Ep 1055 ｜ Former Catholic on Why He Left Catholicism ｜ Guest： Mike Gendron
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 1 minute
Words per Minute
161.09305
Summary
Mike Gindran is the head of Proclaiming the Gospel Ministries. He was born and raised a Roman Catholic. When he started reading his Bible at the age of 35, he realized he did not know the gospel. He has spent the past 50 years of his life sharing the gospel and teaching those in the Catholic Church what the Word of God says about salvation.
Transcript
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Mike Gindran is the head of Proclaiming the Gospel Ministries.
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When he started reading his Bible at the age of 35, he realized he did not know the gospel,
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and he has spent the past 50 years of his life sharing the gospel and teaching those
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in the Catholic Church what the Word of God says about salvation.
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I understand this is going to be a controversial episode.
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I've got a lot of beloved Catholics, not only in my life, but also in this audience.
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And while I know that many, most of you, will not agree with what's said here, understand
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that what Mr. Gindran is saying, he is saying from a place of love for Catholics, this is
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Even if you do vehemently disagree, I urge you to be respectful.
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My Catholic friends have lots of episodes, lots of conversations out there about the
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errors that they see in Protestantism, and I don't see those as an attack, and I encourage
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you to listen to, watch this conversation with the same spirit.
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You are welcome, as always, to comment your thoughts and your disagreements.
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I encourage you to do so, but remain respectful, remain thoughtful, and remain open to what
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This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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Mr. Gindran, thanks so much for taking the time to join Relatable.
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Could you tell everyone who you are and what you do?
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My name is Mike Gindran, and for 33 years, I've directed a ministry called Proclaiming
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the Gospel, and we have a great love and compassion for Roman Catholics, and I was one for 35 years,
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and so I lived it, and it wasn't until I opened the Bible and began reading it that I had a crisis
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of faith and realized that I was outside of Christ, that I needed to repent and believe
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The Lord has taken us all over the world, especially in countries that are dominated
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I had the opportunity to speak in many different seminaries and churches and conferences, and
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it's really been a joy to proclaim the gospel for a living.
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And how many generations before do you know was your family Catholic?
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My family was originally from Montreal, French-Canadian, and so I was one of five children.
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His brother was a Roman Catholic priest who ministered in the jungles of Rangoon, Burma,
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now called Myanmar, and so he actually put in for an assignment to be with his brother,
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and he took the whole family with him, and as a young 13, 14-year-old, I was really amazed
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that a man would give up his life to serve in the jungles to convert people to Catholicism.
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And 50 years later, the Lord took me back to Myanmar, and I was able to preach the true
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gospel to 81 students there that were learning how to be effective witnesses.
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So in my family upbringing, I was an altar boy for seven years and learned the Latin and
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Later on, I was responsible for bringing the first Little Rock Scripture study to a Dallas
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In fact, it was St. Patrick's Catholic Church, and it was then that I began reading the Bible
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for the first time, and for 35 years, I owned a Bible, but it just sat on the coffee table
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collecting dust because the priest told us, don't even try reading it.
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So when I opened it and began reading it, I had a crisis of faith because what I was reading
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as far as plan of salvation was diametrically opposed to what the Catholic Church had taught
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I called my uncle the priest, and I said, Father Charles, why does the Catholic Church
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teach a different way of salvation than the Bible?
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I said, well, for example, in Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, Paul writes, for by grace you have
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It's the gift of God, not of works so that no one may boast.
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And he said, oh, Mike, God doesn't really mean what he's saying there.
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And so I thought, wow, how does he know what God really means?
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And so I began reading more and more, and I came to a verse that has just become my favorite
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verse, 2 Corinthians 5, 21, where it reads, Jesus, he that knew no sin became sin for us
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that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
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And I looked at it as the greatest exchange in human history.
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By faith, Christ takes all of my sin, all of my guilt, all of my punishment, and what
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And so I understood the doctrine of justification, that by one offering, he has made perfect
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And so I don't know the exact day or month that the Lord saved me.
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But I was understanding the scriptures more and more.
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And I came to a conclusion that the nature of deception is that people do not know they're
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deceived until they're confronted with the truth.
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And here I was with an open Bible discovering the truth.
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I was reading the truth, and it was confronting me in my deception.
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He gave me eyes to see the light of the gospel and the glory of Christ and literally turned
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And I remember going to a Bible study, a different Bible study, every morning of the
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It was like I had been a dry sponge in a desert for 30 years plus.
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And I just wanted to absorb everything I could.
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So I ended up enrolling in Dallas Theological Seminary so I could learn the Bible.
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And our last semester at Dallas Seminary, I was introduced to a video that featured former
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priests and former nuns that were sharing the gospel with Catholics.
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And I brought it home to my wife, who's also a former Catholic.
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We watched it together, and we said, we've got to share this with every Roman Catholic we
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So for the next three months, every Tuesday night, we invited Roman Catholics over to
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And within three months, 17 people exchanged their religion for a relationship with Christ.
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We invited them back over on Wednesday night to help them grow in the grace and knowledge
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It was the genesis of the ministry of proclaiming the gospel.
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Shortly after that, Tommy Nelson at Denton Bible invited me in to address 3,000 people there
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And I thought I was only reaching those people.
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Little did I know he had a cassette ministry that went out all over the world.
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So the next thing you know, we're getting requests to go into different churches and seminaries.
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And we literally stand in awe of what God has done with a couple of broken vessels that
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As someone who was raised in the Bible Belt, I wasn't raised around many Catholics at all.
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I think I knew more Jewish people than I did Catholics.
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It wasn't until I got to college that I befriended some Catholics and I started to learn a little
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bit more about the distinctions in Catholicism.
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And one of them was this just complete, among a lot of them, I can't paint a broad brush,
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And no real knowledge of even something like John 3.16.
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I still remember I saw John 3.16, just the reference written somewhere.
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And then someone who lived on my hall freshman year who was also a devout Catholic, she said,
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She didn't even recognize the format of a scripture reference.
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And I remember talking to some Catholics in college and this idea of having a relationship
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with Christ was something that they thought that you could have after you died, but not
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necessarily something that you had to worry about when you were on earth.
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And I don't know if everyone who professes to be Catholic thinks that way.
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But I'm curious, just to get your insight, is that something that is actually descriptive
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And is that kind of a popular mentality among people who were raised Catholic?
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Well, as a Roman Catholic, we trusted Roman Catholic priests as our mediators between us
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And so we never had a relationship with Christ.
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And so as I was studying the Bible, I realized in 1 Timothy 2.5, there's one mediator between
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And then I read where when Jesus gave up his spirit, the veil separating the holy of holies
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from sinful man was ripped open from top to bottom, showing that now through faith in the
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shed blood of Jesus, we have direct access to the Father.
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We no longer need priests offering sacrifices that can never take away sin.
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And so by putting my complete trust in Christ as my mediator, I had direct access to the Father.
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And so a lot of Catholics don't realize that the Roman Catholic priesthood is really superfluous.
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Because Jesus is the perfect high priest who offered himself as the perfect sacrifice to a perfect God
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Christ offered himself once for all sin, for all time.
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And the more I read the Bible, the more I realized that the Roman Catholic religion had really
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And so I went through everything the Catholic Church required of me because I really looked
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at God as a God who graded on the curve rather than the cross.
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And so I was doing all the good works I could in the hopes that my good works would outweigh my sin.
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In fact, I even went to Mass every day during Lent during college because I wanted those good works.
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And that tells us that once we are new creatures in Christ, once we've been regenerated and born again,
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then we do the works that God has prepared for us to walk in.
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And so I looked at good works before and after my salvation experience.
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As a Catholic, I was doing good works in order to be saved.
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And now that I have been saved, I do good works out of love and appreciation for God saving me.
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And so the motivation and the timing of good works is very important.
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And I just wish that Roman Catholics could understand that.
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We are saved by grace apart from works, faith apart from works, and Christ alone.
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You mentioned that your priest, who was your uncle, I think that you said, said,
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you know what, the Bible, you don't need to worry about what the Bible says.
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You were told growing up by your priest that the Bible is just too complicated.
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If you've got a question, go directly to the priest.
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I'm not sure if it's this way anymore, but why is it largely discouraged within the Catholic
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Church to take the Bible into your own hands to read it and to understand it?
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Well, Allie, Beth, I think you have to go back to the Reformation.
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Because it was the Reformers who began reading the Bible.
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And the more they read the Bible, the more the truth set them free.
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And so many of the Reformers ended up leaving the Catholic Church.
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Some of them tried to reform it before they left, but the truth set them free from religious
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And so at the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church actually placed the Bible on the list
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of forbidden books because they recognized as people were reading it, the truth was setting
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And so I think modern day Catholicism doesn't discourage the reading of the Bible.
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In fact, they have their own scripture studies now, but for the longest time, they actually
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had the Bible on the list of forbidden books and discouraged people from reading it.
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Now, they would say, I think, well, look what the Reformation caused.
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Look what the Bible being in the hands of the common person caused and being translated into
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Maybe they would say the Roman Catholic Church was trying to protect the sacredness of scripture
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and the sacred united interpretation of scripture by banning it.
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And they would say the fruit of Protestantism has been progressivism, has been liberalism,
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has been the corruption of the Word of God and the divorcing of the church.
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And we have to look at the fact that it's not Roman Catholicism versus Protestantism.
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It's looking through every church and denomination through the lens of scripture.
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And yes, there are many Protestant denominations and Protestant churches that have drifted away
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from the authority of scripture and they began teaching another gospel.
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And so that's called apostasy, departing from the gospel, departing from Christ.
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So there are Protestant denominations that have gone into apostasy.
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And can that be our final authority in all matters of faith?
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One of the verses that impacted me early on was Acts 17, 11.
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And that's where Paul was preaching in the synagogues of Berea.
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And he noticed that as he was preaching, his listeners were searching the scriptures daily
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to find out if Paul was teaching them the truth.
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They were testing the veracity of an apostle with the scriptures.
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And so that shows that scripture needs to be the supreme authority.
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It's the only infallible source for truth we have on this earth.
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And so we can still test every man's teaching using God's inspired word.
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And if a preacher agrees with the scriptures, then we receive it.
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If it goes against the scripture, then we reject it.
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And so I would encourage every Roman Catholic to test the teaching of their pope
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That's the principle that we learned from Acts 17, 11.
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And of course, Catholics believe that the church really has equal authority with scripture.
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They might even reject prima scriptura, putting scripture first.
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Well, where in the Bible does it say sola scriptura?
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And if the Bible doesn't say it, then how can you say sola scriptura is correct?
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I would agree with Catholics that sola scriptura is a Protestant tradition.
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And that's because it wasn't necessary in the Bible.
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See, it was at the Council of Trent that the Catholic Church elevated their tradition
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And that's why the reformers said, no, it's got to be scripture alone.
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And when you look at Almighty God, there is no higher power than he.
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And he's revealed himself through his inspired, inerrant, infallible word.
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And so, yes, there are traditions in the scriptures that we are to follow,
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They're not the traditions that the Roman Catholic Church follows today.
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And so, I'm reminded of what Jude, the reason he wrote his epistle,
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it was to contend earnestly for the faith that was once and for all delivered to the saints.
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The body of truth that we are to contend for today, it was delivered to the saints in the first century.
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So, anything that comes against that, we are to reject.
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In many of the Roman Catholic traditions today, you won't find in the first century church.
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For example, you don't find priests offering sacrifices for sin in the first century church.
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You don't find indulgences for the remission of temporal punishment.
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You don't find sacraments as a means of salvation.
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And you don't find the church headquartered in Rome.
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So, the church that the Roman Catholic Church has today does not resemble the first century church.
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And we hear a lot, I hear a lot from Catholics, well, this is the church that Jesus Christ established,
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that we can trace the papacy all the way back to Peter,
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and that what was passed down to the apostles by Jesus has continued to be passed down to the priests.
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So, they would say that it is the apostolic tradition.
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He was a very kind person and a good apologist for Catholicism.
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But he said, I just want to practice Christianity the way the earliest Christians did.
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But, of course, that would be my contention, too.
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I'm not even sure that I see that, as you said, in the history of the early church.
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And we have to recognize what Paul said in 1 Timothy 4.
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He said, in latter times, some will depart from the faith and follow doctrines of demons.
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And then he even lists one of the doctrines, and that's forbidding people to marry.
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And so you look at the Catholic clergy, and they're forbidden to marry.
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But I think you even go back to the Garden of Eden, when God told Adam not to eat of the forbidden fruit.
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And so Satan comes along, and he immediately questions God's Word.
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And then he said, if you eat of the fruit, if you break God's command, you surely shall not die.
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Well, the Catholic Church has taken the first lie of the devil in the garden to create the doctrine of venial sin.
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In the Catholic Church, if you commit venial sins, you surely shall not die.
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So now that you have this doctrine of demons in the garden, what happens when Catholics die in venial sin?
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Well, you need to create a place for them to go.
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And that's where Catholics who die in venial sin go to have their sins purified or purged away.
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And it might be where you or I go, according to them, too, right?
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Because we don't have, they would say, the fullness of truth within the Catholic Church.
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So now that you have Catholics in purgatory, now you need a means to get them out.
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And that's the remission of temporal punishment for sin.
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So the first lie of the devil in the garden perpetuated through the doctrine of venial sins
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ends up creating purgatory and then indulgences.
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And so as we share the gospel with Catholics, we need to recognize that.
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John MacArthur calls it a safety net for Catholics.
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They don't believe they've done anything serious enough to be labeled a mortal sin.
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So most Catholics rationalize and say, well, that's only a venial sin.
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It doesn't cause death, only temporal punishment and purgatory.
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And then some Catholics will say, well, we get our idea of purgatory from the books of the Bible that Martin Luther removed.
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And they're referring to the Apocrypha, not a part of the 66 books that we have.
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Well, the bottom line is because they contain historical, geographical, and theological errors.
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And so we know that they cannot be inspired by God because God's word is inerrant.
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And they weren't added to the Catholic canon until the Council of Trent.
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And the reason it was added then is because they needed some justification for the doctrine of purgatory and indulgences.
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And so in 2 Maccabees, they saw when the Maccabeans were killed, many of them were wearing pagan amulets around their neck.
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And so they sent alms back to Jerusalem for the repose of their soul.
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So the Catholic Church said, see there, there is an intermediate place, and we can offer alms for the dead in order to get them out of an intermediate place.
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And so they added the Apocrypha in order to try and support their doctrine of venial sin, purgatory, and indulgences.
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But we don't do things just because the Jews did them.
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The Jews did a lot of things that went against Scripture and went against God.
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So we don't emulate the Jews just because it's in one of their books.
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And the Apocryphal books, they were the intertestament books.
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And then you had the Apocryphal books during that period of time.
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When you were growing up, what did you learn, if anything, about Martin Luther and Protestants?
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Jesus said, I came to divide father against son, mother against daughter.
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And so, yes, the church was divided at that time because the gospel was being proclaimed,
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and they became new creatures in Christ, born again of the Spirit.
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You mentioned before we started rolling that you were once a rocket scientist, correct?
00:25:31.360
Can you tell us kind of what happened between you, you know, leaving home, going to school,
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and then before you started reading the Bible for yourself, I think you said at age 35.
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Tell us about that time period, what your career was before that.
00:25:47.660
I went to undergraduate school at University of Southwestern Louisiana,
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which is now called the University of Louisiana.
00:25:59.680
And so my assignment at Cape Kennedy, Florida was to use my math degree, my math ability.
00:26:07.840
We created impact lines for if we had to destroy the missile,
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we had to take into consideration all the drag coefficients of all the pieces, the wind velocities.
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We had to protect the population from Cape Kennedy all the way down to Africa.
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I had a house right on the beach there in Cape Kennedy, Florida.
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And shortly after that, after my career there, Ross Perot recruited me to Dallas and went to work for him,
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And I'll never forget, every time I got on a plane Monday morning, I always had this great fear.
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If the plane goes down, will I end up in purgatory or hell?
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Because even the popes believe they have to spend time in purgatory.
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Yeah, when the last couple of popes died, they had other cardinals come in and perform the sacrifice of the mass
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for the purpose of getting the Holy Fathers out of a place called purgatory.
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They were offering sacrifices for the sins of the popes.
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And so, yeah, there was not an option to go to heaven directly.
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You had to go through the purging fire of purgatory.
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And now I get on a plane and travel all over the world.
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I know if the plane goes down, immediately I'm in the presence of my Savior.
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And that's because I have the assurance of eternal life.
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And, Allie, the difference between having assurance and not is the difference between what are you trusting in?
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You see, the Catholic Church teaches you must do things to appease God and to merit heaven.
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And so if you put all of your trust in what Christ has done, then you can have the assurance of eternal life.
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As long as you're trusting in what you must do, there can be no assurance.
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Because how do you know if you've ever done enough?
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But when you trust the perfect sacrifice of Christ and His righteousness, that He canceled the eternal sin debt, that God no longer counts our sins against us.
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And now He sees us perfectly righteous because the imputation of Christ's righteousness to every believer.
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And so, you know, the gospel calls this good news.
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I call it the greatest news a condemned sinner on death row could ever hear, that Christ died as a substitute so that you could go free.
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What would a Catholic priest say the gospel is, if you were to ask?
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Well, you may remember the famous golfer Bruce Litsky.
00:29:17.140
I went there, kindergarten through 12th grade, yep.
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Well, her kids came home one day and said, Mom, the kids at school are saying, if you're a Catholic, you have no hope of going to heaven.
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And through a mutual friend, she found out about our ministry.
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And so we went over to her house and sat down with an open Bible.
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And every time she asked a question, we let God answer the question for her.
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And the more questions she asked, the more questions God answered.
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And then I remember about three hours into it, she said, how can I have the same peace that you and your wife have?
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I said, the peace comes from knowing Christ Jesus as my Savior and knowing that the moment I die, I'm going to be in his presence.
00:30:07.600
I said, well, let's let God answer that question, too.
00:30:17.820
The first command of Jesus was repent and believe the gospel.
00:30:21.600
And so the word repent means you need to change your mind about the former way that you were believing you could get to heaven and put your faith in the true gospel.
00:30:32.880
And then I took her to Romans 10, verses 9 and 10.
00:30:37.820
If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart, God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.
00:30:48.040
Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.
00:30:54.760
And then she said, well, what am I going to do now?
00:30:57.240
I've just been named fundraiser at All Saints Catholic Church, and my son's an altar boy.
00:31:05.880
And so she set up an appointment, asked if I would go with her.
00:31:09.260
And I said, sure, because I'm aware of the parable of the seed.
00:31:15.980
I didn't want to leave her one-on-one with a priest that could pluck it away.
00:31:23.920
I introduced myself to the priest, and I said, could you share with Rose how she has any hope of going to heaven?
00:31:36.320
That's the sacrament of regeneration and justification.
00:31:45.160
She has to attend the weekly sacrifice of the mass.
00:31:49.440
She has to do good works in order to be justified.
00:31:54.660
So I saw a Bible on his desk, and I said, could you open to the book of Romans?
00:32:05.060
And I said, how are you going to reconcile what God has just said with what you told Rose?
00:32:16.200
I said, no, there's nothing more important than settling this woman's eternal destiny.
00:32:21.100
And so for the next 15 minutes, he tried to reconcile God's Word with the Catholic plan of salvation.
00:32:27.160
And each time he did, I brought up another verse that refuted what he just said.
00:32:32.820
And he was just getting so frustrated and so angry to the point where he said, look, this meeting is over.
00:32:39.140
And so we got up, we walked out, and I opened my Bible to 2 Corinthians 4, too.
00:32:48.140
God presents the truth plainly to every man's conscience in the sight of God.
00:32:53.000
We don't rely on the bishops to interpret the Scriptures for us.
00:33:00.100
They were written to the saints at individual churches.
00:33:02.900
She said, oh, Mike, I know I can never go back to this church.
00:33:12.080
So a long answer to your question, but that's the Catholic gospel.
00:33:16.560
And priests say they don't have the authority to interpret the Scriptures.
00:33:22.980
By the way, the Catholic Church teaches the bishops are the only authentic interpreters of God's Word.
00:33:29.800
That's why whenever I witness to a priest, I say, you've got to come back home to Holy Mother the Church
00:33:34.600
because you have no authority to interpret the Scriptures on your own.
00:33:45.160
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I'm so curious to hear your insight into Marian doctrine because I've talked about this with Catholics, with Trent Horn.
00:34:36.940
And this is something that I've found a lot of my Catholic friends are very defensive about.
00:34:50.980
And because they are spiritually alive in heaven, then it's fine to pray to them.
00:34:56.260
And why not pray through Mary since she is the closest to Jesus and he will never refuse her?
00:35:08.400
So, I mean, I won't give my thoughts and I have my own thoughts, but what's your take on that?
00:35:14.040
The Catholic Church gives Mary a lot of attributes that are reserved for God alone.
00:35:19.500
And, in fact, in the Catechism, it teaches that Mary was the cause of salvation for herself and the whole human race.
00:35:28.680
And she continues to bring us the gifts of salvation.
00:35:32.700
And it's interesting because if she's the cause of salvation for herself, that means she was a sinner that needed salvation.
00:35:41.180
But yet the Catholic Church esteems Mary as sinless.
00:35:44.580
They teach the Immaculate Conception, that she was conceived without sin.
00:35:49.860
And then they teach that she lived a life without sin.
00:35:53.960
And so that was pronounced in 1854, the dogma of Immaculate Conception.
00:36:01.280
Well, Catholics began asking the question, well, if Mary never sinned and sin is what causes death, where's Mary?
00:36:09.520
And so in 1950, they had to come up with another infallible dogma, that Mary was miraculously assumed into heaven.
00:36:22.200
And she was a perpetual virgin, they say, right?
00:36:24.760
They didn't, that she didn't have children, which I'm not sure how they square that with Scripture that says that Joseph and Mary did not consummate their marriage until, until,
00:36:40.100
And then there's also, I mean, there is, there are references to Jesus' brothers and sisters in Scripture.
00:36:48.180
But the retort that I hear is that that's just a misinterpretation.
00:36:54.460
In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul talks about how Eve was tempted by Satan.
00:37:01.600
And he said, I'm concerned that your devotion to Christ, your pure devotion to Christ, may be led astray.
00:37:12.660
By venerating or turning to other people such as Mary and the saints.
00:37:18.820
You know, Christ is worthy of all honor and glory and blessing and dominion and on and on.
00:37:25.600
Mary, she was blessed to be the mother of Jesus, but she has no special case as far as devotion or praying to.
00:37:39.220
53 of the prayers are to Mary, and only a few of the prayers are to the triune God.
00:37:44.180
And so you can see the emphasis is more toward Mary.
00:37:54.720
Why did they decide that Mary is someone that you pray through?
00:38:02.120
I've asked very smart Catholics to show me even where Scripture alludes to that.
00:38:14.140
Allie, Beth, it goes back to once you no longer submit to the supreme authority of God's Word, then you allow religious traditions to come in.
00:38:23.860
And this is what happened down through the years.
00:38:31.000
And, you know, you look at the Queen of Heaven.
00:38:36.440
And yet they call Mary the Queen of Heaven because Jesus is the King of Heaven.
00:38:42.300
Jesus is an advocate, so they elevate Mary to be an advocate.
00:38:47.640
Now, Jesus is the only sinless mediator, clearly stated in 1 Timothy 2.5.
00:38:53.160
But yet they declare Mary was also a sinless mediatrix of all grace.
00:39:00.600
Through not submitting to the authority of God's Word to allow traditions to come into the church.
00:39:06.700
And, you know, we talked about Jesus only starting one church.
00:39:10.220
Yes, He started your church and my church and the Catholic church.
00:39:15.100
We can all trace our roots back to Matthew 16, 18, where Jesus said,
00:39:19.920
I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
00:39:24.600
So what is the nature of the church of Jesus Christ?
00:39:28.520
You're not baptized by water in order to gain entrance.
00:39:54.000
Every member of the true church of Jesus Christ, their name is enrolled in heaven.
00:39:59.520
Well, that disqualifies the Catholic church because they would be the first to admit that not all Catholics will go to heaven.
00:40:06.020
If they die in the state of mortal sin, then they'll go to hell.
00:40:10.600
And so, again, that goes against the whole doctrine of justification.
00:40:15.740
So who do they believe goes to heaven immediately?
00:40:21.420
Not even someone that they elevate to the place of saint?
00:40:25.960
It's just some people spend longer time in purgatory to be purged of our sinfulness.
00:40:33.920
Even the Pope had venial sins that had to be purged away.
00:40:37.040
So Jesus' death did not earn salvation for anyone, really, according to that doctrine.
00:40:43.360
Because if after you die, you still have to be cleansed of your sin, then the sacrifice was insufficient, right?
00:40:50.740
When you get right down to it, the Jesus of the Catholic church merely opened the gates of heaven.
00:40:56.920
And now Catholics must do their part to get through those gates.
00:41:00.540
It all depends on what they do and whether or not they can die in the state of grace, albeit venial sins instead of mortal sin.
00:41:10.320
And so you look at the Jesus of the Catholic church, and it's not the Jesus that's gloriously revealed in Scripture.
00:41:18.560
I don't know if you're aware, but the Jesus of the Catholic church did not finish the work of redemption.
00:41:26.900
And yet we see in Hebrews 9 that when he obtained eternal redemption, he entered into heaven.
00:41:33.980
But the Catholic church says, no, Jesus must come back down from heaven at the beck and call of a priest
00:41:40.340
and be transubstantiated into a wafer so that he can be offered again on Catholic altars.
00:41:49.780
And that offering is for the sins committed by Catholics in the previous week.
00:41:55.800
We know that Jesus canceled the eternal sin debt for all sins of all believers.
00:42:02.520
But the work of redemption continues on Catholic altars, and he didn't satisfy divine justice, the Catholic Jesus.
00:42:14.100
And so the Catholics need to read about the true Jesus as he's gloriously revealed in Scripture.
00:42:20.820
There are a lot of icons and images used within the Catholic church, much more than within the Protestant church.
00:42:27.020
Obviously, you've got the crucifix, and then you've also got Mary.
00:42:31.980
There are statues and votive candles of depictions of saints.
00:42:36.860
And do Catholics have a response to, well, what about the second commandment?
00:42:43.440
What about the prohibition against graven images?
00:42:45.960
We're certainly not supposed to pray to graven images.
00:42:49.080
I mean, of course, we see that in Israel and the Old Testament, that they wanted a graven image to pray to and to idolize.
00:42:58.120
Surely someone has contended with that, though, within the Catholic church.
00:43:04.340
Well, they removed the second commandment from their catechism and turned the last commandment into two.
00:43:13.000
You know, the second commandment is do not create an image of anything in the heavens above, the earth beneath, or the waters below, or bow down and worship them.
00:43:20.880
And when you look at the Catholic religion, that's all they have is icons and images and statues.
00:43:26.780
And you see pictures of popes bowing down to statues of Mary.
00:43:31.340
And it just goes against the second commandment.
00:43:34.600
And you go into any Catholic bookstore and you see statues and icons everywhere.
00:43:40.500
And so, again, it's heartbreaking to see that the pure devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ is not practiced by many Roman Catholics.
00:43:51.100
You said that they removed the second commandment from their catechism and turned the last commandment into two?
00:44:00.340
Just open any catechism of the Catholic church and you'll see the traditional Ten Commandments on one side of the page and then the Roman Catholic commandments.
00:44:08.920
And you'll see a blank space where the second commandment is.
00:44:12.980
And then you go down and you see they created two commandments for the last one.
00:44:18.140
They shall not covet their neighbor's goods or their neighbor's wife.
00:44:24.320
So they can say that it's the Ten Commandments still.
00:44:29.260
So how do they get around the prohibition against necromancy?
00:44:36.320
Would you say that praying to or through Mary or the saints is the same thing as trying to be a medium or necromancy, which is clearly prohibited to Israel in the Old Testament?
00:44:48.360
Yeah, you look at Deuteronomy 18 and it's an abomination to God if you consult the dead.
00:44:55.500
So when you pray to Mary and the saints, you're consulting the dead.
00:45:06.680
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That is one that I hear a lot, actually, people who go from Protestant to Catholic.
00:46:04.180
I hear, well, it was really the Eucharist, having the real presence of Christ.
00:46:09.460
You hear Catholics say that they yearn for that.
00:46:15.740
Satisfies them spiritually to have the real body and the real blood of Christ that has been transubstantiated in these physical objects.
00:46:25.240
Talk about that, why that's important to Catholic doctrine and why we don't believe it.
00:46:31.160
The imprimatur of the Catholic Church is given on this statement.
00:46:35.040
When the priest speaks the words of consecration, he reaches up into the heavens and brings Christ down from his throne.
00:46:45.620
He speaks and, lo, Christ, the omnipotent God, bows his head in humble submission to the priest's command.
00:46:53.040
And so that's what the Catholic Church believes.
00:46:55.540
The priest calls Jesus down from heaven through the, quote-unquote, miracle of transubstantiation.
00:47:01.880
The wafer becomes his physical body and blood, soul and divinity.
00:47:13.520
And Catholics gather around the altar on Sundays to have their sins that were committed in the previous week forgiven
00:47:21.600
by this propitiatory sacrifice of the Eucharist.
00:47:29.200
It's got to be a false Christ by the authority of Scripture.
00:47:32.640
Because in Acts 3.21, we see that Jesus must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything.
00:47:44.200
He will return a second time and not to deal with sin.
00:47:47.560
So, the Jesus that the priest has said to be calling down,
00:47:53.020
He's coming back down to deal with sin on Catholic altars.
00:47:56.580
The Bible tells us when He's going to return after the tribulation,
00:48:01.100
how He's going to return with power and great glory.
00:48:05.260
He's also going to return the same way He left, according to Acts 1.11.
00:48:08.960
He left in a body, a physical body, and that's the way He's going to return.
00:48:16.640
And so we have all these Scriptures that show the Eucharistic Christ is a false Christ.
00:48:22.740
And I must warn Catholics that when you worship the Eucharist,
00:48:27.660
it's the same sin of idolatry as the Israelites who worshiped the golden calf
00:48:33.680
as the true God that delivered them out of Egypt.
00:48:37.020
You know, when the priest holds up the Eucharist and says,
00:48:47.860
And yet, every time Catholic priests lift that up and say,
00:49:01.120
What do you make of prominent figures, especially in conservative media,
00:49:12.800
There's a handful of others that I can think of.
00:49:15.880
And obviously, there are a lot of very prominent Catholics
00:49:24.320
But what do you think about that seeming shift,
00:49:28.680
at least in the public world of prominent people going towards Catholicism?
00:49:36.320
In fact, even the vice president candidate, J.D. Vance,
00:49:46.020
it was because he read the early church fathers.
00:49:48.440
And that's one of the calling cards of many Protestants
00:49:53.700
They're encouraged by Catholic apologists not to read the Bible,
00:49:59.580
And they stress the importance of the Eucharist.
00:50:02.340
You must receive the Eucharist to have the fullness of salvation.
00:50:07.600
And so it really comes down to this, Allie Beth.
00:50:21.540
And, you know, at the end of the Apostle Paul's ministry,
00:50:24.380
when he was standing before the Ephesian elders,
00:50:47.380
that would even rise up among the Ephesian elder board
00:51:13.020
The early church was persecuted for their faith,
00:51:17.540
and their faith came from reading the scriptures.
00:51:20.160
The scriptures were passed around from church to church.
00:51:26.060
The apostle Peter said the writings of Paul were scripture.
00:51:31.040
So the early church knew what the inspired word of God was,
00:51:34.440
and that's why they were willing to die for their faith.
00:51:39.900
they were primarily to eliminate any spurious books
00:51:50.820
You know, the Old Testament canon was closed 400 years
00:51:56.560
if you suggest that they were started in the first century.
00:52:04.180
when they departed from the authority of scripture.
00:52:18.980
And you said that when you started reading the Bible
00:52:36.720
Tell me a little bit about the immediate aftermath of that.
00:52:41.620
Your wife, your family, I'm sure you have children.
00:52:47.200
because there's a lot of people listening right now.
00:53:33.980
not knowing that they're gonna be unequally yoked.
00:53:54.880
What do believers have in common with unbelievers?
00:54:00.040
And so we have to remain sanctified by the truth.
00:54:19.820
And we often say that just as in a physical birth,
00:54:29.940
You need the Word of God and the Spirit of God.
00:55:27.340
and even say that you'll read one of her books.
00:55:30.300
You know, if she's cutting off the conversation,
00:55:52.840
versus what does the uninspired words of men say?
00:57:22.360
I'm going to stick to the more traditional stuff.