Southern Baptist Leader Says Many Catholics are Born Again

Richard Land

Southern Baptist Richard Land says that he is seeing “more and more Catholics” who have been born again (“Being ‘born again’ isn’t trendy--it’s meaningful,” OneNewsNow, Jan. 24, 2020). Land was head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission from 1988 to 2013. He made the recent comment in light of the 2018-2019 General Social Survey that found that the use of the term “born again” is spreading to Catholics and mainline Protestants. He said, “It’s not what your denominational affiliation is, it’s whether you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.” But the Roman Catholic Church is not just a different “denomination.” It is a different religion from the New Testament faith once delivered to the saints. Rome has a false christ and a false gospel. Its christ is a consecrated wafer called the host that is worshipped as the very Jesus Christ. Its gospel is baptismal regeneration followed by participation in the other sacraments. I have met “evangelical Catholics” while attending ecumenical conferences with media credentials, but when questioned carefully about salvation, they demonstrate their confusion and their trust in the sacraments and “the church.” I have never met a Roman Catholic who testified, “I am trusting in the blood of Christ alone for salvation; baptism and sacraments have absolutely nothing to do with salvation; Mary and the saints cannot hear and answer prayer; I know that Rome’s gospel is unscriptural and I renounce it.” That would be the testimony of a truly “born again Catholic.” In 2005, Land was recognized by Time magazine as one of the “25 most influential evangelicals in America.” (For documentation of Rome’s gospel from sources such as the Vatican II Council and the New Catholic Catechism, see Is the Roman Catholic Church Changing?, a free eBook available from www.wayoflife.org.)

(Friday Church News Notes, January 31, 2020, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)

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