Welcome back to Shemus Popery. I'm Joe Heschmire. And one of the biggest roadblocks that almost any Protestant dialogue and with the Catholic faces is the Pope.

What makes him so special? Why should I follow that man when I've got the Word of God?

Well, Catholics believe part of the answer is this. Jesus Christ created the papacy. He changes Simon's name to Peter, Rock, and then says,

upon this rock, I will build my church.

You might ask, what does that have to do with the Bishop of Rome today?

Well, the Catholic claim here is that St. Peter went to Rome, where he built up the church and was ultimately martyred,

and that his special leadership role carries on in the bishops who follow after him.

Now, Protestants reject this, and many claim that

not only was St. Peter not the first pope, but he never even went to Rome in the first place.

This whole connection between St. Peter then and the bishops of Rome that allegedly follow him

is all just a big Catholic myth with no evidence. Well, the truth is from the scriptures and true history and archaeological

evidence we know Peter never went to Rome. There is no biblical evidence. There is no historical

evidence. In fact, much to the contrary, it was the Apostle Paul who said he wanted to go to Rome.

We have biblical evidence and we have historical evidence that the Apostle Paul made it to Rome,

but not whom we know as Simon Peter.

Okay, so that is the claim that there's no biblical, historical, or archaeological evidence that St. Peter ever went to Rome, and therefore, he couldn't be the first Pope.

Now, as we're going to see, each of those three claims is false.

There is biblical, there is historical, there is archaeological evidence.

And I want to look at each of those three areas in turn.

But before we do that, I want to give a huge thank you to my supporters over on Patreon.

Because of your generous contributions, we've been able to upgrade the studio and hire our new editor. So if you want Shameless Popery to keep growing to reach more people, I'd just ask you to prayerfully consider becoming a patron over at Shamelessjo.com. Your direct financial support is what makes this show possible and what makes this content free to watch. Okay, back to

the argument. Number one, let's look at the biblical evidence and we'll look at St. Peter's

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