Matt Slick Live

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We have no callers waiting right now and let's see. Today I released an article I've been working on for quite a while actually and so it was a lot of work and it was on the Eastern Orthodox system of salvation and it was interesting because when, I'll tell you what happened last night. It was interesting.

Can I test? I field test stuff, you know, and something really I thought, well, it was interesting. I'll tell you what happened. So I go into, I'm on Discord a couple, three times a week and I go in there and I have discussions. I go into a room and I'll tell you the, let's just say that the people become, let's just say a little obstreperous, the Eastern Orthodox. People apparently don't like when I expose their, let's just say their church's teachings.

So we had this discussion last night. It was interesting and this one guy, he said he was getting ready to be Christmated in the, the EO is going to get baptized in East Orthodox salvation. Get this, you have to get baptized, that removes original sin, then you have to go through what's called Christmation where a priest or a bishop or a priest, he will anoint the person with oil and that's how he receives the Holy Spirit, by the anointing with oil.

It's not by the Lord Jesus giving it to you, giving the spirit to you, no, by the authority of the priesthood. So we got talking and I said to this guy, you know, I was having a discussion, it was an interesting discussion actually, and he had, let's just say some difficulty dealing with a lot of what, what they were saying, anyway, so I'll just get to it. So I read the article that I released last night on the summation of stuff in this room with the Eastern Orthodox are there and this one guy said that he agreed with everything that was there and I'm going to read a little bit of it and this is what he agreed to among other things, about baptism and Christmation and that loving deeds, sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist are decisive to salvation and that keeping divine, keeping the divine commandments justifies us with Christ and that our final judgment will hinge in part on the criterion of good deeds and in the final judgment everyone will receive a full everlasting reward according to his merit and the context is salvation. And then justification is how a person comes into and maintains a right relationship with God through a life of obedience to God and confession of sins.

So it's a works righteousness system. So I said this and when I say that people get upset and the only thing I can think about or the only reason I can assume that they get so upset is because I'm tipping over their idols, their false gospel, their idol of a false gospel, that's one guy. He said that he agreed with everything I'd read and the stuff that I read and he's not even a full Eastern Orthodox guy yet so he and I had this conversation and I asked him what's the gospel? And it was to my surprise, I didn't expect this, what he did was he read the Nicene Creed. Instead of going to scripture for the gospel I asked what's the gospel? And well he just gave me the Nicene Creed, he actually read it and it was really interesting. So the, let's see, I want to go through a little bit of what it teaches and he read the whole thing to me and I was like okay, alright, that's what you want to do, the Nicene Creed which was done in AD 325 and it says that we believe in one God, the Father Almighty maker of heaven and earth and all that's unseen and unseen, we believe in the one Lord Jesus Christ our God eternally begotten from the Father and through him all things are made for us and for our salvation that came down from heaven, he was crucified, suffered, was buried, third day rose again, he will come again in glory, we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord the giver of life who proceeds from the Father with the Father and the Son worshiped and glorifies but with the prophets, we believe in the one holy Catholic and apostolic church, we acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life to come and I said but that's not the gospel and he said yes it is and I said no it's not. I said the gospel is defined in 1 Corinthians 15 1-5 as a death, burial, resurrection, that's in the Nicene Creed, I said I know it's in the Nicene Creed but the gospel is not that we receive the Holy Spirit, the Lord the giver of life who proceeds from the Father, that's not part of what the gospel message is or that the Father Almighty is maker of heaven and earth, that's not what the gospel is defined as in the Bible, I asked him, I said what's the gospel that saves us from our sins and he couldn't go to, he wouldn't go to the scriptures, I had to go to the scriptures, he just read a creed, now a creed is from history, he said that he will, he accepts everything from the history and again not from the Bible, alright, so the creed does include the gospel but it adds stuff beyond the gospel, I'm not knocking the creed, it's a good creed and I told him it's a good creed but that the whole creed is not the gospel, the gospel is a death, burial, resurrection, an extension of that is justification by faith alone through Christ alone, I said that's what the gospel is and he started saying that I had a reading comprehension, a listening comprehension, he's really condescending and I've noticed as among Eastern Orthodox that they're worse than Roman Catholics in that their condescension and their arrogance is just horrible, what do you agree with me Charlie, is that what you found, same thing, yeah Charlie he has a son who's in the Eastern Orthodox denomination, he's had a lot of dealing with them, he says the same thing, they're arrogant and I remember once I was talking to an Orthodox priest and not too far from here in Idaho a few years ago and I'm not going to call him father, he wanted me to call him father and I said no, I can't do that because it's against my belief to do that and I said is there something else I can call you, I don't want to be disrespectful, he said you must call me father so and so and I said but I'm not going to do that because I believe it's wrong to do that, I said so can I call you father, he said no you call me father, he was just arrogant, he wasn't like oh okay that's your condition before scripture is that, that's what you believe, I don't want to stumble, that should be the attitude but no it had to be done the way he wanted it to be done, this is what I've noticed in the Eastern Orthodox, they're prideful, they are, now I'm not saying I'm not, you know we've all got pride and stuff but anyway so this goes on and so we had this discussion and then the guy denounced, he said I denounce everything that's on Carm, everything that's on Carm I denounce it, I didn't get a chance to respond to him because he said so many other things but I wanted to say you mean even the doctrine of the Trinity that's taught on Carm, you know Jesus rose from the dead, you know things like that, he didn't know Jesus, he was just getting so angry because I was pinning him you know and I said look this is what the Bible, this is what your church says that you have to earn salvation and this is where I could tell he didn't know what to do because he hadn't heard all this stuff, I said this is official documentation from your sources, I said it's an impossible gospel, you guys can't keep this, it's ridiculous and so what's been happening lately is they get extremely agitated with me, they get very upset, one Eastern Orthodox guy started bringing up one of my daughters who's done bad stuff, she has, and says this is how your Calvinism is, this childish stuff, not even addressing the issues that I raise and I'm not saying that all Eastern Orthodox are like this but man I'll tell you, they, they're arrogant, they're prideful, they're stubborn because they have the true church, they have the true gospel, they have the right tradition, they have the true priesthood and you have to be found in their church and all this stuff, it's ludicrous. So anyway that was my evening last night going through and after I released the article so I'm going to go back in tonight probably and start reading stuff that I've found, what do you guys think of this and see how, see what happens when their idols get tipped, you know their self-righteous works righteousness idol and oh man they don't like it when I call them, that reminds me, this one guy said, he said Matt, he says you keep lying about us and I said no I don't, he says yes you do, you say we worship these idols and stuff and I said but you do because no we don't, we don't worship, we venerate them and I said same thing, I said you're praying to them, you're giving them qualities that are godlike, they can hear millions of prayers simultaneously spoken in thought all over the world in different languages comprehend them, I mean it's a godlike thing, you know it's like a guy going into a gym, you know he does bench press, military press, he does leg press, squats, he does sit-ups, he does everything, he's working for a couple of hours, he does lats and everything and he's working out right and for two hours and he's on his way out and some guy says hey man I was watching you work out, he goes I wasn't working out, I was exercising, well but that's what a workout is, no, by me defining it the exact same thing differently therefore it's different and that's the idea that they do, we venerate, we don't worship, well you bow down before these idols, you kiss these idols, you pray to what these idols represent and you attribute to them great qualities and stuff like this that exceed what's written in scripture, we call that idolatry and they don't like that, oh I can tell you so many things but this is how I keep sharp folks on what heresies are out there, you know some much heresies, so little time, let's get to Jermaine from California, Jermaine welcome buddy, you're on the air, hey man I just want to talk about earth ages today, okay, people who have different beliefs on that but starting back in creation where it says God created the earth but it wasn't void, do you think that brings credit to some people who believe that maybe there was something here before what we know of as recorded time, not that that wasn't the exact precise moment of creation but it was almost like a recreation? Well that's been postulated many times between Genesis 1 verse 1 and 2 there was something that happened, the fall some have said of the angelic realm and effect of the world and so then had to be a new kind of a creation, there's different kinds of things called the gap theory and I don't hold to it so you know I don't know how the earth is, I don't believe it's millions of years old, there's problems in the dating methods and I could cite them to you, some of them but I don't know, okay.

Okay you know part of the reason I meant, I actually read a book by Dr. Donald Gray Barnhouse and it's called The Invisible War and I highly respect a lot of his teachings because I find a lot of it to be just very refreshing, there are times though where I would hear him say something and it sounded like he was a proponent of that, he wrote a book called The Invisible War and his son was also a brilliant theologian and pastor, it seemed like his son differed in opinion from that and I found that there are various aspects of Christianity. Hold on buddy, we've got a break, we've got a break, okay, jump in there, we'll be right back folks after these messages, we'll get back on with Jermaine and I bet some of the callers wait, we'll be right back, please stay tuned. Welcome back to the show, let's get back on with Jermaine from California, Jermaine, get back on buddy, you there, Jermaine, let's see if I hit the button right, let's see, try it again, there we go, now I did it, maybe I hit the button, okay go ahead, all right can you hear me, yes I do, I hear you, all right well, yeah so, yeah I've heard the gap theory and I've heard various proponents of it, like I said Dr. Barnhouse who are a really brilliant man but it seemed like he subscribed to some of that, he even wrote you know very, very complex book on it but the thing is I don't know if there's enough evidence either one way or another, it's just fascinating to me, has nothing to do with my salvation, however when I see some things like you know the recent findings of the pyramid was supposedly was sitting underneath the ground and I look at the earth itself, you know I see points that are supposedly deeper than Mount Everest, it just does make me wonder was there something else here before that God kind of covered up, so it doesn't give you enough, there's no not enough concrete evidence to say one way or another though, right, yeah as far as the gap theory goes there's problems with it, one of the main ones is that it tends to introduce the idea of sin and death before entering into the creation, before the fall of Adam and there's some issues with that, so that's one of the, this is one of the issues that needs to be addressed and dealt with, so you know we have an article on it, I'm just looking at the article but I may have to rewrite that one because it was written by someone else a long time ago on Karm and I think it needs to have more information in it, but as far as the age of the earth goes, the science will say that it's billions of years old, there's problems, lots of problems with that and there are different kinds of radiometric dating systems, rubidium, strontium and then there's something called rock layer positioning where they physically look at rocks, so plesocene rock layer, by rock layer positioning by looking at stratigraphic analysis, 1.6 million years old, but yet rubidium strontium shows it's 773 million years old and in the Pliocene to Holocene lava, stratigraphically dated 5.3 million but rubidium strontium shows 570 to 870 million years old and it goes on, so there's, those are just some of them and there's erosion rates of land and there's pleochologic halos, there's the problem of carbon 14 which says I have life of 5,730 years which means after 93,000 years no organism will have it in it because it's only existing in organisms that, in living organisms it's only obtained through respiration and eating and so when an organism dies within 93 million years the carbon 14 is gone because of half life deterioration, well diamonds are made from carbon and the carbon 14 and it was millions of years old but there's carbon 14 in them which can't exist in things millions of years old, it's impossible. There's just all kinds of problems, isochron dating methodologies, volcanic activity, there's just a lot of problems and you don't hear about them because they don't support the idea of a long earth because a long earth is needed for evolution to occur and even then there's still lots of problems, microevolution, macroevolution, cladistics, epigenetics, ERVs, there's all kinds of stuff, I can go on and on but just problems, okay. And I also you know I have to agree with you I think there's a lot of problems but wouldn't it also be appropriate to say the earth is not simply 6,000 years old as I hear some other proponents of that theory just because they maybe can't grasp the fact that it could be older but wouldn't it be more appropriate to say we just don't know the actual age of the earth? Well we don't know, now some people have stated that the earth must be 6,000 years old because of genealogies connected back to Adam, I've never gone through and checked that but you know I can trust that the people have done a good job and it goes back about 6,000 years, I have no problem with that, I don't have any problem with the earth being 6,000 years old, I don't have any problem with it being 20,000 years old, I just don't know how old it really is, I don't believe it's millions of years old but just to throw this out there are, okay how do I say this, I've heard of but haven't checked into the idea of an expanding universe if it started where the earth was the center because when we look out everything seems to be expanding from everything else, we don't or the sciences don't know where the real center of the universe is because of the big bang, it's like a big balloon is expanding, well there's a central point from which it's expanding but the problem is every space is expanding away from every space which makes sense in that balloon kind of a thing but it implies the idea that space is stretching and as it moves out and it's accelerating which is, they invented dark matter and dark energy to explain this but anyway the thing is that, oh I was going to make it up about it, anyway there's, oh yes I remember, so there's a theory that deals with, it's way beyond my pay grade, that deals with the issue of relativity that on earth we could have the earth be 6,000 years old and outside as things are moving that it could be older or vice versa, no it would be older, millions of years old on the outside, I don't understand all of it but some astrophysicists are working on that, some Christian ones, they're saying there's some stuff there and then there's the issue of the speed of light which there's some evidence and arguments about it's slowing down, it's not a constant and that is a very touchy subject in science right now, not many people know about it, they can't have it be a non-constant and if it is changing that will have radical effects on age theories, galactic theories and stuff like this, it's a major major upset if it's true, not just a little, humongously significant and so science tends to move like a rock down a hill, it gathers momentum and it's hard to change its direction and so that's how science often works, so there's just a lot there and stuff, okay. Right, and just to let you know, I'm a little bit of a nerd so I'm familiar with some of those Einsteinian theories but there's a great movie Interstellar that happened to deal with some of what you just said and it really gets kind of wacky because time for them is relative but I'm a nerd, there's a difference, so yeah I thought it was pretty fascinating, just something to think about but yeah, thanks a lot man, I appreciate it. All right brother man, God bless buddy, keep calling, all right man, oops, got him off there sorry about that, okay now let's get to Alberto from Georgia, hey Alberto welcome man, year on year, oh hey sorry about that, there is a break, so you got to hold on man, all right we'll be right back folks after these messages, please stay tuned.

Welcome back to the show, it's the bottom of the hour if you want to give me a call, it's easy, 877-207-2276, okay Alberto, you're on the air buddy. Good evening, my question is, preachers say, stand separate us from God, does that apply to sinners only or believers too, if it does then our fellowship is broken, not our identity or our relationship, which is it? If what, if the what is, and then there's preachers, preachers say that sins that separate us from God, right, that apply to sinners only, or it applies to believers also, well Isaiah 59 2 says your iniquities have separated you from God, your sin, so sin does separate us from God, yes, but I'm not sure what context you're referencing somebody, because a Christian cannot ultimately be separated from God, but in Christianity when a Christian sins his fellowship with God is affected, but he's not separated from God, so but before you're a believer you're separated from God by your sin. Okay I've got another quick question too, okay go ahead, are sinners born in the image and likeness of God after the fall, if not then why should we as society and government value human life, okay read that one more time, are sinners born in the image and likeness of God after the fall, if not then why should we as society and government value human life, we are in the image of God, whether we're fallen or not fallen, and that's it redeemed and non-redeemed, we're still in the image of God, it's called the Imagio Dei, and then the question is, is the Imagio Dei affected by sin, and yes it is, to what extent, and what extent is it so to speak fixed, loose term there, in respect to the redemptive work, so that's it, there's been some debates about the extent of the Imagio Dei and to what happens, at any rate, so what was the second part of your question though, so in a word, basically what's the difference between the image and the likeness of God in a person's life, it's the same thing, it's just the likeness of God, the same thing, yeah, and the communicable attributes of God, because they say, our preachers say that once you accept Christ, that Christ restores the likeness of God in us, but when you sin, you've lost the likeness, if they're talking about the Imagio Dei, the image of God, it's restored, they've got to be careful what they're saying because they could mislead, the image of God is not removed in our sin, when Adam sinned, we're still made in the image of God, and when we're redeemed, born again, we're still in the image of God, so when someone talks about this, and talks about the difference between the unregenerate and the regenerate, he should say that the image of God is not restored, in the sense that it was gone, because if it's restored, what does it mean that it wasn't restored, what does that mean, they're not saying anything, so you have to be more clear, but, so, what I would say, I'd recommend that people say in this is that the image of God in us was affected by sin, and that the indwelling of God making us born again doesn't restore the image of God, it kind of fixes it, it unstains it, and being very vague on purpose because it's not easy to discuss, and there's a lot of variables that people have gotten in discussions about with it, so I'm just using those variable terms right now.

So basically it was marred, marred, right, marred, scarred, affected, deleteriously, yes. Okay, alright, that's more clear, okay, thank you sir, God bless you. Alright buddy, God bless man, alright. Okay, you too, bye-bye. Okay. Oh, hey, this should be interesting, let's get to Patrick, Patrick, welcome, you're on the air. Hey, I'm starting to be a celebrity.

Yeah, so, what do you got, what's up? I have a question, but after you were talking about the age of the earth, why do you think the earth got tilted 23 degrees? Because God wanted us to have seasons. Well, if you search Google, why the earth got tilted, it'll tell you that a billion years ago, an asteroid the size of Mars hit the earth, and that's what kicked it into a tilt. Well actually, there's another theory that around 700 to 705 B.C., Mars moved within the orbit of the, within the moon, and there's legends in written of the red moon rising, and around 702 to 703 B.C., and fire came down out of having little meteorites, whatever, and then it went from 360 days a week, a year, the length, to 365 days, five hours, 40 minutes and 46 seconds. So there's a theory about that, and it goes into some other stuff about Mars and some other things. It's also a theory not many people know about, but don't get us theories, okay?

Yeah, because that's a good question, you know, about the globe earth or the flat earth, is how did the earth get tilted? I have another question. My other question is, when Jesus was baptized, you said he had to get baptized to become the high priest. Did Jesus have to do works in order to be the high priest by getting baptized? The issue of baptism, why Jesus was baptized in Matthew 3.15, he says to fulfill all righteousness, to fulfill, which talks about the Old Testament. So in Leviticus 8, Numbers 4, Exodus 29, it talks about the requirements of entering into the priesthood.

He's 30 years of age, had to be male, of course, had to have oil applied to you. Jesus had the Holy Spirit applied, you know, poured on him, came upon him. A verbal blessing was given to the priest, my beloved son, whom I'm well pleased, and he had to be sprinkled with water. And I believe Jesus was sprinkled with water because of the Levitical law. And Hebrews, it's going to be Numbers 8.7 says, you shall sprinkle them, the men coming into the priesthood.

That's what it says. So I believe that's what the case was. And that he's a high priest after the order of Melchizedek, Hebrews 6.20 and 7.25. Okay. Well, so Jesus had to do that, and that you could consider that a works.

He had to go to John the Baptist and get oil sprinkled on him and, you know, the ceremony. Right. So that was actually works.

He had to do that in order to become the high priest. That's correct. Yeah. Uh-huh.

Yes. Now, one thing you have to understand is, what's the name of that guy that Martin, he's a real famous person, Charlie told me about him. But his first rule, yeah, Walter Martin, his first rule to see in Scripture is to never take the Old Testament and bring it into the New Testament. And that's what you're doing. You're using Old Testament to prove that Jesus was baptized to become the high priest, and that's against the rules. No, it's not. The Old Testament is quoted in the New Testament. They quote it numerous times. So to say we can't bring it into the New Testament. There's no scripture in the New Testament about Jesus becoming the high priest.

Hold on. I guess that there is, Hebrews chapter 5, 6, 7. He's a high priest.

And what does that say? He says he's a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. Yeah, he's the high priest, but I don't believe he had to do works in order to become the high priest, because he was all, according to you guys, you believe Jesus is God. So if he becomes a high priest, how high, how much higher did he have to become to be God? I mean, you know, the high priest, is that better than God?

No, not. He's made under the law, Galatians 4, 4. For a little while, there were only the angels, Hebrews 2, 9, and as such, he had to enter into the priesthood to be the high priestly sacrifice. That's what he did by getting baptized. He's a high priest after the order of Melchizedek, okay? That's what the Bible says.

No, the problem is, he became the high priest when he was resurrected, because he goes back to doing the word of God. That's not correct. Okay, I'm going to say something very profound, very, very profound. Here it is.

You ready? You are wrong. Okay, there you go. Well, I can say the same thing to you. You are wrong, and you have to be careful, because you're teaching people in a public platform, if you teach the long doctrine, you know, you're teaching heresy.

That would be correct, if I'm teaching something wrong, but you need to check my scripture. You can't do a very good job at that, because you don't want to know how to do that. There's a break. We've got to go, buddy. Talk to you later. Hey folks, Wide Open Lines, if you want to give me a call, 877-207-2276, be right back. Here's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show, and I am in a chat room right now on Discord, because we're in a break. We've got no callers waiting right now, and so I just told them I'm talking about this room on the air. I'm going to do that a little bit, and I enjoy going into rooms and having discussions with people, because one of the main reasons is, it keeps me sharp, but another reason is that they will often bring up issues and responses that I've not thought of, and I really enjoy that, because I think I do a pretty good job of analyzing something, but every now and then, man, I'll come up with something. That's a good question, and so I'll tell them, hey, that's a good question. I really need to think about that, and that happened yesterday when a guy said in Exodus 20, when it says, idolatry, you can't make an image of the Lord your God, things above and below, and bow down before them, and he said, would that be an essential doctrine of the faith? That's a good question, and so I'm going to actually check it out and look into it to see if it's a primary, secondary, essential, something like that, and I'm going to look into it, because I told them, I said, it's a good question.

I don't want to say yes or no right now, because I want to do a more comprehensive analysis of scripture with that question in mind, and he was gracious, and he says, yeah, that's a good response. Take your time, and so, anyway, I'm on the chat room. There's a room. I find it very, very interesting.

It's a spiritual insight thing to me. There's a room on the server called Politics and Religion and Discord. Discord's a humongous chat system, and you can do video, and you can do audio, and there's typing. There's all kinds of stuff.

It's really well done. It's a little hard to work, but once you get it down, you can work it okay, and on one of these servers called Politics and Religion, there's a room called Calvinism, and what's really interesting is that it was initially created in that, among many other rooms that are there, of all kinds of stuff people talk about. Well, people wanted a room to discuss Reformed theology, but what happened was the East Orthodox and the Catholics came in, and at first I was puzzled by that because it's a room on Reformed theology, and then it occurred to me, oh, now I know why they're there, because they attack it. They attack it. They don't like it. They don't like the idea of God's sovereignty. They do not like the idea of God's majesty. They do not like the idea of God electing and predestining. They don't like it because they want their man-centered theology, and so they go in, and they attack it all the time.

I find it interesting, and so it has become one of the largest rooms on that whole server. With me, I always like to wonder, why is it people do what they do? What's the underlying reason for their behavior?

What's the presuppositional base that they have that would then lead them in a certain direction of behavior, attitude, speaking, and things like that? I think it's fascinating that when you open up a room that promotes the sovereignty of God, the authority of Scripture, the final authority of Scripture, they attack it. In fact, during the break, I was in the room in the chat.

I'm not into the sound because I don't have my sound going in there. I'm in the chat part of it. I asked. I do something like this, okay, if you only had two options, the church and Scripture as the final authority, what would you choose? If you only had tradition and Scripture, which would you choose, tradition? These are the guys who go in to this server, and they promote heresy, and they attack the sovereignty of God.

To me, it's fascinating. Some of you may be driving along going, okay, this reminds me, I'll tell my wife something like this. Guess what? I go to the server, and I give them these options, and I do all this stuff, and then they pick tradition.

Well, they pick the church over Scripture, and they're in or they hate this. And my wife will say to me things like, well, I'm glad that does it for you. You know, she's, poor woman, hey, you want to hear about this?

Listen to this guy, what that guy said. And she patiently waits until I'm done, so she can go back to more important things. And so, you know, I got issues.

I got issues. I love this stuff. To me, it's fascinating.

I just love it. So, I'm very intrigued by the inability of people as a whole who claim to be Christians, the inability to trust God's word, because it's simply trusting God for what he said. That's what the word of God is, trusting his word for what he said. What they've done is they've replaced Christ with their church. Now, when I say that, I'm going to do this live, okay? I'm in this room, the chat room, and I'm going to say the EO and the RC replace Jesus with their churches, okay?

Now, I just hit enter, it's in there, and I'll read you some of their responses when they get in, because they don't like what I say. And when I say something like that, it's not without reason, because I wrote an article a while back, I think I did it on the Eastern Orthodox, the Catholics, excuse me, the Catholic church is the way, the truth, and the life, and nobody comes to the Father but by them. I wrote this article, and I went through and I tried to find quotes from sources, they're from different groups, where the way, the truth, and the life, nobody comes to the Father but by me. And I found quotes, like in some of the Eastern Orthodox lately, that the way, the way, the truth, and life, the way, the priest and the EO is the medium of priestly power of Christ, and that the holy Orthodox church is the one true church with the possession of fullness of grace, it's the way. And that reconciliation, the priest mediates, is the sole reconciliation with which is done mediated for the world, the way. And that the truth, the presence of fullness of grace and truth can only be found in the Orthodox church.

It's the pillar and ground of truth, okay, I'm not giving you all the whole quotes because we're going to have time for all of it, it's not like a big study here. Or it's impossible for the Catholic church, the EO church, what they mean by that, to err or be deceived, it just has the truth, because it is the truth. And then the life, all who obtain everlasting salvation obtain it only in the one true church, the Catholic church, Eastern Orthodox church, okay. Or the presence of the fullness of grace and truth found only in Orthodoxy, and grace and truth are absent in non-Orthodox Christian communities, and hence deprived of the means of salvation. So life, eternal life, is only found in the Orthodox church. And then this idea of no one goes to God except through the Eastern Orthodox church, an Orthodox understanding, Christian priesthood is a sacred sharing in the charisma of the Lord's own high priesthood, reconciliation, they mediate is the sole reconciliation, which he alone is mediated in the world, reconciliation and mediation means you go to God and it's in their priesthood, you can't get to God without them. And a medium of the priestly power of Christ, a channel of the Lord's own sanctifying grace.

And another one outside the Eastern Orthodox church is no salvation. So these are some of the things, so when I bring this up and I show these things, now they don't like what I say, they don't like it because they're idolaters. Now you know I go into these groups and I mix it up with them, I mix it up and I shake it up with them because I want to see what they're going to say, I want to see if I'm missing something.

And I can't tell you how many times I have learned so many things from doing this, and then I work on them and then I come on the radio here and I get to talk about them, or people ask me questions and I have this insight because of what I've done so much of, and other areas as well. Now what do you think of what I was just saying? I didn't read everything, I just was giving representative that the Eastern Orthodox church is the way, the truth, and the life, and nobody comes to the Father but through it. That's what the Eastern Orthodox church is claiming. And the Roman Catholic church does the same thing. So would you say that they are idolaters?

Now I say they are. And when I talk about this with them, and with other people, I'll say, that's idolatry. And they'll say, no it's not idolatry.

I say, yes it is. For example, when you bow down to your idols, and then they'll tell me, well wait a minute, this is a good logic point for a lot of you that are listening to this, okay. They'll say, no God told them, the Jews, to make images in the temple. And they'll say, see Matt, God told them to make images, and therefore it's okay to make images. They make these icons, or statues, or idols, whatever you call them, in EO and RC, Eastern Orthodox Roman Catholic, and they bow down before them. And their justification for it is that they say that it was done by God's command in the temple.

And so they can do it. And I always go to them, and I say, you need to read what the Bible says. It says, go to Exodus 20 verse 4, you shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above, or on the earth beneath, or the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them, hide the Lord your God, I'm a jealous God.

So I say, there's a difference between God commanding the Jews in the temple to produce images that represent the heavenly realm that God has commanded, the difference between that and don't make for yourself an idol that you bow down. And I say, now think about this, what is it that the icons and the statues of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church, what are they made of? I mean, what are they made of?

I don't mean of marble or granite, I mean, what are they made of? What's their images? People. They make images of people, of Mary, Joseph, of varying saints, and then they bow down before them. Now, what are they doing? They're bowing down before the creatures, made in their own image.

Now, think about this. Because Mary is human, and she's an incredibly blessed woman. She was able to bear the Messiah. She's blessed. I hope I'm privileged with being able to meet her in heaven. I hope I'm privileged with that, not degrading her or denigrating her in any way. She's an incredibly blessed woman.

All right. But she's human. Joseph, human. And you'll find icons and statues of humans that the RC and EO will bow down before. Why is it God says don't make any likeness of what is in heaven above or earth beneath or in the water underneath? Don't do it, because he doesn't want you to commit idolatry. In fact, I was discussing something with an Eastern Orthodox guy, and he says, he asked me a question. He says, when you pray to Jesus or God, do you have an image in your mind that says no image at all? He says, what? How could you not have an image? It was just, I said, there's none. I just pray to him.

It was interesting. They can't even worship without images. So much heresy. So little time. We're out of time. May the Lord bless you by his grace. We're back on air tomorrow. We'll talk to you then. Have a great evening, everyone. God bless you. Another program powered by the Truth Network.