According to the Pope, anyone who’s not Catholic has no hope of salvation.

It’s an interesting standpoint and one which is completely in line with the basic teachings of Catholicism – but don’t panic just yet!

Pick up your bible and find one word which supports the Pope’s position and I’ll give you a prize.

You see, here’s the flaw in the Catholic teaching:

• They believe that God only created one Church – which is true
• They believe that God set the Apostle Peter as the ‘founding father’ of the Church – which can be supported biblically. Indeed Jesus suggested that Peter was the rock on which He would build His Church (although that interpretation can be argued). Peter, of course, was the preacher at the first evangelistic meeting of the Church and Peter was seen as the ‘first among equals’ of the apostles.
• They believe that Christians should be submitted to Godly leaders – a point which is hard to disagree with
• They believe that there is a ‘line of succession’ starting with Peter and going on through the Papal line – umm, not sure how they can justify that!
• They believe that anyone who is not submitted to the successor of Peter cannot be ‘saved’ because that person is not submitted to the correct ‘Godly leader’ – err, umm, they’ve lost me there!

You see, that’s what Catholicism teaches so the Pope, as the leader and defender of Catholicism, is quite right in defending that position – except in that it’s totally wrong.

Did you see where the flaw was? The flaw was where they stopped looking at what the bible teaches and started defining their own theology.

All denominations, all churches have something in them which is not quite biblically correct. No-one’s perfect, and I’m not slamming the Catholics for being imperfect.

What we all need to do in all things is test what we hear against what we read in the bible. You don’t have to have a doctorate in theology to be able to open up your bible and read what it says.

Test everything and don’t live in fear because one ‘great’ leader or another tells you that you should!