The Cost of Swimming the Tiber w/ Anthony Rogers

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala and today we are gonna be talking about a very important topic.

It's kind of weird, I think all the topics we're talking about on this channel is important. I don't ever think we talk about something that's like, well this is somewhat important, but we're gonna have fun anyway.

This is a specific, a specifically important topic and this is the issue of Roman Catholicism and more specifically issues relating to the conversion of Cameron Bertuzzi of Capturing Christianity to Roman Catholicism.

This is not a bash Cameron episode. As a matter of fact, I don't know Cameron personally.

I've had very few interactions with him through like Facebook Messenger while trying to like set something up or ask a question or something like that, so I don't know him personally.

I'm sure he's a great guy. I know people who know him and they all say he's a great guy, you know, that that's not the issue, but what we're really going to be talking about is what is the cost of swimming the

Tiber? What is the cost of leaving a Protestant theology, and we would argue of course a biblical theology in exchange for the

Gospel of Rome, and so hopefully we can see what those two Gospels, okay, what

I would call the biblical gospel and what I would call the Gospel of Rome, what are the differences and why is it important for us to actually draw the line on those issues?

It is very interesting to me to see the different reactions that people have had to Cameron's conversion, some extreme on one side or on the other, and then there's kind of these this side of like indifference like, oh okay, well he converted from Christianity to Christianity, it's all the same thing, so we're gonna talk a little bit about that as well, but before we do that I want to just remind folks the

Epic Online Calvinism Conference with James White, myself, Dr. Guillaume Bignon, Scott Christensen, and Saiten Bruggenkate is going to be on January 21st.

Folks are already signing up and you can sign up right now at revealedapologetics .com, you just click on the pre -sup you drop -down menu and you could

RSVP your spot. This is also a very helpful way to support Revealed Apologetics, so everything that you do in terms of giving helps me do what

I'm able to do and it actually pays the bill, so all right, so if you're interested in Calvinism, I'm a

Calvinist, my guest is a Calvinist, you know we're not so big on titles, but I do think that if we hold to a

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All right, well without further ado I'd like to invite my friend Anthony Rogers. Anthony, how's it going man?

Your mic is off, yeah there we go, your mic is still off. Oh good, because I stuttered anyways.

There we go, now you're good, how's it going man? It's going great. Well I just want to let you know

I've been binging some of your debates and I'm sure most of my listeners know who you are, but if you don't and you're listening, highly recommend that you go over to Anthony Rogers channel and check out his debates.

He is an excellent defender of biblical Christianity in general, the doctrine of the Trinity specifically, the deity of Christ, interacts with Muslims, Unitarians and all sorts of perspectives, and so he is just a, he's an ace in my opinion in terms of his ability to defend a biblical position, so you definitely want to check that out.

So let's talk a little bit about capturing Christianity in general. I was not an avid listener.

I have listened to many episodes, but it's not one of those channels that I was drawn to all the time.

What's your experience with listening to Cameron Bertuzzi and the content on his channel? Yeah, well so I'd have to say much the same.

It wasn't a channel I watched a lot. I didn't have anything against Cameron or the channel per se. There are some differences, you know, even when

Cameron was a professing Protestant, you know, some things I didn't hold in common with him at the time, but I just wasn't an avid listener.

You know, there's so much stuff out there that nobody should be slighted to hear that somebody wasn't watching them.

That's true, yeah. I'm sure he wouldn't mind. I just want to be clear about that, you know, it wasn't anything about him or anything like that.

It's just there's only so much time in the day, and so yeah, it wasn't a channel that I watched a lot, but I did watch stuff.

There were a few things that caught my attention, so I did watch it. Right, right. Now, Cameron is famous for something in particular, is that among the online apologists and online

YouTubers, I am told that he has the best hair, and I have to agree.

He's got good hair. He's got good hair. So I'll give him that. And by contrast, people, there was a

Unitarian one time, I was in a group, it's a Unitarian group.

I'm of course not a Unitarian, but somebody announced that there was going to be a debate between me and somebody else, and this guy said, is that Anthony Rogers guy, the one that looks like he got beat up in a drunken stupor by three guys in a bar?

So that's my claim to fame. Okay, all right, there we go. Well, let's jump right in.

So again, nothing against Cameron. There were some warning flags that I noticed when watching some of his content, and of course, when he started doing a lot of the

Roman Catholic stuff, and a lot of people have said this, they saw his conversion coming from a mile away, and I would say

I would agree. That was something that I saw coming as well. But again, I don't want to make this about Cameron specifically.

I want to ask you about the cost of swimming the

Tiber, which is kind of a figure of speech of converting to Rome. Can you steel man for us the gospel according to Roman Catholicism?

And then we'll interact with that a little bit, maybe bring in some scripture and contrast Rome's gospel with what we would take to be a biblical gospel.

And before you do that, I did mention that Anthony and I are Calvinists.

I want to make a qualification here. As a Calvinist, I am not the kind of Calvinist, and Anthony is not the kind of Calvinist, and I'm sure he's going to agree with what

I'm going to say, even though he doesn't know what I'm going to say. I'm not the kind of Calvinist that believes if you don't believe in Calvinism, you're not saved.

I know there are some people who hold to that position. I think that there are a wide range of perspectives within the umbrella of Protestantism that have a genuine gospel and that we disagree over important issues, but issues that brothers can disagree over.

And you can correct me if I'm wrong, if you don't hold to that position, Anthony, but I'm pretty sure you do. But Anthony, I think you're going to agree with me here, and you can correct me.

We both agree that Roman Catholicism is different than, say, a disagreement we may have with, say, a

Pentecostal brother or a Presbyterian or a Baptist. Would I be accurate there,

Anthony? Feel free to correct me or disagree. And why is that the case?

Why is the manner in which we differ between, say, different denominations different than how we differ with Rome?

I think Scripture draws some very clear lines. For example, we can say definitively that anybody who denies the deity of Christ is outside the fold of Christianity.

Now, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox individuals, others would agree with us on that sort of thing.

And the reason, that's not just arbitrary, but Jesus in John 8, 24, for example, said, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.

And there, it's an absolute I am statement. So it's I am without a predicate.

Jesus is affirming his absolute deity. He suspends the forgiveness of sins on one's belief in that proposition.

So when we say somebody who doesn't believe in the deity of Christ is not a Christian, that's a sin quanon of the

Christian faith. By the same token, Paul made it very clear that the gospel is central and essential to the

Christian faith. It's one of those things without which not, right? If you don't have this, then you don't have

Christianity. And he makes that clear in a number of places. But one thing, 1 Corinthians 15, when

Paul outlines the facts of the gospel and their theological import, he says, I deliver to you as of first importance that Christ died for our sins.

Don't miss that theological interpretation. He's not just affirming the factuality of Christ's death, but its significance vis -a -vis forgiveness of sins.

But I deliver this to you as a first importance that Christ died for our sins. According to the scriptures, he was buried and he rose again on the third day, according to the scriptures.

So this, Paul said, was a first importance. Earlier in the same epistle, Paul said, I determined to know nothing among you except Christ and him crucified.

In Paul's mind, the problems that were afoot in the Corinthian church all needed to be addressed by bringing them back to this fundamental insight, namely the crucifixion of Christ.

And likewise, in Paul's magisterial defense of the gospel in his epistle to the

Galatians, Paul makes it clear in verses six through nine that it's just this momentous.

Those who don't affirm this gospel are not saved. Those who affirm it are, right?

This is one of the rare times that Paul uses the phrase anathema. Elsewhere, Paul will say things like, if any man loves not our

Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema or let a curse be upon him. But it's not a very common expression in the

New Testament. It'll become very common later in church history. Paul, in Galatians 1, 6 through 9, says that those who peddle another gospel are anathema, which means accursed or cut off from God.

Right. Now, okay, so you may mention, so when we define the gospel, we define the gospel, I mean, the

Bible defines it for us in 1 Corinthians 15. But we would easily agree that Catholics agree with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, right?

So, you know, this is what I've delivered, that Christ died, that he was buried, that he was raised. Where is the difference then?

So a lot of people who are not in kind of apologetic circles, they'll just look at Roman Catholicism and say like Protestantism and say, well, what's the difference?

What do you think is the fundamental difference between a Roman Catholic perspective and a

Protestant perspective in terms of just being two religions? Yeah. So one thing to go back, note that I underscored with respect to 1

Corinthians 15, that Paul doesn't just suggest or throw out there the idea that the gospel are the bare facts, the historical facts of Christ's life, death, burial, and resurrection, but also their divinely inspired interpretation.

God tells us what these things mean, and there are any number of ways that Protestants differ from Roman Catholics on their understanding of these things.

Now, 1 Corinthians 15, it should also be said, is shorthand, right? Like when Paul says, I determined nothing among you except Christ and him crucified, there's a lot packed into that, that Paul will unpack, and he does that in his epistle to the

Corinthians and in other epistles. And so when you look at how Paul unpacks that, then it becomes painfully obvious that we're affirming something and Rome's affirming something else.

Now, one thing that I would also want to point out is this is not just us being cantankerous or mean -spirited, because Rome itself or herself threw down the gauntlet.

At the Council of Trent, Rome hurled her own anathemas in the direction of Protestants, saying that those who affirm what we affirm are anathema.

Alright, and I have a question there. So I hear Catholics say that they view

Protestants as, you know, separated brethren, but at the same time, I mean, I've been to seminary,

I've studied church history, I know about the Council of Trent, and I'm confused because I hear a bunch of different things.

I hear from Protestants, oh, Roman Catholicism, yeah, we disagree on some important stuff, but they're still brothers.

And then I hear Roman Catholics say, yeah, they're separated brethren, but then you read the

Council of Trent, and they say, well, you're anathema if you believe in, you know, sola fide. So what's going on here?

Is there some, like, inconsistencies here? What is the nature of that? It seems to be kind of a contradiction amongst different perspectives there.

Yeah, and of course, I would say, because I have no problem saying, and I think it's honest to say that there is an inconsistency here.

However, the Roman Catholic would say that we're just misunderstanding a term like anathema as it's used in the

Trinity decree. But I don't think that's the case. The fathers at Trent, and by fathers,

I just mean the people that convened at Trent that deliberated and crafted the document and signed off on it and so forth.

They weren't just saying that Protestants are a little wrong, and, you know, we can pat them on the head and, you know, have, you know, all sorts of fun together, but, you know, there's just a few things that we don't like.

And biblically, first of all, the term anathema means to be accursed.

So if Rome is admitting that the word doesn't really mean accursed and just means excommunicated, well, then that just shows another example of Rome being at variance with Scripture.

But secondly, the Roman Catholics who say that it just means to be excommunicated have a problem because Rome's official position has always been that those who are outside of the church don't possess salvation.

And so they also have to try and iron that out. They have to make these sorts of things work together. But when

Protestants are called by Roman Catholics separated brethren, the word brethren seems to indicate you're still brothers.

It means you're still saved, but you're in error, come back home, so to speak. You know what I mean? Is that what separated brethren means?

But you would say that the idea of separated brethren is inconsistent with Rome's official stance on the issue?

That just points up another problem. Rome often pretends that believing in the infallibility of the

Pope or the magisterium of the church solves all sorts of problems, like the confusion allegedly created by belief in sola scriptura, which makes everybody his own infallible interpreter.

That's the charge of Rome. But Roman Catholics don't agree in their interpretation of papal pronouncements or the creedal statements.

So there are Catholics who would interpret separated brethren one way and Catholics who would interpret separated brethren another way.

I would say if I were a Roman Catholic, because I feel obligated to be consistent with what had come before,

I would say in light of Trent and its pronouncements of others as anathema, that the sense of separated brethren has to mean brethren who are going to hell, as difficult as it might be to still call them brethren.

That would be necessarily, I think, what you'd have to conclude. But I don't think that's what a lot of Catholics conclude today.

And maybe at some point we'll get into this, but I also don't think, because you were going to ask me about what

Rome's view is of the gospel and so forth. But I think that there's even a problem, because I think

Trent says something that many contemporary Roman Catholics don't. Interesting.

So what is the gospel according to Roman Catholicism? Someone said something that kind of made me want to do this, what we're doing here.

I don't interact with a lot of comments on Facebook and stuff, not because I don't want to. People message me all the time and I don't respond.

I just don't have time. The only things I have time to do are this at nine in the evening, and then

I'm a full -time teacher. I'm doing all sorts of stuff, so I don't really have time to debate people on the internet. But I do read a lot of stuff, and I read things that are confusing to me sometimes, because I think

I knew the issues on that. It seems this person who seems to be informed says this other thing over here. So when someone said something to the effect,

I remember who it was, when they were referring to Cameron's conversion, they were like, oh, wow, you know, he converted from Christianity to Christianity, you know, kind of like making the idea that like, what's the big fuss about?

You know, he's still a Christian. And I'm thinking like, for me, how I understood the gospel according to Rome, which you're going to explain to us in a few moments,

I always saw Roman Catholics as objects of evangelism, because I understand what the gospel is.

And I understood what Rome was claiming. And I'm like, there's a conflict there, at least from a Protestant perspective, and a

Roman Catholic perspective. These seem to not be the same. I'm confused. Are Protestants saying that, say, for example, justification by faith alone is not a dividing line issue, that you can deny that and still be a

Christian and hold to the true gospel? It's kind of confused. And so that's why I was asking, like, give us a steel man presentation of the

Roman Catholic doctrine, or the gospel according to Rome. And then let's set that side by side with what we think scripture teaches and kind of show they're not in conformity with one another.

And this is why this is such an important issue. Can you do that for us? Yeah. So in a nutshell,

I hope it's going to be a nutshell. Who knows, by the time I get there, it might be 10 minutes in. But the first thing that has to be said is that justification itself is not, as Protestants believe, something forensic.

We believe that justification is God's declarative act with respect to those who are trusting in Christ.

For Rome, it refers to a process that begins, continues, and it has an end.

And it's in some ways like what we normally think of as sanctification, though even here,

I don't think it's exactly the same thing. But justification is a state into which one enters.

Formally, you're a child of wrath and you enter into a state of grace through baptism.

This is the initiation of the process. And then grace is infused into you.

It's like a substance that's infused into you, which literally eradicates sin in the soul.

So the Roman Catholic, when they talk about the remission of sins, it's not what Protestants ordinarily think, that our guilt has been absolved and so forth.

Rather, sin has actually been eradicated from the soul. So the person is really delivered from sin.

And now the grace of God in him is something that he is now exerting, working out, if you will, performing good works and meriting eternal life.

So, I mean, there's more to be said there, of course, but that's in effect the Roman Catholic position.

Now, so when a person sins, this creates a problem, because remember, justification involves the eradication of sin and so forth.

And if it's a venial sin, this is addressed by means of things like Mass, the

Eucharist, right, going to Mass and that sort of thing. But if it's a mortal sin, then this actually destroys the grace of justification that's operative in the soul.

And now that needs to be restored by more radical means. You know, a person who dies in a state of guilt, having committed a mortal sin will go to hell.

Somebody who dies not having discharged the temporal penalties due to sin in this life will go to purgatory until those temporal consequences have been taken care of.

And so in this process, you have not only the individual's own merits that factor into the equation of meriting final justification, you also have, you know, potential purgatorial sufferings.

You have the merits of the saints. So Mary and the saints also contributed to this treasury of merits.

I always consider it quite stingy of the Pope that he has access to this treasury of merits, and he's not just freely bestowing them on people.

Instead, he's granting indulgences to people on the condition that they do X or Y or Z. This is one of the things that sent

Luther off was when Tetzel was in effect selling indulgences, which for people meant time off in purgatory, and so forth.

And so, but the church supposedly has the ability to dispense these merits.

And why aren't they just, you know, doing so much more freely?

Almost as freely, I would expect, as God himself with respect to the actual merit that saves us, which is the merit of Christ.

God isn't begrudging in bestowing that merit. Those who believe will be saved. So by contrast now, the

Protestant position is not a denial that God delivers people from corruption.

This is not justification, but certainly God is saving the whole person and from the whole problem that the fall introduced.

But the issue of justification has to do with the matter of guilt, right?

But when we sin, we become guilty, and that means that we are consigned to punishment.

We incur punishment. We deserve punishment. And in justification,

God remits our sins. That is, He cancels the debt. He expunges the guilt from our record.

And He accepts us as righteous, not because of anything in us or done by us, but because Christ died for our sins.

He took the penalty and lived the perfect life. And that righteousness is imputed to us through faith.

And so God, on the basis of the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, declares us righteous.

It's an instantaneous, once -for -all act. So the

Protestant view is that justification is declarative. Rome's view is that it's a process. It's initiated by baptism.

According to Protestantism, it is received by faith. It involves the remission of sins and the imputation of righteousness on account of Christ's death and life.

According to Rome, it involves the actual purging of sin from the soul and the impartation or infusion of grace into the soul, enabling the person to now work for and merit eternal life.

In Protestantism, there's no such concept of meriting salvation. It's a free gift and so on and so forth.

So that's it in a nutshell. Okay, so I know there are two different levels of talking about Roman Catholicism.

There's the scholarly literature, which is very technical, and you have to define these very well -defined terms and categories that we need to use.

And then there's kind of the popular interaction, you know, between people on the internet and kind of the average person, you know, you have kind of like average conceptions of what many

Protestants think Roman Catholicism is and vice versa. Do you think that when Protestants characterize the

Roman Catholic view of salvation as like, you know, Catholics believe in faith plus works, do you think that's an accurate summary of their position?

Or do you think that us Protestants in understanding the Roman Catholic view of salvation, I think we need a little bit more nuance in how we explain that.

What do you think about that? Well, a person could certainly say a position, even their own with more nuance in one setting to another.

And we may not like it when somebody is giving our own position and not giving that extended nuance. But I mean, we do that ourselves, we can state our position quite succinctly.

And then we might need to then get into greater nuance when somebody is saying something we think that doesn't really hit our view.

But Trent is clear in the sixth session, it very clearly speaks of good works meriting eternal life.

And so it is a system of works righteousness. Now, Rome did have a high view of grace.

And this is I would say to the chagrin of many professing Protestants today. When we say that we embrace other

Protestants who are reformed or Calvinistic or something like that, I would qualify that by saying this, there are stronger versions of non -reformed or anti -Calvinistic

Protestantism than some of what passes for anti -Calvinism today.

There are some pretty radically bad forms of Protestantism today.

I wonder if there's even anything worth calling grace in those systems. But evangelical

Armenians, for example, of the past have held a very robust view of grace, which

I think excels that of Rome. I'm just talking about the matter of grace, not the specific issue of justification and so forth.

But I'll give you an example, Charles Wesley. I mean, I heard a guy the other day, not long ago, who is a

Protestant who is denying prevenient grace. But Wesley, who was a stalwart of evangelism, friend of Whitefield and so forth, who nobody could ever call into question his reformed bona fides, they were good friends.

Wesley had a clear sight of the fact that man, apart from grace, cannot believe the gospel.

He was an Arminian. He believed in free will and all the rest. However, there are some today who would reject that sort of thing.

Now, Calvinists, of course, believe in prevenient grace. The difference between us and the

Wesleyan view would be that we believe that that grace that prevenes, that comes before, is particular and efficacious, whereas in the

Wesleyan system, it is universal and non -efficacious. It can be resistible. It's more kind of like the issue of irresistible grace versus resistible grace.

Yeah, so there are differences. But the reason for saying this is there is a very clear, at least, advantage of one version of non -reformed

Arminianism to other forms that I think excels Rome. But Rome does have a high view of grace in the sense that,

I mean, you could read Trent, and at times it seems to echo the Council of Orange.

Now, the Council of Orange, many may not know. Go back and read that. I wouldn't say that it's perfect in every way.

But many people are going to read that and think that this was written by, you know,

Luther or Calvin, right, or Knox or Zwingli or Wieser or whatever. No, it was written a millennia before them.

But Rome, at times, will echo things that you can find in the Council of Trent.

So they do believe that grace is involved in the whole process and that it's critical and all the rest.

But the question is whether they're consistent with this. And once you get to something like the doctrine of justification, it becomes immediately apparent that, you know, grace is no longer grace in this system.

Having, you know, spoken somewhat favorably of Rome in this respect, I want to make it clear,

I mean, I don't think in the matter of justification they're consistent. Plus, there's the whole issue of sacramentarianism in Roman Catholicism that I think impinges on a lot of this too.

I want to ask about something that's very important to all Christians, right, is this idea of what it means to have peace with God, right?

So let's move away from kind of all the details and the intricacies and the difference between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.

Having peace with God is a biblical category. It is a thing that brings, I mean, me as a

Protestant, brings me comfort that I have peace with God. How does a

Roman Catholic understand what it means to have peace with God and what are some issues that you would take with how a

Roman Catholic would answer that sort of question? Yeah, so, well, first just...

Because, real quick, before you answer, because this came across, because I was invited to a church years ago, and you got to check out this church, it's a great church, you know, great people, great sermons, whatever, and I was going to visit this church, and of course

I finally made it. I was like, oh, I'm here, okay, I'm going to meet up with this person, and of course I couldn't walk into the church because right outside the church there was a

Roman Catholic man holding a huge sign saying the Roman Catholic Church is the only true church that has been guided by the

Holy Spirit throughout the centuries. This is the whole thing, and I was like, I need to talk to this guy.

I can't just walk into this church and ignore that this guy's out here, and so I had a, by the way, we had an excellent and respectful and cordial conversation, but I remember asking him, you know, do you have peace with God?

Do you know that you're saved? And he says, I wouldn't be so presumptuous to say that I could know, and I thought,

I was like, wow. Now, we had a good conversation, and it continued, but I don't want to get into that. That really brought me aback.

I was like, wow, like, not only do you not know you have peace with God, you almost think it's arrogant to think that someone could know.

Now, I'm not sure if every Roman Catholic would say that, but I thought that was fascinating, and so that's where I kind of produced my question.

So getting back to my question, so how does a Catholic understand peace with God, and why would we take issue with that according to Scripture?

Yeah, so one thing I'd say real quickly is that according to Trent, you cannot, without divine revelation, know that you're saved.

Okay. So they would call that the sin of presumption. Okay. And it's tied to their view of the gospel, and the fact that it is suspended on your performance, and whether you pull this off.

You know, as you're running along the rat wheel, hoping that you're making progress, you could always fly off, right?

You could stop moving your little feet, and the wheel will shoot you in the other direction.

So that's the, you know, situation that the Roman Catholic is laboring under.

Now, but I would say quickly after this that, you know, really the sin here, and it's similar to what you hear from garden variety pagans, right?

Where they say things like, you're arrogant for believing that Jesus is the only way, or you're arrogant for this reason or that reason.

The real arrogance here is believing that you can assert something contrary to what

God has said, right? That your word is more certain than his word. And it's really not just arrogance, but faithlessness.

When somebody says, well, we would say, and we can point to it in scripture clearly,

God has promised to forgive the sins of those who believe in Jesus. God has promised to save those who believe in Jesus.

Somebody who says they believe in Jesus, but don't know if they'll be saved, is in effect, you know, speaking out of both sides of their mouth.

They're giving with the one hand what they're taking away with the other. Paul says the one who confesses with their mouth and believes in their heart that God raised

Jesus from the dead, that person will be saved. So it's really a sin on the part of those who reject that, you know, and say that we can't be certain of that.

Now, I mean, of course, what they're going to do is they're going to say, well, I don't know that I really have faith. And, you know, this, that, and the other thing. We could talk about those, but those are secondary, right?

If a person's believing in Jesus, they have the right to say that they have eternal life and so forth.

And we can talk about what are the fruits and evidences of a true and saving faith and all that kind of stuff.

But that again, that's an after, you know, that down the road discussion. But the idea of peace with God, really, this is the rub, right?

One of the things that makes it impossible for me as a Protestant coming from where I've come from now to look at Rome and find it all appealing.

You know, we were talking before the show about what is appealing about Rome to other people and so forth. And some people find this, that or the other thing beautiful.

But I look at the gospel of Rome and it's not beautiful to me. I got to tell you, I think they need the stained glass windows, not that I have anything against stained glass windows, but all the other trappings that go along with it, right?

To present something to the senses that are palpable because their gospel isn't it.

And I'm saying that it's not wrong to make an appeal of this sort. In Paul's defense of the gospel to the

Galatians, he appealed to their experience, right? Of course, he's grounding it ultimately in Scripture. But he says,

I want to know one thing from you, right? These people that he's saying, you know, who's bewitched you, right? Christ was clearly placarded before your eyes as crucified.

The gospel was clearly proclaimed to you. I want to know one thing from you. Did you receive the spirit and perform miracles by the works of the law or by hearing with faith?

Was it by the works of the law that you received the spirit, which is the chief, you know, one of the chief blessings poured out by Christ on his people?

You know, did you receive the spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith? Works or faith? That was Paul's alternative, right?

That's how he set it up. And he's pointing to the fact that when he went to the Galatians and proclaimed the gospel to them, this was their experience.

The promise of the spirit that was made throughout the old covenant became a reality for them. And so Paul's pointing to that and saying this, you received this by faith.

So when I think of my own experience analogously as a, you know, one of the things that always bothered me,

I'll be quick here because I'm not trying to give my testimony. But one of the things that always bothered me was I would listen to other people as they made excuses for why they were in the trouble.

Because I got in a lot of trouble and was facing all. You don't look like a troublemaker at all.

I look like a guy that got beat up by three guys. Listen, I'll let you continue. I'll let you continue.

But I knew you were a straight up thug when you had that debate with that. What was that guy that it was on the

Trinity you called in? You called in. Oh, that was Brandon Tatum.

Brandon Tatum, you had this like wool hat on. You had like this hoodie on.

Even the comment section was like, bro, you just got bodied by this dude from the street. Like it was so hilarious.

You looked like a thug. You don't look like someone who knows theology. And I don't mean that insulting. But when you share and you debate and stuff like that, it's clear that you studied these issues.

But you do look intimidating and you look like you probably had a checkered past. This is 30 years out now, though, but there are some things that are just still like I love my beanie.

I was wearing the beanie. You mentioned it in my discussion with Brandon Tatum. The reason was I was in we were in another place.

I was in the basement. It was really cold that time of year, but I love wearing my beanie. So I had the beanie on and I called him up on just a fluke.

I called in. He didn't think you were going to get on. Yeah, I didn't think he was going to bring me on.

So I wasn't necessarily looking the part. But my wife will sometimes tell me that, you know,

I change this or that because I might draw unwanted attention. One time as an aside, because I we used to live in Vegas.

And one time I this was back like in my early 20s.

So after my conversion, I converted at like 18, 19, early 20s, had just gotten my first car, you know, prior to all the ones that I had that weren't mine, which is part of what got me in trouble.

But I was driving this car. It was a black Honda, black tinted windows. I was taking some people home down the

Las Vegas Strip, past all the casinos. Most people don't know that behind all the fancy hotels, most of those areas are bad areas.

And so I was going past the stratosphere of the big tower. And the area back there is called Naked City gets its name from nefarious activities back there.

And anyways, I was driving past there. And apparently there had been some kind of shooting that week.

And so somebody was out for revenge in this car full of gangbangers pulled up next to me. And I could just feel people looking at me.

And I looked over and, you know, I had been out of the streets for a while.

And I was thinking at this time, why did I look over? Because as soon as you look over, you've committed. And now there's going to be some kind of interaction.

Are you looking at me? Are you looking at me, Anthony? My window was down.

And next thing I know, all these guys jumped out of their car. I'm stuck in traffic. And this guy had one of the clubs that I was telling other people the story of the day.

Somebody in here was heard the story. But he had one of those clubs that you lock your steering wheel with.

Right. And I don't know if you've seen those. I don't know if they're common. I'm not that I was around for the clubs.

So it had this bar with these ridges on it. Yeah. And the first guy runs up to my window.

I'm stuck in traffic. He runs up to my window and he swings it in and I stuck up my arm. You know, it's not like I think my arm is stronger than the club, but I thought it's better than my head.

So I stuck my arm up and I had ridges in my arms for months. Oh, my goodness. And then he proceeded to break out all my windows.

And I won't give you the rest of the story. But anyways. Well, it's better to be attacked as a Protestant because you could be confident to know where you're going.

Exactly. You don't want to be a Catholic because quick before you take my money and beat me down, someone get me a priest.

Yeah. So the reason for bringing this up, though, is just to say that I at one point had gotten in trouble.

And then I'm listening to other people talk about how they ended up where they were at. And I heard this person give this reason.

They grew up in a bad neighborhood. They get another person said they grew up in a broken family. Another person said they grew up poor. Some people said all three of these.

Right. There's one thing after another. And as I'm listening to all of these, I started thinking. At first,

I was like I was looking for my excuse. Right. I'm fishing. I'm like, OK, somebody said, because I don't know what mine is.

Long story short, I realized at the end of the day, and this is what really bothered me. I did the things that I did because I wanted to.

And this is very similar to Augustine's own experience, right, where he stole just to steal. And it was the it was the satisfaction of sin that, you know, countless others have have noted in history that they just loved sin more than God.

And I knew once I started reading the Bible, I read the Bible twice in a very short amount of time before becoming a believer.

And I knew that if I stood before that God, I was utterly ruined. I was going to be undone.

And the problem, I think, for a lot of people is you could have people that will, you know, go in certain spurts and think things are

OK in their case, you know, apart from Christ or apart from the true gospel. And they can keep up that for a while as long as what they're doing is either comparing themselves to others.

Right. Or, you know, and of course, when you compare yourself to others, what you're doing is you're looking for the worst person you can find for yourself, too.

And then you're magnifying his sins and minimizing your own. And of course, that's not the point of comparison.

The point of comparison is a holy God. And that God was so righteous, is so righteous and holy that one sin caused the entire human race to be excluded from his presence and be consigned to wrath and perdition.

Right. That God consumed the entire world, deluged it in a flood, expiring only eight people by grace, by the way.

Right. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord or Genesis six. So I'm reading this sort of thing.

And I just realized, look, there's no hope for me. And when I look at Rome's gospel, because understand my background,

I'm Sicilian, at least through my maternal side, partially through my father's side.

But the family that I knew growing up was all the Italians.

Right. It wasn't any of the other. So that's just always how I've understood myself in terms of my ethnicity and historical, you know, moorings and all that.

And, you know, they came here right from Sicily, back east. And some of them were literally involved in the mafia.

My grandfather's name was Salvatore Toloco. He was named after his uncle, who was the bodyguard of Joe Pirello, the head of the

Cleveland Mafia. I mean, gunned down. They were both gunned down in a little Italy. So, I mean, that's just. Puerto Rican. We don't have that.

We have gangs and stuff, but it's not the same. My point to bring that up is, of course, all good self -respecting

Italians are Roman Catholic. So I wouldn't claim that I had a lot of knowledge of Roman Catholicism growing up, but I at least knew it culturally.

And but when I when I was looking at the Bible, I did actually talk to a

Catholic priest on a number of occasions. And the striking thing to me was here

I am. I'm this guy that's just been reading the Bible for about a year, read it several times. And this priest, just to be frank, struck me as a dunce when it came to the scriptures.

And I give you an example. His name is Father Kelly. He and at one point he was saying he said he was he gave a little homily.

And then he was about to do the, you know, the Lord's Supper mass.

And he he asked a question of everybody that was there.

And he said, how does a person get faith? And I thought, oh, great. The great question.

Right. And I was all excited. I saw faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And he looks at me and he goes, no, without flinching.

And then he looks at the next person. And so now my mouth's wide open. I was like, that was a direct quote from Paul. And nobody's coming up with an answer.

And then he's exasperated. And he finally says through baptism. I said, baptism. So what sense does that make?

I said on the part of an adult, at least. Right. Set aside the question of infant baptism and all that on the part of an adult.

Why would he come to baptism apart from faith? Baptism presupposes faith.

Now, I'm not talking now about whether this is the official Catholic view or not, but I was going to ask. It was like, is this a particular Catholic who's saying this or is this an official view of like Catholics in general?

Well, I mean, I just think logically and as I read Trent, I think it affirms this. But I mean, logically, it presupposes faith.

Right. So but they also, you know, they call baptism the sacrament of faith there. I can understand where confusion would arise in connection with it.

And of course, you don't have the remission of sins apart from baptism. So it's almost like if Scripture connects faith with the remission of sins and Rome connects it with baptism, then it would seem to assume that faith isn't there until baptism.

I mean, so I just I can understand where somebody might go wrong. But this was a priest, you know. And anyways, but but but here's the bottom line.

So I'm listening to what these other people are saying as excuses. I realize none of that works for me.

I don't even think it works in their case. Even if we grant all these things right. There are plenty of people who grew up in a bad neighborhood, had broken families, didn't have money, who nevertheless didn't do some of the things they did.

And even those people aren't perfect before God. And so when I look at Rome's gospel and I think, can this gospel help somebody like me?

And I got to tell you, it can't. Even, you know, 20, 30 years out as a

Christian. I love the Lord Jesus Christ. I live for him. I serve him. You know, vocationally,

I go into prisons. I have such a desire to tell the gospel to other prisoners. I believe this gospel has the power to convict and convert them and change them and so forth.

I have every bit of confidence in the gospel and every bit of desire to serve Christ and so forth.

But I've never thought on my best day that I could take whatever I had done on that day and present it to God and expect that God would be obligated to give me heaven.

Do Roman Catholics believe that God is obligated to give heaven after? I mean, I've heard Roman Catholics say

God will give you heaven, but he doesn't have to do anything. So that when we say

God is obligated, that's kind of like a snippy way Protestants quickly summarize what they think the

Catholic view is. You know what I mean? Well, I mean, I don't have a problem using obligation, even with respect to our view.

God has promised to save those who believe. So I would say those who believe God has to save or else he's not true to himself.

But that's because he's bound himself. So a Roman Catholic might want to say that God has bound himself to reward the merits of the saints with eternal life.

They might try and get around it that way. But Scripture doesn't even allow that sense of merit to enter into the equation. You know, it's not by works at all, according to Scripture.

Okay, so this question always comes up, and I think it's important. A person who affirms a biblical gospel, we'll call the person a

Protestant. And the person has what we would take to be, and it doesn't have to be

Calvinist or anything like that, but he places his faith in Jesus. You know, I put my faith in Jesus.

It's not by works, it's by faith. But to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, it's faith.

And then the person fully understands that and then later rejects that and embraces the gospel of Rome.

How should we, as Protestants, perceive that person? Does that person thereby expose the reality that they were not saved?

How do we navigate that? Because, hey, I wish, I hold to the position, and I'm not afraid to say it,

I think that Rome has a false gospel. Like, I think that that gospel will damn you.

It doesn't save. That's just my perspective. I know people would disagree with that. I wish that wasn't true.

I wish it was still within the pale of, like, under the umbrella of quote -unquote salvation.

But how should we navigate someone who makes a transition like that? I mean, for some people,

Protestants that I know, it's not a big deal at all. And for me, I'm like, I'm trying to understand, because I don't want it to be a big deal.

I want it to be, okay, I don't agree with Catholicism, but they've got some of the essential areas correct, and so at the end of the day, they're still a brother.

I want to say that, but I can't bring myself to say that, given what I know about the gospel.

How should we perceive someone who's made this kind of transition, and why is this such an important thing to think about?

Yeah, one of the things I want to say along with this, so remind me if I kind of veer off a little too much and don't get to your point.

I intend to, but what you said kind of reminds me of something. One of the things that I've seen on the part of Roman Catholics since I've been a

Christian, when I became a Christian, it was in the early 90s, and so it was kind of in the aftermath of a wave of professing

Protestants becoming Catholic. So in 86, for example, Scott Hahn became a Roman Catholic.

In 1990, his wife, Kimberly Hahn, became a Roman Catholic. They wrote a book called Rome, Sweet Home, for example, and then there were others, for example,

Roberts and Jennis converted to Rome, and by the way, that's how they talk, which

I find suspicious already. They converted to Roman Catholicism.

They're acknowledging that in their view, this is a conversion, and number two, though, notice that it's not, as Protestants would speak, conversion to Christ.

It's conversion to Rome, which again, I mean, I think that that's an unwitting way of talking about this, but it does get at something.

Anyways, but one of the things I didn't like ever is this whole idea of what I call celebrity evangelism, and that's where anybody who converts over to the system suddenly is celebrated in the sense that, you know, now everybody's supposed to say, hey, look,

Rome is true because these people converted. Okay, now it doesn't always mean that people were celebrities before their conversion.

I just mean that they're, and I'm not criticizing celebrating somebody's conversion, right? As a Christian, if somebody becomes a believer in Christ, I'm going to celebrate that.

I think all the angels. And Cameron, who is very well, I mean, look, his YouTube channel has got 159 ,000 subscribers, very well -known person.

We can call that celebrity status in like the apologetics YouTube world.

So it is a big deal when someone does that. But I don't think that Cameron would affirm, nor those who participated in his journey to convert, nor they would affirm that because he became

Catholic, that therefore that validates the truth of Catholicism. And so I would agree with that. However, there are far too many that do do that.

And I could point to some right now. Yeah, Muslims are notorious for this.

So that's the first thing. But it's also relevant, not only because this is the sort of thing that some people will point to and say, hey, look, this is a confirmation of the truth of Roman Catholicism.

If this person became a Catholic, you should too. But there's also the sense in which people that like these guys for whatever reason they liked them, that they look at this and it causes them to stumble.

But remember. Well, first of all, I mean, if Protestants were in the same business as constantly parading before people, all these conversions from Catholicism, I can assure you the numbers outstrip

Rome, you know, in terms of which direction people are flowing. And I could show you statistics.

I've looked at statistics on the you know, and some of this obviously is approximation. But, you know, there's at least four or five times more

Protestants that came from Roman Catholicism than Protestants that went to Catholicism.

That's just statistically factual. So if we're doing that sort of game, it's a dead end for Roman apologists.

But so that was that's one thing. But your specific question was, oh, yeah.

So how do we view this? Remember that the New Testament itself records apostasies.

There's nothing about being Protestant in general or reformed in particular. That means we deny apostasy.

There's a genuine biblical category of apostasy. And it's meant there are apostates mentioned all throughout the

New Testament. Right. So you have Alexander the coppersmith, Demas, Hymenaeus and Philetus, Simon Magus over and over again.

Scripture notes people that once were associated with the

Christian faith and with Christians, but then later were not. And Judas is, I think, the the primary example here, because we have more about Judas than others.

So think about Judas. I mean, Judas walked with Christ. He certainly had an accurate teaching of what the true faith is.

Right. Nobody could fault his teacher. Right. And he even proclaimed it.

Right. Mr. Miyagi, Mr. Miyagi would be different. There is no bad student, only bad teacher.

Not in this case. Definitely not in that case. So Judas knew the truth.

But now so how do we how do we view people that once were somehow identified with?

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I'm asking the question, should we see someone who converts from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism?

Should we see that person as apostasizing? In the sense that they are departing from what they formerly professed?

Yes. And in a sense that in a sense that we no longer view them as brothers in Christ. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. OK. The reason I brought up Judas is because most people. So they would look at Judas and say, well, so here you have a clear example of somebody falling away.

And I don't think that he was once regenerated, had truly been united to Christ through faith and justified.

And now later is damned because Scripture itself won't allow that. Right. So Judas, before he betrayed

Christ, the script, in fact, it's interesting. Whenever Judas is mentioned, he's never mentioned without adding this qualification, the one who would betray him.

Right. So you never get introduced to Judas apart from this idea. You already have this suspicion about Judas when you're reading through the gospel before he depart.

But in John 13 and prior, there are all these indications that Judas, there was something off kilter to begin with.

Right. He complained when a perfume was used to anoint

Christ because allegedly it could have been given to the poor. But really, Judas was upset because he held the money bag and it was sticking his grimy fingers in there.

Right. But way back in John six, when Jesus does his great church shrinkage seminar.

Right. Remember when he starts off with 5000 and then all these people leave because they were there for the sights and sounds.

They were there because their bellies were filled and that sort of thing. And not because of the true bread that was standing in front of them.

Right. They left. And then the disciples are like, you realize this offends, you know, this offends people and so forth.

Jesus says, do you want to leave too? And Peter says, where can we go, Lord? You have the words of eternal life.

There's there's no alternative. And then Jesus said, have I not chosen you the twelve and yet one of you is a devil.

So he points out even back then that that Judas was a devil. He was talking about Judas Iscariot, the

Texas. So Judas was outwardly identified with Christ, his disciples. He proclaimed the same faith and so forth.

Later departed. His departure made manifest what he truly was. It exposed him for what he truly was.

And that's why John and 1st John 2 says they went out from us, but they were not of us for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us.

Going out showed that they were never really of us. So, yeah, I would say it's apostasy in this sense that it represents a departure from what was at least ostensibly being professed.

Now, I do have to say here, I mentioned that I haven't really watched Cameron, but I don't know because I didn't watch

Cameron if it was ever really part of what his message was. I don't know that because I've heard from other people that they've said it wasn't evident from the past that this was something that was really part and parcel of what

Cameron believed. And I know that a couple of things that I watched, I remember watching. I think it was something with Matt Fradd and just just a couple of little things here and there.

Nothing to be any expert on his particular case. But I do remember him,

Cameron, saying something like, you know, they were going to talk about this subject. So he was going to go read up on this.

And I'm thinking a lot of this just looked to me from what I was hearing.

And then from what little I saw was sort of like after the fact stuff, like I'm going to figure out what is it Protestants hold on these issues?

That's what it seemed like to me. So if somebody knows better, fine. You know, but I didn't see

Anthony that there were certain things as a Protestant apologist.

Things that I thought just in passing, and I'm not an expert on what Cameron believes, I'm not going to assume

I don't know the level of depth of whatever. But there were things that he would say that I would think to myself,

I'm like, wouldn't you know that? Like, shouldn't you already know that? That's not even like a side thing.

Like, oh, let me go figure this. That's kind of what it's kind of like very much a part of what it means to be a Protestant is to understand some of these basic things.

And at least it appeared to give the appearance that he lacked some knowledge and some things that, well, if you're going to make this leap, you probably should already kind of be up on some of those issues.

I know, granted, we don't know everything. And obviously we all have to look into things and study things. But as someone who has a channel like his and is an apologist,

I guess I assumed probably should have been aware of some of those things beforehand.

But again, that's just my perception. So again, I didn't watch him a lot either. I've heard a lot of people say many things along those lines.

People who have watched him for a while have often expressed, there never really was a strong emphasis on Scripture.

It was very philosophical. And again, I have nothing against philosophy at all. But there did seem to be, at least to all appearances, there seemed to be a little imbalance there.

But again, that's my perception, my limited perception. Okay. If someone were on the fence, suppose, okay, so Cameron has swam the

Tiber and other people who may be thinking about doing it. How would you engage someone or encourage them to really think long and hard about what they have to give up to cease being what we would call a biblical

Christian, someone who affirms these essential doctrines like justification by faith alone and these sorts of things.

How would you discourage someone from making that leap who might be on the fence and saying, hey, is

Rome the true church? And they're really considering it. How would you navigate having a conversation with someone like that and maybe could help some of the viewers who might be experiencing something like that themselves as to like, hey, let's have a talk before you make this decision.

How would you navigate that? One thing I would do, and this is something I've done with people that I've had conversations with that were either

Roman Catholics or looking at Rome. But I've said, hey, okay, here's one thing

I would suggest that you do. Get an understanding of what Rome's gospel is.

Get an understanding of what it is that Protestants have been saying the gospel is.

And then go read the book of Galatians. It's only six chapters. Go read the book of Galatians with these two ideas side by side and ask yourself honestly.

And I could throw this out there and sort of let it go kind of thing.

Meaning I have every bit of confidence that if they're reading the book of Galatians with the intention of believing what it says and evaluating these two competing claims in light of it, that they can come to no other conclusion.

And if they come to the conclusion of Roman Catholicism, in my mind, obviously,

I don't think they're approaching these things above board. There's all sorts of other issues crowding out the issues.

But anyways, I've told people, go and read the book of Galatians and seriously ask yourself, do you think that what

Paul is saying here is what Trent affirmed? Or does it sound more like what Protestants have always been saying?

And it's, again, only six short chapters. Okay, so what if someone gave some…

Go ahead. I'll let you finish. Go ahead. I mean, that's just one thing I'm saying. Now, I'm just saying, you know, throwing that out there, maybe that's a quick thing you say to somebody because you're not going to have more opportunities.

Right. Another thing is to seriously assess yourself in light of what

Scripture says about God and His character and ask yourself, what is your true plight?

What is your true condition? And ask yourself what kind of gospel is necessary to address that problem.

And again, I think Rome comes out here looking terribly bad. And then, of course, just scour the

Scriptures, read the text. It's very clear. I mean, let me throw in a few verses here.

We've been alluding to a bunch, but Paul says in Romans 1, verses 16 and 17, these are the theme verses, the thesis statement of the book.

And this is the nearest thing we have to a systematic theology in the New Testament. Paul says,

I am not ashamed of the gospel. And then he gives, it's a for statement, right? He's giving you the reasons, the reason why he's not ashamed of it.

For it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the

Jew first and also to the Greek. Now he gives another statement, for in it, this is why, this is why it is the power of God of salvation to all who believe.

For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the man who is righteous by faith will live.

That's the thesis statement of Romans. And then Paul goes on from Romans 1, 18, all the way up to Romans 3, 19 and 20 to say that the whole world, the reason this gospel is necessary is because the whole human race is under sin and consigned to God's wrath.

So the plight is that we're under the wrath of God. In fact, in a sense, Paul says judgment day has already begun.

He says the wrath of God, not only is the gospel, the revelation of the righteousness of God that saves, he says the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness.

And he talks about how God as an act of judgment has consigned or given people over to the depths of their own depravity.

More and more, he gives them up, which itself is a judgment and it leads to further judgment.

And all of this is leading up to what Paul is going to say in Romans 3, 9 and following, where he talks about how man is depraved and set aside all your good thoughts of yourself.

And just from a biblical perspective, I mean, you know, it amazes me that people, you know, well, just say this.

Romans 3 through 9 doesn't give a rosy picture of humanity. It's not the picture that you want to hold of yourself, especially if you're expecting anything of yourself or contributed by yourself to be necessary to the equation of salvation.

So Paul says the whole human race is sinful, has no hope.

In fact, one of my favorite little sections here, let me just read this little part here from Paul.

But he says, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be closed and all the world might become accountable to God.

Because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

Now, what I find particularly, it's not like that's great news, right? But what I find so interesting about it is it notice what it says.

It says so that every mouth may be closed. Now, this next statement is rendered into English in a way that kind of obscures the significance of it.

But it says so that every mouth may be closed and then literally and all the world become, well, answerable to God.

Right. So it's the idea is that the Greek is saying that God has stopped up everyone's mouth and the whole world is answerable to God.

But our mouths are stopped up. We can't answer. That's the point. Right. So so the law has shut us up and it's consigned us over to the only possible solution, which is the one that God provided in the gospel.

And that's where Paul goes on in Romans 3, 21 and following to say that while the law, my rough paraphrase, while the law in terms of its commandments and so forth condemns us, it exposes sin, which shows, by the way, that the law

Paul has in view here is not merely ceremonial ordinances. The law shows our sinfulness. And Paul says, but that same are in the law, meaning now not simply the commandments, but the revelation of God.

Right now, apart from the law of commandments, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe.

For there's no distinction. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus, whom

God publicly displayed as a propitiation in his blood through faith.

And I could go on, but that's the rub. Excellent.

Now, I don't know the details, but I do know that one of the things that convinced

Cameron eventually were arguments from typology. I don't know if you're familiar with this.

Roman Catholics have a way of appealing to typology as making arguments for like Mary and other teachings and things like that.

Have you ever experienced the use of typology to prove kind of various Roman Catholic doctrines?

And if so, how convincing are they to you? You're obviously not convinced, but do they often come across as these are very powerful points, but they just don't go far enough or are they completely ridiculous?

And it would be very strange to be convinced by the utilization of typology in favor of, you know, key

Roman Catholic doctrines. Yeah, well, it's interesting, you know, it raises another issue of contention between Protestants and Roman Catholics, at least in this sense that Protestants obviously affirm sola scriptura that the

Bible, the sole infallible norm for all faith and practice, not that there aren't other authorities, but everything is subordinate to Scripture, the word of Christ, who is the king and head of the church, right?

Not the Pope. Well, when Roman Catholics talk about tradition as an additional authority alongside of Scripture, they don't have a infallible understanding of that, or at least if they've been given an infallible statement on that, they don't interpret that infallible statements the same.

So, in fact, there were debates at Trent on how to understand tradition. So one way of viewing tradition is to say that tradition doesn't tell us anything that's not already in Scripture, at least implicitly, if not explicitly.

Other Catholics have viewed tradition as an additional source. It tells us things not found in Scripture.

So it's supplemental in that sense. Those are two very different views. So the

Catholic in the latter category may find it unnecessary to look in Scripture for anything affirming certain

Marian dogmas, for example. But somebody who affirms that everything is at least implicitly in Scripture would find it necessary.

Part of the problem with that for me is it's one thing to find typological anticipations of something that is taught in Scripture.

It's another thing to find typological connections that are never affirmed in Scripture, meaning

I don't mean that you always have to be told this is a type in order for it to be a type. I think Joseph, for example, is a type of Christ, even if the

New Testament doesn't point to Joseph and say, see, he was a type of Christ. What I'm getting at is doctrines like the idea that Mary almost completely disappears from the record after the historical accounts of the

Gospels. You know, she's present in Acts one and then when.

Right. The idea that this whole cult of Mary, that that is part of Roman worship, my cult of Mary, I just mean that there's this worship related to her.

And of course, they'll make a distinction between Julia and hyper Julia and specious distinctions in my mind.

But the point is, she is central to the piety of Roman Catholics. Right. I was supposed to debate a

Roman Catholic named William Albrecht because this other guy that was flirting with that not happening.

Well, for a year, you know, he's got his whole family's gotten covid more times than everybody in China.

There's been a flood in Texas. It's so bad.

I've gotten a car wreck. I mean, you know, anyways, I was dude, I had the face of like, oh, that stinks.

I mean, obviously, we want to want people to feel healthy, but they have covid. But my point is, you look at what this this guy does.

Almost all of his work is on Mariola tree. Right. Or purgatory.

Those are the two issues. I really don't think he wanted to debate justification. I think somebody else threw him under the bus.

But so anyways, the point is, this is central to Roman Catholic piety.

It is is, you know, certain views with respect to Mary and certain acts of devotion and adoration towards her.

And so when I look at the New Testament and Mary completely drops out of the scene, I'm thinking, what did the apostles forget to talk about this most central issue?

I mean, these are occasional epistles, meaning they're written to address specific situations. But where is any discussion of Mary in any of this?

Certainly Rome would bring her up in connection with certain things that Paul addresses in his epistles. But Paul doesn't do it.

Never does. Right. They never mentioned Mary in any of the ways that Roman Catholics do. And so they find it necessary to go looking through scripture for certain things.

And they'll grab. And this is where it looks like grasping, because I give you an example. One of the claims that Catholics will make along typological lines with respect to Mary is they'll say she's the

Ark of the Covenant. Well, here's the interesting thing. I can show you explicitly Jesus associated with the

Ark of the Covenant. When Paul says that Jesus is the propitiation for our sins, it's the very term used for the atonement cover of the

Ark. But he's telling, you know, Christ is the, you know, the the the propitious propitiatory seat.

So if scripture explicitly teaches something and then we can go back in scripture and see these typological connections, which in the case of Christ, I don't think are at all far fetched.

They're quite rich. But when you start trying to do it with distinctive Roman Catholic doctrines, number one, you don't have any explicit teaching on that anywhere.

There's no didactic statement saying any of these things. And then, too, then, you know, in the absence of that, then

I also think the connections don't look as rich as they do in the case of Christ. And they look quite strained.

And then the other thing is, is even if you establish some kind of connection, what what are the implications of that connection?

Because there's there's a further question you could ask. You know, for example, like even like I think you were mentioning the papacy.

None of this typological stuff I've heard even gets you to anything like papal infallibility.

Remember, the Eastern Orthodox folk don't accept

Roman claim of papal infallibility, but they do accept something like a papal office, for example.

Right. So where do you get anything like papal infallibility out of any of that?

You don't. You can't. Let's give some pushback then. So I can I can I can think of a Roman Catholic hearing what you're saying and say, well, wait a minute.

When a Protestant says, well, where is that in the Bible? That's a fair question.

But it also kind of assumes sola scriptura. I mean, couldn't a Catholic be like, well, yes, we want to go to scripture, but I don't believe everything is taught in scripture.

And so we also consider the tradition of the church. So every time you say for the purpose of making it look like we're not following the

Bible, where is that in the Bible? You're just presupposing sola scriptura. How would you interact? Well, so remember, number one, the question was, what do you think about these claims of typology establishing certain things?

So it was a claim that something's found in scripture. And so my response to that is, number one, if you don't have any didactic teaching on that, it's already going to be suspect to me when you start to try and prove something dogmatically that's not there didactically.

Someone has something here, the Peter and Eliakim typology. Now, of course, they think it's the worst here, this person here.

But I did hear something like, I'm actually not familiar with that, that application there. Are you familiar with the attempt to connect

Peter and Eliakim? So, yeah, the idea is that in Isaiah, there's this reference to Eliakim and the keys to the house of David and so forth.

Revelation clearly speaks of Christ having the keys, that sort of thing. So I don't accept that. Number one,

I don't think the papacy is taught anywhere in scripture. And so going to a text like this and trying to establish this doctrine typologically, that's what

I'm saying is problematic in my mind. That was another point. Why would something as important as this just not be there in scripture didactically?

Right. I can show you explicitly the deity of Christ, explicitly justification by faith, explicitly this, that and the other thing.

But here's something that supposedly, you know, we have to believe that as Protestants, that we have to be in submission to the pope in order to be part of the church.

And it's only in the church that we're saved and all the rest. So this is not there. Now, the

Roman Catholic who makes no attempt to prove this sort of thing from scripture, but says, hey, we have tradition in addition to scripture.

Now the problem becomes I don't just think that tradition is saying something in addition to scripture.

I think it says things contrary to scripture, certain traditions. So, for example, one of the things that the pope allegedly infallibly sanctioned was what we find at Trent.

Trent anathematized the gospel. The pope can tell me all day long that he's got these traditions handed down hand to hand, you know, by Peter and other apostles or the magisterium somehow is the voice of all that.

And when I can go to Paul's writings myself and see that, and I don't just mean as my own little pope,

I mean, you know, I've taken years of Hebrew and Greek and, you know, I've read the

Bible in communion with other believers and so forth. I haven't been some freewheeler, freewheeler, not willer.

But, you know, it's not hard, right? You know, by grace, you're saved through faith that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.

That's not rocket science, you know, and it saves even some criminal like me, you know, at 19 years old that came through with crystal clarity.

You know, so I don't think and then besides that, who determines what tradition is?

Because I can look at the writings of the fathers, too, and just take something like the interpretation of Matthew 16 with respect to the papacy.

I've got whole books just on the historical interpretation of that. And the

Roman position is not the earliest position. And it was never in any point in the patristic period, the majority interpretation, namely that Peter was the first in some.

This is the institution of a papal office that's being handed on. You mean this wasn't believed always by all?

Vincent of Larens. Yeah. Everywhere, always, and by all, Vincent of Larens said. Okay. Wow. Well, we're at one hour and 18 minutes.

I do want to ask one more question, and then we can kind of scan the comments and take audience questions if that's okay.

Yeah. All right. All right. So my last question is, well, actually,

I just lost it. It was right there, and I just lost it.

Well, if I think about it, I'll ask it to you. Oh, man, that really stinks. I totally had a really good question.

Well, let me just encourage people. These are gospel issues, right? We would call them dividing line issues.

Contrary to what some people might think, we believe these are issues that really, they're gospel issues.

And so Roman Catholics are objects of evangelism. We should evangelize, and we should share our faith and share the gospel with people.

But again, there is bad blood between Protestants and Catholics that go on from history.

And so I want to encourage people, evangelize Roman Catholics. But you need to be able to navigate that in a biblical way.

And I don't just mean in terms of content. If someone were to ask, how do I treat, therefore, a person who has adopted the gospel of Rome?

You treat them like an unbeliever. And how are unbelievers treated? With gentleness, respect, and love, but with a firmness and clarity of the gospel message.

And I just want to encourage people to engage in that. Move away from this kind of pointless argument and irrational banter back and forth.

And really just speak from the heart, speak from Scripture, and engage people with gentleness and respect.

Because that's part of apologetics as well. So I want to encourage people to engage in that way.

And I know there are some people who on the Protestant side might disagree with what we've said here. And they think that Catholics are, you know, we disagree.

But they're our brothers. I think that the Scripture is clear.

And I think that's a conversation that people should have, Protestants between Protestants, right? If you disagree with this,

I mean, we need to now define, well, what is the gospel? And what is Rome saying? And really take a look at those things. I think those are important issues.

One thing I will say real quickly is classically, it just isn't Protestant to think that these are not dividing line issues.

So those Protestants who are saying that it is, they've shifted, right? They represent something of the downgrade, at least at that point.

You won't find any Protestant creed or confession affirming anything other than that. And at the same time, all the reformers would have been the first to say, if this isn't what we're saying it is, then there's no justification for not being part of Rome.

The other things that we differ on wouldn't necessarily warrant the division.

I will say there are some others that are really important that could warrant a division, like issues pertaining to worship.

We haven't gotten into that. Well, let's jump into some of the comments and the questions. Being a

Calvinist is fun. It's one of those positions that really get people. Look at this one.

Eww, Calvinist. I get the pleasure of being disliked for a bunch of reasons.

Right. So, yeah, I saw even on your,

I don't get in Facebook arguments because I think it's a waste, but I did see a few hecklers commenting on there.

Right. So I get this in here. I didn't know Eli was a Calvinist. I'll be promptly unsubscribing.

Calvinism needs to be buried and forgotten. How could you watch this show and not know

I'm a Calvinist? I mean, I've said it a billion times. I say it often.

It's kind of interesting because, you know, even people in the past who weren't reformed had at least a filial bond, they sensed.

And they even had a high regard for Calvinist scholars and pastors and so forth.

The fact of the matter is that within Protestantism, reformed people have been at the forefront of many of the great issues.

And, you know, the systematic theologies are virtually all by Calvin. It's not all of them. There's some by others, you know, commentaries and all sorts of other things.

But like in apologetics, even though I'm not saying that only Calvinists have done this, but you look at the stuff to the cults, for example, and most people don't know that most of the stuff you pick up is by reformed people.

But anyways, that's fine. People don't like us for that reason. One of the things

I, you know, and I've always said this. When I say that I embrace as my brother and sister others who are not fully reformed or what have you,

I do issue this caveat. I always say I have a little bit more concern for people that have an allergic reaction and lash out at God, you know, in his sovereignty.

Because to me, it's a mark of Christian piety to embrace

God's sovereignty in the sense of, you know, like when something happens, you know, this truly shows the marrow of a person.

What is their response? Right. Are they kicking and screaming and lashing out at God? How dare you? How did you let this happen? That sort of thing.

Or are they saying, Lord, you know, you're sovereign, you're good, you're wise. I don't know how this all fits into that.

But this I know, right. You're my Lord. You're working out everything together for good to those who are the called according to your purpose.

You know, others might mean this was evil against us. You meant it for good. All that sort of thing. But anyways, that's fine.

Well, thank you, Kevin, for subscribing for a short time. I appreciate it.

I'll find you a new subscriber. That's right. I'm sure Kevin's a nice guy, but he's got strong views on that.

That's fine. I wonder if that C stands for Calvinist. He just doesn't want anybody to know.

That's right. By the way, Arminius held Calvin in high regard, says his commentaries were like gold.

Yep, yep, yep. D. Otero says, didn't Vatican II change how

Protestants as well as other religions are viewed? So I think a sober read of Vatican II does, in fact, teach something different than you find in earlier councils.

But Roman Catholics, remember, the official position of Rome is that she is, with respect to doctrine, irreformable.

She can't teach error. The pope is infallible. The magisterium, you know, when it's issuing these sorts of things is infallible.

And so no Roman Catholic can say that Vatican II is saying something different.

And so then the name of the game becomes how do we make these things dance together when they're really just stepping on each other's toes?

But I'm trying to remember, you know, I always think of that statement of Bonson's where he says trying to make the Bible dance with this or that is.

He says he often says that they're fickle partners. Yeah, fickle partners. Yeah. Anyways, it's been ages since I listened to old

Bonson. I have to listen to something later. But yeah, so yeah, that later you have

Catholics debating each other over what its statements about Islam are all about.

What is it saying there? You know, is it saying that Muslims can be saved? Is it saying their

God is our God in the sense that, I mean, we believe in the Trinity. They don't. But it says they worship the same adorable

God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that we do. So how do you interpret that? I always thought that was interesting because there's literally,

I mean, if something's the same, there has to be like a one -to -one correspondence. There's literally like ontologically the

God of Islam is ontologically different than the God of biblical Christianity. So I always thought that was fascinating.

I'm sorry. So Alpha and Omega Reformed YouTube says the Westminster Confession of Faith also affirms extra ecclesiam nulla salus.

And how do we interpret that? So it actually says, so the Roman view is outside of the church, there is no salvation.

The Westminster Confession says outside of the church, there's no ordinary possibility of salvation.

So the idea is that ordinarily those who are believers are incorporated into the visible church.

And we don't exclusively identify the visible church with some group under the authority of John MacArthur.

For example, or Charles Spurgeon, or, you know, the church is that body of people that profess faith in Christ the

Savior by the word of the Holy Spirit. So there are those differences. Okay.

Born Again RN says, how do Catholics get around Paul anathematizing those teaching a false gospel?

Do they say a person can still get together if they do this, but they are just excommunicated?

Do they say a person can still get together if they do this, but they're just excommunicated? I don't know what they mean by get together.

I mean, we don't want to have fellowship with heretics, but that doesn't mean we can't evangelize them and love them and be with them in that sense, right?

Yeah. So, I mean, Paul would be harder on a Judaizer than he would be on a rank and file pagan.

Right. So, for example, to the Corinthians, Paul says, you know, in my earlier letter, I said not to associate with the immoral people.

So I didn't at all mean the people of this world, but he's talking about those who call themselves brothers.

So in this case, Paul's writing to people that profess the name of Christ, but are living in ways that are contrary to Christ and bringing shame upon his name.

So there Paul says, you know, don't associate with those sorts of people. All the more Paul would say, don't associate with people who profess a different gospel.

Right. And so are dragging the faith through the mud in that way. The level of interaction with them would be qualified by that.

So, I mean, they wouldn't be part of the worship of the church. Right. They certainly wouldn't be admitted to the

Lord's table. Sure. You know, in any responsible church in the administration of the

Lord's Supper, you know, so. Yeah. Born Again has another follow up question here.

Rome denies work salvation, but believes you can lose your salvation. But if this happens, how can you get it back without engaging in works since Jesus died once for all?

Yeah, so I think it depends what is meant by denies work salvation. I know that many

Roman apologists don't like to be crass and just say up front what their system really is.

But when you say that a person by the good works that he performs merits justification, that is work salvation.

And, you know, they might say the system is by grace and the grace of, you know, and the ability to do good works is by grace.

But Paul says if it's by grace and it's not by works, otherwise grace would not be grace. So with respect to being justified works, our works are not part of the formula.

It's Christ's works alone. Those are imputed to us through faith. That faith is itself a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.

So I don't think it's it's ever not by works. But when they do talk about,

I mean, the whole sacramental system and penance and confession and, you know, all that sort of thing that's enmeshed in a system of works.

And that's why Roman Catholics don't have assurance. We were talking about it earlier. The reason that guy could say he doesn't have peace with God is because he doesn't know where he's at today.

Right. I mean, if you you know, if I. It's sort of like, you know, what

I think of, you know, if people really believe the Bible is the word of God, wouldn't they be reading it more than they do? Right. It's sort of like, you know, there's there's kind of a tension there.

There's something wrong there. That's very true. God has given us his word like literally the universe into existence has given you his word and you don't cherish it.

But if I really believe that salvation was contingent on, you know, if I commit a venial sin,

I got to, you know, every venial sin is going to mean a certain amount of temporal punishments and time

I'm going to have to spend in purgatory to work it off unless I take care of it now and all this kind of stuff. I'd be keeping strict accounts.

Right. I'd be writing everything down. And man, can you just imagine, though, you know, like, well, doing what, you know, like sin algebra or whatever, like how do you compute all of this?

Because, you know, sin might in itself be like five demerits, let's say.

But it could be worse depending on the person that you've committed the sin against. Sure. It could be worse depending on your own level of light.

It could be worse depending on, I mean, all these different factors. How do you know all these interconnection connected things?

I think I'd just be driven mad, honestly. And so I think there's some Roman Catholics who just ignore a lot of this stuff.

There are others who are more conscientious. They'll go to confession and talk the ear off of their priest and drive their priests mad because.

And I can tell you many a priest has talked about how annoyed they are at people enumerating certain sins in their ears and then leaving and coming back because they forgot one.

Right. Oh, no. Somebody somebody did that. Who did that? Luther did it, but it wasn't only Luther. Believe me,

I mean, I talk to people all the time who aren't even Roman Catholics who still have a defective view of the gospel.

And they're that, you know, they're thrown for a loop every time they think there's some sin that they didn't take care of.

So, yeah, I mean, it's no Roman Catholic, ordinarily speaking, thinks anything other than that they are.

I mean, just the average Roman Catholic going through the rigmarole thinks that these things are conditioned on his works.

Right, right. Bible Care and Share Fellowship gives us wise advice.

Smash the like button if you are enjoying this conversation, if you guys think that this is important content and share it or click the like button.

That helps me out a lot and lets me know that you guys are finding the information useful. So I really appreciate that.

Thank you very much for that. Now, Bible Care and Share Fellowship also has a comment here.

Papers have no answer to who is the blessed man. Who is the blessed man in Scripture and why?

And why do Catholics have a problem with identifying the blessed man? Is this an issue that comes up in debates over Roman Catholicism?

I have to say this. Here the question is talking about another place in Scripture. But when I hear the statement, the blessed man,

I immediately think of Psalm 1 where it says blessed is the man. Right. Ashrei ha 'ish, it begins, blessed is the man.

And often that's read as a reference to like it's gnomic or general. Whoever, whoever this is true of, right, is the blessed man in Romans or Psalm 1.

But I think the Psalm is really Christological. It's talking about Christ. He's the blessed man there in Psalm 1.

This is the introduction to the Psalter, which is going to tell you about Christ later in the Psalter, however.

Oh, by the way, so the Psalm, Psalm 1 begins, blessed is the man. And then Psalm 2 ends.

And remember, Psalm 2 is all about the Son explicitly. And it says blessed are all who take refuge in him.

Right. So you have there's an inclusio here between Psalm 1 and 2 where it begins talking about Christ and ends talking about the blessedness of those who are in him.

But later in the Psalter, David talks about the blessedness of the man to whom the

Lord does not impute sin or count his sins against him. And so that's a classic question that Christians ask

Roman Catholics, you know, because in Rome, Roman Catholicism, God will impute sin to people even if they have faith in Jesus.

OK. Born Again says Cameron embraced mere Christianity.

That is true. That is a big focus on their channel, defending mere Christianity. And you see this in the way they do apologetics and the kinds of conversations they have.

It says here that he did not embrace historic Protestantism nor the gospel, which is it nor the gospel, which is exclusive.

I cannot speak to the second part of this. I don't know to what extent Cameron affirmed what we would call.

However, you're defining, quote, unquote, historical Protestant, historic Protestantism. And I don't know that last statement means a little ambiguous there.

But now this statement, the reason why I put the statement on the screen is it reminded me what I was going to ask you at the beginning when

I forgot. OK. Mere Christianity. OK.

This is a big deal in apologetic circles. And, you know, I'm a presupposition list.

You're a presupposition list. We don't buy mere Christianity. I don't think it's I think it's a terrible way to defend

Christianity. And I say that even having great appreciation for C .S. Lewis and other apologists who do defend mere

Christianity. I think they have a lot of great things to say and I've learned a lot from them. But I just I think it's wrongheaded.

But that being said. What is it about mere Christianity that can make one susceptible to falling into the traps of Roman Catholicism or other kinds of views that are really theologically dangerous?

Yeah, well, so one of the first things I want to I would say is actually let me say this.

So I got a question the other day. I work for a ministry. I answer theological questions. One of the questions that came to me that I was addressing was somebody says, what's what sorts of things are essential that I that a church has to believe if I should join it or something like that?

And I'm thinking, why are you asking what the bare minimum is? You know, go out there and look for the best church you can possibly find.

Right. Find one as robust as possible and go there, you know, provided, of course, that it's got all the necessary things there.

But, you know, in other words, if there's not one that's robust enough that it has all the essentials, don't go there either.

But I mean, anyways, the but. One of the things that I have, you know, from day one, this has always characterized my thinking.

I believed and this is the gospel. Christ, by his death, purchased sinners for God. I'm one of those.

He purchased me. He owns me, which means that as a believer in Christ as Lord, it's my goal to believe everything he says and submit to it.

There's no there's no payoff, right, for kicking against the goals. There's no payoff for disagreeing with Jesus or doing things a different way.

Right. He owns me. He purchased me. I am his slave. So I aim to believe everything

Jesus says and and this is the safe way. Right. He's he is the way, the truth and the life.

His word is truth. He sanctifies by his truth. Right. Sanctify them by your truth. Your word is truth. John 17.

So that should be the attitude of the believer. Believe everything that Scripture teaches and follow everything it says.

Don't look for excuses to not believe something or not do something or to do something differently or whatever. And but one of the problems in part is kind of what we were talking about before, is that what counts is essential to Christianity is not arbitrary.

It's not up to us. It's not just whatever certain groups that we want to include in the fold all have in common.

That's part of the problem. It's what the Bible says is requisite for us to believe.

Right. You know, imagine somebody coming along and saying mere Christianity is believing in God. Right.

OK. So then Muslims are Christians and Jews are

Christians. That's the resurrection. Yeah. OK. So then, yeah, it's the resurrection. But of course,

Satan knows that is true just as much as he knows that God exists. Right. He's not very happy about it.

He expected things perhaps to go a different way. But he knows for a fact that Jesus rose from the dead.

But it's faith also. OK. And Satan believes it. I mean, it's not as there's a certain kind of faith.

Right. But Scripture, you know, it tells us that the one who died, it has to be the incarnate

Christ. And by the way, for a certain person that might eventually watch this, he was upset that I called him a heretic, even though he affirms the incarnation.

Guy is kind of a troll, kind of follows me around, has a little bit more of an interest in me than I think any guy should.

So I usually kind of avoid him. But but he was he was saying, you know, I believe in the incarnation.

Yeah. But the incarnation of a finite deity that, you know, the pagans believed that the gods could become men, that there was nothing fundamentally problematic in their system for a finite being to become a human being.

What's distinctive about Christianity is that we're talking about an absolute God becoming incarnate.

That's what's scandalous to the natural mind. An absolute God who's immutable, simple, right.

Free of composition, omniscient, knows all things, directs all things according to the counsel of his will, that sort of thing.

That's the God who became incarnate. That's the God who died on the cross. Right. That's the one who rose again.

His death was a full satisfaction for sin. And, you know, again, so these are the ways that Scripture is defining what

Christianity is, what the gospel is, how we're saved. And, you know, it doesn't admit of, you know, varying on a lot of these things.

Right. As much as some might like. Now, you said something about the fact that we need to believe all of Scripture.

And when we believe all of Scripture, Truth Defenders points this very important thing out that we become 50 point

Calvinists. Five points are just the starting point. I was unaware that there are 50 points of Calvinism.

There was a guy, I think it was Leonard Koppus, C -O -P -P -E -S.

And I think he wrote a book called The Five Points, Are They Enough? And, you know, he's getting at, you know,

I mean, really, it's something of a unfortunate historical product that people talk about the five points.

Because, you know, nobody until a certain point in history would have spoken that way.

The way the way the Reformed and Protestants in general spoke about these things was in terms of a system of doctrine.

When you look at something like the Westminster Confession of Faith, you're not going to find a section that's thoroughly reformed.

Right. I say this as a Presbyterian minister. I mean, I had to, you know, be conversant with the

Westminster standard. You're Presbyterian? I thought you were Baptist. Oh, man, I shouldn't have had you on the show. I'm just kidding.

But, you know, so if you look through the Westminster Confession, I got to find something on the five points because these things have their place in the system.

It's an overall system of thought believed to be from Scripture. And so if you want to find, for example, where it teaches total inability, you'd have to find it in its discussion of the fall.

Right. If you want to you're not even going to find a chapter on irresistible grace. You'll find something on effectual calling.

And that's where irresistible grace is dealt with. I mean, it's just it sort of skews the way things. So but the point is, it's part of a system.

And that system is much richer than the five points. You know, it affirms everything from those doctrines of God that Christians believe.

One of my favorite parts of the Westminster Confession is its statement about God. You know, somebody go read it.

Go read chapter two of the Westminster Confession. It's a beautiful statement. It says, for example, you know, God is the fountain of all being.

All life, glory, goodness and blessedness are in. He has in and of himself. He is alone unto himself, all sufficient.

And he goes on and on. But read it. It's a it's a beautiful statement. All right. Now, this is the last question, because we are up on an hour and 43 minutes.

And I don't feel bad because I as I was as I was scrolling through videos,

I was watching your videos are long, brother. Three hours. I'm trying to find something that's like maybe 20 minutes, half hour.

Not on Anthony's channel. Not on. Yeah, I mean, you know, I figure, you know what?

I love it. I love it. I think everybody's going to want the longer stuff. But then number one, they can just listen to it in bits and pieces.

It's true. Right. Or or number two. I mean, there's plenty of channels out there doing something else. So all those many channels that can't go to.

No, no. I just think I just think, you know, in my mind, it's like, you know, just like not everything's for everybody.

And I don't need the whole world to listen to me. So I just think I'm going to do what I do. And those who like it are going to like it and listen in.

Well, I well, I like it. I have a 45 minute, 50 minute drive to work every day.

So I listen to on my way there and then I finish on my way back, especially the debates. They're fun to listen to.

And it gives me something to look forward to when I'm driving home in stuck in traffic. So I actually do like the longer videos.

But anyway, we do one more question. And I'll pick this one because a lot of people have been asking me and I haven't said anything about it.

And maybe you can share your thoughts as well if you know anything about it. But here is a question from Mason. Oh, what can we say to her from for informed brothers like Tyler Vela?

I don't know if you know who Tyler Vela is, Anthony. I've been thinking about him since everything started.

Thank you for this video, sir, as we need to know how to appropriately approach those of Rome. And that is that is correct.

Tyler Vela was a Christian apologist for Christianity.

And he was a reformed a professing reformed believer. I've had him on my show.

I would consider him a friend. I've never met him personally, but we've spoken a lot on the phone and over the years.

And I would say he's a friend and I would still call him that. But I think

Tyler, as a former professing Calvinist, even as an unbeliever now.

Still believes that the Bible teaches Calvinism. And so he shouldn't disagree with how we as Calvinists interpret his deconversion.

Does that make sense? In other words, to all intents and purposes, things appeared one way as he was presenting himself.

But the issues of the heart, the spiritual aspect, there are those who are with us, but they left us because they were never of us.

Is that difficult to say of Tyler Vela as a person who considers him a friend and has learned a lot from him?

Yes. But if the Bible is the word of God, it gives us the divine commentary of the heart.

And so did I have an idea that that might be the case? Yes, I did.

Even before he shared some things with me. But I gave him the benefit of the doubt because I don't know the heart. But time unfolds and reveals truth.

And so unfortunately, Tyler left the faith. And yeah,

I would put on him the label that the scripture calls him.

You know, he was never regenerated unless he's not dead. You see,

God can do anything. And so I consider him a friend and I don't talk to him very much.

You know, I was actually going to have him on the show before he actually said everything public. I didn't know.

So I don't know how much we're going to talk. I didn't. It wasn't like I was always calling him and stuff like that. But if I were to speak with him,

I would just let him know if he watches this. I love you and I wish the best for you.

And I pray that God brings you to himself and calls you to repentance and you repent.

But again, looks impossible from the outside, but nothing's impossible for God. So those are my thoughts on Tyler.

I love him and we should pray for him. We should show love, but at the same time, not pretend that this isn't a devastating decision on his part that he will be held accountable before God.

And so I say that with love. And I know that if he were listening to this, he would say, I should say that as a

Christian. So those are my thoughts. What are your thoughts? Did you know Tyler? Did you know about the whole situation there?

So I think you said mostly enough for both of us on it. I'll just say this.

I met Tyler at ETS one year, several years ago. I didn't really know at the time stuff that he was doing.

So it was more like, you know, we were there and people are hanging around and stuff like that. And actually looking back before his, you know, announced apostasy,

I remember thinking, gosh, I wish I had talked to him more during that event because he did go on and do certain things that I liked.

You know, he still gave a shellacking to certain parties that were are still going to go down in history.

I think, you know, for example, certain open theists. He's a good debater. Magoo or whoever, the one guy you debated is completely decimated.

Magoo? Oh, I'm sorry. Magoo. It is so bad.

It was that Magoo cat he debated. So, but yeah, did an excellent job.

So I knew Tyler. I met him in person, didn't have extensive interaction with him, you know, face to face.

We exchanged a few messages back and forth on occasion. So, I mean, there's some interaction there.

I doubt we had as much as you might have had by way of correspondence. So it was lamentable to me when he announced his departure.

And obviously, I hope the best for him. And yeah, the thing is,

I, you know, I didn't ever say anything because I thought, well, there are probably people closer to him that have said certain things.

And sometimes that's the wrong thing, right? Because everybody's kind of assuming other people and then nobody does because everybody's thinking, well, somebody else did.

But I mean, from what I've heard from him, what I've seen with his comments, other people have talked to him.

And so, you know, just let it be what it is. And I would say the same for Cameron.

I mean, pray for Cameron. Pray for Tyler. Love them. You know, show that we're there for them, that we don't hate them, but that we are obviously not going to pretend as though these aren't, you know, that they are in error.

And that we need to speak truth in love, but speak the truth nonetheless. So I would say that for Tyler.

I would say that for Cameron. I know Tyler a little bit more than I know Cameron. But regardless,

I mean, we should be praying for people who go through these sorts of things. And, you know, that's the name of the game.

That's what God has called us to do. So that's all I can say about that. And yeah.

So any last thoughts there, Anthony? This was excellent. And I really do appreciate you coming on and sharing your knowledge and your experience.

And I highly recommend folks go over to Anthony's channel, if you have not already, and subscribe.

He's got some excellent, excellent content, especially he has a series on Galatians, which I think is an excellent series.

And there's a lot. There's like a long video. Each section you break down Galatians very well.

And so and of course your debates are fun to listen to as well. So I highly recommend. But any last thoughts there before we close things out there,

Anthony? Well, no, just well, yeah, I mean, don't trade the gospel for anything.

There's nothing that you could give in exchange for the gospel that's ever going to be worth it.

And I know, you know, I mean, I've seen all sorts of terrible things in this life that I've seen other people give up their confidence in Christ for.

And I thought, you know, I can't imagine it. Right. I can't imagine it. When I was converted into jail cell, that was all

I had to begin with. And I'm thankful for that situation, because now, you know, it's sort of like you can take anything away.

And I already I already knew that. Right. So it's but get to that place where you recognize you have no other hope but this

Christ and this gospel. Nothing else can save. And, you know, don't listen to strangers coming along and saying, you know, you want to pet my puppy dog or, you know, have this idol or, you know,

I'm just saying you understand the analogy, right? Where somebody's coming along, something seems appealing and you naively follow after them.

You know, listen to Christ, hearken to his word. His word is clear. His gospel is sure.

Trust in him. That's right. And we trust in him regardless of how we feel.

There are oftentimes even in the Christian life that we feel like God is not near. He's not he's not listening to us.

He's not delivering us from our trial. Truth is not dependent upon how we feel.

Right. It's it's God is with us. And we believe that because God can't lie and he tells us that he's with us.

And that's true regardless of our feeling of him near in our darkest times.

So we put our firm faith in Christ and his word. And we stand on that no matter what.

I wouldn't trade it for the world. I thank God for his grace and unbelief is ugly and disgusting to me.

And I don't want it. So. All right. Well, thank you,

Anthony. I appreciate it. And I appreciate your friendship. And now you make me want to have a

Starbucks coffee. Anyway, inside joke. And when we were speaking together at the conference there in Virginia, Anthony had he he made me want

Starbucks coffee. If you see his videos, always got coffee with him. And I'm a coffee lover. So anyway.

All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening and sticking with us for one hour and 54 minutes.

Not as long as Anthony's videos, but it was close. So we'll see next time. We'll see if we can go a little longer.

But that's it for this episode, guys. Remember, if you're interested in supporting Real Apologetics, you can click the like button.

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