 Welcome back to Mark Christians. Anytime we talk about the differences between Catholics and Protestants and whether Catholics actually are Christians, you're always going to get a real lively and interesting debate. So let me say this in the beginning. Catholicism is not Christianity. Devout Christians cannot be Catholics, nor can devout Catholics be Christians. But notice how I phrase that. Catholics can be Christian. I'll get to that why I say it just like I said it a little later on. Now I'm not going to be able to cover all of the differences between Protestants and Catholics. Won't do that. There are many things that we can cover and things that I disagree with that are just unbiblical. For example, the veneration of Mary in the Catholic Church that she's some sort of sinless, a perpetual version, not true at all. Or the sacraments that are observed by the Catholic Church for the most part unbiblical. You all know what I think about the Pope. Whether it be this Pope or in the popes in the past, the whole papal system I think is just ungodly and unbiblical. And then praying to dead saints. Absolutely unbiblical. What I really want to talk about and why I say that Christians cannot be Catholics, nor are devout Catholics Christian is this. When you look at how the Catholic Church and how devout Catholics how they view salvation, how they view justification, there can be no other way but to look at it as ungodly, unbiblical. It just doesn't line up with scripture at all. And part of the problem that you're going to have with a lot of Catholics, and let's just be clear, most Catholics aren't practicing Catholics. Most professed Catholics aren't practicing Catholics, just like most professed Christians, most professed Protestants aren't practicing either. And so you're going to have a lot of people that may be in the Church who either may be new, who don't quite get it, who understand that Jesus Christ is the way to salvation, but have not put in the time and the work and the effort into reading it. In the Catholic Church, you're going to have a lot of people that are going to sit back and rely on what their priest tells them, or what someone else tells them. Again, that happens a lot in the Protestant churches, and so that probably is the biggest issue that both camps need to fix. Because if either of us do that more, whether we call ourselves Catholic, whether we call ourselves Protestant, you'll find a healthier understanding of the Scriptures, which will lead to a healthier and more intimate relationship with Christ. So, if a person is more devout of a Catholic than the others, they're going to understand what the Catholic system is all about and how they understand salvation, and it would necessarily mean that they don't accept the biblical teaching of salvation and justification. A devout Christian would also understand what the biblical definition and understanding of justification and salvation is, and they would reject what the Catholic Church teaches. So let's get into it. You need to understand how the church views justification and salvation. It comes from one, the Council of Trent, in the 16th century, this Council that comes together and talks about and kind of gives and lays, I don't want to find the groundwork for how the Catholic Church operates because obviously the Catholic Church was around before then, but it shows us how they view and how they're going to view going forward salvation and what they say. So listen to this Bishop speak. Do we need a higher power to save us? Yes, and here Trent is clearly nodding toward Luther, approvingly. We can't save ourselves. We're not really made righteous by grace. We are declared righteous. God imputes, as it were, righteousness to us. See, Trent balks at that. The Catholic Church has always balked at that because we hold to a real transformation that, yes, we are compromised dramatically by sin. Yes, we need a savior. Can't save ourselves. But that grace now, having invaded our lives, can be cooperated with. That's why Trent talks about justification, which happens through faith and grace alone, quite right. You can't do it on your own. But then it speaks of an increase in justification, which can happen through our cooperation. So the Catholic Church, and it's no big secret, they believe that one salvation is through faith alone. But look how he said, he said faith alone plus these extra works. Well, I'm sorry, but just paying attention to what you're saying, that can't mean faith alone if you're adding something to it. That just means you need to take the word alone out of your statement. And so when you say that, you need to believe and to have these extra works that are mirrored. And we're going to see how that affects another issue that is just completely unbiblical. But to say that, it just goes counter towards scriptures. What's interesting, what should be thought about almost immediately, is that if there's something else that is needed to kind of merit salvation along with your faith, who's the person, who's the entity that determines these works if they do merit salvation, if they do merit entrance into heaven? Well, obviously it's going to be the Catholic Church through a priest and ultimately through how the papal sees it. And so the church being the mediator between man and God, clearly, clearly it is the antithesis, the opposite of what the church is about. That's the whole point of the veil being torn on Christ's crucifixion so that there's no more need of a mediator between man and God. Jesus Christ is now the ultimate mediator who lives in us. And so what makes this ungodly and really satanic is that you eliminate Christ from being the mediator from the purpose that he came for, you eliminate him and in place you put some man who was suckered by the Catholic Church and his organization. In the Council of Trent you have these different sessions and these cans that go along with it and I'm not going to bore you with reading all of them, but a couple of them I do want to read just so you can kind of get an idea of how they see things. Listen to what was said in Session 6 Canon 9. If anyone says that by faith alone the empires is justified in such a way as to mean that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to the obtaining of grace or justification and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will, let him be anathema. In other words, let him be accursed. Let me break that down for you what they're saying. If anyone were to say that faith alone justifies a man, let him be accursed. Let him be damned another way of putting it. They're not menacing words when they say this and though you might hear this Catholic priest or this bishop say it in a kind of a gentle, cordial, professional sounding way, make no mistake about it. There is nothing gentle about what they're saying. If you believe that your faith alone is required, then they're saying you be damned, you be accursed, you be anathema, that's what the word means. But doesn't that go counter to scripture? Romans 4-3 Abraham believed God and it was a credit to him as righteousness. It was his faith that his faith alone that he was a credit to righteousness. It was his faith alone whereby he was accredited with being righteous. Renate. Old Testament, but what about the New Testament? Now that was written in Romans and so obviously the same holds true. If you trust in Christ, if you put your faith in Christ, the person that believes that person shall be saved. What does John 647 say? That when you believe at the moment you believe, you have everlasting life. The word for believe is the same word for trust, which is the same word for faith. The Greek word pissed us and so the person that is believing in the pistol wound, the believing ones, he has faith, he has eternal life at that moment. But not according to the Catholic Church, not according to the Council of Trent, and listen to Canon 12. If anyone shall say that justifying faith is nothing else than confidence in the divine mercy, pardoning sins for Christ's sakes, or that it is the confidence alone by which we are justified, let him be a curse. So if anyone has any confidence in their faith, if anyone has any confidence in what Christ has done, and that be the reason for your salvation, let that person be damned a curse or anathema. John 1-12, but as many as have received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name. So having this trust, this faith, this confidence, as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, that doesn't matter, doesn't mean anything. You need to, and what they're saying is, kind of in a business sense, you need to go through them to become saved. Because now they would tell Protestants oftentimes that being a Protestant kind of invalidates you from being saved from being a Christian. The funny thing is though, how they look at non-Protestants, how they look at atheists or even Muslims or anyone else. Listen to what he says. The Catholic view, go back to the Second Vatican Council, says it very clearly. I mean, Christ is the privilege route to salvation. And God so loved the world He gave His only Son that we might find eternal life. So that's the privilege route. However, Vatican II clearly teaches that someone outside the explicit Christian faith can be saved. Now they're saved through the grace of Christ, indirectly received. So I mean, the grace is coming from Christ, but it might be received according to your conscience. So if you're following your conscience sincerely, or in your case, you're following the commandments of the law sincerely, yeah, you can be saved. Now that doesn't do us to a complete relativism. We still would say the privileged route and the route that God has offered to humanity is the route of His Son. But no, you can be saved. Even Vatican II says an atheist of good will can be saved. That when I follow my conscience, I'm following Him, whether I know it explicitly or not. So even the atheist Vatican II teaches of good will can be saved. So the fact that being an atheist or even anyone else, good works would merit you coming to Christ. That goes counter to what the gospel teaches. You've heard all of this about Jesus. You reject it. You live for the God of Islam or for the God of of Hindu faith or what have you. Or you just reject God altogether. But as long as you've got some good enough works. And again, who determines that the works are good enough? As long as you've got some good enough works, then you can be saved. Guys, I just want to speak clear to you. There are some Catholics who don't understand this, but have placed trust in Christ, faith in Christ, and they believe that He is the way. And I pray, I believe that through the Holy Spirit, they'll grow in their understanding and knowledge of the scriptures and they'll lead the Catholic Church as many are doing. But to someone who is a devout Catholic, who is more Catholic than Christian, that person is not going to reject this. And so that person cannot be a Christian. And then for the devout Christian, that devout Christian, that Christian who understands the scriptures and wants to get close to Christ, once he hears or she hears what's being stated here, that person will reject what the church, the Catholic Church, is teaching. So let's just be clear. There are some Catholics who can be Christians, but there are no Christians who can be Catholics. Amen.