5 - Roman Catholicism, Part 3

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16 - Biblical Hermeneutics, Biographical Studies, Part 1

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Well, welcome to the

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Striving for Eternity Academy's School of World Religions. This is our class on an overview or introduction to the major Western religions.

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We are glad to have you with us. If you have been following with us, you know that we are right now in lesson number three, well, lesson number two, sorry, part three,

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Roman Catholicism. We've been looking at Roman Catholicism. This is the third part, and before we mention where to get the syllabus and all, let me first start, this is a ministry of Striving for Eternity Ministries that is put together and you can get more information about us at strivingforeternity .org.

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And I need to say up front some things that have been happening online from the last two classes that went online.

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On our Facebook page and some of the YouTube page, when we had these classes out there, we have had a lot of Roman Catholics that have started to interact with these classes.

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So let me give some, if you're going to interact as a Roman Catholic with these classes, may I give you some helpful advice to start?

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And I want to do this right from the beginning. One, if you want to criticize these classes, please watch the classes.

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Yeah, that's right. Watch the classes before you criticize them. I've been seeing the criticisms about how

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I am nothing but a ex -Catholic who's upset with the

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Catholic Church. If you're making that claim, I know you didn't watch the classes because in the classes

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I've said that I was raised Jewish and not

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Catholic. I was raised to believe that Jesus Christ is

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Hitler's God because the Catholic Church helped fund Hitler in his killing of six million

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Jews. I had no love for Christ nor the Catholic Church growing up. As far as I grew up, the

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Catholic Church was responsible for the Inquisitions, the Crusades, and the Holocaust, all right?

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So it wasn't that I'm ex -Catholic. Now if you're going to criticize and say

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I don't know what I'm talking about, when I say what I say about the Roman Catholic Church, please keep in mind, as I've said in each of the classes,

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I am getting my information not only from the study of much of Catholic history, but primarily, and all of what

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I'm saying is documented, and from specifically the Catholic Catechism blessed by Pope John Paul II.

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So if what I'm saying is not true, then Pope John Paul II doesn't know

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Catholic doctrine. So if the Pope's not Catholic, I guess then that's okay.

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Just saying. The reality is most Roman Catholics don't understand what

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Roman Catholicism teaches. Just like as we had in the lesson on Judaism, most moderate

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Jews don't understand what Judaism teaches. And you're going to see the same with Islam and the same with many of these religions.

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There are people who are raised in this religion and they get defensive, but their defense is not one from an educated argument where they've actually studied what the organization believes.

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And in this case, I'm giving you what the Roman Catholic Church believes. Alright, that said, oh actually that's right, thank you.

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One more thing that I do have to say when we're dealing with this is there's been some argument or reaction to the idea

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Catholic, meaning that it's in the creeds, the early creeds, the Catholic Church, and therefore

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God ordained the Catholic Church. The word Catholic means unified.

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That's all it meant. So when we see that in the creeds, it doesn't mean the Roman Catholic Church that we speak of today with all of their doctrines.

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It means the unified church, the body, the one body of Christ. That's what it means.

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So we need to understand words and their meanings in their historical context. So now, if you're following along with the notes, you can pick up a syllabus at our store, store .strivingforeternity

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.org, or just go to our website, strivingforeternity .org, pick up a copy of the study of Western religions, the student copy, and you can follow along.

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Now this is one of the studies that we have, and we hope to get all of our studies done this way, that there's a teacher's copy and a student copy.

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And if you pick up this teacher's copy, then you can teach these lessons in your

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Sunday school class, homeschool, whatever you want to do. We've actually been very, very surprised at how many homeschoolers use our

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Striving for Eternity Academy materials for homeschooling. Some we didn't expect, and that's one of the reasons we're working on generating tests and quizzes and extra reading and things like that.

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And that will be in later classes that will have that. That being said, you can get the teacher's edition.

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Another resource you can get that has all the information on the religions I'm referring to is my book,

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What Do They Believe? This is a systematic theology of the major Western religions.

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It is something that you can get, and you'll have all the notes. When I teach through these classes, I'm skipping a lot of stuff, and you will be able to see everything in that book.

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And you can get that book as well from strivingforeternity .org, all right?

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So you'd be able to pick that up there. Let us begin, shall we? And as we start, we are now at the point we looked at.

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Let's just do a review if we could. And I will say this as well for the engineer's sake. Again, I said this in the previous classes, but the slides are a little bit different than where we just put some scripture up there.

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I didn't want to say throw up scripture because that just doesn't sound right. Yeah. So we put up these different organizations.

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In this case, Roman Catholic Church, I'm going to put up paragraphs from the Catholic Catechism. So you'll see paragraph numbers.

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It's going to have the Catholic Catechism. If we don't get it seamed up right, it may mean that I didn't give the engineer the slide or I just have it in the wrong order.

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So this doesn't flow as smoothly, just so you know. But we'll start with an overview. Where we did look at, we looked at the authority of the

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Roman Catholic Church. And in that, we saw their view that they have of their tradition.

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We saw that beyond tradition, they had their view of scripture. And then lastly, their authority was the church itself.

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Then we looked specifically at their view of the Trinity and then looked at Jesus Christ, their view of Christ.

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Now in there, we looked at the role that Mary has in the Roman Catholic Church.

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And we looked a little bit at their view of sin. And now if you're following along, we're going to look at number five, the view of salvation.

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The view of salvation. So we're going to dig into this. And you're going to see that here is where we're really going to see some differences between Roman Catholic doctrine and Biblical Christianity.

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And you say, whoa, Andrew, wait a minute. You're making a distinction. Aren't Roman Catholics Christian? Well, in the

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Council of Trent, the Catholic Church said that people like myself are cursed to hell forever.

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Therefore, they made a distinction. The distinction was that we're not them and they're not us.

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So if I'm making that distinction, don't get upset with me. Catholic Church did it too.

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Actually, I'd say they did it first, right? They were before me. So the point being is they saw this distinction.

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And I understand Vatican II just calls us separated brothers. I'm probably going to get to this later in the lesson.

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But they say that we would just be separated brothers. But the reality is once they've said what they said in Trent and they re -emphasized in Vatican I, yes, they made changes in Vatican II, but they never rescinded what they said in Trent and Vatican I.

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So those things still would be. And I argue that that is some of the issues. But we'll get to that in some moments.

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Let's look at the salvation and what does the Roman Catholic Church, and again, sometimes

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I will shorten this to just RCC for Roman Catholic Church, what does the

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Roman Catholic Church believe about salvation? Well, they believe there's two elements necessary for salvation.

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Well, for justification before God. And we would call that salvation. So when we talk about this justification before God, there's two elements.

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Faith and works. And if you're following along in a syllabus, those are your two blanks. Faith and works.

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Okay, now this becomes important. If you are speaking to a Roman Catholic and you argue that they do not believe in salvation by faith, they're going to disagree with you.

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Okay? Because they say, yes, you need faith. Really the question is faith alone.

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And this was the main issue during the Reformation between the Reformers and the Catholic Church.

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They argued over the definition of salvation by faith alone. Not by works.

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So the Roman Catholic Church believes that both are required to be justified before God and that God dispenses salvation through the

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Church and Mary. We're going to get to that in just a bit. But yeah, see the Church and Mary are necessary for salvation.

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We already talked some on Mary in the last class, so you should review that one if you haven't.

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But Roman Catholics say, I believe in salvation by faith, but not faith alone.

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Alright? That becomes the big issue. Now some people, as we had this week, some people said, well, the five solos of the

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Reformation, they're not in the Bible. So therefore, they're not biblical.

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Hmm. Let's think about that. My response was, well, that's right. Those five solos are not in the

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Bible. But then again, the word Bible is not in the Bible just saying.

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So by your line of thinking, sir, the Bible's not biblical. Because the word

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Bible's not in the Bible. And oh, by the way, the word Trinity's not in the Bible either. But we see the doctrine taught very clearly.

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So does that mean God is not triune because the word doesn't appear? That's what Jehovah Witnesses try to argue. And a

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Roman Catholic would argue against that. So please be consistent. The five solos are taught in the

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Scripture. Actually, I went on to say that there's some other things in Roman Catholicism that are taught against in the

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Bible. Tradition of men, condemned in the New Testament. Condemned.

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But the Catholic Church teaches them. In fact, they hold that up as an authority. Yeah. So when you look at that, if you're going to argue that it's got to be in the

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Bible, then tradition doesn't appear in the Bible, in a good way at least. Tradition is held as something to be condemned.

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So we shouldn't be following traditions of men. So if you're going to argue that, please be consistent.

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And recognize that you hold to things that you will not find those words in the Bible. And they're going to go, oh, but it's in the

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Latin. Yeah. I had someone try to argue that once with me.

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The Bible wasn't written in Latin, just saying. So as we discussed in the section on authority though, the

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RCC makes a direct tie between the authority of the

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Church and salvation. Do we have 95? Alright, good.

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Let's look at this one. And as you see here, it says,

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It is clear, therefore, that the supremely wise arrangement of God, sacred

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Scripture, and the magisterium of the

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Church are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the others.

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Working together, each in its own way, under the action of the Holy Spirit, they all contribute effectively to the salvation of the souls.

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Now, leave this up because I want us to see this. Because I'm making this point, and the

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Roman Catholics have been saying that I'm not being accurate with their doctrine. What does it say is effective to bringing salvation of the souls?

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Three things that can't be separated. One can't stand without the other. Tradition is...

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I always noticed that when I read through the Catechism, tradition was almost always, if not always, listed first.

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But tradition, Scripture, and the Church, the magisterium. So, what you have there is you see that their authority, their tradition, and the

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Church are necessary. We're going to get to that in a moment in more detail. But since they believe it's our choice, when we looked at the issue of sin, since they believe that it's our choice that saves us, then it makes us also believe that it is our sin that can lose us.

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162, if we have that? We do. Good. Thank you. And if there is a slight delay, it's only because I have to look at my screen to see if you have that slide up.

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Alright, so. This says, paragraph 162 of the Roman Catholic Catechism, blessed by Pope John Paul II.

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This isn't me making it up. It says, Faith is an entirely free gift that God makes to man.

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We can lose this priceless gift to live, grow, and persevere in the faith until the end.

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We must nourish it with the Word of God. We must beg of the

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Lord to increase our faith. It must be working through charity, abounding in hope, and rooted in the faith of the

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Church. Do you notice how that says there, you can lose your salvation? Well, that's consistent, actually.

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Let's be honest. If you can save yourself, then you can lose it. If it's your works that save you, your works can be lost.

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Alright? We're going to look at that again in a little bit more detail. So when they, Roman Catholic Church discusses other religions, however, they talk about salvation kind of through a fear or reckoning, acknowledging of a

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God. Do we have 841? Actually, just 841 and 843.

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Let's start with 841 if we do. Okay, good. Look at this. And this is what I said too.

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They've softened their view of those that believe outside of the Catholic Church. You used to, if you weren't of the

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Catholic Church, you were condemned to hell. Let's see what it says. The Church's relationship with the Muslims, the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the

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Creator. In the first place, amongst those are Muslims, those who, these profess to hold the faith of Abraham.

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And together with us, they adorn one merciful God, man's kind, the judge of the last days.

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Now, just notice they don't say in first place amongst whom are the

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Protestant Christians or the Jews. It's first the Muslims. Wow, because the

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Muslims have a very different view, as we'll see in the next class, very different view than the Catholic Church in a lot of areas.

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How about 843? The Roman Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search amongst, among shadows and images for the

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God who is unknown yet near since He gives life and breath and all things, wants all men to be saved.

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Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as preparation for the

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Gospel and giving Him who enlightens men that they may at length have life.

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And so, do you notice what it says there? All the other religions, they are preparing the way of salvation because the ultimate salvation, as we're going to see, comes through the

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Church. But let's start with faith, alright? Faith. Now, I said there's two things, faith and works.

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We're going to look at some other things as we look into this, as I said. But faith, let's start there. The Roman Catholic Church clearly believes that faith is man's response to God.

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It's man's response to God. That's a quote from paragraph 26, okay?

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Faith is man's response to God. And quote, and this is paragraph 183, quote, faith is necessary for salvation, unquote.

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And we would say, amen, it is necessary for salvation. We're going to look if it's faith alone, though, in a moment.

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It is something that is obtained by God and can be lost.

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We already looked at that. That's your blank there in your syllabus. It can be lost by men.

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Now, faith is often in connection with baptism. Just a couple of verses.

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Well, let me give you some paragraphs. Faith is most often connected with baptism in paragraph 782, 784, 804, 846, 866, 977, 1226.

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Now, it's also connected very closely, faith and works. This is section 1815 to 1816.

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And then you can look at 2037. Now, I'm not going to show all those up here because of time.

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But if you go and get my book, What Do They Believe? You can either get a Catholic Catechism or you can get my book and read each of those.

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Now, with that said, let me also mention as we look through here that the

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Roman Catholic Church has a close connection between faith and baptism, as I mentioned. And we're going to discuss that more.

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It's going to have a close connection between faith tying that to saving works.

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We're going to get to that as well. We're also going to see that it's the object of the person's faith is not just Christ, but the

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Church. So that's where we're going to end up looking. So let's look at works. As we look at works, the

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Roman Catholic Church teaches that man can merit grace. That's your blanks there if you have a syllabus.

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The Roman Catholic Church teaches that men can merit grace for their salvation.

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This is really important because this is under a section of works now. So we're talking about works.

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Let's take a look at some. Do we have 546, maybe? Hopefully.

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Oh, good, we do. There you go. Oh, we have the next one, too. Great. So this is paragraph 546.

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It says, Works are not enough. Deeds are, look at that, required.

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Required. Now, if you're saying it's required, then it is a works -based salvation. Because the basis of the salvation, the requirement of it is not words, because words are not enough.

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Deeds. It says, words are not, did I say works? I'm sorry.

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Words are not enough. Deeds are required. So, words can't save you.

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But works can. Now, not to have it there once, but twice.

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Here's paragraph 837. Even though incorporated into the church, one who does not, however, persevere in charity is not saved.

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Now, let's be fair with that language. Because there are some who would say, yes, but that same language is in the

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Bible. And we understand that perseverance of the saints is because God does the persevering.

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That would be a very fair argument. Because that's actually right. We do see that.

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And so when it talks about persevering, however, we have to keep in mind how the Roman Catholic Church views works.

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That views it differently than the way Biblical Christianity would. And so these works are works of grace that are found in the liturgical system and in the sacraments.

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And we're going to look at that in just a few minutes to see that and more. But what you end up seeing, the point

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I'm saying there is when we look at this, we have to understand that the works are the things that save.

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As it said, deeds are necessary for salvation. We have,

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I'm just trying to look at some of the other passages that we have here. Those who obey, this is 851.

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It says here, Those who obey the prompting of the spirit of truth are already on their way, on the way of salvation.

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Notice, they're not saved. So you see, those who obey the prompting of the Holy Spirit, they're only on the right path.

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They're not saved yet. The works are the thing that's going to save them. So we have to keep that in mind when we look at this within the

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Roman Catholic understanding of it. Do I have any others?

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I do? Okay, which one do I have? Let's put that up there. Okay, 889. Sorry, 998.

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My dyslexia set in. Sorry about that. Paragraph 998 says,

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Who will rise? All the dead will rise. Those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

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You notice, this isn't based on Christ. It's based on those who did good. Now, let's look at a couple of things real quick.

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I said the liturgy. The liturgy is something that saves in Roman Catholicism. The Roman Catholic Church teaches that, and this is a quote,

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Christ manifests, make present and communicate his work of salvation through the liturgy of the

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Church. That's paragraph 1076. The liturgy is the order of worship, the sacraments, the prayers, and so sacraments are going to become a big thing.

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The liturgy often requires the use of special wording to be spoken at specific times during the sacraments or services and special people, special authorities that have to do it.

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The Roman Catholic Church believes that the liturgy itself communicates salvation.

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I'll just give you one, actually. I don't know if we have 688, but it says, in the sacramental liturgy through its words and symbols in which the

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Holy Spirit puts us into communion with Christ. You see that?

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We get that communion through this liturgy system.

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What are some of those things? Let's look at one, sacraments. The sacraments.

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When we look at the sacraments, I don't think... I should have put a slide. Do I have a slide that lists the seven sacraments?

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No, I don't. My fault. Again, if you get my book, What Do They Believe?, you can get all of this list.

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The sacrament is the visible sign of the hidden reality of salvation.

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That's paragraph 744. It's the visible sign of the hidden reality of salvation.

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The RCC believes that they are efficacious. That's paragraph 1127.

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In 1131, it says necessary for salvation. You see, this sacramental system, they are efficacious.

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In other words, they cause, they bring about the salvation. They're the means of salvation. They're necessary for salvation.

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If they're efficacious for salvation, they are the means of salvation.

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Therefore, yes, they're necessary. What are they? There are seven of them. We're going to look at two.

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Baptism. One is baptism. Two, confirmation. When someone is,

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I think it's about 13, they get confirmed. They go through a catechism on what the Catholic Church believes. Then they pass that test and go for their,

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I think it's their first Mass that they can partake in. I think that's the first time they're allowed to.

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It's usually a big deal. Kind of similar to the Jewish Bar Mitzvah. You have baptism.

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We're going to look in more detail. Confirmation. Three is the Eucharist. When they take of the Mass, they take of what's called the

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Eucharist. This is supposedly the body of Christ that they take within them. When they do that, they receive grace.

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That is why you have people that take Mass as much as they can to get more of the grace.

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It's really what the sacrament is. It's an adding of grace. By partaking in the Mass, you're gaining more grace.

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Penance. I'm really having trouble with some words. Penance. I can't say it.

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P -E -N -A -N -C -E. Penance. There we go. Thank you.

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Penance. We're going to look at penance as well in more detail. The anointing of the sick.

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Holy orders. Then you have matrimony. Getting married actually adds grace.

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What? I've often taught that marriage is a sanctifying relationship.

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You think very highly of yourself until you get married and you're living with someone that's going to let you know when you do something wrong and correct you very often.

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I often say you really want to know what someone's like. Ask their spouse. Matrimony is a sanctifying thing.

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I just don't think it adds additional grace. The sacramental system is a central theme though in the

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Roman Catholic Church. Sacraments are used for the unity of the

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Roman Catholic Church. Paragraph 815. The Roman Catholic Church believes that other churches may be close to Christ or even close to salvation or on the way the path of salvation.

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We've seen that already. Without the sacraments properly administered by the apostolic succession they can never reach the goal.

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It is the sacramental system that keeps the RCC the dispensers of salvation.

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You have to go through the RCC to get this salvation. Just for the sake of time,

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I'm not going to put any of those verses up because I do want to get through this lesson this week.

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Like I said, I don't want to keep repeating it, but you can get the Roman Catholic Catechism, you can look up these quotes, you can get my book, and I have all the references there and all the quotes that I mentioned.

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One person did say that most of my book seems to be just quotations of other resources and it is because I'm trying to make the case that I'm not making this up.

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I gave so many quotations in my book because I'm trying to make the point that this is something that is what's being taught throughout.

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Alright, so let's look at baptism real quick. Baptism. The RCC believes that baptism is necessary for salvation.

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Necessary, that's your first blank. Necessary for salvation, paragraph 846. And is efficacious.

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That's paragraphs, the ones I gave you is 694 and 1306.

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So your two blanks there are necessary and efficacious. Didn't we see those two words just a moment ago with sacraments?

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Yeah, we did. And baptism is a sacrament, so we would see that. So let's take a look. Do we have 1257?

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I know I have it in my notes. Okay, I don't see it up, so no. Alright, let me read from what you have in the syllabus.

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If you have a syllabus this is yet an advantage of getting the syllabus. You can pick one of those up at strivingforeternity .org

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The syllabuses are about $25 each. This one is a little bit thicker than most, so we still try to keep the cost at the same amount.

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So this is what it says in 1256 and 1257.

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Oh, I see it up there now. Okay, so we did have it. Sorry about that. It says, so you can read along on the screen.

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The necessity of baptism for salvation. Do you notice that? It's necessity. The Lord himself affirms that baptism is necessary for salvation.

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Baptism is necessary. Now what you see there, you see those elliptices? It's me because it was a very long thing and to get it on the slide

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I just gave you the important part there. But you see there three times that it's necessary for salvation.

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Now let's keep reading. The church does not know of any means other than baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude.

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God has bound salvation to the sacrament of baptism. Alright, so the

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RCC when they talk about salvation through faith, it is most often, as I mentioned earlier, linked with baptism.

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You want some paragraphs in their Catholic Catechism? 14, 172, 403, 782, 784, 818, 864.

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I'm tired of giving them all. There's more. Get my book. The Roman Catholic view of baptism is that it washes away the effects of original sin.

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This is something that's important to understand because this is why baptism is so important within Roman Catholicism.

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They know no other means of washing away original sin. So when you get baptized, that effect of original sin is now gone so that now you can choose

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God. That's what gives a person the ability to be able to choose God. It also provides the forgiveness that's your blank there, the forgiveness of past sins.

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The forgiveness of past sins. When you look at this, understand that the way they view baptism is very important because it ties to their view of sin and their view of salvation.

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When you get baptized in the Roman Catholic system, the understanding would be is that it's wiping away or washing away the effects of original sin and if you're an adult and you convert, it's going to get rid of any of your past sins.

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That's actually similar to Islam by the way. Just saying, Islam would hold to the same thing that once you get converted all your past deeds are gone.

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So as an 8 day old that would be baptized, you figure how many sins do they really have to wash away.

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Maybe not too many but if you get converted to Catholicism as an adult, maybe you have more.

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So the issue there being is that the idea that baptism will wash away your sins.

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It removes the effect of original sin. I'm going to skip some of the passages that we have there if that's okay.

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I want to get now to penance. Let's look at letter B there in your syllabus.

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The RCC teaches that they have the power scary, yep they have the power, that's your blank there, by God to forgive sins committed after baptism.

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So the first sacrament baptism, it gets rid of all the sins, gets rid of original sin.

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Now what do you do when you sin? You go to the church. The church has another sacrament called penance that has the power to forgive sins.

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This is paragraph 1442 and 1445.

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Do we have either of those? Okay, we have 1445. There we go. Reconciliation with the church is inseparable with God.

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You see it's inseparable. This was not the one

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I was originally thinking. Do we have the other? Okay, there we go.

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Good, thank you. The sacrament of penance is a whole consisting of three actions of the penitent and the priest obsolete.

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So the priest absolves. That's what that's going to mean. He gets rid of.

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Alright, so let's keep reading. The penitent, that's the person who's repentant by the way, just in case you don't know the terminology.

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So the penitent's acts, notice the works, the penitent's acts are repentance, confession or disclosure of sin to the priest, and intention to make reformation and do works of reformation.

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So what you have here is three things. Let's leave this up for a moment. You have the repentance, but then it has to be confessed to a priest.

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See again, the tying of the Catholic Church. It's the priest is there. And then they have works that they have to do to make up for it.

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Back to that works -based salvation. So you see here, the penitence is the work that through the church you can do.

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But it's the power to forgive sin. So, the

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RCC teaches that they have the power by God to forgive sins committed after baptism in the sacraments of penance.

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They believe that penance is as necessary for salvation as baptism.

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That's paragraph 890. Sorry, 980. 980, there we go. It is through the sacrament of penance that the baptized can be reconciled with the church.

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Penance has rightly been called by the Holy Fathers a laborious act, a laborious kind of baptism.

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The sacrament of penance is necessary for salvation for those who have fallen after baptism, just as baptism is necessary for salvation for those who have yet to be reborn.

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So the reborn is kind of tied with the baptism. So penance is necessary to being reconciled back to God after we fall after baptism.

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I'm going to, let me just skip, I want to skip, let me skip to, and there's more again, there's more details of this if you get the book,

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What Do They Believe? You'll get more information there. But let's go to letter C. The church as dispenser.

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The church as dispenser. The RCC believes that the church through apostolic succession, again you see the tie to the church, has been given the power of salvation to forgive sins.

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For the sake of time, let's not put those passages up. 1442 and 1444 are the ones

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I really want to try to finish this lesson. People in churches outside of the

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Roman Catholic Church can be on their way of salvation, we saw that earlier, but the

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RCC must go out and meet their desire. That's 851.

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The many ways or means of salvation dispensed via the

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Roman Catholic Church are through the sacraments and the liturgy as we just looked at. So the

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RCC has a necessary role in salvation. Salvation cannot be obtained without the

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Catholic Church. The reason is that the RCC believes Christ has entrusted the church to dispense salvation to men.

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I have several quotes on that. But salvation is dispensed through the Catholic Church through the sacraments.

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But there's one other way. There's another way I mentioned earlier and that's Mary. We spent much time last class looking at Mary.

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Remember, in the Roman Catholic system that you have the succession from Peter.

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But if the Roman Catholic through the succession of Peter can dispense salvation, how much more through Mary?

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Because remember that we looked at since Mary's ministry was greater than Peter, we saw that in paragraph 733, then

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Mary's current ministry is to intercede to those on earth and bestow upon them certain grace for salvation.

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This is paragraph 725, 969, 970, and 1040.

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But let me quote this one in 1172. In 1172, it says, speaking of Mary, is inseparably linked with the saving work of her son.

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So as described before in the last class, Mary is held to an unbiblical place of greatness and authority in the

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Roman Catholic Church. The doctrine is all based on the thoughts that Jesus must honor his mother and therefore while still in heaven, he must listen to her.

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So she doesn't submit to him. She doesn't submit to God. God must submit to her.

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But you see, she is a dispenser of salvation as well. So let's, we don't have much time.

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You could look those up. Let's look at the last doctrine that we're going to be covering and that's the

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Eternal State. The Eternal State. What does the Roman Catholic Church believe is the Eternal State?

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Well, the Roman Catholic Church believes that at the point of death, every individual will be held accountable for his or her acceptance or denial of divine grace, that's paragraph 1021, and in which each person will enter either one, they're either going to go immediately to hell, that's one, your first blank is hell, or they're going to go immediately to heaven, that's number two, or eventually they're going to get to heaven after a time spent in purgatory.

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Now if you didn't grow up Catholic or around Catholics, you're going to purgatory. What's that? Never heard of that. That's right, because it's not in the

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Bible. We're going to look at these in more detail, but do note, even the

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Pope, the Pope has to spend 10 days in purgatory before he can get to heaven, so I don't quite know who gets to go straight to heaven.

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Maybe Peter and Paul and maybe the early apostles, maybe, I don't know.

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But the Roman Catholic Church teaches that there's going to be a final judgment and you're going to spend that final judgment in one of these three places.

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So let's look at these. Start with heaven. Heaven is the final resting place for those accepting of divine grace.

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This is 10 23. Currently, current activity in heaven involves

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Mary and the saints interceding for people on earth.

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Yeah, that's paragraph 956 and 962.

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Let's just put up one of those, if we have either of them. Cool. The intercession of the saints being more closely united to Christ, those who dwell in the heaven fix the whole church more firmly in holiness.

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They do not cease to intercede with the Father for us as they proffer the merits which they acquired on earth through one mediator between God and man,

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Christ Jesus. Wow, they even quote the passage in Timothy that says we shouldn't have any other mediators other than Christ in the passage where they say that those saints that have gone before us are in heaven and they earned, notice it said, they earned so much grace that they have an overflow of grace from their human goodness that they give it to those people on earth so that they can get the grace.

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When these guys were on earth if they needed the grace, where did they get it from?

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Previous saints? And where did they get it from? Previous saints? I mean, you just get into a cycle where you realize someone had to be there first.

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I mean, where did they get this grace from that they had on earth? Because if they had to go through purgatory then they had to work off, and we're going to get to that, they had to work off their own sin so they got in level.

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They don't have any additional grace, right? I mean, that would be the thinking. They stay in purgatory until their punishment is paid and now they're even, now they have enough that they can get into heaven they shouldn't have anything left over.

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That would be the reality if purgatory was true. But, just saying. Let's take a look at hell.

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Hell is the final unresting place for those who reject divine grace, 1022.

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Hell is a literal place that contains conscious people for all eternity for the purpose of punishment.

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That is 1033. So, there is a hell. Now, who gets to go to hell?

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I do. According to them. Because according to them the only real people that seem to go to hell and don't have a chance of purgatory are those who teach against the

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Roman Catholic Church. I find that interesting that so many of the belief systems, that this is so many of these religions have some things in common.

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One, if you deny them, not their doctrines, not the doctrines, the organization, you're going to hell.

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Okay? And if you and as you see here, just like in Judaism, works based salvation.

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If you have any works involved that are necessary for salvation then ultimately you have a works based system.

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Because if God did all he can with faith and it now requires your works, then ultimately it is your works that will save you.

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That becomes the ultimate salvation. Alright? And so it becomes a works based salvation.

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Alright? So, there is some question. I don't know if I have time. Well, we're going to go long. There's some question that comes up in the creeds where Christ preached the gospel to souls in hell supposedly.

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That was something a phrase that made it in and out of the creed several times. It has been debated throughout history.

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But the RCC teaches that it was necessary to bring the gospel message to complete fulfillment.

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This is paragraph 634. It seems that the dead might have had a second chance to believe.

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635. However, the dead refused. The dead referred to could be those still in purgatory.

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However, then they would not need to hear the gospel. They just need to wait. Am I thinking? But that becomes the issue.

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The argument is that and this is one of the proofs for purgatory is that Christ went to purgatory to preach the gospel.

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And that is proof that people get a second chance that they can stay in purgatory and maybe some that denied in purgatory they get their second chance.

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Let's look at what purgatory is real quick. We'll wrap this up. Letter C in your syllabus.

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Purgatory. Purgatory is a place of temporal punishment. That's your blank there. Temporal punishment.

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Purgatory is a place of temporal punishment for sins committed on earth that still need payment.

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This is paragraph 1022. Let me just read on.

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Those still on earth can reduce the time that loved ones spent in purgatory by indulgences.

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That's your blank there. Indulgences. Offered up on behalf of the dead. Paragraph 985 and 1023.

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So here you have a system and this is what caused Martin Luther to rebel against the

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Roman Catholic Church. You have this purgatory where people spend time. What did you have? You had the church selling indulgences and indulgence was this idea that you would do something.

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You would do a work not to get yourself out of purgatory but to get your loved ones out.

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Who is not going to do things for their loved ones? They are going to do things because they don't want their loved ones.

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There are many people who are more willing to suffer themselves than to have a loved one suffer.

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So what you have is you have a case where people will do things just to keep their loved ones out of purgatory in their thinking.

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The church made lots of money on these selling of indulgences. So the RTC's doctrine of purgatory is

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I think an affront to the work of Christ on the cross because this doctrine is based on the belief that forgiveness of sins is not based on the work of Christ but based on the payment of a sinners in penitence on earth or punishment after death.

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Thus the RCC teaches by implication that salvation is by works not by faith because they've added works to faith.

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Another problem with this doctrine and truthfully I think purgatory is the proof that it's a works based system because you have to go to purgatory to what?

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Not to receive grace to work it off, to have a punishment. Another problem with this doctrine is that sin has an eternal consequence not a temporal one.

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Therefore the time required to pay even the smallest of sin is an eternity for all liars will have their place in a lake of fire forever because God is infinitely holy it carries an infinite consequence.

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Thus purgatory would need to be renamed as the lake of fire.

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The temporary punishment is called hell. Purgatory should properly be renamed hell.

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Why? Because hell is a temporary place but those that are in hell do not get a second chance.

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They are eventually thrown into the lake of fire. So the living so the earning of merits for the dead so living people, the living earning merits for dead in purgatory like the dead in heaven are doing supposedly for the living on earth.

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That's paragraph 2027 by the way for reference. Why not have the living earn merits for the living and the dead earn for the dead then?

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The logic shows the flaw in earning merits of grace for another dead or alive.

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Our salvation is not based on our works or someone else's works. So how can another's work if we cannot save ourselves how can another's works merit grace for us unless that other person that's meriting that grace is a sinless

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God, Jesus Christ and that's why He alone is the payment.

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Alright, so we wrap that up. Next lesson we will deal with Islam.

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We will look at the same 5 doctrines in Islam. There will be no class next week.

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No class if you are watching live. No class next week. That is because I will be traveling.

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I will be speaking or I will be down visiting one of our supporting churches in Georgia for the weekend and we will be down there visiting with that church as we do with all supporting churches if your church supports striving for eternity we will come visit.

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So there will be no class next week as we will be visiting a supporting church but we will pick up the following week on Islam.

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I hope as long as there's no delays in flights because I will be at NorCal Fire.

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So if you're watching live and you're in the San Jose area, San Jose, California NorCal Fire this will be the last time

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I get to promote this. September 11th and 12th in 2015 James Warner Wallace, Justin Peters, myself will be speaking.

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NorCalFire .org is where you can register. Please register. It is going to be a great event

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I'm sure as they always are. Did I mention the email? Real quick, see I'm trying to rush at the end now.

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If you have any questions, want to email us the email address is academy at striving for eternity dot org.

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Academy at striving for eternity dot org. You can pick up the syllabus or my book,

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What Do They Believe, at our store. You can get that there. Let me really quick wrap up with our brother of encouragement.

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The brother of encouragement, we got asked to encourage brother Richard Story and Richard Story has a story.

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I encourage you if you don't know Richard Story's story to contact him. Richard is a beloved brother.

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He is someone who he got I believe it was he was struck by a truck.

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I don't remember all the details exactly but he basically is in a wheelchair now.

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He uses his time to try to serve God as best he can in a wheelchair. Has a lot of medical problems which is the thing that encourages me so much about him because there's days where if you're like me, there's days you just sit there and go

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I'm just too tired. I don't want to get up and go to church or serve God or whatever it is and then you see a guy like Richard doing it and you go what in the world am

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I complaining about? Because he sees it as a privilege to serve God and in his condition you sit there and go if he can sit there and have to do the things he has to do to be able to serve

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God and his wife who has to literally pick him up and literally move him around and do things for him

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I mean you know you see him serving and it's like wow okay

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I think I can get up and serve. I think I can do it then. So he's a great encouragement.

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I encourage you to encourage him this week. Why do we do that by the way? We put a person to encourage just because we want to encourage you to encourage other people.

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So if you have people you want us to encourage email them in to us. Contact me and let me know who you want encouraged and we will try to do that.

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Until next class, which is not next week till next class remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.