Are Catholics Saved? The Pope and the papacy - John MacArthur

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The Pope and the Papacy

Selected Scriptures
May 1, 2005

And for tonight, I want to talk about the Pope and the papacy because it’s been in the news so much. This isn’t really going to be a sermon; I’m just going to try to take you through a little bit of an understanding of it. I want to talk about the Pope himself, and then talk about the papacy in general.

And I want to tell you at the beginning what is at stake because what I am going to say will surely offend those who are devout Catholics; it will surely offend those who believe that Catholics are brothers and sisters in Christ. Some will read it as unkind and unloving, but nothing is more loving than the truth. To let somebody perish in a false system isn’t loving at all. To rescue people out of a damning and false religion is the only loving thing to do. And there’s a lot at stake here.

Not too many years ago, some evangelical Protestants got together – Chuck Colson and some others – Bill Bright and some others – and they met with some Roman Catholics, and they came up with a document called “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” And in that document, they celebrated a common faith and a common mission. And they said, “We need to embrace each other and carry out this gospel mission together.” This was shocking, to put it mildly, to many – to all of those people who affirm clearly a biblical gospel. And there was immediately a counter to that and all kinds of things brought to bear upon the signers of ECT. Perhaps the most notable, at least in my experience, was a special private session called in Florida, where I was locked up with a very formidable group of people for a period of seven hours, including those on the other side – J. I. Packer, Charles Colson being the notable ones – Bill Bright from Campus Crusade. There was myself and R. C. Sproul, Michael Horton representing the biblical side and reformed theology. And for seven hours we talked about this. What is the gospel? Are the Catholics saved or not saved? That’s really important. It became a discussion of are the Anglicans saved or not saved? Is everybody who’s within quote-unquote Christendom automatically saved? Are they saved because they’re baptized? Are they saved because they quote-unquote believe in Jesus? It was a very heated discussion at many points.

What was at stake? I’ll tell you what was at stake. What was at stake is whether or not we evangelize Roman Catholics. That’s what’s at stake. One billion of them in the world. Are they a mission field, or are they our co-laborers for Christ. That changes everything. Everything.

On the other side, one of the leading evangelicals said, “I think it’s so wonderful that we can now see Catholics as Christians because that means millions and millions of people are Christians,” as if somehow by them deciding they were Christians they became Christians. I was absolutely incredulous; I almost fell off my chair.