The salient point of this podcast episode revolves around the critical inquiry into the relationship between the Word of God and the church. Pastor Anthony Uvenio, a distinguished guest and host of The Reformed Rookie podcast, joins us to explore this pivotal question: which came first, God's Word or the church? We delve into various theological perspectives, particularly contrasting Reformed and Roman Catholic understandings of authority and salvation. Through this discourse, we aim to elucidate the significance of scripture as the ultimate authority in the life of the believer, and the implications of this for our understanding of faith and practice. We invite our listeners to engage deeply with these foundational truths as we seek to affirm the primacy of God's Word in our spiritual journey.

Takeaways:

1. In the discourse of faith, a pivotal question arises: which was established first, the Word of God or the Church itself?
2. Pastor Anthony Uvinio elucidates the importance of adhering solely to Scripture, emphasizing that divine truth transcends human traditions and interpretations.
3. The discussion highlights the necessity for believers to engage with the Scriptures personally, fostering individual understanding and spiritual growth.
4. Through personal testimonies, we demonstrate that a transformative relationship with Jesus Christ is fundamental to one's faith journey and eternal destiny.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. soulfishingministries.org
2. stopandthinkcrewmail.com

Foreign.

Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

My friend Ray Comfort wittingly responded by asking, if you say it's the egg, is that a fertilized egg?

Now if you're an evolutionist, you'll get that on the drive home.

But shifting gears, which came first, the word of God or the church?

Join us today as we get ready to stop and think about it.

Hello?

Anybody home?

I don't think.

McFly.

Think.

I'm thinking.

I'm thinking.

What were you thinking?

I'm trying to think, but nothing happens.

Dance or anything.

Now just think about it.

You're listening to Stop and Think About It, a podcast for the Christian Thinker.

In a day when sound biblical preaching has been replaced by man centered entertainment and the church has become increasingly anti intellectual, this podcast will encourage believers to think biblically and theologically.

So please join me as we get ready to stop and think about it.

Greetings, friends and foes, saints and sinners.

Welcome to episode 66 of the Stop and Think about it podcast.

I am your host, Phil Sessa, AKA the Bronx Expositor, and joining us today is a returning guest and dear friend, the reformed rookie himself, Anthony Uvinio.

Greetings, brother.

Welcome back to the Stop and Think about it podcast.

What is going on in your ministry, in your church and with the reformed rookie?

Well, first of all, thank you for having me on.

It's always a pleasure to talk with you and go through the things that matter most for your whole eternity.

Next, what's going on in the ministry?

It's really slow and steady wins the race.

Right now where I'm going through the book of the Letter to Titus and we're planning on doing Galatians after that.

And last year we made a commitment to basically not do any kind of book studies, but go book by book through the Bible.

When I say book study, a book written by an author, that's not the scripture.

So we want everybody feeding on the word of God because man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word out of the mouth of God.

God.

And just to let your audience know, that's how we know that Moses wasn't Italian, because he never would have said that.

This is true.

This is true.

So we're looking tonight at what came first, God's word or the church.

And sort of a an issue with Protestants and those from a Roman Catholic background.

And that nail was heard around the world.

What was your Wittenberg door Experience the nail that drove you from Rome to Christianity?

Well, it has to be based on the word of God, by God's spirit, because I wasn't smart enough to do that on my own.

I did.

I was raised Catholic.

I went to Catholic school my whole life.

I actually did pray to God and St. Anthony every night.

I was faithful in prayer, but.

You like that name, St. Anthony, right?

Yeah.

You know, I used to pray to St. Anthony, and now I am St. Anthony.

Isn't that crazy?

I like that.

It's like, wow.

Oh, my goodness.

So to the saints at Ephesus, including Anthony.

Saint.

Yeah, there you go.

I really considered myself a spiritual person.

And if you would have asked me why I was going to heaven, it was because I'm a good guy.

You know, heaven wouldn't be heaven without me there.

You know, There you go.

So it was only until.

And God was working on me for several months, I met my.

Who would be my wife right now.

She.

On the first date, she talked to me about Jesus, and I was like, oh, gosh, not this.

No way.

And then a buddy of mine became a Christian, and I met some guy in the gym who, you know, I knew him as barely an acquaintance.

Just seeing him in the place, and I asked him a question.

It pertained to the things of God.

He says, why don't you come to my house?

We'll talk about it.

So I'm like, okay.

So I end up going to his house, and he brings me into his basement and there's a guy sitting on a couch, and very pleasant guy.

His name is Tony.

Introduced himself and say, hey, how are you with that, Phil?

Like, four, five, six guys come down into the basement.

Now, I'm an Italian from Long island originally, the Bronx.

There's seven, eight guys in the basement, and I'm in the.

And I'm like, I'm not getting out.

This is not good.

This is.

This is the cult.

This is how they do it.

They strong.

Sounds like goodfellas.

It felt like good fellas is what.

What it felt like.

So, you know, they start.

They start sharing their testimony with me.

And one guy's marriage was healed, and another guy met his wife and all these different stories, and they were great.

And they're like, well, what about you?

I said, well, what about me?

You know, I. I pray.

I'm a spiritual guy.

Well, what's your relationship with Jesus?

I was like, well, Jesus is good.

You know, what else?

You know?

So one of the guys said, all right, can you read Psalm 51.

I'm like, yeah, okay.

So now I don't even know where Psalm 51 is.

So I'm flipping through the pages, I finally get to Psalm 51.

I start reading it, and he says, no, no, out loud.

I'm like, oh, gosh, this is the cult initiation.

They want to.

They want me to read this thing out loud so that, you know, after I'm done, you said the magic words, you're in.

So I'm like, okay.

So I start reading it out loud and.

And this.

There's two conversations going on in my head.

First, the first voice is telling me I don't understand a word of what I'm reading right now.

I'm just.

I'm reading the words.

I'm not processing them, I'm just getting them out.

And the second voice is telling me, what are you going to say at the end of this thing to get you out of here?

I was incredibly uncomfortable, not liking this at all.

So I finally get to the end of the psalm and it says, and young bulls will be slaughtered on your altar.

And that was the moment that God basically cut my heart wide open.

And not an audible voice, but it was as if he said, you could do it your way and be slaughtered or you could do it my way.

Because what these guys didn't know was that I was a Taurus, right?

Not that I was a big horoscope guy, but I read my horoscope every day.

I was a Taurus, I was the bull.

I was obstinate, I was thick headed, I was dependable, overconfident.

All these things that would describe a Taurus.

I was going to.

I had statues of bulls, pictures of bulls.

I was going to get a tattoo of a bull on my arm.

And basically God said, you want to be the bull, you're going to be slaughtered.

So with that, I look up and I got tears in my eyes.

I'm like, what do I do?

And they're like, what do you mean, what do you do?

I'm like, the bull.

They're like, what do you mean, the bull?

What does that mean?

Because these guys don't know me from a hole in the wall.

So I start telling them about the bull.

Now these were all Pentecostal charismatic guys, and their jaws were wide open.

They're like, oh, my goodness.

You know, we didn't know this.

This is God's spirit who, you know, led me there and gets me to this point.

So they kind of led me in a sinner's prayer.

And from that moment on it was fast forward.

I had to know everything I could about the Scriptures to be able to explain to people why I left the Catholic Church, that, you know, I was a nominal Catholic, you know, I would go periodically.

I always wanted to go back to church, but every time I went back there, it was just dry and boring.

I wasn't getting anything out of it.

So I had been going to my wife's church for several months at that point and going to men's breakfast at this other church, Christian churches.

And then all of a sudden, this message comes to me with Psalm 51.

My heart was melting inside of me.

The sin in my life was just overwhelming.

That's when I repented and trusted in Christ.

And from that moment on, it's just been a whole new life to the glory of God.

So can we say by illustrations, if you mess with the bull, you get the horns of God's conviction?

Yeah.

What I realized was the Spirit is much powerful, more powerful than the bull.

You know.

I was full of bull, and now I'm full of the Spirit.

Well, I'm from the Bronx.

We can talk like this, right?

That's right.

That's right.

Well, we can't.

See, we can't be safe from.

From the blood of.

Of bulls anyway.

Right.

We need the bl.

Well, amen.

Amen.

Yes.

So similarly, I was saved at 13 years old at a Roman Catholicism heard, if all you had to be was a good person, why would Christ have died for your sin?

And I was convicted of my sin.

It was in a Pentecostal assembly of God.

Church went forward, they led me in a sinner's prayer.

But I mean, I believe that he saved me right there in my seat before I ever went up, you know.

And so if you're listening and you have a Calvinistic background, a Reformed Baptist background, you know, we know that it's.

God does use this quote, unquote, sinner's prayer, but it's in.

It's not because of.

It's in spite of.

Yeah, right.

And so that.

It's not saying the magic words in the magic part of the room, you know, in the magic carpet, but tear in the heart.

Yeah.

I would say, you know, Paul says the gospel is the power of God unto salvation.

He doesn't say it's the power of Calvinism, it's the power of charismatics, it's the power of Pentecostal.

The gospel is the power of God.

God works regardless of the tradition that we're in, to bring us into relationship with Him.

So it's not one particular denomination that has a corner on the market on the gospel.

So, sure, I still have brothers and sisters in the Charismatic movement, Pentecostal churches and other churches that don't share my, my same convictions, but they're brothers and sisters in the Lord.

Right.

Yeah, right, agreed.

And I hold to the doctrines of grace, so I got to be gracious.

That's right.

You have to be.

Otherwise it doesn't work.

No.

Not for a second, does it?

No.

So I want to play this clip for us and then I want to have some comments based on this.

So let me just share this with you.

All right.

Well, yeah, well, the Bible tells me so where's that in the Bible?

The Bible tells me this.

The Bible doesn't tell me this.

This argument has to be the most frustrating for me because I personally have a bone to pick with specifically this line of argumentation because it was used against me when I was asking my former church worker when I was leaving my stupid cult.

I was debating the church worker on the canon conundrum.

How do you even know and how do you even get the canon of the Bible without the church?

Because if the church is the one that gave you the Bible, the one that canonized the Bible, the one that even recognized the infallibility of the Scriptures, then they would have to be infallible in the decision of canonization of the Bible.

Because if it wasn't infallible and it was fallible, I can just simply take out books.

But also the church and the Bible go hand in hand because the Bible is a church document.

So whose authority and whose justification and whose interpretation should I rely on to interpret the Scriptures?

The church.

The same way.

How, who is supposed to bind people and who's supposed to interpret the Constitution, if not the Supreme Court?

Same thing.

So this, this is the most frustrating thing for me and the most frustrating low tier argumentation because you are basically begging the question.

If I ask you how do you even get the canon of scripture and you then cite Scripture, you're begging the question.

You can't, you can't use that which is in question.

I am literally asking you something that is pre scriptural.

I am asking you, how do you get the canon of scripture?

And then you get Scripture.

Okay, well you, we don't even know if that's scripture yet.

So you stop asserting.

You're just begging the question.

So to me it's, it's so.

It's so low tier and it's all piety signaling because it basically boils down to everything outside of actually the entirety of Protestantism leads to biblioletry, which is Bible idolatry.

You idolize the Bible so much and you just, you're basically end up being Pharisaic because you uphold to the text too much to the point where you see no reason whatsoever.

Logic doesn't even hold place into your freaking cranium because it has to be in the Bible.

It has to be in the Bible.

Your stupid name isn't even in the Bible.

If, let's say for example, you know, I'm presupposing that it's not in the Bible.

Right, but your mom's name isn't in the Bible.

So are we now no longer supposed to believe that your mother is existing because her name and her entire, entire history is not in the Bible?

It's so low tier that it puts my brain.

Into a coma.

Well.

Poor little friend here, he's got a lot of issues.

He's got a lot of.

Yes, yes.

I wonder if you read the Bible and what it's about.

Anger and ad hominem attacks.

Seriously, his infallible authority has to talk to him about what to do here, you know.

Yeah.

So what do you think is his main issue?

What's his main gripe?

There are some sub issues he has there.

Of course.

I think for him the main issue is who is the authority.

Right.

If we don't know who the authority is, how do we know that we have the right scriptures?

Because one of the, one of those is going to be above the other.

Now I know, I know.

For, for Romanists they call it a three legged stool.

And scripture and church and tradition are all equal.

They're all on par with each other and none is over the other.

But if you don't know who wrote the scriptures on their view, you have to go to the church who gave them to you.

Which would mean the church was the one that decided what books would be in the Bible and what books were scripture or not.

So the presupposition on their view is we cannot as human beings know the scriptures unless we have an infallible authority that gives them to us and not only gives them to us, but interprets them for us and tells us what they mean.

Right, Right.

Yeah.

The question of authority is absolutely huge.

But when you think about it, I mean, who gave the authority of the Old Testament to be recognized as the Old Testament before the Romanist magisterium?

Basically the bishops and the Pope were able to, you know, wave the magic hand and say, well you Know we have the authority to say, well, this is the word of God or something is not the word of God.

I mean, the Old Testament was.

Was already.

Was already out there.

And the early church quoted.

Jesus himself quoted from the Old Testament.

So, I mean, what say you?

And called it God's word.

Right.

So our presupposition is this.

God can communicate to his people what divine truth is.

God is not dependent on a human institution to determine what is and isn't God's word.

God does that.

And our presupposition is he can communicate with his people.

He communicated with Adam, he communicated with Noah, he communicated with Abram, he communicated with Moses, he communicated with David.

And he did that outside of his word.

Right.

He had direct communication with those people.

So our presupposition is God can reveal truth to us without a human institution being set up.

That's going to determine that for us.

Yes.

So if God says something, it is out there and it is true.

Irrespective.

If anyone puts their stamp of approval on it and says, well, yes, we agree that God said this.

Right?

What their part of their.

What's entailed in part of their presupposition is that God can't convey information to people outside of their authority.

Right.

Because they're the ones who have to interpret it.

You cannot have private interpretation.

And we read the Scriptures and say, yes, we should not have private interpretation.

The funny thing is, my question would be, okay, so if I have to make a decision to follow an institution that gave me the Scriptures, is that a fallible or infallible decision?

Because there's many people, there's many institutions that claim they are the one true Church.

And if I don't follow what they say, I'm not part of the one true church and I can't receive salvation.

Right.

Has to come through that particular church.

Right?

Right.

Listen to this by Augustine.

You'll love this.

He said, accordingly, he who sent the prophets before his own descent also dispatch apostles after his ascension.

Moreover, in virtue of the man assumed by him, He.

He stands to all his disciples in re.

In the relation of the head to the members of his body.

Therefore, when those disciples have written matters which he declared and spoke to them, it ought not by any means to be said that he has not written nothing himself, since the truth is that his members have accomplished only what they became acquainted with by the repeated statements of the head.

For all that he was minded to give for.

For our perusal on the subject of his own doings and sayings, he commanded to be written by those disciples whom he thus used as if they were his own hands.

I love that.

And he says, whoever apprehends this correspondence of unity and this concordant service of his members, all in harmony in the distar, in the discharge of diverse offices under the head of will receive the account which he gets in the Gospel through the narratives constructed by the disciples in the same kind of spirit in which he might look upon the actual hand of the Lord himself, which he bore in that body which was made his own, were he to see it engage in the act of writing.

I mean, when they wrote, it was.

You know, because many times Roman Catholicism says, well, you know, he.

God gave us a.

You know, Jesus gave us a church, not a book.

Right.

And they, and they hold Augustine to be in high esteem, last I checked.

Is that.

Is that true?

Yeah.

He's a doctor of the Roman Catholic Church.

Right.

And this is what he said, you know, when, When Christ spoke and they wrote, it was as if Jesus's own hands wrote the book.

Right.

Well, Jesus's own hands did write the book.

Right.

Yes, we really.

Look, obviously I respect Augustine.

My goodness, what a huge saint.

But I think somebody a little bit more than August, more important than Augustine, might have been the Apostle Peter, whom they would claim as their pope.

He says, we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed to which you will do well to pay attention to as a lamp shining in a dark place.

He says we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed.

Right.

So present tense.

And, and he was referring to the Old Testament scriptures which were.

Were communicated to God's people without a formal institution and without an infallible head of that institution.

So if Israel, the people of God in the old covenant, could recognize and know what God's word was without an infallible head and without an institution, why do we now need this institution that not only tells us.

Not only tells us what the books are, but also what the books mean.

Right.

We.

We cannot interpret the Scriptures on our own.

Yet I talk to many, many, many Romanists who all have differing opinions on what certain scriptures mean.

And then they say, well, this.

The Church infallibly defines what the Scriptures mean.

And, and I've asked them, and believe it or not, it's a good question, because let the Catholic Church has infallibly defined less than 10 scriptures in the entire Bible.

Where's the.

What, what good is having an infallible guide when all you have is 10 scriptures that they infallibly define.

You know, that's they are found wanting.

Yes, yes.

Especially when all the other so called Protestants, all the Protestant denominations, do have agreement on the central issue of what the gospel is.

The gospel is we're saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the Scriptures alone, for the glory of God alone.

Amen.

We're all united on those things.

But Rome isn't.

Rome says you can't get to heaven unless you go through us.

And my Bible says the only way to the Father is through Jesus.

Right.

No Roman Catholic Church existed when John wrote John chapter six.

Right.

No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.

At that point, Jesus says, believe on me and you have eternal life.

Sure.

So it was at that point in time, three years before Jesus would go to the cross and then ascend into heaven, before Christian baptism was even invented, that people were believers in Jesus Christ while Jesus walked the earth and were part of his church.

They were believers.

Yes.

Yes.

Amen.

And we know that even the Apostle Paul, he rebuked Peter.

Hence Peter doesn't show himself to be a good Pope, right?

Yep.

Maybe.

Maybe at that point in time, he was a Pope in training.

We don't know.

It was just early on in the church and he was just feeling his way around.

We don't know.

He had Pope training wheels on.

Yes.

He was in the training class.

He didn't have yet, you know, he didn't have the, he didn't have Twitter to get days off in purgatory.

You know, if you, if you tweeted and followed the, the Pope on Twitter, you get X amount of days off in purgatory.

That was true.

You know.

That's right.

That's right.

I'm not making that up.

I know you're not.

Which is crazy.

It is crazy to kind of say something like that.

And you know, again, you start press in Rome on purgatory and, and how it's time related.

They say, well, you know, we really don't say that purgatory has time.

You know, so the question because, well then how do I get time off of purgatory if it's not based on time?

Right, right.

About that.

I mean, isn't that what John Tetzel was running around saying?

Soon as a coin in the kava rings, a soul from purgatory springs?

Right.

Is it was time based?

Right.

Yeah.

Now the, the audio that we heard, he mentioned the canon conundrum.

Yeah.

But I mean, is there a Conundrum.

I know that Michael Krueger spoke to this and I really like, he gave sort of a three part definition and I think this was helpful.

It was helpful for me.

And the first one, he, he focused on a fixed, final closed lip list where no books can be added or, or subtracted.

And again he was focused here on the New Testament.

And so therefore you can have a canon when all the dust settles.

And he called it an exclusive definition in happening in the 4th or 5th century.

And it took some time to work through.

And it would seem then as far as a problem, that the church would have been in the dark, completely in the dark before this, the fourth or fifth century.

And it would seem that therefore that the Church made the canon.

So there, there are some helps and there are some positives and also some negatives with that definition.

And then he moves to this second tier where he says, when you see New Testament books being used by Christians as scripture, right?

So we had Peter quoted from Paul and affirm that Paul used, his words were Scripture.

So when you see the New Testament books being used by Christians and scripture, even if all the boundaries weren't finalized yet, this would be a functional definition.

And so the book started functioning with authority in the church with a core collection of about 21 to 22 out of 27 New Testament books.

And this predates the fourth century by about 200 years.

And the third area was the ontology of the canon.

And so the first two definitions make it sound like the church had a hand in deciding the canon.

And this one, the books of Scripture have authority apart from the church's recognition.

Right?

If God said it, it's true.

Even if no one read it or ascribed to it.

This ontological definition looks at the canon from God's perspective.

He inspired the word of God, he breathed the word of God and there the date of the New Testament would be in the first century.

And so we know that theology determines your definition and date of the canon, which the guy who we listen to, he just didn't really realize all of this stuff because he didn't bring any of this up.

Did you hear any of this stuff being brought up?

Because unless he brought it up, I, I missed it.

Yeah, no, he didn't bring up any of this.

It was none of this.

Right.

So the, the first definition that was raised, the exclusive definition reminds us the canon wasn't, was an instant, it took some time to work through.

In the 4th or 5th century, the dust settled.

The second definition, the functional, there was a core collection of 21 or 22 books out of 27.

The ontological definition, they were canon from the moment of their.

Of their divine, when they were divinely spoken.

So God gave us his book as a canon.

And what does canon mean, by the way?

Canon is basically a word that just means list.

A list of what books should or should be.

Should not be in the Bible.

Yeah.

And so his Church began to see his books as a canon and reaches full consensus in the fourth century.

And it.

And then you have the, the completed canon, but we already had the Old Testament in place.

So again, there was no magisterium, no, no Roman Catholic authority of any of any sort.

And so Krueger brings all three together not as a dot.

I like how he says this.

Not as a dot, but as a line, a process and.

And perhaps a stage.

Perhaps stages rather than a particular date is a better description.

In a complimentary balance approach to give a full picture of the history of canon.

And again, theology colors how we look at this.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

When you look at the early Church, it actually looks more Protestant than it does Romanists, because, yes, Rome likes to say, well, we have unanimous consent of the Fathers on this particular doctrine.

Unanimous consent on any doctrine.

In the first six centuries, with all the Church Fathers, they were all over the map.

There were similarities and there was a majority in certain things, obviously the deity of Jesus.

And that took a while to.

To play out, certainly with the Council on Nicaea and other things.

So there was a lot of work that the Church had to do to hone in on what was true doctrine and false doctrine.

So there was no unanimous consent on this stuff.

They had debates on whether the Book of Hebrews was going to be in the canon or not in the canon.

You know, second and third John, should it be in the canon or not in the canon?

Right.

It wasn't something that the Church infallibly said, okay, yes, this is it.

Yes.

And think about this.

If there was an infallible head, an infallible Pope, why would he just not settle this decision and say, I know that this is God's word.

It's in.

Period.

Right.

If you're infallible in that office, you would recognize what God's word is and what God's word isn't.

So this should not have been debate.

There should have been.

Okay, second, Third John.

No.

Yes, either one.

But it wasn't.

It didn't happen like that, right?

No, it didn't happen at all like that.

Ephesians 2:20 says, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.

So once they spoke, their words were scripture.

It wasn't their personality.

It wasn't their, you know, their tunics.

It wasn't their.

Their sandal size or their accents.

The foundation, past tense, was already laid down.

Amen.

And so now the.

The guy that we heard on the video, he was presupposing something.

Right.

Can mankind know what God says without a church?

He's saying no.

Right?

Right.

And so his gripe, I mean, it's like the blind leading the blind.

I mean, he.

He's like.

He's in a ditch.

Right.

You know, and, and, and he's.

He's trying to, like, climb out of the ditch, but he doesn't realize he's still in it.

Yeah.

Even as he makes his argument, he's still in the ditch because how can you have an infallible church?

Because the only infallibility is God in his word.

Peter was fallible.

Paul was fallible.

I'm infallible.

Every man is fallible.

Mary was fallible.

All have sinned and fallen short or come short of the glory of God.

We have all, all missed the mark.

Yes, we have.

We have.

Listen, the scripture is clear.

The things of the spirit are spiritually discerned.

The man in the flesh cannot know them.

Right.

There you go.

Right.

So what does that tell you?

That tells you it's not a church you need, it's the Spirit that you need.

Once you are born of God's spirit, he gives you eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to believe.

All of a sudden, after that moment in the neck guy's basement, my eyes were open.

I started reading the scriptures and seeing things I've never seen before.

So now this guy who made this video, I don't know where he stands with God.

I would pray or ask him, are you born again?

And when.

I mean, by born again, I mean indwelled by God's spirit.

Not because of baptism or confirmation or anything like that.

Have you truly been born of God's spirit?

Because if you have, you are going to see things differently.

You are going to recognize that Jesus didn't come to bring you a religion.

He came to bring you a father, to unite you back to the Creator who.

Who brought you into this world.

This is not about.

Again, we would look at this and say, this is not about how we work our way to heaven because our situation is so dire.

We're dead in our Sins that God himself has to send his son out of heaven down here on a rescue mission to seek and save the lost.

If we can get to heaven by doing good things, which unfortunately is what Rome teaches, well, then we're co. Saviors.

Well said.

Well said.

And I noticed.

How many Bible verses did he quote that whole time?

Well, it's funny, none, obviously, but what.

One of the illustrations he used, and I was writing it down as, as you played the video, he talked about the laws being passed.

And, and the Supreme Court is the one that interprets the laws.

And I just want to say, first of all, that's a false equivalency.

That's.

That's a, That's a logical fallacy.

Yes, it is.

And the Supreme Court doesn't make the laws.

They're just interpreting the laws.

So even on his own analogies, the Supreme Court isn't writing the laws.

He's still in that ditch.

The laws.

And determining.

Yes.

Is this person's behavior in line with the law or not in line with the law?

So basically, it looks like a Protestant view where we look at the Scriptures and say, is this guy in line with the Scriptures or not in line with the Scriptures?

So thank you for that illustration.

It kind of helps us appreciate that Protestant argument.

Thank you, sir.

Yeah.

And even, even though, just to piggyback off with the interpretation, I believe that they interpreted Roe v. Wade in one way and then interpreted it in a different way.

Yes.

Are the Supreme Court justices infallible?

I don't think so.

Right.

No.

No, no, no, they're not.

No, they're not.

I remember that there were certain people that were very excited that we had the first black female Chief Justice.

And when the question was asked, can you define what a woman is, what was her answer?

Again, I'm not a biologist.

Possibly answer that.

Right.

And now she's supposed to interpret the Constitution of the United States.

So clearly, clearly fallible.

I mean, she could have just.

She could have.

She should have been able to easily answer that one.

But.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, brother.

Yeah.

I mean, how.

How did a believing Jew know that Isaiah and Second Chronicles were Scripture 50 years before Christ came?

Right.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Again, you don't need an infallible interpreter to.

To understand it.

And one of the things, I think that comes into play on a different but related topic of salvation.

This is why Romanists and Eastern Orthodox cannot be assured of their salvation.

Because in some part, it depends on the human being's ability.

Right, right.

They say, well, to say that, you know, that you're saved is the sin of presumption.

And as Protestants from a reformed tradition, we can have certainty of our salvation because it was completely accomplished by Jesus on the cross.

And the Scripture says these things are written so that you may know.

So our authority is the Scriptures because we believe that God, they're God breathed, they're breathed out by God.

They're divine.

Okay?

And we trust that the Scriptures are not a product of human invention.

They're a product of God's breathing.

The same way our salvation is not a product of us doing things, it's the product of Jesus doing it for us.

So when they look at the Scriptures, they try to say, okay, here's God, here's man.

Man has to have some part in this.

So we're the authorities.

We're the ones who say this is or isn't God's word.

Whereas in salvation, again, they say it's Jesus plus plus plus us, our works.

From a biblical and certainly a reform standpoint, we would look at it and say, it's not Jesus alone, it's God alone.

We.

They always have to add something of man into the mix, which you and I know.

All our good works are filthy rags before the Lord.

If I was to add anything or try to add anything to the cross, it ruins it.

It mars it.

Nothing.

To the cross I bring simply to the cross.

I cling.

Yeah.

I mean, how.

What can you add to the perfect sacrifice of the Son of God?

Nothing.

There's nothing.

Nothing.

And you know what's interesting is that Rome often leans upon the church fathers.

And in the past two years, I've delved into reading more of their writings.

They sound a lot more Protestant than they do as.

Than they do as Romanists.

When I read the book Long Before Luther by Nate Nathan Buzenitz, you know, and the focus is, you know, where was the Gospel before Luther?

It was always there.

Yeah, absolutely.

So they believe we were saved by faith.

They believe in sola scriptura.

They didn't use those words per se because, of course, theology, as far as systematic theology, our verbiage developed, but the concepts, the principles, it was still there in their writings.

So they really can lean upon and say, these are our guys.

They're not so much their guys.

And all their guys didn't agree with each other anyway.

So which one of your guys are you leaning upon?

Right, yes.

Yeah, I read the.

I read the quote from.

From Augustine.

They wouldn't agree with that, but then they would say, you know, he.

He's our guy.

And the doctor of the church.

Yeah.

And what about Jerome, who penned the Latin Vulgate?

He called the Apocrypha second canon.

Deutero.

How do you say deuterocanonical?

Deuterocanonical.

Yeah, like Deuteronomy.

Second.

Second list.

Like sec.

Like second law.

And so why wasn't a first canon?

Yeah.

In fact, he said as well as others that those books were good for edification but should not be considered scripture.

Correct.

In fact, if you go on the, the Reform Rookie YouTube channel, I have a series on Catholicism and one of the, one of the sessions is all about the fact that it addresses that particular subject.

Please check that out if you're listening to this podcast at this time.

And so, and by the way, I don't know if this, if this young man will ever listen to this podcast.

I know a friend of mine is going to try to funnel it his way, but he said your stupid name is not in the Bible.

Well, actually my stupid name is in the Bible and it's not very stupid.

It's, it's, it's spelled, it's spelled with.

Mine is spelled with two Ls.

His is with one.

But notice, as you said in the beginning, another ad hominem, attacking a person.

And so it seems he's throwing this out logic.

I, I can tell you this.

My name is not in the Bible, but I am mentioned in Acts 4, 13.

It says when they saw the courage of Peter and John, they recognized that these were ignorant, ordinary men, but that they had been with Jesus.

That is right where Anthony Vinio is cited in the Scriptures.

Well, yes, funny.

Another, another thing he said, and I jotted it down, he says, you can't use that which is in question to prove the point.

In other words, you know, he's going back to like, circularity.

The Bible says, you know, the Bible is the word of God because it says it's the word of God.

And it's like, well, when you have an ultimate authority, you can't appeal to anything higher than the ultimate authority.

It would be like telling you, listen, I need you to prove that your eyes work, but don't use your eyes to prove it.

Well, how do you do that?

Well, you close your eyes to prove that they work.

Well, if I close my eyes, I'm not going to know if they work.

So we recognize that the Scripture is our highest authority.

There's nothing higher that we can appeal to.

In fact, in the book of Hebrews, it says when God wanted to, wanted to make a.

When he swore he swore by none higher than himself.

So even God says, I'm the authority, and I'm going to swear by myself.

So we recognize the scriptures as God breathe.

They, they're, they're divine in nature.

That's our, that's our grounding.

That's our ultimate authority.

So of course we're going to point to that.

Right.

And then the ad hominem attack of bibliology.

Yeah.

Which means.

We worship the Bible.

Right, we worship the Bible.

And so where does he get the concept of idolatry from?

Doesn't that actually come from the Bible, which he's trying to, like, refute, that you need an authority to.

And didn't that actually come from the commandments prior to Rome?

Yeah.

Without the Pope's approval, those commandments were, were authoritative before there was a, a human institution known as the Church.

So he's back in the ditch, or he's still in the ditch.

He needs to truly bow the knee to Jesus Christ and, and not any human authority.

Now God has set up apostles and prophets and pastors.

Those are authorities.

And, and, and, and if, if you're, if you're a Romanist and you're listening to this, I want to affirm with you that those are authorities.

However, they are not infallible authorities.

When we use the term sola scriptura, we mean that the Scripture is the only infallible authority.

We can make mistakes.

We do make mistakes.

And I don't believe that there's any one human being here on earth that has perfect theology.

None of us.

Right.

Because we have.

None of us have arrived.

Once we get to the other side, we will have perfect theology.

Well, amen.

That's why my other title is in the Bible, Chief of Sinners.

Yeah, we, I'm, I'm competing with you on that one.

Well, and, you know, did you see the movie the Da Vinci Code while back?

Dan Brown.

So that's where this whole idea came from that, you know, the Bible was put together in this fourth, you know, fifth century.

And I mean, they're just.

It's really amazing when you put out a video or a movie, how it really colors so much of people's theology.

I mean, just look at the Left behind series.

Sure.

Right.

I mean, that took dispensationalism by storm.

All right, because it's.

We know that it's a younger view, and so ideas have consequences.

And this idea that has yielded such a dangerous consequence is that at the Council of Nicaea, under the authority of the Roman emperor Constantine, it established the biblical Canon.

And because of that we can trust in Rome to interpret the scripture because it came from Rome.

I mean that is just a fallacy.

But, but I wanted to jump back to something else that you had mentioned as far as from the scripture.

This guy, when he speaks about bibliology, the worship of the Bible, he wants us and this body Bakam, the late body Bakam, use often that he wants us to put the sword of God's word in the sheath and not use the Bible.

Right.

So he says, I want you to, I want you to prove the Bible without using the Bible.

But like you said, I want you to prove you could see without using your eyes.

Right.

Why would you put down and, and sheath the most important weapon to prove the Bible if you will, then using the very thing?

Because the Bible is what's called self authenticating, meaning the Bible has divine characteristics and qualities that show it to be divine.

It gives an entire meta narrative from our origins, creation to our identity.

We're image bearers of God to our purpose to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

The problem of evil, sin, the solution, the gospel and what happens when we die eternal life or eternal death.

And so scripture has the power and the authority and God's two edged sword.

And we need to read it.

I'm sorry, we don't just read it, it reads us.

Yes.

Amen.

Right.

Like when you mentioned that you read Psalm 51, right.

And you not only got the bulls but you got the horns, if you will.

Yes.

Yeah, it read, it read you.

Yeah.

The word of God is like a double edged sword, discerning the, the thoughts and the intentions of the heart.

That's not something that humans can do.

Right.

I know, I, I know some, some, some pastors like my, my pastor is an ex Suffolk county detective and he is really good at reading people.

But he will tell you he's not as good as reading people as God's word is in reading people.

God's word will cut you.

And it's supposed to, right?

Yes.

It's supposed to cut you open and then bring you back to the gospel and put you back together.

That's how we grow as Christians.

You know, we get this conviction by the Holy Spirit that brings us to repentance.

And it's this continual process of repentance is turning, right.

Turning away from my desires and turning towards God and his desires.

So repentance isn't a one time thing, it's an ongoing thing.

And thankfully he who began a good work in you is faithful to complete it right.

Amen.

We all live between work begun and work complete.

And everybody is in a different place on that spectrum.

Some are more advanced than others, but everybody who, who trust in Jesus alone for their salvation is, is on that, on that line, if you will.

So I like to use.

You ever see the Sims commercial?

He says, you're gonna like the way you look.

I guarantee it.

Yes, when you praise your faith and trust in Jesus, he who began a good work in you is faithful to complete it.

You're gonna like the way you look, I guarantee it.

There you go.

There you go.

Well, what's incredible is, like you said, you know, God's word has power.

It's not per se that the, that the church, you know, as an institution just stands up and says, well, we have power because we have these religious clothes, clothes on and we have these titles that, that doesn't give anybody power, but God's word has the power and the authority to teach, to reprove, to correct, to rebuke, to exhort, to encourage and train us in righteousness that we may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.

And it's only as the church echoes what's in the word of God that, that there's any power, if you will.

We know we're empowered by the Spirit, but even when we preach, if God's, if God's spirit doesn't press the Word upon someone's life, I mean, the arrow is going to fall, you know, from hitting that person in the heart, in their life, because just like the two thieves on the cross, the Spirit of God blew upon one, not upon the other.

And they were both looking at the same Savior.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

We, we know somebody who's dead in their sins and transgressions.

The, the rich man says, send.

Send one of.

One of my brothers.

Send a messenger to one of my brothers and tell them, you know, not to come to this place.

And, and what does Jesus say?

They have the law and the prophets, and even if, even if somebody was raised from the dead, they would not believe him.

So it's only by the Spirit of God that your eyes are open that you're even going to see these things.

Right?

So this is not about information.

This is about revelation.

It circumvents the intellect because God in his wisdom.

No man knows God through wisdom.

This is not like who got a 90 on the test, you know, to know God, you know, knowing God is the definition of eternal life.

And that's by revelation.

Even the so called Pope of Rome, when God, when Jesus asked him, who do you say in thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

What does Jesus say?

Blessed are you because you were so well studied?

He says, no, blessed are your son, Bartram, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.

So salvation and knowing God is through revelation, not information.

It's not the wisdom of mankind, it's God chose the foolish things in the world to shame the wise.

You know, you and I are the fools for Christ.

Amen.

Our eyes.

I didn't, I tell people all the time, I never would have chose Jesus.

Right?

Deny yourself.

Pick up your cross and follow him.

Deny yourself.

Bless my enemies.

Pray for my enemies.

I'm like, I'm Italian from the Bronx.

We don't do it like that.

That's.

We break our enemy's knees.

You know?

So I can from personal testimony tell you the only way I would be a Christian out of all.

Look, I would pick any other religion in the world over Christianity because no other religion in the world tells me I have to die to myself and love my enemy as I love myself.

So I know that the fact that I do follow Jesus and the fact that I do want to love my neighbor and love my enemy is.

Is only a divine work of the Spirit.

Anthony Vineyard would never choose that on his own.

Yeah.

Amen.

Amen.

Now, Junior Packard rightly said, the church no more gave us the canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity.

Right.

I love that.

But I wanted to ask you, can you give us.

Michael Krueger gave a great illustration between Rome's understanding of the canon and the biblical understanding of the canon using a thermometer and a thermostat.

Can you flesh that out?

Because this was just so helpful.

Yeah, very much so.

So he, he says the church is more like a thermometer.

In other words, it reads the temperature in the room and tells you what temperature it is.

Whereas a thermostat, if I want the temperature in a room to be 74 degrees, I hit the button to 74 and.

And make the temperature get there.

So the illustration is this.

The church, like a thermometer, recognized the Scriptures the same way a thermometer recognizes the temperature.

It did not determine the what.

What the scriptures were or determine that this was God's word.

It discovered it was God's word.

So there, the church at Rome would be more like a thermometer, whereas the pro.

I would see the early church being more like.

I'm sorry, the, the Rome would be more like a thermostat.

Thermostat, early church.

The early church would be more like a thermometer.

You recognized that this was God's word.

And that's exactly what the guy was saying, that you have this infallible, you know, church that decides the books.

There's your thermostat.

We just, we, we set the books.

You know, we press the right button to say these are the books, right?

We wouldn't have a Bible unless Rome gave us a Bible.

But then, but then they put people to death who were copying the Bible for guys like you and me so that we can read it.

You wouldn't have the Bible if we didn't give it to you.

But if you do grab it and copy it, we're going to kill you.

That sounds like Bronx.

Just saying that.

I mean that, that really is a great point because today they allow the Bible in English, you know, and various languages.

But at that time they said no way.

So it shows you that what they are saying today is different from what they said at that time.

They said it had to be in Latin, right?

And so when Luther translated into German and William Tyndale into English, I mean, they try to kill Luther and failed and, and gave him a pass, so to speak, even though the Pope condemned him to hell every year and excommunicated him again or whatever, every single year.

And they actually did kill William Tyndale in his crime, translating the Bible into English.

But today it's allowed.

So where's the infallibility in that?

Where's the consistency in that?

You could change the rules as you want, right?

They have priests, but there's no criteria for priests.

I mean, things are always flipping and changing.

Right.

Well, listen, once, once you get off the scriptures as the sole in infallible rule and you have another authority equal to the scriptures, well then we don't necessarily need what the scripture says.

If we have an infallible authority that can give us rules as well, or traditions.

So I like to ask my, my friends from Rome, can you show me in the New Testament what the qualifications to become a priest are?

And obviously there are no qualifications in the New Testament of what a priest should be.

In fact, the New Testament as per Peter says we're.

I'm sorry, Revelation says we're a kingdom of priests.

We're A holy nation.

We're all priests.

Right.

First Peter 2.

Yeah.

Okay.

A priest is someone who speaks to God on behalf of people, which is the opposite of a prophet.

Prophet is somebody who God speaks to, to speak to the people.

The priest speaks to God.

The prophet speaks to people.

So now as, as Christians with God's spirit living inside of us, we are now priests.

We are to tell people about God.

So we're all priests.

We have one great high priest who went into the, to the heaven.

The tabernacle not made with hands makes one sacrifice sufficient for all, all people, all time.

There's no longer need a need for another sacrifice.

We do not have to re.

Sacrifice Jesus's body on the altar over and over and over and over again.

That one sacrifice and his blood was enough.

That's it.

But if the infallible authority says no, well, now, as a Roman Catholic, you're bound to that.

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's true.

And so many people are confused as to what is or who is the Church.

Yeah.

So Rome, Rome says that it is the Church.

Right.

Clearly Rome is even confused because at the Council of Trent, they call Protestants anathematized, which means damn to hell.

And then Vatican 2 separated brethren.

Yes, right.

And, and funny enough, in the catechism, the Roman Catholic catechism, it says, together with us, the Muslims worship the one true living God.

Now, even Muslims will tell you, we do not worship the same God as you.

You believe Jesus is God.

That's the sin of shirk.

Right, Right.

We do not believe Jesus is God.

We do not worship the same God.

So real Christians and real Muslims agree we do not worship the same God.

It's only Rome that tells you, yes, you do worship the same God.

And together with Rome, you, you, you are entitled to salvation.

Like, again, I have another, a short clip of.

I think it's Bishop Baron having a conversation with Ben Shapiro.

And Ben Shapiro basically says, look, I, I really don't care about the answer to this question, but so many people have asked me, you know, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a practicing Jew.

I try to keep 613 laws to the best of my ability.

You know, on Catholicism, am I screwed?

Am I not going to heaven?

And Bishop Barron said, no, no, you're not.

You're not, you know, screwed.

Jesus is the privileged way, but not the only way.

That came right out of his mouth.

Out of his mouth.

He said, sincere Muslims who follow their conscience and their conscience really is the light of Christ in their heart.

Will gain heaven.

Jews, Muslims who follow the light in their heart will get to heaven.

Even atheists, he said, can't get to heaven.

And what, what boggles my mind is the atheist, the, the, the Jew, the Muslim can all get to heaven.

The only person who can't get to heaven is the Protestant who trusts in Jesus Christ alone for his salvation.

Isn't that amazing?

Sounds like authority to me, but not authority from heaven.

Like a bad authority.

Yes, yes, it sounds like man made authority.

Yes, which, which is really what it is.

And so if you're a Roman Catholic and you're listening to this, both Anthony and myself, we came out of Roman Catholicism.

You have to ask yourself this question.

Who has authority?

God in his word or the Pope?

And popes all throughout history have said different things and councils have disagreed and contradicted each other all throughout church history.

God is consistent.

He's immutable.

His word is immutable, which means it's unchanging.

So you can't afford to be wrong on this issue.

It's too.

It has eternal consequences to it.

Yes, yes, yes.

And so I would, I would, I would encourage or challenge any, any Roman Catholics listening to this podcast.

Take, get your Bible.

Read the Gospel of John, right, all 21 chapters.

And do try not to.

I know it's difficult.

It was difficult for me.

Try not to think.

What would my priest or, or bishop say?

Read the Scriptures based on what God says.

Ask the Holy Spirit to quicken your mind and heart and see if what you were taught in, in Catholicism lines up with what is being taught by the Scriptures.

Because by the end of the Scriptures, think about this, Phil.

If all we had was the Gospel of John, right, at the end of that letter, he says, these things are written so that you may know you, you have eternal life, right?

So the letter, the Gospel that he wrote and, and was circulated, if all we had was the information contained in John, we have enough for salvation.

Gratefully, he's given us more, but we have enough.

Is that what Rome teaches?

No.

No.

So we need to, we need to ask, as we, as we read the Scriptures say, am I really listening with open ears and an open heart to what God is saying?

Regardless of what any other, whether it be Rome, whether it be Latter Day Saints, whether it be the Watchtower, whether it be even, even, even pro, Whether it be the SBC or whatever governmental authority you have, what do the Scriptures say?

Because the sbc, the upc, the, the Watchtower, all these people are going to have to answer to God for What they've taught, myself included, yourself included, especially as elders, we're gonna have to stand before God and give an account for what we taught and why.

And if it doesn't come out of the Scriptures, we're in trouble.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is a weighty responsibility.

Extremely weighty responsibility.

We must study to show ourselves approved.

A workman that need to be ashamed rightly divide in the word of truth.

There is a stricter judgment for those that preach and teach.

Yeah.

And so don't, don't.

If you're listening to this and you just want to run to a pulpit and start preaching, make sure you're called and affirmed in that calling.

Don't, don't, don't be self appointed now.

Yeah.

Don't jump, don't jump into that frivolously.

That's, that's, that's a weighty, that's a weighty office.

And you know that Scripture that you just quoted, show yourself approved.

Who need not, you know, men who need not be ashamed rightly handling the word of truth.

Why would Paul have to write that?

If all you could do is just go to your priest or go to your bishop and ask him, what does this mean?

Yes.

Why does the Scripture tell you to examine it?

Why do we, why does, why do the Bereans in the book of Acts go to the Scriptures to test what, what the Apostle Paul taught them?

They went to the Scriptures and they were more noble.

Yes.

They went to the Scriptures to test what was taught to them.

So I would just tell you Biblically, the Bible says to be a workman who rightly handles the word of truth.

And in order to rightly handle the word of truth, first of all, you must, you must read it.

Second of all, you must study it in context and test everything that's being taught to you against the Scriptures.

Why?

Because the Scriptures are the sole infallible authority.

Men make mistakes.

I make mistakes, you make mistakes.

All Roman Catholics make mistakes.

And I'm not saying that as a pejorative.

I'm saying that as all humanity, I don't have perfect theology.

Neither do you.

We need to be united on the essentials.

The entrance point is knowing who Jesus is and what he accomplished on the cross.

Yes.

Yes.

I mean, if he paid the price for my sins in full, then there's nothing that I can do that's going to add to that payment.

And if there was something that I needed to do to add to that payment that would put God in my debt, in other words, I would be able to stand before God and say, I did everything you told me.

Now you owe me salvation.

And no one will be able to stand before God and say, you owe me.

Right.

A Christian would say, I've been bought with a price.

I am not my own.

I belong to Jesus because he purchased me.

He paid a debt he did not owe.

We owed a debt we could never pay, man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And when, when, when Paul and John and Peter, when they wrote letters, they weren't.

They wrote the letters and they sent the letters.

They.

They weren't there reading the letters.

How did those saints understand them without Peter being there interpreting the letter?

Excellent question.

Excellent question.

Right.

Because the presupposition is when you have the Holy Spirit inside of you, you can now read the Scriptures and not understand them perfectly, but you can understand what they say.

And when you, when you again study the Scriptures again, that's, that's one of the commands as an elder, to teach sound doctrine and rebuke those who contradict it.

You need to know the word of God.

Yes.

That only comes through time, prayer and study.

You have to put, you got to put your hand to the plow.

Yep.

So they were not priests in all these churches.

There were letters sent, and, and those letters were read to the churches.

Paul wasn't there.

That's why he sent the letter.

Right.

If.

If he was there, he wouldn't need to send the letter.

Right.

You don't normally send letters when you're there.

Then you just tell the person.

Right.

When you're right in front of them.

Like when, when Paul rebuked Peter, he was right in front of him.

He didn't send the letter.

But with the Corinthians, the Ephesians and the Galatians, he sent the letter and they understood the letter.

Right?

Yeah.

So, I mean, how does Rome read from these books and then just not understand this?

I mean, it's, it's just so simple.

It's as simple as.

What's a woman saying?

Well, I'm not a biologist.

Yeah, it's, in a sense, I don't have the authority to answer that question.

But Rome is saying, well, you know, we're, we are the only ones that have the authority to, to answer questions and the only ones who have the authority to interpret scripture.

And by what authority do they claim to have that authority?

Apostolic succession.

Which comes from where?

I don't know where.

Where do they get that idea from?

Obviously, It's Matthew, chapter 16 is where.

They'Re trying to get it from.

The, they're trying to get it from the Bible.

Right.

The real authority.

So, ah.

And since they misinterpret that, it shows fallibility clearly.

Sure, sure.

And look, I, I, I, I want to be gracious to sure.

A Roman Catholic who might be listening to this again.

My challenge would be to read the Scriptures.

Set aside your preconceived understanding.

And I know that's very difficult.

You know, our traditions guide the way we think.

They, our traditions.

Especially when, when I came out of Rome, it's, I still felt like this, this hold on me and I was doing something wrong by reading the Scriptures for myself.

But then I come across scriptures where it says, be a workman who need not be ashamed rightly handling the word of truth.

I recognize that I had a responsibility in and of myself to read the Scriptures.

Right.

I have a responsibility as per Deuteronomy, to teach these things.

When I wake up, when I, as, as we walk, as we sit down, as we lie down, we're to teach our kids the word of God.

That's my responsibility.

In order to teach him the word of God, I need to read and know the word of God.

Amen.

Yeah, yeah, amen.

And, and again, I have dear loved ones, family members, friends that are in Roman Catholicism.

This is not anything of hatred.

We don't despise.

Listen, I, I want to see all my family go to heaven.

I mean that, that, that is my heart.

I know that is your heart.

And so we're not here to just, you know, per se, make fun of.

We're not here to per se, just disparage Rome.

And we have family members and friends that are in Roman Catholicism.

We're not trying to throw them away and say there's no hope.

We want to see them come to Christ.

I want to see my, my family members come to Christ who are in Roman Catholicism.

And the only way that's going to happen is if they come to the same realization that we came to.

And we didn't come to it of our own understanding, because of our own study, because of our own intellect.

We came because God opened our eyes.

Perhaps somebody was praying for us.

Certainly God did a work and he opened our eyes.

And so we need to pray that God would, would change the heart, that God would open the eyes of our lost family and friends because we want to see them in heaven.

We don't want, you know, we don't have this, you know, we hope you get what you deserve.

No.

Yikes.

If we had that attitude, you know.

Right, right.

The love of Christ would not be displayed.

In our hearts.

Right.

So insane.

We don't want what we deserve.

There's three things that, that I, I've drilled into my kid's head and, and the people at our congregation.

There's three things that God can give you.

Justice, mercy or grace.

Justice is getting what you deserve.

Right?

Does anyone want what they deserve?

When you line yourself up to the law, We've lied, we've stolen.

Use God's name in vain.

Committed adultery in our minds, committed murder in our hearts.

We've broken all the commandments.

Right.

So if God was to give me justice, would that.

Would, would that mean God's not good?

No.

He's giving me justice.

He's giving me what I deserve.

You don't want what you deserve.

We'd be fright.

And you have mercy.

Mercy is not getting what you deserve.

Yes.

So when you, when you ask God for forgiveness and throw yourself at the mercy mercy of Jesus, you're basically asking him to give you mercy.

Don't give me what I deserve.

And once you place your faith and trust in Jesus, now God says, I'm going to give you grace.

I'm going to give you what you don't deserve.

I sent Jesus into the world to live the perfect life that you needed to live and involuntarily die the death that you deserve.

Such that when I walk into a church that has a cross on it, I say, that should be me.

So if you're a Roman Catholic and you walk into your church and you see the crucifix and you see Jesus on the cross, you have to ask yourself, why was he there and not me?

And the answer is, he went to the cross to pay the price for your sins, not to help you or give you a second chance.

Because God could give you a second chance, a third chance, a thousand chance.

You're going to blow all of them.

You are called to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.

I doubt that I've done that for one second straight my whole life.

Ditto.

We were created to be dependent upon God, not just for our heartbeat, not just for the breath in our lungs, but for our salvation.

In other words, the rescue of my soul and uniting me back to, to God the Father.

I was created to be dependent upon Jesus to do that for me.

If I could do it myself, I would not need Jesus.

Which would mean Christianity is unnecessary, right?

Jesus is either everything or nothing.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, let me close with a few comments.

Here, Charles Spurgeon said, the Word of God is like a lion.

You don't have to defend a lion.

All you have to do is let the lion loose and the lion will defend itself.

Amen.

We should love the Word of God and we should love the God of the Word.

It's not, it's.

It's not bibliology to love God's Word.

If you read the Book of Psalms, he says, oh, how I love your law.

Is he an idol?

Live by bread alone, but by every word out of the mouth of God.

I long for God's word the way I long for spaghetti and meatballs.

Like, I want it.

You know, I want to.

I want to eat those things.

Right.

So it's the same thing with God's Word.

I want to feast on it.

I want to eat it and digest it, absorb it, such that it.

What.

What comes in through my head comes out through my mouth and my hands.

Yes, yes.

And, and some N. Psalm 19 speaks about his Word being sweeter than honey.

The drippings of the honey.

Does that sound like the worship of the Bible or just the enjoyment of God's Word?

So I think this guy really got it backwards.

Yeah.

My son, listen to my.

Listen to my wisdom.

Put these, put these precepts as a.

As an adornment around your neck, like garland on your head.

Like that's how much we're supposed to be in the Word.

Yeah, yeah.

So if you truly recognize all these books in the Bible are the books that you put your stamp of approval on, then why don't you affirm what they say?

Yes.

Well, yeah, look, you know, again, a Roman Catholic is going to say, well, the church is the authority and they gave us the Bible.

And I say, I disagree.

But if the church is the authority and gave you the Bible, have you read it?

As a Catholic, I never read my Bible.

You know, here and there, little pieces, but I never read my Bible cover to cover.

I didn't know.

Mostly as a Protestant, I've read it, you know, over eight or nine times.

Right.

You know, and there's certain passages that I've read probably 500 to a thousand times.

Sure.

You know, sure.

Scriptures that I've memorized that, you know, just won't, Won't.

Won't ever come out of my head.

Right, right.

Because again, you're hiding God's Word in your heart, you know, so it's.

It's important.

Really, really important.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, springboarding off of our topic today.

Let me just say the next time someone tries to hammer you with this argument, just ask where the church gets its authority from if not from the Word of God.

And let me share with everyone.

We have two exciting upcoming events planned for the spring.

We have our third annual contending conference May 2nd at Grace Baptist Church in Woodhaven, Queens with guest speaker Pastor Jim Harrison from Red Mills Baptist Yourself, Pastor Anthony Ovinio AKA the Reform Rookie and yours truly Pastor Phil Sessa AKA the Bronx Expositor.

And Pastor Jim will be speaking on spiritual gifts.

Anthony, you're speaking on God and government.

Amen.

And then yours truly will be speaking on gender roles, specifically in the home and in the church.

And then early in the summer, Saturday, June 27, we are looking to have a New York City invasion where biblically like minded churches will invade an area of New York City with the Gospel of Jesus Christ through open air preaching, street witnessing and prayer.

And so Anthony, thank you for joining us today on this episode of Stop and Think About It.

And thank you for all that listened and took this time to stop and Think about it.

If you would like to contact us please email us@stopandthinkcrewmail.com.

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