Can you show me because we're going to use some hermeneutics.

Can you show me anywhere in the Old Testament where that word perpetual is not perpetual?

Because again, I understand you're appealing again.

Sure.

Any of God.

Hold on, hold on.

Wait a minute.

I thought I was going to get.

To have a talk here.

You asked a question and.

Hang on a second, sir.

Be quiet.

There you go.

I will mute you because it's not your show.

You ask the question, I'm going to give you the answer.

Genesis 6:4.

The word olam is used referring to those who were of old Deuteronomy.

I'll get just rattle off all the ones where it's used, not referring to perpetual Genesis 6:4, Deuteronomy 32:7, Joshua 24:2, 1st Samuel 27:8, Job 22:15, Psalm 20:24:7, 24:9, 25, 6:41, 1377:9 90 ver.

2:103, verse 17, 106, verse 48, 119 52:1 43 verse 3, Proverbs 8, 23, Proverbs 22:28, Proverbs 23:10 and Ecclesiastes 1:10.

Should I go on for more?

Blah, blah, blah, blah blah.

This is Apologetics Live to answer your questions.

Your host from Striving for Eternity Ministries, Andrew Aboard.

We are Live Apologetics Live here to answer your most challenging questions that you have about God and the Bible.

On this program.

We can answer any question that you do have about God in the Bible.

And to challenge us with that, all you have to do is go to apologetics live.com on here every Thursday night that we're here, 8:00 Eastern Time.

You can come join the discussion.

Ask your most challenging question.

Just remember one thing I don't know is a perfectly good answer.

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity.

The topic tonight is the Roman Catholic Church a cult.

We're going to examine some of its doctrines, its history, its authority.

And this is something that started because I put a post out on social media saying, well, declaring that it is a cult.

And a lot of people pushed back thinking, no, it's not.

How are you defining a cult?

How could you say such a thing?

There's believers that are in the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church is Christian, all kinds of arguments.

And maybe the problem is that those who claim to be Protestant, meaning they're protesting, have forgotten what they're protesting.

The Protestants are protesting against, well, the Roman Catholic distortion of Christianity.

And that is a lot of what we're going to talk about tonight now, Drew and Tom cannot be here, so luckily, I brought in the atheist nightmare here, Mr.

Chuck Carpenter.

So, Chuck, welcome.

Hey, thanks for having me on again.

Not my typical wheelhouse, but I'm.

I'm excited to discuss the topic.

Yeah.

And so we're glad to have you on, and you're almost becoming a regular, but I have.

I have to ask a question.

Now, those listening on the podcast will not see this, unless, of course, they go to the Striving Fraternity YouTube channel and check it out.

But you're wearing an orange tie.

Why might that be, sir?

Well, although I am an Astros fan and don't hate me for that, I'm wearing orange tie tonight because orange is associated with Protestantism.

And so this is typically in the context of Northern Ireland and parts of Western Europe.

And this was primarily because William of Orange, King William III of England, Scotland and Ireland, he was a Protestant prince from the Netherlands who became King of England in 1689 after what was called the Glorious Revolution, which overthrew the Catholic King James II.

And his victory at the Battle of Boyne in 1690 cemented the Protestant dominance in Ireland.

And there's also in Ireland that's called the Orange order.

Founded in 1795, the Orange Order is a Protestant fraternal organization that takes its name from Will of Orange, and it celebrates his legacy and defense, Protestantism, particularly in Ireland and Scotland.

And at our church, when some of the Irish, when some of the Catholic type holidays come up, we will.

On the.

On the closest Sunday, some of us will wear orange.

You know, just sort of.

Just sort of in fun.

But, uh, so I like to wear it as a symbolic, uh, representation.

So you don't wear the green because that represents the Catholic Church, huh?

Catholicism, traditionally, yes.

So.

So there you go.

So a little bit of history there already.

So the.

You know, a lot of people were pushing back.

And so I.

I will say this for those who are watching.

I encourage you to share this out where, wherever you are watching right now, or on whatever social media you have, with the hopes that someone who is part of the Roman Catholic Church may pay attention, tune in, maybe even come in for discussion, but at least hear the truth of from God's Word.

And that's what we want.

Ultimately.

I will let you know, you may be watching us on some of the other things that we are also streaming on Matter of Theology.

So we're.

We're out there and the.

I think we may be on.

I don't know if we're on open air theology.

But those are two ministries that are the.

That my co hosts are part of.

So we stream on there as well.

So let me.

Let's start off and I'm going to read right out of my own book and because I told some people on social media they, they asked how I define a cult and it was a little bit longer to be able to express the details of it in than in writing on a Facebook post.

So I, I thought it'd be better to do here so that I can express more what it is when I, when I say a cult.

Now ultimately as we look at things a cult is going to be a.

A group that is controlling.

There's a definition that I.

Not from my book but I do like it is the.

It has the.

The words bite in them and it's all about control.

So the first is behavioral control, intellectual control, forget what the T is.

And then the third is.

The fourth is emotional control.

But, but that it does cover the idea of it that a cult is something that is controlling.

That's ultimately the thing when it comes within religious cults.

I'm being more specific especially within the Christian cults that the first one that I list in my book what do they believe?

And you can get a copy of what do they Believe?

At our website@restrivingfraternity.org but the first one is what I would say is.

Is scripture twisting.

I'm sure that.

And I'm going to place an article up in a little bit that is from Chuck's church.

Did.

Did you write it, Chuck?

Actually I did, yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's what I had thought.

I looked at it last week but.

So it's an article Chuck had had written.

And, and you'll see some of the scripture twisting that we'll talk about.

But scripture twisting is.

It is.

I say is.

And the de facto assertion of extra biblical revelation.

That's the first mark of a cult.

Scripture is often used with a disregard to context to justify an unbiblical or extra biblical doctrines.

So we're going to go through these things one at a time later.

But I want you to see the number one thing that when I say some a speaking of a religious cult I'm going to talk about scripture twisting.

They're going to recognize the Bible as God's word.

But they will do one of two things.

Either they change the meaning of things.

They'll.

They'll teach the opposite to what it does teach something.

It doesn't twist those words to make it seem like it's saying something other than what it's clearly saying.

Or what they often also will do is claim some extra biblical revelation.

Whether it's the Book of Mormon, whether it's the Watchtower, whether it is the Church Magisterium or their traditions in Roman Catholicism, whether it's the Quran, whether it's the Talmud, whatever it is, they add some extra biblical doctrines, extra biblical revelation that is beyond what scripture is to the scripture.

Okay, so that's number one.

So when we see a religious cult, a Christian cult, it's going to start with scripture twisting.

Why does it start with that?

Very simple.

The cults start with this because of the fact that this is how they're going to get the their authority to do everything else they're going to do.

The second one is authoritarianism.

So they need to twist the scripture because they use the scripture to claim an authority that they don't actually have.

So under authoritarianism, I say in the book, what do they believe?

Individual interpretation on subjects are not allowed.

Only the cult leader or leaders can interpret and they are accountable to no one.

Most of the time, a person or organization becomes the authority on the proper interpretation of Scriptures.

Some of these cults will state that only they can properly interpret the scripture and therefore they can twist it and explain the explain that the average person cannot understand it without the cult.

Therefore, if a person disagrees with the interpretation based on a normal reading of scripture, the cult can have an answer that the individual cannot know on their own.

Authoritarianism allows the cult the authority to twist the scriptures.

So with that, I hope you see why twisting the scriptures is.

First it allows them to then justify their twisting of Scripture.

They will claim an authority.

And you'll see as we go through this with the Roman Catholic Church, anyone who's listening right now that is knowledgeable on the Roman Catholic Church.

You know, that is a core doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, that you cannot have a private interpretation.

In fact, this was a major thing historically.

That was the argument against Martin Luther.

The Pope that was in the council that was convicting him, challenged him on this private interpretation.

And they warned that if people would be allowed to have a private interpretation, you'd have many who would, who'd interpret the Bible wrongly and people would be led astray.

To which Martin Luther's argument was better to have the truth out there, where error can also be, than to deny the truth altogether.

Because that's what he recognized the Catholic Church was doing.

They were trying to silence the truth in their desire to have them as the only ones that could speak on how to interpret the Bible.

The number third, the number three, the third thing that I have in the book is exclusivity.

And this is the argument that only the organization has the truth and all others are excluded from it.

What they will do is say if you are outside of their camp, you cannot go to heaven.

This is something you'll often see a reason why so many people when they are in a cult, it is so difficult for them to stay outside of the cult.

A lot of times what happens is they will leave and come back.

And there's a couple reasons for it.

One, most cults will do love bombing.

They give you such an overwhelming thing of, of emotion that you feel you, you're missing something when you leave.

That's mostly because of the next thing we're going to talk about.

But the exclusivity of it is the idea that people have this feeling that if I leave the group, I can't be saved, I can't be right with God.

And that is the controlling factor that keeps them within.

So you have the authoritarians, whether it's an individual or group, a group of individuals or the organization itself that says they have the right to interpret scripture.

So if you don't agree with them, then you're outside of truth.

This leads to the fourth one that I alluded to, which is isolationism.

And, and this in this I say in the book, what do they believe?

Members of the organization are not to speak to outsiders about doctrines unless to convert them.

The organization often states that it has the truth and wants to protect its members.

And this is where they will often do the love bombing.

Love bombing is where they give an over emphasis of emotion and expressions of love, if what they would call it to where you have this emotional response to them, a feeling of community, a feeling of fellowship that, and this is why so many that I have counseled and worked with that would leave a cult.

Many of them will try to return.

I know some that have left and returned up to three times before finally leaving for good.

And they would return.

And every time they return, it makes it all the more harder to leave.

This isolationism can work in many different ways.

One way it could be that they actually isolate you from the world.

There are groups that they, they live together in a commune and in that setting everyone works together, everybody goes to church together, their life is together.

There's some groups that will, they'll all try to move into the same town so that everybody is there together.

Your whole life is wrapped up with that group, and that makes it very hard to leave again.

What's the goal of it?

Control.

Keeping people locked in.

So the, the theologically you feel like you can't leave because if I leave, I'm, I'm leaving the truth.

If I, if the isolation, if I leave, I ha.

I'm leaving my friends.

And so, you know, and let's not, let's, you know, think lightly on the issue of friendship.

The reality is, is that you will see, like for example, during COVID a lot of churches were shut down.

And when that, when we saw that there were a lot of people that started going to good churches.

Why?

Well, what you saw in that was that there were many people who knew the church that they were attending was bad, but they wanted so badly to be.

To have that friendship that they continued to be in a church they knew was bad.

Now, during COVID what happened?

Well, the church shut down.

People were not there, and they were able to go visit other churches and make other friends and then change churches.

So those, those relationships, that isolation, what it does is keep people in that group.

And the idea of when someone is brainwashed is you don't want them to hear the truth.

This is why if you ever try to take a gossip, give a gospel tract or anything to a Jehovah Witness, they will not take it.

And, and they will argue.

Well, you know, we're, we're told we're not to, you know, we're.

They.

I've actually heard different reasons.

And so the thing is, is why don't they take it?

Well, I always tell them the reason they don't take it is because they've been brainwashed and it is a control factor.

And I will always quote for them, Second Corinthians 13:8, which says, for we can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth.

Why do I quote that?

Because if they actually had the truth, they would be able to take whatever I give them, compare it to what their church or group states, and know whether I'm telling something not true.

When someone has to tell you, no, no, no, no, you can't read this.

You can't.

You can't check this out because they're afraid you might learn something other than what they're teaching you that is a controlling and a cultic behavior.

The last one is endangerment.

I say in the book, what do they believe?

Another trait that may include, may that may include is endangerment.

It is true that most cults teach teachings do not lead to either Physical or emotional endangerment of its members.

This one trait may not be true for all cults.

So the idea here is that the endangerment is more clear when you have cults that will use practices such as, you know, I know some groups that will make people.

They're not allowed to eat.

I knew of one cult that what they would do as a punishment if you questioned one of their three leaders, you might have to spend up to three days, sometimes even a week in a chair, tied to a chair in a barn with lights on, all.

All day, all night, with music playing.

And sometimes all you'd get is water.

That's endangerment.

That's something that you end up seeing.

Now, there's also an emotional danger, and this is sometimes tied to the isolationism that people feel.

I can't leave.

If I leave, I lose everything.

There.

There are.

There is a.

We've dealt with a cult on this program that we went into great detail of a church out in Iowa, and we had a woman who came on where the pastor.

Because she was not married, the pastor actually argued that he was the father figure for her.

And therefore, when she was working, her paycheck had to be deposited into a bank account that he controlled for her, and he would give her an allowance.

And one of the things that set her to realize this was problematic was when she ended up wanting to get a new sofa.

And the pastor told her that that wasn't a wise use of money.

He didn't think that she should use her money for a new sofa.

He felt the sofa she had was fine, and he would not give her her own money for a sofa.

Now, what ended up happening was she realized in order to leave the church, she had to lose her savings because he's the one that had control of it.

He also did other things emotionally by making people write down all their worst sins.

And in doing so, he had them in a file so he could always bring them up.

And there were many people that were afraid to leave because of the fear of blackmail, of things they said they had done in the past that they didn't want people to know.

But is his style of repentance.

They had to bring these things out and write them down and give them to him.

And he kept a file of them, and he would remind them that he had that file.

These are the.

When we speak of the endangerment, these are the emotional endangerments that.

That we're speaking of.

So, Chuck, you had mentioned when I couldn't remember what the t was was thought control in the bite.

And I.

I need to look it up.

I think you're right with that.

Which makes me wonder what is the.

What the.

I was.

Because then the eye wasn't the.

Because there.

There's definitely behavior.

There's the thinking, there's the emotion.

And so there was one other.

And I couldn't remember what that is, but I will have to.

I used to.

I used to have it here on the desk in case I ever needed to remember it.

And as folks, if you could tell, I've been packing up.

We're.

We're going to be selling the house.

So notice this week, last week you guys saw that there was nothing on the bookshelves but, well, coffee.

But now there's not even a bookshelf back there.

And as you can see that my desk is being broken down.

I don't have the.

The big part on top of it.

So information control.

Thank you, Sister Tara.

She.

She had it.

So information control, that is the eye.

And.

And so that goes.

The information control is part of.

As you look at those four things, when you have behavior control, that's going to fit under that.

And the emotional control fits under isolationism and some of the exclusivity.

The authoritarianism, a bit thought control.

Definitely the authoritarianism.

The.

The twist.

Scripture twisting, you know, the information or, sorry, the thought information.

I mentioned those two kind of.

And then, you know, when you think of the emotion, you know, we mentioned that.

So.

But ultimately that's that I wanted to take this time.

You can get a copy of my book.

What do they believe?

You can see the more detail that I have for that.

But I knew that I wasn't going to be able easily to answer this and go into the detail that I wanted to on a Facebook post just because, well, social media being what it is, if I try to go short, then it's hard to.

It's easier for people to start misrepresenting what you're.

You're trying to say.

So I didn't want to do that and so I decided to do it here.

So let me start.

Now that we have that, I would like.

Chuck you.

I want you to talk a bit.

Well, first, let you talk about anything that you know, anything.

Any comments you had from what I said.

And then after that we can get into the article that you wrote and I'll give the link for that.

Okay?

Yeah, sure.

So, cons, real quickly concerning the Jehovah's Witnesses.

He's.

He is dead on correct about the information control.

And they won't be able, they won't accept any literature from you.

Although that's their whole job is handing out literature to people.

Right.

So they won't take it in.

So that is definitely information control that they're under.

I love the from Living Waters, the Million Dollar Bill tracks.

I've given a few of those out to some Jehovah's Witnesses and they didn't know what they were.

And so and so we'll be discussing my Catholicism tract here in a moment but if you go to 5solas.net evangelism you'll see that I have two tracks there that concerning the Jehovah's Witnesses.

One's just for Jehovah's Witnesses and ones is are you considering joining Jehovah's Witnesses?

And that is because the one for Jehovah's Witnesses all it has is quotes from the New New World translation which is their mistranslation of the Bible.

And, and it also has quotes from Jehovah's Witness resources, it's primary source documentation from the Watchtower.

And so what you can do is you can pull this up and they should see it as non threatening.

You could even say, you know this, it doesn't say anything bad here about, about Jehovah's Witnesses.

But can you, can we go through these points and you can confirm if what this says is true or not.

And so hopefully they to go through those points with you.

But you need to look at the are you considering Jehovah's Witnesses tracked so that when you get to point, when you get to point number six, you know what to say because point number six is not in the actual Jehovah's Witness track because does talk about how the Watchtower discredits itself as the, you know, the one true authority because they contradict themselves.

And but if you look through it and so that's how that the, the tracks work.

And so that's how that works for the Jehovah's Witnesses as well as the Roman Catholicism.

And so for the Catholicism tract and if you go to5solas.net catholicism and so you may have heard of what's called a syllogism argument which you give two premises and then a conclusion and the conclusion follows from the premises.

Well this is technically not a syllogism.

It would be called a poly premise argument.

So you've got five premises and then the sixth point is going to be your, your conclusion.

And just in a nutshell and you can so with your Roman Catholic friends and family and neighbors.

So you can pull this up and again ask them, you know, is this true?

You know, are these, are these facts?

Right, so point number one is the Bible is the word of God and I.

And so it gives, it's going to give a, a Bible verse and then it's going to also give some quotes from again from primary source documentation, official Roman Catholic teaching, quite a bit of it from the Catechism itself.

So yeah, you know, point number one is the Bible is the word of God and they'll say yes.

And then point number two is God does not contradict himself and they'll say yes.

And again, there's quotes from Roman Catholic sources as well as Bible quotes.

And if you click on a Bible quotes, the Bible quotes are hyperlinked.

If you click on, click on the Bible quote, it actually goes to the Vatican Va.

And so it's, it's, it's actually goes to their new American Bible.

So the quotes in these tracks are from their primary sources documentation, just like the Jehovah's Witness track.

All those Bible verses are from the New World Translation, so they shouldn't have a problem with, with it.

So yeah, point number two is God does not contradict himself.

And then number three is the leaving the living teaching office of the Church also speaks for God.

And so there's no Bible quotes for that, but there's Roman Catholic quotes from the, the Catechism, paragraph 85, 88, 888.

And then there's another quote.

So, so yeah, they, they will agree that the living teaching office of the Church also speaks for God.

And then point number four is going to be the living teaching office of the Church teaches faith plus works for salvation.

And there's quite a few quotes from there.

And the last two quotes you see is from the Council of Trent succession.

And, and this was, this is where they, they, they laid the hammer down.

They, they said if you believe in justification, they didn't just say salvation, which, you know, salvation can be different from justification because salvation is, is a whole sort of a process, if you will, if you understand what the Ordo Salutis is.

And justification is a part of that Ordo Salutis.

But, but they say, yeah, if you believe in justification by faith alone, without works, you're anathema.

You are to be cursed.

Right?

And so this was the conflict between the Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church.

And then point number five is the Bible teaches salvation by faith alone and it gives it quotes, three Bible verses.

Ephesians 2, 8, 9, Romans 3, 28 and Romans 3:20.

And then below that it says also reference and it gives a bunch more that clearly and unmistakably teach that justification is by faith alone, through Christ alone.

And so then, so those are your five premises and then the conclusion.

The final point is number six.

And here's the final point.

It says if the Bible is the word of God, point number one, and God does not contradict himself, point number two, then the Roman Catholic Church, which claims to also speak for God, point number three, discredits itself as the one true religion or the one true authoritative authority of religion because it contradicts the word of God by teaching faith plus works for salvation.

Point number four, when the Bible, which came first, clearly and unmistakably teaches faith alone for salvation.

And then, and then it goes into the biblical gospel that you can share with your friends.

And I, I just want to, in, in, in this, in that and saying that, you know, we're not here bashing Roman Catholics.

We love them and we want them to come to the truth.

We, we hate the Roman, the Roman system.

The Roman system is, is really bad and it's leading them down the path of destruction.

Yeah.

And this is important folks, to what you heard Chuck say several times, original source material, that, that's what I did with my book.

What do they believe?

And the advantage of doing that, of quoting their sources is, as Chuck said, a it.

They should be able to, to take it and read it.

You can.

I've had, had Jehovah Witnesses, I give them a copy of my book and the way I'll get them to read it say, please read the section on Jehovah Witnesses and tell me if anything in there is wrong.

Tell me if there's any corrections needed.

I haven't had anyone tell me I need corrections yet.

And that's why it becomes important to not misrepresent what a group believes.

Because if you accurately represent what they believe and they recognize that, then they can trust that you've.

You're, you understand their position, right?

If, if I, if someone comes up to you and you're a believer in Christ and they tell you you believe in three gods, you go, yet you don't understand Christianity because Christianity doesn't teach there's three gods.

It teaches there's one God, there's three persons, Father, Son and Spirit, but one God.

And when they argue for three gods, are you going to trust anything they else they tell you about how wrong Christianity is?

Nope.

Why?

Because, you know, they don't understand it.

And if we are not going to take the time to understand what these different religions believe and we go and misrepresent them.

Well, are they going to believe what we say about their religion?

No.

Now you say, but I don't have time to study all these things.

Fine.

You talk to someone, you ask them what they believe, let them explain, and then you can just ask clarifying questions.

And you could do as, as what you saw Chuck kind of do is he's, he could do that conversationally.

Well, do you.

What do you believe about who, who has got the authority to interpret scripture?

You need the church.

Oh, well, if you need the church.

But doesn't the Bible say it's the authority?

Well, if I need the church, then doesn't the church become greater authority than the Bible?

So how could they be equal in authority like you're saying they are?

Right.

You could do that with people very conversationally, but take the time to understand what they believe.

That's why actually I wrote the book what do they believe?

So that you could.

I spent 14 years of my life reading it, their documents and systematizing it so you don't have to.

But what do I do?

I give you the, the portions of their, of what they call Scripture and I give you sometimes larger portions so that you can see that it's not out of context.

I try to do that.

Why?

Because I don't want any of us that are defending the true faith to be accused of taking someone else out of context.

So let's get into a little bit of what Catholicism believes.

And I'm going to kind of go through some of the things that are in my book.

What do they believe on chapter two on Catholicism.

And again, I'm just going to ask folks, if you don't, if everyone would do me a favor right now and share this out wherever you are watching or wherever you, whatever social media you have.

The hope is that we might be able to get someone who is part of the Roman Catholic Church to hear this and hear the distinction.

Now, before we start saying how we disagree with the Roman Catholic Church, there is something that Chuck alluded to that we need to start with.

The Council of Trent clearly stated that believing what we believe as Bible believing Christians, that we believe in justification by faith alone, in Christ alone in by grace alone.

Right.

That it's not by works.

Vatican 2 said, or Trent, sorry, said that that was anathema that's cursed you.

You can't.

According to Roman Catholic doctrine, you cannot be saved.

You cannot be right with God and believe in Justification alone, by, by faith alone.

You need works.

So when I say I don't believe that someone that believes, understands and believes Roman Catholic doctrine that they cannot be saved, understand, I'm saying that knowing that they say the same thing about me.

The difference is I don't get upset when they tell me I'm going to hell in their opinion, because their church says this, that's being consistent with their doctrine.

I don't sit there and go, oh no, you're wrong, you're wrong.

How could you say such a thing?

That's their belief.

But they get upset when I say the same thing about them.

Strange but true.

So they would tell you that I could not go to heaven.

Now, Catholic Church in recent years, John Paul II for most part has softened a lot of this.

He has taken it on to, to be where, you know, now Muslims can be saved and things like this.

But they've never ratified what was stated in Vatican, in the Council, in, at that council.

So at Trent, what you have is a declaration, a document that states that we are damned to hell for what we believe.

They've never gone back and stated that.

There's an update, a change to that in any way to say that, oh well, that was wrong.

So if that's still in play, then according to the Roman Catholic Church, believing that Christ's death and his death alone satisfies sin would be accursed.

Just as Mormon Islam would say that believing that Jesus is God is accursed.

I don't get upset when they tell me I'm going to hell according to their beliefs.

And what can I do?

I could take their beliefs compared to scriptures that they say they believe and see where they're wrong.

And so I want to go through some of Catholicism.

So let's.

And I'm just trying to.

Also I do want to look through the comments.

If anyone wants to join, just go to apologeticslive.com just scroll down to where you see the streamyard icon.

It's a duck.

Click on that.

Give permission for your browser to use your microphone at least, but mic and camera and then you can, you could join.

I see you and I'll add you in.

We'd like to have some discussions.

Actually.

It's always better to have discussions here than when we're just discussing it in chat, which, you know, happens a lot.

And I can't always see the chat when my co hosts aren't here.

Let, let's, let's start with what is the authority within the Roman Catholic Church?

So let me see I, I am looking here.

Let me read this comment because I was seeing Keith, that you're responding to this.

Johnny Rulin says, I would say to be honest that there is a bit of a misrepresentation on some Catholic positions here.

I do appreciate the sentiment and understand them, but I think there are inaccuracies and, and so John, if you wouldn't mind, I mean it'd be really good if you came in or Johnny, I, I'm guessing if you could come in and explain what those inaccuracies that you think are it, it would be good.

It'd be helpful.

Let's see, he's, and he's saying here Andrew had me on and if he wants me to come on, I'd be happy to do so.

Well, anyone can come on anytime.

So you know, we don't, it's, it's a show open to anyone.

So.

All right, so let me go to my book on what they believe on the Roman Catholicism now the Roman Catholic Church.

And, and I'm saying Roman Catholicism or Roman Catholic Church and not Catholics.

I'm making a clear distinction.

Just as you have many Bible believing Christians that don't understand Christianity, so you have many Muslims that don't understand Islamic, you have many Roman Catholics that do not understand Catholicism.

So I'm not speaking to the, about the individual people.

I'm speaking of the organization and its doctrine.

And that's why I use the word Roman Catholicism referring to the doctrine, the Roman Catholic Church referring to the organization.

Now my source that I used because when you look at the Roman Catholic Church, it has a long history and tradition and all of the councils are authoritative.

So that's part of the tradition.

So it's a lot to research.

But because they could have, you know, things they've said in the past, they could change.

So I wanted to go with their latest authoritative work, which was the, the 1995 Catechism for the Catholic Church.

That's where all my quotations in my book come from.

I don't know if I'll how many of the I'll use tonight.

But what you see is they will hold to three, three things as equal in authority.

The first is tradition, second, scripture, and third is the Church or what's called the Magisterium.

Now the issue that I have, they would say that these are equal in authority.

But for those who are regular here, you've seen me talk with folks who are Roman Catholic and they, they will say that yes, they're equal in authority.

No qualms there.

The issue, though, that I always ask and I, I think this is a, just logically a good way of going about it and thinking of it.

If somebody is saying that you need an organization or a tool, something to interpret Scripture.

In other words, in this case, the question I will ask people that are part of the Roman Catholic system is to say, do we need the Roman Catholic Church to interpret the Word of God?

That is an important way to understand it.

This is what Martin Luther fought with when he was on trial.

Because what you see is that they will say, yes, you need the church.

Okay, if they say just, and this is no different than the, the drove witnesses will say, well, you need to have the, you need to have the Watchtower to interpret you, you can't, you can't interpret on your own.

Now, remember what I said about a cult, right?

The cult is going to be looking to keep people controlled by their thinking.

They're going to try to keep them where they are not able to get other information.

And so in that process, they don't want you to be reading something on your own.

You need their organization.

Well, if I need the organization, whether it be the Watchtower, the Roman Catholic Church, the prophets of the, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, whoever it is, what you see is that, that thing, that organization, whatever it is, that becomes a greater authority than Scripture.

And the reason it becomes a greater authority than Scripture is because that, because you need that to be able to understand Scripture.

So if, if you need it, then just logically that becomes a greater authority.

So they can't be equal.

Okay, now I, I and I and Johnny is backstage for folks who are in the chat.

So, you know, so I'm going to bring him in top of the hour because I do want to make sure I get through making my case, which he's going to disagree with, and I'm okay with that.

Of why I think the, the Catholic Church is a culture.

The first one though is the fact that what you see here is the authoritarianism.

You're gonna, you know, maybe we'll get into discussion with Johnny on whether works are necessary for salvation, but what they're going to do there is twist what James 2, the meaning of James 2.

So what I'm going to argue is their, their claim for authority is also going to be twisting certain scriptures to give them that authority.

Now, what was already referenced in some of their, their past councils would state that if you're outside of the Catholic Church, you can't be saved.

Well, that's exclusivity okay, now the, the fourth one that we have is isolationism.

Does the Catholic Church isolate people?

Well, when we, we think about the isolationism, now, there's, there's a couple ways I, I mentioned it right there.

There is the group where, you know, yes, they, they stay together within a group and they do love bombing.

You don't see that so much in the Catholic Church in America.

Okay.

But you do see in some areas, not in America, where Catholics will not be allowed to speak out to others outside there.

Is this keeping them within the group as far as where they get their, their teaching from and things like that.

Are they.

Do they cause endangerment?

Well, now we get into historical Catholicism versus modern American Catholicism.

Modern American Catholicism, I would say they do not.

I don't think that you see the physical and emotional endangerment, but throughout history.

Well, yeah, they killed people that weren't Catholic.

So, yeah, I would say that over the, the course of the, of history of the Roman Catholic Church, yes, they had the endangerment.

Okay, so I spoke a lot.

Chuck, I want to give you a chance to respond to anything, any of what I had just shared.

Well, when you talk about damage, there's going to be eternal damage for sure if they, if they don't get out of the system.

So that's, that's very important to, to understand and that's why we're here.

You know, like I said earlier, we, we love our Roman Catholic friends and family and neighbors.

Right.

We don't hate Roman Catholics.

We just.

We hate the system.

It's just a really bad system as leading people down, many people down the path of destruction.

And so we just want to.

Want to be the light here to shine the light on, on the errors of that demolishing the stronghold of the Roman Catholic system and just giving them Jesus Christ.

He said that I.

He said that his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

And under the Roman Catholic system, there's.

You just got to keep working and working and working to either attain or maintain your salvation.

And, and we maintain that Scripture clearly teaches that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

Yes.

So Amanda said, hey, just got here.

What I miss a lot.

You'll have to go back on the podcast and listen.

But Amanda, you're basically, what we pretty much did was I defined what occult is from my book.

What do they believe?

And then I kind of went through, just briefly, what the.

You know, why I think the Roman Catholic Church fits that.

Now what I'm going to do is Bring Johnny in so we can have a good discussion here on this.

Because I think it would be, it's, it's helpful, especially if I, if he says I misrepresented something.

So.

Johnny, welcome.

Hey, can you hear me?

No, we don't hear you at all.

No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

I always like responding, so I don't know if that's.

Yeah, but I would have had to hear you to know to answer that question.

Right.

Well, you're gonna see now.

Yeah, that's true.

I had someone that was.

I had a job once at the government and the system admin set up my email.

So he sends me an email that says, did you get this?

And I responded, no, I didn't.

Can you send it again?

Can you send it again?

No, he.

He walked over.

He walked over to me and laughed and he was, was like, all right, that was funny.

I'm like, it just, you know, because some people will actually send it again.

It's like.

Okay, I, I know, I know if I'm deal with some with a sense of humor or not.

Right.

But let folks know.

I think if I, if I remember correctly, you'll correct me if I'm wrong.

Would you be, and I hope I don't mispronounce, pronounce this, but I might.

Would you be a set of a Cantus Catholic or.

Oh, are you talking about me?

Yeah, no, no, I'm, I'm a.

I'll give a 15 second background.

Reformed, sacramental Baptist.

Okay.

And I, I've actually been going on a lot of Catholic apologetics forums and I've actually just challenged a couple of people for debates, prominent Catholic people.

So I have spent a long time studying.

Okay.

Official Catholic teachings.

Yeah.

Because when you said, when you said I was wrong, I thought, I just thought maybe you're one of the Catholics that I had, that had come in in the past.

And because we get a lot of this.

I grew up.

I grew up Catholic and then obviously I became a Protestant, became born again.

But in the last few years, I've definitely changed my mind about Catholicism as I've studied about it.

You could kind of count me in with your Gavin Ortlands and that kind of thing.

But I do think the majority of Protestants misrepresent Catholicism in a form of antagonism because of our history rather than the fact.

And that's sort of like why I think it's important.

Like when we say something like faith plus works, I do think that's really important to be very clear about what we mean by that.

Because when a Catholic hears that, they hear the same thing.

That if they were to say, oh, like Protestants just have 40,000 denominations and you guys just are a mess, obviously we're like, well, not really.

Right.

You know what I mean?

We have our responses.

We know that that's a caricature.

I do think this Faith plus Works thing is slightly misrepresented, especially because we almost pretend like they don't read Ephesians 2, 8, 9 and Romans 5.

That's what I feel like.

Okay.

Because that's some of the comments like, how do they, you know, how do they possibly arrive at that conclusion?

So when you said I was, you thought I was misrepresenting.

You thought it was with the Faith plus works.

Misrepresenting.

I think that maintaining something like the church is an equal authority to Scripture.

I don't think that they would affirm that.

I think they recognize the magisterial authority of the church, but they recognize the ministerial authority and there's different kinds of authority.

So when we use one word, authority, I think that that's blowing it too far into that one direction where I think sola scriptura doesn't go into.

And I've debated sola scriptura with Catholics publicly, and they've actually come around more to understand the position where I think, like, when we say scripture is our only authority, I actually think that's very.

That's actually wrong.

I think that's actually not sola scriptura.

And I would actually say that's a very Baptist, American Baptist formulation of it.

I think that not even Luther or Calvin would have agreed with that.

And so the other passion that I have is the fact that.

Fact that the Protestants largely have ignored church history.

You go to an average church, they don't study church history.

They don't even care about church history.

This is a big problem.

Right.

Because I've had people convert over to Catholicism and hordes and Orthodoxy because they started reading church history.

We don't cover it.

And they, as a result, think everything is Roman Catholic.

Right.

So that's, that's what I'm like trying to correct in our apologetics so that we don't have the same information.

Mistakes in.

In our approaches to them.

Yeah.

So let's.

Let me deal with some of it.

So the.

You say to admit that you think it's a misrepresentation to say that they believe in.

That the church, the Scriptures and tradition are equal in authority.

Yes.

This is out of their, their document.

The, the c.

I'M just going to say ccc, for as I mentioned, is the, the.

The Catechism of the Catholic church is from 1995 version.

This is the one blessed by Pope John Paul II.

But it says this paragraph 95.

It is clear, therefore, in the extreme, extreme, the supremely wise arrangement of God, sacred tradition, sacred scriptures and the magisterium, the Church are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without, without the others working together, each in their own way, under the action of the Holy Spirit.

They all contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.

Yes.

So that when I say that they are equal in authority, it's, it's based on things like that that very clearly state.

So you can't have one without the other.

Ask you a Protestant question now.

Okay.

When you go to your pastor on Sunday, Right.

Would you say your pastor is preaching the word of God?

Well, if my pastor.

Yes.

I mean, I've had some pastors that I'd have to say.

No, I mean, I've had, I've heard pastors that, that preach out of the newspaper and you know, poems.

So.

Yeah.

When, when your pastor is preaching the word of God, would you say that he is ministering the word of God to his people, meaning he's the conduit by which the word of God is being applied to the people through the Spirit.

Okay, I can agree with that.

And you see the harmony behind the authority of the pastor and the authority of Scripture, they work together in a ministerial fashion.

Right?

In a ministerial fashion, not in a magisterial fashion.

This is what the Protestants argued for in sola scriptura.

The magisterial authority no man has other than the original describers of Scriptures.

But the ministerial authority we do have actually when the word of God is preached.

A lot of Presbyterians would say that the word of God being preached in church is the word of God preached.

It's the same equivalent.

It's no different.

Yeah, but, but I'm disagreeing with the fact that I would say that the, that my pastor has.

Has that ministerial authority.

I wouldn't say he has it.

It's the word of God that has the authority.

And as long as he's faithful to it, what he's declaring would be.

Would is fine.

But it's, it's the word of God that's the authority.

So when your pastor is preaching the word of God and the.

So what the Roman Catholic Church in that thing you're saying is a authority of harmony.

So when the Christians did set Nicaea one for first council, Nicaea which is defined the Nicene Creed as a Trinitarian.

They said that it was inspired by the Holy Spirit and it had the similar binding authority that Jesus gave to the Church as the.

As passed down by the apostles.

That was nicaea1.

Right.

Would you agree with that?

That was.

That's what it said.

Say that again, like Nicaea1 had the binding authority of the Church when it was declared.

So much so that it was considered inspired by the Holy Spirit.

I can give you some quotes if you want, but it was considered inspired by the Holy Spirit not in the equivalent way Scripture was, but in the same binding way that Scripture was in the sense that here's a good way that Protestants kind of deny themselves.

Can you be a Christian and not believe in the Trinity?

Well, I guess the issue there is if people were saying that the counsel was your confession that comes out of that was inspired.

I'm going to have to ask you what you mean by inspired, because I think we're using the same word two different ways.

Because if you're going to say it's inspired, I'm going to say the, the way we understand the word inspired.

The, the.

The grief that we have in.

In second Timothy 3, 16, 17.

And that is the first usage of that word and it's God breathed and.

You kind of nailed it in the head.

As far as the Protestant position, that's actually what I wanted to get to.

I agree with you 100% at that point.

Nothing after Scripture is.

So I actually agree with you on that.

However, there is an authority outside that protects and guards.

And that authority was given to by Jesus to the apostles and then forward.

Right.

And unless you just think that no one has authority outside of the Apostle John dying, then no one in the church has any authority whatsoever.

No, there's an authority within the.

The pastors or elders of a church.

There's an authority they have over their local body.

What is the authority they have?

Well, the authority they have would be a spiritual one.

To care and to protect, basically to shepherd.

Excommunicate based on doctrine.

I would say that anyone in the church has that.

That's magisterial authority.

Now you just need every believer.

No, because anybody.

Now you just said every believer has the ability to excommunicate a person based on doctrine.

Yeah.

So it's not just the ministers or the pastors that have that authority.

Because the issue is that you.

There's a process that you go through for excommunication and the whole thing, they.

Do it based on doctrine.

Can they excommunicate someone on the basis of doctrine.

Can I.

Okay.

Can you declare someone as anathema on the basis of doctrine?

Well, based upon what Scripture teaches.

I see.

Can you define to me what a heretic is?

Can you say who's a heretic?

Right now?

Who would be considered a heretic?

Well then I'm going to have to ask what you mean by heretic because some people define it, what their definition is.

I'll go with that.

Well, there's two definitions broadly.

One in the way Matt Slick likes to describe it is damnable heresy versus non damnable heresy.

Because there's heresy that puts you outside of the camp of salvation, which is how it sounds like you're using it.

But heresy is in a simple sense is any false teaching.

And in that.

How do you know what's false teaching?

Well, we would only know it from a faithful understanding of scripture.

But if I were to finish the sentence, I was going to say I'm sorry.

Yeah, we are all heretics by that definition.

Because all of us, every single person, no one has perfect theology.

Everyone, a lot of people think they do.

But.

So if the, if the definition of a heretic is false teaching, there's.

We're all going to have something that's false and we'll be corrected by Christ.

So now say that.

Okay, go ahead.

I'm sorry.

So when we, we what?

Most people, when they use the word heretic, like you ask me who's a heretic, what they're thinking is whose false teaching is, is so bad that it, it corrupts the gospel so that people that believe it could not go to heaven.

Right.

I, I would say with the Roman Catholic Church and any man made religion, any religion that teaches that you have to add works to salvation, that's what's going to be, constitute a man made religion.

And when you do that, that adding of your works diminishes the gospel of Christ and puts you outside of, of believing in.

That puts you outside of the camp of salvation.

So you can't not saying that you can't get saved.

You can't get saved believing in your works to save you.

I think your guests had a thing to say.

I don't want to interrupt.

Were you going to say Sanchuck?

Well, I was.

I mean there's something I do want to say, but I said anything.

Okay.

So as Protestants we would understand that our pastors and elders, when they're preaching and teaching, that they are, they can be fallible, they can be wrong.

What would the Roman Catholic Church say about the magisterium, when they're, when they're teaching and, and giving, talking about scripture and defining it.

Yeah.

Well, I think I would disagree.

So I've debated this topic about how papal infallibility is basically a modern invention that was not historical by any stretch of the imagination.

And this is actually one of the biggest reasons why a lot of Roman Catholics ended up leaving part of the Roman Catholic Church and then they took it back, Vatican ii.

So I would not say that the Roman Catholic Church has uniquely any sort of authority that's universal.

But the thing that the Protestants seem to think is that almost like every little church around the corner that's just a church plant has its own authority that links itself back to the apostles.

And I would probably disagree with that.

And you know, Dr.

Jordan Cooper and a bunch of other Protestants leave to antiquity.

I was on this debate.

I was in his channel a few, few days ago debating Greek Orthodoxy.

They would all agree with that.

These, like historical Protestants would have disagreed with this idea that you could have just formed your own church and just done whatever you want.

Right.

There should have been still links that led back to the apostles.

Right.

Okay.

So, so my original question was, did the Roman Catholics under that system, is the magisterium considered, can they be fallible or are they infallible?

They say that through the power of the Holy Spirit, they said that the magisterium is infallible.

They apply the consensus of the church that had in the early church, which is that they said that, for example, like the Eastern Orthodox believe that the ecumenical councils are infallible.

So do the Roman Catholics.

They both believe that.

Right.

They applied that both to the Roman pontificate going forward.

Now, we as Protestants, we derive a lot of our theology from the ecumenical councils.

We could actually say there's a sense of infallibility to them in some of the dogmas.

Right.

Well, we would compare those ecumenical councils against the word of God.

This is where I would kind of disagree.

I don't think the Protestants practically do this.

Well, it depends on what you define as Protestants.

Right.

That's a whole range of, you know, Protestant churches out there.

Churches.

So what would you say you are?

I'm Reformed, like Baptist, Presbyterian, just pure Reformed.

Dutch reform, Continental reform, which is most closely associated with Presbyterian.

Okay.

And you would say that, you know, something like the doctrines of Calvinism is biblical, right?

Oh, yeah.

The doctrines of grace.

Okay, so I want to ask you something.

Would you say the free grace theology is heresy?

I'm not quite sure what you meant by free grace theology.

Free grace theology is this idea that you take faith alone, this idea of faith alone to the nth degree where they would say something like repentance is not necessary.

Only truly believing in Jesus is the only thing that's necessary.

You don't make Jesus your Lord.

I actually talked to one person that says you could become an atheist and still be saved, go to heaven.

I actually challenged him to a debate and he, he doesn't want to fight.

Would you say that that would be heresy?

I would say that's heresy because we understand that it's God who grants faith and repentance.

So those, those, those come.

That's out of the word of God.

Is it damnable heresy?

You're saying that there, there.

They're saying that you don't need Christ.

They're saying that you don't need repentance.

You don't need repentance.

Well, you said.

Yeah, but you said, you said that like an atheist can be saved.

Yeah.

The person that I talked to particularly, he has a YouTube channel.

But I don't want to out of Adam right now.

Okay.

We would say someone, all you need is belief.

You don't need anything beyond belief.

Belief in What?

Jesus.

John 3:16 and define belief.

And, but, but like just trusting in Jesus.

Okay, but, but.

So there's two things.

One, if they, if you're, if someone's saying they're an atheist, right.

They can't be believing that Jesus is God because those two are mutually exclusive.

And that's why I'm confused with what.

You'Re saying at one point.

If you genuinely trusted Jesus, no monastery sin that you do afterwards can remove that justification from you.

So on that basis that you know a free grace theology.

I'm sure, Andrew, you, you've known what I'm talking about, right?

I, I understand it, but I, I have not heard where they would argue that somebody.

My question, are they a damnable heretic just saying that.

Are they.

Well, are they adding my repentance is what he's asking.

So.

But it, well, it comes down to what is the belief in.

Because gospel, the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus.

Okay.

And I'm trying to be really clear with it.

So what?

Because just saying the gospel isn't clear, right?

They're believing that they, that they cannot.

That, that Jesus is God.

He died on the cross as a payment for their sin.

There's nothing they could do to earn it.

No works they can give.

They're not a good person.

That it is only by what Christ did that can save them.

And you would say that is that people who people, right, because they would say that at one point, if you believe in Jesus, you have received the Holy Spirit.

And because we believe it once saved, always saved, that that person, no matter what they do, even if they temporarily turn to atheism or even whatever they do, whatever they do, they are saved for eternity because they trusted in Jesus at one point in their life.

Okay, so there's a couple things here.

Because a truly regenerate person, according to scripture, won't turn to atheism.

Okay.

That's what scripture says.

But that's not the point.

Are they a damnable heretic?

Is.

Well, it is the point because we're trying to define the terms.

Because, because what I just defined for you is what is called repentance.

So if they could say, oh, you don't have to repent, well, what do they mean by it?

Because the, the thing is repentance is that the changing of seeing yourself as a good person or your works is going to earn you salvation.

That you have something to add to it.

It's turning from that to turning and trusting God.

And so let me, if, if you're going to say, well, they believe in doing repentance, they just call it something else.

I, then I can't, you know, it's, it's, it's, the problem is, is I, you know, the terminology is faulty.

Okay, then I'll actually loop it back to the final point that I'm about to say, which is Canon 1, Council of Trend.

If any man, I'm asking, do you agree with this?

If any man says that he's justified between before God by his own works, whether done by his own natural powers or through the teaching of the law without divine grace through Jesus Christ, let him be anathema.

Do you agree with that?

Read it again.

If anyone says that a man can be justified before God by his own works, whether done by his own natural powers or through the teaching of the law without any divine grace of Jesus Christ, let him be anathema.

I, I, I mean, that's the first.

Canon of God justification Council of Trump.

Yeah, I would, I would need to see context, but that's.

So that would be saying that you can't add works to salvation, correct?

Is, is how you're saying?

Because I cannot add, and I would say this is the Catholic position, you cannot merit salvation by any natural power or teaching of the law.

There is no meritorious, but they works.

But they do believe that deeds are required.

The only deed that you need to do.

The deed that you need to do is not die.

They need you to die in a state of grace.

Okay.

You cannot commit a mortal sin.

That is the deed that you have to do.

You know, the rest of them go to purgatory for cleansing.

But the only deed is die in a state of grace.

Yeah, but once you talk about purgatory, that proves everything else.

I'm not getting into purgatory because I believe that's a false doctrine.

No, but, but, no, but purgatory proves that.

I mean, the whole purpose of purgatory is to work off your sin.

So it's a purification process.

But, but how do you.

How are you purified?

By working it off.

I would disagree with purgatory, but I get it.

Faith plus works.

I don't think that that's what the Catholics mean, but at least in our sense.

But see, the whole thing is that I think what it is, is you have and, and understand historically, right.

What, what people call the Roman Catholic Church, we think of today didn't really exist until about 1100 AD.

Okay, so you had the.

Very much like you look at Islam or you look at the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints, though with both of those that I mentioned, you can see the transformation within a generation.

The Roman Catholic Church, that transformation was much slower.

So, yes, you can find in early history things that they.

That was not the Catholic Church we know of today.

And, and where it would say things that were.

You'd have people that were biblically accurate.

Okay, but we're not dealing with the historical church because basically you're dealing with the Church today that supersedes the things that they said before.

So when, when they're speaking of the deeds, now they're speaking of works that you do to earn salvation.

And purgatory is the proof of it.

I, I don't think this is saying that you cannot merit salvation.

Okay.

That is.

But I'm giving you something from 1995 that says otherwise.

I joined the Declaration of Justification from the Catholics and The Lutherans on 1997 right there in front of me.

And that's where I was going to go to right after.

The whole idea of purgatory is to work off the sin.

You're there to be purified.

Yes, it's the purified, but off in the.

It is a sense of penance.

It's.

It's purified in the sense of a cleansing of your soul.

I don't agree with the doctrine.

I get you don't agree with it.

But you.

Justification.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

Your justification is achieved by the time you die.

Because remember, they believe what we call sanctification, they believe is part of justification.

So they believe in initial justification, the final justification.

And what we say is final justification is achieved at the point of faith alone, but it is lived out through sanctification.

That's what we mean by works are evidence of salvation.

I will agree, because I've said this for years, that every cult confuses sanctification with regeneration.

Okay.

That confusion in not understanding that salvation would.

We use the term.

Salvation is a very general term that has three elements to it and it's used as an overarching for what we would call regeneration.

Sanctification, Glorification.

Yeah.

And so all three of those would be referred to as salvation, but they're very different.

Regeneration has no works being involved.

Okay.

Sanctification does have works being involved, but sanctification is something after somebody is regenerated, it doesn't lead to it.

And what the, the Catholics would teach is that, that we, those, those works that we do are collaborating.

That's the language of the, the catechism.

Cooperating.

Yeah.

Right.

With God, with the work God did at the cross.

So they know.

And I mean, talking about this, I always have to say my kind of trick question, I ask Protestants is, do Catholics believe you're saved by faith?

And the answer typically is no.

Well, that's wrong.

They believe you're saved by faith, not faith alone.

They believe in faith plus works because you're collaborating.

I would disagree with that in the way that a Protestant means it.

So Canon 9, it says, if anyone says that a sinner is just, this is the one that you, you know, if anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, and that it is not in, in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the action of his own will.

Let him be anathema.

This is the part that we have been battling for the whole time, which is what they mean by faith alone.

At least Gavin Orland, Dr.

Gavin Orland does agree with this is probably anathematizing something like free grace theology.

They are anathematizing this because we don't say that absolutely nothing else is required to make it to the end because we do believe in perseverance.

Right.

So perseverance is a real action.

I'm a Reformed, you know, Calvinist, and we said perseverance is not a.

It's a real thing.

Like it's.

You have to make it to the end.

Right.

But they see justification wrapped into that where we don't.

Right.

And that's where the crux of the argument really lies, which is the fact that, no, you're justified at the moment.

You have, have faith.

Everything else descends from that.

But I've always told Catholics, you know, from an apologetics perspective, I think it's better to go the route of saying you don't have a basis for the sacramental system in Scripture rather than saying faith plus works, because I don't think your average Catholic who knows their Bible believes.

Yeah, you know what?

I'm earning salvation.

When they say works, they mean faith working through love.

That's what they're talking about.

That's something we, we would in some sense agree with.

All right, let me.

First off, let me bring Aaron Brewster, one of our speakers here at Striving Fraternity, into the channel.

Welcome, Aaron.

Hello.

Hello.

So, so let me respond just by giving you some of the.

From the Catholic Catechism.

Right.

Because.

And one of the things you said, you, you mentioned sacraments that, you know, their sacramental system is unlike as a Baptist, I would see baptism, communion as just memorials in a sacramental system.

They, they would see these things as adding grace.

So I'm a sacramentalist, so I can actually defend part of that from a Baptist group perspective.

But.

Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, so that, that is, I mean, and this is one of the things where they even think that their, their works, the things they do can be counted for other people in purgatory.

Right?

So.

Right.

So here we have, you know, as, as I mentioned earlier, this is paragraph 2001.

Indeed, we also work, but we are the only.

Are only collaborating with the God who works.

Well, that's saying we do works, but that works in collaboration with God.

But that's where I say the faith plus works.

Paragraph 2003, just a couple paragraphs later.

Grace also includes the gifts that the Holy Spirit grants us to associate us with his work, to enable us to collaborate in the salvation of others and in the growth of the Body, of the.

Of Christ the Church.

There is sacramental graces, gifts proper to the different, the different sacraments.

In 2009, paragraph 2009, it says merits of good works are gifts of the divine.

Goodness, grace gone, blood before us.

We now are given what is due.

Our merits are God's gifts.

Yes.

So by the way, when they say merit, they don't mean merit like how we understand an imputative merit.

That's not what they're talking about.

Like, for example, God promises gifts to us in heaven.

Correct.

That's.

We're not earning them, but we are merited them on.

On the.

As a result of like, you know, Paul says.

Yeah, but these aren't in heaven.

This is.

These merits are things we're doing now.

Yeah, we, we.

Yeah.

They merit gifts from God that they see as a dispensation of grace through the sacraments.

Of course.

Yeah, And.

Which is not something I would disagree with.

No, but yeah, okay, so.

So here's paragraph 2027 or 2027.

It says, moved by the Holy Spirit, we can merit for ourselves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal life as well as necessary temporal goods.

So this is the difference.

These things, these merits are to obtain eternal life.

That's regeneration.

Can you send me which canon that is, I'd like to look up?

That's the Catholic Catechism, which.

1995.

Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Paragraph 2027.

2227.

No, thank you.

2027.

Oh, 2027.

Apologies for that.

No one can merit.

No one can merit initial grace which is at the origin of conversion.

Moved by the Holy Spirit, we can merit for ourselves and for all others.

Grace is needed to return attainment from Israel.

So yeah, this is the traditional Catholic teaching of cooperation, which we as Protestants disagree with, but it's.

It's cooperation.

It's cooperation to obtain regeneration.

That's the thing.

This eternal life as well as necessary temporal goods.

What do they mean as eternal life?

Well, they're talking about making it to the end.

Right.

So all the things that would.

They would need to make it to the end, they're moved by the Holy Spirit.

So the first sentence there says no one can merit the initial grace which is at the original conversion.

Do you agree with that?

The first part of that sentence.

What that?

That we can merit for ourselves.

No one can merit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversion.

That's what 2020 sciences.

I'll have to pull up, go up to 2025.

We can have merit in God's sight only because God's free plan to associate man with the work of grace.

Merit is ascribed in the first place to the grace of God and secondly demand collaboration first to God's grace, secondly demands man's merit is due to God.

2025, two paragraphs right above it.

Yeah.

It says we can have merit.

Merit in God's sight only because God.

God's free plan to associate man with the Work of his grace.

Merit is ascribed in the first place to grace of God and secondly to man's collaborate.

Collaboration.

Man's merit is due to God.

Fine.

Yes.

But it's still that this merit, this work that we do is obtaining eternal life.

Kathy, I think I just want to address this one because Kathy keeps very confused as far as why I'm defending Roman Catholicism.

I'm not defending Roman cause.

I, I debate Roman Catholics on a, On a weekly basis at this point on matters like Sola, Scripture and things like that.

I, I am trying to get our apologetics level up so that we can make better arguments for.

Toward the exact position where we disagree.

Because when we say things like faith plus works, they just don't hear it the same way, you know, oh, you're just faithful faith plus words.

I'm not talking about your average Roman Catholic here.

So just to be clear.

Yeah.

Your average Roman Catholic doesn't know anything similar to your Protestant.

They don't know anything.

They don't sit there and read the canons.

But if you do read the canons, okay, you can understand the theology.

That's all.

So let me, let me give two more.

And then I see Aaron wants to say some.

But so, so paragraph 2068 says this, a little bit of a lengthy one, but it says the Council of Trent teaches that the Ten Commandments are obligatory.

Obligate.

I can't speak today.

Obligatory for Christians.

Thank you.

And that justified man is still bound to keep them.

The Second Vatican Council confirms the bishop's successors of the apostles received from the Lord the mission of.

Of teaching all peoples and of preaching the gospel to every creature so that all men may obtain salvation through faith, baptism and the observance of commandments.

So again, this is.

They're saying regeneration is obtained with.

The salvation there is referring to is obtained through faith.

Yes, plus baptism plus observing the commandments.

And I think this is the part where the apologetic really kicks in.

I think I agree with you.

And we have to contend the justification at this point is by faith alone, not through these other things.

Yeah, right, but, but see they.

There.

But this is where I say the faith plus works because a couple paragraphs later, this is 2075 says, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?

You must enter into life, keep the commandments.

So this is.

You're quoting scriptures over there.

I'm sorry, well, what they would call scripture, but the Catholic catechism, chapter, paragraph 2075.

I said all my, all my quotations that I have are out of it.

You Exhausted all your quotations on me now?

No, trust me, I haven't.

I skipped over a bunch.

The thing is, I think that they do have a faulty understanding of this.

The problem that I have with the Protestants is I think if we understand them like you were saying, it is a better thing for us to go directly for justification by faith alone.

I do see, and I don't know if in your work you see this, Protestants misunderstand justification by faith alone quite a bit.

Right.

Like, we should be saying things like free grace theology is heresy.

We should even possibly consider that a damnable heresy.

But we've foregone so much of our tradition in the name of the local church having, you know, local authority, that I think that it's led into this.

Oh, like, you know, anything goes as long as you're a trinitarian.

That's what I feel like.

So it could be.

It could be this and you could be that.

That's fine as long as you're a trinitarian.

Okay, let me say one more thing and then I'll let Aaron just jump in, but you mentioned the free grace a lot.

The issue I have with free grace is I, you know, I can't say it's damnable heresy because I need to understand.

You know, like, it's.

It's like I got saved never hearing the word Trinity.

I knew nothing about the Trinity was never something I heard in Hebrew school.

So I never knew anything about it.

I knew Jesus was God.

I read in the scriptures that Jesus was God and I saw the Father and he was God and the Holy Spirit, and he was God.

I didn't understand any of that.

I just accepted that that's God.

Now when it was explained to me, it's like, oh, okay, that's.

That's the clarification of what the scripture says.

Thank you.

That's different.

So did I believe in a triune God?

Well, I, I believed in the God that was in the scripture that is described as triune immune, but I didn't understand the.

The preciseness of it.

So when you keep talking about the free grace, I go back to the question of if, if they're believing that, oh, well, you don't have to repent.

Well, what do they mean by repentance?

Because many of them think.

Many people think repentance is some sort of work that you do.

And that's why they say you don't have.

You don't repent.

But, but what are they saying to do you have to believe.

You got to stop believing that you can earn salvation and trust what God did.

You don't have to make Jesus Lord of your life.

That's what they would say.

You would say, just believe.

Well, you don't have to.

He already is.

We don't make him Lord.

You know what I mean?

Like, no, but you don't have to.

But this submission to him as.

Because they see that as a work.

But that's, See, but that's not what repentance means.

They're adding to the definition.

And that's, that's my whole point.

They're, they're, they're defining this in a way where they, what they say you, you actually have to do is trust, stop trusting self and trust God.

That's what repentance is.

It's that change of mind of self to God.

They do believe it's change of mind.

Yeah.

So.

So that is what you do.

It's the, the idea of, well, you have to submit to God.

You submit to God regardless.

Every knee will bow.

What do you mean by that?

I'm just curious.

Every knee will bow.

I mean, God.

God is God.

He's no one makes him Lord.

No one.

No one is that people could deny that.

Oh, I don't have to submit to God.

Yeah, you do.

He's the one that puts breath in your lungs.

Right?

People that I talk to, the reason I bring a free grace, because I think it's relevant to Trent.

That's the only reason I bring it up.

The reason the free grace would say, once you trust in Jesus, you are saved, regardless of what you do after that you were saved.

But that's not.

But the whole thing is.

First John 2:19 would counter that.

Right?

According.

Right.

And this is the problem that I think the Catholics always bring up with the Protestant.

Oh, according to whom?

Right.

And then we appeal to our own authority.

I'm appealing to scripture.

I didn't appeal to anybody but Scripture.

Right.

And they would say, well, John 3:16.

Right.

And this is the kind of thing that I have with them.

I, I'm a lordship salvation person.

But they think that they, you know, the interesting thing is they think that I'm a heretic because, Because I believe in lordship salvation.

And they think that I'm working my way to heaven and things like that because I have to repent.

I believe the repentance is necessary.

But, but you mentioned John 3:16, right?

Yeah.

Which many know, but they don't.

Read further.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever should Believe in him shall not perish, Perish, but have eternal life.

For God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but rather that the world might be saved through Him.

He who believes in him is not judged.

But he who does not believe in him is judged already because he's.

Because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

So if they don't believe in him, they weren't saved.

Yeah, they would say that you are if you believe in Jesus.

That's all that's necessary.

No, but that's not what this passage.

That's not what the passage says.

If you don't believe in him, you're judged.

Right?

No, I'm agreeing with you, Andrew.

Yeah.

No, I'm just saying, like, so.

So the point is, when you keep bringing up the free grace, I go like, yeah, but what they're.

They're the reason they're having a.

You know, and this is why you can't just say, well, they're all anathema.

They're all accursed.

Because when they're.

If they're teaching what the Bible actually says, but then they use language to say what they disagree with in there, giving it a new definition.

Well, that's not the same thing.

Right.

It's.

It's, you know, so you.

You got to deal with what they're actually believing, not with the way they miscontrue.

I mean, when people say, you know, if you use the term Calvinism, people will say, oh, so you believe that God forces you to believe.

Well, that's not what Calvinism teaches.

So to say that it's like, well, but that's not actually what Scripture teaches.

But if they give that definition.

Right.

They give a strong man argument.

That's the problem.

And that's what I think is happening here.

But okay, I said, I'll let Aaron go.

If you want me to hop off, I can hop off.

No, no, no.

Oh, actually, no.

I'm actually excited to interact with you.

What's your name?

John.

John.

My name is Aaron.

I always come a little late.

Sorry about that, John.

Sometimes, you know, in conversations like this, I tend to be the guy who comes in kind of from more like the layman's perspective.

You know, there are.

There are, I think, a lot of paragraphs in the catechism that, you know, definitely sound on their face value like there are.

They definitely be arguing for the perspective that Andrew is saying.

I think an interesting One is paragraph 1815, where it says the gift of Faith remains in one who has not sinned against it.

Which is an interesting statement.

It goes on to add to that, it says in quotes, but faith apart from works is dead when it is deprived of hope and love.

Faith does not fully unite the believer to Christ and does not make him a living member of his body.

Yes, which, which I'm sorry, can I just look it up real quick?

1815 and so I mean like, so I, I, yes, there I think there are plenty of things for more of a scholarly, excuse me, you know, that.

Type of an approach.

But the question I would ask is this.

Having grown up in Michigan, which very big Polish community, most vast majority of them were Catholic.

The resonating concept among these Catholics, when you ask them whether or not they know they are born again or they know they're saved, they know they're a Christian.

How can you know?

The answer is almost always predominantly I don't know, I can't know, or some mixture of well, you know, if I do more good than I do bad, you know, those, those stereotypical responses that we, anyone who has studied apologetics or witnessing evangelizing have heard.

So if the Catholic Church isn't teaching a works based salvation, why is it the vast.

And I can't speak from my own personal experience, I haven't met all of the Catholics.

But why does it appear from anecdotal testimonies from individuals who have been Catholic, My mom was Catholic growing up.

And those who witness the Catholics often.

Why do we frequently hear that the vast majority of the Church, the people have this belief that their good works are extremely important to their eternal salvation?

Yeah, I think two responses.

One, I would say that the Catholic the, the ability for the layperson to know what the Catholic Church teaches is very limited because one of the arguments I bring for sola scriptura is the fact that they think that the canon laws clarify scripture when if you just place the canon law on a table, it's so high and you know what I mean, like, and I say, do you guys really think that this clarifies scripture?

I would say that first of all, it's an extremely complicated system whose biggest flaw is that you could become an enemy of God in 10 minutes.

Like, like you know, when you come in a mortal sin and mortal sin is not agreed upon anything that's done with full intent, full knowledge, full intent is immortal sin.

So yes, as far as assurance of salvation, Catholic Church condemns assurance of salvation as far as knowing that you are counted to be part of the elect, something like that.

Right.

And this is a great point to disagree with them on.

The second thing I would say is that as far as anecdotal, you know, you could find a lot of Protestants struggling with the same kind of thing.

We believe in justification of faith alone, but we know that when a person falls into sin, especially if it's a grievous sin, we would.

We would say things like, you know, almost like we're separated from God.

Right?

Like, we would.

We would have that.

So anecdotally, I think when people sin, it's a natural response to feel like I'm now broken away from God.

And I think that could be there if we.

If we.

If we remove the Arminians from the conversation, you know, people who actually believe you can lose your salvation.

I would say that.

I think the Protestant response where we are concerned, you know, like, oh, there's so much sin in my life, you know, and we're doubting our.

Even our relationship with the Lord is a very different thing from the belief that it is my good works that further perpetuate my salvation or that make it possible.

Because I would say that really, I tell people this when they're looking for a church, you know, good.

You know, good Baptist church, right.

I say, yeah, read their doctrinal statement, but that doesn't really mean too much.

What's really going to teach you about that church is what the people in that church are doing and saying, who they are, what is churches, and what do they believe that's going to tell you more about what that church teaches in their doctrinal statement.

And even if we could point to a number of paragraphs in the Catholic Catechism, or to things said by popes or whatever else that would make it sound.

Articles written by Catholics, you know, that make it sound like we really agree on this point.

Justification is through faith.

The perpetuating idea about the role that works play in the maintaining of that salvation is very different in terminology than what the Protestants say.

And I think is what leads to a greater number of Catholics professing Catholics believing to one degree or another that their good works are absolutely necessary in this process of salvation versus the number of Protestants who would actually find themselves saying, yeah, if my good deeds outweigh my bad, I'll get into heaven.

I mean, to hear a Protestant say that is, it's a very considerably smaller percentage.

So I may ask you, please, I'll let you.

And I'll let you say something quick.

I would just say.

I would say, practically speaking, though, I think it's safe to say that the Catholic Church does teach a work salvation, if the vast majority of Catholics believe that works are necessary for their salvation.

But go ahead.

I would say one thing regards to that.

If you look at an Armenian who believes in that, you can lose your salvation.

And obviously in the realm of apologetics, we know all of them, right?

We know so many of them.

And when you hear their keeping their salvation, it's going to sound very similar to what we're talking about over here.

Now, we wouldn't condemn them as damnable heretics, right?

Because.

Because they're.

I mean.

Right.

But you know, they're keeping themselves.

You can look at like a holiness Pentecostal, for example, right.

And they would, they would really believe that you must keep yourself, you know, or you could lose your salvation.

I have plenty of people in my church that believe that you can lose your salvation.

Right.

And it sounds like works to some extent, because if you can lose it on some unmeritorious thing, right.

That you do some sin, then there you go.

You're kind of meriting your own own perseverance.

My, my point is to say that we don't condemn this group, right, as this.

I think, like when we come to other groups that say similar things, because you Catholics have a lot of an agreement.

Armenians and I always have said that the only way to refute Catholicism is to be reformed.

Like, an Armenian can never debate a Catholic inconsistency.

You just can't.

Like, you cannot.

In fact, one of the Canons of Trent talks about Predestination Nation, and you cannot know you are predestined.

That was a crux of the debate.

So you'll never see an Armenian be consistent with that because they have a hard time.

And I think you said one la like something towards the end.

Oh, why do so many.

Why do so many Catholics believe that?

Because the Catholic Church, just like how we are, is anti Protestant.

So over time, the culture has developed to be anti.

What I would encourage you to say is if you look at the 1977 Joint Declaration between Anglicans, Lutherans and Catholics, what they have declared is that the word justified by faith alone has semantic differences, but no longer dogmatic differences.

And they come together to identify in 1997, the Joint Declaration.

So we made progress in identifying that we mean the same thing, but we approach it differently.

Okay, so let me, let me just say this, and I know Chuck wants to weigh in as well.

A thing that I've noticed over the years, you had the Catholic Church call It what we believe.

Ina you had the Mormon Church say that we've, we've lost the gospel, they had to restore it.

You have the Jehovah Witnesses that say, you know, that we're not saved.

And all three of those groups in recent years have come back to where they would say we're not Christian.

They are to now saying we're Christian like you.

And so when the, the issue is that what we have is a Catholic Church that, you know, if you look at, you know, really where the beginnings of some of that start with unsaved people who were, you know, when an emperor just goes, you're all Christian and I'll give you great graces if you become pastors.

And all of a sudden you had unsaved people making doctrine.

Okay, so.

But you also had saved people.

And so you have, that's why like Matt Slick always jokes, my church father could beat up your church father.

Because the early church fathers were all over the place in their doctrine and you could find an early church father that teaches anything.

And so in those early years there wasn't the precision.

And with the Catholic Church continuing to morph, it went through years that yes, it might have been more solid.

Just like if you look at the Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon is closer to the Bible than it is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Doctrine of Covenants and Pearl of great prices where it goes, you start seeing what they really teach.

And so you have that with the Catholic Church where what they really taught wasn't developed for a thousand years.

And now you had with Pope John Paul ii, kind of a softening of it.

So now you have the dilemma of which Catholics, because you have the Catholics who believe in the Catholic Church as it is today.

And you have the Seva, the Cantus.

I can't never pronounce that name.

But those that believe that, you know, ever since John Paul II, it's, it's gone arrive ever since Vatican 2.

And so, so which is the true Catholic Church?

Well, if you're going to stick with those that are really holding to, you know, like Mel Gibson and those guys who, who believe.

Nope.

That since Vatican 2, it, it isn't the church anymore.

Well, they, they would still be holding to the very things that we would see, but you still see that lingering on in the, in what the Catholic Church teaches today.

And, and so I, I'm looking at what they, what they're teaching and going, no, they are teaching that you do works.

You, you obey commandments to obtain eternal Life, so.

But Chuck, I know you wanted to engage, so I will hand it over.

Yeah.

First of all, I just want to say, brother, I appreciate the hard work you're doing.

Fighting the good fight.

Right.

For the gospel and the, you know, the, the research, you know, you obviously studied a lot on this.

I want to go back to our discussion on justification and you said something and I want you to clarify that the Roman Catholics or, or the Magisterium would define justification as like it happens at one point in your life, but also at the end of your life, something like that.

Could you reiterate that?

Yeah.

So the, the Catholic's position is that there's an initial justification that is completely merited by God.

It's through grace alone.

So what we would call, you know, when we have a born again experience type of thing, but they believe your final justification is after the life.

And you must die in a state of grace, you die in a state of enmity with God, then he will go to hell directly.

And how would they define justification?

Their definition of justification is a little bit different than ours because I think we all, I think all of us hold to penal substitution.

I've been on panels before that they don't.

So I embarrassed myself.

I think we would all hold to a penal substitutionary atonement.

For them, justification is inclusive of the forensic aspects of it.

But their justification is something like the beatific vision.

Right.

So they're going towards being one with God in his holiness.

So the beatific vision is the goal of the Catholic life.

For us, it's penal substitutionary tone.

They don't have that same system as us.

Okay.

So we would say, based on Colossians 2:14, that the definition of justification, it is a legal declaration by God that the sinner is in right standing beforehand based on the life and works of Jesus Christ.

So I don't understand how the, the Catholic system can say you're declared justified before, by.

Before God at one point of your life and then you're justified before God at another point.

Those are, that's conflicting.

Can I ask you, you seem like a scholar, so I'm going to ask you.

A verse that they would always bring up is Romans 2.

He will render to each one.

Romans 2.

What?

Sorry.

Romans 2, verse 6.

Sorry.

He will render to each one according to his works.

To those who by patience and well doing seek for glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life.

But for those who are self seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey righteousness, there will be be wrath and Fury.

There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil to the Jew first and the Greek, but also glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good.

The Jew first and also Greek for God shows.

Shows no partiality.

So what they say is when we have these legal Colossians, right?

You taken our record of debt, and he's nailed it to the cross, must be balanced with something like Romans 2, where both of them have to be in harmony with one another.

I am not advocating for the position.

Yeah.

And I was going to say this at the end.

I'll wait for Chuck to, because it looked like he was reading it, but let me.

Let me just.

I'm bringing up on that.

Yep.

And so let me just say for.

For the audience sake, this, this may seem odd for some because Johnny's coming in and he's.

What he's actually trying to do is to caution us with his.

His study to not misrepresent the Roman Catholic Church.

That's a good thing because we don't want to misrepresent them.

Right.

I said that earlier, before he even came on.

This is where, you know, he's.

He's been studying more of the history and things like this and that.

That's good for us to take into account.

We.

We want to make sure we're careful when we say this is what, like in this case, the Roman Catholic Church believes.

Right.

So he's trying to give a caution.

Now, am I disagreeing with them or the others?

Yeah, we.

We're, you know, there's some disagreement, but that disagreement doesn't have to be bad.

I.

I know people use social media.

If you disagree.

You're.

You're a heretic.

You're.

You.

You know, I gotta call your pastor.

Your.

Your anathema.

Right?

It's not that we're.

We're disagreeing, and for the purpose of being more accurate and precise in what we're gonna.

What we say Roman Catholicism teaches.

I.

So I want to commend everyone to.

To make sure we do that.

I'm not upset with Johnny that he, you know, he.

He's, you know, it's.

It's.

He's coming in to try to cause us, but his heart.

I'm going to speak for you, but I think I'm accurate that I think Johnny's heart is that we would be more careful in our language with Catholics so that we don't misrepresent them.

And that's a good thing to do.

Okay.

If you don't mind.

I will just give a quick reason for my heart that I was discipling a young man last year and he also was wanting to be an evangelist and he ended up turning Roman Catholic.

So I was working in close concert with him.

Now, he was having other struggles before.

So I'm not saying that it's this entirely, this is entirely, you know, a unanimous thing, but he was one of the people that I was discipling, very close with them, and he ended up turning Roman Catholic.

That's when I started studying it in order to talk to him.

And his best friend ended up turning Greek or Orthodox.

Where I live, that's the growing trend.

And Greek Orthodoxy especially, which is really my heart.

That's the reason I'm not trying to be a devil's advocate for no reason.

People in my life are turning around, which is what caused me to look into this.

Yeah, I remember a guy he worked for, Jeremiah Kry.

He actually was their resident apologist, theologian.

He was going for his doctorate.

And I remember he asked me, he's like, should I, should I go do my doctorate in theology or philosophy?

And I was like, theology?

I said, because, like, if you're going to do apologetics and theology, you need to know what the Bible says.

You need to know what your, the theology is.

He decided to go philosophy and he ended up becoming Roman Catholic.

And he became Roman Catholic because he started looking at the history.

And when you, when you put your, yourself into this, and this is sometimes a danger when you put yourself into that sort of study, you have to know how to apply critical thinking because what, what he started to do is see the history and all the, and starts.

You're putting himself in understanding their position, but then starting to believe the position.

So he, he, he didn't see the subtlety of what started to affect him because he, he, he wasn't looking at it with the critical eye of criticism to say, well, let me apply critical thinking here.

It's.

Oh, but look at the beauty of it.

Look at the, you know, because I talked to him when, after he became Roman Catholic.

And so now I obviously would say he was never saved.

Right.

And you go, well, how was he part of a ministry?

Because he really believed he was saved.

He was just a very intelligent person, but he, he was enamored with the, the answers that the church could give.

I mean, it's no different than what I had with a guy that said, oh, the Judaism is the right way because the rabbis are the only ones that can answer the, you know, these dilemmas.

Of the Bible and then they give a manufactured dilemma that wouldn't, you know, they, they created the dilemma and they have the answer.

So, so it's like, you know, every group is going to have their, their things that, that wrap up their system.

Everybody.

Everyone.

Yeah, and everyone's gonna have some reason for it.

It's not like people are completely ignorant.

Yeah.

And that's why you can't say oh but, but look, this group, this group has, they, they, they have a system that works.

Everyone has a system that works because they make it work.

So Chuck, I think, I think verse 6 to just verse 11 is what I was referencing is a very common, very common response that you'll hear to the.

So that the thing that the reason is you believe in justification penally done on the cross, but is that all it is is the Roman Catholic opposition?

Yes, it's true, but that's not all it is.

So you have to prove that's, that's their challenge to the Protestants is you have to prove that that's all that was happening there.

Justification was complete over there and that's what they would push back on.

And I would say that they, they are approaching that from out of context.

So this is the beginning of Romans, Romans chapter one and Romans chapter two.

And this is leading into the need for Jesus Christ and the Gospel.

And so of course he's going to first starting out, out about how both Gentiles and Jews are condemned and being judged by their works.

Right.

But then Paul later goes into well now we have the works of Jesus Christ that we can appeal to.

Right.

And so if you don't have God's grace, then yeah, you're going to be judged by your works.

But do you believe that this is a salvific verse?

Here is my question to you.

I do not.

So you don't believe that this is any formula for salvation.

I, I don't think he's at this point talking about salvation.

He's talking about the judgment of God.

Okay.

I would say there's even Protestants that would probably have a different position.

This is actually forms the basis of a lot of anti rights future justification theories.

But there was that this is the thing that even Protestants can contend with.

My response has always been this doesn't negate like how you're saying justification by faith alone.

Right.

Because we still believe in the necessity of perseverance and sanctification.

Those are done on the base of words.

And also if you understand the Old Testament, there was a normative understanding that you know, Even though you have faith, right.

There's a normative understanding to the Jew that they would have to.

God will render to them.

Right.

What was there that was the law under understanding.

I, I agree with you, but I would say that if you have been justified in Hebrews kind of gives that clear thing of.

He has already perfected those who are being drawn.

And the language is not meant to settle a debate in 2025.

That language is meant to address Jews and Greeks at their time.

Right.

They're not talking about that.

And if you go to Romans 4, I think I've always just gone Romans 4 into hey, look like there's no other justification apart from any works.

So like there's balances and there's tensions that I've seen with them.

But the best thing that I've always said is if you go directly to scripture and you just stick with scripture, a Roman Catholic will have a very hard time with the overall system that they have.

I do think that the Protestants are pretty much one in the category of understanding scripture and explaining it in a way that over every generation of Protestants have affirmed what, you know, was taught.

Right.

So I think, like, we pretty much hit it in the.

Hit the nail on the head.

So I, I would agree.

I think that Romans 2 does present a problem to a Protestant again that believes that you have works no play no part in your life if you believe that.

I would say.

I don't think anyone does believe that though.

I mean, I think, I think people accept that there's works in sanctification.

But I could point to sermons from last week.

I bet I could.

If I'm talking about.

No, like there's no works apart from other.

I'm just saying that the problem is our understandings are fractured.

Right.

Like, most Protestant churches are not Reformed, so they don't preach that way.

You know, they preach in a very different way.

It will.

Actually, most churches are, are believing in the doctrines of grace even though they deny it.

I mean, I have a friend who literally writes books against Calvinism and he's a Calvinist.

I have a debate that I've done on here.

If you back in what, 20, 20, 21, 2022, with a guy, Ari Fuentes, and you know, he's a Calvinist and he's debating Calvinism and it's, you know, he just doesn't understand what it is.

He, he's arguing against the straw man.

So let me, let me just say this.

First of all, I do want to thank Johnny for coming in.

I think I Think it's good for us to be challenged?

I think it's good for us to be, you know, to, to be more precise as, as best we can.

You know, Johnny, I do want to let you know if, if you do want to set up some debates with Catholics, we got the platform right here, you know, where you could be heard by thousands, you know, with the podcast.

So I'll be in touch.

There has been one, and He's a prominent YouTuber.

Actually, it's two Indians.

So myself, I'm an Indian and he's also an Indian.

Wait, you are.

True.

I couldn't see that.

Right.

And I mean, obviously, obviously you're Christian.

That makes you white.

Oh, yeah, right.

I mean, right.

Isn't that.

Oh, sorry.

I'm, you know, the, the liberals, I just.

It's hard to keep up with them.

The gift of God given to the whites, Right?

Yes.

You get the white man's religion that, that.

I was discipled by Jews, Andrew.

I, I got discipled for, you know, all of my formative years by Jews who loved Christ.

So I have a very high respect for the Jews and I can never espouse the person that you're talking about.

Yeah, well, Blessi Rulon says I know Johnny well over 10 years.

He, he debate in way more Catholics and also has very strong understanding of what Catholics believe in the practice that he debates.

So, so put that comment up for you.

But yeah, if you wanted to.

To do a debate, you know, here we could, we could set that up.

Set it up as a neutral platform.

Would be very interested to do.

Yeah, well, I, I mean, look, I've.

I moderated many debate.

I mean, I do a lot of the debates, but I've also moderated debates here, and I, I tend to be quite neutral.

So.

Okay, there was one debate where I was the moderator and they had me on stage sitting behind them, and people were like, dude, you can't, you can't.

Your, your face is giving away.

Like when, when the, the, the.

The.

The argument was over the charismatic gifts and when, when the guy just flatly denied that there's any textual criticism with the ending of Mark 16.

And, and he was like, that's just cessationist making up an argument.

It was like.

I guess I had a look on my face like, what?

So that was.

You are a cessationist, right?

Yeah, I believe the Bible.

You said what?

I believe the Bible.

I think I watched your debate between Max Lake and yourself, and I think you did very well.

Yeah, it becomes which one we've had, I think, I think he and I have debated gifts maybe six or seven times.

So each one gets better where he goes.

I don't have any more questions.

He has like more than half of the time left.

Yeah, I love that point.

I will ask a prayer request from you guys as I leave here, which is that I'll be traveling to India next week to do ministry in a lot of reformed churches over there.

Non Reformed and reformed.

Is it evangelistic.

So we invite a lot of Hindus and Muslims there.

So just be praying if you could for God's word to flourish and then, you know, hopefully we can, we can see a lot of salvations especially among the unreached peoples there.

So maybe I'll come with you one, one day to India.

I just don't know what I would eat there.

That's my only problem.

Indian food is.

It's the only thing I, I have tried so much maybe a dozen times.

I've tried Indian food.

I live on Indian food.

I know you guys are more than welcome.

Like yeah, if you guys ever come.

Kathy, Kathy says thank you, Andrew, Chuck, amb.

Because you know, we can't use his real name I guess, but and, and Johnny for a good discussion and challenge.

So yeah.

So let me, let me just give just a quick shout out to some of our sponsors though because you know, they help us do this show.

So let me mention Lagos Bible software does have some discounts right now.

They are good until May 15th.

So you got a couple weeks left to get 25% off of their libraries.

So if you want to go get their libraries, use our, our affiliate link which is lagos.comsfe lagos.comsfe that gets you not only the discounts there but you can get those sales going on right now.

I of course think that everybody needs to stay awake in the morning and therefore what you should do to stay awake in my personal opinion is go to strivingforaternity.org plunge, get yourself a cold plunge and you will be refreshed.

You will be exhilarated for the day.

You, you will tackle anything that your day has for you after a good cold plunge.

I do that every day.

In fact, I had to get up super early this week and I had to drive somewhere early.

So I did my cold plunge at 4 in the morning.

It's the first time I've plunged while it was still dark out.

So that was a different experience.

But I, I love it is the funniest thing because I love my cold plunge every day until I have to get into it.

But part of that is what that.

That fight or flight sensation create, you know, gives you the dopamines and whatnot.

That, that knowing you're going to get into that cold water.

But it is the hardest thing you do all day.

But if, if you're saying, look, I like to be awake in the morning, but I can't do cold plunging, that's just nuts.

Well, all right then what I suggest you do is, is go get some Squirrelly Joe's coffee.

And you could do that at striving for attorney.org coffee.

Get the first.

If it's your first time, use the promo code SFE to get your discount of 20% off.

But what I suggest to do is always go to striving fraternity.org coffee when you reorder so that Joe knows that you got.

You found out about them through us here.

That helps him to continue to sponsor us.

And we appreciate that because, well, you know, I like the coffee and so I like, you know, Joe supporting us.

It's nice.

But lastly, and this is one I'll let Aaron talk about is my pillow.

I'll let you do that for that one since you like your pillow too.

And do every time Andrew preaches.

I always make sure I have my pillow, my travel.

My pillow with me.

Not for my sleeping, though.

I roll it up and it's perfect.

It fits right behind my back.

Good lower back support.

But I actually really do love my.

My pillow.

I, I don't just have the.

My pillow, though.

I have the.

My robe and I have the.

There's the.

My coffee.

But you can't say that because of Joe.

There's the.

I'm wearing my.

My slip.

I'm wearing the slippers right now.

Yeah, we have the.

My towels, my pillow towels.

Anyway, the mattress topper is the best in my opinion.

Really?

What was that?

The mattress topper is the best.

You got to do that.

We haven't had to do that yet because our mattress topper that we have right now is still good.

But that you've said that so many times.

I'm like, okay, the moment we have to replace it, I'm going with my pillow for sure.

Yeah.

So go to when you.

Oh, no.

Sister.

Sister Tara.

She said, where's the kiss?

My daughter let us all down tonight.

Yes.

Your daughter didn't see.

It's becoming a thing where she's.

Tara wants to see up.

There we go.

This one.

Put that up.

Tara wants to see your.

Do you.

For folks who don't know Aaron's daughter comes in every night before she goes to bed and gives him the kiss good night.

We get it on camera now.

Now it's expected so if you want to get yourself a my pillow just go to mypillow.com use the promo code SF it stands for Striving for eternity and that is what gets you the discount that they have and they give great discounts with the promo code and so we greatly appreciate that.

So please do that and let me just Aaron, any speaking events you got coming up with.

I think you got a homeschool event coming up.

I do.

I'll be in Winston Salem, North Carolina here later this month and looking forward to that.

That is the 22nd through the 24th.

In Winston Salem and I will be this weekend at the Truth Conference in New Jersey.

That is John Harris, myself a couple others going to be speaking at that that will be in Mount Laurel, New Jersey.

You'd have there is a registration you can get to through Striving for Attorney.

If you go to striving for attorney.org go go look at the the actually I think I even have a banner for that.

So let me look see if I have that still do to do.

No, I may not have that up but if you if you just go to on our website look for Truth Conference you'll find the article we have on that for the registration that is this weekend.

So that looking forward to that.

It's going to be a very different conference because.

Because a lot of it also going to be strategy strategy planning for how to kind of how.

How to deal with churches that where denominations have kicked people out because they've been.

They're not woke, they're awake and so for that reason they've been given the boot.

And so yeah so that is you call.

Yeah there we go.

You're calling her in for.

She normally has a bedtime of 10 o'clock but apparently she was up with her mother hadn't gone to bed yet so I didn't get the smooch yet.

Yeah.

So now we get to see her give you the kiss good night.

Does she know that everyone in the audience here like waits to see that?

She.

She knows.

She knows it now about it.

Well there you go.

So you know it's a little things our audience loves.

If folks if you're listening to this and there's thousands that listen to this but they don't watch it live it is kind of fun if you come in and watch live because when you're here live the the chat has its own conversations going.

It becomes it.

It's really kind of neat to see the friendships that form in the chat and things like that.

And just even though we.

We don't always say it like there's always.

The chats are going crazy about Aaron's daughter giving him a kiss in the forehead.

And they all like that.

That.

So that's sweet.

But Chuck, anything.

Anything going on with you that we can before we close out?

Nothing specifically planned.

Just for a quick background.

I am an elder at a Reformed church in League City, Texas.

And so if anyone's looking for a good, solid Reformed church in that area, you can look us up@5solas.net go through the website.

If you like what you see, come by or contact us and we'll have a good discussion.

And where is that in Texas?

Was it close to.

You might say it's halfway between Houston and Galveston.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right.

Close to the NASA area.

Okay.

Good to know.

Well, next week I.

I will talk to Drew and Tom to see if they will fill in.

I will not be here to do a show.

I will be traveling.

Traveling.

I will be traveling much of the month, so I'm going to be counting on them to do some shows.

We may or may not have one.

If they can't make it, be praying for both of them.

Drew right now is under the weather and Tom just has a lot going on with his work, with his job.

So be praying for them if you could.

And with that, until next week or the week after, just remember to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

And we'll see you next time.