Host Cy Kellett welcomes Trent Horn to talk to an Ex-Catholic.
Transcript:
Caller: Or grew up Catholic. My wife was. We had practiced the Catholic faith in our home. In 2006, my wife was invited to a non denominational women’s conference with about 1800 women. And she went on her own. She didn’t go with anybody, but she just experienced something she’d never experienced before. She heard the word of God spoken. And just being in the presence of 1800 women that were worshiping and praising God was something that she hadn’t experienced before. And when she came home, she says, you know, I don’t know what’s going on, but I think we need to check this out. So we continued to go to the Catholic Church, but we started going to the San denominational church also, so every weekend. And we did that for over a year. And we kept going because we were hearing things we weren’t hearing about in scripture. We were hearing and reading about the assurance of salvation.
Trent Horn: Yeah. So, John, I guess there’s two things that pop in my mind. One I just want to throw out there. I sympathize with you that sometimes, you know, we might go to a parish and it’s, it’s spiritually dry. I mean we might, it could be a lackluster homilies. You know, the, the music is, you know, wanting, you know, is. There’s a music there that is either, you know, very poor or is reminiscent of like an 80s TV jingle or something like that. And, you know, you don’t feel the spirit. You know, it feels kind of ritualistic and rote. And I, and I can sympathize with that though. I would say that Catholics who maybe are in a parish and you don’t feel like the spirit moving. Why aren’t these people on fire for their faith? It doesn’t seem in that way. One, I would say they could be on fire in a different way, that they have very deep contemplative prayer that’s different from how other people show vigor in the Holy Spirit. The other would be, perhaps it would be wise, why not go and see other Catholic parishes where people are seeing the work of the Holy Spirit more manifest. So for example, you might enjoy researching the Charismatic Catholic Renewal. So there they are, Catholics who really focus on the continuing gifts of the Holy Spirit and charisms. They believe in praise and worship. That really evokes the whole person. So you might want to say, hey, maybe you might see a lot of the stuff you see in the non denominational church. I would recommend maybe go and look at the Charismatic Catholic Renewal. And I was trying to look online, hoping I’d find something right here as I spoke to you. But in Dallas, they did a conference there a year ago. They might be doing another one nearby. You might want to check that out. But number two, I would say that you’re bringing up that. Well, there’s things we heard doctrine wise. So there’s one is like prayer and piety, like there’s people who are just really fervent and zealous. But the other would be teachings. And I would say you’re correct. When you go to Protestant churches, you may hear other teachings. But I would caution you that you should only believe them if they’re true, not just because they may sound good. Does that make sense?
Caller: It does, sure.
Trent Horn: So you talked about, you heard about assurance of salvation. What does that mean to you?
Caller: That means that I can trust the scriptures of Romans 10, 9 and other places, and we don’t have time to go through them all. But if I openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in my heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And further, it says everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. That’s pretty definitive. Now, just what I got to close is it was my heart issue. I was playing a part time Christian for 50 years. I was attending, I was trying.
Trent Horn: What do you mean?
Caller: It really was my heart issue. And that’s what changed. And that’s when we gave our lives to Christ. There truly was a change, a transformation in our lives, both of our lives. We saw things differently that we used to tolerate, that we would, we just, we were uncomfortable with. And there was a truly a change in our lives and a transformation in our lives. Sure. You know, I feel like, I feel like the guy, the blind guy in John, you know, the Pharisees kept asking him, you know, what happened to you? What happened to you?
Trent Horn: Right.
Caller: And he says, I don’t know. You know, I was blind and now I can see.
Trent Horn: Sure. Well, let me, let me jump in on that, John, with a few resources and thoughts here before we have to run to our hard break here. First, I don’t doubt that you had an experience where you felt a connection with Jesus that you may never felt before. And that is a trap that people can fall into within the Catholic faith that even though we receive Jesus in the Eucharist, we can take that for granted and things can become ritualized and we don’t feel the graces of the sacraments moving on our hearts and affecting our souls. So it’s the same as people in Jesus’s Time that there are people who knew him day in and day out, and they took Jesus for granted. They were familiar with him. You know, even the people in his hometown said, you know, this is the Messiah. This is, this is the kid that, to give the Trent horn paraphrase of Scripture, is this not the carpenter’s son? Is this not the kid that ran around in diapers around us? This is, this is the Messiah. So when things are familiar, sometimes we don’t see how good they are, especially growing up Catholic. That can be the case for a lot of people. However, I would say that if you, you have a new vigor of having a reignited relationship with Jesus that is not opposed to seeking a deeper relationship with him through the Church, through the sacraments, seeking him in confession to free us from sins, receiving him in the Eucharist. So Jesus dwells within our bodies, temples of the Holy Spirit dedicated to Him. When it comes to assurance of salvation, I agree with you that what Romans is saying. Notice something interesting in the passage. It’s not using the past tense, it’s using the present tense. It’s not, if you confessed with your lips that Jesus is Lord, or if you confessed or did this at some point in the past, you will be saved. It’s present tense. That is. That’s correct. Those people who confess with their lips, those people who do this, who are in Christ, as Paul says, they will be saved. But the problem is when you go later in Scripture, when you go one chapter later In Romans, chapter 11, we see here that God talks about how he says in Romans 11:22, note then the kindness and the severity of God, severity towards those who have fallen. But God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness, otherwise you too will be cut off. So even there in Romans, that, yeah, those who are in Christ who are actively confessing him, will be saved. But we could still fall away. And In Romans, chapter 11, Paul talks about those who are in Christ who can be cut off because of that. So I would recommend that you look into that. I tell you what, I will send you a few of my resources on this. I hope you’ll look over them and then I’d love for you to call back and we could discuss it more. So stay on the line. We will give you, you know, stay on the line, give our call screener your contact information and I will send you some resources. I’d love to hear back from you again.