Shall We Accept The Pope's Invitation To Unite With The Roman Church?

“I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one flock and one shepherd” (John 10:14-16).

Christian unity is certainly a most desirable thing. Our Lord Jesus Christ before He went away prayed to the Father, as recorded in the seventeenth chapter of John, “That they all may be one: as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” There are some people who think that that prayer of our Lord Jesus has never been answered because of the differences of opinion, the dissensions, and the sectarianism which have prevailed through the centuries among those professing the Christian name.

There came a great cleavage in the sixteenth century as a result of which we have today, in the western world, Roman Catholics and many different denominations of Protestants. There were many dissensions before the sixteenth century. In about the eighth century there was a great cleavage as a result of which we have the eastern Catholics or the holy orthodox Catholic Church, the Greek Church, and there are a great many other lesser divisions found in the eastern world among those bearing the Catholic name. Do these different divisions nullify the unity of the church of God? If the Church of God is simply an organization, an outward organization, then most certainly it has been sadly rent in pieces and our Lord’s prayer has never been answered. But if what our blessed Saviour asserts in John 10 be the truth, as indeed it is, then our Lord’s prayer has been wonderfully answered for all who have found in Christ the Shepherd of their souls are one flock. All who had once gone astray as lost sheep but have now returned to Him the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls, still compose one flock with one Shepherd over them whatever their denominational views, whatever differences may have come in through national lines. All who confess the one Saviour and trust alone in Christ are members of one body and therefore the Church remains undivided and indivisible.

You will see at once that there is a difference here between the Protestant and the Roman Catholic viewpoint as to what constitutes the Church. The conscientious Roman Catholic thinks of it as a visible human society, with a human head, having certain officials guiding and directing it, and as he notices the schisms that have come in, he thinks of the Church as having been rent and torn. But the Protestant who sees what he believes to be the truth (I recognize that the Roman Catholics believe that their view is the truth also) believes that there is one Body and one Spirit, and refuses to recognize any such possibility as the rending of the Body of Christ.

Now the head of the Roman Catholic Church, the pope, has recently issued an encyclical which he put forth on Christmas day which has attracted considerable attention. It occupied a large place in the daily press and I am dependent upon that for the account of it. I realize, of course, that the press sometimes, with the very best intentions, makes mistakes. I myself have sometimes been represented in the newspapers as saying and doing things that I never thought of saying and doing. So I do not hold the pope of the Roman Catholic Church responsible for every expression in these paragraphs, for in some instances he may have been incorrectly reported. The encyclical is entitles, “Lux Veritatis” (The Light of Truth), and in this he invited Protestants and other dissident branches of Christianity to return to “the one fold” under the pope.

We read in the Chicago Tribune, “The resume of the encyclical said the pope was ‘firmly confident that should his words be diligently meditated upon, they will bring not only comfort to Catholics throughout the world, but would be a motive for separated brethren to consider that the Roman church always has been the faithful depositary and custodian of the doctrine of Jesus Christ, and that in the first ages of Christianity, all other churches and religious communities, east and west, had recourse to it as the infallible teacher of truth.’“

I should not like to charge this venerable gentleman with misrepresenting anything but I would simply say that the records of history are open to all and any one who cares to investigate will readily find that there is much that is being taken for granted here. It is not a fact that in the first ages of Christendom all churches and religious communities west and east had recourse to the church of Rome as the infallible teacher of truth. It is a fact that in the early ages of Christianity practically all churches everywhere had recourse to this Book as the infallible teacher of truth. By the end of the first century all the books which we know as the New Testament had been added to the Old Testament canon and were accepted by the church generally as the Word of the living God. When questions or differences of judgment arose, no one thought in those early centuries of appealing to the church that was established in the city of Rome to know the truth, they came to the Book itself.

During the days of the great Arian controversy in the beginning of the fourth century it was not the church of Rome that settled infallibly the doctrine of the eternal sonship of Christ, it was the fact that over three hundred Christian presbyters came together at Nicea with their Bibles and the sacred writings in their hands and showed from Scripture that it was an apostolic doctrine that our Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of the living God. Even when a century later the question of the soundness of the orthodoxy of Nestorius, a bishop in the church, came up, it was not Rome that settled it but at the Council of Ephesus where all the bishops came together on one footing, Nestorius was set to one side as, in the judgment of these bishops, a heretic. It was because last year was the fifteen hundredth anniversary of this Council of Ephesus that the pope issued this particular encyclical. This statement says, “The council held at Ephesus in 431, condemned the doctrine of Nestorius, which impugned the divinity of Christ and the divine maternity of Mary as Theotokos, or mother of God.”

Now I hope that is not an actual quotation from the papal encyclical. I think that must be the newspaper reporter’s impression of what the pope really said. I cannot understand how any man acquainted with the facts could say that Nestorius impugned the divinity of Christ. Who and what was he? What was his teaching and why was he set to one side by the Council of Ephesus as a heretic fifteen hundred years ago? In those days the question of the exact relationship of the blessed Virgin Mary to our Lord Jesus Christ was being very widely discussed. Was she the mother of His divinity as well as of His humanity? Nestorius was a highly respected bishop; he had been looked upon for many years as one of the leading teachers of the Word of God. In the church in those days a term, “Theotokos,” a Greek word meaning, mother of God, had been brought into use by some of the ecclesiastics, and they wished to apply this term to the blessed Virgin Mary. They said, “Inasmuch as the Lord Jesus Christ was God as well as man and He came into the world through her, she was the mother of God.” and if the mother of God, they reasoned that certain honors ought to be paid to her which the early church never paid. This was a new thing, the older church had known nothing about it. Nestorius stood his ground as representing the older church. He said, “No, we have no right to give to the blessed Virgin Mary the title, ‘Theotokos.’ She is not the mother of the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ. As God He had no mother. As God He was the eternal One. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him.’ Therefore, Mary herself was His creation.” It was unthinkable that one should speak of His creature as the mother of her Creator. Therefore, Nestorius standing firmly for the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, and insisting upon the deity of Christ, refused to acknowledge the use of the term, “Theotokos,” refused to acknowledge the blessed Virgin Mary as the mother of God. When called upon to make an explanation at the Council of Ephesus, he was perfectly calm, clear, and logical. He said, “Our blessed Lord Jesus Christ was one Person but with two natures, a divine nature and a human nature. He received His human nature by a divine miracle through His birth of the Virgin Mary but His divine nature was uncreated and eternal, therefore the term ‘Theotokos’ is not allowable.” but Nestorius substituted another term, “Christotokos” the mother of Christ. “It is perfectly all right,” he said, “to call her the mother of Christ,” and he would go so far as to say that she was the mother of Christ who is himself both God and man in one Person, but he would not say that she was the mother of God. His language was not always as clear as it might have been in distinguishing between person and nature. Some thought he believed in two distinct personalities in Christ. Because of this, Nestorius was branded a heretic, cast out of the professing church, bitterly persecuted, and died some years later after incredible suffering because of the doctrine he held. If Bishop Nestorius were living in Chicago today and cared to unite with The Moody Church, other things being equal, we should be glad to receive him, if he confessed that our blessed Lord Jesus is God and man in one Person—two natures but one Person—the eternal Son of God become flesh, for we believe this to be the truth. Therefore, I can scarcely think that the pope with his knowledge of church history ever said that Nestorius impugned the divinity of Christ. I hope he did not say that. I think that was simply a newspaper reporter’s mistake. But Nestorius did refuse the term, “Theotokos.” He would not recognize the blessed Virgin Mary as the mother of God.

“The resume of the encyclical said the pope was ‘firmly confident that should his words be diligently meditated upon, they will bring not only comfort to Catholics throughout the world, but would be a motive for separated brethren to consider that the Roman church always has been the faithful depositary and custodian of the doctrines of Jesus Christ, and that in the first ages of Christianity, all other churches and religious communities, east and west, had recourse to it as the infallible teacher of truth.”

As I personally meditate upon that, I regret to say that I cannot find myself in unison with the pope. I think he has made a mistake. I think he has failed to observe that in early days the church was not recognized as the teacher, but the Word of God ministered in the Spirit’s power was the teacher and the church, the taught. That is exactly the position we take today.

We read further: “In the first place, the encyclical treats of the supreme, infallible teaching of the Roman pontiff.” I am afraid that if I have to acknowledge the infallibility of the Roman pontiff before I get into the Roman church, I will have to stay outside. How could I do that when history proves that one pope on more than one occasion has denounced his predecessor as a heretic, and one had his predecessor’s body dug up and reduced to ashes. One or the other was certainly fallible—possibly both. That is a matter of history.

The dogma of the infallibility of the pope was never known until the council of the Vatican decreed it and at that time a great many Roman bishops refused to accept it. In this country Cardinal Gibbons, archbishop of Baltimore, refused to accept the doctrine of the infallibility of the pope and as he left the shores of America, he declared he would fight against it. When he returned, the whole question had been settled. It was reported that a newspaper reporter met him as he came off the steamer and said, “Well, do you now believe in the infallibility of the pope?” He said, “Well, he called me Jibbons!” he had mispronounced his name which seemed to imply that he was not infallible in remembering names at any rate. But a great many Roman Catholics down through the ages refused to credit any such dogma. It was decreed only some seventy years ago and prior to that time it was not considered the truth.

We read further: “After referring to the rise of the Nestorian heresy, which fifteen centuries ago endeavored, as already preceding heresies had done, to divide the unity of the universal church, it shows by the citation of copious historical documents how in that gravest extremity, the entire Christian hierarchy recognized the supreme authority of the bishop of Rome (the pope).’ The resume said the encyclical then treated of the point that in Jesus Christ two natures, divine and human, are united in one only divine person; that the sacred Scriptures speaks: ‘Only of one person as the same sole Saviour who is called both man and God—man, who is born, is nourished, and dies; God, who works the greatest miracles by His own power.’ This truth afforded occasion for the pontiff to return to the subject of the unity of the true church, which is the mystical body of Jesus Christ.” But by that mystical body is not necessarily meant the visible body. It is composed, as we have already intimated, of every believers in the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven and on earth and of that body, Christ, no one else, in the Head.

When Luther was in controversy with Cardinal Cajetan, when he had been summoned to answer for his supposed heresy, the cardinal insisted that one must accept the authority of the pope. Luther said, “No, not if his word is contrary to the Holy Scripture.” “But there must be a head to the church,” the cardinal said. “And there is a Head,” said Luther, “our Lord Jesus Christ who speaks through the Scriptures.” No other Head is recognized by the true church. Is it not a strange thing that if Peter was ever the head of the Church, there is no mention of it here? He himself does not mention it neither any of his brother apostles. Let me read from 1 Peter 5:1, “The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder.” The world, “elder” is “presbyter.” He is saying, “The presbyters which are among you I exhort, who am also a presbyter.” He speaks of himself as a fellow-presbyter, on a level with other presbyters. In other words, if Peter was ever pope, he never knew it, it never occurred to him that he had any such place! He was an old man when he wrote this letter, it was written shortly before his martyrdom and here if anywhere he should have been insistent on his divinely given prerogative. If the pope is a regenerated man, if he is a lover of the Word of God, we would welcome him as a fellow-presbyter and give him the same place the apostle Peter had but no other.

“The encyclical, the resume continued, finally develops the point that the Virgin Mary is the true mother of God, adding: “If, indeed, Jesus Christ is God, she has borne Him and must be called Theotokos; that is, the mother of God, and if she were the mother of God she must be full of grace and adorned with every privilege. Therefore, we should venerate, love, and imitate her. The objection which Protestants bring forward against the veneration of Mary is very clearly answered. Indeed, the pontiff addresses to them also the patriarchal exhortation to follow the example of Catholics in involving the protection of the Virgin as the mediatrix and intercessor with the Divine Saviour. A final exhortation is made by the pontiff to the brethren of the eastern church, who also venerate Mary as Roman Catholics do, and who for so many centuries maintained themselves in unity with the apostolic see, and who in the Council of Ephesus saluted the pope as ‘Custodian of the Faith.’“

Very well, then, it simmers down to this. We can all go home to Rome if we are willing to give to the blessed Virgin Mary the place of mediatrix and intercessor with our blessed Saviour. Let us see what place the Word of God gives her.

Turn first to Luke 1:26-30: And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, “Hail, thou that are highly favored, The Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, “Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favor with God.” Mary was a chosen vessel for a great purpose. She was highly favored. God manifested His grace toward her in a wonderful and special way but there is no hint in Holy Scripture that she herself was an absolutely sinless person. There is no hint of the Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Sometimes Protestants misuse that term, they speak of believing in the Immaculate Conception and by that they mean the sinless incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. but the term, “Immaculate Conception” has no reference to the incarnation at all. It is the name of a dogma of the church of Rome which was decreed on December 8, 1854, when it was declared that the Virgin Mary was immaculately conceived of her mother; that is, she was born absolutely holy, she had no remains of inbred sin in her and thus was a prepared vessel to bring the holy Son of God into the world. There is no such thought as that in Scripture and Mary herself knew nothing about it for in this first chapter of Luke, reading from the forty-sixth verse, we find her taking the opposite ground, “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.” According to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, Mary needed no Saviour for she was absolutely sinless and holy but Mary herself says, “My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. for he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” I have no difficulty in speaking with my Roman Catholic friends of “the blessed Virgin Mary.” It is perfectly right and proper so to speak of her but on the other hand if she be exalted to a place that would seem in any way to give her the position of a mediatrix, then the Word of God rebukes that entirely.

Look at Luke 11:27-28: “And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked. But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it.” this is the first attempt on the part of any one to exalt the blessed Virgin Mary in any special sense, and the moment the Lord Jesus Christ hears it He says, “No, no do not talk like that, do not say blessed the mother in that sense but blessed rather those who hear the Word of God and keep it.”

Three times we read in the Holy Scripture of our Lord himself gently rebuking His own mother:

In Luke 2 we read that the blessed Virgin Mary and her husband, Joseph, came to Jerusalem with Jesus when He was twelve years of age and as they went home again they thought He was in the company and they proceeded a day’s journey, and at night they could not find Him. The blessed Virgin Mary lost her own Son! I would not like to trust the keeping of my soul to her!! She was a good woman but she lost her own Son. They went back to hunt for Him and found Him in the temple. “And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.” Notice the gentle rebuke with which He answered her. “How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” (Luke 2:48, 49). Just imagine any one speaking of the blessed Virgin Mary as a mediatrix with her blessed Son when He himself practically said “What business was it of yours? I had work to do appointed of my Father. Why did you interfere?”

Look at John 2. The Virgin and her Son went together to a wedding feast and the wine ran out, and we read in verse three, “And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.” What was that? It was a gentle rebuke. It was as though He said, “It is not for you to tell me what I am to do in these circumstances. you are the mother of my humanity but I have now entered upon my great ministry. Do not interfere with me.” if I had to commit the keeping of my soul to her and ask her to go to her Son for me, I should be very much afraid she would be answered in the same way once more.

Then look at Matthew 12:46-49: “While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!” Do you observe that the only three times where it is recorded that the blessed Virgin Mary sought in any way to intercede with her Son for other people she was rebuked, and yet some tell me that I dare not go directly to my blessed Saviour but must go to His precious mother and plead with her to speak for me. I do not need any mediatrix for Christ Himself is the one Mediator. Let me draw your attention to four Scripture references that speak of this.

First Timothy 2:5: “For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.” One mediator. This shuts out every one else. No mediatorial saints; but Christ himself, the one Mediator between God and man, the One who died for our sins upon the cross. Look at Hebrews 8:6: “But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, but how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises.” Hebrews 9:13-15: “For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh; how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this cause He is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might received the promise of eternal inheritance.” He is the mediator. There is no other. Again, look at Hebrews 12:24: “And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.”

Instead of Holy Scripture presenting the blessed mother of our Lord as a mediatrix, as one who could care for the souls of others we find her put under the gentle care of one of the apostles. As the blessed Lord was dying upon the cross, He looked down and, we read, “When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home” (John 19:26). Would you not think it might have been just the other way if the pope is right? Would it not have said that from that hour she took John to her home, took him under her protection? But no, John took her under his protection. She was an aged woman, needing loving care, and John was glad to give it to her.

The last mention we have of Mary, the mother of Jesus, in the Bible is in the first chapter of Acts, the fourteenth verse. Here, instead of presenting her as the object of worship, as one to whom the faithful are praying, we find the very opposite. Beginning with verse thirteen, we read: “And when they were come in, they went up into an upper room, where abode both Peter, and James, and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas the brother of James. These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.” You might have supposed it would read like this, “These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, TO Mary the mother of Jesus.” But no, it is WITH Mary. She knelt as a supplicant with them and lifted up holy hands in prayer to God in fellowship with them. We gladly give to the blessed mother of our Lord that place because Scripture gives it to her but we do not dare give her a place that Holy Scripture never gives her.

The Bishop of Rome has said that down through the ages the Church has stood for the same teaching. It was on December 8, 1139, that the Church first celebrated what was called the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. It was seven hundred fifteen years later that the doctrine was accepted as a Roman dogma. For seven centuries there had been no unanimity regarding it. Some of the greatest doctors of the church denounced this doctrine. Among them was Bernard of Clairveaux. It was he who wrote:

“Jesus, the very thought of Thee
,
With sweetness fills my breast,
But sweeter far Thy face to see,
And in Thy presence rest.”

Then there was Anselm, the godly-archbishop of Canterbury, and Bonaventure, Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas: all these rejected this dogma. The greatest doctors of the medieval church denounced the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception as contrary to Scripture. It was Bernard who said, “Why stop at Mary? Why not go farther back, why not teach the immaculacy of her mother and the immaculacy of her grandmother and keep on going back and back and back?” Imagine any doctor of the Roman church talking like that today. But Bernard of Clairvaux lived before these things had blinded the eyes of the church to the simple truth of God. It was he who wrote that other great hymn “O Sacred head now Wounded,” in which he says:

“O Lord, what Thee tormented,

Was our sins’ heavy load,

We had the debt augmented

Which Thou didst pay in blood.”

Furthermore, during the Middle Ages there were two great orders of friars, the Franciscan and the Dominican. The Franciscans followed the teachings of Duns Scotus, a subtle doctor of the church who accepted the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. The Dominicans refused this and each called the other heretics as they went about teaching from place to place. After Pope Piux IX decreed the dogma in 1854 they had to accept it, whether scriptural or not.

No, frankly, as we Protestants look over the wall into the Roman fold we do not find that perfect unity we have heard so much about. Even there, there are great differences of opinion. Popes have differed, Councils have differed, and the clergy has differed. And so we say, “No, thank you. It was very gracious of you to invite us to be good children and come home but we have found so much more blessing outside, it means so much to know Christ as our own personal Saviour, to be able to go directly to Him without any one interfering; it is so blessed to have an open Bible; it means so much to know that the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses from all sin; it means so much to know that we are members of the Church which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all; it means so much to know that if truly born again, Roman Catholics belong to our Church and we belong to theirs that we do not feel like giving up our glorious liberty in Christ Jesus to go into any kind of ecclesiastical bondage.” And so, we will return the compliment and invite the pope, the cardinals, the priesthood, if they believe in salvation alone through the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, to tear off their ecclesiastical grave clothes and step out into the liberty that is in Christ, and we will be glad to sit down with them at the table of the Lord and remember Him as our common Lord and Saviour.

As I close this little review, I come back to that which is always very real to us here, the question of your relationship to Christ. Do you know this blessed Saviour as your own? If not, it makes no difference whether you are Protestant or Catholic, you are lost. You may be a member of some local church but you are lost if you have not taken Christ as your personal Saviour.

I read some time ago of a stereopticon entertainment that was being given in an English village. The place was filled, the room darkened, and the people were following the pictures on the screen. Some one came in and spoke with the usher and said, “A little girl has been lost. Her name is Mary Jones. Please go up to the platform and ask them to announce this. She has been missing all afternoon and her people are frantic. Just say that she is lost and ask that if anybody knows where she is they give the information at once.” The usher went to the gentleman who was giving the address and the announcement was made but no one spoke. By and by when the service was over and the lights turned on, some one noticed a little girl sitting at the front, and she went over and said, “Why, Mary, what are you doing here? Didn’t you hear the announcement that Mary Jones was lost?”

“Yes,” she said, “I heard it.”

“Well, why didn’t you get up and tell them you were here?”

“Why, did they mean me? I didn’t think they meant me. They said Mary Jones was lost and I knew where I was all the time.”

I am afraid there are a great many people like that. Mary Jones was lost in the church and did not know it, and it is possible to be a member of a church, either Protestant or Catholic, and be lost, if one has not definitely trusted the Lord Jesus Christ, and owned Him as Saviour. My dear friend, have you trusted Him? This is not simply a matter of doctrine, of ecclesiastical persuasion, it is a matter of whether or not you have definitely received Christ by faith into your own heart, as your own personal Saviour. If you have, thank God, your soul is safe. If you have not, no work of righteousness, no penance, no sacraments can ever avail to put away your sin.

“Nothing, either great or small

Nothing, sinner, no;

Jesus died and paid it all,

Long, long ago.

“When He, from His lofty throne,

Stooped to do and die,

Everything was fully done,
Hearken to His cry!

“Till to Jesus’ work you cling,

By a simple faith,

‘Doing’ is a deadly thing -

‘Doing’ ends in death.

“Cast your deadly ‘doing’ down -

Down at Jesus’ feet;

Stand in Him, in him alone,

Gloriously complete.

“’It is finished!’ yes, indeed,

Finished every jot,
Sinner, this is all you need,

Tell me, is it not?”

There is a full, free, and eternal salvation for you if you will put your trust alone in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Note: There were fully four thousand people gathered in the great auditorium to hear this address. Hundreds undoubtedly were Roman Catholics and we are thankful to say that at the close there were a number who professed to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their Saviour. Many who had been brought up in the Church of Rome came forward to express their appreciation of what they had heard, and we ask our readers to pray most earnestly that those of them who have never been born of God may be led to a saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

—A Sermon Preached by Pastor H.A. Ironside in The Moody Church on Lord’s Day Evening, January 3, 1932