More on Rick Warren's Capitulation to Rome

Well, greetings. I started a response yesterday to Rick Warren's capitulation to Roman Catholicism and the gospel. I worked at it pretty quickly because I'm here in Ukraine and I just didn't know, honestly, what size file I'd be able to upload well to YouTube and things like that.

So I kept it fairly brief. There were a number of things I wanted to say that I didn't, but it actually went real well. So I wanted to just add a few things to that video, which has already been viewed over 5 ,000 times since I posted it yesterday.

One thing I should say, by the way, is you can certainly decry Rick Warren's capitulation to Rome and the damage to the gospel that that type of capitulation does, but you don't have to do it with quite the level of animosity that some people are showing.

And so I would recommend that if you're going to comment on the subject, a broken heart and a broken spirit and a concern for the purity of the gospel would be better than, well, we've always known this, you should have seen this coming, et cetera, et cetera.

I think that the subject deserves a little bit better than some of the comments that it's gotten, be that as it may. At the same time, the strongest language I know of in the New Testament is found in condemning those who pervert the gospel.

Paul’s Warning Against a Different Gospel

And what I wanted to do briefly was to back up that statement by looking at the situation in Galatia, where Paul was dealing with individuals who did not disagree with him on a wide variety of issues.

In fact, it would be an understatement to say that Paul had far more in common with the Judaizers than Protestants believing biblical Christians, let's put it that way, have with Roman Catholicism as a system.

There's no question about that, none whatsoever. There is no evidence, for example, that the Judaizers had the wild idolatrous dogmas concerning Mary. And I have no idea what Rick Warren thinks, how he can even begin to state that, well, you know, they have an understanding of that.

If that's just the Latria Dulia stuff, then once again, I'm just left stuttering at the man's willingness to make that kind of a claim. But the point is that the Judaizers in the churches in Galatia were individuals who, from our perspective today, would be considered to be exceptionally orthodox, but they desired to distort the gospel.

And so we see in Galatians chapter one that Paul says, he pretty much skips past the introduction that's normally a part of his letters. And he says, I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting him who called you by the grace of Christ for a different gospel, which is really not another.

Only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort, metastrepsize the gospel of Christ. But even if we are an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we preach to you, he is to be accursed.

As we said before, so I say now again, if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you have received, he is to be accursed. And you know that is the term anathema. Now, notice a few things.

Even when he says for another gospel, it doesn't come across well, real well in English, but you'll notice it's heteron, heteron euangelion, unto another gospel, hauk esten allah, which is not another, using a different term, hetero, we know means other, but allah would be another of the same kind.

Hetero is another of a different kind. So he's not saying that there's multiple kinds of gospels. We can have multiple flavors of gospels. There is only one gospel, and he attributes to those who wish to cause the Galatians to follow after this other gospel, the idea that they want to disturb you and to distort the gospel of Christ.

Now, that distortion does not have to be a complete change of the gospel. It's something that looks completely different. In fact, the term here is often used as something that just gets twisted out of shape enough to no longer be functional.

Sort of like when you twist a key, you're trying to open a lock, and the lock is jammed, and you twist it too hard, and you twist the key, and it no longer becomes functional. It still looks like a key.

Only upon examination can you see that it is no longer functional. But that is the idea here, is that these individuals had much that was right. In fact, if we look down below at the actual incident in chapter 2, where Paul encounters these individuals, notice what he says here in verse 4, but it was because of the false brethren, the Pseudedelphoi, who had snuck in.

They snuck into the fellowship to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage. So, he attributes to them evil motivations, and he recognizes that their one small addition to the gospel comprises a complete denial of the gospel.

This is where I think people struggle, because they say, well, you know, I just don't, I've met far too many people who get so focused upon one little thing that they completely lose their balance, and they have no love, and they have no balance, and they cannot function with other people, or work with other people.

I fully understand that. But you see, there are certain things that are non-negotiables, and you have to stick with the biblical definition of what the non-negotiables are. And what is absolutely non-negotiable is that salvation is not just made available by Christ, but the salvation is only in Christ.

The solas of the Reformation are the solas of the Apostle Paul, and of the New Testament itself. And so, there are certain things so fundamental to the gospel, the freedom of grace, for example, that if you alter those things, if you twist those things, if you change those things, you no longer have the gospel.

And so, he calls these people false brethren. That means they acted like brothers, they sounded like brothers, they used the language, they probably dressed the same way. They were, when Paul wrote this gospel, this letter to the churches in Galatia, he knew that these very men that he was talking about would be sitting in the congregation when this letter was read.

He knew what the result was going to be. It was going to be a horrible Lord's Day when that thing was read to the congregation, I can assure you. But notice what he says in verse 5, "...but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.".

We did not yield in subjection to them. That's what Rick Warren just did. He just yielded in subjection to them, to Judaizers, to people who make the look like amateurs. When you start listing the things that Rome adds to the gospel, when you start looking deeply into their concept of the Mass as a propitiatory sacrifice, the priest as a sacramentally ordained alter Christus, another Christ, when you look into the concept of purgatory, and supererogation, and satispassio, and indulgences, and you consider everything that Rome has added to the gospel, it goes far beyond anything that the Judaizers ever dreamed of doing.

And so Paul says, we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour. There was no period of time where we said, well, you know, you know, you don't find Paul saying, we have so much in common with them, you know, we all just need to get it.

No, it's not there. It's nowhere to be found. Why? So that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. That's his highest priority, is the truth of the gospel. Everything else pales in consideration to that highest priority.

And so here you have inspired commentary on what is really at stake here. And once again, either Rick Warren is just simply ignorant and being used in the most egregious fashion, hasn't read the Universal Catholic Catechism, hasn't read any of the dogmatic canons and decrees of the Council of Trent, or Vatican II, or certainly hasn't read Indulgentiarum Doctrina, or any of the things that he should read before doing these kinds of videos and talking about these kinds of things.

Either he's just incredibly ignorant of these things, or this is a full-scale abandonment of the gospel, a repudiation of the gospel. And I have no contact with the man. I've never met the man. I doubt he has any concern whatsoever about what I have to say.

But those who are near him, please, you must, you must call the man to repentance. He must repudiate that video that he put out. He must apologize. As the pastor of that huge church, he must explain to his people what the gospel is and why Rome's gospel will never give you peace.

It just has to happen. And here is a biblical foundation for saying we cannot engage in this type of activity, no matter how much pressure the world puts upon us to compromise these issues, no matter how marginalized and and put into a minority we are.

And folks, this kind of pressure is going to be put upon all of us in the future as there becomes fewer and fewer of us in western culture, as we're pushed more and more to the outside. We are going to be tested as to what our priorities are and whether we really believe that the gospel and the spirit are the only things that have been given to the church by which we are to literally change the hearts and minds of men.

Because if we're willing to put the gospel off to the side, as the mere Christianity movement does, and say, well, you know, as long as we're Trinitarians and as long as we believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, let's not talk about what that means.

Let's not, let's not apply these things, but let's just come up with the LCD Christianity, the least common denominator Christianity. You know, the whole reason that people are doing this, quite honestly, is because they're ashamed of the gospel.

They don't believe that we can really know it. They don't have a conviction that these solas are absolutely definitional, etc., etc. Those folks are going to be against us. The world's going to be against us.

But the real question is, what do we believe? What's our conviction? What are our priorities? Will we stand with Paul or will we yield in subjection to them for an hour, with the result being that the truth of the gospel will not remain with those, if we are ministers, who are under our care?

That really is the question. And I say to Rick Warren, how do you know that the gospel is truly, the truth of the gospel is remaining with your people when you're saying things like this? That first commenter on the video, I've been a Roman Catholic.

I've been going to Saddleback. I, you know, I've been real comfortable. Wow. I can say with absolute assurance that a person holding to a false gospel would not be comfortable sitting under the preaching at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church, not because we're mean and nasty, but because we're very clear and very consistent.

And that is really something that needs to be thought about. So this isn't a matter of just trying to be mean and nasty to people and jump on some bandwagon of being the anti-Rick Warren crowd. No. The reason I'm talking about this is because he has fallen directly into a position of being in direct opposition to apostolic teaching.

There is no question of this. I'll debate anybody on that. I'll go to Saddleback and debate Rick Warren on that if he wants to do that. Be happy to do it because it is absolutely inexcusable to assist the Roman communion in its continued enslavement of people.

Justification by Faith and Peace with God

My friends, the Roman gospel has no finished work of Christ and therefore cannot give anyone peace. Romans 5 once says, therefore have been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

That's the issue folks. That's what it's about. That's why we continue to evangelize Roman Catholics and must continue to do so no matter how marginalized we become in the process. And so those are some of the issues that I wanted to add to what was said in the previous video.

Apostasy, Sexual Ethics, and the Call to Pray for the Compromised

And it is my hope and prayer that Rick Warren and the sad thing is folks, he's just a well-known example of the many who are simply collapsing on biblical issues whether it be the gospel here or the definition of sin and sexuality and marriage.

We live in a difficult day where there is apostasy all around us and we cannot wrap our robes around ourselves and say well I'm better than those people. No, it is only by the grace of God that any of us have a commitment to the gospel and its centrality and its purity.

And so we pray for Rick Warren and we pray for those who find themselves in churches where the gospel is being compromised. We know that Christ will care for his sheep but sometimes his sheep become very hungry and we pray for them as well.

So some thoughts I wanted to share with you. Thanks for watching. God bless.