Rick Warren’s Capitulation to the Claims of Rome, Plus a Deep Fractal

Rick Warren’s Capitulation to Rome and the Loss of Protestant Conviction

Well, greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. It's a Thursday afternoon, and some of you are probably wondering. I've got to keep the volume down. I'm doing better. Boy, Accordance is throwing me a curve all of a sudden.

I just updated it, and now it's lost one of my resources, and it keeps throwing this thing up, saying, I can't find it. And I'm like, okay, and then a couple seconds later, I can't find it. So I'm just going to put this box down there and just hope it stops telling me I can't find it until we can find it for it.

Not sure what happened there. Anyway, that's the live by technology, die by technology. Some of you are probably wondering, when we got back from Kiev and Berlin, the first program we did was not on a subject that I addressed while I was in Kiev and Berlin.

And that was, he says, as he realizes he has his phone in here and puts it, I'm still going to put it on vibrate because, you know, I forget. And then the wife calls and gets all upset three hours later because you've got to turn it back on.

Everybody knows this stuff, I know. I addressed three times while in Kiev the subject of the Rick Warren capitulation to Rome. And to be honest with you, until this very moment, I completely forgot that.

And I don't, since he doesn't know about the dividing line or didn't know about the dividing line, I'm not sure how I'm going to be able to track this guy back down because it was a Facebook connection.

But there was a Anglican on Facebook that said he would be willing to come on the program. And Jeff Durbin was talking to him. Maybe Jeff would remember what his name was and how to contact him or something.

But we need to, not before Christmas, but afterwards schedule a time when we can Skype with this fellow and have the discussion that we had talked about having relating to Rick Warren because he was saying that I was sinning and the sin of divisiveness and all the rest of this stuff by saying what I said in regards to Rick Warren.

Of course, since he's not a Roman Catholic, I'm not sure how he avoids the sin of divisiveness, but that's another issue that maybe we can talk about. But I posted three ScreenFlow videos on the subject of Rick Warren's statements, but I realized for some reason that our audience is divided too.

And there are those who follow the blog and follow stuff that I post on Facebook and on Twitter. And then there are others that only follow the RSS feed for the dividing line and just don't pay attention to any of the rest of that stuff.

And that's perfectly fine. But what that means is what I said on those ScreenFlow videos might not even be familiar to some people on the program. And of course, I was being fairly brief because especially in the first one, I wasn't sure what kind of upload speeds I'd be able to get wirelessly in Kiev, especially since we were having so many problems with electricity there.

Turns out I got better FaceTime connections and upload speeds in Ukraine than I get here, which is really interesting. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It took me almost no time at all to upload those videos in Ukraine.

So I'm not sure what that's all about. But anyway, so I want to look again and address this issue of the fact that the vast majority of Protestants aren't. Just as the vast majority of Roman Catholics aren't.

I mean, Dr. Moeller was talking about a survey recently that said something along the lines of, what was it, 78 of young Roman Catholics reject Rome's teaching in regards to homosexuality. And it's been a given for a long, long time that the large portion of Roman Catholic, those who call themselves Roman Catholics, go to mass once a year and don't obviously take their faith very seriously at all.

And that is also the case when it comes, sadly, to those who call themselves Protestants. Large portion of non-Catholic, non-Orthodox, so non-Roman Catholic and not Eastern Orthodox. Then, of course, outside of you put those two groups over there, you've got quite a mixture at that point, a huge mixture of things, depending on how you even count denominations or what is Christian, what is not.

But of those who attend at least churches that have some type of historical mainline commitment or statement of faith or something, the vast majority of them are no longer Protestants in the sense of having a conviction that Roman Catholicism is wrong on a fundamental theological level that's actually important to know about.

So in other words, most non-Roman Catholics and non-Orthodox are out of tradition, taste, comfort, convenience, and not out of conviction. It's not, oh, there is something wrong with that. It's, I don't know, you know, I prefer a praise band and skinny jeans and Rob Bell glasses to the dude in the dress or the guy with the funny hat.

Not really into candles. I suppose they're okay, but the smells and bells and definitely don't like the crucifix type thing and too many statues. But other than that, no big deal. Not a real problem. Well, that kind of non-confessional, non-convictional perspective really is the majority perspective amongst people today.

And so if you are a Protestant of conviction, you're a Protestant because you actually know what you believe, you know what Rome believes, you know what the issues were at the Reformation, and you think they're still important.

You're in a small minority today, small minority today, and it's a small minority that is viewed as unloving, intolerant, narrow, and there are unloving, intolerant, narrow, anti-Catholic bigots in the world.

Just as there are intolerant, narrow, unloving, anti-Protestant Roman Catholics in the world. I've met them, believe me. If your rejection of Rome is based upon emotion and ignorance, don't call that conviction.

Not Christian conviction anyways. If your rejection of Rome is primarily because you read some really bad, jacked-chick comic books a long time ago, don't call that Christian conviction because that's just bigotry parading as zealotry, as righteousness, or whatever else.

But if you actually have taken the time to think through what the issues were, and the two primary issues at the time of the Reformation, the material and the formal doctrines, teachings of the Reformation, the foundations of the Reformation.

We all know Sola Fide, justification by faith, was what was preached. It's what reached the heart. It's what changed the thinking of people. It's what caught the imagination. It spoke to a culture that was surrounded by death.

The Black Plague was still in the recent memory of many people. A third of Europe had disappeared during that time. It still came back every once in a while. No one knew what it was yet. Only a few inklings were starting to become known.

And as a result, you thought about eternity. It would not be a shocking thing for you to be traveling down a road and to encounter a dead body along the side of the road. Entire generations lived in the same household, and so you would see the deaths of grandparents and parents and extended relatives.

You would see them die. You would be exposed to their dead bodies and to their funerals and your siblings. There was a tremendous infant mortality rate. We didn't have antibiotics and things like that.

And so unlike so many today, where you don't even actually see death until you're an adult, then you knew exactly what death looked like. You knew you had been touched by it. And so you knew your own mortality, and because you knew your own mortality, you thought about eternity.

You thought about your relationship to God. You thought about the life that comes after this. And as a result, that preaching of justification by faith, that wiping away of the centuries of dead, dusty scholasticism and tradition that had encrusted the faith with its falsehoods and its works righteousness and its sacramentalism, all of that was, well, most of that, enough of that was blown away in the Reformation to allow that beautiful message to once again very clearly echo in the hearts and minds of people.

But to defend Sola Fide, the material, there had to be a formal, there had to be a ground and a foundation, because as soon as Luther came to understand the truth of justification by faith, what was the first attack against him?

Well, you're contradicting the authority of the church. You're contradicting what the Pope has said. And so Sola Scriptura, the sufficiency of the scriptures as the sole infallible rule of faith of the church, became the absolutely necessary foundation for maintaining this freedom.

Because just as in Galatia, man had snuck in to spy out the freedom which we have in Christ Jesus to try to enslave us to false gospels, Rome wasn't about to give up its control over the lives of millions of people under its authority.

And so those two great doctrines remained in the foremost of the thought of people for centuries. And really only with the Enlightenment, the collapse in having a high view of scripture and divine revelation, do you have people moving away from those particular things.

So we come to our day and the vast majority of people today have no meaningful connection to church history. Church history is a dry and boring subject for the mass of people and certainly the vast majority of what would be broadly called evangelical Christians, which I guess is a term that just means Christians who actually pretend to take their faith seriously.

Most people have no passion for it. Most people feel no connection, especially to the early church fathers because, well, they were just so different than us. And weren't they all just a bunch of Catholics anyways?

Well, not Roman Catholics. And actually, if you allow them to be interpreted in the context in which they actually existed, a tremendous testimony against the claims of the Roman Catholic Church. But that's another issue.

But even the time of the Reformation, man, it just seems so long ago. And now today in a society where people are so hesitant to say anything that might be offensive, if someone does read Luther, if you mistakenly read some of the table talk or read some of his debates, some of the things that he said to Erasmus, for example, you'll discover it was a different day.

It was a different time. And as such, people just don't feel the connection because they don't know what the context was. And it just seems like a different time. And we've moved on from all this. Can't we can't we all just get along?

Seems to be the attitude that many people have. And certainly today in our sanitized Western culture where you almost never see death when it's presented on the screen, it's sanitized. We hide our children from it.

We don't talk about it even within the church the way that we should. As a result, the vast majority of us don't think about eternity. We don't think about our own mortality. We do not seriously consider the fact that this could be the last day of our lives.

We certainly rarely live that way. We leave so many of our relationships in such a such a way that if we were to pass away, there would be such regret on the parts of others for things unsaid, undone.

We don't think about these things. We just don't we don't consider these things. And if we don't think about eternity, then we don't think about our relationship to God. And as a result, doctrines like justification, they do not.

I keep borrowing the words of I think it was Dr. Murray. They don't ring the bells. The doctrine doesn't ring the bells of men's heart any longer because we don't see death. We don't think about eternity.

And as a result, we have a view of God that, you know, well, if you were brought into some kind of mega evangelical church with the kind of idea that, well, God's just really lucky to have you. And he's just so happy that you you're willing to tip your hat toward him for a few minutes a week.

If that's the kind of garbage that you've been fed, then why should you really worry about your relationship to God? Because, I mean, he'll work it all out. I mean, it doesn't really matter. You know, I mean, he's just he's just happy that every once in a while you sing some songs and maybe drop a 20 in the plate and all's well.

And so when we think about those things, it's not surprising. I'm people think, well, why would you be surprised that Rick Warren is collapsing on Rome? I'm not. I'm not. I'm not surprised. It doesn't make it any less troubling to me.

To to recognize that that the the pastor of the largest Southern Baptist Church in the United States is either abysmally ignorant of the issues, the Reformation or grossly deceived concerning the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church or a combination thereof.

I don't know. I don't know. The things that he said are just. Unbelievable, unbelievable. So let's take a look. Let's remind you, you may have seen the screen full of videos, maybe not. I don't know. But let's take a look.

Let's start with the older one. This was from a this is a less than a minute. Actually, I'm going to I'm going to send you a different one. I'm going to do them in the other. OK, got that one now. Well, it's black right now, but listen to what Warren says here.

And how he addresses. The subject of Pope Francis. And then I'll play the I believe the later one that came from when he went over to Rome and they used him as a pawn over there. So here we go.

Authenticity, humility. Pope Francis is the perfect example of this. He is he is doing everything right. You see, people will listen to what we say if they like what they see. And as as our new pope, he was very, very symbolic in, you know, his first mass with people of AIDS.

His is a kissing of the disformed man, his loving the children, this authenticity, this humility, the caring for the poor. This is what the whole world expects us Christians to do. And when we when they go, oh, that's what a Christian does.

In fact, there's a headline here in Orange County. And I love the headline. I saved it. It said, if you love Pope Francis, you'll love Jesus. That was a headline. It was a headline. I saved it. I showed it to a group of priests I was speaking to a while back.

OK, so Rick Warren talks to groups of priests. And of course, what I asked him in the video I posted was, did you call them to repentance? And of course, from his perspective, you have to. They're fellow believers.

But let's let's take that piece by piece.

Authenticity, humility. Pope Francis is the perfect example of this. He is he is doing everything right. You see, people will listen to what we say if they like what they see.

That is a wonderful humanistic concept that has absolutely positively nothing to do with biblical Christianity. That's what you get out of self-help books. That's Oprah speaking. Look around the world.

Is that true when it comes to the proclamation of the gospel? No. But once you become a pile of ecumenical goo, then that sounds good.

And as as our new pope, he was very, very.

Our new pope. You call him Papa. He's the head of your church. It's interesting in the next video. So one thing I didn't mention in the videos and I. I don't know why I didn't, but wanted to just kept forgetting.

He's going to talk about our church. One little problem, according to Rome, Saddleback isn't a church. Not. You may be a separated brother, whatever that means. And there's all sorts of different understandings of how that how that's supposed to work out.

And obviously, the modern Roman Catholic view is very different from the historic Roman Catholic view on that. But be that as it may, that's not a church. Even under John Paul, was it? Was that was that the name of the off top my head?

Memory is not what used to be, but I think that was the papal encyclical encyclical, papal encyclical that. Made it very clear that there are only certain groups outside of Rome that are identified as a true church based upon their having valid sacramental orders.

And Saddleback would not be one of those churches would not. No, that's not a church from their perspective. They don't believe in the sacramental presence of Jesus in the Lord's Supper and don't believe in transubstantiation and so on and so forth.

So does he not know that? I don't know. I don't know. The man never met the man, never met the man and don't have access to him. But maybe somebody who watches this does and might want to might want to ask.

I don't know, but just find that interesting. Our Pope, he is not my Pope. He cannot be my Pope. I don't have a Pope. Christians do not have a Pope. Christians do have a Holy Father that's called God the Father.

We do have the vicar of Christ that's called the Holy Spirit. And we do not have an alter Christus, another Christ, because we have the real Christ. And so that's that's what Christians believe. And therefore, they don't have any desire to call this anyone, this man or anyone else, no matter how nice a man personally he might be.

It matters not when you take on the names of the Trinity for yourself and you don't repudiate them. That's called blasphemy and that's called partaking of the spirit of Antichrist, which is opposing Christ.

And given that he continues to teach a gospel that includes indulgences and all of the sacramental system of Rome, that is opposing Christ. And that's what Antichrist is is all about.

And, you know, his first mass with people of AIDS, his is OK, his first mass for people with AIDS.

One of my real concerns. Is that. So many of those who would watch this or would see this picture would immediately go, man, I'll tell you that. That's that's that's really cool, you know, saying saying mass for people with AIDS.

What should be the Christian response to that? I honestly doubt that more than a small percentage of people who saw this or heard this had what I would believe to be the the absolutely necessary Christian response.

And that is. The mass is a blasphemy. How can it be a good thing to perform a blasphemy of the finished work of Christ for anybody, especially for people who need the sacrifice of Christ more than anybody else?

But that's not how people think. Not anymore. Partly ignorance, partly the mass is just their version of the Lord's Supper, isn't it? No. No, it's not. It is allegedly a propitiatory sacrifice that perfects no one.

It is allegedly the priest, by his sacramental power, rendering Christ present body, soul, blood and divinity upon the altar in an unbloody sacrifice. It is what flows from Rome's fundamental denial of the finished work of Christ.

And as such, it is a blasphemy. As such, it is why I don't believe you can ever go. You know, I've gone to observe in the sense of study. So as to be able to refute, but ever go in the sense of friendly observation, participation to weddings, things like that, where the masses could be said, it is a blasphemy.

And if you cannot put yourself in a position of not being able to identify blasphemy as blasphemy. But most people just today, well, you know, I've got my belief, but they've got theirs. And it really, really seems like you're being just really, you know, really narrow.

Yeah. Yeah, because if there is any way of righteousness apart from the finished work of Christ, then he died needlessly. That's what Paul said. And if I can stand before God clothed in a multicolored robe made up of the righteousness of Christ, Mary, the saints, my own suffering and purgatory, etc., etc.

Then Christ died needlessly. Yeah. So, yeah, I think we need to be narrow on that because the truth is pretty much narrow when it comes to, well, it was Jesus said something about the narrow way and the broad way and broad way led to destruction and so on and so forth.

So, yeah, yeah.

Kissing of the disformed man, his loving the children, this authenticity, this humility, the caring for the poor. This is what the whole world expects us Christians to do. And when they go, oh, that's what a Christian does.

In fact, there was a headline here in Orange County, and I love that line. I saved it and said, if you love Pope Francis, you'll love Jesus. That was the headline? That was the headline. It was the headline.

I saved it. I showed it to a group of priests I was speaking to a while back.

Wow. Well, let me put it this way. Catholic answers and the Catholic apologists know they don't have anything to worry about from Rick Warren, anybody under his ministry. Not not anything at all. And I think it was this other video that I was told I didn't see it myself.

So I'm going on. I'm going on what somebody else said. But I was told that one of the first comments under it was from a guy who's been attending Saddleback as a Roman Catholic and said, I've always felt comfortable at Saddleback.

If someone who is trusting in the gospel of Rome can attend your church and feel comfortable there, not see the fundamental error of their ways, then something's really missing from the proclamation of your church.

It's something called the gospel. That would just that's just unbelievable. So there you've got Rick Warren talking about our Pope viewing the mass in a positive way. Just just buying into the spirit of the world.

Just this is not a man does not have a Christian worldview. Yeah, I know. John Piper invited to speak. I don't care. He still doesn't have a Christian worldview. That's that's plain to see from this, isn't it?

Seems to be. But then he went to Rome, as did others. And got used. And here's. Now, here is where he just simply. I mean, talk about whitewashing stuff. That's I don't know how else to describe it. If you've not seen it, you may know you're really being harsh.

Watch for yourself.

We have far more in common than what divides us. When you talk about Pentecostals, Charismatics, Evangelicals, Fundamentalist, Catholics, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, on and on and on. Well, they would all say we believe in the Trinity.

We believe in the Bible. We believe in the resurrection. We believe salvation is through Jesus Christ. These are the big issues. Sometimes Protestants think that Catholics worship Mary like she's another God.

But that's not exactly Catholic doctrine. There's the understanding. And people say, well, what are the saints all about? Why are you praying to the saints? And when you understand what they mean by what they're saying, there's a whole lot more commonality.

Now, there's still real differences. No doubt about that. But the most important thing is if you love Jesus, we're on the same team. The unity that I think we would see realistically is not a structural unity, but a unity of mission.

And so when it comes to the family, we are co-workers in the field on this for the protection of what we call the sanctity of life, the sanctity of sex, and the sanctity of marriage. So there's a great commonality, and there's no division on any of those three.

Many times people have been beaten down for taking a biblical stance. And they start to feel, well, maybe I'm out here all by yourself. No, you're not. The church is growing in Latin America. The church is growing in Asia.

The church is growing in Africa. It's not growing in North America or Europe, but it is growing everywhere else. And so we've seen this feeling that maybe we're not as influential, but we're far more influential than people realize.

We are far more influential than people realize. Who is the we? Well, no, stop. Stop. We have far... Cease. Thank you. We are... We are influential. And what's being pictured at that time? The Pope in his Popemobile.

Wow. So much there. Let's get to it. I play the whole thing so you can get a sense of what's being said. I mean, Rome... What would Rome have paid to get something like this only a few decades ago? And they probably didn't have to pay anything here at all other than maybe a plane ticket.

I don't know. Yeah, yeah. I mean, just chuckling. Wow. Did he really just do that? Did he really just say that? Oh, that's awesome. This is great. He just whitewashed the hyper veneration of Mary and intercession of saints and angels.

And man, he just chucked the Reformation under the bus with a grin and a smile. And, of course, he still did that. Well, we've got some real differences.

Yeah, okay, let's look at it. We have far more in common than what divides us. When you talk about Pentecostals, Charismatics, Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and on and on and on.

Well, they would all say we believe in the Trinity. We believe in the Bible. We believe in the Resurrection. We believe salvation is through Jesus Christ. These are the big issues. Catch it? Oh, man.

Salvation is through Jesus Christ. Yeah, well, the Mormons say that, and the Jehovah's Witnesses say that.

I wouldn't want to play three-card money with him. Oh, man. Sleight of hand.

In case you're wondering, what was missing there was this little word called alone. Solus Christus. Alone. Christ alone. Yeah, that part was sort of missing. When I saw that, first of all, the first few things there was, oh, here comes your standard, everyday, mere Christianity.

It's the mere Christianity stuff. It's nothing more than we all believe in the Trinity. We believe in the cross. We believe in the Resurrection. And that's the least common denominator type stuff that we're dealing with all the time now.

Dealing with all the time. And for a lot of people, that is definitional enough of Christianity that you can leave the gospel out. But Warren has to sort of throw a little bit of a gospel spin in there.

But in the process, deny the very essence of the Reformation. Because it was not a belief that we are saved by Jesus. It was the belief that we are saved by Jesus alone. By grace alone. Through faith alone.

And that is the gospel. And Warren just said, oh, hey, we got a whole lot more in common. It's okay. They believe we're saved by Jesus. Again, I don't know the man. Is he ignorant of these issues? It's hard for me to believe that.

It's hard for me to believe that. Does he know that he could not, in this context, say the word alone? If you put yourself in a position where you can't speak the truth, you're someplace you shouldn't be.

Or, if you've put yourself there and you know you're not going to be able to speak the truth, and you know the truth, then you're denying the truth. You're compromising the truth. You're capitulating.

For what reasons? I don't know. I have no idea. I don't know why he thinks he's getting out of this. But there you have least common denominator Christianity, mere Christianity, combined with let's pretend we're saying we all believe we're saved by Jesus, when the reality is different than that.

The reality is different than that. Where is it? Well, why in the world would I be missing one of my books in here? I'm supposed to have them all in here, and Mary has gone missing. Might have it in here.

Might have it in here. This is music that we provide. I'll bet you it's right toward the front. Well, no. Oh, you're copy. Oh, good. Thank you very much.

Let's see. Yeah, we should send some Luguri quotes to him. Oh, those are fun. That's what I'm looking for.

That's what I'm looking for. I don't know if I started the book with this. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, here it is. Sorry. Algo probably could have quoted this without having the book. Nick probably could, too.

Hi, Nick. I'll have to get Nick to, because you know what would sound really cool? Is have Nick record this for me in Russian. That would sound particularly nefarious. But German would sound pretty wild, too.

I'll have to translate that one myself. That's on Kindle. Oh, yeah. That's available on Kindle. I just looked it up. Yeah, I've got it on Kindle. Coolio. I just have to fire up my Kindle to do all that, but it would be faster.

Since I'm using it, it would pop up in front of the video and stuff, so that's why I didn't do that. Anyway, here's the quote, folks. If you ever need to get past this kind of Rick Warren-ish fluffy stuff, a small booklet tucked in the fold of a chair in the corner caught my eye.

It was sticking out just enough, or I may not have seen it. Intrigued, I pulled it out. This was in the chapel at the hospital where I was working as a chaplain. Blue and white cover bore the title, Devotions in Honor of Our Mother of Perpetual Help.

I still have this in the other room. I scanned through a few of the prayers, and one of them I spotted the words, My Eternal Salvation, so I backed up and started from the beginning, and here it is. Oh, Mother of Perpetual Help.

Well, wait a minute. Did I tell the story? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to read this whole section, because I think it's relevant. Oh, Mother of Perpetual Help, thou art the dispenser of all the goods which God grants to us miserable sinners.

And for this reason he has made thee so powerful, so rich, and so bountiful, that thou mayest help us in our misery. Thou art the advocate of the most wretched and abandoned sinners who have recourse to thee.

Come then to my help, dearest Mother, for I recommend myself to thee. In thy hands I place my eternal salvation, and to thee do I entrust my soul. Count me among thy most devoted servants. Take me under thy protection, and it is enough for me.

For if thou protect me, dear Mother, I fear nothing. Not from my sins, because thou wilt obtain for me the pardon of them, nor from the devils, because thou art more powerful than all hell together, nor even from Jesus, my judge himself, because by one prayer from thee he will be appeased.

But one thing I fear, that in the hour of temptation I may neglect to call on thee, and thus perish miserably. Obtain for me then the pardon of my sins, love for Jesus, final perseverance, and the grace always to have recourse to thee, O Mother of perpetual help.

Then I continue on. At first I could not believe what I had just read. So I ran back to the last few lines. Was this prayer really saying that the petitioner did not fear his or her sins, the devils, nor Jesus?

That's what it said. I shook my head in disbelief. A few years later, I found myself in a radio studio in Boston, Massachusetts doing a radio discussion with a former Protestant-turned-Roman Catholic named Jerry Matitix.

The topic was Mary and the Saints. Mr. Matitix and I were scheduled to do two public debates at Boston College over the course of the next week. But that day we were live on the air taking calls on the subject of prayers to Mary and the Saints.

As I packed for the trip, I found a little blue and white booklet and decided to bring it along. I reached into my bag and brought it out. Surely quoting this prayer would bring a strong reaction from Mr. Matitix.

Surely he'd deny that such a prayer is proper and that the people who had written it were simply going overboard in their piety. The talk show host gasped involuntarily as I read the final lines. And as I put down the booklet, I looked across to my opponent waiting for the expected reaction.

The host likewise turned to Mr. Matitix. He was quiet for a moment, and then he spoke. Mr. Whitey began, I can only hope that someday you too will pray that prayer. I can still see it to this day. I have a picture in my iPhoto library that I took that day of Jerry and I in the, I guess somebody else took it because I guess you can see both of us, in W .E .C .E. in Boston.

And I honestly expected Jerry to do the, oh, that's just piety. He didn't. And an understanding Roman Catholic could not say that. Could not use that type of excuse. The Pope at that time, John Paul, his papal coat of arms, totus tuus, the Latin totally yours, dedicated to Mary.

If Pastor Rick Warren, the pastor of the largest Southern Baptist Church in the United States, thinks that Rome's excuses for the worship of Mary, and I know all about hyper veneration and Latria and Dulia.

I understand that. I've been there, done that. Go listen to the debate with Patrick Madrid on the subject of veneration of saints and angels. It's on YouTube. That's right. Watch him jump out of his skin when Bill Shishko uses his gavel.

Aged him 20 years right there. I know all about it. It's unbiblical. It's indefensible. It is indefensible. And so for the pastor of the largest Southern Baptist Church in the United States to sit there in Rome and pander to this kind of lunacy, this idolatry, means that his heart is not broken.

When he sees pictures of little old ladies bowing down and rocking back and forth while lighting candles in front of statues of Mary, he doesn't care that they are lost. He doesn't care they have a false hope.

How can you take idolatry and do that? Well, they have their answers. You know, if you just listen to what they say. Reformers listened to what they said and answered all that stuff a long, long, long time ago.

I know that it doesn't end up in the current editions of the most popular books. I really doubt Joel Osteen talks too much about it. Probably not going to show up on Rob Bell's Oprah program.

We better press on. Sometimes Protestants think that Catholics worship Mary like she's another god. But that's not exactly Catholic doctrine. Not exactly.

It's not exactly Catholic doctrine. Yeah, they don't say it that way. But you know what, Pastor Rick? If you know your Bible, you'll know that to worship and to serve are synonyms. In fact, the Hebrew term Ahav that is translated that way in the Old Testament is frequently translated by both Latruo and Deulo in the Greek Septuagint.

And Rome has made a distinction between the two to avoid the reality that when you're lighting candles to someone and you're bowing back and forth and praying to them, that's called worship. Not quite what they say.

And people say, well, what are the saints all about? Why are you praying to the saints? And when you understand what they mean by what they're saying, there's a whole lot more commonality. Now, there's still real differences.

Yeah, good place to stop it. There's still real differences, but there's a lot of commonality. What commonality? What commonality? There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. There is no one else who has standing before God.

There is no one else who can mediate for me. What common ground? I'm sorry, but this is just full-scale collapse. It is excusing idolatry. In the name of unity on what? What is the only meaningful basis of unity?