The Verse I Never Saw - Marcus Grodi - Deep in History

[Music] the monuments of speakers for this weekend is tremendous you look at your list you look at the stuff we're talking about it's it's really neat stuff up until this year every year what we've done in this conference is we would focus on a period of history the first conference is about being deep in history in general then we focus on the early church fathers then we focused on the Reformation in Germany or in the continent then we focused on the English Reformation then we focused on the coming of the faith to the Americas and then last year we focused on the battle for the faith after the American Revolution to the present day now what we'd like to do for the next couple of years is to focus on a particular doctrinal issue and look at it historically and so this year we're looking at authority in the church authority how do we know what is true how do we determine what is true what do we base our faith and the different speakers for this weekend will focus on different aspects of that from historical perspective as I talk to my staff about what I should talk about you can't escape having me because I'm the president and founder of the coming home Network International I'm not here because I have a PhD because I don't but I couldn't escape the fact that this is the topic that brought me into the Catholic Church this issue of authority and so my staff encouraged me tell your story again well I've told it to you so many times and the problem with telling your conversion story especially when you're in my shoes because every week on EWTN I hear a better conversion story than mine so after a while I lose track was that in my story or somebody else's or I think you know that was good I got used that but what I'd like to to focus on in my own journey is the issues in relationship to this important topic of authority how do you know what is true and for me as I look at my background I the lord opened lots of doors to me because I was a Lutheran a Congregationalist a Church of Scotland a Presbyterian I mean I've seen authority from a lot of different angles including from the position of being a secular materialist during college and I want to talk about my own journey not for your focus on me but my guess is a few of you come from similar backgrounds or some you have friends family who are caught up in these imperfect understandings of Authority upon which they have based their life and they may not realize it now the title for my talk is the verse I never saw if you've watched the journey home if you've been to these conferences you know in the past I've talked about the verses that I've never saw this idea came about because what we noticed is that so many converts to the church what opens their heart and mind to the church is some scripture text that seemingly they never saw before is that true of any of you here anybody raise your hand if you in other words whoa I didn't see that before or I saw that verse I remember that verse but I never really saw it I understood it in a different way and I've given talks on this where I've collected in a number of verses but I'm going to talk tonight about Devers and this verse I swear was not in my Bible this wasn't there when I first heard this verse and I mean heard it was about almost exactly 19 years ago this coming month before then I was oblivious to this verse I even preached on first Timothy all the way through but this verse wasn't there some Catholic snuck in to my Bible I don't know how it was done to slip this in but it was this verse that opened my heart to the Catholic Church before I get to that moment though I want to back way up and talk about the different ways that I've understood Authority in my life in terms of my faith number one what was the foundation for the authority that I trusted for what was true number two how did I understand the church what did I think about the church and number three was I aware of this verse at all and the verse I'm talking about if you'll open your schedule page 1 essentially what I'm going to do this evening is an expanded version of this introduction to tonight's conference well there's the okay I was looking for the the clock all right there at the bottom four sentences from the bottom page one you're going to see first Timothy 3:14 through 15 Paul writes I hope to come to you soon but I am writing these instructions to you so that if I am delayed you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God which is the Church of the Living God the pillar and Baal work of the truth seems fairly clear doesn't it well it wasn't in my Bible before I was brought up a Lutheran baptized catechized confirmed at a beautiful little Lutheran Church so our Lutheran right up route 23 in Perrysburg Ohio and I memorized the small catechism of Luther it took two years but that was what we did in those days every Saturday for two years and I knew the Lutheran faith well my understanding of authority how do you know what's true was following Luther's line it is the Bible the scriptures are infallible inspired everything we need to know about salvation that we'll find there interestingly enough in my particular lutheran church every single Sunday our pastor somehow found a quote from Luther to include in his sermon and so I grew up as a young Luther Lutheran constantly fed by the writings of Martin Luther how did I understand Church what I find interesting about my background is for me is that I grew up thinking that the church consisted of xot our Lutheran Church certainly so our Lutheran was connected with the bigger Lutheran Church of America but as a young man as a regard to my teaching it never crossed my mind to think about this little church being really connected to any other church I knew there were other churches in town the Baptist Assembly of God the Church of Christ Pisgah peléan Presbyterian but I really just thought of Lutheranism and my Lutheran Church and I didn't think that any other Christian believed anything different than I did we all believed the same thing we had different names for our churches we didn't worship the same place I just figured we grouped together into different churches because of our nationalities our backgrounds in our little town it just usually seen that the more wealthy gravitated to the Episcopal Church and the poor gravitated to the Assembly of God in the Pentecostal churches and we Lutheran's were somewhere in the middle that was my understanding the difference between churches I never saw this verse as a young man did I think about this Lutheran Church as the foundation for what was true no this is where I worshiped and gathered it was the Bible that was a foundation for truth as I got a little older as a teenager I began to meet friends who were members of these other churches and there were times when we would talk about what we believed and I began to notice that the Baptist didn't believe what Lutheran's believed and the Presbyterians didn't believe what Lutheran's believed and I actually played baseball with a young man named yogi Leland the younger brother of Jim Leyland the coach of the Detroit Tigers who was a staunch Catholic and they didn't believe what Lutheran's believed now it didn't struck me of any significance I think I've shared this story before here where I were playing basketball for the Lutheran basketball team and we played both against other church teams in our league and there was one particular time when it was a playoffs and all of our teams are gathered in the gym and I was sitting with the Lutheran's and the Presbyterians are over here and the Baptist's and the Catholics and and the piss Kop aliens and Assembly of God and as I looked around the auditorium I noticed that there were my friends sitting with the other teams and it was a work of the spirit and in my heart grace to see that there's something wrong builds there in the Baptists and there is Fred over there in the Episcopalians and there's Steve with the Catholics and yogi with the Catholics and Steve with the Assembly of God what is this how do you understand these different churches and I remember that point in my life thinking there were two options either one of us is right or we're all wrong I'm sure there are other options but that's the only two thoughts that came to my mind either one of us is right I was trying to think what could one of the other churches have a right and we Lutheran's are wrong I didn't want to go there but I also didn't want to say no we Lutheran's have a right and they're all wrong that didn't seem Christian and so I concluded that there must be something wrong period and that was the the beginning of my leaving of Christianity because when I went to another school up another road from here in Cleveland called case Institute of Technology where I was trained to be an engineer basically I left Church behind left Christianity behind it began to move into an area where I needed something more substantial tangible to build my faith and for me it was science because science you could retest and retest and I could touch it it wasn't built on myths or opinions it seemed tangible I needed a two plus two equals four foundation for my life what was Authority for me what was interesting as I look back was the authority was that I believed that these good scientists had done their homework and they had done their experiments and they had reproduced them and therefore their books were delivering truth that you could depend on and they are certainly good folk you could you could trust them with your life and I believe that there were other explanations that I had received as a Christian even moved so far into a certain ideology promoted by a man named van Daniken who spread the idea that all these angels and stuff that people said they saw well they were space people coming to earth I was caught up in that what was the authority in my life well I believed it was this rational scientific reproducible experimental foundation for truth a lot of people are there the church it never crossed my mind that eight church any church could be trustworthy because it's all myths they're all just man's creation they're all people as if Freud would say looking for a father figure to make him feel better about their life and if I had thought at all about first timothy 3:15 who had been absurd and then between my junior and senior year the Holy Spirit smacked me with a rock awakened me through the witness of a friend who got me reading scripture invited me to church the preaching of a pastor I had a very powerful conversion spirit in fact it happened when I was doing summer school at Bowling Green University where my oldest son John Mark is a senior in philosophy in a little country Congregational Church now Congregational churches now we have AK entirely different understanding of authority and church because in that little church that brought me to Jesus the authority was scripture scripture everything was around studying scripture but church was defined by that little passage that I have quoted in the schedule about 10 verse lines down from the top Matthew 18 that says for for two or three are gathered in my name there am I in the midst of them in other words Church is wherever two or three or four are gathered in the name of Jesus and they're asking for God's guidance and that's a church in fact in that little really nice Congregational Church the pastor was a very faithful and sincere follower and preacher of Jesus Christ but basically the idea of church was not just that little congregation but the idea is that whenever two or three gathered in prayer and you were asking for the guidance of the Spirit you were a church and at Clay sia a gathering and Jesus is with you and if you are sitting there and you're studying the scriptures and you're asking for the guidance of the Spirit you can believe that the holy spirit is gonna make sure that what you decide as a group is true did it make a difference what the churches believe for two thousand years no what's important is you're gathered in the name of Jesus so what's the truth about baptism while you look up all the verses on baptism and you ask the spirit guide you and you decide what's true that's what we believed 1st timothy 3:15 remember that verse what happened that this this radical Congregationalism where every individual church is able not only to decide what it believes but each little individual church is made up of all these little churches of all two or three or four gather name when I left college and became an engineer and I was in a different town with an O Congregational churches I began visiting around Reformed churches Presbyterian churches a visit Episcopal Church went back to the Lutheran Church and I began recognizing wool we all believe in the scriptures but this idea of authority varied from every church to the next the Baptist's of a different understanding than the Methodists the way the church operates who decides what's true piss Kop aliens at bishops Presbyterians of elders Congregationalism it's a voting of the local church and there's a catholics over there and one of the reasons i went to seminary was to figure this whole thing out because at seminary my desire was to be a preacher of jesus but to be preaching what's true and at seminary i read a book called the institutes of the christian religion and if you read that by Jean Calvin John Calvin I went to a non-denominational interdenominational seminary all evangelicals all believed that the Bible was the sole foundation for what is true it's inspired all that we need to know about salvation is in there but there were 45 or more different traditions represented but in the midst of that was a big emphasis on on Calvinism the covenant theology and I want to read to you what John Calvin says about authority in the church John Calvin wrote accordingly the Lord by certain marks and tokens has pointed out to us what we should know about the church now if I were to ask you as a group what are the marks of the church what are they exactly right unquestionable well did you know that the Reformers redefine the marks of the church as we have cited from above from Paul to know who are his is a prerogative belonging solely to God therefore according to God's secret predestination as Agustin says many sheep are without and many wolves are within for he knows and has marked those who know neither him nor themselves of those who openly wear his badge his eyes alone see the ones who are unfaded ly holy and will persevere to the very end the ultimate point of salvation in other words only God knows who's going to be saved only God knows the elect you can't know whether you're saved or not that's only God's prerogative and then that sense you just don't know worth not only anyone else but yourself and he goes on but on the other hand because he foresaw it to be of some value for us to know who were to be counted as his children he has in this regard accommodated himself to our capacity and since assurance of faith was not necessary he substituted for it a certain charitable judgment whereby we recognize as members of the church those who by confession of faith by example of life if are partaking of the sacraments profess the same God in Christ with us so it's subtly saying that God didn't really intend to church but for our encouragement he allowed us to have this gathering so we have some way of looking around to see who's another Christian by our profession of faith by our example of life and Barbra taking of the sacraments we have some guests on who's a part of this church he has more over set off by plainer marks the knowledge of his very body to us knowing how necessary it is for our salvation from this the face of the church comes forth it becomes visible to their eyes now here are the marks of the church not just for John Calvin but for Martin Luther wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard and the sacraments administered according to Christ's institution there it is not to be doubted a church of God exists and here he's quoting Luther's Canada Kathy Augustine Augsburg confession scuse me the point being that how do you German to church if it's preaching the gospel and celebrating the sacraments rightly that's the church we have laid down as distinguishing marks of the church the preaching of the word and the observance of the sacraments these can never exist without bringing forth fruit and prospering by God's blessing for the Lord esteems the communion of his church so highly that he counts as a traitor an apostate from Christianity anyone who arrogantly leaves any Christian society provided it cherishes the true mystery of word and sacraments he so esteems the authority of the church that when it is violated he believes his own diminished in other words you determine a to church if the preaching is good and they're doing the sacraments right and if they're doing the preaching right and the sacraments right you can't leave that church or your your your going into schism he doesn't say how do you know exactly what's good preaching or good sacraments yet but he's I think what's happening is that John Calvin was recognizing that a lot of people didn't like his preaching and so they were going elsewhere and he's saying wait a second here that schism even though every adult at that time is a schismatic of course but he'll get to that in a moment it is of no small importance that it is called the pillar and ground of the truth and the house of God by these words Paul means the church is the faithful keeper of God's truth in order that it may not perish in the world for by its ministry and labor God will to have the preaching of his word kept pure and to show himself the father of a family while he feeds us with spiritual food and provides everything that makes for our salvation there's also no common praise to say that crisis chosen and set apart the church as his bride without spot or wrinkle his body and fullness for this it follows that separating from the church is the denial of God in Christ hence we must evermore avoid so wicked a separation but with all our might we are attempting the overthrow of God's truth we deserve to have him hurl the whole Thunderbolt of his wrath to crash us nor can any more atrocious crime be conceived than for us by sacrilegious disloyalty to violate the marriage that the only begotten Son of God gained to contract with us it sounds like he's really saying no you don't leave the church and that's what the church has always said it's just which church are you talking about for an order that the title church may not deceive us every congregation that claims the name church must detest it by this standard as by a touchstone if in word and sacraments it has the order approved by the Lord it will not deceive let us then confidently pay to it the honor due to churches but again if devoid of word and sacrament it advertises the name of church we must just ascoobis Leiby where such deceits as we must avoid rashness and pride on the other side so what he's saying is if it claims to be a church in its preaching and doing the sacraments correctly it's a church if it isn't it isn't a church and you can leave it do you know that happens every day I mean as I look back I remember when I was a minister in the pre-computer age that there were forms in triplicate that you would buy by the box load that you would use whenever you got a new member because they knew they were coming from somewhere else so you could fill this form out so they could have one sheet to go to their previous church to have them remove from the roster to be under your church and one to keep for themselves for their files with all the other times they've left other churches and why are they mostly jumping Church to church to church because they don't like the preaching they're judging whether this is good preached or not count Kelvin and actually Luther opened a can of worms just a couple more things I want to read it has already been explained how much we ought to value the Ministry of the word and sacraments and how far our reverence for it should go that it may be to us a perpetual token by which to distinguish the church therefore the church must tumbledown with the sum of religion when the sum of religion dies which alone could sustain it again if the true church is the pillar and foundation of truth it is certain that no church can exist where lying and falsehood have gained sway and since conditions are such under potpourri one can understand how much of the church remains there instead of the Ministry of the word a perverse government compounded of Lies rules there which partly extinguishes the pure light partially chokes it the foul the sacrilege has been introduced in place of the Lord's Supper the worship of God has been deformed by a diverse and unbearable mass of superstitions doctrine has been entirely buried and driven out public assemblies have become schools of idolatry and ungodliness in withdrawing from deadly participation in so many misdeeds there is accordingly no danger that we be snatched away from the Church of Christ the communion of the church has not as was not established on the condition that it should serve to snare us in idolatry ungodliness ignorance of God and other sorts of evils but rather to hold us in the fear of God and obedience to the truth in other words Catholic preaching is bad all the sacraments they're doing wrong so you can leave the church and come over to here where I'm preaching what is true and that was my understanding of how you understand a church a church is a place of authentic preaching and authentic worship and let me let me say Catholics aren't we used to this combination of word and sacrament does that sound familiar in other words he took the original marks of the church the visible marks of the church and basically said that church is defined in worship only and how then you define what is authentic worship when I left seminary that's all I understood Church scriptures the foundation for truth what is the church a church is a place where you worship authentically you preach the gospel and then I became a Congregationalist minister where every individual church could decide what would ever want it to believe what a mess and when you're pastoring the church like that and you have a whole group of people that everyone thinks they know what the truth is and truth becomes a democratic gathering very quickly my ordination was received into the Presbyterian Church and the beauty of Presbyterianism is you have a book of order based on the wisdom of the leaders for all those couple hundred years how to run a church and and plus there was a book of confessions and what's interesting is that this book of confessions which has about 15 confessions and if you try and study all them together they contradict each other in lots of places but what usually happens is each pastor decides for his own which confession he likes and mine was the Westminster Confession let me read you anything and even come from Westminster backgrounds here's what it says about scripture I mean there's a lot here but because of time I only read that the infallible standard for the interpretation of the Bible is the Bible itself and so any question about the true and complete sense of a passage in the Bible which is a unified whole can be answered by reference to other passages which speak more plainly so if you want to understand a rough verse you just find another verse to explain it which is interesting because if you look in the back of the Westminster Confession there are 10 pages of Bible references in other words this whole thing is put together with a combination of Bible references this explains this explains this explains we used to have Bible drills at seminary where we'd fight over the meaning of Scripture and with this group against this group and the group that won was the group that had the most I mean now I'm being I you know I'm joking but it was essentially that the Holy Spirit speaking in the Bible is the supreme judge of all religious controversies all decisions of religious consuls all the opinions of ancient writers all human teachings and every private opinion we are to be satisfied with the judgments of him who is and can be the only judge in other words you've got the Bible you read it you compare the verses and you believe the Spirit is guiding you and that's how you know what is true well let me I want to read this about the church the Catholic or universal Church is invisible and consists of all the elect who have been are and ever will be gathered into one under Christ the head the visible church is only Catholic and Universal under the gospel it is not confined to one nation the visible Church is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus in order to gather and perfect the saints in this life until the end of the world Christ has given the Ministry scriptures and Ordinaries of God to his universal visible Church this universal visible church has been sometimes more sometimes less visible particular churches which are members of it are also more or less pure depending on how the gospel is accepted and taught how the ordinance of God are administered and how public worship is performed the purest churches under heaven are subject both to impurity and error some churches have so degenerated that they are not Churches of Christ but synagogues of Satan I wonder who he's talking about nevertheless there will always be a church on earth to worship God according to his will and then here's the last paragraph there is no other head of the church than the Lord Jesus Christ in no sense can the Pope in Rome be the head of it rather he is that Antichrist the man of sin the son of damnation who glorifies himself as opposed to Christ and everything related to God that's in the Westminster Confession so what is the church the church is invisible but it has a visible element but the only know whether this visible element is the church or not as whether it is represented by authentic preaching and good sacraments but how do you determine which is authentic preaching the Westminster Confession as well as John Calvin Luther's ultimately ends up every individual can decide for themselves what is authentic preaching and sacraments to shorten my story I had gotten to the point that what I was recognizing is that my Presbyterian preaching and what I understood as the gospel was radically different than other ministers who also believed that the Bible was infallible and also believed in authentic preaching and also believed that their sacraments were true and my Presbyterian versus a Methodist versus the Baptist versus the Episcopalian versus the Assembly of God we all believed in authentic preaching we all believed in authentic sacraments we all believe that the Bible is trustworthy yet we were radically different how do we know my conclusion the problem was me I haven't studied enough I'm not wise enough I haven't prayed enough I'm not faithful enough it must be me and so I better not be in the pulpit so I announced my resignation from the pulpit I didn't leave Jesus I just said if I can't know what's true or not be preaching when I left the pulpit I remember these questions so now how do I know what's true I still believe that the scripture is true jesus is my Lord but what is the church is the Presbyterian the Baptist the Catholic the episcopate what church can I trust and then I became reacquainted with an old seminary buddy Scott Hahn I hadn't seen him since seminary he had become Catholic I didn't know how to ever heard of a Protestant minister becoming Catholic before so there's no file folder and my mind to put that but he was speaking and I went to hear him speak and after his talk it was Scott we hadn't seen each other and he he was crowded by groupies so he said hear listened to this tape and he I got his conversion to how I get hurt Scott's little conversion tape all right I was driving had about an hour and a half drive home and I was listening to the tape and I've jokingly in the past said that I was going to listen to find out where he went wrong but to be honest I really didn't know how to even take the idea that he would becoming Catholic it didn't make why would anyone do that it didn't make sense to me because I came fed with all this stuff I've just said to you the Pope is the Antichrist the Catholic Church is full of lies and idolatry and may have cleaned its act up in 500 years but how would why would anyone want to become Catholic so I was listening to Scott's tape and I on the road and he got to a story and when he told this story that's when I had to actually pull my car to the side of the road and stop it here's his story he says that when he was a pastor and he believed all the things that I just told you that I believed only ten times more he was the most radical Calvinist I had ever known he said that one man in his congregation came up to him and said Scott what is the pillar and foundation of truth and Scott kind of said what he said no no what what is the pillar and foundation of what we believe Scotts answer as I listened to him on a tape was exactly what my answer would have been the Bible you see I had then look back now I see in the Westminster Confession the Augsburg confession as well as John Calvin's Institute he used first timothy 3:15 the pillar and foundation of truth it's a church but because he's so redefined the church as this in entity which you can't even grasp that can range from two people gathered in a Bible study to a local church that votes whatever it wants to believe it never crossed my mind that that was what Paul's talking about so you don't even listen to the verse so for us the pillar and foundation of truth is the church which gave me in Scripture and so when when Scott answers that okay that's right except that this guy challenged Scott says well but what does the Bible say as the pillar and foundation of truth and Scott was the same as me we've read that verse a bazillion times but we don't remember it and Scott said what are you talking about so the guy says here look and he turns to first timothy 3:15 and Scott says he read that verse and was silent and that's why I pulled off the road because that verse isn't there and I went over and I got my Bible and opened it and it said that the pillar and foundation of truth is to church the body of Christ the church and you need to understand it didn't make me Catholic it made me made it worse the pillar and foundation of truth is the church what church what is the church how do you define the church you know there's a scripture which are also quoted in the the schedule page to Matthew 18 which talks about Jesus telling us if a couple guys have a problem right and somebody's in sin and you want to correct that person well what's your steps first you go to them you confront them and if they don't listen to you then you bring two or three and if they don't listen to two or three what does he say take it to the church well I remember looking at that thinking well if two or more gathered my name is a church then you didn't have you know that second step should have taken care of it right you confront one guy well you're a church you and him and if you don't agree well then you've separated into two churches and then you go grab two more three people so now you got another church and then you get with them again well not you if you reunited your one church again now it is a lift so now you're to churches again and then you go find some bigger group of people because a bigger group is got to be a bigger church it means that what Jesus is talking about I mean the absurdity of it where would I go how do you understand what's true the pillar and foundation is what well this began a long study for me which is what this weekend is all about you're gonna hear talks this weekend they're gonna talk about all the different aspects the early church fathers or looking at scripture again with new eyes when Jesus said to Peter thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church I used to have a set answer that I would use to write that off but Jesus was saying I will build my church and so I looked historically how that verse was understood Ephesians and the understanding of church in Ephesians the fact that in John 14 15 and 16 Jesus is promising that he'll give the Holy Spirit to the Apostles to guide them into all truth look at the confusion in Christianity around the world there is no one doctrine that every single Christian in the world agrees on there's no one doctrine they have different views of Jesus different views of the Bible different views of the church some are Trinitarian some are not some don't think you need salvation different views there's no one doctrine that every Christian group agrees in so how do you determine what's true where do you find it well the early church fathers opened my heart Ken's gonna talk a little about that so we'll Paul fake a pen and others I could quote a bunch of early church fathers but I don't want to steal their thunder they're probably to give you those in a moment I just want to summarize by telling you what I discovered I've used this analogy before and I know it's simplistic and a good historian will probably punch holes in it but since they're not up here and I have the microphone that what I came to recognize by asking this question you see what's important to me is to ask the question how did your average family throughout history know what was true on their faith I don't mean the bishops or the priest but I mean your average husband wife five kids living in a little house back in the woods of France in the fifth century or some husband and his wife and kids living up in the mountains of Spain in the ten hundreds or some similar family living in the backwoods of Germany and a third how would they know their faith how and we believe that God wants everyone to be saved and so we would believe that God would provide the means for these people to know what's true oh and when I came in my studies is I found that there seems to be five things that define the authority in this order and if you've read my book how firm a foundation I use this in there it seems to me this is the authority the number one top authority is the church the Magisterium centered around Peter and beneath that is tradition and scripture it's not scripture first because of scriptures first again we end up with a thousand interpretations because every individual can decide for themselves it's not tradition first because again how do you judge it which is authentic tradition or not that was the problems in the third and four century trying to define the divinity of Christ and Trinity and the nature's of Christ we're talking about traditions here but it was on top it was the Magisterium and union with Peter Scripture and tradition and down below it of all things as a Holy Spirit because it's all undergirded by the Holy Spirit you can't say the Holy Spirit's first because then you and I will say well I'm going with the Holy Spirit first and actually there were a number of heresies in history the church that that's where they went Tertullian who at one time was a great teacher in the church and then he bought into a group that put the Holy Spirit first and he died a heretic outside the church because that group following the Holy Spirit decided it knew what was better than the tradition scripture and the church so you have the church on top magister beneath peter tradition in scripture pretty much together the Holy Spirit and conscience conscience is on the bottom does that kind of make sense and what happened in the Reformation is you have this challenge or that overturned the authority of the church and it doubted the authenticity and trustworthiness of tradition leaving you the Bible and the Holy Spirit and me but it wasn't quite that simple because every single reformed group established a new tradition based on the particular teaching of their leader so they throw out one Pope for another and they were Lutheran's or Calvinists or swingley ins or menno simons Mennonites Congregationalists they all had traditions that helped them understand how to interpret Scripture I just read you Calvin's Institute's two volumes calvin defining a tradition on how to understand tradition the scripture saying it was based on the Holy Spirit so every individual could know what was true and that basically is what comes down to today every single group that you run into if you look at their background they've got a leader they they go back to that guided their particular true that helps them understand scripture and they believe it's all guided by the Holy Spirit and so we should follow it the problem is though that this has gotten switched upside down today conscience is first me and I believe the Spirit is guiding me too so that I can best understand scripture and determine which traditions I need to follow and so that and I can decide which of the church I need to obey you see that anywhere I actually I had this really juicy story of to give an example but amount of time I had to be careful with this story I'll give it real quickly because it's to me it illustrates it it's a sad thing I think it's sad because recently I was told that a retired Catholic bishop published his memoirs and this particular bishop retired but he retired a bit in disgrace well the most liberal of our Catholic Bishops he was homosexual he ended up paying nearly a half million dollars to a man to silence him and that was Church money not his own and in his memoirs it's all about his life and I want to find out this book I didn't want an essay by it so I went on the internet bookstore and I looked and there were 57 reviews of this book and 50 of the 57 reviews gave it a five-star rating he's brilliant he's a genius he's courageous he's a model for a discipleship he takes a stand against that power-hungry an uncaring unloving Church he was outspoken against john paul ii saying the john paul ii undercut the authentic renewal of attic and to he's outspoken against the Church's teaching on homosexuality he thinks the church has got to change I then I read the seven people that were the Minority Report who had best game at 1 star rating and basically what they were saying is that this is an old whiner mad at everyone that didn't agree with him in other words everybody else had disagree with them is wrong including the church and to me this is an example of when you put yourself first and what you want and what you think is true you put yourself first over Scripture and tradition and the church you believe the Holy Spirit's guiding you to understand what the Bible really means and how tradition was wrong and now the church needs to change this weekend we're going to talk about the absolute need to trust this beautiful church we've been given because the minute you doubt the trustworthiness of the Holy Spirit guiding the Magisterium and union with Peter you are on a slippery slope to doubting almost everything and we could give innumerable examples of this it's a beautiful gift that we have and so why not this weekend we celebrate this gift we've been given so that we can stand without embarrassment for before God knowing that he's given us a guide to lead us into all truth let's close with prayer name of the Father Son Holy Spirit dear Lord I do ask your guidance on this weekend on every speaker on every heart we all come from different backgrounds we come with different questions and challenges but most importantly I want us to hear you this weekend speak to us through your speakers so that we can know what is true that we can truly appreciate the great gift you've given us in your son Jesus and the great gift you've given us in his body the church and thank you that you've by your grace opened our hearts and minds to have this gift of this church into our lives forgive us for the ways that we are bad examples of your faith and may this weekend we each be challenged to be one more faithful witness to you into your church pray in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit amen [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The Coming Home Network International

Views: 42,987

Rating: 4.8965173 out of 5

Keywords: Bible, Authority, Christian authority, Biblical interpretation, Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant, Pastors becoming Catholic, Church, I Timothy, Scripture, God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, St. Paul, Coming Home Network, Journey Home, Marcus Grodi, Martin Luther

Id: OonbbY7bbew

Length: 49min 31sec (2971 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 14 2018