Equipping Eve: Gospel Anathemas

Is the church today doing everything it can to provide women a firm foundation of truth in Christ Jesus?

Well, it's true, there's no shortage of candy -coated Bible studies, potluck fellowships available to ladies.

But beyond Sunday morning, are Christian women being properly equipped to stand against the same deceptions that even enticed

Eve in the garden? In an attempt to address the need for trustworthy, biblical resources for women,

No Compromise Radio is happy to introduce Equipping Eve, a ladies -only radio show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth in an age that's ripe with deception.

My name is Mike Abendroth and I'm pleased to introduce your host Erin Benzinger, a friend of No Compromise Radio and a woman who wants to see other women equipped with a love for and a knowledge of the truth of God's Word.

Well, hello ladies and welcome to Equipping Eve, the show that seeks to equip you with fruits of truth from God's Word.

I am Erin Benzinger. I am your host today and every day that you listen to Equipping Eve, lucky you.

So what are we going to talk about today? Let's just jump right into it. It's the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation. Did you know that? You probably did. If you are on the computer at all on the internet, on social media,

Facebook, Twitter, read any blogs, and if you are in the least bit

Reformed, then you no doubt have seen the myriad of Reformation -themed posts and messages and sermons and communication.

It's a fantastic thing, isn't it? And what I do love about Reformation truth and those who uphold the

Reformation, those of us who hold to biblical doctrine and who affirm the things that were brought to light in the

Reformation, the things that were opposed in the Reformation, those of us who would agree with the

Reformers, you know, I think what's really great is that while there is an influx of those here with the 500th anniversary in 2017, we uphold these doctrines every year, all the time, right?

We talk about the Reformers, not all the time, but often, because they had such an impact on church history.

And so that's what I really do appreciate about our crowd, if you will. Notice I did not say our tribe.

Let me never, ever use that phrase. Who came up with that? Do you remember that?

I think it's kind of died out now, but, you know, I think it was popular among the Driscolls and the young restless and reformed and, you know, come join our tribe.

Well, that's silly. So anyway, but among the biblical

Christians who affirm Reformation truths, you know, we don't just bring out those doctrines, those important doctrines, the affirmation of the doctrine of justification by faith and, and related doctrines.

We don't just discuss that here at the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. It is something that we affirm all the time.

And why, why is that? Let's think about it. It's because those are biblical truths, right?

Isn't it? And because they are biblical truths, we uphold those biblical truths all the time.

We discuss those biblical truths all the time because they are necessary and wonderful and good and true, and we cannot know our

God without them. And so we don't need a special anniversary to, to extol those truths, but it is wonderful to think that for 500 years, people have been affirming and upholding the messages of the

Reformation, and we're very grateful for that. And at the same time for 500 years, that same 500 years, the

Roman Catholic Church has been denying biblical truth.

And that's a sad thing. And what's even more sad, it's, well, it's perhaps even infuriating to think of the leaders of the

Roman Catholic Church, the Pope and the priests, and here they, they hold in their deceptive claws, so many millions and millions of people who look to them as their leadership, just as we would look to our pastors and to our elders.

And, and so many millions of people look to their priest and the

Pope for truth. And here they have just perpetuated these damning lies, and it's a, it's an infuriating, righteously infuriating, yet sad thing.

It's grievous. And what makes it so grievous is that there are so many millions of people trapped in this.

Think about it, ladies. I don't know. Perhaps someone listening today used to be trapped in Roman Catholicism.

I don't know. I don't know who is listening. Praise God if He rescued you out of that and saved you out of that.

Some of us weren't trapped in Roman Catholicism, but we were trapped in other deceptions, maybe mysticism, maybe the, the seeker -driven movement, the self -driven movement.

We were all deceived in some way, shape, or form before God was good and gracious to save us.

And that's why we don't just take these Reformation truths and throw up a big banner and talk about how much better we are than the

Roman Catholics because we have the truth. No, no. What a terrible way to go about this.

No, you take that truth and you proclaim it to your mission field. And your mission field is your

Roman Catholic neighbor. That's your mission field.

That's my mission field, literally, actually. I have several Roman Catholic neighbors.

And that's actually something that I've seen on this 500th anniversary. I see so much.

Maybe I shouldn't say so much. It's just perhaps struck me. But I have seen some attitudes of spiritual pride and arrogance and a mindset that says, hey,

Roman Catholics have had the truth. You know, we've been doing this for 500 years. I have no mercy or compassion for them because they have denied

Christ and his truth all this time. Well, okay.

On one hand, we don't throw pearls to swine. But on the other hand, what about the cradle Catholic who hasn't really known anything else?

They were raised in Catholicism. They were baptized when they were infants. Their parents, their mother, their grandmother, their great -grandmother, they were all good

Catholics and probably very good people, very nice people who would do anything for you.

That person doesn't know any different. All they know is what they saw and what they were raised with. And that person needs the gospel.

And that person needs the gospel with compassion. Truth, yes. Truth that you're a sinner.

Truth that what you've been taught by the Roman Catholic Church is wrong and will condemn you to hell.

They need truth, but they need it in a compassionate manner because you are destroying their entire belief system.

And if you just come at them and mock their beliefs and patronize them, you're not going to get very far.

It doesn't matter how much biblical truth you proclaim. And so,

I'm not telling you how to witness, ladies. I'm just asking and encouraging that we consider this. And this is coming from someone who, as you've probably noticed, can be quite snarky.

But you know what? At the end of the day, it really doesn't accomplish anything. And yes,

God saves. And yes, God will take whatever truth we speak, and He will use it how He has ordained to use it.

But that doesn't give us a right to be jerks. Let's not be jerks. Let's be compassionate.

Let's proclaim the gospel, not just to our Roman Catholic neighbors, but to all of our lost neighbors with compassion, with boldness for the truth, absolutely.

But with a love for the lost, because we were once lost ourselves.

Think back. Remember, there was a time before you knew

God's grace. And it's interesting. I tweeted something to this effect a few weeks ago, and just something about, you know, let's not just bash

Catholicism. I'm not saying that we shouldn't rebuke the teachings of Roman Catholicism, and we're going to talk a little bit about that today as well.

I am certainly not saying that. And if you have followed me for any length of time, you know I'm not saying that because I rebuke the false teachings of Roman Catholicism, among other groups, very clearly because it stands opposed to biblical truth.

At the same time, let's not just do that with this attitude of spiritual pride and arrogance because it does not accomplish anything.

And it doesn't bring glory to Christ. It just doesn't. It just makes you look like a mean person.

And if we are in Christ, we must remember who we were before we were saved.

And let that motivate our evangelism.

I think we just need to pray for opportunities to evangelize our

Catholic neighbors, those people we know, because I dare say we all know one.

And yes, we're thankful for the Reformation, but we don't walk around as people who are better than those who are still lost because we're not.

We're still sinners, and we were sinners who were lost just like they were once before.

Let's not forget that. We must always remember our position in Christ, but remember where we were before we came to Christ, because that was not of our own doing.

It was His gracious mercy that saved us. So anyway,

I did not intend to wax eloquent on that for that long, but we'll keep going. It's all on the same theme.

It's got this Reformation theme going today. So like I said, we should stand strong against the damning doctrines of Roman Catholicism.

I wholeheartedly affirm that, and so I want to make that very clear today in light of what

I just said, that we should have compassion and not merely bash those teachings, but teach against them from Scripture, or speak against them from Scripture, and then evangelize with compassion for those who are lost.

So that's kind of the crux of what I was just saying, but I'd like to just take a look at a couple of key teachings of Roman Catholicism just to make it clear that we, as Biblical Christians, cannot stand aligned with the

Roman Catholic Church because they have a different gospel. So several years ago,

I wrote a research page for Christian Research Network. That's ChristianResearchNetwork .org,

and it's still there. And it's kind of a little comparison between Roman Catholicism and Biblical Christianity.

And what I did is I pulled out just a few of the canons from the Council of Trent, and that is a very important event in the history of the

Roman Catholic Church. And as I say in this article, it was at this ecumenical meeting that Rome ultimately anathematized or condemned the

Biblical doctrine of justification, and that's at the heart of the Reformation, right? This doctrine of justification, justification by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone.

Nothing that you do can earn your salvation. We would affirm that as Biblical truth.

That is what Jesus taught. That is what the apostles taught. That is what we see in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

Your good works cannot save you. Whether you're dropping money on the plate, serving food at a soup kitchen, or sacrificing animals to atone for your sin, your works cannot save you.

Jesus Christ is the only one who kept the law perfectly, and He bore the wrath of God that we deserve, even though He was sinless.

And so it is through Him and His work alone that we are saved. But here at the

Council of Trent, which took place between 1545 and 1563, Canon 9 says,

If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the action of his own will, let him be anathema.

Well, that's pretty clear, isn't it?

But, you know, let's go to Scripture, shall we? Let's go to a very familiar passage,

Ephesians 2. Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.

It is the gift of God. Verse 9, Not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Huh. That's different from what the Roman Catholic Church is saying.

And then, what's so interesting, so that's, you know, the heart of the gospel there.

And the same Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians, Galatians 1, 8,

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed, or anathema.

As we have said before, so I again, so I say again now, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, he is to be accursed.

Okay, so we've got the gospel is by you are saved by grace alone through faith alone.

We see that in Ephesians 2, and then we see the Roman Catholic Church saying, Well, if anyone says a sinner is justified by faith alone, he is to be anathema.

Huh. Well, that's a different gospel. And now Paul, the same writer here in scripture, is saying,

If anyone preaches you a gospel contrary, then he is to be accursed. So who are we going to go with?

The Bible or Rome? This quiz is graded, ladies.

The Bible or Rome. Okay. Canon 14 of the Council of Trent. If anyone says that man is absolved from his sins and justified because he firmly believes that he is absolved and justified or that no one is truly justified except him who believes himself justified and that by his faith alone, absolution and justification are affected.

Let him be anathema. Canon 24. If anyone says that the justice received is not preserved and also not increased before God through good works,

I'm reading this quickly, ladies. Let's go back. If anyone says that the justice received is not preserved and also not increased before God through good works, but that those works are merely the fruits and signs of justification obtained, but not because of its increase, let him be anathema.

Whoa. So what this is saying, that is, if anyone says that his own salvation is not maintained and increased before God by his works, but instead if anyone says that your works are only the fruit of your salvation, then that person is to be anathema.

That's what the Catholic Church teaches. Ladies, here's your next quiz question.

You didn't know we were going to end a quiz, did you? I didn't warn you. Is that true or false? It's false.

It's false, isn't it? The scripture very clearly says that God keeps us,

God saves us, and God keeps us. John 10, 27,

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the

Father's hand. I and the Father are one. God saves us.

God keeps us, okay? And then, if anyone says, says the Roman Catholic Church, that your good works are just fruits and signs of justification, that person is to be anathema.

Really? Really? Is it just me, or does the scripture speak at length about our good works being the fruit of our salvation?

Because our good works do not save us. We just saw that. Ephesians 2, right? But if we have been saved, we walk in a manner worthy of the gospel by which we have been saved.

Therefore, we put on this new self, and we do good works in response to our salvation, and in response to the fact that we are a new creation in Christ.

Let's go back to Ephesians 2. Let's look at the next verse, right? So we see, by grace you've been saved through faith, not of yourselves.

It is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. Verse 10, which we leave off of this. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. Gotquestions .org

addresses this, and in response to this verse, they say, God's goal in saving us was not only to rescue us from hell, but also that we would reflect his character and goodness to the world.

God delights to see us becoming more like his Son. We were created in God's image. Sin marred that image.

When God brought us back for himself, it was to restore his image in us and free us to become all we were created to be.

I would use different language, but anyhow, when the Holy Spirit comes to live inside us, he prompts us to do things that glorify

God. Our desire to please God grows as our understanding of him grows.

The desire to please God results in good works. It's true.

That is why you cannot be saved and still be living in a pattern of unrepentant sin.

Yes, you are still going to sin because you are human. You are not yet glorified, but when you are saved, you are a changed person.

And we see that in Scripture, don't we? We see that to put on the new self. Paul talks about that over in Ephesians 4.

We see that we are a new creation in Christ. We see it over and over and over again, that our works are the fruit of our salvation.

There's an order to these things, and yet the Catholic Church would anathematize those who teach that.

And so this is just, we're just touching on these truths, and I didn't necessarily intend to go on and on and on here.

But if you go to the link that I will put on the

Equipping Eve blog here, we'll link to this episode, which you obviously found because you're listening to it.

But there will also be a link to this article at christianresearchnetwork .org. And what

I did in this article is I kind of put side by side some main doctrines, and we took a look at what the

Roman Catholic Church says about these doctrines, and then what biblical Christianity says about them. And of course, it's pulling from scripture because that is the definition of biblical

Christianity. So it takes a look at salvation, the Eucharist or the Lord's Supper, Mary, scripture, purgatory, indulgences, penance, the papacy.

And then there are some additional links down below. It's all footnoted, so hopefully you'll find that helpful if you've ever wanted to look at a side by side.

I know many of us are very familiar with this, and we know what's wrong primarily in Roman Catholicism.

And so I'm not trying to teach you something you already know. I'm just trying to give you a tool that I hope you find useful.

I actually had kind of forgotten about it, and I was working on this episode and looking at some other things and remembered that that article was there.

So I hope you find it helpful. And the purpose of this episode was not to point you to that. But again, I hope it's a useful tool for you.

So we see then why the Roman Catholic Church, their teachings are so dangerous.

This doesn't mean that we hate Roman Catholics, people who practice Roman Catholicism. Again, we love them and have to give them the gospel because many of them don't know any better.

They haven't been raised with anything else. You know, there are areas where it is just the

Catholic influence is so strong. And there's an area near where I live where you find out someone else grew up there and you say, oh, really?

What parish? Because it's just a very Catholic area.

So no, they may not have been exposed to the true gospel. And so we do have compassion for those people, and we present it to them to give them an opportunity to accept or reject the gospel.

And in fact, that's actually the mission statement of my church, which

I kind of love. And I didn't intend to bring this in at all, but it just fell in here. So it is, we exist to give every man, woman, and child the opportunity to hear, understand, and accept or reject the gospel.

Yes. Yes, that is why Christians exist. What is the chief end of man?

To glorify God and enjoy Him forever. How do we glorify Him here? We proclaim His gospel of grace.

We call people to repent of their sins and trust in Jesus Christ alone for their salvation. We give them the gospel.

We give them an opportunity to accept or reject it. It is not up to us to get them to pray a prayer.

It is up to us to be faithful to what we are called to do, to be faithful to biblical truth, to proclaim that biblical truth, and let

God and His Holy Spirit do that work. It is just up to us to be faithful.

But what about when professing Christians are not so faithful and actually betray the gospel of Jesus Christ by their alignment with false teaching, like Roman Catholicism?

Very recently, there was, um, there were a few headlines. Oh, and he's done this before, but, uh, there were a few headlines about, uh,

Pastor Rick Warren, who pastors Saddleback Church in Southern California, Orange County, California, Purpose Driven Life, Purpose Driven Church, that Rick Warren, we all probably know who

Rick Warren is, and, uh, I've never met Rick Warren. I'm sure he is a very nice man.

So just to be clear, my problem with Rick Warren is his denigration of biblical truth by his poor handling of the scriptures in his own teaching and by his alignment with false teachers, including those who are members of the

Roman Catholic Church. And so there was a, um, well,

I'm on a Catholic website, which is fine. Uh, because it's probably, um, more, a more measured presentation than some of the discernment websites.

So anyway, I am on cruxnow .com, taking the Catholic pulse. There you go. Uh, this article was written in September of 2017 by Pia De Solleni.

I'm sorry if I'm butchering your name. Uh, the headline reads in Orange County, Bishop and Pastor Model Catholic slash

Evangelical Ties. Okay. So the article starts out, there are all kinds of relationships among Catholics and Evangelicals in America.

And one especially striking example is the friendship and partnership in Orange County, California between Bishop Kevin Vann and famed

Pastor Rick Warren. The two men pray for and with each other. They share the struggles in their life and with each other and have become partners in ministry.

Let's take a look at this. What this is, is really kind of a, an interview with between the, um, the journalist and, um,

Bishop Vann and Pastor Warren. And, um, let me never call him pastor again.

Sorry about that. I know he calls himself pastor, but he's not giving his people biblical truth.

So anyway, um, okay. You know, asking how you became friends, blah, blah, blah.

Okay. So Vann moved to Southern California and they became friends. He used something that K Warren wrote in his, um, bulletin for the week or something.

I don't know. So anyway, they became friends. Um, how did your friendship grow? Bishop Vann says in the months and years that followed,

I discovered the blessing of sharing the concerns of ministry with Rick, talking about our homilies and what we were both studying and praying together.

Our relationship has also been blessed to include K, his wife, also Rick's staff at Saddleback, and our staff at the diocese began to get to know each other through various meetings, sharing, listen, not only our common love for the

Lord, but also our love for the church, fellowship, and praying together. You have different churches. Well, maybe not.

Let me strike that and go back. The Roman Catholic Church is not the same as the body of Christ, as we see in Scripture, because of the things that we already talked about.

The way that they anathematize the gospel. They literally anathematized the biblical gospel of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone.

So the Roman Catholic Church is not the same as the church in Scripture, the body of Christ.

Period. Now, I can't really say much about Rick Warren's church and where that falls because of the poor teaching that goes on there.

I remain silent on that point and will let you make your own deductions. But you don't share if you claim to be a biblical

Christian and you are friends with a Roman Catholic, which, fine, you can be friends, whatever, but that Roman Catholic should know where your differences are, and that is primarily in the gospel.

That friend should know, hey, I think you teach a false gospel because you anathematized the gospel that's in the

Bible. And so you don't have this love for the same church if you love the true body of Christ as found in Scripture.

It's different. Anyway, this goes on, the bishop van says,

Rick and I have shared our lives and faith and our ministries together. He was there when

Rick Warren's son committed suicide, etc., etc. And so they ended up starting a conference on the church's response to mental illness together.

But again, we have a problem. You claim to be a Christian. Now, you can't have a common agreement on the church's response to things because you don't have common agreement on the most basic thing, which is

Scripture. So again, we have a problem. So Rick Warren says, out of Matthew, that's his son who committed suicide, out of Matthew's death came a partnership in creating a conference to help others and also a number of other mental health initiatives.

It also brought Catholics and evangelicals together as I and our church received many letters of comfort from Catholic priests and parishioners.

Also, the Norbertine brothers who live up the street from Saddleback at St. Michael's came and sang vespers to close our conference.

Their leading of worship was very moving to everyone. Bishop van says, we've also worked together on pro -life projects, caring for immigrants and standing against the legislation in California that was promoting physician -assisted suicide.

So they've done a lot of social things together, social gospel things. Okay, that's not the gospel.

We may very well be in agreement with many Roman Catholics and with the Roman Catholic Church on things like abortion or homosexual marriage, physician -assisted suicide.

That does not mean that they are our partners in ministry. And so this has been a problem for quite a while.

Back many years ago, there was a document called Evangelicals and Catholics Together. That basically said, you know what?

We need to forget our differences. It was trying to reverse the Reformation. And we talked about this for a couple of episodes earlier this month, didn't we?

That we see that there is a Reformation reversal. Christians, professing

Christians, don't really understand what they believe. They don't understand the differences between Christianity and Catholicism.

So we have this Reformation reversal, like everybody's a Christian. Y 'all believe in Jesus. We're all good.

So we had this Evangelicals and Catholics Together document years ago. And then back in 2009,

I think it was, we had the Manhattan Declaration, which was basically a regurgitation of ECT.

And so that kind of caused an upset because some people signed it who probably shouldn't have. And I really appreciated

John MacArthur's response to the Manhattan Declaration, because a lot of that document was about, you know, we need to set aside our differences.

We need to understand that we're basically serving the same God and align on these social issues of abortion and whatnot.

But do we? Do we align in such a way that makes it look like we do serve the same

God in Christ? And affirm the same doctrines? John MacArthur listed the main reasons that he was not signing the

Manhattan Declaration. And his first point is, although I obviously agree with the document's opposition to same -sex marriage, abortion, and other key moral problems threatening our culture, the document falls far short of identifying the one true and ultimate remedy for all of humanity's moral ills, the gospel.

The gospel is barely mentioned in the declaration. At one point, the statement rightly acknowledges, it is our duty to proclaim the gospel of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in its fullness, both in and out of season, then adds an encouraging wish, may

God help us not fail in that duty. Yet the gospel itself is nowhere presented, much less explained in the document or any of the accompanying literature.

Indeed, that would be a practical impossibility because of the contradictory views held by the broad range of signatories regarding what the gospel teaches and what it means to be a

Christian. Bingo. Because there's two different gospels there. We just saw it.

Council of Trent anathematizes the biblical gospel.

And MacArthur goes on, and there's no need for me to repeat his statement. I'll try to remember to link to that as well.

And of course, that was, what, eight years ago now. It's hard to believe. But the mindset is still there.

There is still this push to eliminate what the

Reformation accomplished. And 500 years later, we cannot let that happen.

Because biblical truth still stands. The doctrines set forth in the

Reformation, the soteriological doctrines, have not changed.

Because they are biblical doctrines. They are in scripture.

They are truth from God. So when leaders like Rick Warren try to blur the lines, we do stand up and say, no, a thousand times, no.

This is what the Bible says. We don't back down for anything, not for any social cause.

Because social causes should never, ever, be placed above gospel.

There are a lot of good lost people. A lot of people who oppose abortion, but who also oppose the

Lord Jesus Christ. We can agree with them on the social issue of abortion, but far more important is the truth of the gospel.

Okay, ladies, I actually didn't get to what I primarily wanted to discuss today. Shocking.

So thanks for tuning in, and we will come back to it. There is a push for a

Reformation reversal among some professing Christians. We must be mindful to hold to biblical truth at the same time we must be mindful that our

Roman Catholic friends and neighbors are lost. They need the gospel of Jesus Christ just like we once did.

I hope you'll join me in praying that God would give us a heart of compassion for the lost, no matter what system they are lost in.

Atheism, mysticism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Catholicism.

That we would have a heart for the lost and a zeal and an urgency to proclaim

Christ. All right, ladies, until next time, get in your

Bibles so that you know that biblical truth inside out. Get on your knees so that you're leaning on the strength of Christ.

Get equipped. Thanks for listening. Is the church today doing everything it can to provide women a firm foundation of truth in Christ Jesus?

Well, it's true, there's no shortage of candy -coated Bible studies, potluck fellowships available to ladies, but beyond Sunday morning, are

Christian women being properly equipped to stand against the same deceptions that even enticed

Eve in the garden? In an attempt to address the need for trustworthy, biblical resources for women,

No Compromise Radio is happy to introduce Equipping Eve, a ladies -only radio show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth in an age that's ripe with deception.

My name is Mike Abendroth, and I'm pleased to introduce your host, Erin Benzinger, a friend of No Compromise Radio and a woman who wants to see other women equipped with a love for and a knowledge of the truth of God's Word.