A Firm Foundation (P1)
This topic has been on my heart for a couple weeks now. I want to be obedient to the prompting of the Holy Spirit and simply document how He’s been teaching me about it and unpacking it with me.
It all started when a friend of mine sent me a video by Wesley Huff about Catholics versus Protestants.
I’d never heard of Wesley Huff before. Maybe I’d seen his picture somewhere, but it wasn’t something I normally would have clicked on. I usually think to myself, “Okay, yeah, there are lots of people talking about Jesus these days, so I’m not just going to listen to anybody.”
But because he sent it, and he’s one of the people I’ve been praying for, asking the Lord to reveal Himself to him, I decided to listen.
In the video, Wesley talked about the controversial topic of the Apostle Peter being “The Rock” based on Jesus’ words in Matthew 16:17–18.
My Background and the Journey So Far
This argument about Peter being the foundation is one of the core pillars in the Catholic Church.
Disclaimer: This is not to bash the Catholic Church. I have nothing but gratitude to have been brought up in a devout home and to have come to know Jesus through the Catholic faith. The catholic church has my respect. This story is simply with regards to my own personal faith journey.
For context: I was born and raised Catholic. I went through all the sacraments of the Catholic faith except Holy Matrimony. However, in 2024, I had a real, life-altering encounter with the Lord Jesus.
My journey actually began before 2024. Back in 2021, right after COVID, the Lord started working in me and awakening my spiritual senses. Before that, I was spiritually dead — a dead man walking. In 2021, I gave my life to Christ, and in 2022, I got baptized.
Now, we all continue to go through the process of sanctification. My spiritual man had been saved, but my soulish man still needed a lot of saving. Toward the end of 2023, things started happening rapidly. I’ll go into details about that whole story another time, but the point is: if you hear me talk about the Catholic faith a lot, it’s because that’s my background. That’s the lens through which many of these questions came up, and it’s what I’ve been unpacking with the Lord.
Unpacking Matthew 16
So when the argument came up that Peter is “The Rock” and that the Catholic Church followed this in ordaining popes, priests, and the clergy, I got curious. I went back to Matthew 16:13–18 to get the context of what was actually going on.
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Jesus asks His disciples:
“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
They answered that some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. Then He asks them directly:
“But who do you say that I am?”
Simon Peter replies:
“You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”
Jesus answers him:
“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.”
Let’s stop and unpack that for a moment. Peter received a personal, divine revelation of who Jesus Christ is. Flesh and blood didn’t give him that knowledge; it could only come from a divine encounter — Spending quality time with Jesus.
Peter encountered the truth. And there’s something about truth: once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
So who or what is “The Rock” that Jesus was talking about? Is it Peter the man, or something much deeper? In Part 2, we’re going back into scripture to unpack what “The Rock” truly means and what it looks like to build our lives on it.
