Jeff Durbin (5:31)
It's. Yeah, it's, you know, it's just, it's. It's not fair, not just to say that you can be for legal immigration and against illegal immigration and still be pro life. And it doesn't have to be the category of Nah, yeah, I like, I like the inhuman in main treatment. I want to get them abused. I'd like to get them harmed as much as possible before we send them back across the border. I like it. Not fair. Not a way to. Not, Not a way to steel man your opponent's position. But the Pope says that again, the vicar of Christ on Earth, the one who's in Peter's chair, he, he says you can't be pro life and for capital punishment, which I find so peculiar, because God is both those things. He is for the preservation and protection of human life. And he is clearly, clearly, clearly, clearly for capital punishment in cases like rape, in cases like murder, in cases like kidnapping and enslaving. And it's just, it's all over the Bible. And, you know, somebody could say, well, I was Old Testament. Okay, well, Jesus said, Matthew 5, 17, 19, that he did not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. And if you teach anybody to disobey even the least of these commandments, you'll be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them be called great in the kingdom of heaven. So Jesus view of the law is. Do not even begin to think that I've come to destroy the law or the prophets. And so interesting also that the apostle Paul in his ministry in Acts 25, during his ministry in Acts 25. He says something that is just powerful after the cross, after the resurrection, after the ascension of Jesus. So the new covenant now is like in force. All right? Jesus is on his throne. He's accomplished redemption, all that's done. Now he says when he's on trial, ascension, essentially. He says, if I've done anything worthy of death, this is an inspired apostle in the new Covenant. He says, if I've done anything worthy of death, then I don't object to dying. Which means that there are things, according to an inspired apostle, that are actually worthy of the death penalty. And it would be right for Paul to be executed for those things. And so he says, if I've done anything worthy of it, then I don't object to dying. All right? Because that's just, that's the right thing that should happen. And that's in the New Covenants. Post cross, post resurrection, post ascension. That's Paul inspired apostle, very reliable source. And, and there's more, of course, in the New Testament itself in terms of capital punishment. But the Bible is just filled with this, from the very mouth of God. So you have a question, sorry, a decision to make. Who do I believe? Whose voice carries the weight? Who, Whose voice is the reference point? Is it Pope Leo, the modern day Roman Catholic Pontiff in 2025, or is it God himself in his inspired revelation? We've got it. Roman Catholics are holding on to it. Christians are holding on to it. You can get access to it, you can order on Amazon. It'll be there by noon. All right, and so you can get these. And the words are there. And I know that Rome, I have Roman Catholic friends and family that would agree with me on this point. This guy is telling tales of the schoolyard. This, this, this does not make any sense. I mean, saying that as a vicar of Christ, you know, this is, this is the right position. You can't be pro life and capital punishment. Again, God is both those things in Scripture, protect and preserve innocent human life and execute guilty criminals. And so couple verses, and this is by no means comprehensive or exhaustive. Genesis 9, 6. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in his own image. That's the reason why God gives you the reason. The four for God made man in his own image. Notice that there's no text that says, you know, if you kill an animal to eat it, then you got to lose your life because, you know, blood for blood sort of a thing that's not even there because you have beasts, you have Creatures. And then you have the imago dei. All right, so God's saying, here's why you kill the person who killed a person. Because God made man in his own image, and so that deserves execution. Exodus 21, verse 12. Whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death. And then Exodus 21:17, whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death. Exodus 21, verse 16. Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him shall be put to death. There is man stealing, and that's kidnapping is death penalty. That's what God says. Kidnapping is death penalty, which is powerful. Exodus 21:15. Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death. Exodus 22:19. There you go. It's a big one. It's an important one. I wish you'd put this one out there today. Whoever lies with an animal should be put to death. The whole furry community is gone. Yeah, right. People that, you know, have this obsession with bestiality and animal sex and all those sorts, all that kind of depraved stuff. Leviticus 20, verse 10. If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. And here, here is the. Here is the Standard from Exodus 21:23 25. We'll end with this. But if there is harm, then you shall pay. Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe, for stripe. Lex talionis. Equal justice. Okay? Can't be unequal justice. And so the point for equal justice is if you go so far as to engage in murdering an image bearer of God, you can't make that right. Right. Like with theft, you can repay. And there's standards in scripture about what that repayment should look like. It's different from just like general theft to theft of a business, something like that. But you can make that right in some way. But when it comes to the murder of another human being, the only way on this side of heaven to make it right is you have to have life for life. You murdered a human being. It's unjustified killing of a human being. And so you forfeited your right to live. That's biblical. There's no way around it. And it's an amazing thing to me that God has spoken so clearly and repetitively on this issue in scripture, and you would still have a Roman Catholic pope, and even professing Christians. Deny it. Deny it. And so you say, okay, well what's the solution for murder? And so people will suggest, well, I think what we do now is we send them to the penitentiary. So they become penitent. So they become penitent over time. And so what do you do? You have a victim now, the murdered victim, that life is gone now. So then you take the person, the perpetrator, the one who actually executed that person, and you put them into a cage like an animal for life. Behind bars sometimes, not even that. Sometimes people murder people and they actually get out of jail. Right. And so where's the justice in that? They still have their life. And what happens in our system today is you have a penitentiary system that wants to make people penitent. And so you put them into a cage like an, an 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for years, and you go, all right, I guess maybe that solves it. Put them in a cage like an animal, I suppose. But they don't just get to get there with no bankroll. I mean, it has to be bankrolled. And who's it bankrolled by? It's bankrolled by the community around the offender, which means that this person murdered this person. What did the community around that have to do with the murder? Not a thing. But who's also being punished for the murder? Well, the person who was executed is, you know, they're paying for the murder, they've lost their life. But also now the community around the offender is now also paying for the murder for the rest of their lives. Because you have a system that is not just, that doesn't simply say fair trial, cross examination, right. Witness and testimony, evidence that has to be in place. And then you have of course, execution. And now that person is gone. No one else is paying for that crime. I'm not paying for it anymore. Right. The guy, he's paid for with his own life. And that's, that's the way to actually have justice according to Scripture. So Roman Catholics will always sell you on the idea of this unified tradition throughout history, just simply not true. Sell you on the idea of you've got this apostolic tradition that came all the way up to us is simply not true. Try finding the assumption of Mary in Scripture and the Immaculate Conception and all those things in Scripture, you're just not going to find it. You have development of doctrine over time. You know, when they talk about the papacy and going all the way back to Peter, I would say ask the Eastern Orthodox if they agree with you on the Papacy. It's not just Protestants to disagree on the papacy. You know that. And so they have this invented position. It's not in the Bible. It develops over time in history. And you get to the Vicar of Christ and this the papacy, and then what do you get? As time rolls on, culture influences the Roman Catholic Church, culture influences the popes. And so now you have this American from Chicago who's got some modern views on capital punishment. He just can't hold it together. And so ultimately, the last Pope said that the death penalty, capital punishment, he said. He said this. He said it is unjust. The capital punishment is unjust. Unjust, unjust. What about these verses from God's own mouth repeatedly, over and over and over? So the last Pope says to God, when God says, life for life, the last Pope says, that's unjust. God. God says in his word that rapists deserve to die. Then the Pope says, that's unjust. God says in his word, kidnapping and enslaving somebody means you deserve the death penalty. The Pope says, that's unjust. So he is, as the vicar of Christ on Earth, the representative of Christ on earth. He is calling God to his face, unjust. Because I've got news for you, these Bible verses are here, and thankfully they're here to stay. Heaven and earth will pass away. My words will by no means pass away. Jesus says, the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. These verses are going nowhere. They're going nowhere. And so what you have now is two voices to contend with. You've got the voice of God in Holy Scripture, and the Pope agrees that these are the words of God. And you've got the modern Pope saying God is unjust for saying that. And then this Pope, Pope Leo, the new one, saying, you can't be pro life for the preservation and protection of innocent human life and believe in the death penalty for murderers. You can't do that. And I'm saying you can find both of those things in abundance in God's holy word. So who do I believe? The Pope? Or do I believe the true and living God? And yes, that's why I'm Protestant, for Exactly. Exactly. Moments like this. This is why I am happily a Protestant. The Protestant church is still filled with sinners. It is a mess. A lot of times the Reformed Church is a mess. We're all sinners. But we have a standard that we can appeal to and a standard that's supposed to transform us and correct us. How do you correct the modern Pope? When he calls God unjust for capital punishment, how do you correct him? I mean, I'm asking my Roman Catholic friends that you know how much I love you. How do you correct a guy like that? Well, what happened? What do you. I mean, what happens? You get these little, these little. You have this, this. This marketing strategy of Roman Catholic apologists, this unified church, this unified history, this unified doctrine, and it's simply not true. You've got popes who deny that the apocrypha is scripture, and then other pope saying, no, that's scripture. What the Vicar of Christ doesn't know what God's word is. You've got contradictions galore. And then moments like this where you've got this marketing strategy of Roman Catholic apologists. We have this unified church, unified tradition, all this stuff. So then you have to say, what about all the different sects within Roman Catholicism? What about all those. What about the Roman Catholics within the Roman Catholic communion that are arguing against the Vicar of Christ on Earth today and saying, that guy is contradicting Scripture and our own tradition, but he's the Vicar of Christ. But we have this unified tradition, this unified church. It's just not true. It isn't true. We should be willing, and I'll kick it over to you here, Luke. We should be willing. If we're honest and we have integrity, all of us, we're all a work in progress. I'm not saying I'm standing above anybody for sure. We should be willing to say honestly and straightforwardly, these are problems within our communion, right? This is a problem. What this guy said is a problem. These are problems within the reformed community. These are problems. These are failures. And just be honest about it. And the same thing goes with Rome. Just be honest about the fact that this is a real problem. What are you going to do 50 to 100 years from now when culture has so changed in certain areas, when Rome just yields to it and it no longer even is recognizable to the Roman Catholic church of 200 years ago? What happens to this unified tradition, this unity of the faith and the necessity of the Vicar of Christ on Earth to guide the church and all of that? Where does it all go? My point is it's ultimately a selling point of Roman Catholic evangelists and Roman Catholic apologists, the selling point of this unified tradition and the blessing and benefit of the papacy and all those things. You see moments like this and you say, this Pope is the Vicar of Christ on Earth and he just called God unjust. This Pope is actually disagreeing clearly with the voice of God himself. And so Protestantism, the Reformed community, just simply says what Augustine says, what Athanasius says. That doesn't matter what some council says ultimately, or what a bunch of guys have gathered in this place have said. And no matter how much authority they have, it's the voice of God that you appeal to is the standard that we're all supposed to appeal to. Not the voice of this bishop or that bishop or this council. It's the word of God. That's the reference point. That was the position of Augustine and of Athanasius. And so we say, as reformers, let's get back to what they said. Let's be willing to be a church that's corrected by the word of God, so that we can even say to a guide like this, and we could say, no, you. I'm sorry, no, you are contradicting the very words of God. No, God says in his word, clearly, capital punishment is justice. It's justice. And to call God unjust as the vicar of Christ on Earth makes me so suspicious, so suspicious of your claims.
