Are Catholics Considered Christians and What Are The Differences in Beliefs?

today we have a great question as someone recently asked and that is this are Catholics considered Christians that's coming up next on the beat hey Murph reading welcome to the beat my name is Allen par thank you so much for tuning in if this is your first time here on this channel we answer frequently asked questions about the Christian faith like this one we talked about dating relationships from a Christian perspective and we do all sorts of other Bible based videos as well so if you're new consider subscribing so today we have a question once again our Catholics considered Christians so what I want to do in this video is first of all I want to give you a brief history of how Catholics and Protestants separated and how that all went down and then second of all want to talk about what Catholics and non-catholics which are called Protestants agree on and then finally what do they disagree on and so first of all a brief history of how all this stuff went down the word Catholics simply means universal so there was a period of time a long period of time where all of Christianity was comprised and made up of what was called the Roman Catholic Church but then somewhere in the 16th century a man named Martin Luther not Martin Luther King along with some other people disagreed with some of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and felt that they were not biblical and so as a result they broke off from the Roman Catholic Church and decided to try to reform it which is how the Protestant Reformation actually began so number two what do Protestants and Catholics actually agree on well first of all they both agree that there is one God second of all they both agree that Jesus is the Son of God third they also agree on the Trinity and fourth they both agree that there is eternal punishment in hell and eternal life in heaven and finally the questions we want to spend most of this video talking about is what do Catholics and what we call evangelical Christianity Protestants disagree on and the list is actually quite extensive but the most important thing that we disagree on is salvation evangelical Christianity believes and teaches that faith alone in Jesus Christ apart from works is enough to get someone into heaven Romans chapter four verse six describes God as one who credits righteousness apart from works this means that we believe that you do good works as a result of your salvation but not as a requirement for your salvation Catholics on the other hand believe that yes you have to believe in Jesus but you also have to do all sorts of works and they have these seven sacraments two of which are baptism and the Eucharist and all sorts of other things confirmation and if you do these good works along with believing in Jesus Christ and you live a good life then and only then can you expect to be in heaven the second major difference between Catholics and Protestants is evangelical Christians believe that the Bible is the only and final authority on all matters of what we call faith and practice faith meaning what we believe in as Christians and in practice how we live our lives in other words there is no other book other than the 66 books that we have in the Bible that we believe are inspired by God that we should base our beliefs and base our behaviors on Catholics on the other hand have a different view of the Bible yes they believe that the Bible is authoritative but they also put the church the Catholic Church and the Pope and also their traditions in the church as being on the same level and being on par with the Bible so when the Pope speaks something that is considered to be authoritative just as the Bible is or whatever traditions have developed within the Catholic Church these traditions are also supposed to be considered authoritative along with the Bible in addition to that they have a different view of how many books are in the Bible we as evangelical Christians believe there are 66 books in the Bible and after that the Bible or the Canon of Scripture was closed you cannot add to it you cannot take away from it however they believe in 14 extra book called the Apocrypha and unfortunately many things in the Apocrypha are just simply contradict much of which is found in the Bible the third thing that Catholics and evangelical Christianity disagree on is how we as Christians are supposed to approach God so we as evangelical Christians believe that we don't have to go through a priest or go through someone or recite sort of some sort of Prayer or anything in order to get to God chapter 4 verse 16 says let us therefore come boldly into the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need we can go straight into God's presence we don't have to go through someone else and one of the greatest proofs of this is whenever Jesus died the veil on the temple was ripped from top to bottom now what does that mean well you have to understand in Jesus day the place of worship was the temple and so inside of the temple there was a small room called the Holy of Holies and in this room was considered God's presence well the only problem with that was this only the high priest could go into this room and only one time of year in order to offer sacrifices and to receive atonement for the people of God but once again when Jesus died that veil was ripped into which was symbolic of saying not just priest or a high priest can now enter into God's presence all of God's children can now enter in and that is the reason why the New Testament describes us as being a royal priesthood because we can go to God our selves Catholics on the other hand believe that in order for you to receive forgiveness of your sins you have to confess your sins to a Catholic priest that priest then takes your sins to God and then and only then will you experience forgiveness and in doing so you have to recite a certain number of Hail Marys which then elevates Mary on the same level as Jesus which creates a whole other problem because we know that Mary was just a sinful woman just like you and I who happen to be chosen to be the mother of Jesus in addition to these three there are all sorts of other differences between what Catholics believe and what Protestants or evangelical Christianity believes let me give you a few the first is this idea of purgatory this is the idea that not everyone is ready to go directly into God's presence instead you may have to stop off at this place called purgatory where you will need to be purged of your sins first hence the word purgatory before you are able to go into the presence of God which then leads me to another false belief from the Catholic Church which is his idea of prayers for the dead and this is the idea that those of us who are living can somehow for those who have already died and our prayers can somehow boost their status and free them of whatever sin may be separating them from spending eternity with God in addition to prayers for the dead they also believe in prayers to the dead and so instead of praying to Jesus only they pray to Mary pray to Peter pray to Paul and other people who have died and passed on and finally they believed in this idea of transubstantiation and this is the idea that when Jesus said that when we eat the bread we are eating of his flesh and when we drink the wine we are drinking his blood they actually believe that whenever you take communion the bread dust turns into jesus's flesh and you're actually eating a piece of jesus's flesh and you're actually drinking jesus blood when you're taking communion this idea does not align with what the Scriptures teach because it clearly says that the bread is a symbol of Jesus body and the wine or grape juice is a symbol of his blood not the body in the blood itself so the original question was this are Catholics Christians well let me just go on record and say this it is not my job nor is it your job to go around and decide who is a Christian and who is not that is God's business not ours but what we can do and what we are called to do is assess whether someone's belief lines up with a Christian belief so we are able to confidently say you know what I don't know if you're Christian or not but what you believe in is not a Christian belief but in order to confidently do that you and I have to know exactly what and why we believe what we believe if you liked this video hit the like button don't forget to share it with your friends be sure and subscribe check out some of the other videos on this channel hey thank you so much for watching I'll see you next time on the beat

Channel: THE BEAT by Allen Parr

Views: 626,074

Keywords: are catholics considered christians, how are catholics and christians different, what are the differences between catholic and protestants, are catholics born again - john macarthur, are catholics christians john piper, what is the meaning of purgatory, why do catholics baptize babies, christianity versus catholicism, thebeatagp, the beat by allen parr, difference between catholic and baptist, difference between catholic and orthodox, speaking in tongues

Id: m3mWT93YpKQ

Length: 8min 25sec (505 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 20 2018