History of Groups, Movements, & Organizations

And this morning we're taking a look at the history of groups, movements, and organizations. As I look at it, this is a fascinating area, because we have so many groups, and you try to say, how on earth are all these different groups there, thousands of them, tens of thousands of different groups of different size, and how did we get so many groups that all call themselves Christians?

It is phenomenal. It is amazing. And we'll take a look at that and I think get some insights as we go through things this morning. Question. How do groups, movements, and organizations get started? A certain idea. A concept gets going and people follow an idea. Yep, that's one of them. Good. What are some others? Disagreements. Disagreements, yes. It could be divisions and schisms over different things.

And why else? And by the way, what I had on your handout was lines to fill in, okay? All right, good. What else? Geography. Yes, geography. Very good. Geography is another thing that ends up starting different groups. All right, what else? Anything else? I have some here, let's step through them, and you hit on some of them, let's see if we catch some more. Politics. Just political things.

It is profoundly unbiblical, by the way, but that in fact has been the origin of a great many groups. Geography, as was mentioned here by Richard. Personalities is a key one. It showed up in New Testament times. Here's Paul writing to the church at Corinth. And he doesn't get past the first chapter before he says, what? One guy says, I'm a Peter. Another, I'm a Paul. Another, I'm a Christ. You know, personalities can end up being the basis.

Social differences. There have been different churches, you know, based on, you know, this one's of this particular social group and that group. Rich people's churches and poor people's churches. Different races. Another one, different bases of authority. We'll be looking at that. Here, different bases of authority. One group says, this is the base of authority. Another one says, this is the base of authority.

It is quite often the Bible minus or the Bible and. The Bible minus was, for example, Marcion. We'll see that in a bit. The Bible and, we've seen lots of groups like that. The Book of Mormon, the Seventh-day Adventist group is another one. the Catholic Church had its own Bible Plus teaching. So lots of different bases of authority. Different methods of interpretation. We looked at that last week. Do we interpret the Bible literally or allegorically? And if we interpret it allegorically, how do we interpret it allegorically? So there'll be different ones that way.

And then failed attempts at reform. That has happened numerous times where a group will come up and they will see what needs to be Restored and repaired and then We'll turn around Make sure you got the right ones Okay, there's signs are the one under the book is the one you need to for today, okay? All right Yep Failed attempts at reform what will happen is a group will come up will try to correct the problems that are evident and then the church reacts and so you end up getting by the reaction of they end up creating something new that was never intended. The original reformation attempt failed, and so what happens is they say, well, since you guys won't reform, we have to start something new.

So there's another one. The apostles taught that there is positionally only one mediator, one church, and one faith. That's a little hard to reconcile with 33,000 denominations. That's what they taught. Earthly groups, movements, and organizations don't change the position that we have in Christ, but they can most definitely be in conflict with it. See that? They can't change it one bit. They can establish whatever organizations they want. They won't change the position that the believer has in Christ, but they can definitely establish something that is in sharp contrast and conflict with it.

These are some passages here that make reference to the one mediator, one faith, one church. One thing that's important to recognize here is that the unity of the body of Christ is something that the Lord has established. These passages teach just exactly that.

There is no way that you can make an organization or pull people together that will somehow create a unity. The unity is there. The church cannot create the unity. All that we can do is live consistent with the unity that's already there. Real important, because a lot of movements at unity these days overlook that important point. They try to create a unity instead of recognizing the unity that's already present.

Something else, and you have this as a special handout, I won't rely on this by the time I get shrunk and lose it, but it's a special handout, you have this one here, or should, and the key point here is that over the centuries, and this is kind of a big picture item, over the centuries the church has tended to do a pendulum swing, back and forth between, on the one hand, get the pointer out here, emphasis on emotions on the left side, Emotional experience, expression of emotion. And then on the right side, emphasis on intellect.

And so what has happened? The churches tended to swing back and forth and back and forth between emotionalism and intellectualism, and what's in the middle? Biblical Christianity is in the middle. So what do they swing past? Biblical Christianity, every time.

So what has happened, you see the last one now, Pentecostalism and Charismatic Movement, we'll take a look at that in a little more detail in a little bit. But to give you an idea how much that has impacted the church, surveys done in the year 1970, 10% of those who called themselves Christians claimed to be charismatic. By 1995, that figure was 50% plus.

There was more in it. Yes, more in it. What do you mean? Economic gain. Oh yes, and other things too, as we'll see, but you're right. Okay, this is a big picture trend. We'll take a look now in a little more detail, looking through each of the steps. Let's look first at the Apostolic Age.

Now, even in New Testament times, there were divisions and divergent teachings. The church, however, was seen as one single church. There wasn't a concept of, we've got a bunch of different churches and denominations. That was never the perspective at that point in time. The one thing that they did have to deal with was not movements within so much, because things were conceived as one single church during the apostolic era.

What they did have is continuous encroachment from the outside. They had, for example, the Judaizers come in. Now we're trying to establish Christianity, and the Judaizers would come in and try to have Judaism seep back in. Or they would have differing movements.

In Ephesians 5.18, he writes and says, no longer get drunk with wine. I don't believe that's just a matter of some alcoholism, but there was a religion, Dionysianism, that basically established getting drunk as a religious experience. Very drunk as a religious experience. There were the very roots of the paganism and magic and witchcraft movement.

For example, in the Book of Acts, it tells about how a great pile of magic books were brought together and burned by the believers And notice this wasn't believers going out and burning somebody else's, this was their own. Important distinction. But what they did is they were dealing with the encroachment or the getting rid of these things that they previously were seeped in. And so it was more a matter of stopping the infiltration than it was of developing movements within. Okay, moving into the early church era, One of the movements that started up there was Gnosticism.

It came from Eastern religions. One of the things that most people lose track of, because Marco Polo made his trip back to the East, a lot of people thought, well, that was the first time. No, it was a reestablishment of the old trade route. During New Testament times, there was trade with China and India that came through Antioch, where the Christians were first called Christians, and it went up through the middle of Turkey and then carried spices and imports from the East into Rome. Well, they didn't just carry spices and other Eastern imports, silk, it's called the Silk Road, they also brought in Eastern philosophy, Gnosticism, mixed it with a lot of the Greek philosophy, and so now the Gnosticism was seeping in.

We see it in Paul's letter to the Colossians, where there's early forms of it starting to show up, And when John says, you know, this is the test. If the test is that they don't say that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, that's the Antichrist. That's Gnosticism. Denial of Christ coming in the flesh. Gnosticism gained prominence and development in the second and third centuries. It's one of the pendulum swings you'll see on that sheet that we looked at before. This Gnosticism was a secret knowledge That's the idea of Gnosis is to know. Very intellectual at the time. Marcion was another reaction.

He was basically anti-Semitic. He took the Gospel of Luke and ten of Paul's letters, diced them up, just took the scissors to him, and he ended up with an abbreviated form. He clipped out and selected out to eliminate any reference to Judaism. He just hated Judaism. And so, as a consequence, he had this abbreviated Bible. Very select. Basically, if he didn't like it, he cut it out.

And here's an interesting thing. He was around during the time when the Gnostics were getting established, but it was also in contrast to Gnosticism. On the one hand, on the left side, you look at the differences. Here's Gnosticism, secret knowledge. Marcionism, no secret knowledge. You've got Gnosticism founded schools, Marcionism founded churches, developed itself as a religion. So here's, at the same period of time, two contrasting movements beginning. And here's another one, Montanism. This is the birthplace, if you will, of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement. See this here?

Tongues, revelation, healing. So here's this guy, he had Montanus and his two prophetesses Priscilla and Maximilla and they had, instead of Christ coming to Israel, Christ is going to return in Asia Minor, modern Turkey. Why? Because we had a new revelation. So they'd have these revelations, they would speak in tongues and they would have healings and that sort of thing. And two of John's disciples, we know, there may have been others, but two of John's direct disciples called Montanus a heretic. None of the rest of the church accepted it either.

But nonetheless, it was a movement that stayed around for a couple of centuries, and then, within the last century, has brought itself back to life again. Okay, next one, into the imperial church era. This is where Christianity has now been declared a legal religion, and very shortly thereafter, the official religion. We have several important doctrinal church controversies. I would point out this Mani, or Manichaeism, has a couple of interesting features. One is that it actually started before Christianity became legal. But here's the other thing that's interesting. This Mani, his group was the group that later on Muhammad would be in contact with. That was Muhammad's understanding of Christianity. this fellow Mani.

And what he did is he brought together Christianity, Buddhism, remember the Eastern religions were being brought in along the Silk Road from China and India still, and Persian ideas. They had Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism believes in a good god and a bad god that are equal and never resolved. So he mixed these ideas, Christianity and Buddhism and this Zoroastrianism, put them together and came up with monarchyism.

Arius was another one that came up later, and that was a major movement, by the way. Arius' teachings that Christ was not deity stuck around, even though the church condemned it officially. And the reason Arius was able to get people to follow it, even though the church officially condemned it, is he came up with snappy tunes.

How about that? He came up with snappy tunes, they had choirs that went around the cities singing these snappy tunes and getting people to sing along with them even if they didn't believe or understand what they were saying. Yes? Huh? Snappy tunes. Catchy music. Catchy music. Yeah, yeah. You ever have a commercial or something, you find yourself singing and you think, why on earth am I singing that, you know? Yes. Thank you, Nancy. Because it was something, you get it in your mind and you just can't do it. They even had battles of the bands, different groups going around trying to combat that with other snappy tunes. Okay, there were other heresies as well.

Pelagius was an important one. because Pelagius said that man is not born sinful. Man is basically good, and if there's any bad, it's just environmental. And Pelagius was also condemned, but the church ended up embracing it halfway. Why do I say embracing it halfway? Because rather than saying man is really truly born sinful, they say, yeah, man's born sinful, but he can do something about it. That's called semi-Pelagianism. Yeah, a man's born sinful, but he's got enough good to do something about it. There were others, of course.

Here's the movement that didn't have a movement. There was a title for it, but it never was developed into a group until over a thousand years later. That's the re-baptizers. What would happen, these people would read the scriptures and they would say, When I read about baptism, there's nothing about infant baptism. There just isn't anything in the Bible about it.

And so, individuals, a little at a time, a couple or a person at a time, would arrive at this conclusion. Well, from the year 220 up until this time, 413, there was a growing preponderance of belief in the church that you should baptize children when they are Tiny, because then that gets rid of the original sin. That thought grew, and that became the dominant belief in the church for centuries. But there was this massive group that had no particular name that would say, no, we're not going along with that. We'll baptize our kids when they believe, and when they're old enough to believe and understand what they're believing.

Since it won't happen in the church, we'll just do it ourselves. And those people didn't die in a big group. They died one couple at a time. One couple at a time. And so this became established basically for over a thousand years. And we'll follow up on this in a little bit.

For over a thousand years, those who looked at the Scriptures and said, hey, getting baptized as an infant isn't going to save me. It isn't going to save anybody. they died, and they never became a movement because it was fatal. It never got developed as a major movement, yet the numbers when totaled are massive, huge. The other thing that happened in this period of time, we've mentioned it before, the Church was split into the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, basically because of the Roman Empire having been split politically even prior to the time when the Church was legal.

Yes, the church actually had a split in the southern part, but that ended up getting lost. Yeah, initially. Yeah, isn't that interesting? Now, this East-West division started 284, then totally in 395 on the political side. The church simply followed that, which was also reinforced by other differences. One of the ones we mentioned, the Western Church was based on the Latin language, the Eastern Church upon Greek. And so that was one change. Here's one of the other things that happened.

There was a controversy called the Filioque Controversy. And the question that they split over was, was the Holy Spirit sent by the Father or the Father and the Son? That was what split them initially. And biblically, it's the second answer. But nonetheless, so the Orthodox churches teach the first position. The Son did not send the Holy Spirit.

Now, what happened, we mentioned this before, in 1054, each side excommunicated the other, and so that basically severed things substantially. You have a handout like this that I won't go through, but I'll let you follow through on. It's a special handout that gives further information on this church split, because it was major.

You have the Catholic churches, and I'll use the word churches because ultimately it became that, And then you have the Orthodox churches in the Eastern world. So you have those two. One of the key things to remember about the Orthodox Church, though, is that because it was so heavily impacted by Islam, and Islam was so profoundly militant, that it ended up, because at different times Islam would have different tongues of military movement going in, it would cause splits among different groups in the Orthodox Church. and the movement of Islam ended up causing a lot of the divisions in the Orthodox churches in the East.

Okay, 590 to 1517 is the next one. We've got the movements within and movements without. What do I mean by that? Movements within has to do with within the Western Church and the Eastern Church, and we'll focus primarily on the Western Church here, there were movements within, and I think that's one, you know, people will talk about the Roman Catholic Church. The truth is that there are those that still call themselves Catholic and have broken away from the Roman Catholic Church. There are a number of movements within, and what the Church did was they would sanction various movements.

You want to start this little, you know, brotherhood? You want to start this, you know, this order? and they would sanction various movements, people would apply to be considered official, and some were rejected and some were not. But you had monasticism that basically set itself in.

People were thinking, boy, the world is evil, I'll get myself away from it. And of course it's not biblical, but that was a trend that set itself in. Scholasticism is another one of the pendulum swings. Steady, steady, steady, steady, steady. You put yourself, throw yourself into studies if that's going to do something.

You also have the Franciscans and other authorized orders. What's interesting is at times some of these groups spoke out boldly against the Catholic Church. The Franciscans said that the Pope was the Antichrist. They said that the Catholic Church was itself going to be the whore of Babylon. So, I mean, they spoke out boldly. It is amazing how powerfully they spoke out and got away with it.

Anyway, papal schism was one of the other things. At one point in time, there were actually three different popes, all calling themselves the pope. And these were not just religious movements, but there were also political and military alignments that went along with this. And they went through several generations of multiple popes.

And that's frequently overlooked. There were calls for reform, different ones. The Reformation that we talked about was kind of the big one that hit the fan, but there were numerous calls for reform. A lot of them didn't go very far, and some of the people who called for reform didn't go very far. They didn't live very long. But nonetheless, there were numerous calls for reform.

Pressures from Islam and the political domain split the Eastern Orthodox Church. That's another thing. They would get movements politically into different tongues of the Eastern Church, because of the pressure from Islam and creating different political groups and divisions. Then you establish a separate church organization because you kind of have to. And then once things get healed up, you're left with these different groups. So now you have Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox and Serbian Orthodox and Syrian Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox and a few others.

Okay, the movements without. And here's some denominations you may never have heard of. Bogomils. How many of you have ever been to a Bogomil church? Paulicians. We follow Paul, right? The Paterines. It's another group that was outside the official Roman Catholic Church. The Albigensis. Real interesting, the Albigensis is a group that...

And by the way, most of these groups just say, well, how come we never heard of them? It's because they were totally militarily eliminated. The orders militarily was you wipe out every last single follower, not one left. And there were guys who had their life's dedication to wiping out these groups. So that's why you say, why don't we have any? That's why.

Waldensians was another one. And by the way, some of these groups, not all of them, some of them we'd look at and look at what they taught and say, that's not bad. We'd look at it and say, that was good. They were persecuted severely. Yes, Norm? Okay, a lot of these, these are spread out, of course, starting out, you know, the 590, you know, starting time, and then spreading into, and I try to put them in an approximate historical sequence, spreading into, because a lot of them, they would start up and they would last for a while and then be wiped out, you know. Yes, and there was overlap between them. So I put them in approximate historical sequence here.

The Lollards, that's the ones that were associated with John Wycliffe. They were called Lollards because they would kind of hang around the marketplace. They would loll around, and hang around the marketplace, and when they saw opportunity, then they would preach. So they called them the Lollards, and that's how they got the name.

The Hussites, Jan Hus, in Eastern Europe. and United Brethren. So there are movements both within and without, and I think even now, one of the things to remember is if, you know, somebody will talk about like the Roman Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church, and there's so much division.

I've looked into it and even emailed with some of the groups who say the current, they say we're Catholic to the core, but the current Pope is just horrible, okay? One group I emailed with, they've got Mary exalted there, and I emailed them several times back and forth, and I said, well, what does the current Roman Catholic Church think about it? And they never answered. But there are a number of Catholic groups that are not Roman Catholic following the current regime in Rome. Now, yes?

The Lawlords basically, they followed Wycliffe, and basically they eventually got drummed out. It was I think 44 years after Wycliffe died, the Pope ordered, because he was absolutely outraged by what Wycliffe was teaching, so he had Wycliffe's bones dug up, burned, ground up, and thrown into the river. 44 years after he died, so there was still a steaming anger, okay? It was a steaming anger that went on for centuries, but they eventually, there's no Lollards now. Yeah, it was expensive, costly. Jan Hus was burned at the stake. So you've got, you know, it was extremely costly to be a part of these groups. And as time went on, more so.

Yeah? So everything in that column is military? Yeah, but basically, they're all gone. There are some descendants of the Hussites and the United Brethren now, because they were later on and were able to kind of survive that period of time. OK. Who's of those militarily protected?

Yes, and we'll get into that right now. OK, good point. Now, here's this tree, and because you're shrunken version, you'll have a hard time reading the chart, there's a large version of this chart here in your packet. It doesn't have the pictures on it, but the idea is that you can see the chart real clearly, okay? Now, here's the interesting thing.

You get into what's called the Reformation period, and obviously, you know, this isn't the first time that people have said, hey, the Bible's our authority, and we're going to stand on it. But it came to a point where it overwhelmed the ability of the established church to suppress it. It was that large and up at a time that they couldn't just wipe it out. So, let's take a look at this Lutheran church. Basically, it was Luther whose intent was not to start a new church. Again, this is the principle we brought up before. It was a reformation that failed. a Roman Catholic priest. He was trained, had his doctorate in Roman Catholic churches, in Roman Catholic institutions, and had been teaching in university. He was Catholic, and he wanted to see reform of what was there.

The Pope, when Luther was starting to speak up, the fellow who was the Pope at the time, had gotten his first official position in the Roman Catholic Church at the age of eight. He became a cardinal at age 13, right? And so this guy was like a teenager when he was stepping into being a pope. And he thought, well, this is ridiculous, you know?

There were a lot of other things about it that were, you know, things that he could bring up. But the point is, he was looking for reform in the church, not trying to establish something. It was the counter reaction that he got that ended up starting the Reformation. It was the severity of the reaction and the absolute, you know, no, we don't have anything wrong with us, kind of reaction that created the Reformation and the movement that it was. Now, the next break off you see on the tree there, let's step through Lutheranism here, excuse me.

One of the things that I think is key to point out, Luther maintained, as did the Catholic Church, political ties. He went to various noblemen and had their military support and protection. Nancy and I visited one of the places in Coburg where Luther was protected. He wrote, a mighty fortress is our God. He was in a place that was untouchable. So he made the comparison. But Luther did make connections with numerous noblemen and had military protection and aligned himself with military force.

He spoke out boldly against the Anabaptists and Jews. I was reading Luther's commentary on Galatians. He'll give a commentary on Galatians and all of a sudden he'll break out into a spew against the Anabaptists, those who re-baptized. We'll talk about that group in a bit.

He also went to the Jews with this message and they rejected what he had to say, so he spoke horrible things against the Jews, I'm afraid. The other thing to remember is what he didn't reject, he embraced. He continued the political alliances. He continued the infant baptism. He continued to interpret portions of scripture allegorically. So if he didn't reject something, he kind of maintained what was there in the way of Catholicism, and you see that in the Lutheran churches today.

A lot of it was rather anti-semitic, unfortunately. Pretty foul. Luther's tongue was not tame. Yeah. Okay, the next group is the reformed group. This actually ended up being the bigger group as you look at what it broke into. Luther was operating primarily in Germany and other parts of Europe. Calvin was in a different situation. Calvin was one of the major reformers who was not actually, though he taught in a university at one point, he was one who actually had not been a Catholic priest.

Nonetheless, he kind of holed himself up in Geneva. Switzerland had a kind of unique military situation. and has carried on as they do now, the situation of kind of military-political separation. And they had a good position of kind of geographic defense with the lakes there and the mountains that they were up in. And so he was able to hold himself up there and be protected from the wars and religious conflicts that are going on with much of the rest of Europe.

Not entirely. There were Catholic cantons in Switzerland as well. As you see, a whole bunch of groups branched off from the Reformed movement there. Now, Calvin and Luther actually did have some contact at certain points, although Luther lived a little bit earlier, there was some overlap in their time. And they did have some different teachings, different areas, and Calvin was the one who Started he didn't develop it fully, but he started this Calvinism that you you know likely heard of Calvin like Luther however saw Israel Being replaced by the church and so that the tendency was to look back and see the law as the continuing basis for Christian growth and living And part of the problem, too, is he, even though he didn't do as Luther did, he still maintained the political connection. He was supported by the town council of Geneva, and actually took part in seeing to it that others who were not of Reformed camp, but still Christians, and not Roman Catholic either, that they were killed.

So it was severe. And we'll get into it when we get talk of the Anabaptists the break off of John Calvin and the reform group was not necessarily anything there wasn't a violent You know connection between them so much I think one of the things to compare this with is Galatians 3 1 through 3 You know here's a few foolish Galatians the bottom line in that passage is you've started by the law no Okay, having begun in the spirit Are you now going to switch to the law to help you grow spiritually? Is the rest of your Christian walk based on the law?

Somehow this never sunk in. Now, the next one is the Anabaptists. Here's something to make a distinction on. You have this nice little tree. You have that nice little chart that shows a tree. What that chart doesn't show is that the Anabaptists broke off, but it was different in that it was a reaction. and the break-off was not well received.

Calvin himself had a part in seeing to it that some of the early Anabaptists, and I don't have pictures there because they got killed off too quick, were killed, and he had a part in that. Here's what happened, the same thing that had been happening for centuries. The Anabaptists actually, and you notice I have a green line with a dot there, because the Anabaptists had been around for centuries.

They were the movement with no name, What they said is, when I look at the scripture, you're telling me to take the scripture as authority. When I look at the scripture, I find no basis for infant baptism. I find basis for baptizing those who believe. And therefore, we're going to baptize adults who believe.

And obviously it's not going to happen in the Reformed Church. So the reaction from the Reformed Church is kill them. Drown them. Between 4,000 and 5,000 Anabaptists were killed, many of them by drowning. They thought, okay, you want to baptize? We'll baptize you. Many of them by drowning. Between 4,000 and 5,000 Anabaptists during this time of the Reformation, this kind of early break-off, because they said, we will not have our children baptized, and we will baptize those again who have come to belief.

Okay? Costly. The Anabaptists, as we see now, there's actually groups that have come off of that. Now, here's the other thing, is they sought no political alliance. Their position oftentimes was pacifist, but it wasn't so much that they didn't believe in war so much as that was their way of saying, I'm not getting militarily aligned. You see the difference there?

In other words, their problem is if they were not pacifist, then they'd get sucked into all this political battle and military infighting that went back and forth. All of Europe was turning into an uproar because they would say, you know, look out, the Catholics are coming. Look out, the Lutherans are coming. Look out, the Calvinists are coming. Okay? And the Anabaptists are saying, we're just looking out, you know? Okay? Now, no direct connection between the Anabaptists and the Baptist church. Notice, I said not directly. Here's, well, we'll get to that in a bit.

But all that happened in the Baptist church movement, it started because independent of the earlier group, they looked at the scripture and they said there's no basis for infant baptism. Again. So this happened again and again and again as a source of different groups. Centuries of Anabaptists. And here's a statement that's real interesting.

The Council of Trent, which was a kind of a Reformation reaction, It says, were it not that the Baptists had been grievously tormented and cut off with a knife during the past 1,200 years, they would swarm in greater number than all the reformers, all the politically aligned groups. How about that? Because this group, they called a man a Baptist, but they didn't have a movement for a great long period of time. There was just one believer or a couple would say, we don't find that in the scriptures, and then they'd die. That's his point. This is the cardinal who led the Roman Catholic Council of Trent.

The Anglicans was another break-off. Again, though, it had a different origin. Basically, what I show there is King Henry VIII wanted to marry Anne Boleyn, and that didn't fit within the Catholic Church rules of order. And so he says, well, we've got a separate island here with an English channel between us and the continent. And I'm the king, so we're going to start a different church. So it broke off basically for that reason.

It's shown as breaking off the reformers, but the reality is it's sometimes called Anglo-Catholic because all they did is they didn't reject everything of the Catholic Church, they just said we have a separate organization that is not rooted politically in the Catholic Church. Okay, basically because of that, they maintained a lot of Roman Catholicism. They just said, you know, we're not here to establish something new, just separate. And so they maintained that.

The 1611 King James Bible was Anglican. It came out of this root. And that's one of the reasons why a lot of the early reformers just spit nails at this King James Bible. They didn't want to have anything to do with that. It made them infuriated. And the notes that were in it, were also Anglican, basically Anglo-Catholic. And so it actually took decades for the King James Bible to become accepted because of that, its connection to the Anglican Church. And it had to be revised in order to begin that acceptance, which it was several times. The next one is the Presbyterian Church.

Here's John Knox. He had connections with Calvin. The thing that was different, Calvin really stepped into a situation where there was a separate political group. He didn't advocate rebellion against authority. John Knox said basically to Calvin, I agree with you except about this.

And he says, so yes, we are having a rebellion. 1559, the rebellion began. By 1560, things were cemented in place. But again, it carried on the idea, now we have a rebellion, now we have a government that's aligned with the church. And so he established the Presbyterian denomination at that point in time.

We'll get back to that in a bit, by the way, because there's more detail on the Presbyterian church I want to show. Here's the Baptists. They were basically, they had gone, some of them already over to Holland, even though English Baptist was the root. And so what had happened here, here's this guy John Smythe, he's a Cambridge graduate, he was a pastor of a church, he started reading the Bible and he says, there isn't any infant baptism in here.

And so he maintained that. Okay. The Methodist. Now this is a fascinating one, and we're going to revisit this too, although we don't have much time. The Methodists here, largely, the idea was to reform the Anglican Church and get some spiritual life into it because it had fallen into such deadness. So here's John and Charles Wesley establishing the church. Basically, it grew outside the bounds of the Anglican Church. Although they originally didn't intend, they actually ended up starting this church. It was influenced by Arminianism and Pietism under that branch, but there's actually another branch in England called the Calvinistic Methodist Church because that had more Calvinistic influence. Now we've got this nice tree. The reality is this tree is complicated because this shows it's simple. It's a rat's nest. It's a briar when you look at the interconnections. Let me show you why.

We'll get into this next part here, 1648 to the present. Finally, Europe has quit fighting amongst themselves over religious issues, but there was still religious repression within each authority, within each government. Okay, here's your family tree of religious groups. You notice Mrs. Noreen's contribution, thank you. And this chart has concise grouping. Notice that the top part of this is other religions, so it's obviously very simplified.

Here gives you an idea of what some of the different groups are. An important point I want to make about that handout is that it's not necessarily by historical development, but by characteristic. This isn't how they branched off in history necessarily. but how they ended up. So you'll see things grouped that didn't necessarily have the same historical roots.

Okay? Important distinction. The other thing is some generalizations that are given on there don't apply in the specific case. Let me give you a case in point. Here's one. You've got the Anabaptist Believers Churches, and it says Independent Bible Churches here. Okay? That's where we fall. Okay? However, one of the things you'll see, it says Congregational Form of Government. That's not what we have. Okay?

So look at the generalization as a generalization, realizing in specific instances it may not fit. Nonetheless, it's a good collection of churches of a category. And you won't find every detail, but quite a bit. Now, we don't have time to go through it all, but this is the Presbyterian family of connections.

This is since about 1700, and you have a special handout that fits that. Isn't that complicated? It looks like a wiring diagram, okay? It is incredible. And there's things splitting off and joining together and grouping up with others. And by the way, this is simplified. But this gives you an idea why we've got these thousands and thousands of denominations and all the reasons that we gave.

Geography, personalities, different methods of interpretation. One of the things that caused a split less than a century ago was a lot of the Presbyterian Church started going liberal, that is, not taking the Bible literally as the basis of authority. There were those that reacted to that. So you have, for example, the Bible Presbyterian Church splitting off and saying, no, the Bible is to be taken as truthful, taken seriously.

And so you'll see groups like that starting off. So here's again where different basis of authority, different methods of interpretation start to come into play. If you were to look at it, you would find a similar incredible chart for every group. Let's take a look at one more here, and you have a handout that fits it.

The current Pentecostal charismatic movement, which is huge, started off as, had its roots in Methodism. There were also some contributions in the U.S. from revival meetings, the Shakers, and even from Mormonism. Mormonism, by the way, is one of the first groups in the United States to practice speaking in tongues.

Now, from Europe, you had the European import. The European import was this Schleiermacher. Schleiermacher, remember, was the guy who said that religion really consists of emotions. Really, emotions is the basis of belief. That's what really the substance of it is all about, is being emotional. Kierkegaard came up with this idea that there is no foundation in truth. To understand something, you have to experience it. There must be a leap of faith. That really didn't catch on immediately, but what happened is you find a confluence between this experience, this philosophy, the European import, and the development of these next Methodist-based groups. What do I mean?

The holiness groups in the late 1800s, early 1900s, the Azusa Street group was the Pentecostal churches. That's where the gift of tongues is the verification that you've had the baptism of the Holy Spirit and if you don't speak in tongues, you haven't had it. That's their basic idea. That's the roots of the assembly of God and the four square churches, among others.

Then, you've got the charismatic groups coming in about 1960. This is where the Pentecostal idea jumped its banks. It started flowing into other denominations. By 1967, you've got charismatic Catholics. And that's why I said by 1970, it only started in 1960, by 1970, 10% of those who call themselves Christians call themselves charismatic Christians. And of multiple denominations, No longer was it thought, I have to speak in tongues as evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I can do all sorts of other gift kinds of things. And as long as I'm charismatic, it doesn't matter what denomination I'm in.

So the whole thing jumped the banks. Then finally, in 1980 about, is the third wave movement. John Wimber and the Vineyard Churches is kind of the root of that. And it jumped the banks again. Instead of going beyond denominations, It jumped the banks in terms of, now I can express the Holy Spirit in ways other than what's listed in the Bible. So that's why you have the holy barking, and the holy roaring, and the holy barfing, and the holy mock birthing, and all these different things. And basically you can express all sorts of things outside of anything that's in the Bible. So the Bible is not a basis of authority, it's a place to start to go somewhere else.

A lot of, by the way, a lot of the third wave movement ends up copying, in its externals, the Kundalini teaching in Hinduism. And that's the next step. I was speaking on this at a conference a couple of years back and somebody asked, what's next? I think the only room next is to jump outside of Christianity and begin to make those bonds with Hinduism and the other religions. that have these extra-biblical expressions. I think that's the movement that you'll see next after this third wave movement.

It's because they don't have any other direction. Where else can they go now? They've jumped outside of what's biblical, they've jumped outside of church denominations. The only direction they can go is to bind themselves with other religions, and essentially they've begun to do that by expressing Kundalini Hinduism.

By the way, Kundalini means serpent power. Next thing to look at, I don't even hope that you'll look at the lettering in here, but I do hope you'll take a look at the chart that you've got in your package. This is the last chart that we'll look at. This is the fundamentalist movement.

What's real interesting about it is that as you look at this movement, it's a movement that stretches across denominations. And it was real interesting, it ended up putting Christians from dispensational churches in some kind of an alliance with Christians who are from reformed churches. Otherwise, there would be some kind of a substantial difference there. What happened was during the latter 1800s, there was this movement of liberalism seeping into many of the mainline churches.

And what was this liberalism? It's basically, it's beginning, I'll put it informally, to not take scripture seriously. To begin saying, well, you know, a lot of this stuff is myths, or it's really nice stories, or, you know, Daniel didn't really write the book of Daniel. Those kinds of things. And they would make those sorts of statements, and Other Christians reacted to that, whether they were of Reformed background or dispensational background. They said, hey, wait a minute. You've got a problem here.

You're cutting off the root of the basis for truth. That cutting off the root of the basis for truth sprung up liberalism, and that set the stage for the charismatic movement to move in. Why? Because instead of having a foundation in Christianity founded on historical truth and objective fact, Since we've cut off the root of that, what does that leave left?

Emotions. Experience. Existentialism. So the church has moved in that direction as a consequence. This fundamentalist movement was a reaction to liberalism that said, hey, wait a minute. And you'll find even like at the Presbyterian Church Seminary at Princeton, which initially, by the way, other than its reform position had some pretty solid guys. There was a big split there as the church went off in different directions and the seminary went off in different directions. But a lot of the scholars there would argue in terms of, okay, here is what's true, and they would lay out what's true.

And by the way, the archaeology of the last century has just done torpedo jobs on the liberal view, finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls, finding of a great number of historical documents. You know, I try to show pictures of things like that here. But what's happened is the philosophy has already gotten launched, even though the factual basis for liberalism has gotten torpedoed. Well, let's get to the last point here.

Ultimately, look at what's the message in Ephesians. Ephesians 4, 11-13 there. The apostles and prophets, evangelists and pastors who are teachers have been given for the equipping of the saints. Why? Look at this. To the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith. Isn't that amazing? In view of what's taken place historically.

Pastors and teachers, not to put people off in a million different directions, but for the unity of the faith. But notice, you get to the passage immediately after this, notice it's not based on diversity of doctrine. The passage immediately after this points out that it's not being thrashed back and forth with different doctrines. Singularity of doctrine is the key. Singularity of doctrine.

And notice the ultimate point here. The ultimate point is growth in Christ. Growing in the grace and knowledge of Christ. Let's pray. Lord, as we look at these things, it is amazing what has happened over time. The world and the flesh have had their way. And yet, Lord, the true church is nonetheless as unified as it always was. And we just pray, Lord, that you would work in hearts to bring people to a knowledge of what indeed is our basis of unity, and that is in you and the work that you have done. We give you thanks for that in Jesus' name. Amen.