3 - Roman Catholicism, Part 1

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4 - Roman Catholicism, Part 2

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Well, welcome to the

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Striving for Eternity Academy's School of World Religions. We're glad to have you with us.

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We're glad that the mute is actually working or not on so that you can hear me.

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You are not watching live. You do not understand what that reference is to. It's one of the advantages to watching live

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Monday nights, 8 o 'clock Eastern Standard Time. You can watch at strivingforeternityacademy .org.

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Join in the chat and be part of the chat room. A lot of people are chatting away and sometimes they actually talk about what we're talking about in class.

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But we are, we encourage you to get a syllabus. The syllabus has notes in it that help you follow along so you have a quick reference.

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You can pick that up at strivingforeternity .org. You can go directly to store .strivingforeternity

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.org and pick up a syllabus. And that is something you'll have with you to help keep all your notes together.

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You can write in some of your own notes because what you're going to find is that I not only give you the fill in the blanks, but if you have a syllabus, you have a place where you can take all your notes.

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We are going along, if you happen to have gotten my new book, I'll mention that early instead of later,

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What Do They Believe. You can purchase that at our website as well. What Do They Believe is basically going to be covering a lot of the material that we're going to be going over tonight, but not everything.

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If you want to get more detail, get the book, I'm just saying. We are in the

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School of World Religions. This class that we're in is going to be an introduction to the major Western religions.

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We're going to focus just on the Western religions. We're also going to give a response eventually to them. This is going to be not an introduction.

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Thank you. This is going to be lesson number two. Lesson two is going to be on Catholicism, Roman Catholicism.

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We will not complete this this week. I hope to be able to complete this next week, but even that's doubtful.

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Just saying, I don't want to prolong them, but this lesson, if you've read my book, you know this is a longer chapter.

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There's more history with Roman Catholicism, and so we actually put some more details in there, especially because of the fact that what you're going to see with Roman Catholicism is that it is going to be probably the closest to biblical

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Christianity, and it is the one that many people will need to understand some of the differences on.

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We're going to deal a little bit longer with that. I am going to say up front, just so that I don't get in trouble with the engineer.

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I gave the engineer the slides literally, I think like an hour before we got to set up and get class ready.

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So, throughout these classes, it is going to be a little bit different with the slides because where we usually have slides that deal with scripture, and I can reference the scripture and it's known right away which one to pop up, sometimes

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I may be referencing things that it may take a second or two just to pull up the slides.

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Just saying so we don't get ourselves in trouble with the engineer. Engineer, engineers that are upset with you can cause you a lot of headaches.

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Just saying. So, let's begin in lesson number two of your syllabus.

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This lesson, what I'm going to do is reference the 1995 Catechism of the

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Catholic Church for all the quotations. Okay, so as I go through this, the documents, this document is really the latest printing of the

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Roman Catholic Church. I'm going to shorten that just to say RCC throughout because Roman Catholic Church takes a long time to say.

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I'm just going to say RCC. But I'm going to give you quotations, they're going to have numbers in them, and those numbers are going to be the paragraphs from the

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Catechism of the Catholic Church. I chose to do that because one of the things, as you're going to see in this first point when we talk about authority, is that the

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Catholic Church has changed their doctrine over time. When you study Roman Catholicism, it is a large study to do.

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It's large because basically you have to realize that there are all these things that are throughout history that are, you know, the different councils that they have, different edicts that they give, and some of them actually disagree with one another, just saying.

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But the real issue there is how do you know what they really believe? Well, you'd have to go through all that history.

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I'm going to give you some things throughout, but really I want to deal with what's the latest. What is their most, you know, relevant, current thinking?

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Alright, so let us start with a lesson, the first point on authority.

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Alright, so, as we look at what is the authority, and remember, as we go through this, we're systematizing these different religions, we're going to look at their authority, their view of God, their view of Christ, their view of man's sinfulness, their view of salvation, view of end times.

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So, starting with their view of authority, we have to understand, if you look in your Syllabus, that the

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Roman Catholic Church understands three sources of authority.

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Number one is tradition, number two is scripture, and number three is the church.

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Now, I've put those in that order because, well, that's the way the

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Catechism does it. Let's take a look at verse 95, this was an easy one to get engineered because it was the only one for this section, good.

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It says here, it is clear, therefore, that in the supremely wise judgment of God, sacred tradition, sacred scripture, and the magisterium of the church are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the other, working together, each in its own way, under the action of one

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Holy Spirit, they all contribute effectively to the salvation of the souls.

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Now, immediately, I understand that some of the Christians hear that last part and go, what?

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Tradition and the church to the effect of the soul, we're going to get to that probably next class, okay?

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Hold your horses, I understand. You, you're screaming, you're pulling your hair out, I know.

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You're going to see some differences between Biblical Christianity and what we see here in Roman Catholicism, and by the way, let me say up front because some will say, well, wait a minute,

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Roman Catholicism is Christian. That is something that I know there's many that make that claim, but remember that in the

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Vatican Council, the Vatican Council said that people like myself that believe in the doctrine of salvation by grace alone, justification by grace alone, that we were condemned to hell, we were anathema.

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So when you think about it, please keep in mind that the Catholic Church argues that the beliefs that Biblical Christians would have are different.

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Now, I understand that in the modern day, the Catholic Church wants to say there's no difference between Christians and Catholics, that Vatican II calls us separated brothers, so we see that distinction.

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This is actually something you're going to see when we talk about Mormonism and Jehovah Witnesses, they're kind of remaking themselves to sound more

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Christian, where they once condemned Christianity. So what

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I want to point out though is that what you see here is the tradition often precedes

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Scripture as its authority. You see that in the passage 95, paragraph 95 that we just gave, also paragraph 97.

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I think this may be caused by the Roman Catholic tradition is what, their tradition is what really interprets

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Scripture. Scripture is, instead of having your traditions interpreted by Scripture, in Roman Catholicism the

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Scripture is actually interpreted by tradition. So that's something you will notice.

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So let us start with tradition. Tradition, yeah

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I know I'm going to start singing. For any of you who are familiar with Fiddler on the Roof, a good

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Jewish movie, film, you know you had the main characters singing about tradition, the value of tradition, and that's something you see very much in Judaism.

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This is where I see there's a lot of similarity between Judaism and Catholicism, the idea of tradition plays a big part.

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But let us take a look, and I will say this also, which I may not have mentioned in the beginning, but I am going to be reading my notes, so I'm going to be looking down a little bit more than I typically would in most classes.

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I'm doing that because what I want to do is make sure that I get my notes correct, and so I may not have as good of eye contact with those of you watching, but I am trying to make sure

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I'm accurate, and so some of the details I want to make sure I quote correctly. So with that said, the

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RCC, as I said Roman Catholic Church, believes that God provided two forms of transmitting the gospel, the oral and the written.

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Let's look at a verse, this is 76, it says there, the gospel was handed down, look at that, handed down orally, by the apostles who handed it on by spoken word of their preaching, by the example they gave, by the institutions they established, what they themselves had received whether from the lips of Christ, from His way of life and His works, or whether they learned it at the prompting of the

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Holy Spirit. Now, what you see here is something we saw in Judaism, in the lessons in Judaism, an emphasis on the oral tradition.

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You're going to see this again in Islam next, when we get to that lesson. But what you see with the oral tradition is some problems because how do you know today what was orally transmitted becomes an issue.

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The oral is a living transmission. We have verse, paragraph 78, let's look at that, 78 says this, this living transmission accomplished in the

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Holy Spirit is called tradition. Through tradition the church in her doctrine, life and worship,

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I'm having trouble with this, yeah, okay, and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes.

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So, you see the emphasis that they're going to place on tradition. This is going to be important because the

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RCC clearly believes that all revealed truths are not from the scriptures alone but include tradition.

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Let's take a look at a couple of paragraphs. I don't know if we're going to get through all the, I have a lot of quotations, but let's look at just 81, maybe 81 to 84, or just maybe, let's look at 81 and 82.

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The holy tradition, and holy tradition transmits in its entirety the word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the

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Lord and the Holy Spirit. As a result, the church to whom the transmission of the interpretation of revelation is entrusted does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from holy scripture alone.

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Both the scripture and tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments, devotion, and reverence.

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So, what you have there is, you see, this is the battle cry of the Reformation was sola scriptura, scripture alone.

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You see, the Roman Catholic Church even today does not accept scripture alone. Sacred scripture, sacred tradition, and sacred scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the word of God.

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That's paragraph 97. Sacred tradition and sacred scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the word of God, unquote.

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What you have there is, you see, that they did not hold to scripture alone being the source of authority.

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They would hold tradition as equal authority to the scriptures.

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That becomes really important. Because if tradition is equal in authority and tradition changes,

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God's word is actually changing through time. So, at one point, those of us who believe in biblical

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Christianity, in justification by faith alone, were condemned to hell and now we're only separated brothers and we have a way of getting into heaven.

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That's a change in tradition. That's a contradiction. I mean, we're one or the other.

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You know, this becomes an issue that you end up seeing with tradition. The tradition affects the manner and the way they interpret scripture and that becomes really important to understand.

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Because you have to decide what is going to be your authority, your ultimate authority.

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If you're going to use tradition to interpret scripture, then your ultimate authority is really your tradition.

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Same thing that you see with believers who, they redefine or interpret the scripture from a theological system.

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When they do that, what you see is that they are really making their theology, their theological system, as the ultimate authority.

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And we don't want to be guilty of that. And so we need to be aware that our ultimate authority is going to be, for Christians, would be the scripture.

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But for the Catholic Church, notice that they don't distinguish a difference between their tradition and the scriptures.

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There is a note that distinguishes, I don't think I have this slide up, but there's a note that distinguishes between the church tradition and local church tradition.

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Do we have 83? No? Okay, so let me just read paragraph 83.

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Tradition is to be distinguished from the various theological, disciplinary, liturgical, and devotional traditions born in the local churches over time.

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These are particular forms adapted to different places and times in which the great tradition is expressed.

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In the light of tradition, these traditions can be retained, modified, or even abandoned under the guidance of the church mysterium.

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And so what you have is the idea that you can have local church traditions that could be different.

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And so they would be subjected to the greater church, but you have to look at the fact that these churches have differing views.

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Now that makes a problem, doesn't it? Because now all of a sudden you can argue that one church is saying this is an authority, another local

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Roman Catholic church is saying something else is an authority. I kind of find that interesting because the big argument they had with Martin Luther during the

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Reformation was they said, Luther, if we were to believe as you believe that people can interpret the

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Bible on their own and have it in their own language, there would be, people would have private interpretations and you'd have all kinds of heresies.

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You need the church to rightly interpret the scriptures for you. And Luther said, better to have a private interpretation and people get it wrong than to have the

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Catholic church dictate and be wrong. And that was his argument.

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He knew that there would be error that would creep in with private interpretation, but the truth would also be taught.

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And here what you see is that you have local private interpretations of the tradition.

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Let's look at another one. Nope, not the church, sorry, scriptures. The second one that we see is the scriptures.

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So they do, the Roman Catholic church does hold to scriptures, but not exactly the scriptures that we have in the

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Christian Bible. Along with Roman Catholic tradition, the

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RCC accepts the scriptures as an equal authority.

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That's your blank there, by the way. Did I give the blanks before? The blanks under authority are tradition, scripture, and the church.

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Just saying if I forgot that. The blank here is that the scripture, the traditions are accepted as equal, equal is your blank, equal authority.

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We already looked at 82 and 84 where you saw that. The RCC believes that it has a role in accepting and giving the canon of scripture.

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In other words, you'll hear this often. Well, let's put up, do we have 2032?

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Let's put up 2032. Thank you. The church has received its solemn command of Christ from the apostles to announce the saving truth.

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To the church belongs the right to always and everywhere to announce the moral principles, including those pertinent to social order and to make judgment on human affairs to the extent that they are required by the fundamental rights of the human person or the saving of the soul.

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The other one, actually, I guess, do we have 138?

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Okay, I did say that I threw these at them real quick. So, they're not exactly in a numerical order where they could just throw them up.

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So, let's, let me just read, 138 says this, the church accepts and venerates as inspired the 46 books of the

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Old Testament and the 27 books of the New. Did you notice something there? That's right. There's a different number of books in the

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Old Testament between the Roman Catholic Bible and the Christian Bible. And they believe that the

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Catholic Church was necessary to give us those books. Let me just give a quick argument there just so you understand.

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There was a council in 320, I believe it was, where they decided the final canon.

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Make note that the books that we have in the Christian Bible were always accepted.

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There were a couple books that were questioned, but the majority of them were accepted long before that council.

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Keep in mind these extra couple books that we're going to get to, the Apocrypha is what they're known as.

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They were not accepted as part of the canon until the 1500s, okay, not until the Reformation where they finally accepted as part of the canon.

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You don't see them listed in that early council, just saying.

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All right, so in other words, we would not have a set collection or list which books are inspired or not inspired without the

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Roman Catholic Church. You see how they set themselves up so without them you can't have the

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Bible. This view is to say that the authority of the

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Church was required to decide which books were in and which books were out of the

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Bible. Furthermore, the RCC has accepted additional books, chapters, and passages not in a

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Protestant Bible. Let me read from paragraph 120. Do we have that one by chance?

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Okay, so that's one of the things we don't have that slide. We do.

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Okay, let's put that up. We had it, okay. It is the apostolic tradition that the

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Church discerning, let me try again. It was the apostolic tradition that the

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Church discerning, discerned which writings are to be included in the list of sacred books.

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This complete list is called the Canon of Scripture. It includes 46 books of the

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Old Testament. 45 we count Jeremiah and Lamentations as one and 27 in the

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New. Okay, so what you have there is you see this idea that we needed the

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Catholic Church to give us the scriptures. Without them we couldn't have the scriptures. So what becomes the ultimate authority?

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It's not the scriptures, it's the Roman Catholic Church. Notice how in Roman Catholicism the scriptures are subjected to both tradition and the

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Church. We're going to look at that a little bit more. RCC believes that the Church is the only authority that can determine which books make up the

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Bible. Therefore, the Protestants lack the whole of scriptures. You could see this in paragraph 138.

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So, historically I should note, it should be noted historically that the

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Jews had a list of books of the Canon for hundreds of years before the

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Roman Catholic Church developed their list. The earliest known list of Old Testament was the discussion at the

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Council of Jamnia in 70 AD. The Council of Jamnia was a meeting of rabbis where they answered the issue of which books of the

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Old Testament were part of the Old Testament, the Tanakh. We talked about that in last class.

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The issue of note was that the Old Testament books which the RCC accepts as apocryphal books were not part of the

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Jewish Canon. They were books of historical value that were placed in the back of the

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Old Testament, we might say. However, the RCC moved them to their chronological placement and called them scriptures.

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So, what you had was you had books that were of value, books like the chapters of Daniel that got put in, books on the

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Maccabees that were historically, had some historical value. And so, what we often see is, keep in mind that we didn't have books that were bound the way we do today.

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So, they'd have individual scrolls. And so, originally when they started to bind the books, they would put some of these books in the back, but eventually they made their way to the front, kind of like you have a concordance in your

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Bible. And so, they worked their way up front. Let's go to the last one. Now would be a time for the church.

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The church. Now that slide. The RCC sets itself as the only true church.

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Without them, you can't have true church. Let's look at 866 if we can. 866, the church is one.

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She acknowledges one Lord, confesses one faith, is born of one baptism, forms only one body, is given life by one spirit for the sake of the hope, at whose fulfillment all divisions will be overcome.

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And so, what you see in this passage, there is no Protestant church that is part of the quote -unquote church.

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Because only the Roman Catholic church fulfills the purpose. That's your blank there.

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The purpose. And has the authority of the church. What is that purpose?

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Well, in paragraph 2030, it mentions the purpose is giving the scriptures.

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Only the Catholic church, the Roman Catholic church can provide the scriptures. But there's some other things that we see in 2032.

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Let's not put that up. Sorry. But I'm just going to go through the notes here. So, here are seven things that the

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Catholic church claims that they alone can provide. One, the scriptures. Paragraph 2030.

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Two, grace through sacraments. We're going to look at that later on when we get into salvation. Three, an example of holiness.

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Four, the announcement of saving truth. Five, the announcement of moral principles.

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Six, make judgments on human affairs. And then seven, make present and manifest the visible signs of communion between God and man.

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That's paragraph 1071. So, the RCC is the only true church because of its authority.

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You see, it sets itself up as the authority. Even scripture is subjected to it. The RCC believes that it is holy and infallible.

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Therefore, it must have complete authority. The authority of the Roman Catholic church is not rooted in their holiness or infallibility, but instead in their apostolic succession and the function of the mysterium.

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And so, with this, we see, I'm going to skip some of the things that I had in,

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I'm going to skip some of those just so we can try to get through, but we see that the local bishops will have authority over the local church as they receive it from the greater

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Roman Catholic church. But there is, it is clear that the fact that the Roman Catholic church displays a tight relationship between itself and God.

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This would be in paragraph 2039.

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In fact, to the odds, to be at odds with the Roman Catholic church is to be at odds with God.

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This is paragraph 1445. And I'm just looking to see if we have any of them for you to put up, but I'm going to assume not.

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How about 750? Do we have 750? Paragraph 750 we could put up?

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I'll read that one then. All right. To believe that the Catholic, that the church is holy and Catholic.

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Catholic in that day, it meant to be unified, and so we have to keep in mind that it's, it doesn't mean the

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Catholic church the way it became known. It just means unified, the universal. That she is one and apostolic, is inseparable from belief in God, the

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Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. In the Apostles' Creed, we confess one holy church, and not to believe in the church so as to not confuse

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God with his works and to attribute clearly to God's goodness all gifts as he bestowed on the church.

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So the idea here is that it is inseparable, the church is inseparable from a belief in God.

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Now, let's first deal with apostolic succession. What does it mean? The apostolic succession is the belief that there is a direct line from the apostles handed down to the bishops in direct succession.

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That's your blank there, succession. This succession is an office of the church held by few and is believed to have been established from the beginning of the church in an unbroken, excuse me, line.

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Let's look at paragraph 77. Good, we have that one. In order that the full and living gospel might always be preserved in the church, the apostles left bishops as their successors.

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They gave them their own position of teaching. Indeed, the apostolic teaching which is expressed, and by the way, that was paragraph 35 that I first read, paragraph 77 says,

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Indeed, the apostolic preaching which was expressed in a special way in the inspired books was to be preserved in the continuous line of succession until the end of time.

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So what you see is you see them drawing back and saying they're getting their authority from the original disciples and therefore men like Martin Luther and John Calvin can't claim that.

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Just keep in mind when we look at that, I don't think it's as clear as they try to make it out that there's this undivided line.

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This is the belief that the RCC teaches that the Pope is the successor of Peter and therefore has ultimate, that's your blank there, ultimate authority on earth over the church.

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So he has the ultimate authority on the earth over the church and he gets this because he is in a direct succession from Peter.

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Furthermore, as Peter's successor, the Pope is infallible like the

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RCC. Does that make you nervous? Yeah, it makes some of us cringe.

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Do we have maybe 860? Let's just, that's a short one. The apostles took care to appoint successors.

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That is what they're going to use to say, see, now the reason this becomes essential is because the apostolic succession is a key ingredient to understanding

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Roman Catholicism. This doctrine is where the church is going to argue it gets its authority.

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Now, I've mentioned the church. Let me mention another part, the magisterium. The magisterium, let me tell you what they are.

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The magisterium are the third great pillar of authority according to paragraph 95. They get their authority from their apostolic succession.

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They, according to paragraph 67 and 93, they guide, according to paragraph 77 and 85, 86, they teach, they sanctify, paragraph 873, they govern and exercise authority over the

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Roman Catholic Church. So they guide, teach, sanctify, govern, and exercise authority of the

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Roman Catholic Church. The Holy Spirit is known in the church's magisterium and He assists, in which

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He assists. So they get their backing by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit assists them in their authority.

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It is the magisterium who have the sole responsibility and authority to interpret tradition and Scripture.

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That's your blank there, interpret. They have the sole authority and responsibility to interpret

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God's Word. Do we have 100, paragraph 100?

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Let me just read it. It's in your syllabus if you have it. The task of interpreting the

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Word of God authentically has been, I bolded this, entrusted solely to the magisterium of the church.

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That is to the Pope and to the bishops in communion with Him. So what you see there is you notice the authority structure they set up.

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The church interprets Scripture. Without the church, you can't have Scripture. You must have the church in order to be able to claim to interpret

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God's Word. Let me throw the graph up. I know I have that there for you. I have this graph.

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This kind of shows really what you have. You have Scripture in the center.

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What interprets Scripture? Well, Scripture is interpreted by tradition. What interprets the tradition?

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Well, the magisterium interpret the tradition.

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And then what defines what the magisterium say? Well, it's your local congregation. You see, the local congregation is quite far removed from the actual

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Scriptures. This is why in the Reformation when they argued and said, made the case for the

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Scripture alone and it being written in the language of the people, this was why it caused such headache,

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I mean hardship for the church. First off, the Bible was in Latin, not in the language of the people.

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Martin Luther put it in German and the church wanted to kill them for it. They killed Wycliffe for putting it in English.

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They could not handle the Scriptures being in the hands of the people because they had so much removed the

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Scriptures from the people. And that's what really made a revival during the

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Reformation is because what you had was you had people that suddenly had

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God's Word and they can interpret it on their own and they started to study it and see what the

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Scriptures actually said and that created a great Reformation. Let's move on.

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That's their authority. Let's look at their view of God. Now, here we're not going to see much difference in some areas between Christianity and Roman Catholicism, but the

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RCC, quote, never ceased to proclaim their faith in one only

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God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, unquote. That's paragraph 152.

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The RCC believes, quote, Trinity is one.

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They do not confess three gods, but one God in three persons.

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The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves, but each of them is

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God whole and entire. The divine persons are really distinct from one another.

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God is one, but not in solidarity. Father, Son, Holy Spirit are not simply names, designated modalities, modes of the divine being, for they are really distinct from one another, unquote.

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That is paragraph 253 and 254. What you get there is you get basically what we would say in Christianity, a biblical view of the

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Godhead. The Roman Catholic Church agrees in a proper definition of the

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Trinity. What do we have about Jesus Christ? What's their view of Jesus?

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Well, let's take a look at this. There's little question that the Roman Catholic Church accepts the biblical view of the deity of Jesus Christ.

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However, since the Roman Catholic Church has devoted much of its theology to the doctrine of Mary, and since Mary is tightly tied to her son,

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Jesus Christ, Mary will be discussed in this section, though not this week. We're probably going to pick up on discussing

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Mary's role next week. I'm going to discuss it in the area of Jesus Christ because that is where, quite frankly, you see the connection.

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So, we're going to look at the deity of Christ and we'll pick up on Mary next week. Hate to keep

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Mary waiting, but oh well. We only have a 50 -minute class.

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The Roman Catholic Church clearly believes that Jesus Christ was fully God, that's your first blank, and fully man, that's your second blank.

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The Roman Catholic Church clearly believes that Jesus Christ was fully God, fully man.

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Two natures, one body. Alright, let's take a look at some passages. The first one, very good.

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4 -6 -4, the unique and altogether singular event of the incarnation of the son of Jesus does not mean that Jesus Christ is part

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God and part man, nor does it imply that he is the result of a confused mixture of divine and human nature.

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He became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true

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God and true man. Do we have 4 -6 -8?

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Alright, the fifth council at Constantinople in 553 confesses that there is but one hypostatic or hypostasis or person which is our

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Lord Jesus Christ, one of the Trinity. He was crucified in the flesh, our

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Lord Jesus Christ, God and Lord of glory. And then next paragraph, the church thus confesses that Jesus is inseparably true

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God and true man. He is truly the son of God who is without ceasing to be

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Lord and God became man. Next paragraph, 470 says, because human nature was assumed not absorbed, the mysterious union of incarnation, the church was led over the course of centuries to confess the full reality of Christ's human soul with its operations of intellect and will and of his human body.

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In parallel fashion, she, and she always refers to the Catholic church, she has had to recall on each occasion that Christ's human nature belongs as his own to the divine person of the son of God who assumed it.

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Everything that Christ is and does in his nature derives from one of the

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Trinity. The son of God therefore communicates to his humanity his own personal mode of existence in the

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Trinity. In his soul, as in his body, Christ thus expresses humanity, the divine ways of the

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Trinity, the son of God, worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind, he acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved.

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Born of the Virgin Mary, he was truly been one of us, like us in all things except sin.

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So, what we have there is a clear, we as biblical

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Christians would have no disagreement there with the view of the Roman Catholic Church on their view of the

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Trinity or their view of the deity of Christ or his hypostatic union, his dual nature.

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I will say this, and I'm going to carry this over to next week, but notice that they refer to the incarnation, this is not the immaculate conception.

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We're going to deal with what the immaculate conception actually is next week. Many people, especially people who don't know much about Catholicism, but even some who are raised

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Roman Catholic, do not know what the immaculate conception is. Many people think it is the conception of Jesus Christ.

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It is not. It is the conception of Mary. And so you say, why is the conception of Mary so important and so different?

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I'm glad you asked, and next lesson we're going to talk about that.

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In the next lesson, we're going to cover the issue of Mary and address what role she had, what was her function, and what's the relationship with Jesus and Mary.

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You really do have to understand Mary had a very important role or has an important role in the

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Roman Catholic Church, and that's the reason we're going to spend some time with her or discussing her next week.

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We won't spend time with her. So if you have any questions about this lesson or anything else, you can email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

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I do want to encourage you, if you want to get more information on this subject, you can pick up my book,

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What Do They Believe? A Systematic Theology of the Western Religions. You can pick that up at our store, store .strivingforeternity

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.org. You can pick that up there. You can get a copy of the book.

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It goes into much of the material that we're going to be going over here. I want to encourage you to get that book.

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Spent 14 years in research for that book, so it was a lot of work.

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Some other things we want to highlight for you, if you're watching live, the

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NorCal Fire is coming up September 11th and 12th of 2015 in San Jose, California.

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You can go to NorCalFire .org to get all the information.

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James Warner Wallace, a cold case homicide detective who became a Christian after examining the

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Gospels. Justin Peters, who's going to talk on discernment, but he's also going to be talking on the topic of hermeneutics, a very important lesson.

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I will be presenting two messages on the topic of discipleship. I'm going to be looking at bitterness and forgiveness in the life of Joseph, and then

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I'm going to look at receiving wise or unwise counsel from the life of Balaam.

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I encourage you to come to the NorCal Fire. Lastly, the last announcement

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I have is consider hosting at your church a Bible Interpretation Made Easy seminar.

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That's a seminar we do. We come into your church for eight hours, six sessions, Friday night,

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Saturday, and we teach your congregation how to rightly handle the Word of God.

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It is basically the 20 lessons that we put together summarized into eight hours, six sessions.

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Cram it in for your knowledge. We would love to come to your church and present that material.

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We do always have a Brother of Encouragement or Sister of Encouragement. I don't have the slide on that.

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My bad. I gave the slides last minute and that wasn't one of them that made it in. I'm sorry. But I do want to say this.

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Why did we start this Brother or Sister of Encouragement? What's called the CBro or CSIS, the

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Striving for Eternity Brother or Sister of Encouragement. It really started because I went to many funerals and I would hear the most wonderful things that people say about people that are dead.

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Have you ever wondered what people are going to say at your funeral? The wonderful things they're going to say. Wouldn't you like to hear those things while you're alive?

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That's the point. We realize that we save some of the most encouraging things to say about one another after people are dead.

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We wanted to encourage you to encourage others while they're still alive. I want to encourage you guys to encourage this week

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Brother Mike Stockwell from Cross Country Evangelism. I think it's crosscountryevangelism .org

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or .com, I forget. But just do a Google search on Cross Country Evangelism. You'll find Mike Stockwell.

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Mike, I said in the pre -class, those who watch live get to see, get some updates in the pre -class

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Monday nights, 8 o 'clock at strivingforeternityacademy .org. You can also join in the chat room when you do that.

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What you have with Mike Stockwell though is a great brother who has, he had a landscaping business.

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He sold his business, sold his truck, bought a little car, hopped, put everything he owned into his car basically and traveled the country to share the

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Gospel wherever he went. He basically planned to be able to live in his car.

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He had sleeping bags and whatnot. He's yet to sleep in his car. By the hospitality of many, he has been able to always have a roof over his head.

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But Mike had lost his mother this past, last week. He's been home and not out serving even though he wanted to be serving.

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He's been home with his mother taking care of her. His sister who really took care of his mother kind of full time for a long time,

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Mike took over toward the end. Mike was with his mother on her final breath. But the real encouragement is the way

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Mike spoke, actually not just Mike, his sisters as well, his four sisters. The way they spoke of their mother and father as they got ill and died.

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I mean one sister said what her mother taught her was how to die. Think about that.

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Her mother was someone who was so loving Christ, both the mother and father.

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When they were, his pastor said that when he comes to comfort his father,

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Mike Sr., that they walked away encouraged because he was so excited to be sick because it meant he was going to see

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Christ. And his mother, Mike Jr.'s mother was the same way, just really wanted to see

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Christ. And the way they spoke, I have seen Mike Stockwell preach on the street. I've seen

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Mike Stockwell preach on conferences. I have never seen Mike Stockwell preach like he did at that funeral.

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It was touching. I mean the fact that he could turn to a coffin and say to the people sitting there, this is going to be you one day.

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We're all going to die. And he gave such a compelling and compassionate gospel presentation, knowing where his mother was.

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I have never seen people that have such a great assurance of salvation than I did at that funeral.

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I walked away from a funeral encouraged and celebrating, which seems strange.

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But that's the kind of guy Mike Stockwell is. Can you encourage him this week as his family is going through a rough time, as you can imagine losing their mother who was really a stabling force for them, really someone that they all speak so highly of.

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Even before she took ill, Mike always spoke so highly of his mother. Encourage him this week.

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As we go next week, we'll talk about Mary. We'll hopefully talk about man's sin in Roman Catholicism.

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remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.