May 10, 2024 Show with Dr. Tony Costa on “A Critical Examination of Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel”

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On April 15th, Bishop Mar -Marie

Emanuel of Christ the Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley, New South Wales, was attacked by a teenager shouting

Allahu Akbar, the Islamic phrase in Arabic, which means

God is great, repeatedly stabbing the bishop, which resulted in the bishop losing an eye and stabbing several other individuals in the congregation.

And this has brought even further attention to Bishop Mar -Marie

Emanuel by people of all stripes of Christianity, whether they be

Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Evangelical, who are lifting up Mar -Marie

Emanuel as a hero, who are viewing him as a

Christian leader, who are saying that we should be following his example of forgiveness of his attacker.

And so today, I thought it was very important, in spite of some of the criticism

I've already received, to have someone on the program who is thoroughly knowledgeable of Mar -Marie

Emanuel and discuss his theology, his church, to discuss his gospel, and to be more informative from the truth of the

Scriptures to our listeners as to whether he should be held in high esteem as a genuine

Christian leader, in spite of any of the numerous admirable things that we can truthfully say about this man.

And to do this is Dr. Tony Costa, a dear friend of mine for many years, a returning guest to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, who is the professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

He's also an author, debater, and conference speaker. We may even be having him out to Pennsylvania in 2025 to debate on egalitarianism.

He would be opposing the view that women have equal roles and functions in the body of Christ to men, and we are still working on that, and hopefully that will come to fruition, and we'll keep you updated.

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Dr. Tony Costa.

Thank you, Chris. It's always a pleasure to be on with you. Well, if you could, tell us about this

Christ the Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley, and I may be mispronouncing that,

New South Wales. Yes. The Good Shepherd Church is a church that was established by Bishop Marmari Emmanuel.

Let me just say right off the bat that that's not his real name. I mean, his actual name, his real name is

Robert Schleiman. He was born July 19, 1970, in Baghdad in Iraq, so he's

Iraqi by birth. It came as a great shock to me. I thought he was an older gentleman.

I just realized that I'm older than him, so that came as a great shock to me.

So am I. There you go. When you've got a long white beard, it ages yourself decades.

Oh, of course. Yeah, my wife says the same when I grow a beard. So he was born in Iraq, so he's

Iraqi by birth, and he was ordained as a priest in the

Assyrian Church of the East in 2009, and then he became a bishop actually two years later in 2011 of Christ the

Good Shepherd in Wakeley, New South Wales, Australia. And the reason why he goes by the name Marmari Emmanuel is because that was the name that he took when he was consecrated into the ministry or into the clergy.

The other thing we should also make clear, Chris, just for the sake of transparency, and I would also join my voice to yours, that I've also been attacked as well in my social media circles for bringing out the differences and the theological differences, and people act like we should just ignore those or just cover them up in light of the recent attack.

And so you can still have a transparent discussion on these things without taking away from the fact, as we're going to talk in a minute, that Bishop Marmari Emmanuel is someone who's actually a winsome character.

He's actually a very nice man. He's not a horrible person, as some people try to make him out as just this devious heretic.

But we'll talk about that as well and what counts as heresy as well in terms of his theology.

But I think it's important to realize, Chris, that we're living in an age where theology doesn't matter for most people.

They just think as long as he's a nice person, he's making good claims and sermons, theology shouldn't hold us back.

And this is where I get very concerned is that when we start seeing the dwindling of theology, that this becomes a very slippery slide that we get on.

And so we need to maintain the sound doctrine that has been passed down to the

Church, that is through the apostles and through Scripture, and hold on to that. Let me just say that the ancient

Church of the East came out of—it branched from the Assyrian Church of the

East in 1964. It's not to be confused with the Chaldean Catholic Church.

The Chaldean Catholic Church is in full communion with the Bishop of Rome, that is, with the

Pope. And so their liturgy may be Orthodox or Orientalist Orthodox, but the

Chaldean Catholic Church remains in union, that is, in full communion with the Pope as their head.

The other thing I think we need to also know about Marie is a bit of a controversial figure.

He was suspended from his bishopric in 2014. And one of the reasons for that is he was accused by the archbishop of violating certain canon laws, believe it or not, of the

Council of Nicaea. And so just a few I'll mention. He was accused of, for example, placing pictures in the

Church. And if you look at some Assyrian churches of the East, they don't have pictures or icons.

Really? Yes. If you look at some of their churches inside the inner sanctum of their churches, you will notice they don't have pictures.

They'll have a bear cross. It would almost look like something Zwingli would have been proud of, you know, no images, nothing, just white walls.

And so the reason I know this is I've pastored and baptized a young—well, a married girl, but both of them were from the

Assyrian Church of the East. And so I got to know a lot about that particular domination.

So he includes pictures. If you notice in his videos, you'll have pictures in the background of Mary and Jesus, icons of Mary and Jesus, and you'll have one of Saint Cyril, for example.

The other thing as well was you're supposed to live on the premises as a bishop. You're not supposed to live with other people, but he was living apparently with his mother,

I think, or something. And the archbishop says, well, you can't do that. It goes against canon law. And the other thing was his eschatology is—they called it very sensationalistic.

It almost sounds like a dispensational about the tribulation coming and so forth. So he got in some trouble with that.

Another area he got into trouble with was over running his own charity work, and I don't know what's so bad about running a charity to help the poor.

But anyway, all of that to say that he apparently had—he had collided with the archbishop on certain issues.

And so 2014, he's deposed as bishop. In 2015, he establishes an independent church, and his church,

Chris, is not recognized. It doesn't have any official status with the Assyrian Church of the

East. It's an independent church, correct? Correct, correct. And it is neither

Roman Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox, correct? Correct. So they're very different.

So the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Eastern Orthodox, many of them would consider the ancient church of the

East to be heretical because of the charge of Nestorianism. Sometimes the ancient church of the

East—the Eastern Church of the East, rather—is sometimes called Nestorian because it moved eastward.

It went as far as China. They were Nestorian churches as far away as China and in India as well.

And so this brings up a whole debate. We'll talk about this as well,

Chris, about whether Mary is the mother of Christ or whether she is the mother of God using the language of the

Council of Ephesus and Chalcedon. We can talk about that because these are honorific titles not for Mary.

They're not to lift her up. They're actually to emphasize that Christ is God in human flesh. But we can talk about that.

But there are some videos where Mari clearly disavows this language of mother of God, and he sides with what

Nestorius said. We should call Mary Christotokos, which means the Christ -bearer, the mother of Christ.

And Nestorius did not like the term Theotokos, which means the God -bearer, that Mary bore

God the Son in human flesh. Although Protestants are not

Nestorian, they would side with the Nestorians on that issue, wouldn't they, most of us?

Well, this is sad, though. This is sad because historically in the Protestant creeds, the confessions and the creeds of the

Protestant churches, they affirm Chalcedon and Ephesus. And there is nothing wrong with giving

Mary that title, Theotokos. As long as it's understood in the context that what it's saying is that Mary carried

God the Son in the flesh in her womb for nine months. She bore him. She is the mother of a person.

She's not the mother of a substance. She didn't give birth. A pregnant woman doesn't say, you know, I'm going to have a blob of protoplasm.

She says, I'm going to have a boy, or I'm going to have a girl. And she knows that that's a person.

And so Mary did not give birth to some substance like flesh. She gave birth to a person.

And so who was that person in her womb? Well, it was God the Son, second person of the

Trinity in human flesh. And so when the council called her Theotokos, what it was saying was not that she preceded

God or mothered God or was a member of the Godhead. What it's saying is the one she bore was the one person, God the

Son, with two natures, the divine and the human. And it was to protect the hypostatic union of Christ.

And apparently Nestorius was read as saying that there were two persons, the divine

Son and the man Jesus. And so Nestorius was taken to mean she's not the mother of the divine one.

She's the mother of the human side, the human part. And this is one of the most controversial issues,

Chris, in church history. Scholars today, church historians still today will debate whether or not

Nestorius was actually Nestorian. They believe that he was misunderstood. They believe that they were talking past each other.

There was clearly a language barrier, Chris, between the West and the East, their hypostases and usia and prosopon and words like personae in Latin and talking about substantia, substance and essence.

And so sometimes what would happen is some of these Eastern fathers, Greek fathers and Latin fathers would talk past each other.

And the Greeks would say, well, there's three hypostases in the Godhead. And they would say, no, hypostasis is the nature, not the persons.

And they accuse each other of being modalist. So all of that to say there's a lot of ink that has been spilled on this topic.

And Dr. Michael Hagen and many other church historians, I believe, have already have addressed this. It continues to be addressed whether or not

Nestorius was unjustly condemned. Now, let's immediately and briefly, because it's not the main reason we're doing this show, but briefly respond to the charges of quite a number of people who heard about this program in advance through social media that we are being heartless in giving any kind of critique of Mari Emanuel.

Right. Especially right now, after he is recovering from losing an eye to the attack of this teenager who

I'm assuming it may be Muslim. Right. He might be just. Yes, he was. OK, because he was a

Muslim, Chris. He was 16 years old. He was a Muslim has been confirmed by the media, by the police. And he was crying out.

And I heard it on the video before YouTube yanked it out. He did cry out a lot about a lot about God is greater.

Allah is greater. And then he you could hear him saying that if he didn't insult my prophet,

I wouldn't have attacked him. OK, well, I'm glad you clarified that, because obviously we have leftist spoiled brats here in the

United States. Yes. On college campuses, using Arabic phrases in support of Islam and Palestine.

And yet these very people would have would not last five minutes under Sharia law.

You know, you know, you have drag queens saying free, free Palestine. Oh, yeah.

We have them here at the University of Toronto. They took over the campus. They called the little Gaza and they have no idea what they're talking about.

And then you have again, you have LGBT groups like queers for Palestine. And they're told over and over again in Gaza, they would find the highest building and throw you off of there and stone you to death.

Right. Well, well, can you defend what we're doing today briefly? Because that's about especially in regard to the timing.

This man was recently attacked and could have lost his life, but lost an eye.

So, yes, is this is this wrong timing for us to be doing this? No, no, I don't think so.

I we were going to talk about it anyway. I know it was on your list of things to do. Right. We were going to talk about this anyway.

I know you, Chris. Well, you were going to cover this. I know you, Chris. Like I said, I we've been we've known each other for many, many years.

It's not a matter of timing. It's a matter of look, theology matters.

And we hear our common friend, Dr. James White, say this over and over and over again. Theology matters. And when

Christians say things like, well, you shouldn't be talking about not in light of what's happening and especially now.

Look, it's one thing to lose an eye. And I really feel for him because losing an eye is very traumatic.

But theology is important. The gospel is at stake. I don't think the Apostle Paul in Galatians would would give up, you know, go on, go on a temporary leave just so not to offend certain people in the

Galatian church. He came right out and said, well, this is another gospel. And that other gospel is anathema and it will damn your souls.

So I think that the truth of the gospel, as Paul says in Galatians, the truth of the gospel was was under attack.

And so we were going to talk about this regardless. And he's also returned to his church and he's preaching again.

He's he's not still in the hospital bed. Right, right, right. So he's come back to the church.

And so and he's still preaching theology. So I think it's important for us to realize that Satan does not take any coffee breaks.

And I don't think Christians should as well. We should always be always ready to give a defense for the hope that we have in Christ.

Now, so and this is not this is not, as you know, Chris, this is not to demean Mario Emanuel.

Right. As we will as we will talk about. He is a he is a winsome character and he's charitable. Yes. And I also before we go into the critique aspect further, when we come back from our first commercial break.

He is a hard person to be pigeonholed. He is an extraordinarily gifted orator.

I am sure that there are many evangelicals who would sell all their possessions if they could possess his gifts at oratory.

He is he is captivating. And the thing that makes him even more dangerous, perhaps.

Is that he, as I heard in a in a message today, he sounds like he is preaching the true gospel very often.

He sounds like he is preaching the gospel of the Reformation. He sounds sometimes like he is teaching total depravity as far as the nature of man before regeneration.

I was listening to a sermon that lasted over an hour today, and I barely could come up or find anything that he said that I disagreed with.

And the few times in the midst of the sermon, when there were disagreements with Reformed theology that were obvious, they were the same kind of things that many

Armenian evangelicals would commonly say in a sermon. But then he contradicted the whole sermon at the very end before his prayer, when he was saying that we must believe in transubstantiation and the literal flesh and blood of Christ present in the

Eucharist to be forgiven. And I will play that clip after we return from the first commercial break.

But so I'm not discounting this man as not having any gifts.

He's biblically literate. He has infinitely more scripture in his sermons than Joel Osteen does.

And very often is correctly interpreting them. So this is what makes this man more of a paradox.

It makes him more confusing. And some people who have only heard perhaps some sermons or parts of sermons by him may be thinking, other than the weird costume, what do you have a problem with this guy?

This guy sounds like he's born again. He sounds like he's got the same gospel as I do.

And I'm a member of a Reformed Baptist church or a Presbyterian church or what have you.

But you have to you have to do enough listening to to find where he is in grave area, even to the point of damning error.

And we'll go. Yes. And let's go into that when we return from our first commercial break. Sure. If anybody has any questions for Dr.

Tony Costa on Mar Marri Emanuel and his theology, our email address is

Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com. Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com gives his first name at least city and state and country of residence.

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That's royaldiadem .com. Always mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with Dr.

Tony Costa, professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary, and we are providing for you a critical examination of Bishop Mar -Marie

Emanuel of Christ the Good Shepherd Church in a suburb of Sydney, Australia.

And, Tony, I'm going to play a clip. You are with us, right,

Tony? Yes, sir. Just wanted to make sure. I'm going to play you a clip. Oh, the rapture hasn't happened yet,

Chris. I'm going to play you a clip of Mar -Marie

Emanuel that was at the very end of a sermon that, in most ways, sounded excellent to me, unless I missed something.

He even gave a great analogy that I had never heard before of when

Jesus Christ said he came to bring the good news to the poor, and he was saying, when you give money to a beggar, how are they acting and speaking in truth that they are truly poor?

You know, because there are a lot of scam artists out there, and one who is truly poor has no inheritance and cannot work.

It is absolutely impossible for them to work, for them to be rightly out there begging.

And he compared that to a spiritual pauper. The spiritual pauper who is lost has inherited nothing but the sin of Adam and death, and he cannot work to gain eternal life.

There's nothing he can do. And, therefore, Jesus Christ gives him that good news that he can be the heir of a great inheritance and can have eternal life, even though he cannot work at all for it, which was another contradiction in his theology, because he sounded like a

Calvinist at that point. But, right at the end, this is what

Mar -Marie Emanuel had to say. Take my body, fig, and take my blood, grapes, and I have plugged my body, which is the fig, out of the thorn, and I have plugged my blood, which is the grapes, out of the braise.

He took the sins of the whole world. He took the sins of the human race, thorns and the braise, and made them a crown over his head.

And out of this crown, thorn of crown, he gave me his body and blood on the cross.

It is his body and blood in the truth. It's not symbolic.

It's not bread and wine. It's the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. And if you don't believe in that, then you are still living in sin.

You're still captive. You're still bound. When you come and believe that this is the body and the blood, and you receive it, believing that it is the true body and the true blood, your sins are forgiven.

Jesus came to proclaim liberty for you, who as a sinner, willingly and unwillingly, captive and bound, thorn and braise, thief and robber.

Well, that is the clip I wanted to play, and we have been disconnected by Dr. Costa. So hopefully he can hear me now.

Can you hear me, Tony? I can hear you now, yes. I just lost you when you were playing the clip.

Well, he was basically saying that you are still enslaved by your sin if you are not acknowledging that the elements of bread and wine in the

Eucharist are not bread and wine, that they are the true body and blood of Christ. Right, right.

And so, therefore, it's interesting that there are evangelicals who would be—and, of course, ecumenical

Catholics in the Eastern Orthodox— who would be saying, how dare you denounce someone as being a false teacher, as being dangerous, just because they disagree with you on certain things.

This is a wonderful man. He is willing to be a martyr for what he believes.

He's forgiven the person that stabbed his eye out of his skull.

Would you do that? Would you be willing to forgive that person? So how dare you?

Well, here you have Mar Mar Emanuel. That was not an ecumenical statement with evangelical

Protestants, because we don't eat the real flesh and drink the real blood of Christ.

Do you have any further comment on that? That's right. Well, yes. Well, that's not the gospel. In the gospel, 1

Corinthians 15, 3 -4, Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, was buried, was raised. And the gospel is the gift of God in Christ Jesus.

It's the free gift of eternal life. And that is not—the ordinance of the Lord's Supper is for regenerate

Christians. It's for the Church, but it's given to you when you come to Christ.

So that's why baptism—we believe baptism, praeto -baptism—we believe baptism should be performed after someone has come to faith.

Just like Acts 2 -38, the people heard the gospel, and then they were baptized when Peter preached. And then in terms of the

Lord's Supper, the Lord's Supper, again, is for believers. It doesn't make you a believer. It doesn't regenerate you.

It's what regenerate believers do in commemoration of Christ. And so when you make transubstantiation a basis for salvation, and Rome would agree with that, but then

Rome is much more open and much more liberal, if I could use that word. Inconsistent. They're inconsistent,

Rome. Correct. Modern Rome, not the traditionalist guys. Correct.

That's right. And so he was doing well. I mean, he was doing well. I mean, it's almost like the

Judaizers, where they're preaching Christ, they're preaching the crucified Christ, the risen Savior. They're preaching the gospel, and then they said,

Oh, but you need to be circumcised, and you need to keep the law, and so forth, to be saved. So this is the issue, the theological problem with Mari Emmanuel is that he comes across, he makes the—he preaches out of the

Bible, and he's very—a stellar message, as you yourself have noted. But then he'll bring this aspect of the tradition of the

Church. He'll bring that aspect, and it is a tradition of the Church, Chris. Transubstantiation developed and evolved in Church history, and it really comes out when you come to the 11th and into the 12th century, especially with Thomas Aquinas as well.

It's absent in the patristic era, is it not? It is. It is. It's absent. And there's clear references in the early fathers, of the

Supper of the Lord being a figure of his body, a figure of his blood, and so forth. And it's not until you get into the turn of the millennium that you start getting this talk about fusing real presence and transubstantiation together.

So the early fathers could speak of the real presence of Christ, but not in terms of transubstantiation.

And they did not worship the elements of the Eucharist. No, no, no.

In fact, that evolved—well, that was already current in the time of Thomas Aquinas. And it starts,

I think, around the 1200s A .D. or end of the 1190s to the 1200s. That's when you start having the adoration of the

Eucharist. And Aquinas himself talks about how he adores the

Eucharist, the host, as Christ himself. And so that developed within Church history.

I mean, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Eastern Church, has nothing of this and nothing like this. And so it's clearly a development in the

Western Church. Well, now I'm going to play another clip of Mar -a -Mari Emmanuel, where you really hear his full -blown idolatry.

And this is in regard to Mary, the mother of Jesus. We thank you, God, for choosing

Mary to be the vessel, to be the ark, to be the citadel, to be the second heaven.

You are so unique, Holy Mother. In every aspect, you are unique. In every aspect, you surpass every human being, even the angelic orders.

Your Son, who is God, Jesus Christ, has elevated you and venerated you and venerated you above every level, including the angelic orders.

I bow, I bow with humility before your feet, begging you,

Mother, to intercede to your beloved Son, because if there is any heart that understands the sacred heart of Jesus Christ, it's the heart of Mary.

Mother, I beg you, intercede to your Son to have mercy on me,

I the sinner. You are my Holy Mother, who lives forever, who is with me forever, who prays and intercedes for me unceasingly.

I thank you, God. I thank you, Lord Jesus, for giving me such a perfect, wonderful, unique, special, so, so, so elevated of a human being called

Miriam of Nazareth. Mom, intercede for all of us, to your beloved

Son, to have mercy on His Church and to have mercy on this turmoiled world.

Holy Mother, I beg you, from the bottom of my heart, pray and intercede to your

Son to have mercy on every lost sheep, on every sick soul, on every soul that is being held captive, imprisoned, in dungeons, whether they are spiritual, satanic dungeons, or physical dungeons.

Through your intercession, may your Son release them. And there you have that disturbing, idolatrous portion of a sermon from Marmari Emmanuel.

And there are even evangelicals, many, who will say, we are quibbling over tertiary issues here.

They will say, that's at worst misplaced devotion, but it's not idolatry.

I mean, give the guy a break. Mary is a unique woman in Church history, and we should remember her with reverence.

He just goes a little overboard. But this is clearly going into the realm of idolatry, isn't it?

Well, yes. I mean, words like, I bow, I bow with humility before your feet.

And he calls her the Ark, which is also what Roman Catholics refer to her as. He calls her the second heaven.

She has been elevated, and even Christ himself venerates her. And then he calls on her to intercede to her

Son for sinners. Well, why can we not come directly to Christ? I mean, Hebrews 4 says, let us come boldly to the throne of grace, that we might find help in time of need.

We come boldly to the throne of grace, because that access has been opened by the ripped flesh of the

Son of God. When he died, the veil in the temple was rent in twain, that we might enter into the very presence of God.

And in 1 Timothy 2 .5, there is only one God. There's only one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.

And so Christ is our intercessor. He's our great high priest who ever liveth to make intercession for the saints.

So this would be completely foreign to the New Testament writers. The apostles themselves never thought of Mary in this aspect.

Every time we speak about or the Scripture speaks about access to God, it is always through his Son, and it is open through his

Son. And there is only one mediator between God and man. Not two, not three, but one mediator,

Christ Jesus himself, who gave himself for us. And therefore, as our great high priest, he intercedes for us, for his people.

And here we see again, this is what church tradition does, Chris. It always augments itself to the

Scriptures. There's an augment that is foreign to Scriptures, alien to Scripture. And what hope is this?

I mean, when the apostles were preaching the gospel in the book of Acts, they never, ever, ever, ever, ever pointed people to Mary.

They never asked people to come through the intercession of Mary. The gospel was always, come to Christ, come to Christ.

You can come to God through the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the gospel message. This is not a tertiary matter.

This is a gospel issue. And anything that violates the gospel is another gospel.

And the word that Paul uses for another gospel is the strongest word in the Greek New Testament. It's the word anathema.

It means to be under the judgment, the damnation of God. The apostle Paul would never regard something like this as tertiary.

Yes, and people are just ignorant of the fact of why this is so important.

It is stripping Christ of his uniqueness, his sovereignty, his power, all of his attributes.

Even stripping him of his compassion and his mercy and forgiveness, because according to a prayer like that,

Jesus won't do it unless Mary is asking him to. Mary is more merciful.

She's more compassionate, more forgiving. Yeah, it's like the Roman Catholic prayer to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, where the prayer says that Christ would not turn away the request of his mother.

You mean that prayer of Alphonse Liguori? Yes, that's one of them, yes. And, of course, he did turn her request at the wedding of Cana in John 2 about making more wine and all that.

But the point here is that the same thing applies in the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, is that Christ listens to his mother.

And it's the mother that assuages the wrath of Christ and softens his heart toward sinners.

There is nothing of this in the Scriptures. This is completely foreign to the Scriptures. And so if the gospel is the means by which

God saves men and women, then how can a gospel that adds, augments ideas, foreign ideas to it, how can that be the gospel of salvation?

It's not. Now, how would you respond to those who say, well, even if he is guilty, is charged on his over -the -top and unbiblical adoration of Mary and his insistence on acceptance of transubstantiation that we have clearly demonstrated, his insistence on transubstantiation for forgiveness of sins, which is actually the consistent way to view the

Roman Catholic teaching on this. I know that he's not Roman Catholic himself, but I'm saying that, as we already mentioned, post -Vatican

II Catholics, even those that are very conservative, like those with Catholic answers, they are very inconsistent on this because they extend to us, who are

Protestant and do not receive the Mass, the olive branch of brotherhood, and they have no business doing that, if they really believe that John 6 is talking about the

Mass. But how do you respond to people who say, well, yeah, we've heard that he has abuses in regard to Mary, veneration, and the

Eucharist, but you haven't proven that he's a Pelagian, that he believes in works righteousness, so how do you respond to that?

Yeah, well, he does believe in works righteousness, because if you look at some of his other sermons, he believes in baptism regeneration, that baptism is necessary for salvation.

So it's not just believing in Christ. You need to be baptized to be saved. He even quotes Mark 16, verse 16, which is a questionable text.

It's a spurious text, actually, but he quotes it. Whoever believes in it is baptized shall be saved. He also affirms that in order to receive forgiveness from Christ, there's another famous sermon where he says you cannot go, and I'm quoting him here.

He says you cannot go directly to Christ. He says you can, but not always, that is, receive forgiveness.

And I'm quoting him now. When I sin, this is Bishop Murray, when I sin, I cannot go to Jesus Christ directly, because that sin separated me from him.

Then he says I need a saint who cannot sin anymore to approach Christ on his behalf.

And so he also believes in the intercession of the saints and believes that he cannot go directly to Christ for forgiveness.

He needs to go through one of the saints. That is not the gospel. That is not 1 Timothy 2 .5.

And clearly he is saying here that you need a saint to intercede for you to the

Lord Jesus Christ, to forgive you. And again, that is not biblical at all.

And to argue that this is acceptable and that this is not really a big deal, once again,

Chris, I'm sure the Judaizers believed that Jesus was the Son of God, the Messiah, the Son of God, and so forth.

And they probably would have said, well, Paul, come on. I mean, really? Are we going to really quibble about circumcision?

I mean, it's just a cut in the flesh, and it will heal. What's the big deal? And Paul says absolutely not.

If you be circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing. And you have fallen from grace. So that's the key word here.

If you add anything to the gospel of grace, it's no longer the gospel of grace.

It's now the gospel of grace and works. And so Bishop Murray's approach is synergistic.

It's not monergistic where God alone does all the work. He believes you work alongside of God by eating the

Eucharist, by getting baptized, et cetera. So he doesn't believe in eternal security. That's clear.

That's obvious. And he does believe, obviously, he does believe that you can lose your salvation. So he is quite

Arminian in that respect. Well, we are going to our midway break. Please be patient with us. It's the longer break in the show because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because the

FCC requires of them to geographically localize

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to Lake City, Florida, where the radio station is located.

And they do so with their own public service announcements that they air in the middle of the show on their end.

On our ends, however, we air our globally heard commercials. So please use this time wisely.

Write down as much of the contact information as you possibly can, provided by as many of our advertisers as you can, so that you can more frequently and successfully respond to our advertisers, keeping in mind that the finances that come through our advertisers are absolutely required to keep the show on the air.

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Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is

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Last but not least, if you are not a member of a Christ -honoring, biblically faithful, doctrinally solid, theologically sound church, no matter where you live in the world,

I may be able to help you find a biblically faithful church just as I have done with many people all over the planet

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That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Dr. Tony Costa on Mari Emanuel. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com

Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. Let's see,

Dr. Costa, we do have a question from, let's see,

Lily in Brooklyn, New York. And Lily asks, have you heard any evidence from Mari Emanuel's sermons or writings that he would be guilty of believing in a heresy of works righteousness akin to what we see in the doctrine of Trent, where works are clearly cooperating with not only the works of Christ, but the works of Mary and the saints in order for salvation to be granted to a sinner?

Yeah, the answer would be yes. He does believe in works righteousness. That's why he mentions participation in the

Eucharist is necessary for salvation. He believes baptism is necessary for salvation. If you're not baptized, you cannot be saved.

And it is also the position of the Assyrian Church of the East that works and faith work together to achieve salvation.

And so they are in agreement with the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental, Orientalist Orthodox Church, which includes the

Coptic Church, the Armenian Church, the Ethiopian Church, and so forth. So they don't believe in sola gratia, grace alone.

They don't believe in sola fide, faith alone. They believe, in a synergistic view, that you need to cooperate with the sacraments, with divine grace, to achieve salvation.

And so, yes, he makes that very abundantly clear that you cannot be saved by faith alone and Christ alone, by grace alone.

Even though he is no longer affiliated with those other denominations you mentioned. That's correct.

But he does follow, even though he's established his own church, he does follow the

Eastern Syriac tradition, which comes from the Assyrian Church of the

East. So that's the liturgy that he uses. Okay. By the way, thank you,

Lily. Keep listening to Iron Sharp and Zion Radio and spreading the word to your fellow

Brooklynites and others that you know throughout the world. Let's see.

We have Byron in Manhasset, Long Island, New York.

And Byron says, I heard that Marmari Emmanuel forgave his attacker and said to him that he forgives him because he is his son and he loves him.

Is that a proper way for any Christian to forgive someone, even if they are a cleric?

Should we dare tell anyone that they are our son? Yeah, that stems out of the idea of the cleric being father.

So the Syriac, excuse me, the Eastern, the Assyrian Church of the

East employs the same language as the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox and, of course, the

Oriental Orthodox Churches. And, of course, in the Church of England, you also have priests called father as well.

And it stems from this idea that the priest is a spiritual father to everyone, not just the Church, but to everyone.

Really? So in other words, in those churches, the clerics would consider themselves my father, even though I reject

Rome and denounce it as a false church, and they would declare themselves the father of Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists?

I didn't know that part. Yes, well, that's why their title is father.

So if you're addressing a priest, whether you're Jewish or Muslim or whatever you may be, you address them as father.

Not I. I don't. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people have asked me if I'm a father, and I said, yes,

I have three children, and yeah, I'm a father. See, I thought that they only legitimized that on the basis of...

Obviously, there is the genuine concept of viewing somebody as your father in the faith, not through using the title father, but you are like a son in that you're nurtured by this person in the faith, but a

Muslim isn't being nurtured by Mar -Mar Emanuel in the faith. Right, right.

And that language is biblical. Paul could speak of how he fathered the Corinthians, and he talks about how

Timothy was his son in the faith, and Peter could refer to Mark as his son in the faith. But in Roman Catholicism, because of that global aspect, especially since post -Vatican

II, in the Roman Catholic Church, and also in the ancient Church of the

East, there is this idea that it's not uncommon for clergymen in those churches to address people who are seeking spiritual advice, irrespective of whether they're members of the church.

It's not unusual for them to call them my son. That's not unusual. So that is why

I think you have Mar Emanuel talking like that, because he sees himself as not just a spiritual father, but as a father to Muslims, because he sees them as potential converts.

Now, this is a more tricky area of that instance of Mar -Mar

Emanuel forgiving the Muslim who attacked him, because it divides even

Reformed Christians. The issue of pronouncing forgiveness upon an unrepentant person.

There is a divide, even between two brethren in Christ that I revere, who are both soteriologically

Reformed, although one is a dispensationalist. John MacArthur believes that we are to forgive everybody, even if they never repent or even ask for our forgiveness.

And J. Adams, the late J. Adams, who wrote the classic work

From Forgiven to Forgiving, was very clear that he believed that we are only to forgive those that repent and request forgiveness of us.

And he made it clear also that he still believed that we are to love our enemies, we are to pray for our enemies, and do good for our enemies, but that is not the same thing as forgiveness.

Because you are releasing a person from the bound of debt.

They are no longer bound to debt when you forgive them, and therefore, if you are doing that to somebody unrepentant, they may just continue sinning not only against you, but many, many, many other people in the same way.

I tend to agree with Dr. Adams in this divide. Where are you on that?

Yeah, it is a very thorny question, because on the one hand, you have the

Lord asking— in Luke 23, you have the Lord asking the Father to forgive His murderers.

Forgive them, for they know not what they do. And again, there's been a lot of debate about who are the they. Are they the

Roman soldiers, the Jewish Sanhedrin? Who exactly are the they that Christ is calling the

Father to forgive? Well, obviously, we're not specifically told, and there's no signs that they were repentant at that point when they were crucifying the

Lord. And of course, you've got Acts 7, 59 -60, where Stephen, the first deacon, is being stoned to death, and he calls on the

Lord Jesus. He says, do not hold this against them. As if to say, don't seek retribution for what they're doing against me.

So it's a tough one. In my own personal life, Chris, I've had to let go of anger and bitterness towards certain people.

And in my heart, I had forgiven them, but I never told them that directly, that is, to their face.

And eventually, surprisingly, by God's grace, these people did reconcile with me. They came back, and they did seek forgiveness, and they did.

There was an official reconciliation. So I think that Bishop Mari, I'm not sure if he's doing that in the sense of releasing any sense of retribution against this person, but I personally think that it may be injurious, the way he said that, because it's almost like he's giving carte blanche to this

Muslim fellow, that, you know, just go on on a killing spree, kill other ministers or clergy members, attack them at the pulpit, because we're just going to let you off anyway.

So I'm kind of in between those views, Chris. I mean, the jury's still out on that one for me. But I know from my own personal experience, forgiving someone in my heart and just letting it go without actually telling them that publicly, it was a way to just release a lot of anger and bitterness in my heart.

And eventually, they did reconcile with me. So that's where I stand. I'm still, the jury's still out on that one for me.

Okay. We have Ida from Los Angeles, California, who says she is a born -again

Christian Muslim apologist, and I don't judge him.

And then she says, Marmar Emmanuel clearly said baptism does not save you.

She says, Tony, this is so sad that you have so much time in your hands to spend two hours criticizing

Bishop Marmari in such critical times with Christians dying all around us.

You guys put the Lord Jesus to shame dividing the body of Christ. Why don't you get a speaker and go to your local mosque and tell all

Muslims, Bishop Marmari is a heretic, and go do worst what you did on April 15th.

I am sure he is praying for you too. If you have any problem with him, contact him and ask him to do a debate with you.

He doesn't care what you say about him. Maybe you should go, maybe you should do a radio program with Bishop Marmari instead of talking behind him.

Well, that's an interesting, she brings up many things, but there has been the question when

Christians have criticized me, whenever I have done a critique or an expose of a publicly known figure, they will say, how dare you, you are violating the principles set forth in the

Gospel of Matthew on how we are to address a brother in error.

And the difference is that in Matthew, those are sins committed against you in private.

There is not some heresy that is being declared in the ears and eyes of who knows, maybe millions of people on YouTube.

So, let's get that out of the way. We don't need to get, we don't need to address

Marmari Emanuel personally when what he has said is a matter of documentation on YouTube, and he has said things that have been heard by millions, right?

Yeah, so anything that is said publicly is open to public critique. And so Matthew 18 doesn't apply, as you rightly said.

It deals with private sin, and then taken to the person, then to the two witnesses, three witnesses, and then to the church.

There's a hierarchy there. There's a pattern there. But when Bishop Marmari goes online and makes public statements, then you are open to public exposition and critique.

And so I think that our sister, I think is, probably doesn't realize that I've been debating

Muslims and teaching on Islam for almost 30 years. I've debated them. I've seen them come to Christ.

I've baptized many Muslim families. And I think she probably is not aware of the fact that I've dealt with interdenominational dialogues, and we do so out of love.

We don't hate Bishop Marmari. In fact, if Bishop Marmari gets wind of this, we want to say we love him. We think he's doing a good job, but we do have some theological differences.

I've had even people in my social media circles accusing me of, why are you even talking about Bishop Marmari, and why are you wasting your time defending him?

And so you get it from both sides, both barrels of the gun, where you get people who say you shouldn't deal with him, he's not a genuine

Christian. Others would say, well, you shouldn't treat him that way because he's just been attacked and so forth, and he's a

Christian. But I think what our sister in Los Angeles needs to realize is this. When you preach the gospel to someone, do you tell them that it's necessary to come to Christ through his mother

Mary? Do you teach them that Christ cannot forgive you directly? You must go to Christ through one of the saints.

If that is the gospel you think is the gospel that the Scriptures talk about, you've got to read through Galatians, because Galatians 1 is very clear that if we preach another gospel other than the gospel that has been revealed to us, that that gospel is anathema.

And so theology matters. We cannot compromise on theology and biblical doctrine, so the souls of people are at stake here.

And so to simply dismiss this as an intramural fight, an in -house fight, is truly missing the mark because we are calling out the fact that the souls of people are precious and that if you and I, Chris, start telling people you can be saved through Jesus Christ, but you must come to him through his mother or through the intercession of a saint, you're not preaching the gospel.

You're preaching a compromising message, which is not the gospel.

And so as Paul says in Galatians 1 .10, if I'm here to please men, then why am

I being accused? Why am I being attacked? If I was seeking to please men, then I would not be under attack.

But I am under attack precisely because I'm preaching the gospel of Christ. And by the way,

Ida, I have every intention after this show to get the recording of this program into the hands of Maramari Emanuel and invite him to a debate, whether it be a debate on my show, a debate in a public setting, like in a church, or any other public venue, a moderated, timed debate.

So that is something that I do intend to do. Whether he accepts is up to him.

I don't know. And I'm kind of puzzled about the way you phrase that you're a born -again

Christian Muslim apologist. Did you mean by that you're a born -again

Christian who is an apologist to Muslims? Is that what you meant? But that was just a confusing way of wording it, a born -again

Christian Muslim apologist, because you can't be a Christian and a Muslim, especially when

Islam teaches that shirk is the unforgivable sin, the worst possible sin you can possibly commit.

And all Christians, according to Muslims, are guilty of shirk because, according to them, we appoint partners to God when we declare the hypostatic union of Jesus Christ, when we say that He is the

God -man, fully God and fully man, God in the flesh.

Am I wording that correctly, Tony? Yes, absolutely. I'd give you a name,

Systematic Theology. Ha! Also, she sent in another email.

Forgot to say, the Lord Jesus said, do not call anyone your father, but He also said, don't call anyone teacher.

Is Pastor John MacArthur a teacher? Why do you call him a teacher? Well, that's a standard

Roman Catholic defense of them calling their spiritual leader's father, and there's a big difference between the word teacher being a description of somebody's role and using it as a title.

I would be very leery of someone, in fact, I would approach them and lovingly rebuke them, who was calling out to John MacArthur, Teacher John, Teacher John, can you please assist me with understanding this?

And it's also, when Jesus said, do not call any man on earth your father,

He was not obviously telling us not to call our biological male parent father.

He was speaking specifically about those in the spiritual leadership realm.

Anything to add to that, Tony? Yeah, I would totally agree with you, Chris. The context in Matthew 23 is talking about the

Pharisees, and there He says not to be like them. He said that they love to be called father, they love to be called rabbi, and they love to receive the praise of men.

But Jesus says, but it shall not be so among you. He says you are brothers to one another, you are equals. And so He's referring to people using these vain titles to praise themselves.

And therefore that is why pastors and our elders in the church are not called fathers, we don't refer to them as father, and we don't call them teacher.

You know, you'll find that in some good old Bruce Lee movies where they call the Kung Fu teacher, teacher.

But you do not use that title of pastors or elders.

And so Pastor John MacArthur, you know, people don't call him Teacher John MacArthur, they call him

Pastor John MacArthur. But as you rightly said, but his role is that of teaching and preaching.

Right. So the key word is here not to use those labels as titles, exalting titles.

Well, Ida, I believe you're a first -time questioner, so if you give me your full mailing address in Los Angeles, California, you'll receive a free

New American Standard Bible, compliments of nasbible .com, and compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

who will actually ship the Bible out to you at no expense to you or to Iron Trip and Zion Radio. And that is what we do here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio whenever we have a first -time questioner.

Yeah, Chris, let me just add, very quickly, because Ida said he doesn't teach that baptism is necessary for salvation.

He does. All she has to do is go on YouTube and just look for his message on salvation, and he clearly says there that baptism is necessary for salvation.

He quotes Mark 16 -16, which is not part of Mark's original gospel.

It is the long ending of Mark, which is considered spurious by a majority of scholars. And there

Jesus says, Go ye therefore into all the world. Preach the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved.

And Mari Emanuel uses that text to show that baptism is necessary for salvation.

So it's available on YouTube. You could hear it from the man himself. Now, this would probably require an entirely separate program.

I don't want to take us on too long of a rabbit trail. But I consider our conservative

Bible -believing Lutheran brethren as brethren.

And they believe in baptismal regeneration. Am I wrong in doing so? No, no.

They do believe it. But here's the funny part, is that they will still say that you're saved by grace and faith alone.

They'll still say you are justified by faith alone. But the way that Lutheran theologians will speak of this is that God has already predestined you.

Even though the later Lutheran didn't really talk about predestination, pre -1525, absolutely, bondage of the will.

Post -1525, Luther begins to downsize his predestinarian views.

But it's still believed in the Lutheran Church. And so what they would say is that if that child is truly part of God's elect, then that regeneration will be confirmed.

Okay. Well, I'm glad to hear that because, in fact, you and I have a mutual friend,

Joshua Schuping, who just became... He left the Christian Missionary Alliance and became a

Lutheran. Right. I disagree with his Lutheran distinctives, but at the same time,

I still hold him as a brother in Christ. Of course. Of course. Well, we have to go to our final break.

If anybody else wants to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

chrisarnson at gmail dot com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say you are in a church that is very similar to Christ the

Good Shepherd Church in the Sydney, Australia area. And you are struggling with things that you're hearing there and are questioning whether you should remain there and you don't want to bring identity to yourself publicly.

Well, obviously, that would be a reason to remain anonymous. But if it's a general question, give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

We'll be right back. Please do not go away. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the

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That's nhpbc .com You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672

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and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line. And I just got word today that Baker Publishing is joining the party joining many other publishers and they are donating 100 copies of Dr.

James R. White's book The Forgotten Trinity which I had the honor of receiving the dedication in that book to me.

That book is dedicated to me and I thank James for that wonderful honor that I will cherish forever and I'm sure you have read

The Forgotten Trinity haven't you, Dr. Costa? Absolutely, and I've recommended it to my students at the seminary.

And Dr. Costa has also been a speaker at the Pastors Luncheon and I'm sure you had as great of a time as I did when you were there at the luncheon.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I want to just quickly address again Ida to remind her of a couple of things.

First of all, remember that Bishop Mar Mar Emanuel was clearly not being ecumenical with Evangelical Protestants when he said you cannot be forgiven if you do not receive the true flesh and blood of Christ in the

Eucharist. That you couldn't view them symbolically. And so therefore he is being as severely critical of us as we are of him.

So this is not just a one -way street. Also, you have sent in charges that were intended to be read on the air publicly against Dr.

Costa and myself claiming that we are in grievous error by even conducting this show.

So what's the difference between your criticism of us publicly and our criticisms of Bishop Mar Mar Emanuel?

I just thought I'd throw that out there. That's a point well taken, Chris. That's a point well taken.

And I really want to make sure, Tony, before we go to any listener question that you summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners so that they may be more aware and more clearly warned with facts about Bishop Mar Mar Mar Mar Emanuel who we've already acknowledged has many gifts.

He's a powerful orator putting many evangelicals to shame in his abilities to speak.

That he was often hitting the nail on the head and correct in his biblical interpretations.

We're not denouncing everything about him. I don't believe that he is intentionally deceiving people like many in the

Word of Faith Pentecostal realm are. And his sermons are saturated with biblical content unlike many people in the

Word of Faith ministries and other false churches. But still, he needs to be warned about and if you could, please, summarize.

Yes. So what I would say is that whenever the Word of God is read and we hear the Word of God, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the

Word of Christ or the Word of God. And so this is why Chris and I believe that Roman Catholics hearing the gospel preached from the pulpit in the

Roman Catholic Church can be used—that can be used by God to regenerate them. And it has.

In fact, the Reformers were saved while they were still within the Roman Catholic Church. And therefore,

God saves them in spite of their denomination in those cases.

God is sovereign. We believe in the visible church, the visible mystical church made up of all

God's elect. And so—and that is why we hear Roman Catholics coming to faith in a Roman Catholic Church or in the

Eastern Orthodox. They hear the gospel preached. They come to faith. But the issue here is that they are convicted by Scripture, and that is why many of them leave those denominations into a

Bible -believing church. That's what I did. I was raised Roman Catholic, heard the gospel many times, but then

I realized I could not stay within the Roman Catholic Church because of its inconsistencies with Scripture. And the same thing applies to the

Ancient Church of the East. They do have these Marian prayers, prayers to Mary, prayers to saints, the

Eucharist being the real flesh, transubstantiation. And these are not tertiary matters because anything that affects the gospel is not tertiary.

This is not a question of whether we use grape juice or wine at the Lord's Supper or unleavened bread or leavened bread.

These things we could agree to agree agreeably. But when you touch on the gospel, what makes a man right with God, which was the whole issue behind the

Reformation—how is a sinful man justified before a holy God? The question of the nature of the gospel is pivotal.

And so this is why I always recommend people read Galatians, and people say, oh, Paul's talking about the

Old Testament laws, he's talking about circumcision. Just substitute circumcision with baptism, with intercession, with church tradition, with prayers to the saints.

It's in addition to the gospel. And anything that adds to the finished work of Christ is an abomination.

Christ is a perfect Savior. He finished the job. He atoned for our sins.

He purged our sins in His own blood, and He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, which means it is finished.

It's perfect. And God has accepted that one perfect sacrifice, never to be repeated again.

And that is why at the end of the day, as you know, Chris, you and I are going to stand before the King of kings and the

Lord of lords, and we're accountable to Him when it comes to the gospel. We're not accountable to offending people.

I would rather have—I'd rather have men angry at me than have God angry at me. And so I must be faithful to His calling.

I must stand up for the gospel of grace, and God forbid, as Paul says, may it never be, that I should glory save in the cross of our

Lord Jesus Christ. And so that is why we do what we do, because we love people, and the gospel of Jesus Christ is far more precious than any human attachment or relationship.

Amen. Well, how should our listeners find out more about you and your ministry?

What is the best link, or the best links, plural, for us to explore you and your ministry?

Yeah, I'd say through my social media. If you go to YouTube, you can subscribe to Toronto Apologetics.

Just put Tony Costa, Toronto Apologetics. A lot of my work is on there. There's a lot of debates, a lot of theology, a lot of interviews, which included yourself as well,

Chris. You've been on my YouTube channel. So I would encourage people to do that. I'm also on Facebook, if you follow me on Facebook.

And also, I do have a book coming out very soon, and it's entitled

No King But Christ, The Collapse and Bankruptcy of Second World Views. And so that book is going to be out, probably

God willing, in the next two weeks or so. So stay posted, and just check out my

YouTube channel. Most of my ministry work is mentioned there. And I would strongly urge people to look up, on YouTube, Tony Costa's message at the

Iron Sharpens Iron radio luncheon. He gave a really powerful and eye -opening message on the infiltration of Marxism into the church and into nearly every other sphere of American life.

It will astonish many of you. Well, I want to thank you so much, Tony. It's always a joy to have you on the show.

I look forward to many frequent returns by you. I look forward to seeing you face -to -face for a wonderful time of fellowship and hope that we can pull off that debate in 2025 on the ordination of women, of which you will be taking the opposing position, of course.

I want to thank all of our listeners. I want to ask you to all pray for Marmari Emmanuel, not only for his physical health, but that he would be transformed by the love and grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, that he would be truly saved and spend the remainder of his days preaching the true unadulterated gospel of Jesus Christ.

I hope that you all have a blessed and happy and joyful and wonderful weekend and Lord's Day.

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.