Sunday School - The Roman Catholic Controversy Part 1

A false teaching of the Lord as you have your word and the truth will bring to you in this place. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Well, today we're gonna talk about Roman Catholicism. And we're not gonna go directly into this book just yet.

Introduction to the Roman Catholic Controversy

We're gonna give you an introduction. We are gonna start this new series about Roman Catholicism from Dr. James White and his famous book, The Roman Catholic Controversy. Now, have any of you read this book before?

Well, this is it. This is good, then. This will be your first time getting through it. And what we're gonna do typically is we're gonna probably take a chapter a week. How we go through the materials is to be determined depending on the conversations you have on the material here.

There's a lot of really good stuff here. Now, why do you think we're gonna be touching on Roman Catholicism? Why do you think that's becoming a focus of our ministry here?

Well, in our community, we have a lot of Roman Catholics.

So, that's a great point. I wanna give you a quick statistic. So, we are in one of the most unchurched regions of the country here in Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley is the most unchurched region of the country.

What I mean by unchurched is that the predominant population here in these counties don't attend churches. They're non-church attenders. Typically, in Silicon Valley, you have a higher rate of agnosticism, atheism.

When you look at the religious demographics and you look at what churches are being attended.

Or what people identify as,.

Roman Catholicism is number one in this area. Now, that's not to be surprised. Roman Catholicism is the largest church in the world. With about 1 .6 million adherents. Huge. Massive. Roman Catholicism is also very popular in predominantly Latino communities, Latino countries.

Mexico, for instance, is a predominantly super Catholic majority, and Mexico is gonna be a mission for us, too, because this is where we're putting so much focus in as we're partnering with a church in Atlanta that's there.

So, Roman Catholicism is on our radar because it is the largest false Christian group in the world. Now, that's a strong statement. Notice what I said. It's a false Christian church. In the world that we're living in today, in evangelicalism, and you take the mainline Christian denominations, for the last about 50 years, there's been a shift in the way evangelicalism approaches Roman Catholicism.

What have you observed, maybe in your experience, as a shift or change or culture from evangelicals towards Catholics? Has it become friendlier or has it become more hostile?

It's become more ecumenical, friendlier. So explain that word you just said. Ecumenical, there's a good sense of the word and there's a bad sense of the word. Like, technically, in Nicaea, it was ecumenical council, but it wasn't a good sense of the word.

In a bad sense of the word, basically, you're mixing religions.

So, if you look at the trend in the last, especially the last 30 years, so take your pick. Even evangelicals have come to embrace Roman Catholicism in ways that are really unheard of. So much so, that in fact, you have a lot of interfaith events between major evangelical leaders, like Kenneth Copeland, and Roman Catholic bishops, even the Pope himself, appear on a major evangelical program and espouse the needs of the church as needed and how the church should unite and when he said that, it meant the Protestant church and the Roman Catholic church, how basically we should come back home to our home and that we should all be under one family, under one umbrella.

It's interesting, because in the 1990s, some interesting stuff happened from Roman Catholic communities here in the United States and in Latin America as well. You have what's called kind of like the Roman Catholic I wonder if anyone has this one for me.

Yeah, Roman Catholic tentacles, where essentially, you have Roman Catholic churches and groups that were starting to have these very incredible religious experiences, similar to what you see in kind of Catholic communities.

And it starts to sweep through Roman Catholicism and become this almost like mini-revival from Roman Catholicism and one of the things that started happening is people started talking, speaking in tongues, people started prophesying, people started to do all these things that you wouldn't normally associate with Roman Catholicism.

But it was very much Roman Catholic, what we would say charismatic and apostolic labor. And you start to see a bleeding between Roman Catholicism and Pentecostalism. Very interesting thing that I have some friends actually that were Roman Catholic, and then became kind of charismatic Roman Catholics and are still charismatic Roman Catholics.

It's very interesting. But the focus of today's lesson is gonna be a discussion more so about what our confession says concerning the world, concerning the church. And in particular, what the claims are of itself and why it's important that we focus on Roman Catholicism in the weeks and months to come as we learn more about Roman Catholicism so that we can better give an answer to Roman Catholic natures and also as we prepare to go into the mission field in Mexico to reach Roman Catholicism with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Roman Catholicism, Tradition, and Cultural Drift

Now, another reason why this is an interesting discussion and we'll talk about this next week is that there seems to be a trajectory in the culture that I both really am excited about but also kind of terrified about.

Anyone here has heard of Andrew Tate? Yeah, okay. Andrew Tate has kind of become this famous influencer on social media. He says some pretty vulgar things, pretty disgusting things about men and women, particularly about women.

But he says a lot of things that make sense as well, so that's why he's become kind of popular for him to rise to. But one of the things that he has recently done is that he has become a Muslim. And what's interesting is that there seems to be an embrace on the part of a lot of young people of a journey to return to some form of tradition.

And how that's manifesting itself is that there are some young people who are now looking to Islam or Roman Catholicism as a way to go back to your roots, to embrace some form of traditionalism, some form of cultural stability, which is not being found in the cultures they've existed in, the cultures they've disintegrated before our very eyes.

So there's a tendency that a lot of young people are kind of wanting to embrace some form of hierarchy and tradition to bring order to their lives. And one of the ways that I've seen this person, I've had a friend, who I went to high school with, and she was a pagan, and she's been an absolute pagan.

And when I say pagan, I mean like lifestyle. She worships Jupiter. She has altars of different goddesses and gods, and she does all these spells and incantations. And she recently converted to Catholicism.

I've been following her social media posts on this, because I'm just fascinated by it. And how she makes these connections between what she learned in paganism and how it was such a natural fit for her to go from paganism to Catholicism.

And how she says, oh my goodness, it's the Virgin Mary, it's this person over here. It fits perfectly with this mythos of this Greek understanding. Or it fits perfectly, the saints are really just, these spiritual beings who were represented by the Mithras in the Persian ethos.

And how this really fascinating version of her, she basically feels very comfortable going from paganism to Catholicism, and I think that's actually, there's a reason for that. There's a reason why there are certain people who convert from paganism into Catholicism, and they feel very comfortable.

It's because Roman Catholicism is a pagan religion. So what you won't hear from our teaching in regard to Roman Catholicism is that we're not going to be teaching you. We should all just get along. We should all just embrace each other, and just, you know, major to major, minor to minor, you know, we have some big, big things in common, which is true, actually.

We do have some big, big things in common, such as the doctrine of Trinity, the divinity of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Christ from the dead. These are some major things that we hold in common with Roman Catholicism and Protestants.

But the errors of Rome are far too great to overlook. The errors of Roman Catholicism is not to be overlooked. Some of the claims that Rome makes in regard to itself and regarding its authority comes from their understanding of what is called papal order, papal succession.

And one of the things I want to focus on is what our confession actually teaches on this subject. And so, in chapter 26 of our confession of the church, and I'm thinking of hidden things when we have a copy of the confession, so you can look at that in your life.

But in chapter 26 of our confession, I want to start with paragraph one. Now, how many of you guys are familiar with the Nicene Creed? The Nicene Creed, very, very important.

Creed of faith. And it talks about, you know,.

We believe in the what? In the one Catholic church, okay? One universal Catholic church. Notice where our confession says, in paragraph one of chapter 26, paragraph one, the Catholic or universal church, which with respect to the eternal birth, the spirit, and the truth, and grace, may be called invisible, consist of the whole number of the elect that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one place, and head thereof, and is the spouse, the body, the wholeness of Him that fills all in all.

Curious, isn't it? In 689, these brothers came together and they formulated this confession. And they used the term Catholic. Why do they use the term Catholic? It means universal. So what does the word Catholic mean?

Universal, but why universal? Why is that important phrase to use? Why universal, what is that trying to encompass? And notice the language of the confession. Yes. It's trying to encompass all the people of God.

All the people of God, okay? So you can't get bigger than that. Universal, it's as big as it gets. Universal, it means all encompassing, essentially. And so the reason why those who put the confession together used this term was twofold, actually.

One, to obviously speak of the breath of God's people from all ages, from all time, into eternity. But also to reclaim a perfectly good word that expresses a truth about God's people and reclaims it from the error of wrongful causing.

So they're reclaiming it. Now one of the things that Christians do sometimes, which I don't like, is that when a false group starts using a term or word, we tend to shy away from it. The example of this would be how in most predominant, the two biggest translations in turn of the 20th century were the King James Version of English and the American Standard Version, both of which used the term or name Jehovah, okay?

So Jehovah appeared seven times in the King James Bible and the AHA, which was the popular Bible in the turn of the century, was also the, used the name Jehovah for 6 ,000 times. But something curious happened in the 1930s, 1930s and 1950s, there's a little group called Bible Students, who then in 1931 changed their name to Jehovah's Witnesses.

And Jehovah's Witnesses from 1931 to 1951 grew exponentially, and in 1930 they published their own Bible Bible translation where they used the term Jehovah even more prominently. So what you begin to see is that in 1952 you have what's called the RSV, which was the revised version of the ASV, and that translation actually took out the name Jehovah from the translation.

We can see this trend in the 1970s as more translations come out, as the NIV comes out, there was a letter that was sent to the Potioner, the NIV, asking them why they didn't translate my name into the grammatical involvement of Y-H-W-H as Yahweh or Jehovah.

And they said if we invested $2 .1 million in this translation, we would not have recouped that as if we had inserted it in Psalm 23, Yahweh is my shepherd rather than the Lord is my shepherd. It was purely out of profit motive.

Because people were more accustomed to using.

The term Lord rather than Yahweh. So both profit motive and also the fact that a false witness group began using this term very prominently, we see that a lot of Christians are too bewayed from using the name Jehovah or Yahweh.

And I think in recent times we're moving away from that error, we're regracing the divine name as we see from major translations, such as the LSB that just recently came out uses the name Yahweh, the legacy standard Bible, LSB.

And that's from a quote from John Parker's seminary. But I say this because oftentimes Christians move away from perfectly good terms, perfectly good words because a false witness group has been hijacked.

And what the reformers are doing here in this discussion is a special statement. As you're saying, no, we are the Catholic church. We are the universal church. And what is that universal church? It consists of all members, visible and invisible, of the elect, meaning those who have gone before us who are in glory, and those also who are now, and those who are yet to come in the future.

God knows who are his elect. And the church, universal church, encompasses the whole breadth of God's people throughout the cosmos, throughout the ages. And so we are the true Catholic church. There's no reason to, here's a fun thing I do with Jehovah's Witnesses.

Is there any time you see a Jehovah's Witness, I tell them, hey, you're a Jehovah's Witness? Me too, I'm a JW, I'm just an incredible JW. Because I am a Jehovah's Witness. Not the same as you are, but I'm a true JW.

I do the same thing with Catholics. It's great that you're Catholic, I'm also a Catholic. But a little bit different. Not only Catholic, I'm just a Catholic. I believe in the scriptures. I'm part of the universal church.

And that always makes it an interesting discussion, because their view of the church is actually a little bit specific. Our view of the church is that if a Catholic knows this stuff, then we'll leave him just for some conversation.

Any questions so far?

Just a quick comment. When you were talking about Catholic and recovering it, it's like, today, somebody says, how you doing? You better not say you're gay today. But gay just means I'm in a carefree, happy mood.

But the word's been absconded, and so I dare not use it. So how you doing? I'm doing well. I can't say, well, I'm in a gay mood today.

I'm not, I don't know why. I just don't know what it says, that I'm not in a gay mood today. Yeah, I'll be there for today.

Yeah, but we've let them take the Lord away. It's like, very much like the Ascension of the Catholic. Back to what you said at the beginning about the errors in Catholicism. They hold the doctrine of Jesus' atoning death, his burial, and his resurrection, which are really, really important, of course.

They hold them as doctrines. With their errors, can we call that true faith? In other words, the church as a whole teaches these things, but they don't practice them in a way that gives reality to them.

So can we, are you asking whether a person in Roman Catholicism may be saved? Is that the essential question? Yeah, ultimately, yeah. Yeah, I think most, most reformers understood that, yes, a person can be in Roman Catholicism and be a Christian.

But there are Christians that are in great error, and it's, and that's why, you know, if you look at the early history of reformers, they really saw themselves as, again, what were they trying to reform?

They weren't trying to make something new. They were trying to reform an already existing structure, which was Roman Catholicism. What it ends up becoming is Protestantism, we were protesting, we were protesting the errors of Rome, and obviously Rome didn't reform, but the church reformed.

So Rome didn't reform, the church reformed. There's a difference. So the early reformers tried to reform the institution. They weren't successful at that. They were successful, however, in reforming the church, because those who were true to their faith would have come out.

So the early reformers saw themselves as those who were calling people out of darkness, and they used that term often, according to 1 Peter 2, being called out of darkness into the Lord's light. So they saw themselves as people who were treacherous.

All people using words like Revelation 18, 4, referring to Babylon, get out of her, my people. That was the call of the reformers, get out of her, should you not share in her calamity and her sins. But yes, a person can be a Catholic, and be saved, but they are in grave danger, and it's not as common as you would think.

It's not like you look at 1 .6 billion people we assume are saved. That would be a wrong assumption. That would be a grave assumption to make. However, we ought to know and recognize that there are people, and I know at least two Roman Catholics, who actually sure know Jesus, but boy, they're in error.

And they'll usually admit the errors of Rome, and say, yeah, that's not true, that's not the Bible, but here's my research thing. And so it's always really interesting when I talk to Roman Catholics like that.

There's a little bit of what I would call cognitive cynicism that's involved in that. But yes, a person can be a Roman Catholic, in grave error, but embrace the gospel. But those are very far between, and I would say, for the majority of the dogma is usually false dogma,.

Or permitted dogma, and so.

So there are Roman Catholics who are bad Roman Catholics, and eventually they'll get out. So that's the way I look at it.

Yes. I understand what you were saying when you said, I am also a Roman, I'm also a Catholic. That's right, that's right. But I think it's giving them a little too much to say they are Catholics. No, I'm the real Catholic.

That's a good distinction. But it's saying that that way is kind of a little offensive. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right, right, right. You know, I like to point them between, because then they'll ask, I always question this. You're a Roman Catholic. I'm just Catholic. Because, I mean, think about what that means.

Roman universal. Let's not, just focus on Romans, that's not very universal, is it? If Rome is a center, is Rome a center of the universe, then? And, so I kind of bring that in that way, in those terms, to help ground the conversation.

Try to bring a distinction between Catholicism and Roman Catholicism. Which is exactly what, you know, this first paragraph is teaching us here, is distinguishing the difference between the Catholic, the universal church, and then the Roman church.

You know, the Roman institution of the church. Just to continue on in paragraph 26, I mean, in chapter 26 of our confession, I want us to look at the fourth paragraph. And notice what it says. The Lord Jesus Christ is the head of the church, included by the Holy Spirit of the Father, all power for the calling, institution, order of the government of the church is invested in a supreme and sovereign manner.

Neither can the Pope of Rome, in any sense, be head thereof,.

But it is that the Antichrist, the son of perdition, that exalts himself in the church against Christ, and all that is called God, whom the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of his coming. Okay. Now this is one of our controversial statements in our confession.

The Pope, the Antichrist, and 2 Thessalonians 2

And it is not always controversial, actually. This was the standard position of many Roman law enforcers, in regard to the minimum of lawlessness it is. Now let me break some of this down for us. In the culture today, in Christianity, in American Christianity in particular, there's been hundreds of books, hundreds of documentaries made about this incoming man of the tomb, all of the Antichrists, okay?

And the way that modern evangelicalism approaches the subject, is they're looking for a liberal leader, probably Russia, maybe the Middle East, maybe it's in Rome, who's going to cool that stations, bring a peace deal to Israel,.

And then without that peace deal,.

He's going to break it, and all hell's going to break out, and there's going to be a seven year, or three and a half year, tribulation of your year, and we're waiting for this menacing figure of Christianity to come on the world scene.

Some people even say it's Satan incarnate, okay? If you watch some of the sensational documentaries of History Channel, for instance, they'll say it's, oh, it's Satan incarnate. They'll quote some liberal professor of Jesus' seminary, and it's just terrible stuff.

But let me tell you, that's not what we're looking for. That whole scheme that I just presented to you has not been whatsoever. Now, one of the reasons why this part is perhaps more controversial, is because it says that the Pope is who?

Or what? Antichrist. Is he just an Antichrist, or is he that Antichrist? It says, according to our confession, that the Pope of Rome is that Antichrist. The man of sin. The son of tradition. Now, that term comes from 2 Thessalonians, chapter two.

What's your turn there?

2 Thessalonians, chapter two.

Starting with verse one. Now, concerning the number of the Lord Jesus Christ,.

When they gather together to Him,.

We ask you, brothers, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarm, either by spirit or spoken word, or letters seem to be from us, in the effect that the Lord has come. Let's break that down for a second, too.

Let's see how this, on how the doctrine has infiltrated the church today. Anytime there's something they can use, what do most American evangelicals run to immediately? What's that? Revelation. It's like, oh, it's a good revelation today.

The pandemic, I had a joke during the pandemic, when the pandemic started, because I said, let's listen. Because most of our church at the time was dispensational, heavily into this end-time nonsense, craziness.

But I started to say, okay, you know, I started to say things that, you guys are making me a little bit nervous. I'm looking all up, so I'm just happy to do this. Maybe, maybe, maybe you're right on something.

But as the course of time progresses, you see that, oh, well, here we are in 2023, the pandemic's essentially over, and the world sort of has come back to business as usual. The antichrists didn't come, you know, Joe Biden, you know, is not the antichrist.

Trump's not the antichrist. As far as we know, they're probably, they are antichrists, but they're not the antichrists. And so it's really easy to become sensational. And Paul's warning the Christians to that effect, saying, don't become sensational over this topic.

Don't be alarmed, which is what Christians tend to do. They see something they use, and they alarm. And I used it so many questions. You know how it is when a crazy guy, I don't get this question from you guys.

I kind of miss it, to be honest, but I'm glad I don't get it as often. Same thing for those I'm used. People from my church come to me and say, pastors, these years, what does it mean? And they want me to interpret times and seasons and dreams and visions.

And it's like, stick to the scriptures. Stick to the word. We don't need to make everything sensational. You know, I remember when I was myself, a criminal idealist, sensational, bleeding, there was a news article written that there was a red heifer born in Israel.

All right, why is that newsworthy? Because red heifers is a requirement, a purebred red heifer with no blemishes is a requirement for temple sacrifices. And so finally they were able to breed one that was perfectly blemished.

And it was so incredible, so useful. Because what does that mean? It means that finally we can start rebuilding the temple, and finally we're gonna start having sacrifices again, and the antichrist is gonna show up, and they need that temple in order for the antichrist to come.

They need a third physical temple. And a resuming of sacrifices in order for them to get that scheme right.

And so, when Sue and I were in Israel many years ago, we went to a shop, and it wasn't Christian. It was a very conservative Jewish place that was breeding that heifer. They hadn't quite got there.

It kept having white hairs. That's right. White hairs, black hairs, gray hairs. It needs to be completely blemished. No imperfection on the coat. We met the guys who were Jewish. We met the guys who were working on that.

Yeah, isn't that cool? And so, when I said that at the time, I was like, yes, the coming of the Lord is coming soon. We're gonna see, we're gonna be raptured out of here soon.

But brothers and sisters, it's not true. As you talk about antichrist, in 2 John, he says that he who denies that Jesus is coming in the flesh is the antichrist. And he uses the article. He says that's the antichrist.

That's different than Paul speaking in 2 Thessalonians. It seems like Paul is using an actual prophetic voice. And John is using more of a descriptive voice.

Is that fair? So, Paul never uses the term antichrist. The term antichrist is not found in Revelation. It's found in places of scripture, 1 John and 2 John. 1 John and 2 John. Yeah, both of them have it.

1 and 2 John are places where antichrist is mentioned. And it's not, again, he says, there are many antichrists. It's not like we're waiting for someone. As a matter of fact, and when John was writing this, he had particular people in mind.

He had actual, specific people in mind as he was writing this. It's a doctrine that when the Gnosticism began to take root, the Gnostics denied this physicality that the incarnation of Jesus Christ and started to teach falsehoods around this.

So, Jesus, when John has specific people in mind as he's teaching Jesus, and saying things that whoever denies that Jesus came from the flesh, this is the antichrist, okay? Antichrist being opposed to.

So, if you teach that Christ didn't come from the flesh, you are opposed to Christ. Antichrist being opposed to. But what we can call here a confession, it's really important, it's actually, look at our website.

We have some addendums made to the confession that we hold to. And we say that we don't particularly hold on to this part of our confession, which I'd like to change in the future because I wholeheartedly agree to this.

And I'm gonna make my case for it. Why is it true that the Pope, Jerome, is that antichrist in particular? Let's continue reading 2 Thessalonians chapter two. He says in verse three, let no one deceive you in any way.

For that day, that day being what we saw in verse one, he's referring to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, not being gathered together with him. So, he's referring to that day will not come unless the rebellion, or apostasy, comes first.

And the man of law is revealed, the son of destruction. So, notice one has to perceive the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. There needs to be a rebellion, that word rebellion is used as the word for apostasy.

Apostasy, apostasy meaning to turn away from. Rebellion or apostasy means to turn away from. And so, he says that this day will not come until the rebellion, the apostasy, comes first. And the man of law, as this is revealed, is the son of destruction.

Notice what the trait of this man of destruction is in verse four, who opposes, exalts himself against every soul of God, or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.

Very important here. Let's break this down even more. He opposes and exalts himself against every soul of God. Remember the temple he opposes now, I'd love to see this in the future. But if you, you know, Paul's actually, he's he's he's he's he's talking about Daniel chapter nine.

In Daniel chapter nine you have this incredible prophecy concerning this beast, this incredible beast. This is unlike all the other beasts that come before. The other beasts have remnants of a bear, remnants of a lion, of a leopard.

But this one, this piece of speaking, has forms. And out of this piece comes what's called the little boy. He speaks words of love. He exalts himself in his own language and changes times and seasons.

So we know that this final piece, St. Daniel 9, is wrong. Every commentator agrees on that. Premillennial, dispensational, autumnal, postmillennial. Everyone agrees this piece is wrong. OK? Even the German public disagrees that it's wrong.

Everyone's, since it's universal, no one disagrees with that. Out of that piece appears the little boy. Speaks blasphemous words. What comes out of the shadow of the Roman Empire? The Holy Roman Catholic Empire.

With a, which is actually a head word, an attic, an attic being the ancient site of the ancient power of Rome. When you see St. Peter's Basilica, you know St. Peter's Basilica, any time they'll pose a new pope, it's like everyone's gathered in front of it.

Every Sunday, they have communion. They have services out there. There's an obelisk that stands there. You know, that obelisk was erected by Nero. Pretty incredible stuff. It's the ancient power of the Roman Empire, of the ancient empire.

The Vatican itself is actually the smallest recognized country in the world. It's the smallest recognized country in the world. Small, but speaks words of blasphemy, of foreign and changed fantasy seasons.

We are in the year 2003, using a calendar that was instituted by the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Gregory. We're using what's called the glory calendar, changing fantasy seasons, okay? Someone had their hand up over here?

Okay. So, you see how the Roman Catholic Church took over the empire of Roman section. And it's continued since. And so that beast of Daniel 9, that's referred to and talked about, and out of that beast comes this little horn that speaks words of blasphemy.

That's the, that's some tradition that's backed up by Christ. And it's not cool at all, it's hard for him to use language. He's not quoting the data, but he's using words that alludes back to Daniel 9.

He says in verse four, who opposes himself, and who opposes himself against every so-called God of all conversion. So he takes his seat in the temple of God from himself to be God. That's exactly what Daniel 9 talks about, okay?

Pretty incredible stuff here. So, I'd love to go more into that since the future, but the correlation is actually uncertain there. And I'm fairly convinced that the Lord in Daniel 7 and 9 is a reference to what Paul referred to in the text of Romans chapter two, which in turn is in fact the Roman Catholic pope of Rome.

Any questions so far? Would the Catholics say what the horn is? Okay. That's a good question. I don't know what the Roman Catholics say what the horn is. I'm gonna look into that now. That's my curiosity question.

I have, by the way, in front of me, the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church. This is the official Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church. I'm gonna read to you some of the things that they say here regarding the office of the pope.

Just to make sure that we're not making a spiritual note.

Boy, there's some bad stuff here. That whole book is the Catechism? This is the Catechism, the whole thing, definitely. A little bigger than ours.

This is a little bigger. But you see why there's so many extra biblical things that they have to count for.

Well, the Baptist only found 613 rules.

Yeah. Yeah, so it's just a little bit different here. So one of the things I want to point out to you that is referenced here in the Roman Catholic Catechism regarding the pope. Notice what it says. The pope, the Bishop of Rome, and Peter's successor is the perpetual and invisible source and foundation of the unity of both the bishop and the whole company of the faithful.

Did you hear that? The pope is the foundation of the unity of the church. Who is the foundation of the church according to Ephesians 2 verse 17 onward? It's Christ. Jesus is the foundation. What is the pope trying to do?

He's taking over Jesus's position, which is interesting because when you look at other Roman Catholic Catechisms, particularly what we see with the, in their understanding of Mary and their theology, is that Mary essentially takes on roles that belong to Jesus.

And the pope also takes on roles that belong to Jesus. What they do is they take the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, and they make him lesser than by the way that they allow others to take functional responsibilities and roles that belong to Christ.

And so they lessen, so even though they confess the Trinity, they confess the unity of Christ, they make less of Christ by the way they strip him of his divine titles, his divine prerogatives, and assume those roles, because Peter married for the people of Rome.

Okay, so it's a very dangerous thing to do. I wanna continue reading what the Roman Catholic Catechism says regarding the pope. It says, for the Roman pope, by reason of his office, as vicar of Christ, I don't know what the word vicar means, vicar of Christ.

It's representative? Yes, it's representative. And it has more to do, not just with representative, and that like, I'm your lawyer representing you. It has more of a physical representation. So vicar has a connotation of having a fleshly representation, so that the pope is a fleshly representation of Christ.

He's not just a representation by virtue of some type of relationship, relational representation. Or rather, the pope is himself, according to another part of the Roman Catholic Catechism, is Christ the only flesh?

Is Christ the only flesh of the vicar? He's a representative. And he says, and as the pastor of the entire church, brothers and sisters, the pastor of the church, Christ, Christ is the only one who can be called the true pastor of the universal church.

Imagine if one of us came up here and says, we're a pastor, but we're not just your pastor, we're everyone's pastor. I mean, that's pretty bad stuff. And here the Roman Catholic Church is teaching that the pontiff, or in this case, the Bishop of Rome, is the pastor of the entire church.

And it says he has full, boy, supreme, and universal power over the whole church, a power which he can always exercise unhindered. I'm not making this up. I'm bringing this from their own Catechism, their own teaching, their own dogma.

How more blasphemous can it get? Who can say other than Christ that has full, supreme, universal power over the whole church? That belongs only to Christ. Colossians chapter one, Paul makes a beautiful argument, saying that he, Christ, is the image of the Eastern Episcopal God, the first world organization for by Him all things are created, and he is himself the head of the church, and the fullness thereof, okay?

And yet what does the Pope of Rome do and assume? He assumes what belongs only to Christ. He exalts himself, thereby exalting himself over God. Exalting himself over Christ.