From Israel To Italy

There are many ways that I could expound on a title like The Jekyl & Hyde Italians. I could easily take up the themes of taxes, laws, manners, or religious practices and we’d have some funny & shocking posts. However, my main description is of the Religious-Secularism that pulls at them from all sides. I actually feel sadness for the Italians and their deep, deep struggle to see the Truth of Biblical Faith which reigns over secularism and through healthy religion.

The Great Divide

Simply, Italians from the day they’re born are confronted and confused with a terrible dichotomy or division to life.

On one side, the Roman Empire tells them that God created the universe in 6 days and is the Source of our origins.¹ This is what the family for generations has had to follow and believe. To deny this is to refute Grandma and discredit the priest. This is their values side of what they know.

On the other side, the Italian (European) public education system pounds naturalistic Darwinism into them from a young age. This theory basically says that chance and natural laws come together and form the origin (and meaninglessness) of life. There-is-no-God atheism is the stew they’re boiling in from Monday through Saturday. This is the idea of science or facts that they know.

What we have then is the common Italian who walks around as secular as can be, living for the pleasure of the moment (or the moments to come), and thoroughly confused as to where they came from and where they’re going.

Here’s the Hard Work

I think one of our greatest tasks as Bible-believing and practicing Christians in Italy is to help Italians to see that God is the source & designer of life, that He does have a plan for life ( Ephesians 1:7-10), that He is know-able, and that they are responsible to Him for what they do with that life.

1. of course, they don’t give the Italian the “why” and they say that God is not know-able apart from them and their mediation [back]

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This is the final, fantastic close of Mr. Scudder’s testimony. We apologize for the long absence this summer, but we’ve had to do a lot of travel and take care of many personal obligations. Getting back to this post, while I may not fully follow Mr. Scudder in the area of “modern tongues”, I would say that his understanding is excellent about the deception of a mixed and/or common faith. Please take a couple minutes to read through his closing and then leave us a comment or two!

Catholics no longer a mission field?

Some Evangelicals are now saying that Roman Catholics are no longer considered to be a mission field since they are ‘Christians’, as evidenced in the document ECT, (Evangelicals and Catholics together).

What a sad commentary to our brothers and sisters in Latin countries, and others who have laid down their lives for the Gospel, and have seen millions of Roman Catholics believe the Gospel. The future of evangelism hangs in the balance.

In my eight years of working with Charismatic Catholics, I have come to the following conclusions.

I had been naive and had neglected to really look into the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church to see what they really believed about the doctrine of Salvation by Grace alone through faith alone on account of Christ alone. I took it for granted that they believed the Gospel of the Bible. I had not prepared and made serious mistakes. After study I found that historically, and conversely, the Roman Catholic Church teaches as dogma, that justification is conferred through her sacraments, and that it consists of inner righteousness whereby a man, it is stated, becomes ‘just within himself.’ The Church of Rome condemns the Biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone. (Council of Trent)

Any non-Catholic Church that held the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church would be considered a ‘Cult’ by many of the same people who are seeking unity with the Catholics.

I have discovered that most Protestants do not know what the Gospel is ‘according to Rome’! And are easy prey for Roman Catholic apologists because they do not know how to defend sola scriptura or because of their extreme arminianism. Do we once again need a reformation in the ‘Protestant’ Evangelical Churches?

It was the standard practice of the FGBMFI to tell Roman Catholics to stay in the Catholic Church so that they could witness to others and I find this to be true also in many Protestant/Pentecostal churches. I believe this was a very dangerous attitude in that I found those who stayed eventually were lost to the Roman Church once again for various reasons or because they had not been truly born again. I believe most of the ones who had trusted in Christ alone for salvation came out of the Roman Catholic Church.

You cannot stay in a Church, without consequences, that denies we are saved by what Christ did outside of us, and not what we can do to become worthy inside.

“Solo Christo”

“Solo Christo” was one of the cries of the Protestant Reformation. Translated from the Latin, it means “Christ Alone.”

In these times, the growing tendency to emphasize feelings and experiences at the expense of sound doctrine is presenting the world with a ‘feel-good’ religious community, the boundaries of which grow more ephemeral with every new ecumenical pronouncement. This is especially true among Roman Catholics and some Evangelical and some Charismatic Christians. I want to emphasize that not all Evangelicals and Pentecostals are being deceived but some are.

And the lines become more blurred, so that now in some ecumenical meetings, New Agers, Universalists, Roman Catholic as well as “some” true born again Christians such as Evangelicals and Pentecostals are coming together to celebrate their oneness in a quote, ‘Common Experience.’ This is the great deception.

Although speaking in tongues can be valid experience from God it is not always of the Holy Spirit. It can be counterfeited. Satan has counterfeits of every Gift of God. You can receive an experience without being saved, and when this happens it leads to many problems. The major problem is a false sense of security that you are saved, and leads you further away from the true Gospel and many times into the occult. It has been documented that most spiritualists are former Catholics.

If we accept everybody as brothers and sisters because they speak in tongues, then we are heading down a slippery slope, Catholic or otherwise.
(Spiritual experience ALONE can never be the basis for unity. Unity must be based on sound DOCTRINE.)

Some may have a legitimate question about laying hands on unbelievers. Some bitterly regret having prayed for and laid hands on these Catholics who have, according to some Pentecostal testimony, received an alien spirit as a result. Does this mean that “we” transmitted an evil spirit from us to them? NO - in our ignorance God would not allow us to transmit the Holy Spirit or an unclean spirit to a unregenerated person but we have been guilty of helping that person open-up to an unclean spirit.

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“If anyone comes with another doctrine, do not receive him….for he who greets him shares in his evil deeds.”
Holy Bible 2 John 10-11 KJV.

“Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.”
Galatians 5:1. KJV

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Bill Scudder

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