The Faith of Amy Coney Barrett

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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture, and media from a Reformed perspective.
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Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
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Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
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And welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
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Today is September the 29th, 2020.
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And if you're following along in our daily Bible reading, today you're going to be reading 2 Peter chapter 3.
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If you'd like to get a copy of our daily Bible reading list, you can do so by going to our website, sgfcjacks.org.
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That's Sovereign Grace Family Church of Jacksonville.
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And if you are in the Jacksonville area and you do not have a church home, we would like to invite you to come and spend the next Lord's Day with us.
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We have Sunday school at 9.30 and worship at 10.30.
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Well today we're going to be engaging in a very important conversation about an important event that happened this past weekend.
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Today is Tuesday.
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Yesterday we would have dealt with this topic, but we didn't because yesterday was an important holiday.
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Yesterday was Yom Kippur, so I interviewed one of our elders, Brother Mike Collier, on the subject of the atonement and what that meant.
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And that of course was very important and we wanted to focus on that yesterday because of that holiday.
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But the weekend prior to that event, a very important and significant event happened in regard to our nation.
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And as many of you know, our nation has been going through a lot of political turmoil lately.
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This is an election year like I have never seen.
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There is absolute hatred.
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There is absolute just divide all over.
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There is a lot of animosity that is going on and we know that a lot of this has been irritated and exacerbated as a result of things that happened in regard to the COVID situation and then after that, of course, things that happened with the riots and the violence and things that happened as a result of the accusations of misbehavior by police in regard to Black Lives Matter and things like that.
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This has just been a difficult year and many of us have seen that it doesn't look like things are slowing down.
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It looks like things are just ramping up the closer we get to the election.
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And then just a few weeks ago, or now I guess it's looking like just a few days ago really, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and as a result you had the two factions, the two sides, the Democrats and the Republicans.
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They were coming at one another and the Democrats were saying, no, you can't fill her vacant seat until the presidential election is over.
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And the Republicans on the other side were saying, no, we have every right to fill her seat because the current president is a Republican and the current president has the right to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court until such time as he is not the president anymore.
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And even if he were to lose the election in November, he'll still be the president.
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And until the end of the year, he certainly has the power to go ahead and make this nomination.
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And he did.
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He chose to nominate a woman named Amy Coney Barrett.
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And as soon as I heard that he had nominated this woman, I, like many people, was very interested in who she is and what her background is and what her positions on the issues are.
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And I know this, I know that since her name was announced and since her nomination was announced this past Saturday, there have been copious amounts of articles.
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I'm sure there are going to be thousands of podcasts this week that are going out in regard to her and her life and her record as a judge.
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But one of the things that is most important to me, and I'm sure is important to many of you, my listeners, is the question of what is her faith? What does she believe? Because as we know, what we believe influences how we behave and what we believe influences what our values are.
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Ultimately, our worldview is framed, first of all, whether or not we believe in God, whether we have a theistic worldview or an atheistic worldview or an agnostic worldview.
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Those are all formed by first trying to understand the world around us.
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And right away, when Amy Coney Barrett's name was put out there, it was accompanied by the phrase, she's a Roman Catholic, she's a Roman Catholic.
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And immediately people started saying, you know, she's a she's a Catholic.
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And I have looked into a little further and found that she's actually, even though she would identify likely as a Catholic, she is part of a group that is not exactly what most of us would think of when we think of a traditional Roman Catholic.
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And so that's kind of what I wanted to talk about on the program today.
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I'm going to be citing two specific sources.
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If you're interested in looking at what I'm looking at, I'm looking at first an article in The Guardian.
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The article is entitled, Who is Amy Coney Barrett, Trump's anti-abortion Supreme Court nominee? And by the way, that is how she is being tagged, both by the right and by the left.
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And this is one of the reasons why I think the left hates her so much, and they've already demonstrated a lot of hatred towards her, is because she does seem to be a person who is pro-life.
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And just for a moment, just for a little side note here, that is one of the areas that Roman Catholics and Protestants do share in regard to our mutual faith, or in regard to our faiths, because I do think there's a distinction between Roman Catholic theology and Protestant theology, and I think I might later on, in a program this week, I might go ahead and deal with that too, and why does the divide between Roman Catholic and Protestant matter? And the big question is, does Rome have the Gospel? And I think that may be a question I deal with on a later episode.
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Hint, the answer is no, I don't believe Rome has the Gospel, that was the reason for the Reformation.
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But that is, again, a topic for a later episode, but the point is, in regard to this, we have one thing that we share with Catholics, and that is a devotion to life, a devotion to the fact that life begins at conception.
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I remember years ago, I went to a March for Life, it was downtown Jacksonville, I don't think it was an actual, it may have been the March for Life, I don't remember if it was named something else, but it was essentially a pro-life march.
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And Jennifer and I went, and we walked around, and we noticed, as we began to look around, that there wasn't a lot of people there who were Protestants.
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A lot of the people that were there were Roman Catholics.
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And you could tell by, some of it because of the way they were dressed, and some of them were actual priests and nuns and stuff, and so that was fairly obvious.
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But some of them had t-shirts from their particular Catholic churches, you know, that identified themselves as being Catholic.
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And then, of course, we had some conversations with folks, and there was a lot of Catholics.
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So, if Amy Coney Barrett is a Roman Catholic, then it is true to say that she's anti-abortion, if she is being consistent.
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One of the things that we have seen among those on the left who say that they are Catholic, is they're inconsistent on this issue, because many of them would say, well, I am pro-life, but I'm not going to take away a woman's right to choose.
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And so they become pro-abortion in their voting.
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And that's monstrous to say, yes, I believe it's a baby in the womb, and I believe that that child has dignity, and that that child is made in the image of God.
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But because of political pressure, I'm going to say it's okay to murder that child.
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That's absolutely repugnant.
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But that is what we see a lot from those who would say, yes, I'm a Roman Catholic, but I'm going to vote to allow for the murder of children in the womb.
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So, the first thing we could say is, yes, the things that are coming out about Amy Coney Barrett, about her being pro-life, those things seem to be true.
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But I want to, again, I'm going to cite the Guardian, and then I'm going to go to the website of what's known as the People of Praise.
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Because this is the community that Amy Coney Barrett is supposed to be a part of.
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And I've looked into it some, I've kind of researched it for today's program.
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And it's actually quite interesting, because if it is actually true that she's a part of this group, and it seems to be, then she's not what we might identify as a regular Roman Catholic.
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She seems to have some charismatic leanings.
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And it's interesting, as many of you who are familiar with the last 100 years of church history, the last 150 years of church history, the rise of Pentecostalism in the early 1900s, that actually gave birth to the Charismatic Movement.
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And the Charismatic Movement went throughout various denominations.
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So you had the Pentecostals, but then you had Charismatics within the Anglican Church, you had Charismatics within the Episcopalian Church, you had Charismatics in all the different denominations, but you also had Charismatic Roman Catholics.
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And so that is very, I think that was in the 60s when that began to happen.
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There was a widespread sort of charismatic adoption that happened in a lot of those various denominations.
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And so this group, the People of Praise, and I'm going to read from their website in a moment, they identify themselves as a charismatic Christian community.
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But before we do that, I want to make a few points from The Guardian.
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This is the article from The Guardian.
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It says, just reading from the beginning, it says, Subject to confirmation by the Senate, Amy Coney Barrett will be the youngest justice on the U.S.
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Supreme Court, a position from which she will be set to influence American life for decades yet to come.
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Donald Trump's nomination of the 48-year-old comes two years after her name surfaced as a possible replacement for the retiring Anthony Kennedy, whose seat was ultimately filled by Brett Kavanaugh after contentious confirmation hearings.
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And that leads me to the first thing I want to mention.
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Whatever we feel about Amy Coney Barrett, whatever we think about her in regard to her faith, we as believers should be praying for her as a person, as an image bearer of God.
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Because over the next few days, weeks leading up to her confirmation, however long that's going to take, and I don't know how long it's going to take, this is going to become an absolute nightmare for her as an individual.
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If we look back just a few years ago to the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, there was mayhem that happened, and they attacked him every which way that was possible.
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There were accusations of all kinds.
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I believe, if I remember correctly, it spawned the Me Too movement, trying to prove that this man had done something in his younger years that was so repugnant that it would make him unable to fill that seat.
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They were trying to find anything they could to hang on this man, and ultimately it failed.
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Ultimately, he went on to become a Supreme Court justice.
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And I have no doubt that Amy Coney Barrett is about to become the object of this same type of vitriolic attack.
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And I fear for her.
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I really do.
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In my heart, I think about what she is going to have to go through.
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And obviously she's willing to go through it.
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She accepted the nomination, and so she knows what's going to happen.
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I don't think that she in any way is unaware of what is about to happen.
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I think about her children.
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I've seen the picture.
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Many of you have seen the picture of her with her family.
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She has seven children.
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She has some children that she adopted from Haiti, and that has also become a point of contention, which is amazing to me that she would adopt children that were from another country and, of course, were of a different ethnic heritage than her own.
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And she's being attacked for that.
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Rather than being seen as loving and wanting to help, she's being attacked.
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The attacks are coming from all sides.
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And it really is a sad thing to watch.
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And as believers, no matter where we come out understanding her faith, at least our hearts have to go out to the fact that what she's facing, what her family will most likely face, is a horrible thing.
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And we need to be praying for her and for them.
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But I want to read one more little snippet here from the article, and then we're going to move over to the website, the People of Praise.
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It says, to the fore is Barrett's religious faith, prominently her association with People of Praise, a charismatic Christian group with what is described as an authoritarian internal structure.
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Arguments from both political factions have been publicly rehearsed.
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Will Barrett's religious convictions affect her performance as a Supreme Court justice, or should they have nothing to do with determining her fitness for such an important role? Now, historically, the United States has not had a religious test for someone who was going to hold an office.
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They did not have to hold to a particular religious viewpoint.
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They did not have to hold to a particular view.
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But we all saw the hearing, and I don't remember when it happened, but we all saw the hearing with Sanders, Bernie Sanders, as he was talking to a man who was a Christian who had written an article for a Christian school.
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And the man had written the article, and it said that essentially Jesus was the only way to heaven, Christians were the only ones going to heaven, basic Christian doctrine.
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And Bernie Sanders was saying, so you're telling me that a non-Christian is under the curse of God, and you're telling me that a non-Christian, that a Muslim is not right with God.
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And basically what Sanders was doing was saying, he's like, I think it's repugnant that such a person would be able to hold office, holding the views that you hold.
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And ultimately the point was, if you're a Christian, you shouldn't be able to hold office.
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That was what everyone took away from that, because Sanders wasn't citing some obscure Christian sort of side doctrine.
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It was the standard doctrine of Christianity.
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Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven.
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He is the way, the truth, and life.
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No one comes to the Father except through him.
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This is basic Christianity 101.
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Sanders cites it, and he says, this is too far.
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This is over the top.
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And all of us look back and we said, okay, there appears to now be a religious test to hold office in the United States.
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That's not something that has been in the past, but now, of course, because the left will not accept anything except for total agreement with their position.
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They will not accept anything except for total lockstep with what they believe and hold true.
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And so, therefore, if you are not in lockstep with them, you are not worthy to hold office.
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And so, of course, whatever Amy Coney Barrett's religious views are, if they are in any way Christian, they are going to come under attack.
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And this leads us to the website.
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This is actually from the People of Praise, their website.
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Under their About section, they have a Who We Are, and I'm going to read just the first portion under the Who We Are.
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It says, People of Praise is a charismatic Christian community.
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We admire the first Christians who were led by the Holy Spirit to form a community.
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Those early believers put their lives and their possessions in common, and there were no needy persons among them.
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Jesus desires unity for all people.
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We live out this unity the best we can in spite of the divisions within Christianity.
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We are Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, and other denominational and non-denominational Christians.
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Despite our differences, we are bound together by our Christian baptism.
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Despite our differences, we worship together.
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And while remaining faithful members of our own churches, we have found a way to live our daily lives together.
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And it goes on.
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Basically, this is an ecumenical movement.
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And ecumenism is the idea that all—well, there's different ways of looking at it, but basically ecumenism is the idea that all faiths should come together under one banner.
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And some broader ecumenical movements would say all faiths in general—so Jews, Muslims, Christians, whatever—should all come together under one banner.
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But specifically, when you hear of ecumenism or the ecumenical movement, typically that's been trying to break down denominational divides.
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And we've seen that be fairly common, especially when you have Methodists and Presbyterians and Anglicans and stuff worshiping together.
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Baptists maybe get in there as well, and they worship together, and they say, you know what? We're all Christians.
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We have various denominational differences.
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Our views on baptism, our view—a lot of these things are secondary.
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But where I think this group really makes a huge distinction, and it's right here in their website, is they would say that Roman Catholicism fits alongside of all of these other denominations.
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So you have, going back to their list, they said Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians, non-denominational and denominational churches.
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This is something that, for me, would make this group unable to participate.
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I could participate with something that might have—like, I do a lot of things with my Presbyterian brethren, even though we would disagree on certain aspects of covenantal theology.
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We would disagree especially on who is a proper candidate for baptism.
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We still hold to the very same essential doctrines of what is the gospel, what is the atonement, how do these things work.
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But I can't have that same type of fellowship with a Roman Catholic, because I would say very clearly that Roman Catholics do not have the gospel.
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As I said, I'm going to try to explain this further in a future episode.
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I don't know that I'll be able to do it tomorrow's episode, because my plan is to respond to the debate.
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So keep your ears out for tomorrow's episode.
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I'm planning to do a late-night recording and have it prepared for Wednesday morning to respond to the debate between the two presidential candidates.
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Because I think this issue is going to come up, and I want to hear it.
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I want to be able to talk about it.
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But getting back to the Roman Catholic thing, this whole ecumenical idea reminds me of a story that happened in the life of R.C.
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Sproul.
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Everybody knows how much I love R.C.
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Sproul, so I want to tell a story that he told, and this is how I'm going to draw everything to a close today.
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As I said earlier, I think that the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett was a good nomination in many ways.
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She seems to be a very educated woman.
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I think that she is, in fact, pro-life, and that, I think, is going to be a big step forward in regard to the court.
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So I would support that.
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I would be encouraged by that.
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But the question of her faith, what is her faith? It seems to be that she's a part of a movement, a charismatic Christian movement, that sees the lines drawn between Christians as being, for lack of a better term, the lines drawn between Christians are irrelevant.
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That we need to just be able to, by the Holy Spirit, come together and let those walls fall.
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And a lot of people feel that way.
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But, as I said, I want to tell this story from the life of the late Dr.
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Sproul, because this story has stuck with me for years, and I remember when he told it, and this is so important, because he said one day he was at his office, and a group of people came to his office and asked to speak with him, and it was a group of people that were making a claim similar to what is made here by the people of praise.
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And that is that they had, by the Holy Spirit's power, become unified, and they were no longer separated by their denominational differences.
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And they had Roman Catholics, and they had Methodists, and they had all these different people of differing, very different theological backgrounds, and they said, you know what, Dr.
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Sproul, you need to join us because we have, by the Spirit's power, we have become unified, and all of our differences have been set aside, and we are now unified under the banner of love, and we are together.
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And Dr.
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Sproul said, that's great.
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I think that is wonderful.
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He said, but let me ask you one question.
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I do have to know the answer to this one question before I could get involved with your group.
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He said, is a man justified by faith alone or not? And he said, within five minutes, they were at each other's throats.
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You see, here's the thing.
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When we think about movements like this one, the movement that says we can have unity in the midst of all this diverse belief, at some point, they're having to lay aside truth.
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At some point, they're having to say, our unity is more important than truth, and my firm conviction is that unity will never be more important than the truth.
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The truth must stand first, because if we have unity in error, then that is not true unity.
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We have to have unity in the truth.
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So, how do I feel about Amy Coney Barrett's group that she's a part of? I would say, I probably wouldn't join that group.
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However, I think that she is a person, whether or not she is a genuine Christian or not, I think she is a person, one, is an image bearer of God.
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She doesn't deserve what she's about to get, and she's about to get, I think, a lot of attacks.
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So, I want to pray for her, and I want to encourage you to do the same.
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And also, pray for her that if she is lost, and we don't know, because I don't know her heart, that she would come to know the Lord, because what more important thing for her could there be than to know Jesus Christ? Here's the thing.
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She could sit on the highest court in the land for the rest of her life, but one day, she's going to face a judge greater than she, just like you and just like me.
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All of us are going to face the judge of the universe one day, and we will face the judge of the universe with, we'll either have one of two answers.
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We'll either say we have trusted in Christ and in his finished work, or we will say we have trusted in something else.
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If we have trusted in Christ, we will not be put to shame, but if we have trusted in anything else, we will be lost.
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So, I hope this has been helpful for you today.
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I hope it has encouraged you to maybe look a little bit further into this, if this is a subject that interests you.
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And, of course, as always, I want to thank you for being with us today and listening to the program.
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My name is Keith Foskey, and I have been your Calvinist.
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May God bless you.
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Thank you for listening to today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist.
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If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe and provide us feedback.
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We love to hear your comments and questions and may even engage with them in a future episode.
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As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
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All who come to him in repentance and faith will find him to be a perfect Savior.
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He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him.
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May God be with you.