A friend wrote this morning and mentioned that a priest he knew was asked by a Protestant whether he is assured of his salvation, whether he is certain that he is saved.
This is a common question asked by Protestants, evangelicals. It’s a necessary problem in their system of religion—this question of whether we’re sure that we’re saved. So, he asked me if I would take some time to talk about it, think through it, and try to provide something helpful.
Now, as a former Protestant, I know all about this endless fussing about assurance of salvation. I witnessed it all the time—people tormented for decades, wondering whether they’re saved or not. This isn’t a modern problem. This isn’t something new; we can’t blame it on social media. This is a problem that has plagued Protestants from the 1500s, from the beginning of the Reformation, because their teaching leads to this completely unnecessary and unreasonable dilemma.
Their teaching forces a person to ask, “Wait a minute, am I really saved? How do I know I’m saved?” There have been many attempts throughout Protestant history to answer that question. By the behavior of Protestants, it’s clear that those answers are never convincing, nor should they be.
To read the scriptures without being influenced by false Protestant teaching leaves us without any such dilemma. We don’t find passages in scripture where Christians are walking around, trying to figure out whether they’re saved or not. We don’t find St. Paul writing in his epistles that he’s been struggling with certainty of salvation or giving advice on how to be sure of their salvation. You don’t find that in Scripture. You’ve got to learn Protestantism first to be forced to think in those terms. It’s a question that has no place in true Christianity.
As a consequence of the false teaching of Protestantism, it’s a red flag that should warn people that something’s wrong. Because if I put these parts of this Protestant system together, it leaves me wondering whether or not I’m saved. How can I know? How can I know for sure?
As I said, there are a number of different answers. Some will give you the sort of jolly, laughing, stupid response, which is, “Of course, you’re saved. If you believe that Jesus died for your sins, then of course you’re saved. It’s stupid to even ask, it’s silly to even question. Of course, you’re saved. You just need to tell yourself you’re saved.”
What this really boils down to is that salvation comes by believing that you’re saved. It’s like, “I believe I’m saved, therefore I am.” What a bunch of craziness. It’s almost as if God is now subject to man. On Judgment Day, this arrogant, crazy person is going to stand before the creator of the world, the judge of the universe, and what? Tell God he’s saved?
That first response, which is basically believing that you’re saved and then continuing to tell yourself that you’re saved, is one response. And it’s pretty crazy. Because, as I said, you’re essentially telling God that you’re saved. So that’s one response. I would consider that the most truly Protestant, really the most reasonable in light of Protestant teaching—you might as well just tell yourself that you’re saved. Since salvation is by faith alone, according to the Protestants, you might as well just believe that you’re saved.
So, option one.
Option two, we find—one example I can give. The second option came during the Great Awakening period in early American history. Now remember, I was a Protestant, so I have quite a bit of knowledge of the history of Protestantism that I think would be not normal for Catholics to have, especially if they’ve never been Protestants before. I was a pretty zealous Protestant as I made my ascent from unbelief to Catholicism.
In early America, and in England, in the 1700s, there were some really intelligent, charismatic figures in Christian circles. One of them was John Wesley, in England; he’s the founder of the Methodist Church. Another was Jonathan Edwards, who many Americans are familiar with because of a famous sermon that he gave titled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Sometimes that sermon is read in American history classes.
But there was another important figure in the Great Awakening. A preacher in America from England, who was considered one of the greatest preachers among the Protestants. His name was George Whitfield. George Whitfield was a traveling evangelist who preached gospel messages, Protestant gospel messages. And those messages were sort of like a Billy Graham revival meeting, what Billy Graham called crusades.
George Whitfield would preach, and his method of preaching and message was very influential. If we could boil down all of his messages and all of his talks to one simple theme, it would be, “You must be born again.” This is actually an answer to the question, “How can I know if I’m saved? Can I be assured of my salvation?” When George Whitfield said, “You must be born again,” what he meant was, you must have a conversion experience. You must experience this sort of sensible change in your life, this conversion moment, where you go from death to life, where you are spiritually dead, and then spiritually alive again. “You must be born again,” you must have a conversion experience.
So that was the question that Protestants were asked. “Have you had that conversion experience? Have you been born again?”
I can tell a personal story about this to illustrate it. When I was still in college, my wife and I chose to attend a very reputable Reformed Baptist Church in northern New Jersey. It was Trinity Baptist Church in northern New Jersey. They had a famous preacher there named Albert Martin. My wife and I decided that we wanted to become members of this Reformed Baptist Church. It was a great community of Christian people. They had great teaching and preaching. They had a great school that I was actually involved with at the time. It was a great place, again, in the context of my conversion. I was about 24 or 25 years old at the time.
So, we applied to become members at this church. You have to fill out a questionnaire. And then what they ask for is for you to share your personal testimony. Your personal testimony is your story of your conversion. What they’re looking for, as you give your testimony, as you share your story, they’re looking for evidence that you have been “born again.”
After you’ve submitted your questionnaire and all this stuff, you then schedule a meeting with the leaders, the pastors of this church. There were, I guess, four or five of them. So Danya and I met with these men, and we were interviewed to see whether we would be admitted to membership at this church. This is what the questioning consisted of: “Describe for us your conversion experience.”
We see this investigation to determine whether or not we’re really Christians. How do you determine whether someone’s really a Christian? You have to find whether there’s evidence that they have been born again, that they have had this true experience with the Holy Spirit, where they came to believe in Jesus and were transferred from the kingdom of the devil into the kingdom of God. The way that we know that is because we have this experience, this conversion experience.
Now, for me, because I was an unbeliever, just a punk street kid growing up in New Jersey, I actually did have a significant spiritual experience. I was hanging out with my friends when I was in college—I think I was a freshman—at a bar with a bunch of my friends. We were goofing around, acting like idiots, drinking and dancing around like fools, just having fun.
But there was one night when I was there with my friends, and I had this crystal-clear image in my mind of standing before Christ on Judgment Day and Him saying to me, “Depart, you cursed, into everlasting fire.” I was with my friends, in the midst of all that partying and fooling around, and in my mind, on that night, Christ was warning me that if I didn’t abandon that life, I would go to hell.
That night, I went home and never talked to those friends again. They were my childhood best friends—kids I went to preschool, kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, and high school with. We played sports together. I lived in one house my entire childhood. Those friends were my life from preschool into college. That night was the last night I ever talked to them. My closest best childhood friends, fellow teammates, schoolmates, and family friends—I never talked to them again. That’s how moving that experience was. I never looked back.
When I tell that story, my story could satisfy this investigation of the Protestants into whether or not I had been born again. My life changed. My behavior changed. When I was a kid, growing up in New Jersey, in a working-class family of unbelievers, I had a terrible, filthy mouth. I was always cursing. I used to get detention in school for cursing in the hallways, curse all over sports fields, get thrown out of games for my temper, cursing out umpires and referees. That was who I was—just a hot-headed, foul-mouthed punk. When I became a Christian, I stopped cursing.
The reason I stopped cursing wasn’t that I made a resolution to avoid certain words. It was because all of the anger, all of the hatred that was in me, went away. I was at peace; I was calm; I was happy. All of that competitive, nasty behavior—nastiness—it went away. I became a peaceful person. That’s why I stopped cursing, because the cursing was just verbalizing all of that anger and hatred, that nastiness.
There were signs in my life of a radical conversion, a radical change in my life, and I could easily satisfy this Protestant Inquisition. My wife, however, had a more difficult time because she was born into an evangelical family and went to church her whole life. When the time came for her to talk about whether or not she had been born again, she had no cool conversion story to tell. She just had a boring, normal Christian life. She struggled, as do many Christians, especially those born into Christian families. She struggled for a long time with this dilemma: How could she know if she was actually saved? How could she know if she was actually born again? She never had an experience like I had. I had the Protestant experience, but she didn’t. So she, like many Christians, spent time wondering whether or not she was actually saved.
This is all Protestant lingo, Protestant ideas, and so on. Protestants, after they get done bashing Catholics and dividing churches, spend the rest of their lives wondering whether or not they’re saved. When Protestants have a cool conversion story like I did, they tend not to wrestle with this problem too much. But those who didn’t have a radical event marking their conversion struggle with this throughout their lives, wondering whether they’re saved.
This gets even more complicated because there are other Protestant doctrines that torment Protestants even more. For example, if you see a group of Protestants that call themselves Reformed Protestants, that usually means they are followers, not of the Bible alone, but of a man named John Calvin. John Calvin taught what are called the Five Points of Calvinism. Sometimes, these people refer to themselves as Calvinists. Or sometimes they’re called Calvinists by other groups. They like to call themselves reformed. They think of themselves as true Reformed Christians, Protestants of the Reformation.
There were five points of Calvinism. They can be remembered by the acronym TULIP: T-U-L-I-P. The first was Total Depravity, the second was Unconditional Election, the third was Limited Atonement, the fourth was Irresistible Grace, and the fifth was Perseverance of the Saints. But the second one was the troublemaker. Calvinists believe in Unconditional Election, that is, before time began, God made a list of who would be saved based on nothing they had done, because remember, we’re saved by faith alone, not by any works. Works are, for the Protestant system, completely irrelevant. God chose a certain number of people unconditionally, and at the end of time, those people will be in heaven, and everyone else—everyone who was not chosen—will be in hell. Before the world began, there was an unconditional election by God of who would be saved, and those are the only people who will be in heaven.
They don’t believe in free will, which is why the “I” in TULIP is Irresistible Grace. That means that God’s grace, when He comes to a person, when He comes to one of the elect, in their life, His grace and the influence of His grace is impossible for that person to resist. It’s irresistible grace, and therefore, they respond rightly to God’s influence, to the gospel, and become Christians in time. God’s grace is irresistible.
When you have an exciting, radical conversion experience, you can say, “Ah, that was the point. That was the moment when God came to me, and I experienced His irresistible grace, and my unconditional election was revealed. I had a golden ticket.” People with this radical conversion experience can say, “Yeah, that was the moment when I experienced irresistible grace.”
But the person who has not had a significant or exciting conversion experience wonders, “Has God ever come to me? Have I ever received that grace? Am I actually one of the unconditionally elected?” This idea of election torments them. When the Protestants separate themselves from the Catholics and go running off into this free field of wildflowers with no churches, no steeples, no priests, no vestments, no collars, no confessions, no commandments—just butterflies and lilies and sunshine—they start to realize there are all kinds of problems with the consequences of their beliefs. These consequences start to manifest themselves, causing all kinds of spiritual, intellectual torment, confusion, depression, and so on.
That’s why you see the Protestant community, once they all run happily out of the church into the field, they all start dividing into a thousand different groups. I don’t even know how many groups there are, but it’s probably a thousand. They start to think through their Protestant teaching. They continue reading scripture and run into passages that don’t make any sense in light of Protestant teaching, and then they start to disagree with each other. They say, “No, I don’t think Calvin’s right about total depravity. I think man still has some goodness in him that allows him to have free will and respond to God freely.” “No, I don’t know about this unconditional election. I think the gospel is just preached to everybody, and whoever responds is saved. There’s no way God could choose to put people in hell because they wouldn’t even have done anything to deserve it.” They go through all these points and disagree on them all, creating a million different divisions among the Protestants.
You don’t have the one universal Church of the Bible, which at the time of the Reformation, the Protestants pretended would come about once they freed themselves from all of the Catholic corruption. Two thousand years later, there are a thousand Protestant denominations and schisms. There remains one Catholic Church that has more members today than ever before. But all of this talk about freedom and joy has led to endless, endless division.
Sometimes Protestants will try to dismiss their divisions as if they’re no big deal, but think about it. If your disagreement with a fellow Bible-believing, anti-Catholic Protestant is so serious that you can’t worship in the same building, can’t use the same parking lot, can’t have the same leaders but have to create two separate congregations with separate buildings, separate parking lots, separate pastors, separate church secretaries—you’re really not like-minded. Your sola scriptura idea is really not leading to some single, clear, easy-to-understand knowledge of the Christian faith. In fact, there is infinitely more chaos and confusion among people who identify as Christians today than there ever would be in a Catholic Church that filled the world.
Sure, there’s disagreement among Catholics. There are different ideas among Catholics, but they still continue as members of one holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church. They are still all subject to the same priest, same pope, same priesthood, same bishops, and so on. Within Catholicism, there certainly are schismatics who are like Protestants. They will do all the things that Protestants do—they will separate from local congregations. A lot of Catholics will go and seek out their own place where the true Christianity can be found. They’ll separate themselves from their neighbors. They’ll talk out against the pope. You can see that schismatic, divisive spirit among some Catholics, not many—very, very few, in fact—but you can see it.
That’s not because the same problems are found in Catholicism. It’s that some people in the Catholic Church simply haven’t left yet, and they probably will at some point, whether they finally excommunicate themselves, or whether they are excommunicated by the church. Yes, you’ll find disagreements among Catholics. But in the Catholic Church, we have a concept called the magisterium, which represents the faith and morals taught by the pope and bishops—all the bishops of the world—in union with the pope. That really is the Catholic Church. Anyone who disagrees or separates himself from the pope and bishops is simply a schismatic, possibly a heretic. But there is one holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church, and its unity can be seen in the unbroken succession of popes and bishops and priests that extends all the way back to Christ Himself.
That’s not a theory; that’s a historical fact. I don’t even think any non-Catholics question the truth of apostolic succession. And of course, Protestants have no claim to any such unity with Christ Himself, any actual human earthly unity with Christ. They can claim to have some kind of invisible spiritual unity.
But again, we’re back to this problem of testifying of ourselves. “Oh, yeah, I’m a Christian. Oh, yeah, I’m united to Christ.” Well, how do you know you’re united to Christ? “Well, because I know I believe I am, I am.” And so they just testify of themselves. They ignore the earthly work of Christ; they ignore the Incarnation. This is why I always say that Protestants, in practice, reject the Incarnation.
They have no unity with the incarnate Christ, who came into the world, gathered to Himself 12 disciples, taught them, and trained them to become the leaders of a church that would exist on Earth and spread visibly and physically through the whole world. They have no unity with that church, with that earthly mission that Christ accomplished. In His Incarnation, through His Incarnation, they claim to have some unity with something of a cosmic Jesus and a spiritual Jesus. And you see how this begins to resemble the early heresies in church history. They don’t have unity with the incarnate Jesus; they have unity only with some spiritual Jesus.
This is the falsehood of Protestantism. They don’t believe that Christ came into the world to establish a visible, hierarchical, earthly church. They believe the church is just a collection of people who are “born again”. Which brings us back to this wacky self-examination to find out if you’ve been born again or not, which many people aren’t sure of. Protestantism leads us from something that is clear and historical and orderly, authoritative, certain—it leads us not into some kind of assurance of our salvation; it actually leads us into chaos and confusion. And it diminishes the idea of salvation or unity with Christ to some kind of spiritual imagination of a relationship with Jesus, who becomes an invisible friend.
So, there have been a number of different attempts to try to explain how one can have assurance of salvation. You can just believe yourself to be saved, and know because you believe—and that’s, you know, this circular argument, self-approved salvation. Or you can point to some rebirth experience as evidence that the Holy Spirit actually caused you to be born again, and you can point to that as the proof that you’re saved.
But then you’re left with this new problem. Okay, okay, okay. So you’ve become a Christian. Okay, great. Maybe you’ve had a born-again experience. Okay, great. Like I said, I had such an experience, though I wouldn’t explain it in Protestant terms. So let’s say you have had this experience. The problem now is you’ve got 30, 40, 50, 60 years to live in this world. And as a Protestant, where Jesus is in heaven, Jesus is spiritual. There is no earthly church, really. Nothing on earth really matters. And all that matters is that you were born again. What do you do? What do you do for the next 30, 40, 50, 60 years on Earth?
This torments Protestant people. For many Protestants, I would say most Protestants, they can’t figure out what to do with their earthly life. They can’t figure out anything to do other than become some kind of preacher or missionary. And so just about everybody in Protestant circles, just about everybody who’s serious, ends up wanting to become some kind of minister or preacher or pastor or missionary because it’s the only work in this life that can make any sense to them. In light of Protestant ideas, where there’s no visible church, it’s sort of this—like, I would say Platonic, but it’s not that intelligent. It’s just this sort of overly simplified, dualistic, spiritual idea of religion. There’s really nothing to do in this life that isn’t stupid and useless other than try to lead other people to have born-again experiences and become Christians, which, you know, sounds very noble. But again, it’s overly simplified.
How does it actually work out? In practice, how does that actually work out? Again, it sounds cute. Sounds very spiritual. Sounds like it’s heavenly-minded. Sounds nice. But what do you actually do? You just become a pastor? Do you appoint yourself an evangelist? Do you start walking around, knocking on people’s doors, asking them if they have been born again? Do you start handing out gospel brochures, which tell people how they can be born again? What do you do? Do you start your own church? Do you decide to get on a plane and fly yourself out into the jungle somewhere to see if you can help tribal members become born-again Christians? Is that what you’re supposed to do?
For many Protestants, that’s what they do. They spend their lives basically sending themselves all over the place to try to make other people have conversion experiences. And everybody can appoint themselves a pastor. You can just say, “Well, you know what? I love to read the Bible, and I’m born again, and I know that there’s nothing else that matters except being born again. So I just want to work to make other people born again.” And so, “I’m just going to start William Michael Ministries Incorporated.” Let’s start making my own YouTube live church service videos because I feel like I’m moved by the Holy Spirit to be a pastor, a preacher. And I don’t need anybody to anoint me or ordain me because I’ve been anointed by the Holy Spirit Himself. How do I know that? Well, I believe it. I believe I’m a believer.
And we just get this insanity—self-testifying, self-appointing, self-ordaining men and women sending themselves all over the place. Really, because there’s no actual order. They don’t believe in any earthly hierarchical church. And they act like they may be the first Christians to ever live. They study the Bible like they may be the first Christians to ever figure out what it says. And even their zeal comes from this sort of arrogant, self-centered craziness that imagines that everything is being revealed through them for the first time.
This is what used to drive me crazy as a Protestant—this crazy brain world of pastors and preachers and ministers sending themselves all over the place. And I remember sitting there in the middle of that just thinking, like, “These people are all crazy. They just do whatever they want. They start their own churches.” I don’t know about where you live, but near me, there are people who will just rent a space in a strip mall and start their own church in a strip mall. You know, “Joe Schmo Revival Ministries Incorporated,” “Holy Spirit Presentation Ministries,” “True God”—just make up their own stuff. And because they can come up with the money to lease some space in a strip mall or in an office complex—I remember one evangelical church that I attended in college—they just rented what was basically like warehouse space and converted it into this kind of auditorium that they called the Worship Center. And on one side of the Worship Center, they put offices for the people who worked there—the staff, the pastors, and the worship ministers. It was in a warehouse building. And anybody can just start their own church.
The Protestants are motivated to that because it feels like it’s the only thing that makes any sense in light of their teaching. They don’t have a full appreciation for the material world. It’s this crazy—I mean, you know, I don’t know if you remember a few years back, there was some crazy cult—I forget the name of it—but they believed that there was a UFO that was going to come and pick them all up and take them away. And I don’t remember if they all took drugs, or they all ended up dead, of course. But this crazy thing where they were like, “We’re the true believers of…” Wasn’t it like a comet or something like that? And they’re like, “You know, nothing in this world is real. We’re the real believers. We’re the true people. And this is going to happen, and we’re going to be…” I mean, Protestants talk about this idea of the… It’s just craziness. When you really listen and let it work itself out, it’s just craziness. It’s as crazy as the transgender movement.
It’s just as crazy to say that I am a Christian minister because I believe that the invisible Holy Spirit has chosen me. That’s just craziness. And God would never leave us to that craziness. Now, what’s even more bizarre is when you get among the more literate and cultured Protestants, who like to pretend that they’ve got some kind of tradition and history on their side. They don’t have this sort of wild, self-ascending idea of Christian ministry. They’ll have, you know, an established church like the Presbyterian Church, or the Reformed Baptist Church, or the Methodist Church, or the Southern Baptist, whatever, Anglican Church, and so on.
They’ll say, “Well, we don’t do that sort of stuff. We don’t believe that a man can just appoint himself to be a minister and go start his own church. We believe that a man’s got to be called by the existing church leadership based on his character and signs that he meets the qualities of a Christian minister, and then he’s got to go to seminary, and then he’ll be ordained. And then he can become a member in this specific flavor of Protestant Christianity, whether it be Southern Baptist or Reformed Baptist or Reformed Presbyterian, or who knows any of the other groups. And there’s lots of them.”
But they’ve got this sense of being sort of the older OG Protestants, keeping the tradition, keeping the faith of our fathers alive. “The reformers were the first true Christians since the apostles, and so in order to become a minister among them, you’ve got to be ordained.” Well, that’s how you know that you’ve been called to ministry is that you’ve been ordained, but you’ve been ordained by the guys who were ordained before you. And they were ordained by the guys who were ordained before them. So it looks kind of serious, like, “I’m not appointing myself here. I’m being ordained by these guys, and these guys were ordained by those guys, and those guys were ordained by those guys. This is real ordination.”
But if we keep going, just a few generations, sometimes maybe a few centuries for some of the older denominations, we come to a point where the guys who started ordaining people weren’t ordained by anybody. And so this whole idea of ordination is just a big sham. And this sense of assurance that “Yeah, I’m called to the ministry, I’m a real Christian, I’m a real Christian minister,” it’s just a total farce. Because this succession is not apostolic. It’s just out of sight. And that’s sufficient to impress the people who are not going to think or ask, or people who think that the world started in 1776 or 1517. They’re just not going to ask.
But it’s all false assurances. And that’s really the point here: all of this talk of assurance is false. All of it. All of this Protestant talk of assurance is false. In fact, the reason why so many Protestants struggle with uncertainty, with lack of assurance, is because they’re actually thinking straight and realizing that what they believe, or what they’re being taught, or what they see practiced in their Protestant churches doesn’t make any sense. They can see that. They hear all this talk, and yet they still feel sinful. They still commit sins. They still have days where they’re as bad as they ever were, where they have thoughts that are as filthy as they ever were. They get into an argument and blow up in anger and curse just as bad as they ever did before. Now, they don’t do it often. They don’t do it like they used to. But they know that evil is still present in them.
You say, “Oh, that’s okay, brother, because Jesus died for our sins. And when God looks at us, He sees the righteousness of Jesus, and He doesn’t even pay attention to our sin. All He sees is Jesus.” And then the Protestant says, “Yeah, but wait a minute, you told me that I’m supposed to be born again. And if I’m the same as I was, if I’m really the same as I was, but God just calls me something that I’m not, then am I born again?” And I’m just back to the original problem. How do I know I’m born again if I still have sin in me like I had before? And so this nice, cute message about God seeing Jesus’s righteousness and God not imputing our sins to us—our sins are really not ours anymore because now we’re covered with the blood of Jesus, and God just sees perfect obedience—that doesn’t jive with the message that I need to be born again.
And so the message doesn’t make any sense. And so I’m stuck here without any assurance that I’m saved, and you’re just spinning me around in a circle with this nonsense. You’re telling me all this good stuff, all this nice, happy Jesus story to get me to come visit. But then if I want to share in the benefits, you say, “Well, hold up, brother, we’ve got to make sure you’ve truly become a Christian. And in order to truly be a Christian, well, you’ve got to have evidence of a conversion experience.” Well, what the heck am I supposed to understand here? It doesn’t make any sense. If Jesus died for my sins, why do I still die? If the Holy Spirit caused me to be born again, and I’m no longer who I was but I’m somebody new, why is that old person still present with me? What you’re saying doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t make any sense.
Now, many Protestants at this point eventually fall away. They’re called “backslidden”. It’s like a whole population of backslidden Protestants, and some of them will continue to point back to a day when they prayed the sinner’s prayer, which, of course, is not in the Bible, but convenient. Or when they raised their hand when the revival preacher asked if anybody wanted to go to heaven. If they remember one day where they think they had a conversion experience, they’ll point back to that day and say, “Well, I know I’m saved because I was born again, because I did this or did that,” even though we’re not saved by works but by faith. But that’s just another contradiction, and it just goes on like this. It goes on.
Some people get really creative in their ability to stack all these things together and try to make it all make sense. Some just ignore the parts that don’t make sense. But some keep studying. And I, for one, was one who said, “No, this just doesn’t make sense. It’s not that I’m not creative enough. It’s not that I’m not trusting enough. It’s that this really objectively makes no sense.” And I kept seeking and seeking, and studying and studying. Finally, where I found the answers that actually satisfied and brought all of that uncertainty to an end was in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
If you’re a Protestant, and you’re sick of this endless confusion, sick of all these huckster pastors and preachers constantly talking, constantly writing new books, publishing new videos, and all of this, and leaving you still back at square one, asking the same questions with the same frustrations, what I recommend is you get off all of that junk and study the Catechism of the Catholic Church because you will find answers to the questions that you have if you’re a thoughtful, reasonable Christian who’s been in Protestant circles for a while.
You know that these Protestant teachings don’t answer the questions. They contradict one another. They lead to just more questions and more confusion. If you know that, because you actually take the faith seriously, and you’re studying the Scriptures, and you’re thinking about the teaching, reasoning through it, and trying to understand it, and you see that it doesn’t make sense, I promise you that you will find satisfying answers in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism answers these questions in ways that are completely different from the way that these phony Protestants answer them.
You’ll find answers to questions like, “How can I know if I’m saved? What do I need to do to be saved?” You’ll find the answers to questions like, “Why exactly did Jesus die on the cross? What did Jesus actually accomplish by dying on the cross? What does it actually mean to be born again? What should I actually do with this life that I have to live on Earth where I have 30, 40, 50, 60 years to live? What should I actually do in this material earthly life?” You’ll find mature, reasonable, thorough answers to these questions. Not only will you find great answers to these questions, but you’ll find footnotes and references where you can spend the rest of your life going deeper and deeper into these great answers.
All of that confusion and uncertainty, being a Christian for 20 years and still walking around wondering if you’re saved or talking about the day that you had a conversion experience—all that nonsense. When you know there are Bible passages that completely contradict all that. For example, when St. Paul tells us that we need to work out our salvation with fear and trembling. Does that sound like the nonsense being taught by the Protestants? “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” I’m sorry, but I know that that’s not what the Protestants were preaching, and it’s right there in the New Testament.
When Jesus says, “He who perseveres to the end shall be saved,” you ask, “Who will be saved? How can I know if I’m saved? Can I be sure of my salvation today? Can I be sure of my salvation?” Jesus says, “Whoever perseveres to the end shall be saved.” Does that sound like what the Protestants are teaching in their Bible studies and revival meetings? No. Right there in Scripture, clearly contradicting all of this nonsense. The reason why the nonsense exists is because the beginning of Protestantism is false. And if you trace it out, all of the ends will also be found to be false.
“Whoever perseveres to the end shall be saved.” Perseveres in what? Well, Jesus says that we need to take up our cross and follow Him. Does “take up the cross” mean faith alone? No, we know very well what the cross means. It means suffering. St. Paul said, “All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.” “Whoever perseveres to the end will be saved.” Does that sound like “once saved, always saved”? No, it sounds like the exact opposite of what the Protestants tell people. Jesus says, “If anyone is ashamed of Me before men, if anyone denies Me before men, I will deny him before the Father.” Does that sound like “once saved, always saved”? Does that sound like salvation by faith alone? Does that sound like you’re allowed to slide back and fall away and say, “Oh, well, you know, I did say the sinner’s prayer.” But is that what it means to persevere to the end?
How can I be assured of my salvation? The answer is very simple. I can be assured of my salvation if I am persevering today. That’s how I can be assured of my salvation right now. I can be assured of my salvation if I am persevering in following Christ and taking up my cross and testifying for Him before men. If I’m doing those things, then I can have assurance of salvation because He said, “Whoever perseveres to the end shall be saved.” As of right now, I’m persevering. And if I’m not persevering, what does He say? “Whoever does not persevere to the end…”
You don’t need a Protestant to explain this for you. You have to persevere to the end. And the way that you do that is by grace, rather than just all of this baloney nonsense talk about grace. Talking about how the Holy Spirit this and the Holy Spirit that, and then watching people fall apart and crash and burn all over the place and wondering where the Holy Spirit went that they talked about all the time. The true work of the Holy Spirit is seen in perseverance. And then the question of grace and all of this stuff when you’re left to wonder, “How do I get it? Where do I seek it?” All of these gifts, all these fruits of the Holy Spirit that I’ve read about in the Bible—what do I actually do to get them? How do I get them? Protestants have no answer. They’re going to give you some mystical craziness: “Oh, you just pray, brother. Pray for them. You gotta read the Bible and pray.” Really? Because in the early church, there was no Bible. So how did they get grace?
We can read in the book of Acts, chapter 2, verses 41 and 42. It says that in the early church, those who believed in Jesus were all together. There was a visible church. And they continued together, not like Protestants. They continued together. And they continued together in four things. They continued together in four things. And these are the marks of true Christians. The first thing was the teaching of the apostles. The second was in communion—actually, in fellowship living together. That’s the moral life, the life of charity. Jesus said, “By this men will know that you’re my disciples, by your love for one another,” that you live together in community and love one another. The third, it says, is in breaking of bread.
Now, carnal people will read that and think it’s talking about getting together for pizza night or for brownies at a Bible study. No. When Acts chapter 2 talks about the breaking of bread, it’s talking about the Eucharist. You can go back and read early Christian writings and learn about the Eucharist. That it was a meal, the fellowship meal. From the very early days of the church, it wasn’t a potluck down in the fellowship hall. It’s talking about the sacrament of the bread and the wine. It’s talking about communion as the sacrament. And the fourth was in prayer.
So in the book of Acts, we learn that there are four marks of a true Christian: He is living under the teaching of the apostles. He is living in fellowship with that community, which is with the apostles. He is participating in the sacramental life that Jesus established when He said, “Do this in memory of Me.” And fourth, he is sharing in the prayers of that community. These are the four key marks of a true Christian: united to the apostles, united to the other believers who are also united to the apostles, participating in the sacramental life, and praying with one voice with the apostles and the community of Christians. Protestants are doing none of those things.
Now, if we fast forward 2,000 years to the present day—I told you if you want good answers, go to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. If you open up a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it’s a big, fat, giant text that you can study for your whole life. You can also study it online. If you just Google “Catechism of the Catholic Church,” you’ll notice that the Catechism is divided into four parts. The Catechism is divided into four parts for subjects in the Catechism. Can you guess what those four parts are?
They are the four elements of true Christian life.
The first part of the Catechism is the faith of the Catholic Church. What’s studied in that first section? The Apostles’ Creed. Let me ask you this: Does your Protestant church recite the Apostles’ Creed? If not—if not, now, some do, thankfully—but if not, is there any way to be more certain that you are not continuing in the teaching of the apostles? You don’t even recite the Apostles’ Creed. But the first part of the Catechism is a study of the Apostles’ Creed, the teaching of the apostles.
The second part of the Catechism is the sacraments. The breaking of bread, for example, which represents all of the sacraments. That’s the second part—breaking bread. The third part is the moral life of the Christian community. Just as we saw in the book of Acts, they lived together according to the Christian moral life. You can find a great work written by St. Augustine in the fourth century titled “The Moral Life of Christians.” That’s the third part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. And the fourth part of the Catechism—guess what? Prayer.
When the apostles asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray,” He taught them the Lord’s Prayer. Most Protestant churches don’t pray the Lord’s Prayer because they think it’s wrong. That’s how crazy they are. Some do, thankfully; some do pray it. But many of them don’t even pray it. It’s like American public schools that don’t say the Pledge of Allegiance anymore. It’s just craziness. But the four parts of the Catechism, by no coincidence, are the four elements that mark a true Christian. And this is the only way to have assurance of salvation.
The only way you can have assurance of salvation, as St. John says in the New Testament, contrary to what Protestants say, is to keep His commandments. You can go read it yourself. Read the First Epistle of St. John. It’s very short; you can read it in five minutes. He says, “If anyone says that he knows God but doesn’t keep His commandments, he is a liar.” And then he says, “By this, we know that we know Him, that we live as He lived. By this, we know that we are His disciples, that we keep His commandments.” So for all of this nonsense faith-alone talk, St. John explicitly says in the New Testament, “If anyone says, ‘I know Him,’ but doesn’t keep His commandments, he is a liar.” There is no assurance; there will never be assurance for people who don’t keep God’s commandments.
And if you say, “Well, but we don’t need to keep God’s commandments; we’re saved by faith,” then why, when the rich young ruler came to Jesus and asked Him, “What must I do to be saved?” did Jesus answer him and say, “Keep the commandments”? Was Jesus playing a trick? That is a pretty cruel trick to actually trick someone by giving them a false answer when they ask you, “What must I do to be saved?” No, that was the true answer. That was the true answer. If anyone says, “I know God,” but doesn’t keep His commandments, he’s a liar. St. John tells us how we can have assurance. We can have assurance of our salvation if we are persevering presently in obedience.
Obedience to what? Obedience to God’s commandments and to the church, which Christ Himself established. If you are in the church, subjecting yourself to the teaching of the apostles and to the leaders, by the way, who are successors of the apostles, which no Protestant ministers are—if you are subject to those men who have been ordained in succession all the way back to the apostles themselves—and you continue, persevere in their true Christian teaching, living in union with the true Christian community that’s united together under the apostles, and you’re participating in the sacraments that Jesus Himself established and commanded us to keep, and if you’re praying as Jesus taught us to pray, that’s how you can have assurance of your salvation. And it’s the only way you can have assurance of salvation. You need to persevere to the end to be saved. You need to keep God’s commandments.
And what happens if you don’t keep God’s commandments? Do you act like Martin Luther and say, “We don’t need to keep God’s…”? No, that’s craziness. You simply make use of the other sacrament that our Lord provided—the Sacrament of Confession. You go and you say, “I have sinned against God, against the church. I’ve broken the commandment. I know that I’m not allowed to break the commandments, and I take it seriously. I am heartily sorry that I broke the commandments.” The priest, hearing our confession, seeing our contrition, will assure us that as long as we continue in Christ, confess our sins, and do penance, we will be saved.
Confessing our sin is part of obeying the commands and proving ourselves to be eager to obey the commands. Who are the crazy ones? The ones who say we don’t need to confess our sins? The ones who say our disobedience doesn’t even have an effect on whether or not we’re saved? That’s explicitly contradicted all through the New Testament. It’s no wonder those people have no assurance of their salvation. They’re warned on every page of Scripture that they don’t have assurance of salvation.
The only way we can have assurance of salvation is to be under the teaching of the apostles and their successors, in union with the community of Christians who are in union with the successors of the apostles, participating in the sacraments that Christ Himself gave us, and persevering in prayer as Jesus taught us to pray. That’s the only way that we can have assurance of our salvation that’s actually grounded in truth outside of our own opinion. I hope that’s helpful.
God bless,
Mr. William C. Michael, O.P.
Headmaster
Classical Liberal Arts Academy
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