hi my name is Kenneth David Schrank and you're listening to Catholic versus Protestant so tell us a little bit about yourself if you would please who you are what you believe and how you came to believe what you believe sure well I'm 56 years old I live in California I've been a Christian for 38 years I came to Christ in Calvary Chapel of Riverside under Greg Lori and I believe the Bible I believe the Bible's pretty much 100% true and I've had faith in Jesus for that long and and I'm sticking to it can you talk a little bit about your childhood how were you raised was the religion in the home was a prayer in the home did they take you to church where your grandparents very religious or your parents or your siblings just paint a little picture for me if you would please about your childhood well I was not religious in my upbringing my parents had their faith my dad was German Catholic my mother was presbyterian so you can imagine the conflict so yeah my dad my dad was a maybe what considered a faithful Roman Catholic I don't know but he married my mother outside of the Catholic Church because of the doctrine of the Catholic Church requires you to be Catholic so my mom was not converting to Roman Catholicism so the priest told my dad he said all your sons are bastards so that's what my dad told me and I heard even the German Pope the last German Pope he he clarified that publicly that the only way to salvation is through the Roman Catholic Church and all other faiths are either defective or false so I have to believe what he says do you remember as a very young child praying and bad at meals and can you just talk about some of the early experiences you have reaching out to God no I was I was technically I guess raised like an atheist I I didn't believe in God I think I remember a couple times where my mother had me in church probably just to get rid of me and so no I didn't learn anything about Jesus until I was 18 years old what happened at 18 well primarily I think the reason why I came to Christ was had to do with my older brother committing suicide my dad was an okinawan the Marine Corps ISKCON and he had he came back because of course of the family problems and so my dad had accepted Christ before I did and I didn't make a commitment to Christ until I had an actual encounter with Christ I guess I mean I was learning from I had I had wrestled in high school and we would pray and the wrestling matches and I didn't think anything of it I didn't wasn't against it I wasn't for it I just went along with it and so and I think I went to one Bible study in my high school when I was 18 and crossed the street from the school a smoking area because that's where I used to hang out and I would I remember learning something about the book of Philippians but I didn't understand a word he said so until God actually drew me when I was 18 I understood nothing and comprehending nothing about the Bible so I was a blank slate and so my girlfriend at the time was a Christian though we weren't walking with Christ and she wasn't you know we were sitting in sin so she had mentioned to me that I needed to ask Jesus in my heart and I just like I don't know what you're talking about you know so I ponder that for a while and eventually though God I was these little things that I probably heard over time they started to strike me and I actually had a legitimate interest I guess at a point because I didn't really want to live anymore my older brother committed suicide I guess it runs in the family I don't know but I was thinking about suicide myself and I was like no I can't I can't do that to my besides I'm not brave enough to do that so I called out to God and as soon as I called out to God I said god help me before I even had the words out of my mouth the phone was ringing and so I answered the phone and it was my dad on the phone so my dad is a practicing Christian at the time and so he says so any cause I want to help you get your life together and I'm like that's weird I didn't really make a connection to the prayer and calling out the God till later and after I became a Christian I'm like yeah that was God answering my prayer so he goes I want to I'm down at the Toyota Riverside and I want to help you get a car and help you get a job and dadadada because I was kind of a basket case and still AM I'm 56 now but I you know from doing drugs and everything I had some devastation I guess in my life and so I'm still recovering from that I think so I went down to and got the car and got my life together and started following Jesus to the best I possibly could I guess at the time I'm but I'm probably still not that good at it but I do believe it so God helped me establish get my life together at least give me some hope at that point and I made a commitment to Christ at when I was 18 I'd like if it's possible I'd like you to talk a little bit about the church I want you to talk to me about your personal conversion to Christ and then how that led you to join a church or a congregation or maybe it didn't maybe you're just completely on your own with your Bible maybe you don't go to church maybe you don't have a pastor maybe you don't have a congregation I don't know but can you talk a little bit about the church because the Bible puts a lot of emphasis on the church that it is the pillar and bulwark of the truth and that it is the mystical body of Christ and that Christ and His Church are one flesh and this is a deep mystery there's a lot of emphasis on the church we see in the New Testament and particularly in the book of Acts and in the letters of Paul a great emphasis on building the church seeding the church helping the church to keeping the church on course and we see in the book of Revelation a lot of stern warnings against the church that the churches are going astray and they need to be brought back into line with Jesus Christ so just talk about your experience or practical experience with the Church of Jesus Christ well I've been in Calvary Chapel pretty much all my life and that's what I'm comfortable with the passage that started that was Chuck Smith in Costa Mesa it's a worldwide church it's a non-denominational Church and Greg Laurie was my pastor for probably 16 years greg is known as an evangelist he's a great evangelist and Bible teacher he's he's a good guy as far as human beings go this is so what do you want to talk about from here we can move on to other subjects well I think that there's some issues with in Roman Catholicism that like the priesthood and or the celibacy in the priesthood I think that's kind of an issue I think that most of the people within the church don't have that gift to celibacy so I don't know where they get that that basis for for celibacy within the Catholic Church I mean because you got the priests who are required to be celibate and then you got two nuns and all the leadership in the church is required celibacy at a certain level I guess I personally don't understand where they get that from in the Catholic Church we do have married priests in the eastern part of the church and in the western part of the church it's been a discipline that priests cannot marry but they're not forced to become priests it's a calling from God or it's supposed to be a calling obviously many people that became priests became priests because it was an attractive job you know Satan calls people into the priesthood for the wrong reasons and God calls people into the priesthood for the right reasons and so we've got every one of our priests called into the priesthood but some one they're called in by God and some of them are called in by Satan so we need to make that distinction and you should never trust any man even if he's wearing the Roman collar but my point is that we do have the discipline of celibacy in the western part Church but that could change tomorrow so it's really not a very controversial topic but early in this interview you said something about the Bible being almost 100 percent true can you clarify what you meant by that well I think that they did the best they could in some instances to record what was said about Jesus and what happened like with Judas how he committed suicide or whatever there may be some disparity there as far as exactly how he died in and so forth there may be little variations in the recorded history of it so I don't think that God told every there's this is specifically what I want you to write so some was identified through investigation as a they did the best they could that's what I mean it's a Catholic dogma that there are no errors at all in the Bible the Bible is inerrant it is a perplexing dogma but the dogma nonetheless needs to be adhered to by every Christian that the Bible is inerrant it's the Word of God it's inspired meaning that the author's the secondary authors are the humans who were free to write but they also wrote what God inspired them to write not by dictation but by inspiration just like when you got that phone call from your dad when you were in need of helping you cried out to God you get that phone call from your dad God works with these secondary causes with the inspiration of the authors when they wrote what God wanted them to write so it is an infallible dogma of the church that the Bible is 100% inerrant and as st. Augustine famously said in the fifth century if there's even one area of doubt one error concerning faith and morals then the whole book we can just chuck it into the garbage there's absolutely no way to recover from that and also we need to know that the Bible is a special set of books it is an infallible set of infallible books which means that there are no other books from other religions that can be compared with it in terms of that inspiration or in terms of inerrancy and in terms of it being the fullness of truth saving truth everything that we need to know is there in sacred tradition and in Sacred Scripture and I think you'll agree that st. John said that if everything that Jesus said was written down the world itself couldn't contain all the books so there is sacred tradition and that too is infallible so I just wanted to reinforce this Catholic dogma that the Bible is a very very very special book and there's no way for you as a Protestant to know even which books are in the Bible without the authority of the holy roman catholic church that met in council over centuries to decide which books were in and which books were out so you need to understand that if you're bowing to the authority of the bible you are necessarily bowing to the authority of the church right but those books existed hundreds of years before the catholic church even got its authority through Rome and I have read the Catholic Bible I've read the deuterocanonical the second Canon the Maccabees and Daniel or whatever wisdom I read some of those books and and I kind of have to agree with the Protestants on that one even though I find that there's probably some historical value with those other books they didn't quite measure up to the level of the rest of Scripture but do you trust yourself in your private judgment or are you somehow for some reason convinced that it's God Almighty inside of you guaranteeing that your judgment is not a private judgment that it is the judgment of the Holy Spirit in you saying that these deuterocanonical books are not inspired and they are not part of the Canon of the Old Testament you have to compare it with Scripture all right but how do you compare a candidate for Scripture with Scripture if you don't know what Scripture is the whole exercise is to figure out what Scripture is and we need an out at the Catholic Church - it will give them more authority than me because Jesus Christ and the Holy Roman Catholic Church are one they're one flesh as Saint Paul says in Holy Scripture you may feel that your canon of Scripture is infallible but there are only two possibilities when you have that feeling it's either just an arbitrary feeling you have and you might be wrong it's not a feeling it's not a feeling like I said I've read Maccabees in all these other books they don't rise to the level of the authority of the Bible they just don't have the power to change a person's life they don't have the same level of integrity that the Bible has but if you were to sit down with Martin Luther and Martin Luther said well James is not inspired James is not part of the Canon of the New Testament would you agree with him because he has authority or would you say well the Holy Spirit told me that James is inspired and that James is part of the infallible set of books what would you say to Luther I think James oh the leader of the church lon so was Luther wrong well I don't I don't read Luther but he was just as convinced as you are I agree with you that you can't eliminate certain books on individual interpretation so yeah I agree with you on that I can't do it myself but there has to be a consensus of people that are inspired that by the Holy Spirit to discern which which is done like you said in the Catholic Church it was done in the Protestant Church by a consensus of people that went through and determined these things yes I I don't think I have that authority alone know that there has to be scholars I'm not a scholar so I'm trusting scholars that they interpreted whether they were Catholic or Protestant or whoever they might be to have interpreted the Scriptures properly and then give it to me but I do find that the scripture is an agreement from Genesis all the way up through revelation so whatever these scholars were they gave it to me I think they did a pretty good job so I if the Catholics did it I you know I'm thankful to them that they did it and I but I think that they had an authority if if the Roman Empire did not protect Christianity the way they did then we'd probably be still hiding in caves I don't know that and it would have been very difficult to accumulate any kind of writings and to store them and to put them in a library and so forth so that we could have them so yeah so I guess that was important that they protected the Christianity for sure for sure I think that Roman Catholicism is a complicated creature and I think the most important thing for people to realize is that they first that they have faith so yeah this is not just a Protestant notion of putting faith first it's a constant struggle for Catholics to put faith first and it's a constant temptation to fall back on to religion religiosity as a crutch so I just wanted to make that very clear to the listeners it's not like Catholics are comfortable with religion and that Protestants are all perfectly free in Christ and their faith is on fire and all Catholics are just stalled content with following the Pope and the rules and just having a lifeless and Limp faithless participation in externals it's not like that there's a mixed bag in among the Protestants there's a mixed bag among the Catholics and there's a mixed bag amongst Muslims and Jews and everyone else there are even lukewarm atheists atheists that don't live up to their religion so I think this is a universal thing now i-i've know lots of Catholics but if I ask most Catholics if you died today do you know for sure that you're going to heaven most of them are like no I how do I know that you know as I've done a lot of bad stuff in my life so in their perception they think that Roman Catholicism apparently their religion is a works based religion that if I do enough good that somehow I've overcome the bad so if I asked you David if you died today would you go to heaven would you be with Jesus Christ what would you say at the moment of death were vulnerable to attack if you read the Saints throat the past 2,000 years you'll always see a great emphasis on death judgment heaven and hell these are the four things and death is always described as a trial it's always described as a time of temptation where your weakness is amplified where the memories of your sins floods you with guilt confusion anxiety and where the demons can tempt you to distrust God or to even turn on God so they can have your soul forever so we need to constantly pray to God that at the moment of death and in the moments of weakness that we will not succumb to temptation the temptation of the flesh the temptation of the world the temptation of the devil there are so many temptations waiting for us at the moment of death and at all moments of weakness whether we're sick just think about yourself when you're sick when you're tired are you more patient or are you less patient well when I'm sick I'm less patient and it's the same thing at the moment of death I am very vulnerable I'm very weak and it requires grace to persevere to the end so I'm praying every day for God to protect me because I'm weak and if I have the sin of presumption and I say well I'm saved that is a sin that is a grave sin for me to be 100% convinced that I'm saved that's a grave sin that's a damnable sin so I need to know I need the grace of God to take this breath and to have this heartbeat right now and just to exist right now I need God's grace and I need the grace of God to have faith today and tomorrow and and more importantly I need the grace of God to continue to cherish the faith and to protect my faith and to hopefully build my faith not because I am strong but because God is strong because Jesus Christ is strong so I have to I have to be aware of the fact that that I am weak and I can say yes today and I can say no tomorrow you know the Bible says that as many is received and they are the children of God you know in John so if you receive him your child of God I'm not ever going to deny Jesus Christ I mean I might be a sinner till the day I die I know that but that's why the blood of Jesus covers all sin so it covers all past sins well present and future sins so I'm not ever going to depart from God I know that I'm his child I've been a Christian for I'm not like I said I my probably going to go on performance I probably you know don't measure up very good but if you're going to go on faith which is what I prefer because I have been weak my whole life like you said when you're weak and I know what that's like and that's that's really why Jesus became the mediator not necessarily the priest but Jesus the high priest he's a mediator because he understood he understood as a human being that he was weak and so he understands our weaknesses so therefore he he doesn't judge us harshly based on that he understands that in the flesh were weak and so he he understands that we're going to fail I mean that's just the way we are and I've been you know somewhat disabled I said most of my life and headaches and respiratory problems all kinds of things that made it hard for me to function in the world and I've failed on a big level so but God doesn't he said I'm his child and if I call on his name I'm saved so I don't think that it's going to be on a scale or anything like that or maybe one week right before I die that I'm going to somehow it denied Jesus Christ I've been a Christian for 38 years and there's been periods where I doubt it but I don't doubt anymore I don't know I don't doubt God's goodness I doubt my own idols that I'm secretly worshiping that I'm secretly more in love with myself than I am in love with God that's the danger right where you're so you're so that you're so deluded and hypocritical like the Pharisees where you think that oh I'm a religious person I have faith I follow the rules and aside the other thing and let me just temper or moderate my comment by saying that I'm very much on fire with faith I'm very much in love with God I trust God 100% I have no doubt and I am pretty confident that I'm not gonna go to hell because number one I don't want to and number two God doesn't want me to go to hell God wants me to go to heaven to be with him it's like you said there's a good parent and if you ask even an evil parent here below for a loaf of bread they're not gonna give you a scorpion even even an evil human being is not that he's not that stupid so imagine God Almighty who's all good when I asked him for faith when I asked him for perseverance when I asked him for that seed of faith that has fallen on to me that it fall on good soil that it takes root that it not dry up that it not be choked by the anxieties of the world that not be snatched up by Satan do you understand that parable of the seed well that's that's why though that Jesus said that there's some that the fruit remains so there are people that are committed that their fruits always going to be there and they're not going to depart from him just like just like the people when we were talking about the Eucharist the people that Jesus told them he said you got to eat my body and drink my blood a bunch of people left right so there's people that are just Fairweather friends or whatever that are going to depart from Jesus because they're not loyal they don't know who he is so and they don't know that he's you know he's not ever going to jesus was not going to have them break the law just like he wasn't going to have abraham sacrifice his son he was interested in them having faith and knowing who he was so the people that stayed were the people that were his true believers I mean so if you if you are a true believer it will be like jesus said he that endureth to the end so yeah if you don't depart from God because there's many atheists that have had they have departed from God they think somehow that the Bible is evil I don't think that I know that the Bible is true and I know that God has promised just like God promised to Abraham that his seed from eight you know Isaac he was going to populate the planet with his descendants and that's why he knew he could sacrifice his son and he would raise from the dead if he had to you know I mean because he knew that God was faithful so he just trusted God and so his face was not going to depart so you kind of fell a line though was almost there pretty much every Catholic that I've met that says I don't know for sure but I could go into the Protestant community and it doesn't matter whether they're Pentecostal or Baptist or whatever they might be and if I ask them that question almost a hundred percent of them are gonna say yeah I just know that I'm saved and they're not going to doubt it so somehow in your training in the Catholic Church they've given you the idea that somehow maybe that you might somehow not make it but basically there are two dangers on either side of our walk with God on the one side is presumption where we say yeah I'm saved like Luther said I'm saved I can sin as much as I want he broke his vows and he went and got married even though he had taken about vows of celibacy and he was indulging in all kinds of sin because he said I'm saved I can't go to hell so I'm gonna indulge in sin he said sin and sin boldly because there's nothing we can do there's nothing we can do to lose that we can do to lose salvation so sin boldly that's what he said but that that sin of presumption is on one side of our walk with God that's one danger but on the other side there's the other danger which is which is what do they call it despair so presumptions on one side that's one danger but on the other side is despair where we say oh I'll never be saved Oh God doesn't love me I'm not worthy to be saved and it's true you're not worthy to be saved but you are saved so in between those two extremes those two dangers yet we're never worthy but in between despair which says I'll never be I'll never I'll never make it and on and on the one hand and on the other hand saying I'm in I'm 100% in in between those two extremes we have the love of a son for a good father a good son that loves his good father that trusts his father that's the path we need to walk on so the person that's fearful and doubting on the one hand with despair he's like a slave he has a servile fear he says well God's a big nasty bossman in the sky and he's gonna whip me and beat me and torture me in hell and I'm really scared of him and that's not true and then on the and there's the presumption that says oh well God's my little uncle and I can walk all over him and just take his gifts and I don't need to I don't need to thank him and I don't need to worship Him and I don't need to go to church and I don't need to read the Bible and I don't need to pray and I can just I'm I'm the spoiled child of this rich father figure that's presumption and neither of those loves is perfect neither of those loves is a perfect love the perfect love is the wholesome sincere and spontaneous love of a child that's innocent that's that's that's in relationship with this loving parent there are no barriers there's no mask it's an open loving relationship in two directions there's trust there's hope there's love and everything everything is just natural and simple very very simple so that's the path that Christians are called to that's the teaching of the Catholic Church and I don't I don't think that you would disagree with that not really so at the end of my episodes I do ask my guests to give a little message of hope and the reason that I asked my guests to give a little message of hope is because there are a lot of people that are isolated and lonely today it might be because of Technology because of original sin or because they're not close with God I don't know but just to wrap up what do you think you might be able to say to anyone that's out there listening now well I see God is good myself right my life has not gone that well but I take responsibility for all my actions and I know that I've sold a lot of bad seeds in my life and I also know that a lot of that came about because of lack of faith or even those negative thoughts and feelings like you're talking about because even though I was a Christian I still made bad decisions and a lot of that negativity comes from those bad decisions so I don't hold God accountable for that at all so I take responsibility for those things when I confess those things to God so recognizing that what God said you know which is good for you know does to love one another and do not harm our neighbors and to love him those are all good things and I'm not going to turn against God merely because things in my life go bad or you know maybe I'm a job even you know but job was a perfect man I'm nowhere close to him so things went bad for job and he was perfect in God's eyes and so whether I end up like Lazarus as a an impoverished bum and has to beg scraps as a Christian that's fine with me because I'd rather die in faith with nothing than to have everything and lose my soul as Jesus said you know so you know what but did the Prophet man if he gains the whole world is on so so I would rather be unhappy and you know have nothing in this world and just have Jesus than to have everything that possibly the devil could give to me so that is my hope is that God saves me and gives me an eternal blessing that I will one day walk with Him where here there will be no more tears and no more sorrow no more pain that's what sounds good to me because I've seen lots of pain and suffering I've been to places where I should have never been as a Christian and I've gone to hell and back because of bad decisions and even because the world doesn't like me I mean the world doesn't like me still because even though I've made mistakes I'm not going to contradict my face and say that you know God doesn't exist because I've failed so I take full responsibility and God is always right I find him to be infallible and I know that he loves me so even though I don't have everything I don't expect that from God though I just know that God loves me and that he takes care of me and he protects me and I know that when I die God's going to receive me because that's the promise he made to me that if I call upon his name that I shall be saved and it's not based on my works per se so it's not of works lest any man both otherwise I could boast to you and say yeah I'd been a really good Christian I've already messed that up there's no possible way that I could say I was a really good Christian like Greg Laurie or Billy Graham or somebody things like that so sometimes I'm probably a little hard with the atheist because I I was technically an ACS at 18 because I had the same questions although I'd never read the Bible I didn't have any of you about whether God was moral or immoral or a cruel dictator all I knew is that the world was messed up and so I I found it hard to believe that there might be a guy that would allow such things but now I'm 56 years old I know how human beings are I just know that it's human nature to err and fail so my dad was a failure I've been a failure you know my mother everybody's pretty much a failure in my family so I pretty much know that bad things are going to happen because of that and so I'm not judging God according to that to the nature of man which is to make mistakes so for the atheist I think that you still have to be I was a tender atheist even as an atheist I probably had some Christian type standards where I you know I probably didn't believe in abortion I found it hard you know I had a few deaths like with animals and that those were things that really struck my heart where I would cry you know and so I think yeah I had a tender heart still towards you know death and and God really so and I was an honest person and I think that as you know for the atheist they have to approach God honestly you know and human beings just aren't very honest for one if you're honest you might lose everything you have and then you've got of course you know reap whatever you sown so but I just encourage the idea is to be honest about themselves and about God and not necessarily with man but with God himself and that you know approach the Bible with you know that honesty about whether something is good or bad and you know because that's that's what the Bible is really about it's just about you know what's best for humankind because God loves us he sent his son you know and God in flesh to die on the cross for our sins I believe that that's the greatest hope is that you know that this world is just so temporal we only have a short time here that we don't need to put all of our emphasis on this world and that's what I think the Atheist tensity tends to focus on on this life and you know it's good not to make mistakes obviously so try to make the best possible decisions you can and I think you need to lean towards the Bible to make good decisions and so the hope is not necessarily in living the perfect life or you know not necessarily getting trouble with the law or whatever it might be your hope is in Jesus that's supposed to be your hope is that one day you'll have eternal life because we're not guaranteed that everything will go our way in this life and we're not supposed to pursue those things that's that's what part of God's promises is that we don't pursue earthly things if we're interested in the truth and an interestin of God because Jesus doesn't have a earthly kingdom Jesus already owns everything and we are going to we already pretty much own everything if we have faith in Jesus Christ that we're going to have mansions and so forth in heaven and that this life is just a place of suffering and pain and and sorrow that we can't put hope in we can't put trust in human beings and their knowledge and even in science I I don't hold too many kind of scientific views concerning the Bible I I believe the Bible so my hope is totally in God and that's where I get my hope I mean that's where the Atheist I I think they should focus on God that's all and I think that's where the hope is derived from because when we practice and you know we despair and and you have to believe though that God is going to save you it no matter what because I don't I don't think that God is going to to ever leave us or forsake us as you know God said he's you said that he said I'm not going to leave you or forsake you so I have to trust that that that is true and that he's going to save me no matter what so even if I do sin like I said no Martin Luther might have sinned and maybe he did it extravagantly but I think that I've seen dick stravagant Lisa but I never plan to do that you know I just the way it is that we are sinners sometimes so I've always believed that God was going to save me and I still believe that and and actually in a pretty good spot right now where I feel like God is leading me more than he is the best but that requires faith so I just advise every atheist to put their faith in Jesus and no matter what happens that you stand with Jesus because he's good and I said I don't I don't know very many atheists that even could say that Jesus was that as far as his testimony so to look at God is being Jesus is because that was what God was always intending that man would be perfect and that we would have a perfect environment and because of sin all these bad things have entered in and so not to judge God by the bad things because we need to take responsibility for those that's my hope is it's Jesus that he that he saves me I have no I have my life is probably different than many other people I've got lots of baggage and and so I couldn't put any hope in this world if I wanted to so I am forced to love Jesus and and put my hope in Jesus because I don't have any hope anywhere else it's been 38 years and I'm you know the performance is not been good but it's it's been worth it I would not exchange anything that I've gone through for anything that the world could have offered me I mean if they offered me like to be President of the United States or you know the wealthiest man in the world I wouldn't switch it what I went through and where I'm at today for any of that so if I end up like Lazarus that's fine with me