Introduction-Why Study Church History?
Vern Peterman · Jul 6, 2003
Church History, No. 01
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4826225650808

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We have this Church History in God's Word. We're going to be going through these 13 sections, as we do here. Today we're going to be looking at an introduction and asking the question, why study church history? We're going to be stepping through that. This next week, and by the way, these outlines are basically what you have on your front table of contents. I'm just stepping through it quickly to keep us oriented here. We'll be looking this next week at key time periods in church history. Just kind of stepping through in one week, stepping through about 19 centuries here of church history. Almost 20.

Then, how we got the Bible will be the next one. Starting from how the Old and New Testaments were drawn up and pulled together, and how they were separated from other things that were written during ancient times. and then particularly how the English Bible came to us. And so we'll be looking at that, stepping through the paces on that. The history of Bible interpretation. What you'll find out, and we'll see here, is that the history of Bible interpretation follows along very closely with some of the different, you know, how did different groups get started? Because as you look at a passage, you'll say, well, heaven's sakes, there's six different interpretations of this passage. Well, we'll find out exactly why.

So we'll take a look at that. The next one, the history of groups, movements, and organizations. We're not going to track everyone. With some 20,000, we're not even going to get close. But what we'll do is get the big picture and then take a look at a few specific groups to get an idea how those groups developed and how that's impacting us today as a church.

The next one here, the history of the relationship between church and government. It has been one that has gone flip-flop, and it's also profoundly affected both church and government, including our own. And so we will look through that and kind of step through some of the key places where that's been an impact. History of freedom, martyrdom, and persecution. It's something that obviously in the early church was a significant factor. but it has continued to be a significant factor. We tend to think of the early churches going through lots of persecution, and yes they did.

But there have been more believers killed for their faith in the last century than all the prior centuries combined. Amazing. Since we last met, if the average rate of deaths to Christians holds true, 7,000 believers have died since we last met in this room. Lots. It is a phenomenal number, shocking.

History of churches and church governance. How have churches been run? Who's called the shots? And that's a fascinating study in itself. You wonder why churches seem to run different directions? We'll get a real clear idea why. History of the doctrines of salvation. There have been various times in church history when certain ideas came forth. Let me give you, for instance, a quick one. We think fairly easily of the idea that Christ died in our place, right? We think, of course.

From the time of the New Testament, it was a thousand years before we have any record that that perspective was understood. Isn't that amazing? For a thousand years, we have no record that believers in earlier centuries understood that principle. So we take it for granted as, of course, that's the truth. Ten centuries went by before that even came to the surface, so far as we can tell.

History of the spiritual growth teachings. Now that's fascinating, because you look at what some of the churches have taught are the principles of spiritual growth. And it is stunning. It is shocking. And there is a great disparity among believers, among those who call themselves believers, as to what is involved in growing spiritually. The next one, the history of end times teachings.

This again goes back to, you know, how do we interpret the Bible? And lots of different perspectives there. We'll be taking a look at it, and we'll get an understanding why are people all over the place on this. Why do you have some people who believe in a pre-tribulation rapture, and others believe in no rapture at all? Why do you have some people who are looking forward to the Lord's coming, and others saying, no, the Lord came 19 centuries ago?

Wide variety of belief there, and there's a reason for it. History of missions. Missions is something that obviously started in the New Testament. That's why Christianity spread. And yet, even today, missions are changing. We'll be looking at the origins and history of Islam and its interactions with the Church. It's not that Islam is a part of Church history directly. Islam is not a part of the Church. But the impact of Islam upon the Church has been huge. It was during the first century that it began, and it is this century, isn't it? Huge impact of Islam upon our culture and upon Christianity.

So we'll take a look at that one. All right. How is this going to happen? We're going to go through facts, graphics, pictures, things of that sort. One of the things you notice, I like to try to put pictures in front of you, because I think that helps cement in people's minds not only the facts and information, but the reality of it. OK? Now, we'll have handouts, of course.

Historical and replica samples. I like to make sure people get a chance, if they can, Here's what a 1611 King James Bible looks like. You might be shocked. I'd like to have you have a chance to see a page and even take a scanned replica with you of that out of the Geneva Bible so you can look at what that looks like. Again, if you have other things you can bring in and share and are willing to do so, that's great and we'll include them as much as possible. Files on CD. I'm pulling together, if you have a computer with a CD player, I'm pulling together what's going to be a massive library on church history. This much if it were books. Massive library on church history.

So at any rate, later on what I'll do is kind of, because I'm still pulling the pieces together, and it will include all the files from this as well. What I'll do is I'll kind of get a sign up for those who would like one and then we can go ahead and get you that in your hands. It'll be a public domain stuff that you can pass along to others as well. So, no problem in sending parts or the whole thing once we get that collected.

Comparing Church History with Scripture. We call this Church History and God's Word, not just Church History. Because at multiple stages we'll be saying, okay, that's great, this is what happened, how does it compare to God's Word? We're not going to leave this in academic realms. We're going to instead just say, okay, what does God's Word say? does this compare with God's Word, and how does church history stack up with the truth?

So we'll be looking at that. We want you to ask questions. I haven't gotten to yet, but we want you to ask questions. And then the last thing is discussion. Now, views of history. Views of history. We want to back up on this because this is important. What we're studying is a perspective that the world does not have.

And what we're being taught largely, and I remember going through the science courses and whatnot in college, and what we're being taught largely in our public schools and our universities, and frankly even some Christian schools, is a materialist view of history.

That materialist view says that history is either random and meaningless or mechanical and meaningless. Either way, it's what? Meaningless, okay? In other words, it is either an atomic and molecular machine, or it's a physics machine, or some combination thereof. And in the end, it is just kind of cranking on, inexorably. Just moving on, and personality is an illusion. That's the message that's coming across.

And our lives are simply biological and physical and chemical interactions and nothing more. That's the materialist view of history. And materialists will look at personalities and look at things of that sort, but in the end, it's meaningless. The materialist view has nothing to offer in terms of significance. All it tells you is the mechanics.

That's what most of our society is being fed. The next one that's become more popular in recent decades is the Eastern philosophy and religion. The primary ones we're talking about, of course, are Hinduism and Buddhism. There's different sects and groups within each of those, just like we have among Christendom.

But think of this. In the Eastern philosophy, Eastern religion approach, life is not going towards a particular direction and then you're done. Life is cyclical. A lot of the Hindu scholars will say that the age of the universe when it's all done will be something around 4 trillion years. They're just expecting that you're going to be reincarnated and reincarnated and reincarnated and reincarnated and reincarnated. And if you don't in Hinduism reach Moksha or in Buddhism reach Nirvana, then that's alright because next time you're just going to go around again and again and again and again. And history is cyclical, okay?

And it is headed somewhere, but that's way, way off. This is the perspective of Eastern religions, and many who have rejected materialism and rejected Christianity are headed in this direction in our culture. They're soaking it up. It is pointless, because it is cyclical. You may not help that person who is suffering, because that's his karma. and you don't want to disturb it because that will wreck yours. So you must leave him suffering.

Gail? I don't know if it was this month's issue of National Geographic or last month's, but there's an article in National Geographic which I saw was very interesting about the untouchables and how they're treated even today, even though taxes have been about a lot.

When I was in college, I shared with a group earlier, I took a course in Eastern religions, I spent hours and hours and hours talking to a Hindu professor, Dr. Bhanu Dave, and hours and hours and hours talking with him, and I came out just shaking my head, you know, we're living a dream of God, and when all of this dream is over, then we will all return to the impersonal God. That's as good as it gets, folks. Okay? Have a nice dream. Or nightmare, depending on how you look at it, okay?

Now, Christian biblical history is different, and it's different in this regard. Christian biblical history has a direction, it's linear. It starts somewhere, and it has a purpose. That is unique. Materialism cannot offer that. Eastern religion and philosophy cannot offer that. Only biblical history offers this perspective that all of history, everything that has gone on, everything that will go on, all has a purpose. That is special and unique.

We have something as believers to share with the world that you've seen from the other major philosophies the world cannot offer. The world cannot touch it. So we have a different view of history and we have a different view of the future, don't we? Now, views of church history. Within Christendom, there are two...

Yes. Question? Yeah. Sure. Yes. That's right. That's right. And the very next verse, 311, is God's eternal purpose. Yes. And this is the marvelous thing. The world has nothing like that to share, that what is happening on planet Earth is purposeful and meaningful. As a matter of fact, it's eternally purposeful. And personality is not an illusion. Personality is not something to be snuffed out, as it is in Eastern religions or materialism. Instead, personality has eternal purpose, because and it's founded upon the personality of the Godhead.

The views of Christian history, basically we could split it up a lot of different ways, but among Christians there are two. The first one, and this view by the way represents most of Christendom. Most of those who follow, if you look at these charts of the world of this many billion Christians or whatever, most of the people who call themselves Christians in some realm fall into this category, this covenant or reformed view. Israel was chosen as the people of God in the past, but God has cut them off entirely, having replaced Israel with the Church.

Israel has no future. That's, in summary, the covenant and reformed view. Those who hold to that look at the reformation of Israel as a nation as having one of two kinds of significance. One, it's either pure happenstance and has no meaning whatsoever. Or two, Israel has only been reformed so that God can show more judgment to Israel. Those are the two views of those who fall under the covenant and reform theology view.

The second view, and what is taught here, is the dispensational view. Israel was chosen as the people of God in the past, but God has temporarily set them aside, creating the church as a separate group, but not a replacement. Notice the arrows here. This arrow shows Israel broken off, and the church replacing Israel. Now in the dispensational view, Israel still has a distinct future, and we show Israel here continuing, and the church beginning alongside. Distinct differences. Obviously there are some variations within each of those camps, but that's the basic idea. Now, which one's right? Which one is correct? They're obviously quite different views. Which one's correct? Let's take a look at a verse here. Here's Romans 11, 1 and 2, and I've taken the first half of that for the sake of brevity.

I say then, God has not rejected his people, has he? May it never be. for I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew." And you've got the reference for later on in that chapter. Let's take a look at another one. Jeremiah 32, 36 and 41a. And I've taken verses that are separated there to make this point that this is the Lord God of Israel that's speaking these words, okay? And then the point comes out in verse 41.

I will make an everlasting covenant with them. How long? Everlasting, okay. With them that I will not turn away from them to do them good. What does that sound like? Sound like he's cut them off? Sound like God hates them? Okay. Because that is, among some of the covenant folks, the view. God hates them for having been unfaithful and has just rejected them utterly. And many of those carry that on to say the only reason that Israel has become a nation again is so they can be additionally judged, brought together, and shown God's condemnation. That's the view. This doesn't seem to fit with that. Now, this is, I think, to kind of get a perspective, and this chart is one produced off a file, and I might do it a little differently, but it gets the idea across.

From creation, there has been an anticipation of the cross, hasn't there? All the way from Genesis chapter 3, continuing on to sacrifices that you see in Genesis and on into the books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, and so on. And what you see in there is an anticipation of the cross, of God's sacrifice in Christ Jesus. In the Church Age, which is between this time of the cross In this time of fulfillment, we are in a position of two things. One, a time of reflection, looking back on what the Lord has done, because the cross is now history for us.

And a time of anticipation of what is yet to take place. Interestingly enough, there is more prophecy about the second coming than the first. So there is still much to anticipate. The statistic is, out of about 10,000 verses of prophecy in the Bible, about 5,000 have been fulfilled. The other 5,000 yet to come. Alright, here.

Why study church history? And for here, on your handout, you've got lines. Why study church history? I'm asking the questions now so you get to answer. Why would we bother? What's that? To know who we are. How did we get here? How did things happen? What else? It helps us know where we're headed too, doesn't it? We should not be in a case of having spiritual amnesia. How on earth did I get here? but instead having a perspective. Yeah, Tom? Yes, yes. Excellent point.

And unfortunately, what happened, church history had a tendency to not only do this thing of repeating, but not learning from what was going on for centuries. You know, gee, this year isn't working. Let's do it for another century, right? So, yeah, just this tradition thing or the momentum of history has tended to carry things on.

Good. What else? Yeah? It directs our purpose. It gives us a perspective to see where things are headed, doesn't it? It directs our purpose. Good point. What else? It helps us understand other people, their mindset. When we talk to someone who has a covenant theology or reformed theology viewpoint, we're not just wondering, how on earth did he get that perspective? It won't make any sense to us. Once we're through with this, I think we'll have a lot better sense of where did this come from? Why do people hold these different views? How come we have this one verse and six different interpretations?

We'll have a better perspective on that, won't we? Good. Anything else? All right, let me click through what I had here and if that helps add, fine. We can better understand why churches in the world are like they are now. We've talked about that. We can avoid repeating past errors. There's Tom's perspective.

The next one, we're encouraged by the testimonies of those believers who lived in centuries past. How about that? Believers who stood fast in spite of great opposition. Believers who who got it in terms of understanding, ah, I see what God's Word says, and that perspective being brought out into the church. Things like that encourage us as believers as we see that. The next one there, the amount of history in Scripture implies that there's value in understanding history. Does that make sense?

If you look at Scripture, both the Old and the New Testaments have lots of history in them. In the Old Testament, even starting from the book of Genesis, you've got lots of history. woven throughout the pages of the Old Testament, you step into the New Testament, what do you see?

There's more of it. The Gospels are recorded as history. The Book of Acts is recorded as history. That has a strong implication. History must count. There must be value in looking at history. There's a message. Another one, the amount of prophecy in Scripture implies that God is telling us the rest of the story, the history, the rest of His story. So if you look at those, there are strong implications coming out of scripture as well, in addition to the things that people brought forth, and I appreciate the comments and input. Something else to take a look at, what does church history encompass? From a biblical standpoint, church history starts when?

Yes, in creation, I heard that, and that's fine. From the standpoint, without that, we're not getting anywhere, right? Okay. Then the day of Pentecost is the actual starting of the church itself. Okay? And so that's why we have this quote here from Acts 1-8, it's the very next chapter, Acts 2, where we see that described and fulfilled. That's the beginning of the church. Okay? The next part we have at the other end of that, excuse me, jumped a little too fast, First Thessalonians 4, 16 and 17 is the rapture.

That's the time when this church history that we're going through now winds up. It may be that we won't get to finish this. As much as I've been looking forward to it, I won't be disappointed. If the Lord decides, time's up, I'm happy with that. But that's the end of church history. Let me ask this little question.

Will there be church history after the rapture? Yes, that's correct. However, there will be something very interesting here. Will there be things that are called church on earth during that period of time, after the rapture? Yes. There will be dry, senseless church history after the rapture.

All right, now, next perspective here. This is the timeline. We'll be looking at this timeline. You have both a small and a large copy of it in your handout material there. If you want to, what we're going to do is step through this real quickly and talk about these. We're also going to look at the specific individual points that break down these particular periods of time. Something to keep in mind is I've made these breakdowns at certain years, and in truth, those years, somebody else could use something else, and you will find other people breaking things down at different points.

That's fine. The breakdown points are to be useful in our kind of remembrance and thinking of things, but there's nothing about them that's absolute. In other words, I'm not going to argue with somebody if they adjust something or put another division in there. That doesn't bother me in the least. These are just simply tools for our thinking in terms of history and its breakdown.

And if somebody else has some other breakdown, I'm happy with it. Now, the first era there is the Apostolic Era. That's obviously... Let me back up here. Hard to do it here. There we go. I think that'll get us there. The Apostolic Era, that's obviously within the era of the Apostles. Once the last Apostle died, and we'll check in on that in a minute. Once the last Apostle died, that was it. The next is the Early Church. This is a period that we hear about.

The Church is growing from a very small number up to the point of the completion of the time of persecution when the Roman emperor said, okay, Christianity is now legal. We'll take a look at that in a bit. The imperial church, the church increasingly got involved with the Roman government. Now, on the one hand, having been opposed by the Roman government, now from 312 to 590 was increasingly all tied up with and interwoven with the Roman government. And then the next roughly a thousand year period of time, 590 to 517, is the medieval church. Then that's broken by the Reformation, which I clock here as 517.

Other people can point out other things that brought up to that point, and that's fine. And then 1648, the Peace of Westphalia, up to the present modern time. These are the breakdowns you have on your chart, and let's step through them quickly. I put 30 AD down. You may find different Christian scholars, New Testament scholars, may put the time of Christ's death anywhere from 29 to 33 AD.

I think for the sake of what we're doing, the details on that are not particularly critical. And it's also, it's not a problem from the standpoint of does that make the history questionable? No. They simply didn't write things like, I, Paul, am writing this to you, Philippi, and it's now, you know, 63 AD. Okay? That dating system didn't happen until later. So a lot of the things that took place, we have windows of time, not specific years to clock them by.

Just from the standpoint that church history starts at the point of Pentecost, that's the only reason. Obviously the Lord is acting, but church history hasn't begun. 96 AD is the death of John, the last living apostle. Most of the apostles... Yes, and it turns out that it's probably about a year before John's death. when it was compiled and put together comes on later, and we'll cover that when we go through the history of the Bible. In other words, you could put that as another time period in there as well. Most of the deaths of the Apostles are extra-biblical, as we don't have a record of it outside of Scripture, but we will go through that when we step through it.

At 312, Constantine declares Christianity legal in the Roman Empire. By this time, about 10% of the Roman Empire is Christians. 90% out there are pagans. Now, that sounds nice, except for one thing. That was only the western half. The eastern half received the edict and just set it aside, so the persecution continued for them for a time.

590, Gregory I becomes the Bishop of Rome, the first to be called the Pope. By this time, things had more and more moved towards a point where the church and the church structure, and as we'll see, even the church titles and names and their designations for certain areas that churches operate within, they just basically carried over the Roman government's names. Diocese, Vicar, Pontiff, all those are titles that come straight out of the Roman Empire. We'll take a look at those.

1517, Luther nails the 95 theses to the Roman Catholic Church door at Wittenberg. By the way, that wasn't a rebellious act. That was the way you posted something that was saying, I want to discuss this out in the open. It was only interpreted to be a rebellious act when they looked at what was in it. We're happy with discussion, but not about this. That was the way it worked out. So it was only, I mean, Martin Luther was intending to reform things, not start something new, per se. But anyway, we'll get into that.

1648 was a piece of Westphalia ending the Thirty Years' War. Nancy and I, some years back, stayed in Bomberg, and we were at a mill that was right along the river. And right across the river was a huge castle. And we asked some of the people who lived there, What is that? And they said, oh, that was the castle of the guy who sold the munitions to both sides during the 30 Years War. He made lots of money. And then it goes to the present. Anyway, those are the divisions we will use.

As Marilyn brought up, there are lots of other things going on that are important in the midst of those, but those that just kind of give us a framework to operate with. Okay, so what we'll do is we'll step through each one of these. and step through these next week as we look at each of these time segments. You have a handout that should match this pretty closely. And what I wanted to do here is to step through what some of these pictures are.

Excuse me, we'll go through that in a minute. This next week, I'm going to go through the periods of time in a general review, and then starting two weeks from now, we'll go through the rest dealing with things by subject. That is, instead of just doing, you know, sometimes they teach church history kind of by moving through it by age. Instead, I'm going to cut it the other way after next week.

We're going to look at it by subject, and we're going to cover all of church history on that subject. And so we'll sweep through topically. So we'll, for example, look at how we got the Bible two weeks from now, and we're going to sweep through all of church history to the present as to how we got the Bible, and we're going to look at that. The next one, the history of Bible interpretation, we're going to start from the beginning and carry it on to the present. So that's the way we're going to proceed after this next week. Now, you're wondering what those pictures are. I want to step through there, and you may want to take notes, or you may want to just stick it in your in your memory bank.

This is Caesarea Philippi. This is where the deacon Philip lived. This is where the Gentiles first were introduced to the church. Remember, this is where Cornelius, Acts chapter 10, is located. So now you've got a picture. This is an aerial view of Caesarea Philippi.

About 3,000 Roman soldiers were stationed there. So it's not just a little podunk town. It was basically on the eastern end of the Roman Empire. That was the Roman fortress. And it is also the place where Paul was imprisoned for two years. Up here is a fragment of John's Gospel.

This is, in terms of what is a credible testimony, this is the earliest piece of the New Testament that we have in our possession. And you may look at that and say, huh? But what we will find out as we look at this is that the amount of material that we have of early New Testament documents and the amount and the distance of time between the original writing and the copies that we have is so overwhelming compared to all other documents of ancient history as to be almost embarrassing. It is an embarrassingly phenomenal number of documents. This is the first little piece, yes it's a fragment, but what you find is shortly thereafter we get a mountain of documents including whole copies of scripture.

All bound. The next one here, this is on the bottom, the Forum in Rome. and this is one obviously New Testament times was relevant but Rome continued to be pivotal and initially Christianity was cast out from the forum you didn't bring it up because it was dangerous eventually it got to be the place it was brought out in the open because that's where Christianity went out in the open and very well connected with the Roman Empire's government up top here is a Christian coin of about the same era, sort of late Roman Empire. The actual Christian coin and they had the stamp there. And if you can look real carefully, you've got a halo around the head there.

Then as you go on here, here's the Gutenberg printing press. This is the middle of the 1400s. We think of the internet as the information age. This was the start of the information age. They were excited about this. Once Gutenberg developed this printing press, they just started punching out pamphlets and copies of scripture and the first thing they printed was a Bible. They started printing up things.

Martin Luther could have handouts and spread them all over Europe. And they'd never had such a thing. And it exploded. It was one of the tools that broke open church history in that era and ended basically a thousand year reign of the the Roman Catholic Church over the main part of Europe.

John Wycliffe, and one page out of his Bible, and one of the things you'll notice, a person didn't get his picture up here unless their first name was John. But anyway, John Wycliffe was oftentimes called the Morning Star of the Reformation. He translated the Bible from Latin. He didn't have the Greek text available to him, he translated from the Latin. and spread that around England principally and he had a group that he worked with called the Lollards that helped him spread, and this was all hand copied, helped him spread the Bible that way. The next one over here, this is the Castle Church at Wittenberg where Martin Luther went and nailed the 95 CCs and was stunned at the response. Whoa! He thought he was starting a discussion and instead he lit the forest on fire.

Here is Abraham Lincoln's parents Bible. That was the Bible that was read in his home. And then down below John Nelson Darby who not 200 years ago formulated teachings that had been in formulation for many centuries but spoke them clearly, including the one that we looked at here, where Israel still has a history and a future. Israel is not being replaced by the Church. The Church is a separate entity, a separate group of people.

That was something that he formulated, among other things, rather distinctly, and put them forth. And then this last one, John Walvoord here, who has been instrumental through the the 20th century, and not only heading up Dallas Theological Seminary, but also doing lots of writing and speaking and things of that sort.

He died last December, and so he's home with the Lord. I was at a conference with my brother, and my brother asked him, you know, John, what's the first thing that you're going to ask the Lord when you get to heaven? He says, I'm not the least bit concerned about that. I'm concerned about what he's going to ask me. So at any rate, these are the Johns.

So you get an idea of what's there. The one other point here is on the initial cover where you've got the pictures there. This is inside the Colosseum in Rome. The Colosseum was built during the 70s AD. And so actually the early New Testament authors, they never saw it. This was something that was built during the 70s AD, completed towards the latter end of that decade. And it basically is two football fields in each direction in approximate numbers. Good size.

What you see down here is a lot of divisions underneath the floor And the floors obviously rotted out, but that allowed them to move things and keep things going underneath. And interestingly enough, a major industry was bringing in fresh sand from Egypt to put clean sand on the floor and move all the bloody sand off. All the bloody and messy stuff would be off, so they could say move in new stuff and just ship loads of sand moving into there. The Colosseum in Rome continued to be used for a few centuries, and up until 312, Christians, once it was constructed, were indeed losing their lives in the Colosseum.

This is an early Greek document. In addition to the Scriptures, and we'll go over that, we have thousands and thousands of early Greek documents that give us huge insight into the meaning of words and phrases in the New Testament. And it is wonderful the things that have been discovered, including some of them used as stuffing in a crocodile graveyard.

All right, this is the Catholic Church door in Wittenberg, and this is Jerusalem looked at from the Mount of Olives in the current scene. So anyway, that's the quick intro here. This next week, what we're going to do is step through some of the periods of church history and just kind of walk through it in an overview fashion. Then we'll begin to look at some of the details in terms of here's how the Bible was interpreted, here's how we got the Bible, here's the history of the teaching on prophecy, things of that sort. So we'll step through each of those.

Yes? This is Jerusalem. I think this is looking towards the west. You're on the Mount of Olives looking towards the west. This is the Dome of the Rock, built in rough numbers around 500 years ago. So it's an old building. But it is on, this pad that it is on, is where the Jewish Temple was.

And there's some, what's that? This is the wall, and by the way, you see this wall, some of this wall was modified and whatnot in a similar time frame to around when the Dome of the Rock was built. So some of this is not original wall, but at least gives you an idea where it was. Some of it fell into disrepair and whatnot and had to be restored.

At the south end of this temple mount is where, for example, the Mikvah baths where Acts 2 took place, where they baptized the people, that's thought to have taken place there. Just south in this area here, this is the city of David, in this area. So when you look at David thinking of Jerusalem, he's thinking of just this. And the temple had not been built at David's time, right? Because who built the temple? Solomon, his son. So Jerusalem was a small place at that point in time.

Lots of history yet to unfold. Good, any other questions, thoughts? Yeah, Tom? You can see the Eastern Gate a little bit further right. Right here is the Eastern Gate. And based on both tradition and I think biblical history, that eastern gate which has been sealed up the last 500 years is to be where Christ comes through into Jerusalem when he returns. The eastern gate was sealed up by the Moslems, thinking, well, we'll stop the Messiah from coming. And they put a bunch of Moslem graves around the bottom too, to try to discourage the Messiah from coming through there. I don't think it'll stop him. Okay? Any other thoughts there? Questions?

Okay, there's a couple of sites. There's one down here. It's off the edge there. But I think as you look at it archaeologically, it is more likely that it's located over this side, the other side of the hill from here. about in that area. Yeah, Nancy? Yeah, okay, yeah. She's asking where the cross was located, and thank you, because I want to make sure that people do hear. Where the cross was located, where the crucifixion was done, and the general, when you investigate everything, it looks to me, right over in this area is a location that appears to fit all the facts.

But it is an area that's subject to discussion. We don't have some absolute, here's exactly where it was kind of thing. That's not something the Romans kept track of. Any other thoughts, questions? Okay, let's close in prayer. Lord, we're thankful that as we begin this study of church history, That it's not just a history of us, Lord, and how we got here, although it's certainly that. But it is a part of a bigger plan of what you're doing. It's your history. It's your story, Lord.

And we thank you that as opposed to others and other religious groups, as others who have simply rejected any spiritual belief, Lord, that we can look forward to the outworking of your eternal purpose. And what a marvelous thing that is. We give you praise for it and we give you thanks. In Jesus' name, Amen.