Pastor Mike Shreve, it's great to have you back here
on Charisma News.
And this time we're gonna be talking about your book,
Beliefs of the Catholic Church.
And we are talking about this from a place
where we love the Catholic Church.
We love Catholic people.
My parents both grew up Catholic.
My grandparents were Catholic.
I have a lot of respect and admiration for their devotion.
But there's definitely some things that I,
as I read the Bible, I don't agree with,
but I still wanna show love and respect.
And so I think this conversation and you sharing your life
is gonna help a lot of people be able to connect
to our Catholic brothers and sisters.
And I have nothing but warm memories.
My grandmother was an extremely fervent Catholic
who prayed the rosary every day.
And her last words to my father were,
Andy, I'll rise with Jesus.
I believe she had a personal relationship with the Lord
and that she will be in the resurrection, praise God.
That was her final confession.
And I was an ultra boy.
I could show you pictures of me back in my first communion
or in my ultra boy cassock.
And I served under priests that were real role models
of Christ-like character, gentle, meek, humble, God-loving,
God-fearing men.
And so again, I have only warm memories.
They were a positive influence in my life.
I went to parochial school up until middle school
and the nuns were wonderful.
A few of them were a little fierce to deal with,
but I don't blame them with a hundred kids in the classroom.
They'd have to be pretty strong to manage all of us.
But once again, they kept me secluded
from a lot of the rampant evil
that's in the public school system.
And so I'm very thankful.
But like you, I have since searched out the Bible myself,
which a lot of Catholics do not do.
They do not read the Bible for themselves.
They trust in the Catechism.
And once I began reading the Bible,
I saw this disparity between true biblical,
authentic Christianity and what I'd been taught
as a Catholic.
And so I felt like this book needed to be written
because a lot of times I've seen presentation
by Protestants concerning Catholicism
that I thought was really harsh and insensitive
because they didn't really understand it
from a Catholic perspective.
But I'm coming from that perspective.
I was-
I agree with you.
I feel like there's been a lot of Catholic bashing
and that's not what you're doing.
It's not what I wanna do.
Absolutely not.
The Catholics that I have in my life absolutely love Jesus,
but there's definitely some other things
that are maybe non-essentials, I don't know,
that we disagree about.
And so I'd love to hear more
of what you have to say with this.
Well, I think a good place to start
is the definition of the church.
And in the book, I might read a quote
from the first chapter, the first chapter deals
with the whole idea of what is the true church.
And if you go back in Catholic doctrine
in their ecumenical councils and so forth,
you'll find out that over and over they teach
that the Catholic church is the only true church.
And it's one point, incidentally,
it's 1.3 billion members strong.
So that's the largest segment of Christianity in the world.
There's about 2.6 billion people.
And I think it would help to see
that according to my insight now,
I believe there's two aspects
to what people call the church.
There's something called the professing church,
which I was a part of growing up,
but I did not know Jesus.
I had no personal relationship with God,
but I was part of the professing church.
And that's made up of all those who profess faith
in the historical validity of the existence of Jesus
and what he accomplished,
his death for the sins of humanity,
his burial, his resurrection, his ascension.
I believed in all of that.
I was taught all of that, but I did not know him.
And yet in John chapter 17, Jesus said,
this is eternal life that they might know you,
the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
He didn't say know about you, God.
He said, this is eternal life that they might know you.
And that was the missing element.
And it was a very important missing element in my life.
Then at the nucleus, at the core of the professing church
is a much smaller group I call the possessing church.
And that's made up of people of many denomination,
Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Episcopals, et cetera,
who have had a genuine, authentic, heartfelt encounter
that came to them by making Jesus Lord of their lives,
by surrendering to him and inviting him into their heart.
Jesus said, I stand at the door and knock.
And if any man hear my voice,
I will open the door and come into him.
And that's exactly what he wants to do.
And that's when I was spiritually regenerated.
I was born again at the age of 19.
I was not born again
when the Catholic church says you're born again.
And that's that infant baptism.
And that might be a good subject to tackle next.
Yeah, let's talk about that.
This whole concept of infant baptism versus baptism
when you can make the confession yourself.
I know that when we look at baptism in the Bible,
actually this morning I was just reading in Mark
where Jesus went to John the Baptist and was baptized.
And you look and see, well, we know that Jesus was
in his thirties whenever this happened
and began his public ministry right after that.
So he was not an infant, but when he was at eight days old,
we know that he went to the temple
and he was really circumcised.
And that's what happened at that point
because that's historically what happens
on the eighth day there.
But what is, where did this infant baptism come from?
And what is it now today?
Well, first of all, let me say that the Catholic church
teaches that five things happen.
Five definite things happen during infant baptism.
Number one, that child is born again.
Number two, the spirit of God enters that child.
Number three, that child receives the gift of eternal life.
Number four, that child becomes a member of the church.
And number five, original sin is canceled and dismissed
and purged from that child.
So five supernatural things are supposed to take place
during sprinkling that never take place.
And so tragically, what happens is you have
unregenerated infants that grow up
to be unregenerated teenagers that lose faith
in Christianity because they never had
a genuine encounter with God,
or unregenerated adults that think they've received
this experience possibly of being born again,
and yet they haven't done it the biblical way
and haven't had a real encounter with Jesus quite often.
Quite often that's the case, more often than not.
And so that's the tragedy of the matter.
Infant baptism strangely was not originally taught
in the church.
It was not originally taught among the disciples at all.
Now Catholics will cite, I think it's five instances,
four or five instances where it talks about
a whole household being baptized.
Like Cornelius that wanted to be saved
after Paul and Silas sang at the midnight hour
and the jail cell doors blew open.
Well, it's that he and his household were baptized.
And they use those descriptions
that happened in the book of Acts
about four or five times to try and prove
that infant baptism is true.
But in not one of those circumstances
was it mentioned that infants were involved.
A household could have been adults or older children
that had an awareness of what they were doing
because the proper order is repent and be baptized.
And you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Well, only people old enough to know
the concept of repentance therefore can be baptized.
And I think one of the strongest examples
is when Philip preached to the Ethiopian eunuch.
It's a great story in the book of Acts
where he joined himself to the chariot
of this Ethiopian eunuch and he just happened to be,
it was a God encounter, a God set up.
He just happened to be reading Isaiah 53 at the time.
And he said, what's this talking about?
And Philip explained it to him.
And then the Ethiopian eunuch said, well, here is water.
They were apparently parked near a body of water.
He said, what does hinder me?
Can I be baptized?
And Philip said, and this is key, he said,
if you believe with all your heart, you can be baptized.
And so he made that a prerequisite for baptism.
An infant baby cannot believe with all of his or her heart.
It's got to be later on in life.
Some people call it the age of accountability,
which is not necessarily a scriptural term or idea,
but at least a point where a child can understand
and comprehend the difference between good and evil
and what's actually happening.
Yeah, I know that for me, I prayed the prayer
to receive Jesus when I was four years old.
And that is a moment that I'll never forget.
I can take you to that space at my parents' house.
And my mother, she prayed with me
and I knew what was happening.
I can remember what happened earlier in the day
that made me want to pray to receive Jesus.
And then I remember later as a separate occasion,
whenever I got baptized at my pastor's pool
and then got filled with the Spirit as well,
filled the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
And those are distinct moments
that I was a part of making that decision.
I was the integral part.
If I wasn't making the decision,
none of those things would have happened.
And I'm so grateful for those memories.
And I know that an infant will not be able
to remember those memories, even if they could,
if they could make that decision.
But it's something that we need to do.
Dedicating babies is one thing,
but baptism is a completely different thing.
Right, and that's a very important thing, very important.
And I believe another really important issue
is the whole idea of an exclusive priesthood.
Because in Catholicism, only a priest can administer baptism,
only a priest can serve communion,
only a priest or a bishop can preside,
and usually it's a bishop preside over confirmation,
which is the sacrament where supposedly you're filled with,
or sealed by the Holy Spirit.
And only a priest can administer extreme unction
or the final anointing,
which a person receives just prior to death.
And so it makes a mediatorial priesthood a necessity
from birth to death.
And that ties you to the church
and makes it a very fearful thing
for you to even think about leaving
because you would cut off your source of forgiveness.
Because according to Catholic doctrine,
only a priest can forgive mortal sin
or sin that leads to death.
And so if you don't go to confession
and you have mortal sin in your life,
you're assigning yourself to an eternal hell.
So no wonder these are very, very important issues.
And so what does the Bible have to say about it?
The scripture actually teaches
that all believers are priests.
In the Old Testament, they did have an exclusive priesthood,
Aaron and his sons were the priests.
And you had to go to those priests
in order to be reconciled back to God
through the proper sacrifices being offered
at the Tabernacle of Moses,
later on the Temple of Solomon and so forth.
But that did not overflow into the New Testament
because Jesus is our great high priest.
Now we have boldness to enter the holiest.
See, in the Old Testament,
only the high priest could go into the holy of holies.
But now all believers can have boldness
to enter the holiness, whether the forerunner has,
for us, has already entered.
And that's talking about Jesus,
who's made a high priest forever.
So we don't have to have a mediatorial priesthood
to go through.
We go to God directly to be forgiven of our sins.
And we, of course, prepare our hearts
for departure from this world
between us and the Lord Jesus Christ
as a personal relationship with him.
I don't have to have someone performing a ritual over me
before I pass from this world.
And 1 Peter 2.5 says all believers are a holy priesthood.
1 Peter 2.9 says all believers are a royal priesthood.
Now, to be fair, Catholic doctrine does teach
that there's two classes of priests.
And that there's a ministerial priesthood,
and that there is a lesser level of priesthood
assigned to all believers.
But still, it's not the same as the biblical interpretation
of what a priest is.
Yeah.
And as you were talking about
the whole mediator concept there,
I'm reminded of 1 Timothy 2.5, where it says,
"'For there is one God and one mediator
"'who can reconcile God and humanity,
"'the man Christ Jesus.'"
And so that is one thing that has always helped me,
knowing that Jesus is the one that we pray to.
He's our mediator.
He's the one that's taking our intercession
to God the Father.
And it is not the saints, it's not Mary.
But that's one of the things where there's a big difference
is sainthood and Mary, and praying to people that,
or praying to saints that aren't Jesus.
And what actually is the sainthood, actually?
Let's talk about that for a little bit.
I think that's an important subject.
And incidentally, a lot of people don't understand
that Catholicism has evolved through the centuries.
And all of the beliefs that are now
comprising this worldview called Catholicism
have not always been a part of that organization.
For instance, just to give you one quick example
before I address sainthood, for instance,
the Immaculate Conception of Mary
is a major Catholic doctrine.
The belief that just like Jesus was conceived without sin,
so Mary was conceived without sin.
Unknown to most people, that became a Catholic belief
ratified by the church in 1854.
So just about, what, less than 150 years ago.
And then in 1950, through a papal decree
that was considered infallible,
the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary was introduced,
which is the belief that Mary was assumed up into heaven,
similar to Enoch or Elijah,
that she was assumed up to heaven.
And then in 1954, that's less than a century ago,
she was declared to be the queen of heaven.
And so these are more recent doctrines.
And if anyone begins to search out,
in fact, I'm about to put an article on my website.
My website is called to catholicswithlove.org.
And I'm about to put an article,
probably in the next week or two,
on the evolution of Catholic beliefs
and how many of them happened hundreds of years,
even a thousand or more years
after the coming of Jesus to this earth.
But talking about sainthood,
the scripture is very clear
in addressing all believers as saints.
If you go to the introduction of many of the epistles,
Paul would write to the saints which are at Ephesus,
to the saints which are at Philippi,
to the saints which are at Corinth.
So all believers were referred to that way.
And so we need to understand what a saint is.
A saint is a person who has been sanctified.
And there's a triune meaning to that.
To be sanctified means, number one,
to be cleansed from the defilement of sin.
Number two, to be made holy in the sight of God.
And number three, to be sanctified means
to be set apart for God's purposes.
And that happens at a true salvation experience.
You're cleansed from your sin by the blood of Jesus.
You are made holy because the Bible said the new man,
the inward man is created in righteousness
and true holiness.
You are rendered sinless by the power of the blood
of Jesus flowing through you.
And if you've truly surrendered to the lordship of Jesus,
you are set apart for God's divine purpose in your life.
Bam, you become a saint at that point.
And there was no concept of an exclusive group
of canonized saints.
The first thousand years of the church,
that happened much later on.
When I think it was in the 900s,
when the first saint was canonized.
And then eventually there evolved this concept
of being able to pray to the saints
to intervene in our behalf.
But to believe that, well,
I should mention the canonization process.
In order to be a canonized saint,
there has to be two miracles happen
by someone appealing to that saint in prayer.
And that person has to have a recognized life
of consecration, of course, and dedication.
But there has to be evidence supplied
that that person has some kind of power
in being approached after death for a miracle to be wrought.
Well, God in Deuteronomy 18, for instance,
he very explicitly prohibited anyone
trying to contact the dead.
And we have the account of Saul trying to contact Samuel
and how that even hastened his death
because he disobeyed God in going to a medium.
And I believe the whole Catholic concept
of praying to the saints is a transgression
against God's prohibiting of that practice.
Also, I believe not only is it theologically incorrect,
it's logically absurd because take, for instance,
if there's out of the church, maybe 25%
of 1.3 billion Catholics in the world,
if a quarter of a billion Catholics in one day
pray to Saint Peter.
Saint Peter has got to be aware
of 250 million conversations at once,
or a little over that.
And he's got to be personally present
in every one of those person's lives.
Now I do well to stay focused on one conversation
with one person at one time.
Can you imagine being hit with 250 million requests
in one day?
I cannot, I cannot.
You break that down mathematically
into minutes and seconds, and he's got thousands
of people coming to him every second by second.
And to process that, he'd have to have omniscience
and omnipresence, which are attributes only God has.
And to attribute that ability to Mary or to the saints
is to lift them up to the level of the Godhead.
And I believe that's impossibility.
And when you look at it just logically,
it doesn't make any sense at all.
Besides, I've got Jesus, the great high priest,
interceding for me.
And the Bible says that the spirit makes intercession
for us when we don't know how to pray.
So I've got the Holy Spirit,
and I've got the Lord Jesus Christ praying for me.
I don't have to ask a saint to come to my rescue.
I've got the two greatest intercessors in the universe
petitioning the Father in my behalf.
Yeah, and we're not speaking against the people
that are recognized as saints for who they are,
what they've done.
We're just talking about not praying to them.
They were great people.
God used them in mighty ways.
But praying to them is where there's an issue.
Is that correct?
I'm just clarifying that.
I think all believers are saints,
just like all acorns are potential oak trees.
But for that acorn to reach its full potential,
it's got to fall into the ground and die,
and then go through a growing process.
And newborn children of God don't always have
all the exhibited qualities of saintliness in their lives,
but they're growing into it.
And then there are some people who have demonstrated
Christlike character to a very high degree
that show they express saintliness in a more profound way.
And I think it's an inheritance
that belongs to all of us.
All believers are priests.
All believers are saints.
All believers are temples of God.
The church is a living body of believers.
The church is not an organization.
The church is an organism.
It's the living body of believers
who have come into a relationship with God.
And I think once people realize this,
they see the fallacy of all those other beliefs.
Yeah.
You know, Pastor Mike,
I've got a lot more questions for you,
and we might have to do another session.
I'd like to talk about purgatory and other concepts
that have worked in there as well.
But I don't wanna miss this opportunity.
Maybe we can talk about purgatory briefly,
but I do wanna make sure that we pray
for our Catholic friends and family,
brothers and sisters at the end of this time.
But let's talk about purgatory.
Could you explain a little bit about that?
Well, purgatory is the idea of a temporary realm.
It's been described as a realm of suffering.
It's also been described as a realm of purging,
where a person is purged of evil attributes
or negative attributes
that they haven't dealt with during life.
And they're not holy enough
to enter the glory of heaven at death,
but they're not so evil that they should be consigned to hell.
That's the concept that they will therefore
have to spend a period of time in purgatory
in order to atone for their sins.
Well, I believe first of all,
that takes away from the price that Jesus paid
because the Bible said He suffered once for all
to sanctify us.
And there's nothing I can do to earn a status
of acceptability or a status of a great enough holiness
in order to enter the glory of heaven.
Because then I dismiss the idea that grace is sufficient.
I dismiss the idea that faith is sufficient.
I dismiss the idea that Jesus' death on the cross
and resurrection is sufficient.
Then it becomes a works-based mentality
that somehow I have to do something
to earn the status of eternal life in heaven.
And I believe that's an insult to the cross, very much so.
I do a whole chapter on purgatory
and a whole chapter on indulgences in the book.
And I go into a lot of detail in those two chapters
and I couldn't even hardly summarize
everything I cover on this interview.
But I would like to say that there is no Catholic source
that explains the nature of what a person goes through
in purgatory to become a more holy person.
It doesn't define it at all.
It just assumes that there's a suffering process after death.
Well, what happens?
Does a soul just float around
and re-experience the torment of failure
and a realization that they failed God
until that torment cleanses them?
There's no, like I said,
no definition of the process whatsoever.
And by the way, purgatory is a very contested concept
that caused the division of the Eastern
and Western portion of the church around.
It was about a thousand years after the birth of the church,
there was a huge argument among,
I think it was a great deal of why
the Greek Orthodox Church split off
and some other issues as well.
But I am firmly rooted in the belief
that there's only two destinations after death
and that's either heaven or hell.
The Bible never talks about purgatory.
I would like to address the go-to scripture.
In fact, Catholics say this is the go-to scripture
if you're gonna try and prove purgatory,
that you should go to this scripture definitely.
And I'm looking in the book right now
so I can quote it to you exactly.
It's out of Paul's writings to the Corinthians
where he said, no other foundation can be laid
than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
And if any man build on this foundation,
if he builds good works, then they endure forever,
but he can also build, he can build gold, silver,
silver or precious stones or wood, hay or stubble.
And it said, the day that comes
shall try those works by fire.
And that those works will either be burned up
and the person be saved or that the fire will reveal
every man's work of what sort it is.
And if you read that passage of scripture
out of Corinthians very carefully,
it does not say that the fire will try every man's works
over a period of thousands of years.
It says the day, the day, capital letter D,
the day shall declare it.
And so it's talking about the specific day
when Jesus will come again in flaming fire
and all his holy angels.
And at that moment, he will judge, he will discern,
he will immediately assess the works
that have been in our life.
And he will determine whether or not
it's wood, hay or stubble.
And instantly that scripture is only dealing with Christians.
It's not dealing with the unbelievers.
It says, if any man build on this foundation,
what foundation?
No other foundation can be laid
than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
So it's talking about those who've tried
to build their life on Jesus,
but that some of them have built works
that are wood, hay and stubble.
They're lifeless, they're of no eternal value.
And I would dare to say a lot of what's been done
in denominational Christianity is wood, hay and stubble
because it involves doctrines and practices
and traditions that are not biblical.
And so because of that, the works will be burned up,
but if a person truly loves Jesus and is born again,
they will be saved yet so as by fire.
That's not talking about purgatory.
It's talking about what we do for the Lord
after we're saved.
Yeah, it's very important for people to know
why you believe what you believe,
and also where did that belief come from?
If you can trace that belief back to the Bible,
the word of God, then you're in good standing.
If you trace it back to history or tradition,
then you've got rocky ground and that is not a good thing.
Always get back to the foundation of Jesus Christ
and his word and then you're gonna be
in a much, much better place for sure.
Pastor Mike, any closing thoughts
and then would you wrap up in prayer
and pray for our Catholic brothers and sisters?
Incidentally, that scripture I just quoted,
I found it while you were talking
this 1 Corinthians 3 verses 11 through 15.
And you mentioned one word that I want to end with
very concisely and that's the word tradition.
The reason that Catholics can embrace many ideas,
many concepts that are not biblical
is because of something called
the three legs of Catholicism.
It's depicted as a stool, a stool that has a top
and three legs of equal height of equal importance.
And the three legs are sacred scripture,
sacred tradition and the magisterium.
And the magisterium is a word
meaning the hierarchy of the church,
the Pope and all the bishops.
Well, if sacred tradition includes an idea,
concept or practice that is not found in the Bible,
that's okay.
According to Catholicism, that's of equal authority
and equally believable if it's established
by the magisterium.
And so that's why they can have many beliefs
that are not necessarily found in the Bible.
And I would just urge anyone who's a Catholic
who's listening to this,
I want you to know that my whole motive
in making you address or encouraging you,
I'll put it that way,
encouraging you to address these issues
and to examine these concepts and ideas
is so that you can sift your way
through the things that have prevented you
from having a genuine encounter with the Lord.
I did not receive the Holy Spirit when I was confirmed,
but when I was 20 years old,
I got baptized in the Holy Spirit
and began speaking in tongues.
And it was literally like heaven on earth.
That moment was ecstasy beyond description.
I want you precious Catholics
to experience being born again,
like I did when I was 19,
to experience being filled with the Holy Spirit,
like I did when I was 20.
That's my heart's cry for you.
And so I'm praying right now,
Father God in the name of Jesus,
especially if there are Catholic brothers and sisters
listening to this presentation,
I pray that you will open their eyes to the truth
and reveal yourself to them
in a very powerful and profound way
and that they will come into a greater depth
of a personal relationship with you
than they've ever had before.
May there be a great deliverance
from any beliefs that are non-biblical
and may they see the importance
of the foundation of the word of God being in their life
at the expense of any other beliefs being forsaken
that are not biblically based.
Let that be the major step forward
that many of those listening to this podcast make
in Jesus' name, amen.
Amen and amen.
Pastor Mike Shreve, it's great to have you here
on Charisma News to talk about this new book,
the beliefs of the Catholic Church.
And I wanna encourage people to go to catholicswithlove.org
for more information from Pastor Mike.
Definitely he's got some great resources
that you need to check out.
So Pastor Mike, thank you so much
for joining us here on Charisma News.
It's always a blessing, John.
You're a great brother in the Lord.
I appreciate you.
Well, thank you.
Bless you.