Matt Slick Live

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. It's Matt Slick live. Matt is the founder and president of the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry found online at karm.org. When you have questions about Bible doctrines, turn to Matt Slick live.

For answers, taking your calls and responding to your questions at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. Everybody, welcome to the show. It's me, Matt Slick. If you're listening to Matt Slick live, hope you're all having a good day. I'm having a good day, more or less. I wrote an article and released an article today.

I'll be talking about it a little bit. I use logic a lot when I try and write and bring things out and stuff like that. I had a discussion recently with a guy who said that Jesus is the image of God. He's the image of God. Therefore, I worship an image.

Since I worship an image, then I shouldn't complain that they have images in their churches. I got a kick out of that argument because he was pretty bad. This guy was serious. I said, really? Okay.

I thought I'd write up an article and I got it going there. There's problems with that logic. One is the fallacy of category error, dealing with ontology. What that means is Jesus' image is equal to God. When you have an image of Mary, the image is not equal to Mary. The image of God in Christ is God, so the image is equal. There's a category of equality versus a category of representation. Then there's a fallacy of equivocation, where the word image changes meaning.

That's another problem, which I went over a little bit already. Then there's a fallacy of failing to distinguish between the work of God and the work of man, where the work of God is the incarnation. The work of man is making your own idol. Actually, this is 20 verse 4, you shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness in heaven, bow down, et cetera. The idolaters love to promote their idolatry and justify it so that they can hopefully find a way to continue in their blasphemous idolatrous practice of praying to saints and praying to Mary and seeking Mary's help.

It's just idolatry. I'll tell you when I do that in varying discussion rooms, I'll tell you, man, they do not like it. They do not like it that I call them out on the carpet about their idolatry because they just say that I'm not understanding what the truth is.

I go, well, let's talk about it. Then when we talk about it, they don't want to talk about it very much. They get upset.

In fact, one guy was so upset with what I was saying, I mean, he was so upset with what I was saying, that he started cussing and becoming foul, brought up my family. This is really bad. It was bad.

It was just horrible. This kind of thing happens when you are dealing with people who are idolaters. You tip over an idol. You tip over one of their idols, and man, I'll tell you, they get real uppity.

It's pretty obvious that that was the case. Hey, there you go. I'm just rambling a little bit, talking about stuff. If you want to give me a call, the number is 877-207-2276.

Some of you can see me playing with a camera, trying to get it to be centered. It's a little bit odd today, and it'll work out a little bit more. All right, let's get to Jermaine from California. Jermaine, welcome, buddy.

You're on the air. Hey, Matt. Yeah, so today I had a question about how a lot of churches perform their services today, and this isn't a blanket statement, but I've seen a lot of the, I don't know if you call them seeker-friendly, or some of the newer churches where there's an extreme focus on home groups and these small communities, which is fine, but I just don't see a lot of focus on actual theology and Bible training, and it just kind of made me wonder is a lot of what we see as church today, are we kind of doing it wrong? Like, is church meant to be a little bit more modeled after what we see in the New Testament? Well, I think you're onto something there. For the most part, what I understand is churches are trying to equip their Christians, but I get the impression, it's just me, my subjective experience here, is that a lot of what they're doing is babysitting and not really equipping, and so I have a problem with that.

Maybe that's what you're seeing, too. You go to these Bible studies, and I can't go to Bible studies because I always mess them up, and people find out that I know stuff, and then they start asking me about all this stuff, and I'm not there to do that. I'm there to learn and not undermine the Bible study leader or anything like that. And then I'll teach things that they're not really, if they do ask me questions, they're going to ask me questions that they may not like the answers to, and I give them the Scriptures, and they cause those problems.

So that's just a personal thing. But the Bible studies I have gone to, for the most part, they're okay. They teach, but not very deep, in my opinion. So I think there's room for improvement, but a lot of churches do good stuff, too, I would say. Yeah, and a church I used to go to many years ago, very nice people, and they do have a heart for God.

There didn't seem to be a lot of action. The only training that some people, God, seem to be outside of the church at a seminary or a Bible college, but doesn't the church have a place in that as far as teaching, like verse by verse and going deep, and ministries like yours, where you're serving every day. That's all. I just was kind of curious, because I know I go to a good Bible teaching church, but a lot of churches, I would say, around me are kind of lacking, and it's almost like a formula, where you just kind of go sit and hear a message, and hear some music, and go home, and I don't see a whole lot of growth, and I'm not trying to judge anybody. That's what I see as a whole.

Yep. You know, I'm reminded of Calvary Chapel, Big Calvary, they used to call it, where Chuck Smith was the pastor, and I attended there for a few years. What they would do on Sunday was generic preach the gospel, and I'm not knocking that at all. It was fine, it was good teaching. He actually made the comment once that if you want to get into deeper stuff, go to the studies, because they would teach deeper stuff in those studies, like for an hour long on one topic, in Bible studies, and I thought that was great.

That was a good model. They were doing that, but you know what, I just reminded myself of something at that very church when I went to Christ College Irvine, and that's in Orange County, and Santa Ana just borders Irvine. I was living on campus, and I was taking a class on social studies. My major in college was social science, and so I had a theory, a theological theory, and I proposed some stuff, and it turned out that all the evidence invalidated my theory. My theory was wrong, and it was fine.

I got an A in the class because I did good research and learned. But the point I'm bringing this up for is in that research, I needed to have questions answered by Christians relating to doctrine, evangelism, and varying things of equipping, and so I went to Calvary Chaplain. I went to the very church where Chuck Smith was pastor, and I'm not knocking them.

Chuck was a great guy, and I got permission to pass out the information at the church, and then I gave the results back a couple weeks later, and it turned out that 80% of the people in our Bible study, over 200 people, 80% were functioning Roman Catholics in their doctrine of salvation. Long story short, it was really traumatizing. When I told the Bible study leader that, he was shocked, and I never forgot this because it told me that when you teach, you have to repeatedly make statements in your teaching where doctrine is inserted into your studies.

It has to be done all the time. That's how they learn, by inculcation, repetitious teaching, and they weren't doing that. So that was just one experience I've had. I've had some other experiences similar I could tell you about, but there you go. I'm rambling a lot. No, that actually was my experience as well. A lot of people I knew with good hearts, and I used to be one of them, so I'm not trying to place myself above them, but until I got really hungry and serious, I found that I didn't really question a lot of what I was being told, and when I did, it kind of reframed everything for me, and a lot of people are functioning other religions, I guess, as you could say, because with that weakness in doctrine, you start to hear comments like, well, you know, Buddha's not so bad, and hey, maybe Mormons and Catholics are just like us, and it's a lack of integrity in doctrine that allowed a lot of that in. I would never say any of that right now. Right.

Yeah, it could be bad. Here's an example of another study. I went and taught a midweek study at a church. They asked me to, a Baptist church, asked me to go in and teach on theology and cults and things like this, kind of interrelate them, and I said, yeah, fine. They said, you could do it for four weeks. I said, sure, fine.

So I was doing that, and I don't know, second week or third week I was there, whatever. I mentioned predestination, and the reason I mentioned it was because all cults deny God's election predestination. And so one of the things you can do is bring up how God predestines people, and here's a verse. Well, long story short, I ended up walking out of the church because they were so upset with me for teaching this that the people were yelling at me, interrupting me. I literally closed my briefcase and said, I am out of here.

It was that bad. And then the elders of the church called me up a couple days later when they heard what happened, and they apologized. They said, it's in the Bible, what you're taught.

We're just teaching a technique. And I said, yeah. And they begged me to come back one more week, and I said, okay, I'll give it a shot. Same thing happened. I ended up walking out for 20 minutes.

It was bad. And this is, these experiences I've seen, people often in churches get addicted to manby-pamby theology. That's man-centered. And this is a problem in the Christian church. I'm not saying all the churches do that. A lot of good churches teach a lot of good stuff.

There really are a lot of good people out there, but unfortunately we have a lot of bad ones too. And there you go. All right. Well, thank you very much, Matt.

I just hopped on. I meant to ask, did you speak on the death of the pope yet? Yeah, I mentioned it yesterday. Um, I believe he's in hell. Um, because, uh, if he, uh, if he, uh, uh, affirmed official Roman Catholic theology regarding the gospel, then there's no hope for him because Roman Catholic gospel is a false gospel. And so, uh, I just don't affirm that he's in heaven. I'm sorry, but that's just my position according to what I've seen in scripture. You know, that's bad.

Yep. All right. Well, thank you, Matt. Appreciate it as usual. And Lord willing, I'll talk with you again. All right, brother. Always glad to hear from you, man. God bless.

All right. Well, that was Jermaine from People's Republic of California. Let's get to Jim from Virginia. Jim, welcome here on the air. Uh, hello.

I'm calling about the priesthood of Christ because you've mentioned that he's maybe sprinkled and I'm saying you turned to Matthew chapter three, where it says the John was down at the Jordan baptizing and Jesus came to him and remembered, read scripture said he went up from that, from the Jordan. Can you hold on? We got a break.

Can you hold up? And we'll talk about that. Okay. We'll talk about it then. And, um, we'll see, maybe you'll agree.

Disagree. So hold on, man. Hold on. Hold on.

We've got a break. Hold on. Okay. So, Hey folks, we'll be right back after these messages and hopefully this will be an interesting conversation. So please stay tuned. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the show. We might get into some interesting stuff here.

I'm going to shake a lot of people up, but, uh, let's go see what happens. Hey, Jim, uh, you're still there? Yes. All right.

All right. So you were talking about, um, baptism in the Jordan, right? I'm talking about when John was baptizing and Jesus came to him, our Lord came to him and remember John down at the Jordan and, um, well, and after he was baptized, he went up from the Jordan, the Jordan is Jordan river. But, um, more than that, I'm giving you a thought because I know you studied and things, but our Lord Jesus priesthood wasn't from the Leviticus line. He was from the tribe of Judah. Right. He was from the tribe of Judah. And after the Catholic day, you know, that's the priesthood.

And even Samuel wasn't from the Levitical line. Well, hold on. Look, you're jumping all over the place now. So, um, what I'm trying to say is that it's a different, he, of course we know that Lord Jesus is the Lord and King, King of all glory. Well, okay. Wait, what's your, what's your question?

What's your question? My thing is, is that he didn't, when you say it, uh, the Leviticus priest had to be sprinkler. I'm saying that he's not. Oh, okay. Okay.

So he had to fulfill all righteousness. So that means, can you hold on a sec? Can you hold on? Let me finish my sentences. All right. That would be helpful. All right.

So when he says fulfill all righteousness, what is he referring to that needs to be fulfilled? All right there. Hello.

I'm waiting for you. Okay. I asked you. So if he says is to fulfill all righteousness, what was it Jesus had to fulfill?

Okay. Well, when, when John, the Baptist said that he needed him to be baptized instead of him, although the Lord Jesus had no sin, he wanted to be baptized. It's in the lack of, for all that he was, he's taken the place of answering that question.

What was it? Jesus was fulfilling. Fulfill all righteousness is a part of him, uh, doing like he became, uh, took on the form of man, made an election. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

This is in the context of being baptized, not the incarnation. What I'm talking about. Hold on. Righteousness.

Hold on. You have to look at what the context is. Jesus is getting baptized by John and John tried to prevent him saying, I need to be baptized by you. When you come to me, Jesus answered, permitted it this time for in this way it is, it is fitting for us. That includes John to fulfill all righteousness. So what was Jesus fulfilling? Well, I'm going to let you, you tell me what he was doing on that job. I'm not, I'm talking about, it's a different priesthood. He's not under the priesthood. Okay. Well, hold on, hold on. You're not answering the question.

What was it he trying to fulfill? Do you know? No, I'm going to let you answer that question. All right. Okay. Okay. So, okay. So you said you don't know.

All right. So the Levitical priesthood is a type of the true priesthood of Christ. The priesthood requirements for anyone to go into the priesthood had to be 30 years of age. Jesus was 30 and anointing. That's a Holy spirit came upon Jesus. Jesus was anointed.

Had to be, have a verbal blessing given my beloved son, whom I'm all pleased. And according to Leviticus eight, seven had to be sprinkled with water. Now, if you want to say, if you want to say, as I was going to tell you that it's not the political priesthood that's applicable, then go find me in the old Testament, the things he fulfilled at his baptism, go find him, go look at the verses, look at the scriptures, go find them.

Okay. Go look, see what you can find in the old Testament that Jesus did. If you want to deny that it's the priesthood of Leviticus, I understand he's not a Levite priesthood, but I'm trying to tell you that the priesthood typology of the old Testament is fulfilled in the new Testament.

It's pointing to the true priesthood. He had to fulfill requirements. He wasn't doing anything other than that. So you had to find that in scripture. Okay. You can find it. Anything else he did? Okay.

Can you do that? Well, I'll probably do that, but I wanted to make a point that, uh, you know, like you were saying about these, uh, supposedly, uh, popes and everything, they're nothing but enemies of the cross. I agree. The Pope is.

Yes. I agree. The whole system, you know, that's the part of our problem with the Supreme Court justice. As you notice, most of them, where'd you get into the Supreme Court justice all of a sudden with the Pope? And then we're talking about baptism.

I'm just saying most of them are Roman Catholic. Okay. What's this got to do? Are we switching topics now? No, no. You gave me something to look up, to get back with you on.

So I said, okay, I'm going to do that. But I would mention that what you said about that, that, you know, it's that I'm trying to say the situation that we are in and, uh, with the Roman Catholic thing. Well, the Roman Catholic church is a false church. It does not preach the church.

It doesn't. You had this, uh, fell on, he's a Roman and I thought you should have told him, he went on and on. But the Bible plainly says called no man's father. And it says there's only one year between, uh, God and me. And that's the man Christ Jesus.

He's the day's man. And, and, uh, when you, when you started out with, well, go ahead. I'm trying to make it, thanks for letting me talk in my show. I appreciate that. Um, so yeah, I know about all of this. Okay. And sometimes I think it's appropriate to bring it up and sometimes I don't think it's appropriate to bring certain things up when Catholics call up a lot of times when Catholics call up, but like atheists and others, I'd like to have a dialogue with them. And what I often do is turn the temperature down. I don't want to hammer off.

I want them to stay on longer because I want people to see and to hear, so to speak, what the errors are within the Catholic system. Okay. I'm not a person with you, man. I really love you. I really love your personnel and everything. I'm just trying to, you know, I listen to you all the time. I say, man, I appreciate you. I can give you an example of when you, when you talked about, you know, when, when Jesus came and when Nicodemus came to Jesus at night and he says that, you know, that we know that you're from God, no man do these miracles.

I'll do. And the Lord looked at straight as heart and said, you must be born again. And he said, I couldn't be born. And he said, Oh, can you mother sometime be born? He said, that's the born of the first person that was born spirits proceed.

It's like you said, send us context. That first birth is like, we're in a water truck and the motherfool at birth. And I said, this is the burden. And he's related to the spirit and you have to be blown for it. There's a spiritual birth.

You know, at our office, when you have a broken heart and contrary spirit that the spirit sees you in the God's family, the spirit is always, Yeah. I understand that. You haven't, do you have another question though? Oh, we've got a break. All right. Okay. All right. All right, brother. Well, God bless.

Keep listening though. Okay. All right. All right. Okay. Hey folks.

So we don't have anybody waiting. If you want to give me a call, the number is 877-207-2276. We'll be right back. It's Matt Slick live taking your calls at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. Welcome back to the show. Hope you're having a good time and listening. And if you are interested in giving me a call, the number is 877-207-2276. Let's get on with Chad from Charlotte, North Carolina.

Chad, welcome. You're on the air. Hey Matt, how are you doing? Doing all right, man. Hanging in there.

What do you got buddy? Yeah. So just following up on this today that Catholics actually believe that Mary was also conceived without original sin and never even knew that was a thing, but just want to know kind of what your counter to that argument was. I mean, I know that the Bible says no man is perfect and no one's without sin. But then a lot of times they'll counter with apparently, well, Jesus was an exception, so Mary is too. So what would be your counter to that? That's just a stupid argument.

Yeah. I just say, show me that in the scriptures, because they can't. It's not there.

It's made up. You just ask them. Always ask Catholics to demonstrate their doctrines and their beliefs from God's word. What they'll generally do is avoid the word of God, generally. And they want to go to church fathers. Yeah, and I know they'll... Go ahead.

Yeah, I'm sorry. I know they'll point to like Luke 1 23 where it says Mary was full of grace and they'll say that that's the proof. Well, actually, it doesn't say that. She's the highly favored one. So it's called karethon in the Greek, not platos karethos.

So she is the highly favored one. And that's what's going on. So it doesn't say full of grace. In fact, the phrase full of grace occurs in the Bible. And it's in reference to Jesus when it's spoken about in John 1 14, that the word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. And then it's also spoken of in Acts 6 8, Stephen, full of grace and power. So the term full of grace is not in reference.

It doesn't mean that you can't sin or haven't been sinned. So what they do in their error is... Let me see. Get the... Full of grace. Get my notes. What they'll do is...

Put it this way. Because of their idolatrous nature, because they worship creatures and things like that, even though they say they don't, but they do. They practice it in their adoration and their practice and positioning and prayers too and a whole bit. What I believe is that the cult of Mary developed out of the paganism that was around the Roman Empire of varying female goddesses. And so the Catholics just incorporated the idea of Mary as an extension of the female goddess idea without her being a goddess.

And so they gradually started adding more doctrines to her that she was the mother of God, Theotokos, that she had perpetual virginity, which the Bible doesn't teach, and her macho conception that she was born without sin. So what I do is I say, show me that in scripture. They can't. They go to the verse about full of grace, you know, a highly favored one.

They can't. It's just not there. So, you know, there you go.

And that's Luke 1 28 that you're talking about. Greetings favored to one. Okay. Well, thank you very much, man. I appreciate it. Sure, man. No problem.

God bless. All right. All right. You too. Okay. All right.

Let's see. Let's get to Linda from Raleigh, North Carolina again from Raleigh. We write welcome. You're on the air. Hi, Matt.

Appreciate you and all you do. I only have one question. If a Christian does not believe in predestination, does that mean that that Christian is going to hell? No. Not at all. No.

Okay. Predestination is just something that, yeah, predestination is taught in scripture. A lot of people will deny predestination because they have varying reasons.

They're bad ones. But that's not a doctrine that you have to affirm in order to be a Christian. The doctors that you do have to affirm or can't deny, I should say, openly, knowledgeably deny. Here's the deity of Christ and one God and the gospel and his resurrection, things like that. So predestination is taught in scripture Ephesians 1 4 and 5, you know, Acts 4, 27, 28, Romans 8, 29, 30.

It's taught, but it's not required to believe it in order to be a true Christian. Yes, sir. Okay. Well, again, thank you for all you do and I will free up the line for someone else. Well, appreciate it and God bless.

Thanks for asking. Okay. Bye-bye. Okay. Bye. All right. We have a caller coming in on the break.

No, you've got to break about five minutes. If you want to give me a call, the number is 877-207-2276. Also, you can email me.

That's easy to do. Just send an email to info at karm.org, info at C-A-R-M dot O-R-G, and for the subject line, radio comment or radio question, something like that. We can get to them.

Usually do them on kind of Thursdays and Fridays and sometimes during the week when it gets slow. We do have a caller coming in, I think. I'm not sure if that's working or not, but no big deal.

So the issue of baptism, well, no, there it is. There it is right there. So let's get going with Gil from New York. Gil, welcome. You're on the air. I spoke to you before. How are you? Good evening.

I'm also blind too, so bear with me. In John 5 24, it says, most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in me that sent me has everlasting life and shall not come into judgment, but has crossed over from death to life. In light of that, when it speaks about judgment in, I think it's in Corinthians chapter 5 verse 10, 2 Corinthians, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. How does that contrast with John 5 24?

And also if you could explain what the true gospel is so that people will hear it. Sure. As opposed to what the Greeks believe, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. We're going to be judged by our works and for our rights, but not for salvation. And so what Jesus is teaching in John 5 24, you believes in him had eternal life does not come into judgment. So Jesus is saying, if you have eternal life, you won't be, you won't lose it. You don't come into judgment and he's passed out of death into life. Let's talk about believing and trusting in Jesus, but you know, we're all going to stand before the judgment seat.

That means that we're going to face him with what we've done. Not the white throne judgment. Yeah.

Not the white throne. No, we pass out of judgment. There is no condemnation.

Let's see if it's Romans 8.1. Yes. There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So that's that.

Right. So what we're talking about here in a sense is the difference between justification and sanctification. Justification is a legal declaration of righteousness and sanctification is a process we go through to be more like Christ. What the Catholics do is confuse justification and sanctification and they bleed them together so that you have to do good works in order to be saved.

And hence, for example, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2068, it says that you attain salvation through faith, baptism and the observance of the commandments. So it preaches a false gospel. Okay.

I can't tell you what the true gospel is. Yeah. Right.

Can you do that? Because I know in Ephesians 2 8 and 9 it says, for by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works as anyone should boast. And by the way, I do believe in predestination all the way.

Okay. You can't be halfway. You got to be all the way when it comes to predestination, you know. Well, yeah, you know, some people have faulty ideas what predestination is. Like God looks into the future to see what we'll do and then he picks us based on unforeseen knowledge. And that's a false doctrine.

That's just not true. It doesn't mean they're damned if they believe it's just not correct. And people who deny predestination often have a faulty understanding of what that means. And they assume what's called libertarian free will and that therefore predestination and libertarian free will don't go together. And then they forget that there's something else called compatibilist free will. And so they make mistakes and they're not... haven't examined the issue sufficiently.

They're just basic stuff. It doesn't mean they're not Christians or anything. Yeah. Well, Romans 8 29 says to those Hebrew predestined, he also called, right?

And those he called, he also justified. You know, and predestination is taught in Ephesians 1 3 and 1 11 and many other places, you know, in the Bible. Right.

That's absolutely correct. And what I like about John, excuse me, Romans 8 28 29, a lot of people don't see it. It says those who before knew, he also predestinated.

The foreknown ones, the foreknown ones are also the predestined ones. They're the same group. A lot of people don't know that. Yeah. Can you just explain the true gospel to me so I don't get confused and whatever, because God is not the author of confusion, but a God of peace.

I think Paul says in first Corinthians 14. Yeah. Well, yeah.

So other people can hear it too. Sure. Right now the breaks coming up. So hold on. We'll get to the break and then after that I'll get the gospel. Okay.

Which is a great honor. That'll be great. Thank you. All right. Hey folks, we'll be right back after these messages.

Please stay tuned. All right, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Thanks for listening. We're the last segment of the hour.

Let's get back on with Gil. Are you still there? Yes. Absolutely. Thank you. All right.

So let me get the gospel. I love doing that too, actually. I've been doing it a lot. Yeah, I know.

Doing it a lot online. I enjoy it. The best thing. So the gospel is the good news. The Greek word for gospel, it's ewingeliat, means the good news.

What is the good news? The good news is that Jesus Christ, who's God in flesh, fulfilled the law perfectly. He never sinned.

He never did anything wrong. 1 Peter 2.22. And then he went to the cross.

They murdered him. And on that cross he bore our sins. 1 Peter 2.24.

And then three days later he rose from the dead. So the gospel is a death, burial and resurrection of Jesus for our sins. 1 Corinthians 15, 1 through 5. And so what we need to do is trust in what Jesus did. The gospel is that we don't have to keep the law. The gospel is we don't have to do good to be saved. We don't have to keep the law to be saved. We trust in Christ to be saved.

He did everything necessary. It's the good news because we can't keep our salvation by our goodness or earn or regain our salvation by our goodness. We can completely trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. And the good news is that he did everything necessary, died on the cross, rose from the dead. If we believe and trust in him alone, then we can be with him forever. Amen.

That's the good news. Yeah, and the Catholics try to say, for example, that, you know, we are, as believers, born again Protestants, they say that when it comes to, like, the whole thing of salvation and all of that, they feel that we don't have to do any good works. And I point out to them is Ephesians 2.10, for we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. So they try to say that we don't believe in doing good works, but Philippians 1.6 says, he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Well, when they tell me that we don't believe in doing good works, I say, that's not true. Of course you believe in doing good works. That's my point, yeah. I just tell them that the good works don't contribute to our salvation.

That's all. And what they often forget is regeneration comes along with belief, that God causes us to be born again, 1 Peter 1.3, and so therefore we're justified by faith, and that faith alone in Christ alone, by what he did. And then he lives in us, John 14.23, makes us new creatures, 2 Corinthians 5.17, and so we go do good works, and we do a lot of good works. And sometimes, you know, I've had this discussion with people on Discord and PalTalk and PayPal, and, anyway, so I have this discussion, and I'll say, look, I do a lot of good works. And they say, well, you know, your good works, there are not that many.

I said, well, wait a minute. I did nine years of prison ministry, 22 years of radio, I've written 4,600 articles on CARM, door-to-door ministry, swap ministry, go to the beach evangelizing. You know, I say, I'm not boasting. I'm saying, I've had a lot of good works.

I don't look to any of those for salvation or contributing to my salvation. And that's what I tell people. Yeah. That's important, yeah, because, you know, that's why I mentioned Philippians 1.6, he who began, it's all about him, he who began a good work in us will bring it to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Justification means just as if we have never sinned, right?

Yeah, it's like that. Just as we, yeah, it's a nice little way of saying it, but more accurately, it's being made in a right relationship, position with God, but it involves the issue of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us by faith. The accrediting of righteousness, right, to impute. Very important.

Yes, it is. And so, Philippians 3.9 is an important verse because it says, we may be found, let me read it a little bit before. Okay. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ. Jesus, Christ Jesus says, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and I count them, but rubbish, and the word rubbish in Greek is skubalon, and what it means is basically refuse that which is thrown to the dogs. Okay? So, it kind of is rubbish so that I may gain Christ and may be found in him not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, a righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith.

Philippians 3.9 is a killer verse. Oh, man. Yeah. Yes.

Thank you very much. Yeah. I just want to make sure because that, you know, when judgment day comes, I just hope that, you know, that when Catholics say that, you know, we have seven books and extra books, and the church fathers believed in that stuff, and I just don't want to, you know, I fear of that, you know, like, what if I'm wrong or something like that? Yeah.

No, no, no. God has not given us a spirit of fear. 2 Timothy 1.7. Yeah.

When the Catholics talk about the church fathers believed this or believed that, don't believe them, because they used to tell me that until I started doing my homework and started checking, and I found that the church fathers often disagree with each other a lot. Yeah, I was going to say that. Yeah. Contradiction. Yep.

In lots of areas. So don't let them, just don't let them snow you with that. Okay. Yeah. Got it.

Thank you. Good. All right. Well, good. Okay. Yes.

It's been a pleasure and a treasure. No, I just want to be sure. It just scares me a little bit sometimes, you know, because I'm not as quick in the word. You know, when I mention this stuff about the seven books, you know, that they feel that it promotes purgatory, I think in 2 Maccabees chapter 12 verse 45 and 46 and all of that stuff, and they try to say that 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verses 11 to 15 talks about the works, you know, and the fire and all of that stuff coming through the fire. They believe that has to do with purgatory, you know what I'm talking about? You know, escaping through the flames and all that.

Yes, but we need to look at this, what it is. It says, the context. Now the one, verse 12. On verse 12, now if any man builds on the foundation of gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man's work will become evident for the day will show it because it is revealed with fire. And the fire itself will test the quality of this man's work. Now he's using fire as a metaphor. A foundation with gold, silver, precious stones. We don't build on gold, silver, and precious stones, we build on Jesus. That's the foundation that he's talking about in verse 11.

So he's using metaphor symbols and things. Each person's work will become evident the day will show it because it will be revealed with fire. What, literally fire? Is there going to be on a judgment day a fire over there and in my works are thrown into the fire?

Of course not. It's a metaphor for the crucible of God's judgment of looking at you and looking at what you're doing. It says the fire itself will test the quality of this man's work. The reason he's talking about fire is because that's how they purified gold and silver.

And wood, hay, straw would be burned up by fire, but gold and silver are purified by it when the dross is removed. That's why he says, if any man's work which has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. It doesn't say salvation, it says reward. If any man's work is burned up, he'll suffer loss, but himself will be saved, yet it's through fire. It's a metaphor that he's using where the word fire, in the last sense, is saved through fire, the judgment's to come. But the fire of purity and purification of our works, not for salvation. So do not fall. They mentioned Revelation 21 and 27, nothing impure, nothing that defiles will be able to enter there.

And they use that verse that I mentioned and the other one that I just mentioned now to justify purgatory. Let's look at it then. Let's look at it.

Okay, so always context. In verse 24 of Revelation 21, the nations will walk by its light. No sun, no moon can be illumined by the lamp that is the lamb.

This is figurative language here. The nations will walk by its light. The kings of earth will bring glory unto it. In the daytime, its gates will never be closed and there being the glory and the honor of the nations into it and nothing unclean and no one who practices abomination and lying shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the book of life. So he's saying the ones who don't go in are the ones who are practicing evil things. It doesn't say that you get in by practicing good things. It says your names are written in the lamb's book of life. So always look at what's saying. Look at the context. Don't trust the Catholics what they tell you. So I learned that years ago.

Yeah, don't trust them. Yeah, they mention about this whole thing about these extra books were around before the Protestant church, before the 1500s and all of that stuff. So let me jump on that really fast because I only have a couple minutes left. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.

No problem. So the apocryphal books were written after Malachi and before the time of Christ. Four hundred years? Yes, a period of time.

Intertestamental period. Now the Jews rejected the apocryphal books as being inspired. The Jews did not consider those books inspired. Romans 3, 2. First of all, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. So Paul the apostle is saying the Jews were the ones entrusted with those oracles, those proclamation statements and truths of God. They did not recognize the apocryphal.

They did not. Now when the Catholics, they like to say, Eastern Orthodox do it too. They'll say our church gave you the Bible. It's a load of crud. They say did they give us the Old Testament?

Of course not. God gave the Old Testament to the Jews. The Jews weren't Catholics and they weren't Eastern Orthodox.

So who did he give it to? The Jews, who were entrusted with the oracles of God. And then what they'll do, the EONRC, is they'll say our church includes them, therefore the Jews are part of our organization and therefore we gave you the Bible.

So we can tell you what it really is. The arrogance of them is profound. So this is one of the things that they'll do because they want to promote their false doctrines found in the apocryphal books. Yeah, I got saved in 1992 and I didn't know how to read well until I got into the Bible and I was through, I had suffered from ringing in ears. Tonight there is no cure for that. As Psalm 119 verse 71, it was good to me that I was afflicted, that I might learn new decreeds. If it wasn't for that I would have never come to Christ. I just wasn't interested in the Bible. So it's almost like a miracle that God opened my eyes to the truth, you know. Well, it is a miracle. He did open your eyes to the truth because it says he opened the heart of Lydia to believe the things spoken about Paul, Acts 16, 14.

And also in Luke 24, 45 he opened the minds of the apostles to believe the things of God. I remember that, yeah. And I said before you met, I got tinnitus to, mine's 80 decibels. Oh, I didn't know that. Wow. Oh yeah.

Wow. But it's harder when you're blind when you have it. It's much harder, easier if you could see, you know what I mean? Yeah, I have hearing aids and it helps. It helps mask it a little bit, but yes it does.

I have the top of the line, the most expensive ones I could get. Yeah. Oh, interesting.

And because mine's so bad. But at any rate, it's not, you know, I'd rather, well I'm sorry that you're blind and stuff, but you seem to be studying God's word and learning. So praise God.

Praise God. Thank you. I'll call again. Okay. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure and a treasure.

Okay. Thanks man. God bless.

Hey folks, there's the music right of time. May the Lord bless you by his grace. We'll be back on the air tomorrow on Wednesday and uh, cause today's date is April 22nd. I should do that at the beginning of the show, but that's what it is. Hey folks, hope you have a great evening. God bless. We'll talk about it. Another program powered by the truth network.