Polemics, Roman Catholicism

Okay, the approach that we took is we initially looked at the Orthodox Church and largely looking kind of at the history, the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church. And I'm using those in kind of shorthand. By Orthodox, I mean the 20 plus churches that are Eastern or Oriental Orthodox. And by Catholic, I mean the Roman Catholic Church. Initially, there was no church division. There was only the true church and false teachings. The apostles, whenever the false teachings showed up, went after them very directly. And what we'll do is we're going to focus this time on both of them, but primarily now on the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, looking at the common history that they had and then have broken away from.

One of the things that stands out here, The Bishop of Rome began taking on the title and the full role about the year 600 AD. What's one of the things that you'll hear the Roman Catholic Church referring to in terms of their succession? Who would they say is the first pope? Right, Peter. In Roman Catholic catechism, a couple of different paragraphs, and in the initial one, the copy I have is signed by the prior pope, But even there makes reference to being the successor of Peter.

And that's a big point that they make. The truth is, however, the first 200 years of that is largely fictitious. And even as we'll see here, the connection to Peter is completely fictitious as well. It was really around the year 600 that the Roman Catholic Church began to operate in somewhat the capacity that they have now, where the Pope was actually called the Pope. And he acted in a capacity like the Pope does presently. So it took over 500 years from the time of the end of the New Testament and the last apostle living until the time when the first guy really was both called and acted as a Pope.

Yes, Jack. Yeah, what what happened is is that you initially had the apostles had apostles. There were a few apostolic delegates that were working directly with the apostles. We could have Timothy and Titus as prime examples. We have letters from Paul to those two men. But what they left in place was elders in a plurality over the local church. That's all they left in place.

But by the time the ink was drying on the book of Revelation, and John had just gone home to be with the Lord, that's when they started coming up with this bishop idea. Ignatius even said, like, we're going to have the Lord's table this morning. You may not have the Lord's table without the bishop present. Where's that in Scripture? So immediately you start seeing people concocting things and adding to Scripture.

The bishop then, became a prominent item from that time forward. And so by the end of the second century, it was assumed, oh, we've got bishops. You also began to see the five bishops, you'll see Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, those bishops as being above the other bishops. So kind of super bishops, archbishops is the term that you start hearing.

And then when the East and the West separated, Rome became elevated with a singular bishop above all, and then Pope. Initially, it just means Papa. And the Orthodox churches also have that title Pope, as we'll see here in a little bit. Yeah. Ah, okay, not the title Pope, okay?

This is Pontifex Maximus, was a title used by the Roman emperors. So if you go into the Roman history from like the third century, before Christianity was legal, never would you have the bishops, even though they were an invalid role and position, never would you have the bishops called a pontiff. Only the Roman emperors were called a pontiff, and it was when the Roman Empire began to go into serious decline that the Bishop of Rome began being called the Pontifex Maximus. The origin of that title is, it means the chief bridge maker, and it was a title of one of the high priests in Babylon.

Okay? So anyway, that's the answer to your question. One of the things you'll notice, you see this chart here that's on the front page? One of the things you'll notice, it's in the year 600 that you begin to see not only is the Pope acting as a Pope and being called a Pope, but you also see, and that's with Pope Gregory.

Gregory the Great was also one of his titles. Pope Gregory also imposed Latin in worship and in prayer, and that has held up until the lifetimes of some of us here when things were switched, where they no longer had services in Latin. Some churches still hold the services in Latin. So that's something that was established back then by Pope Gregory. It's not that they didn't do it before Gregory, but he institutionalized it as this is the way we're doing it and made an official proclamation. Notice what else? Prayers directed to Mary, dead saints and angels. Was that done before? Yes, it had been done in some of the prior couple of centuries, but now he made it official.

So there you see two things that happened under Pope Gregory. Pope Gregory, by the way, was also the one who got the idea started that Mary Magdalene had been a prostitute. There's no biblical support for that. It was just kind of passed on a rumor. The next century, about a century later, kissing the Pope's feet, Pope Constantine. was that veneration of the cross images and relics authorized now think about this veneration of the cross images things like that and relics what's the issue with that why would that be a problem yeah it would be looked upon as idol worship where where would the demand or impetus or motivation be to venerate these objects. Money is one of them. What would be another? Power and authority. In other words, we've got the right ones, we've got the right store. And what else?

What had been taking place in the pagan religions? Idol worship, right? And so you tell them, look, you can't worship that idol Artemis anymore. So what are you going to do instead? Put Mary on there and now it's fine. See? And so this kind of thing is basically what happened is, is they made, they adapted the practice, adopted it, made it Christian.

Because before they would, they would pray to various angels and spirits and things of that sort. And we have documents at that time from New Testament times. The pagans would do so. What happened is then that got You know, you can't pray to this and that, you know, pagan deity anymore, but if you just call them, you know, Saint so-and-so, then you're fine. If you just pray to this angel over here, then you're in good shape. So things got adapted over and then officially recognized here.

How about the College of Cardinals? What happened in Rome? Rome had the emperor and what was the next body, political body, below the emperor? Pardon? The Roman Senate. Now, Rome is decaying, so what are you going to replace the Senate with? College of Cardinals, right? So now you have the Pope who gets the title of Pontifex Maximus, which is what the Emperor had, which came from the Babylonian high priest, right? And now that the Roman Senate has fallen apart, what do you replace it with? The College of Cardinals, okay?

And then you have local districts that are governed and those districts were called a diocese. So you see the whole structure? Basically everything is just carried over, sometimes some different names, sometimes direct adaptation of the name. It's basically how do we restructure the Roman Empire with the church running it instead of whatever political system is in place.

Okay, canonization of dead people as saints is initiated. So now scripture Who's a saint according to Scripture? Everyone who believes. Paul writes to the church at Ephesus, and he says, to the saints at Ephesus. A few chapters later, he's going to tell the ones that are stealing to stop it.

So we have this term, somebody is like a saint, as if that's some exalted behavior, when in fact the saint is everyone who believes, even if you have to tell them to stop stealing. celibacy of the priesthood decreed by Pope Gregory the seventh 1079. This is just after the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church had excommunicated each other. The Pope and the Orthodox Bishop excommunicated each other. A celibacy of the priesthood.

Why would that come in place? Basically, what had happened is, during the time of about the second century, Gnosticism came into place. And one of the teachings of Gnosticism is, things spiritual are good, the earth and the material things are bad. So one of the teachings of some of the Gnostic sects was asceticism. That is, you deny your bodily desires and you're severe with yourself. And of course, They rejected Gnosticism, but adapted the Asceticism, and so then made it so all priests are celibate.

However, different history, some portions of the Orthodox churches, because they split off, different decision. Except for the very highest bishops, the others either can, or in some cases, like with the Coptic Orthodox, must be married. So variation in tradition. The same root, as they all originally were part of the same group, but it's when did they split and what decisions had they made by the time they split. That's what made the difference. Let's go down the list.

The Rosary. Repetition, praying with the beads. Invented by Peter the Hermit. There's a thousand years after the New Testament, they came up with the Rosary. And so now you pray through this thing. Can you see a problem? What would be a problem with the rosary, biblically? Jesus warned against vain repetitions. This is still carried on in Tibetan Buddhism. Prayer wheels. And so here the rosary got this repetition. You know, say the rosary so many times. Go around and around in circles.

But it was a thousand years after the New Testament had been written that they added that. And where did it come from? Did it come from The Bible? No. It was a pagan tradition to start in, you know, adding this thing in. Question? There are other different, a number of different pagan groups that have, you know, various kinds of prayer beads, worry beads, you know, the Buddhism, Hinduism, a whole bunch of different groups have that kind of thing. And it basically has pagan roots. And all that happened is they take the pagan practice and carry it over and put Christian names and words and things like that on it.

Sale of indulgences established to reduce time in purgatory, 1190, so almost the year 1200. The New Testament had been completed over 1100 years earlier, 1,100 years earlier, and now you add the indulgences, that's out of Egyptian religion, Egyptian pagan religion, you pay some extra to get some time out of purgatory. Yeah. Yeah.

And it was also carried over from some other pagan religions, but the indulgences part of it was specifically Egyptian. The indulgences was one of the things that really got Martin Luther stirred up because what they did is they They allowed people to pay these various indulgences because they needed to pay for things like St. Peter's Cathedral and the various things you see in Vatican Square.

And so they offered, they had this big marketing program with the indulgences and they would offer people, if you pay X amount of money, it doesn't matter what you do, you will bypass purgatory and go straight to heaven. So they had people that would you know, expect to go straight to heaven because they paid the money, but then they would live like the devil, right? And they'd already gotten this, you know, do not pass, go to not, you know, collect $200 kind of thing. So they just live like nothing mattered. And of course, other people were understandably disgusted by that.

Questions? Yeah, go ahead, Jack. Yeah, it's interesting. The church has a massive number of assets. And if you go and take a tour today, you can see just huge, huge collections of things that are valuable. But rather than get rid of any of them, because those things have been held in the church's treasury, for some time. They would go out and get new monies collected and of course they could put whatever kind of value they wanted on the, spiritual value because nobody could verify it, on the exchange of money. So give money because if you do this, then this and this will happen. So they could get those folks who were willing to put the money out to do so.

Oh, well, obviously, you know, the Latin was what it's based on is purging the idea of purging one, the Catholic idea, and this is straight out of the catechism. The Catholic idea is that unless someone has accumulated merit sufficient to bypass purgatory and very few do. Some even have an excess of merit like they say Mother Teresa had an excess of merit. Most people will figure that if they're saved they will still have to spend time in purgatory. And so you can once a person has died you can reduce the time that they will have to spend in purgatory by paying the indulgence money.

And the idea is that you're purging the sins that are from which you have not been completely cleansed. That's the idea. You have not been completely perfected, and I think that's the terminology that the catechism used. Not having been completely perfected, go to purgatory so that these sins might be purged, and then you enter heaven.

Yeah, and it's not in scripture. It is definitely a fear thing, and it's also a money thing. It's a matter of controlling people. Grace is just way too easy, you know. And you look at scripture repeatedly, well, we'll take a look at passages here as we have time, but you look at scripture repeatedly, Hebrews underscores more than once, Christ died once for all, perfecting forever.

Perfecting forever. Okay. So it's a done deal. No basis for purgatory at all. Another hand started to go up. Yeah. Are you praying for those who have died? Yes. Well, what happens, you pray for those who have died to limit their time. You can put forward money for them.

You can have an excess of merit from somebody else, even yourself, could be applied to somebody who's in purgatory. For example, St. Teresa developed an excess of merit, they said. They said, not I said. She developed an excess of merit, therefore she went straight to heaven with no purgatory time, and the excess that she had beyond what was necessary is available to be transferred to others.

Yes. Yeah, and that's that's the way it's done. You can go Even now, you know, give them 50 bucks and they'll lay it up on the altar and do some little thing. Now, you know, you're not given a nice mechanical layout as to here's how much time and this chops off so much. So you never know, you know, it's always in question. But that's what's held over people. Let's move on because there's so much good stuff here. Top of page two there.

One of the things, as Randy and I go through this, and we talked about this just yesterday, one of the things that will be a repeated theme is with each of the different groups that we're going to be looking at, one of the questions we want to get fixed in each one is how and where and in what way are they adding to Scripture? It's true, just about every group, if they've got something unbiblical, whether they embrace it publicly and openly or not, they're adding to scripture in some way.

If we look at it here, here is this quote here that's actually from, this is from the Roman Catholic scholar Cardinal Newman. This is, we are told in various ways by Eusebius that Constantine, in order to recommend the new religion to the heathen, transferred it into the outward ornaments to which they had been accustomed in their own.

The use of temples and these dedicated to particular saints and ornamented on occasions with branches of trees, incense, lamps, and candles, votive offerings on recovery from illness, holy water, asylums, holy days and seasons, use of calendars, processions, blessings on the fields, sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure, the ring in marriage turning to the east, images at a later date, perhaps the ecclesiastical chant and they carry Ellison are all of Pagan origin is sanctified by their adoption into the church get this.

So free admission that they're all of Pagan origin Roman Catholic Cardinal. So this isn't some low level guy you know trying to undercut things. This is a cardinal speaking and why is it sanctified. How is it made holy. Because the church adopts it. That's it. They use it. The church adopts it. Therefore, it doesn't matter that it's goofier and a wooden watch. It's good, right? Even wedding rings are something that's a tradition.

But you got to look at any tradition, because we'll say, you know, when are we meeting? We're meeting on Sunday. We don't attach a significance to it that's connected to paganism. and drawn from paganism. When we say Sunday, we're not worshiping the sun. The problem is with a lot of the adoption of these that they end up adding doctrines. That's the point. You add doctrine to scripture. Where did you get it? It's essentially paganism with some Christian dust sprinkled over the top and now it's okay.

Now, the chart on the bottom here is a comparison of Roman Catholic and Orthodox teachings. There's both some things that are parallel because they have a common origin, as well as what's different. Let's look through them. Leadership of a singular pope over a hierarchy, the next level down being the cardinals. And then on the Orthodox churches, leadership by a confederation of bishops. group of bishops. The highest honor among the Eastern churches is for the bishop in Constantinople. Male celibate leadership to priests and nuns, basically in the whole hierarchy, is celibate. Whereas in the Orthodox Church, celibate at the highest level, and depending on which branch, either may or must be married below that level. So an interesting distinction developed between them.

Pardon? That's a real tough one because you get, you know, you'd say, well, you're not eligible, you're married. Yeah, you would be disqualified. So you end up having somebody, maybe their wife died or something like that, and that's the only way they get there. It's rather strange. If you have a mandatory marriage requirement, It's only those where the wife died, are they eligible. So very odd. It's also tough to come up with support in scripture for that.

Baptism and Eucharist are effective for both the Catholic and the Orthodox churches. That is, they're not just symbolic, they are effective for salvation and sanctification. People of this background will look at, if you say, when were you saved? They will say, well, when I got baptized. because, and that was as an infant, because that was when they got saved. That was their view. The idea that Augustine put forth is that the baptism washes away original sin.

Scripture. The books in Scripture in the Roman Catholic Church are 66 books we're accustomed to, plus those of the Apocrypha, The Orthodox Church has the same 66 books plus Apocrypha plus three more books. So they add some more to it. The other thing is the tradition of the Roman Catholic Church, tradition of the Orthodox Church. So you have in each of them scripture. What do you add to it? Tradition. The only difference is whose tradition. So is it this tradition or that one? So you have scripture plus tradition. It's only a question of which one.

Yes, Marilyn. What happened is you see the Orthodox and Catholic churches having the Apocrypha added. And by the way, the Catholic church didn't add it until after Martin Luther was dead. Okay, so way late. And then you see other churches that descended from them oftentimes held on to the Apocrypha afterwards.

Here, you know, we're accustomed to seeing a King James Bible without the Apocrypha. The original King James Bible has an Apocrypha, and it wasn't until the late 1700s, early 1800s, they began printing it without, okay? So that's something that's kind of amazing. The early Bibles, You know, the Apocrypha was not considered scripture. Then during the Middle Ages to the Reformation, it was included as scripture. And then it's only been in recent centuries that's been dropped off and only among those who are non-Catholic, non-Orthodox.

Yeah, Art? Is there anything to be said in regard to the Apocrypha? The canon of Scripture was determined by Apostle of Man. Is there anything to be said that just because they didn't include the Apocrypha that it wasn't inspiring? Good question. Art asked the question of Just because in the development of the canon, because it was recognized by men, how do we know it's not inspired? A few different things.

One is that the Apocrypha was looked upon as useful material to read, but not as scripture. And it wasn't just the recognition by the official church council, but it was all the Christians, because they looked at, is this apostolic? Is it genuinely historic? So that even in the earliest ages, it was not recognized as scripture. It was only later on when it began to be recognized as scripture. The earliest centuries, they did not view it as scripture.

That would be one point. Another is that there are a number of things within the Apocrypha that are clearly mythical. You know, you have like Belle and the Dragon, and you get stories, all kinds of fanciful accounts. things that don't square up with scripture at all. Many of the apocryphal books claim to be connected to people like Daniel. And when you look at it and we know that it was certainly not written by Daniel and not written until centuries after Daniel was gone. So so many of the apocryphal books fall short in being genuine and we're clearly understood as that.

The apocryphal books that I think have the most historic value, because they give us information about the time between the Testaments, are the Maccabees books, because it talks about what happened with the Jews between the Old and New Testament. That has historic value, even if we look at it and say it's not Scripture. It's still very valuable historically because it fills in a gap that we don't have information directly from Scripture to address. So that's a quick answer to a big question.

But essentially, essentially, the early the early church did not recognize the apocryphal scripture. And during the the time of the dominance of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, they recognize the apocryphal books with some minor disagreement as to which one should be included. And it's only been in recent centuries that there's been a matter of taking those out of Scripture, recognizing that they weren't there in the first place. What do you mean?

They include the Apocrypha as Scripture. It was at the Council of Trent, which was the mid 1500s, that where they officially adopted the Apocrypha, three books short of what the Orthodox Church adopted. OK, communication primarily in text. Now, here's something I want to get across.

You see behind these Orthodox priests, what's on the walls here? In the Catholic Church, they have these icons that are two-dimensional, plus they have statues and things of that sort. In the Orthodox Church, they don't have the statues because this is an area where they went in different directions. The Orthodox Church said, we're not doing the statues thing, but they do the icons.

And we're in the Catholic Church, they look at what does our text say, even if it's something we add to scripture, it's still what does the text say. In the Orthodox Church, they're not terribly concerned with the text. One priest was asked, how come you don't teach more doctrinally in your church services?

And he says, why should I? We've got our icons. So they look at the icons as that's the container of doctrine. So this is a distinction to get fixed in your mind. They're not so focused on the texts as the Western Church was, looking at what's inspired. To them, you've got all the truth concentrated in the icons and you just meditate on the icons. I see several heads shaking. Isn't that puzzling?

But that's the way they operate. And repeatedly, They've stated that. Matter of fact, here's one. This is the Coptic Pope, and this is Norm Avery gave me a copy of this little thing that was punched out and handed out to people when this guy visited. Anyway, here's the guy.

He says, to the Coptic Church, faith is more important than anything, and others must know that semantics and terminology are of little importance to us. What do the words say? It doesn't matter too much. What do the icons say? That's what we care about. So that's an important distinction. There is a distinction there in where do we get our truth? The Roman Catholic Church, even if they're going to add the scripture, would still look to a text. The Orthodox Church isn't so much worried about texts as what do the icons tell us? That's where they want their theology.

So here's the next part. You have aesthetics, communication primarily in aesthetics, the icons. The idea is that those are picturing the truth. And so, you know, if the picture is a thousand words, they take that very literally and they say, forget the words, I'll take the picture. So that's, they meditate on the icons and don't worry so much about the text. Yeah, Randy? Yeah, that'd be scary, wouldn't it? Yeah. Yeah, and I can imagine, you know, somebody, you don't need to have to go to the church either. You can have icons on your computer screen. There you go.

Emphasis upon definition and understanding in the Western Church under the Roman Catholic focus. Emphasis on continuing mystery. So, do I not understand the icon yet? Well, that's okay because it's a continuing mystery. If you don't understand it yet, just meditate on it some more.

A couple of weeks ago, Wendy Beckman went to a funeral that was in an Orthodox church, an Eastern Orthodox church. And they have priestesses as well as priests. And she was speaking with this woman who had performed all service. And she asked her a question about, are you related to Catholicism?

And she goes, well, similar, but we're much more mystic. Yes. And we're very proud of that, that they were so much more mystic. Yeah, much more mystic. Now, think about the connection. If you look at the Eastern religions, they're more mystical, correct? And so look at the geographical proximity.

So what you have is as you get towards the East more, where the Orthodox churches are located, you get more towards the Eastern religions where things are more mystical, and you see the geographical explanation for why you're still so-called Christian, but more mystical in character.

It's the marriage between the two, if you will. Next thing down, Mary is perpetual virgin, taught by both. We explained last week that how Mary could be a virgin and Jesus have brothers and sisters is differently explained. The Roman Catholics have that Mary remained a perpetual virgin, and the brothers and sisters were actually cousins. The Orthodox Church says, no, that's not right.

It's because Joseph had another wife. So, anyway, neither of those are good explanations in my opinion, but just so you know. Adam's sin brought universal guilt, and listen to this, in the Orthodox teaching, Adam's sin brought universal mortality. So they're not so worried about the guilt, but just death. So it's more the impact. The guilt is not that big a deal to them. Christ dying on the cross, they're not so much worried about it absolving the guilt as dealing with the mortality. Okay.

Then finally, the Roman Church is our mother. In the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church says that the Orthodox Church is our mother. The Bible doesn't say either one. Alright, now, let's look on page 3. Now we've got some questions. Does Scripture itself claim that Scripture is our sole basis of authority? Now here's a passage we looked at in Isaiah 20. Writing of the scriptures revealed in Isaiah's day to the law and to the testimony if they do not speak according to this word It is because they have no dawn the Sun isn't coming up for them.

Okay Mark 7 this is a word from Jesus speaking to the Pharisees and scribes You can also look at Matthew 23 first 36 verses But in vain do they worship me teaching us doctrines the precepts of men Neglecting the commandment of God you hold to the tradition of men.

Is there a problem with the tradition? Yeah. Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men. He was also saying to them, you are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition, thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition, which you have handed down.

And you do many things such as that. What does that sound like? Sounds like the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox churches. Matter of fact, that's exactly what the rabbi that I visited a few months back pointed out. He says it's amazing. They get rid of all the Jewish stuff, and then they build it all back up again. We don't want any Jewish priests, but we want our own, okay? We don't want their traditions, we want ours.

So, anyway, and then the Acts 20, and we'll be looking at that, this very same passage later on here, but just, Paul starts off and he's talking to the elders from Ephesus, I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God. And when he's done warning them, he says, and now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace. That, elders, are the ones you're supposed to be standing on. What did I teach you? Not what traditions you're going to add to it. We could go on with that. I'm going to end this part with Jude 3. I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith.

This is the faith, which is the set of doctrines. We have other passages listed there. And by the way, that's not all of them. But there are a number of references starting in Acts, early in Acts. to the faith, the set of doctrines that was specifically communicated to and through the Apostles. That set of doctrines, and it's singular, the faith.

So Jude 3, I urge that you contend earnestly, and by the way the Greek word is epiagonizomai, it means a super athletic effort. I urge that you put forth a super-athletic effort on behalf of the specific set of doctrines given by the apostles, once for all. That Greek word is hapax, which means once given, perpetually valid. That specific set of doctrines, once given, perpetually valid.

You don't tweak it. You don't add to it. You don't adjust it. That's what you pass on. That's what you contend for. Not decide, okay, now you can kiss the Pope's feet. Okay, now you can give us 50 bucks and then your uncle can take less time in purgatory. None of that. It's what do the apostles say? What do they leave us with? That's what counts. Page four. One other question.

May anyone interpret scripture or only the official hierarchy of the church? As Randy and I go through these various groups, you will find that this question is also a biggie. And here's the Roman Catholic Catechism, paragraph 85. The task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, oh boy, the Bishop of Rome.

So can you have a Bible study in the Roman Catholic tradition? Can you have a Bible study? Yeah, in other words, you can have Bible study. Go ahead and go for it. Do it. But you know exactly what it says. It says what they say it says. You don't get to interpret it in variance with what they say it says. So go ahead and study. Just know what you better conclude. Here's Acts 17, 10 through 12. Acts 17, 11 is the focal point.

The brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went to the synagogue of the Jews. Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see whether these things were so."

What did they do? They used the word of God to check it out. Did they have a bishop tell them what it meant? Did they have a church catechism say, this is what it means, folks? And by the way, who were they checking out? Paul, they checked out the Apostle Paul. So does it make any sense that somebody else who says that they got a succession from Peter tells you it means this or that? No. Scripture itself says that these were more noble-minded because they directly examined Scripture and compared the Apostle Paul, the author of a portion of Scripture, to see if what he said was true. Second Peter 1, 20 through 21.

But know this first of all, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation. That is, nobody's going to interpret it and then give everybody else the inspired interpretation. For no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God, the same Holy Spirit who will lead us into all truth. So how do they interpret scripture?

Ah, now this is interesting. Paragraph 492 of the Roman Catholic Catechism. The Father blessed Mary more than any other created person, quote, in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. How about that? And chose her, quote, in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. Now, how does that set with you?

OK, the quotes that they made, where's that from? Okay, the passage right below, okay? Ephesians chapter 1, first few verses. Who did they apply it to? To Mary. Who does the scripture passage apply it to? All believers, but you're not allowed to make that interpretation. Right? That's the doctrine, is you're not allowed to make that interpretation. What they say goes. That applies to Mary. And the saints, those are the ones they designate. Okay? You okay with that? Oh, so you're alright with it? No? Yeah? Okay, alright. Okay, let's try another one.

Paragraph 969 of the Roman Catholic Catechism. Therefore, the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the Church under the titles of Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix. Any problem with those? What's that? Yeah, who is our advocate? Well, look at that, and we have the Holy Spirit who is our advocate here with us, and we also have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. So where does Mary fit in there? She's one of us. Yeah, that's pretty strange. And then here's 1 Timothy 2, 5, for there is one God. How many mediators? One.

What? How narrow-minded is that? Are you sure you're interpreting correctly? How can it mean one? It can't mean one. They've got more than one here. Is there a problem? Do you see what the difficulty is? By the way, Jesus says, I have to go because he's going to send who as a helper? The Holy Spirit. So we have Mary taking the place of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Wow. That's pretty amazing. And including a mediator, one that says there's one mediator. Wow. But I can't interpret this stuff anyway. You know how that goes. Yeah. Yeah.

A co-redeemer is another term. I didn't quote that here, but you're correct. They also have her as a co-redeemer. The catechism explicitly also says she's the Queen of Heaven. And that term, you'll find that in the Bible. That is biblical. The Queen of Heaven is the Babylonian goddess. And you'll find it in Jeremiah. And it makes the Lord so mad, He says, don't even pray for these people. Don't pray because I won't listen. They're worshiping the Queen of Heaven.

That's pretty amazing, huh? Okay, we've gone through the pages. You have this family tree of denominations. I've put it in some color. It may be different colors, but some color. The idea is as we go through these, that you'll refer to it again and again. Some of them are explicitly listed that we'll be talking about. Some of them not, but we can show where they connect to in terms of the family tree, what they broke off from. So anyway, keep that handy and it's colored for a purpose.

The other sheet you'll see behind it is the Roman Catholic plan of salvation. It looks like a flow chart. This is so you can do your computer program and figure out how you're doing and keep track of it and see whether you've accumulated merit and all that stuff. Yeah, Marilyn. Correct.

Yeah, what's happened is that the term Anabaptist was commonly used and it just means re-baptizing. Because it grew up out of the idea of, here are all these people that were raised Catholic, and then they recognized, wait a minute, the Bible doesn't say anything about infant baptism. And so they would get re-baptized once they believed as an adult. Neglecting and setting aside their previous baptism is completely ineffective. So it was a term applied to that group.

They were severely persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church, by the Lutherans, and the Calvinists. Between those three groups, the Catholics, the Lutherans, and the Calvinists, during the 1500s, between 4,000 and 5,000 of them were killed. And what tended to happen is rather than any of them calling themselves Anabaptists, they tended to get broken off into different groups. One of the larger groups at the time was the Mennonites.

But again, you also have a following after a name, because it was named after this guy, Menno. So the term Anabaptists, you don't hear about them now, it's been dropped off. It means re-baptized, not recognizing infant baptism. The name is dropped off, and yet you'll still have quite a number of groups that won't recognize infant baptism, ourselves being one of them. So it's just, the name is dropped off, people have called it other things, or the groups have gotten called by other names.

Anyway, this plan of salvation that you have, this complicated flowchart, let me try to make it simple. There is this state of the soul line that's about two-thirds of the way down, goes across, and below that line you're spiritually dead, above that line you're spiritually alive.

How do you get into being spiritually alive? You're baptized, whether as an infant or an adult. From there, whether you stay saved is up to you. And if you stay saved, whether you go to purgatory or go straight to heaven is up to you. If you commit a mortal sin, no matter when you were baptized, you fall below the line again and have to get re-saved. If you commit only venial sins, it means that you don't lose your salvation, but that you continue on into purgatory. And the more venial sins you've committed, the longer time you'll spend in purgatory.

What they like to do is... What's interesting is that there's a general principle, but there's no big formula. So it's nice to have a flowchart. If I really had all the details, I could do this thing on a program and really give you all the, you know, all right, George has got five more years and, you know, give them some specifics. But there's none of that kind of information available.

Up in the upper left-hand corner, you have the loop that they like to keep people in. And this is where you're not committing venial sins. If you do commit them, you know, you confess them and get right back in the loop. And you go to Mass all the time and you do good stuff. and then that accumulates merit. It's that upper loop that accumulates merit, okay? And notice right in the middle of that block there in that upper loop under Eucharist is faith. So how do you accumulate merit? Through faith, okay? So when they talk about, you know, you're being saved by faith, yeah, you are. But that faith leads you to good works and then you can store up merit and do all the good stuff. Pardon? What's that? Merit equals merit plus one. Yeah, there we go. Merit equals merit plus one. You put this thing on the loop, you get this thing on... I can imagine going through some computer program and just getting this thing all done up right.

Yeah, Randy? One thing I think is, people are in a psychiatric group, at least as far as I can see. I don't know if that's the same here. They can't have bumper stickers. They practice random acts of kindness. Yeah, yeah. But all of that is an opportunity to at least create a lifestyle that increases group learning.

Right Yeah, you see Yeah, you notice when the Catholic system, you know, it's you know exactly What sins are going to make you drop below the line? Okay They got the list of here's the really bad ones and those are going to make you drop below the line and you need to get Resaved so as long as you don't do those You can stay above the line and you're OK. And then you can accumulate merit. So you know what you got to do to accumulate merit and get this chest full of merit so that you can hopefully not spend too much time. Yeah, Art?

So in reference to God knows His own, in reference to, we hear these days that there are millions or large numbers or some numbers of Roman Catholics that are saved. My question is, in view of the fact that they I would put it this way, that a person may be in the Roman Catholic Church and saved, However, I don't believe a person can be saved by following the Roman Catholic Gospel. Furthermore, while you see this chart about everything above the line is what happens while you're so-called saved, I don't believe that this is the biblical understanding at all of what spiritual growth is.

Because in truth, Scripture does not exhort us to accumulate merit, does it? Scripture instead urges us to grow, and that's what we look at the end of 2 Peter, but grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's growing, not accumulation of merit that counts.

And so they've got the wrong focus. So the point being that the Roman Catholic Church gospel is not a saving gospel. What they teach for daily life is not contributing to growth. A person can neither be saved nor grow by the teachings that they have. If a person is saved, it's because they believe something other than what the Roman Catholic Church teaches. If they grow, it's because they're getting some input other than what the Roman Catholic Church teaches. Yeah, and we have a number of people who have Roman Catholic background that I would say are at varying stages. Some of them have long ago said, no, I'm done. Others still haven't gotten that figured out yet.

Last page you've got, because we're running through time here, is one of a record of absence from and possible later presence in Rome for Peter. They call him repeatedly the successor of Peter. And they keep looking to that as the authority. And they look at Peter having the keys to the church and, you know, he's the rock on which they're going to build the church, all these doctrines. And you look at how many times Peter is definitely in Jerusalem, how many times Paul writes to or from Rome and Peter's never mentioned. It doesn't quite click. And add to that that it takes a number of months to get each way between Jerusalem and Rome. And then you have some additional time onto each of these.

So if he was the bishop in Rome for 25 years, which is what they claim, he hardly spent any time there. Or Paul repeatedly blew it and just never even mentioned the guy. There's one other thing that's not on here, and that's that there's another tradition that has Peter, later on after this time in the New Testament, spending a number of years in Antioch with the church there, which would further block out some time available to go to Rome. But I didn't include that. Anyhow, let's call it quits.