continental reform, which is most closely associated with a Presbyterian.

01:04:46

Okay and You would say that, you know, something like the doctrines of Calvinism is biblical, right?

01:04:58

Yeah, the doctrines of grace. Okay, so I wouldn't I want to ask you something. Would you say the free grace theology is heresy?

01:05:07

Not quite sure what you meant by free grace theology free grace theology is this idea that you take faith alone this idea of faith alone to the nth degree where they would say

01:05:16

Something like repentance is not necessary. Only truly believing in Jesus is the only thing that's necessary.

01:05:22

You don't make Jesus your Lord I should talk to one person that says you could become an atheist and still be saved go to heaven. I Actually challenged him to a debate and he doesn't want to fight

01:05:32

Would you say that that would be heresy I Would say that's heresy because we understand that it's

01:05:39

God who grants faith and repentance So those those those come that's out of the Word of God.

01:05:44

Is it damnable heresy? Hmm you're saying that they're they're they're saying that you don't need

01:05:53

Christ They're saying that you don't need repentance you don't need you said you said that like an atheist

01:06:02

Can be saved. Yeah, the person that I talked to particularly he has a YouTube channel, but I don't want out of Adam right now

01:06:08

Okay, we would say someone all you need is belief. You don't need anything beyond belief belief in what

01:06:15

Jesus? John 360 and the fine belief and but but just to us like just trusting in Jesus.

01:06:22

Okay, but but There's two things one If they if you're if someone's saying they're an atheist right, they can't be believing that Jesus is

01:06:33

God because those two are mutually exclusive and That's why I'm confused with what you're saying at one point if you genuinely trusted

01:06:41

Jesus No amount of sin that you do afterwards can remove that justification from you So on that basis that you know a free grace theology.

01:06:49

I'm sure Andrew you you've known what I'm talking about, right? I understand it, but I have not heard where they would argue that Are they damnable heretic just saying that Are they well, are they heading to my repentance is what he's asking?

01:07:06

So but it will come down to what is the belief in? because gospel the resurrection of Jesus Okay And I'm trying to be really clear with it.

01:07:20

So what because just saying the gospel isn't clear, right? They're believing that they're that they cannot that Jesus is

01:07:28

God. He died on the cross as a payment for their sin There's nothing they could do to earn it.

01:07:34

No works. They can give they're not a good person That it is only by what

01:07:39

Christ did Mm -hmm that can save them and you would say that is that is people who people right?

01:07:48

because they would they would say that at one point if you believe in Jesus you have received the

01:07:53

Holy Spirit and Because we believed once they'd always saved that that person no matter what they do

01:07:59

Even if they temporarily turned to atheism or even whatever they do, whatever they do They are saved for eternity because they trusted in Jesus at one point in their life

01:08:09

Okay, so There's a couple things here because a truly regenerate person according to scripture won't turn to atheism

01:08:18

Ding dong job as witnesses ding dong Mormons Christian.

01:08:25

Are you ready to defend the faith when false religions ring your doorbell? Do you know what your

01:08:31

Muslim and Jewish friends believe you will if you get Andrew Rappaport's book?

01:08:36

What do they believe when we witness to people we need to present the truth But it is very wise to know what they believe and you will get

01:08:45

Andrew Rappaport's book at what do they believe dot -com Okay, that's what scripture says

01:08:53

Well, it is the point because we're trying to define the terms Because because what

01:08:59

I just defined for you is what is called repentance. So if they could say oh you don't have to repent well, what do they mean by it because the the thing is repentance is that the changing of Seeing yourself as a good person or your works is as gonna earn you salvation that you have something to add to it

01:09:20

It's turning from that to turning and trusting God And so let me if you're gonna say well, they believe in doing repentance

01:09:28

They just call it something else. I then I can't you know, it's it's it's The problem is is

01:09:34

I you know, the terminology is faulty Okay, then I'll actually loop it back to the final point that I'm about to say which is canon one the

01:09:43

Council of Trent If any man I'm asking do you agree with this if any man says that he is justified before God by his own works

01:09:50

Whether done by his own natural powers or through the teaching of the law without divine grace through Jesus Christ Let him be anathema.

01:09:56

Do you agree with that? Read it again

01:10:02

If anyone says that a man can be justified before God by his own works Whether done by his own natural powers or through the teaching of the law without any divine grace of Jesus Christ Let him be anathema.

01:10:17

I mean That's the first canon of God justification Council of Trent. Yeah, I would I would need to see context

01:10:23

But that's so that would be saying that you can't add works to salvation Correct is how you're saying

01:10:33

Because I cannot add and I would say this is the Catholic position You cannot merit salvation by any natural power or teaching of the law

01:10:43

There is no meritorious, but they work but they do believe that deeds are required

01:10:49

The only deed that you need to do the deed that you need to do is not die They need you to die in a state of grace

01:10:56

Okay, you cannot commit a mortal sin That is the deed that you have to do the you know The rest of them go to purgatory for cleansing, but the only deed is die in a state of grace

01:11:04

Yes, but once you talk about purgatory that proves Everything else. I'm not getting into purgatory because I believe that's false doctor

01:11:11

No, but but what I know but purgatory proves that I mean the whole purpose of purgatory is to work off your sin

01:11:18

So it's a purification process, but but how do you how are you purified by working it off?

01:11:26

I would disagree with purgatory, but I know I get it Plus works, which is

01:11:31

I don't think that that's what the Catholics mean, but he's been our sense but see the whole thing is that I Think what it is is you have and and understand historically, right?

01:11:43

What what people call the Roman Catholic Church? Do we think of today didn't really exist until about a thousand eleven hundred

01:11:52

AD? Mm -hmm. Okay, so you had that very much like you look at Islam or you look at the

01:11:59

Church of Jesus Christ Latter -day Saints Though with both of those that I mentioned you can see the transformation within a generation

01:12:07

The Roman Catholic Church that transformation was much slower. So yes, you can find in early history things that they that Was not the

01:12:18

Catholic Church. We know of today And and where it would say things that were you'd have people that were biblically accurate okay, but we're not dealing with the historical church because Basically, you're dealing with the church today that supersedes the things that they said before so When when they're speaking of the deeds now

01:12:41

Mm -hmm. They're speaking of works that you do to earn salvation and Purgatory is the proof of it.

01:12:50

I I don't think this is saying that you cannot merit salvation Okay, that is but I'm giving you something from 1995 that says otherwise and Justification from the

01:13:02

Catholics and the Lutherans on 1997 right there in front of me So that's where I was gonna go to write after the the whole idea purgatory

01:13:10

Mm -hmm is to work off the sin You're there to be purified yes, it's a purified but work off in the

01:13:19

It is a penance. It's it's a purified in the sense of a cleansing of your soul

01:13:25

I don't agree with the doctrine I get you don't agree with it, but she justification. Yeah, no, no No, your justification is achieved by the time you die because remember they believe what we call sanctification

01:13:35

They believe is part of justification So they believe in initial justification the final justification and what we say is final justification is achieved at the point of faith alone

01:13:45

But it is lived out through to a sanctification. That's what we mean by works are evidence of salvation

01:13:51

I will agree. I will agree because I've said this for years that every cult confuses sanctification with regeneration

01:13:59

Okay that confusion in not understanding that Salvation what would what we use the term salvation is a very general term

01:14:11

That has three elements to it and it's used as an overarching for what we would call regeneration sanctification

01:14:20

Glorification yeah, and so all three of those would be referred to as salvation

01:14:27

But it they're very different Regeneration has no works being involved

01:14:35

Okay Sanctification does have works being involved but sanctification is something after Somebody is regenerated.

01:14:47

It doesn't lead to it And what the the Catholics would teach is that that we those those works that we do are

01:14:57

Are Collaborating is that's the language of the the catechism operating. Yeah, right with God with the work

01:15:05

God did at the cross so they know and I mean Talking about this.

01:15:10

I always have to say my kind of trick question. I ask Protestants Do Catholics believe you're saved by faith and the answer to typically is no well

01:15:23

They believe you're saved by faith not faith alone They believe in faith plus works

01:15:31

Because you're collaborating I would disagree with that in the way that a Protestant means it so canon 9

01:15:36

It says if anyone says that a sinner is just this is the one that you you know If anyone says that a sinner is justified by faith alone

01:15:42

Meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to a break obtain the grace of justification

01:15:49

And that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the action of his own

01:15:57

Will let him be anathema. This is the part that we have been battling for the whole time

01:16:02

Which is what do you mean by faith alone? At least Gavin Orland. Dr. Gavin Orland does agree with this is probably

01:16:10

Anathematizing something like free grace theology They are anathematizing that's because we don't say that Absolutely, nothing else is required to make it to the end because we do believe in perseverance, right?

01:16:21

So perseverance is a real action. I'm a reformed, you know, Calvinist and We said structures is not a it's a real thing.

01:16:29

Like it's you have to make it to the end, right? but they see Justification wrapped into that where we don't right and that's where the crux of the argument really lies

01:16:41

Which is the fact that no you're justified at the moment. You have faith everything else Descends from that but I've always told

01:16:48

Catholics, you know this the the from an apologetics perspective I think it's better to go the route of saying you don't have a basis for the sacramental system in Scripture rather than saying faithless works because I don't think your average

01:17:03

Catholic who knows their Bible believes Yeah, you know what? I'm earning salvation when they say works they mean

01:17:11

Faith working through love. That's what they're talking about That's something we would in some sense.

01:17:17

So, all right. Well, let me first off. Let me bring Aaron Brewster one of our speakers here at striving fraternity into the channel.

01:17:26

Welcome Aaron So, so let me respond just by giving you some of the from the

01:17:34

Catholic Catechism, right Because in one of the things you said you you mentioned sacraments that you know, their sacramental system is

01:17:45

Unlike is as a Baptist. I would see baptism Communion as just memorials in a sacramental system.

01:17:54

They they would see these things as adding grace So a sacramentalist so I can actually defend part of that from a

01:18:01

Baptist perspective. Oh, yeah, go ahead. Yeah So that it's not I mean and this is one of the things where they even think that they're their works the things they do

01:18:10

Can be counted for other people in purgatory Right.

01:18:16

So right so here we have You know as I mentioned earlier, this is paragraph 2001

01:18:23

Indeed, we also work but we are the are only collaborating with the

01:18:29

God who works well That's saying we do works But that works in collaboration with God, but that's where I say the faith plus works

01:18:40

Paragraph 2003 just a couple paragraphs later grace also includes the gifts that the

01:18:47

Holy Spirit grants us to associate us with his work to enable us to collaborate in the salvation of others and In the growth of the body of the of Christ the church there there is sacramental graces gifts

01:19:05

Proper to the different the different sacraments in 2009 paragraph 2009 it says

01:19:14

Merits of good works are gifts of the divine goodness grace gone before us we now are

01:19:22

Given what is due our? Merits are God's gifts Yes So by the way when they say merit they don't mean merit like how we understand an imputative merit

01:19:36

That's not what they're talking about Like for example, God promises gifts to us in heaven, correct?

01:19:42

That's we're not earning them, but we are merited them on the as a result of like, you know, Paul says yeah

01:19:47

But these aren't in heaven. This is these merits are things we're doing now Yeah, we get the merit and gifts from God that they see as a dispensation of grace through the sacraments, of course

01:19:57

Yeah, I wish that's something I would disagree. No, no, but yeah, okay. So so here's paragraph 20 2027 or 2027 it says moved by the

01:20:06

Holy Spirit. We can merit for ourselves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal life as well as Necessary temporal goods.

01:20:23

So this is the difference these things these merits Are to obtain eternal life.

01:20:29

That's regeneration Can you send me which Canon that is I'd like to look up that that's the

01:20:35

Catholic Catechism which night then 1995 Catechism of the

01:20:42

Catholic Church paragraph 2027 Two two two seven.

01:20:48

No, thank you. Two zero two seven. Oh two zero two seven apologies for that. Um No one can merit no one can merit initial grace, which is at the origin of conversion moved by those third we can merit

01:21:01

For ourselves and for all others graces net needed to return attain from Israel. So yeah, this is the traditional

01:21:07

Catholic teaching of cooperation, which Disagree, but it's it's cooperation.

01:21:14

It's cooperation to obtain Regeneration, that's the thing This eternal life as well as necessary temporal goods, what do they mean is eternal life?

01:21:26

Well, they're talking about Making it to the end, right? So all the things that would they would need to make it to the end

01:21:32

They're moved by the Holy Spirit says the first sentence there says no one can merit the initial grace Which is at the origin of conversion.

01:21:38

Do you agree with that? The first part of that sentence what that that we can merit for ourselves

01:21:47

No one can merit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversion, that's what 2027 since Go up to 2025

01:21:58

We can have merit in God's night only because God's free plant associate man with the work of grace

01:22:04

Merit is described in the first place to the grace of God and secondly to man collaboration first to God's grace

01:22:12

Secondly demands good man's merit is due to God 2025 two paragraphs right above it. Yeah It's a that says we can have merit in God's sight only because God God's free plan to associate man with the work of his grace

01:22:27

Merit is ascribed in the first place to grace of God and secondly to man's

01:22:34

Collaborate collaboration man's merit is due to God fine Yes, but it's still that this merit this work that we do is obtaining eternal life

01:22:44

Kathy um, I think I just want to address this one because Kathy keeps very confused as far as why I'm defending

01:22:49

Roman Catholic I'm not defending Roman Catholic. I debate Roman Catholics On a on a weekly basis at this point on matters like solar sculpture and things like that.

01:22:59

I I am Trying to get our apologetics level up so that we can make better arguments

01:23:06

For toward the exact position where we disagree because when we say things like faith plus works

01:23:12

They just don't hear it the same way, you know, oh, you're just for the faithful faithless work I'm not talking about your average

01:23:19

Roman Catholic here. So just to be clear. Yeah, your average Roman Catholic doesn't know anything Similar to your

01:23:24

Protestant. They don't know it. They don't sit there and read the canons But if you do read the canons, okay, you can understand the theology

01:23:30

That's so let me let me give two more and then Aaron wants to say some but So so paragraph 2068 says this a little bit of a lengthy one

01:23:38

It says the Council of Trent teaches that the Ten Commandments are obligatory the

01:23:45

Obligate I can't speak today Obligatory for Christians that thank you and that Justification the justified man is still bound to keep them the

01:24:01

Second Vatican Council confirms the bishops successors of the Apostles received from the

01:24:08

Lord the mission of of teaching all peoples and Of preaching the gospel to every creature so that all men may obtain salvation through faith baptism and the observance of Commandments.

01:24:25

So again, this is they're saying Regeneration is obtained with the salvation.

01:24:31

They're referring to is obtained through faith Yes plus baptism plus observing the commandments and I think this is okay where the apologetic really kicks in I think

01:24:42

I agree with you and we have to contend the justification at this point is by faith alone Not through these other things.

01:24:48

Yeah, right, but but see there but this is where I say the faithless works because a couple paragraphs later this is 2075 says what good deed must

01:24:58

I do to have eternal life? You must enter into life keep the

01:25:04

Commandments so This is your coding scriptures over there.

01:25:10

I'm sorry. Well what they would call scripture, but the Catholic Catechism chapter paragraph 2075

01:25:18

I Said all my all my quotations that I have are Exhausted all your quotations on me now.

01:25:23

No, trust me. I haven't I skipped over the thing is I think that they do have a faulty understanding of this the problem that I have with the

01:25:34

Protestants is I think if we understand them like You were saying it is a better thing for us to go directly for justification by faith alone

01:25:41

I do see and I don't know if in your work you see this Protestants misunderstand justification by faith alone quite a bit

01:25:48

Right, like we should be saying things like free grace theology is heresy We should even possibly consider that a damnable heresy

01:25:55

But we've foregone so much of our tradition in the name of the local church having, you know

01:26:01

Local authority that I think that it's led into this. Oh like, you know, anything goes as long as you're a

01:26:07

Trinitarian That's what I feel like so be it could be this and you could be that that's fine As long as you're a Trinitarian, okay, let me say one more thing and then

01:26:13

I'll let Aaron jump in but no You mentioned the free grace a lot Yeah, the issue

01:26:19

I have with free grace is I you know, I can't say it's damnable heresy Because I need to understand it, you know, like It's it's like I got saved never hearing the word

01:26:31

Trinity. I Knew nothing about the Trinity. It was never something I heard in Hebrew school

01:26:38

So I never knew anything about it. I knew Jesus was God. I Read in the scriptures that Jesus was

01:26:45

God and I saw the Father and he was God in the Holy Spirit and he was God I didn't understand any that I just accepted that That's God Now when it was explained to me, it's like oh, okay.

01:26:58

That's that's the clarification of what the scripture says. Thank you That's different So did

01:27:04

I believe in a triune God? well, I believed in the God that was in the scripture that is described as triune, but I didn't understand the the preciseness of it

01:27:17

So when you keep talking about the free grace I go back to the question of if if they're believing

01:27:23

That oh, well, you don't have to repent Well, what do they mean by repentance because many of them think many people think repentance is some sort of work that you do

01:27:33

And that's why they're they say you don't have you don't repent. But what are they saying to do that?

01:27:39

You have to believe you guys stop believing that you can earn salvation and trust what God did

01:27:44

You don't have to make Jesus Lord of your life, that's what they would say you would say just believe well

01:27:49

You don't have to hear it is We don't make him You know what? I mean, like no, but you don't have to but this is a mission to him

01:27:57

Yes, because they see that as a work But that's see but that's not what repentance means.

01:28:04

They're adding to the definition and that's that's my whole point They're they're they're defining this in a way

01:28:12

Where they what they say you you actually have to do is Trust stop trusting self and trust

01:28:18

God. That's what repentance is. It's that change of mind of self to God They don't believe it's change of mind.

01:28:25

Yeah, so so that is what you do It's the the idea of well, you have to submit to God You submit to God regardless every knee will bow

01:28:37

Yeah, like what what do you mean by that? I'm just curious Every every every knee will bow.

01:28:44

I mean God God is God. He's no one makes him Lord No one no one is that people can deny that.

01:28:52

Oh, I don't have to submit to God. Yeah you do He's the one that puts breath in your lungs, right?

01:29:01

It's people that I talked to the reason I bring the free grace because I think it's relevant to Trump That's the only reason I'm bringing it up.

01:29:06

The reason the free grace would say once you trust in Jesus you are saved Regardless of what you do after that you are saved, but that's not really but the whole thing is

01:29:18

First John 2 19 would counter that Right according right and this is the problem that I think the

01:29:26

Catholics always bring up with the Protestant Oh according to whom right and then we appeal to our own authority. I'm appealing to Scripture I didn't appeal to anybody but Scripture, right and they would say well

01:29:36

John 3 16, right? And this is the kind of thing that I have with them I I'm a Lordship salvation person, but they think that they you know the interesting thing is they think that I'm a heretic because I believe in Lordship salvation and they think that I'm working my way to Heaven and things like that because I'm have to repent.

01:29:54

I believe the repentance is necessary but but You you mentioned

01:30:00

John 3 16, right? Yeah Which many know but they don't read further

01:30:06

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever should believe in him Shall not perish but have eternal life

01:30:13

For God did not send his son into the world to judge the world But rather that the world might be saved through him

01:30:19

He who believes in him is not judged But he who does not believe in him is judged already

01:30:25

Because he's because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. So if they don't believe in him

01:30:32

They weren't saved Yeah, they would say that you are if you believe in Jesus, that's all that's necessary.

01:30:38

No, but that's not what this is That's not what the passage says If you don't believe in him

01:30:45

You're judged Right. No, I'm agreeing with you

01:30:50

Andrew. Yeah. No, I'm just saying like so the point is when you keep bringing up the free grace I go like yeah, but what they're they're the reason they're having a you know, and this is why you can't just say well

01:31:01

They're all anathema they're all accursed because When they're if they're teaching what the

01:31:08

Bible actually says, but then they use language to say what they disagree with in there Giving it a new definition

01:31:16

Well, that's not the same thing Right. It's it's you know, so you you got to deal with what they're actually believing

01:31:25

Not with the way they misconstrue. I mean when people say, you know, right You've used the term

01:31:31

Calvinism people will say oh so you believe that God forces you to believe Well, that's not what

01:31:36

Calvinism teaches. So to say that it's like well, but that's not actually what scripture teaches

01:31:43

But if they give that definition Right, they give a strongman argument. That's the problem and that's what

01:31:48

I think is happening here. But okay, I said I'd Let Aaron go If you want to hop up I can hop up no, no, actually no,

01:31:56

I'm actually excited to interact with you. What's your name? John John, my name is Aaron Hi, I always come a little late.

01:32:03

Sorry about that John Sometimes you know in conversations like this I tend to be the guy who comes in kind of from more like the layman's perspective

01:32:12

You know, there are there are I think a lot of paragraphs in the Catechism that you know, definitely

01:32:18

Sound not in their face value like there are they definitely would be arguing for The perspective that you and you're saying

01:32:26

I think an interesting one is paragraph 18 15 Where it says the gift of faith remains in one who has not sinned against it

01:32:36

Just an interesting statement. It goes on to add to that. It says in quotes, but faith apart from works is dead

01:32:43

When it is deprived of hope and love faith does not fully unite the believer to Christ And does not make him a living member of his body

01:32:53

Which One eight one five And so I mean like so I Yes there.

01:33:03

I think there are plenty of things for more of a scholarly. Excuse me You know that type of an approach, but the question

01:33:09

I would ask is this Having grown up in Michigan, which a very big

01:33:15

Polish community most vast majority of them were Catholic The The resonating concept among these

01:33:25

Catholics when you ask them whether or not they know They are born again, or they know they're saved.

01:33:32

They know they're a Christian. How can you know? The answer is almost always

01:33:39

Predominantly, I don't know. I can't know Or some mixture of well, you know if I do more good than I do bad, you know those still stereotypical

01:33:51

Responses that we anyone who has studied apologetics or witnessing evangelizing have heard so if the

01:33:59

Catholic Church isn't teaching a works -based salvation

01:34:06

Why is it the vast but I can't speak from my own personal experience I haven't met all of the

01:34:12

Catholics, but why does it appear from? Anecdotal testimonies from individuals who have been

01:34:19

Catholic. My mom was Catholic growing up And those who witnessed the Catholics often.

01:34:24

Why do we frequently hear that the vast majority of the church the people? Have this belief that their good works are extremely important to their eternal salvation

01:34:38

Yeah, I think two responses one. I would say that The Catholic the the ability for the lay person to know

01:34:50

What the Catholic Church teaches is very limited because one of the arguments I bring for sola scriptura is the fact that they think that?

01:34:57

the canon laws Clarify scripture when if you just place the canon law on a table

01:35:03

It's so high and you know what I mean, like and I say do you guys really think that this clarifies scripture?

01:35:09

I would say that first of all, it's an extremely complicated system whose biggest flaw is that you could become an enemy of God in ten minutes like Like, you know when you come in a mortal sin and mortal sin is not agreed upon anything that's done with full intent

01:35:23

Full knowledge full intent is a moral sin So yes it as far as assurance of salvation Catholic Church condemns assurance of salvation

01:35:31

As far as knowing that you are counted to be part of the elect something like that, right? And this is a great point to disagree with the month

01:35:39

The second thing I would say is that as far as anecdotal, you know You could find a lot of Protestants struggling with the same kind of thing

01:35:47

We believe in justification of faith alone, but we know that when a person falls into sin

01:35:52

Especially if it's a grievous sin, we would we would say things like, you know Almost like we're separated from God, right?

01:35:58

Like we would we would have that so anecdotally I think when people sin it's a natural response to feel like I'm now broken away from God and I think that could be

01:36:07

There if we if we if we remove the Arminians from the Conversation, you know people who actually believe you can lose your salvation

01:36:15

I would say that I think the Protestant response where we are concerned, you know, like oh, there's so much sin in my life

01:36:23

You know Then we're doubting our even our relationship with the Lord Is a very different thing from the belief that it is my

01:36:33

Good works that further perpetuate my salvation you know or that make it possible because I would say that really

01:36:44

I tell people that's when they're looking for a church, you know good, you know good Baptist Church, right? I say yeah read their doctrinal statement, but that doesn't really mean too much

01:36:53

What what's really gonna teach you about that church is what the people in that church are doing and saying who they are

01:37:01

What what is churches and what is what do they believe that's gonna tell you more about what that church teaches and their doctrinal statement and even if you could point to a number of paragraphs in the

01:37:13

Catholic Catechism or to things said by Popes or whatever else that would Make it sound articles written by Catholics, you know that make it sound like Where we really agree on this point justification is through faith the the perpetuating idea about The the role that works play in the maintaining of that Salvation is very different in terminology than what the

01:37:41

Protestants say and I think is what leads to a greater number of Catholics professing

01:37:49

Catholics Believing to one degree or another that their good works are absolutely necessary in this process of salvation

01:37:58

Versus the the number of Protestants who would actually find themselves saying

01:38:03

Yeah, if my good deeds outweigh my bad, I'll get into heaven I mean to hear a

01:38:09

Protestant say that is it's a very considerably smaller percentage. So I would ask you

01:38:15

I'll let you and I'll let you say someone's one quick. I would just say I would say practically speaking though I think it's safe to say that the

01:38:24

Catholic Church does teach a work Salvation if the vast majority of Catholics believe that works are necessary for their salvation, but go ahead

01:38:32

I would say one thing regards to that if you look at an Armenian who believes in that you can lose your salvation and Obviously in the realm of apologetics, we know all right.

01:38:43

We know so many of them and when you hear they're Keeping their salvation.

01:38:49

It's gonna sound very similar to what we're talking about over here now We wouldn't condemn them as damnable heretics, right?

01:38:56

because because they're Right, but you know, they're keeping themselves and you can look at like a

01:39:06

Holiness Pentecostal for example, right and they would they would really believe that you must keep yourself, you know

01:39:12

Or you could lose your salvation. I have plenty of people in my church That believe that you can lose your salvation, right and it sounds like works to some extent because if you can lose it on some

01:39:24

Unmeritorious saying right that you do some sin then there you go. You're kind of meriting your own Perseverance my my point is to say that we don't condemn this group right as this

01:39:35

I think like when we come to other groups that say similar things because you Catholics have a lot of an agreement or minions and I always have said that the only way to refute

01:39:44

Catholicism is to be reformed like an Armenian can never debate a Catholic Yeah inconsistency.

01:39:49

You just can't like you cannot in fact one of the cannons of trend Talks about predestination and you cannot know you are predestined.

01:39:57

That was a crux of the debate So you'll never see an Armenian be consistent with that because they have a hard time

01:40:04

And I think you said one lap like something towards the end Oh, why do so many? Why do so many

01:40:11

Catholics believe that? Because the Catholic Church just like how we are is anti Protestant.

01:40:17

So over time the culture is developed to be anti What I would encourage you to say is if you look at the 1977 joint declaration between Anglicans Lutherans and Catholics What they have declared is that the word justified by faith alone has

01:40:31

Semantic differences but no longer dogmatic differences and they've come together to identify 1997 the joint declaration so we've made progress in identifying that we mean the same thing, but we approach it differently

01:40:45

Okay, so let me let me just say this and I know Chuck wants to weigh in as well A thing that I've noticed over the years you had the

01:40:55

Catholic Church call it what we believe in asthma You had the Mormon Church say that we've we've lost the gospel.

01:41:03

They had to restore it You have the Jehovah Witnesses that say blue, you know that we're not saved and All three of those groups in recent years have come back to where they would say we're not

01:41:15

Christian They are to now saying we're Christian like you and so when the the issue is that what we have is a

01:41:28

Catholic Church that You know if you look at you know, really where the beginnings of Some of that start with unsaved people

01:41:39

Who were you know when when an emperor just goes you're all Christian and I'll give you great graces if you become

01:41:46

Pastors and all of a sudden you had unsaved people making doctrine. Okay, so but you also had saved people and And so you have that's why like Matt's like always jokes my church father could beat up your church father because the early church fathers were all over the place in their doctrine and You could find an early church father that teaches anything and so in those early years there wasn't the precision and With the

01:42:16

Catholic Church continuing to morph it went through years that yes It might have been more solid just like if you look at the

01:42:22

Book of Mormon The Book of Mormon is closer to the Bible than it is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints Doctrine of Covenants and and Pearl of Great Prices where it goes you start seeing what they really teach and so you have that with the

01:42:35

Catholic Church where what they really taught wasn't developed for a thousand years and And now you had with Pope John Paul the second kind of a softening of it

01:42:47

So now you have the dilemma of which Catholics because you have the Catholics who Believe in the

01:42:52

Catholic Church as it is today, and you have the set of seven the cantis I can never pronounce that name

01:42:57

But those that believe that you know ever since John Paul the second it's it's gone arrived because ever since Vatican to and so So which is the true

01:43:05

Catholic Church? Well, if you're gonna stick with those that are really holding to you know Like Mel Gibson and those guys who believe nope that since Vatican to It isn't the church anymore well

01:43:19

They they would still be holding to the very things that we would see but you still see that lingering on in in what the

01:43:28

Catholic Church teaches today, and and so I I'm looking at what they what they're teaching and going no they are teaching that you do works you you obey commandments to obtain

01:43:40

Eternal life so but Chuck I know you wanted to engage so I will hand it over Yeah, first of all

01:43:49

I just want to say brother, I appreciate the hard work you're doing fighting the good fight right for the gospel and the

01:43:57

You know the research you know you obviously studied a lot on this. I want to go back to our discussion on justification and You said something, and I want you to clarify that the

01:44:09

Roman Catholics or the magisterium would define Justification as like it happens at one point in your life, but also at the end of your life something like that Could you reiterate that yeah, so the the

01:44:20

Catholics position is that there's an initial justification that is Completely merited by God is to grace alone

01:44:26

So what we would call you know when we have a born -again experience type of thing But they believe your final justification is after the life, and you must die in a state of grace you die in a state of Enmity with God, and he will go to hell directly

01:44:42

And how would they define justification? Their definition of justifications is a little bit different than ours because I think we all

01:44:53

I think all of us hold to penal substitution. I've been on panels before that they don't I embarrass myself

01:44:59

I think we would all hold to a penal substitution or atonement for them justification is

01:45:06

Inclusive of the forensic aspects of it, but their justification is something like the beatific vision right so they're going towards Being one with God in his holiness, so the beatific vision is the goal of the

01:45:18

Catholic life for us It's penal substitution or atonement. They don't have that same system as us Okay, so we would say based on Colossians 214 that the definition of justification that is a legal declaration

01:45:32

By God that the sinner is in right standing beforehand based on the life and works of Jesus Christ so I don't understand how the

01:45:41

Catholic system can say You're declared justified before Before God at one point of your life, and then you're justified before God and another point you're sure

01:45:52

That's conflicting can I ask you you seem like a scholar So I'm gonna ask you a verse that they would always bring up is

01:46:00

Romans 2 He will render to each one of Romans to what sorry Romans Romans 2 verse 6.

01:46:06

Sorry He will render to each one according to his works to those who have patience and well -doing

01:46:12

Seek for glory honor and immortality He will give eternal life, but for those who are self -seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey righteousness

01:46:21

There will be wrath and fury there will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil to the

01:46:27

Jew first and the Greek but also Glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good the

01:46:33

Jew first and also the Greek for God shows impartiality So what they say is when we have these legal

01:46:39

Colossians, right? You've taken our record of debt and he's nailed it to the cross Must be balanced with something like Romans 2 where both of them have to be in harmony with one another

01:46:52

I Am not advocating Yeah, and I was gonna say this at the end

01:46:58

I'll wait for truck to because it looked like he was reading it, but let me just bring it up on that Yep, and so let me just say for the audience sake

01:47:07

This this may seem odd for some Because Johnny's coming in and he's what he's actually trying to do is to caution us with his his study

01:47:18

To not misrepresent the Roman Catholic Church That's a good thing because we don't want to misrepresent them, right?

01:47:25

I said that earlier before he even came on This is where you know He's he's been studying more of the history and things like this and that that's good for us to take into account

01:47:36

We want to make sure we're careful When we say this is what like in this case the

01:47:42

Roman Catholic Church believes, right? So he's trying to give a caution Now My disagreeing with them are the others.

01:47:49

Yeah, we were you know, there's some disagreement, but that disagreement doesn't have to be bad. I Know people use social media if you disagree your your heretic your you know,

01:48:00

I gotta call your pastor your your anathema it's not that we're disagreeing and for the purpose of being more accurate and precise in What we're gonna what we say

01:48:14

Roman Catholicism teaches I So I want to commend everyone to make sure we do that.

01:48:21

I'm not upset with Johnny that he you know He's you know, it's it's he's coming in to Try to cause us be his heart and I speak for you

01:48:31

But I think I'm accurate that I think Johnny's heart is that we would be more careful in our language with Catholics so that we don't

01:48:42

And that's a good thing to do Okay, don't mind. I will just give a quick reason for my heart that I was discipling a young man last year and He also was wanting to be an evangelist and he ended up turning

01:48:55

Roman Catholic. So We I was working in close concert with him now.

01:49:00

He was having other struggles before so I'm not saying that isn't does entirely This entirely, you know a unanimous thing, but he was one of the people that I was discipling

01:49:10

Very close with them and he ended up turning Roman Catholic. That's when I started studying it in order to talk to him and His best friend ended up turning

01:49:20

Greek Orthodox where I live. That's the growing trend and Greek Orthodoxy, especially which is really my heart

01:49:26

That's the reason I'm not trying to be a devil's advocate for no reason People in my life are turning around which is what caused me to look into this.

01:49:34

Yeah, there was I remember a guy He worked for Jeremiah cry. He actually was their resident apologist theologian

01:49:43

He was going for his doctorate and he and I remember he he asked me He's like should I should

01:49:48

I go do my doctorate in theology or philosophy? And I was like theology. I said because like if you're gonna do apologetics and theology you need to know what the

01:50:00

Bible said you need to know what your Theology is he decided to go philosophy and he ended up becoming

01:50:06

Roman Catholic and he became Roman Catholic because he started looking at the history and When you when you put yourself into this and this is sometimes a danger

01:50:16

When you put yourself into that sort of study You have to know how to apply critical thinking because what he started to do is see the history and all the end starts

01:50:27

You're putting himself in understanding their position but then starting to believe the position so he he didn't see the subtlety of what started to affect him because he

01:50:38

He wasn't looking at it with a critic with the critical eye of of criticism to say well

01:50:43

Let me apply critical thinking here It it's oh, but look at the beauty of it Look at the you know, because I talked to him when after he became

01:50:50

Roman Catholic and so now I obviously would say he was never Saved right and you go.

01:50:56

Well, how was he part of a ministry? Because he really believed he was saved he was just a very intelligent person but he he was enamored with the

01:51:09

The answers that the church could give I Mean it's no different than what I had with a guy

01:51:14

That's at all the Judaism's the right way because the rabbis are the only ones that can answer the you these dilemmas of the

01:51:20

Bible and then they give a manufactured dilemma That wouldn't you know, they they created the dilemma and they have the answer so so it's like, you know, every group is gonna have their their things that That wrap up their system

01:51:38

Everybody everyone. Yeah, and everyone's gonna have some reason for it. It's not right. People are completely ignorant

01:51:45

Yeah, and that's why you can't say oh, but but look this group this group has they they they have a system that works

01:51:51

Everyone has a system that works Because they make it work so Chuck I think

01:51:59

The I think verse 6 to just verse 11 is what I was referencing is a very common very common response that you'll hear to the

01:52:07

So the thing that the reason is you believe in justification Penally done on the cross, but is that all it is?

01:52:15

It's the Roman Catholic opposition Yes, it's true. But that's not all it is So you have to prove that's that's their challenge to the

01:52:21

Protestants is you have to prove that that's all that What's happening on their justification was complete over there and that's what they would push back on And I would say that they they are

01:52:33

Approaching that from out of context. So this is the beginning of Romans Romans chapter 1 and Romans chapter 2

01:52:40

And this is leading into the need for Jesus Christ in the gospel And so of course, he's gonna first starting out about how both

01:52:48

Gentiles and Jews are condemned and being judged by the works Right, but then

01:52:54

Paul later goes into well now we have the works of Jesus Christ that we can appeal to All right.

01:53:01

And so if you don't have God's grace, then yeah, you're gonna be judged by your works But do you believe that this is a

01:53:06

South Pacific? Verse here. It's my question to you. I do not so you don't believe that this is any formula for salvation.

01:53:15

I Don't think he's at this point talking about salvation. He's talking about the judgment of God Okay, um,

01:53:23

I would say there's even Protestants that would probably have a different position this is actually forms the basis of a lot of anti rights future justification theories, but There was that this is the thing that even

01:53:36

Protestants can contend with my response has always been This doesn't negate like how you're saying justification by faith alone.

01:53:42

Right because we still believe in the necessity of perseverance and Sanctification those are done on the basis of works and also if you understand the

01:53:51

Old Testament There was a normative understanding that you know, even though you have faith, right?

01:53:57

There's a normative understanding to the Jew that they would have to God will render to them right?

01:54:03

What was there? That was the law understanding. I agree with you but I would say that If you have been justified in Hebrews kind of gives that clear thing of he has already

01:54:13

Perfected those who are being drawn and the language is Not meant to settle a debate in 2025 that language is meant to address

01:54:22

Jews and Greeks at their time, right? They're not talking about that And if you go to Romans 4, I think I've always just gone through this for and said hey look like there's no other justification apart from any works so like There's balances and there's tensions that I've seen with them

01:54:40

But the best thing that I've always said is if you go directly to Scripture and you just stick with Scripture a

01:54:47

Roman Catholic will have a very hard time with the overall system that they have I do think that the Protestants are pretty much one in the category of Understanding Scripture and explaining it in a way that over every generation of Protestants have affirmed what you know was taught, right?

01:55:02

So I think like we pretty much hit it in them hit the nail on the head.

01:55:07

So I would agree. I think that Romans 2 does present a problem to a Protestant again

01:55:13

That believes that you have no works. No play no part in your life if you believe that Then I would say

01:55:20

I don't think anyone does believe that though. I mean, I think I think people accept that there's works in sanctification,

01:55:26

I Could point to you sermons from last week I bet

01:55:32

I could I'm talking about no like there's no works apart from other I'm just saying that the problem is our

01:55:39

Understandings are fractured right like most Protestant churches are not reformed. So they don't preach that way

01:55:45

You know, they preach in a very different way. Well, they have actually most churches are are

01:55:53

Believe in the doctrines of grace, even though they deny it. I Mean, I have a friend who literally writes books against Calvinism and he's a

01:56:00

Calvinist I have a debate that I've done on here if you back in with 2021 -2022 with a guy

01:56:09

Ari Fuentes and you know, he's a Calvinist and he's debating

01:56:15

Calvinism and You know, he just doesn't understand what it is. He's arguing.

01:56:21

It's the straw man. So let me let me just Say this first off. I do want to thank Johnny for coming in.

01:56:27

I think I think it's good for us to be challenged I think it's good for us to be You know to be more precise as best we can

01:56:36

You know Johnny I do want to let you know if you do want to set up some baits with Catholics We got the platform right here, you know where you could be heard by thousands, you know with the podcast.

01:56:48

So I'll be in touch. There has been one And he's a prominent youtuber.

01:56:54

Actually, it's two Indians. So myself. I'm an Indian and he's also an Indian. Wait, you are I couldn't see that Right, and I mean obviously obviously you're

01:57:04

Christian that makes you white. Oh, yeah, right Right, isn't that I'm sorry,

01:57:12

I'm you know, the the liberals I just it's hard to keep up with You get the white man's religion that I Was disciple by Jews Andrew.

01:57:26

I I got discipled for you know, all of my formative years by Jews Loved Christ.

01:57:32

So I have a very high respect for the Jews and I can never espouse the person that you're talking about.

01:57:37

Yeah, well Blessy Rulan says I know Johnny well over 10 years

01:57:43

He he debate in Way more Catholics and also is very strong understanding of what

01:57:50

Catholics believe in the practice that he debates so So put that comment up for you.

01:57:57

But yeah, if you wanted to do a debate You know here we could Yeah, well,

01:58:04

I mean look I've I moderated many debate I mean, I do a lot of the debates, but I've also moderated debates here and I I tend to be quite neutral So, okay.

01:58:15

There was one debate where I was the moderator and they had me on stage sitting behind them and people were like dude, you can't you can't your face is giving away like when when they

01:58:26

The Argument was over the charismatic gifts and when when the guy just flatly denied that there's any textual criticism with the ending of mark 16 and and he was like that's just cessationist making up an argument

01:58:43

It's like I guess I had to look at my face like all the scholars So that was a station.

01:58:49

It's right. Yeah, I believe the Bible You said what? I believe the Bible Max Lake and Yourself, and I think you did very well.

01:59:01

Yeah, it becomes which one we've had. I think I think he and I've debated gifts Maybe six or seven times.

01:59:08

So Where he goes, I don't have any more questions. He has like more than half of the time I will ask a prayer request from you guys as I leave here

01:59:19

Which is that I'll be traveling to India next week to do ministry and a lot of reform churches over there

01:59:25

Non -reformed and reformed is it evangelistic? So we invite a lot of Hindus and Muslims there so speak praying if you could for God's Word to flourish and then

01:59:36

You know, hopefully we can we can see a lot of salvations, especially among the unreached peoples there.

01:59:41

So Maybe I'll come with you when one day to India. I just don't know what I would eat there

01:59:47

That's my only problem Indian food. It's the only thing I I have tried so much

01:59:52

Maybe a dozen times. I live on Indian food. I know you guys are more than welcome Like yeah, if you guys ever come

01:59:59

Kathy Kathy says, thank you, Andrew Chuck Amb cuz you know, we can't use his real name,

02:00:05

I guess but and and Johnny for a good discussion and challenge So, yeah, so let me let me just give just a quick shout out to some of our sponsors though because you know

02:00:18

They help us do this show. So Let me mention Lagos Bible software does have some discounts right now there are good until May 15th

02:00:26

So you got a couple of weeks left to get 25 % off of their libraries

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Lagos comm slash SFE Lagos comm slash

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SFE that gets you not only the discounts there, but You can get those sales going on right now.

02:00:52

I of course think that everybody Needs to stay awake in the morning.

02:00:58

And therefore what you should do to stay awake in my personal opinion is Go to striving fraternity org slash plunge

02:01:06

Get yourself a cold plunge and you will be refreshed. You will be exhilarated for the day

02:01:13

You you will tackle anything that your day has for you after a good cold plunge. I do that every day

02:01:20

In fact, I had to get up super early this week And I had to drive somewhere early.

02:01:26

So I did my cold plunge at 4 in the morning It's the first time I've plunged while it was still dark out.

02:01:32

So that was a different experience But I I love it is the funniest thing because I love my cold plunge every day until I have to get into it

02:01:39

But part of that is what that that fight -or -flight sensation Create gives you the dopamines and whatnot that that knowing you're gonna get into that cold water

02:01:50

But it is the hardest thing you do all day But if if you're saying look I like to be awake in the morning, but I can't do cold plunging.

02:01:56

That's just nuts Well, all right Then what I suggest you do is is go get some squirrely

02:02:02

Joe's coffee and you could do that at striving fraternity org slash coffee Get the first if it's your first time use the promo code

02:02:10

SFE to get your discount of 20 % off But what I suggest to do is always go to striving fraternity org slash coffee when you reorder

02:02:18

So that Joe knows that you got you found out about them through us here That helps him to continue to sponsor us and we appreciate that because well, you know,

02:02:28

I like the coffee And so I like, you know jokes supporting us.

02:02:34

It's nice But Lastly and this is one. I'll let Aaron talk about is my pillow

02:02:40

I'll let you do that for that one since you like your pillow too. I do every time

02:02:47

Andrew preaches. I always make sure I have my my pillow my travel my pillow with me Not for my sleeping though,

02:02:55

I roll it up and it's perfect it fits right behind my back and good lower back support My my pillow

02:03:02

I I don't just have the my pillow though. I have the my robe and I have the

02:03:09

There's the my coffee, but you can't say that because of Joe there's the

02:03:15

I'm wearing my my slip. I'm wearing the slippers right now. Yeah, we have the my towels my pillow towels anyway

02:03:22

The mattress topper is the best of my they're really What was that mattress topper is the best yes, you gotta do that We haven't had to do that yet because our mattress topper that we have right now is still good

02:03:33

But that you've said that so many times. I'm like, okay the moment we have to replace it. I'm going with my pillow for sure

02:03:39

Yeah, so go to when you know sister sister

02:03:45

Tara She said where's the kiss? My daughter let us all down.

02:03:51

So yes your daughter didn't see it's becoming a thing Tara wants to see up. There you go.

02:03:56

This is the one put that up Tara wants to see you Don't you for folks who don't know with? Erin's daughter comes in every night before she goes to bed and gives him the kiss good night

02:04:05

We get it on camera now now it's expected. So if you want to get yourself a my pillow

02:04:11

Just go to my pillow comm use the promo code SFE It stands for striving for eternity and that is what gets you the discount that they have and they give great discounts

02:04:21

With the promo code and so we greatly appreciate that. So please do that and Let me just Aaron any speaking events you got coming up with I think you got a homeschool event

02:04:34

Coming up. I do. I'll be in Winston -Salem, North Carolina Here later this month and I look forward to that.

02:04:42

That is the 22nd through the 24th in Winston -Salem And I will be this weekend at the truth conference in New Jersey That is

02:04:52

John Harris myself a couple others gonna be speaking at that that will be in Mount Laurel, New Jersey You'd have there is a registration you can get to through striving for attorney if you go to striving for attorney org go go look at the the actually,

02:05:09

I think I even have a Banner for that. So let me look see if I have that still to do

02:05:17

No, I may not have that up. But if you if you just go to on our website look for truth conference

02:05:23

You'll find the article we have on that for the registration. That is this weekend So that looking forward to that it's gonna be a very different conference because a lot of it also going to be strategy strategy planning for how to Kind of how to deal with churches that were denominations of kick people out because they've been they're not woke they're awake and so for that reason they've been given the boot and so yeah, so that is

02:05:52

You call it. Yeah. There we go. You're calling her in She normally has a bedtime of 10 o 'clock, but apparently she was up with her mother hadn't gone to bed yet So I didn't get the smooch yet.

02:06:05

Yeah, so now we get to see her give you the kiss Can I does does she know that everyone in the audience here like waits to see that?

02:06:14

Well There you go, so You know, it's a little things our audience loves if folks if you're listening to this and I and there's thousands that listen to this

02:06:25

But they don't watch it live It is kind of fun. If you come in and watch live because when you're here live the the chat has its own conversations going it becomes

02:06:38

It's really kind of neat to see the friendships that form in the chat and things like that and just even though we we don't always say it like there's always the chats are going crazy about Aaron's daughter giving him a kiss on the forehead and they all like that.

02:06:52

So that's sweet. But Chuck anything anything going on with you that we can before we close out

02:07:01

Nothing specifically planned just for a quick background. I am an elder at a reformed church in Lake City, Texas And so if anyone's looking for a good solid reformed church in that area, you can look us up at five solas net

02:07:17

Go through the website if you like what you see Come by or contact us and then we'll have a good discussion.

02:07:24

Where's that in Texas? What's it was it close to? You might say it's halfway between Houston and Galveston.

02:07:31

Okay Yeah, right It close to the NASA area. Okay Good to know well

02:07:40

Next week I I will talk to Drew and Tom to see if they will fill in I will not be here to do a show.

02:07:49

I will be traveling I will be traveling much of the month So I'm gonna be counting on them to do some shows we may or may not have one if they can't make it

02:07:59

Be praying for both of them Drew right now is under the weather and Tom just has a lot going on with his work with his job