Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012
Vern Peterman · Jul 8, 2012
Bible Bkgds/Church History, No. 28
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926320453511

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

This is actually a 10-page handout, so I mildly apologize for the length of it. But anyway, I think what we're going to do is, Craig was sort of whetting your appetite on Church History last week, and this week what we'll be doing is just kind of looking at the turning points and the key, you know, very high very much highlights in things that happened over church history over the last, you know, roughly 2,000 years. And with the idea that we'll go from here on out after today, we'll go through things by theme, by topic.

And so this is an introduction to those key time periods. We have here, this is the Roman Colosseum up at the, oh this thing is not, Operating. It does help to have it turned on. Okay, this is the Roman Colosseum. And the floor there has rotted out and has been taken out. This is the church at Wittenberg where Luther nailed up his 95 theses. And this is a New Testament document on papyrus.

Craig went over some of these and we have these on the top part of your first page handout, what each of these things are. We'll be looking through this again and again just as a matter of those being kind of key indicators of the time period. These are the turning points we'll be looking at. 33 AD, and by the way, I've changed that since we went through this some years ago. We had that 30 AD, but increasingly the evidence is pointing towards Christ's crucifixion on April 3rd, 33 AD, that specific day. and the death of John 96 AD, the last living apostle. The others all died a martyr's death.

And then 312 is when Constantine declares Christianity illegal in the Roman Empire. Prior to that, there had been 10 waves, just like a number of thumbs and fingers, 10 waves of Roman persecution and the last one was no less severe, and then finally Christianity is declared legal. To the Christians it was almost bizarre. First I'm persecuted to death, and now it's completely legal and fine. Then 590, Gregory I becomes the Bishop of Rome, the first to actually be called Pope in any full sense.

1517, Luther nails 95 theses to a Roman Catholic church door at Wittenberg. That's the church that we have pictured there on the right. And then 1648, the Peace of Westphalia signed ending the Thirty Years' War. We'll talk about that Thirty Years' War because that was pivotal. OK, let's look at the first one, 33 to 96 AD, from Christ's death, burial, resurrection and ascension, and then at 33 and then 96, the death of John, the last living apostle. Here it is on the chart, and this is fulfilling what you see on the top of your first page there.

Now, the setting of the church, here's Galatians 4.4, when the time had fully come, God sent his son. So we had in that the influence of Rome politically, and one more thing, what did Rome build lots of?

Yes, roads, roads, roads, enough to go two times around the earth. If you can imagine that, all hand built and built the hard way. Built roads that went two times around the earth. Many of those roads are still in use or existence now. Phenomenal roads. So it was political and it was also a transportation system.

The influence of Greece, intellectual and specifically language, that the entire New Testament was written originally in Greek, translated fairly early into other languages. We have over 5,000 hand-copied Greek manuscripts and somewhere around 25,000 hand-copied documents when you include the other languages it is translated into. Huge number.

Then the influence of the Jews. The Sadducees hung around Jerusalem and ended their existence in 70 AD. They didn't believe in a resurrection, they didn't believe in anything beyond the five books of Moses, and they didn't believe everything inside the five books of Moses. But the Pharisees were missionary and they believed the entire Old Testament and they taught the resurrection, they taught miracles. All the books of the Old Testament they looked upon as inspired. And they went around the whole Roman Empire and beyond telling everybody about those Old Testament documents and the accounts in them.

So here's the influence of Rome, the influence of Greece, the influence of the Jews. Here is a map showing the Roman provinces from 70 to 120 AD. Here, look at how extensive it was. The British Isles all the way to the Persian Gulf, all the way down to Egypt and the Red Sea. Phenomenal. I mean, think of the countries and the cultures that that includes now. Amazing how extensive the Roman Empire was. But it was also a problem, as we'll soon see. Here are some of the roads in 14 AD. And 14 AD, that's the death of Caesar Augustus. They continued to just build roads and build roads and build roads. And the Roman soldiers were the ones that did it.

Here's Alexander the Great's empire bringing the Koine Greek language, and that greatly influenced, set the groundwork for the writing of the New Testament. Prior to Alexander the Great's going in and invading the way he did, because he enforced the language the way it was, essentially very similar to the New Testament Greek. Prior to that, Greek was splintered up in a bunch of different dialects. So he set the stage for communicating the New Testament.

Here we have, and this is on page one in your handout, The Roman Empire provided political stability and good roads on which to carry the gospel. The Greek culture brought the Greek language which was structured beautifully for precisely conveying the essential New Testament truth.

Here is Jesus on the cross and with one Greek word said in the perfect tense, it is translated, it is finished. But it's actually just one Greek word, tetelestai. It's all paid. And the form of that Greek word, the grammar of it, is it's completely and totally paid, impacting you on into the present and on into eternity, implying permanence. And he said that all in one word, from the cross. He could say it in one word because of the Greek language that had been established. It says it's completely paid, it's permanently paid, and its effect will be on into eternity. That's powerful stuff.

The next thing, the spread of the Jewish culture gave the Empire a background in the Old Testament so as to better convey the gospel. This is why the Apostle Paul could write to the people in Corinth and talk to them in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and talk to them about Moses and the Passover and the water brought out of the rock. And he could tell them in 1 Corinthians 10 too that the Israelites were baptized into Moses. And the people reading that would know it. Why?

It's because the Jews, the Pharisees specifically, had gone about spreading those Old Testament accounts. So everything was set up by the Romans, the Greeks, and the Jews to spread the gospel at the right time God sent His Son. The apostles wrote letters and they wrote histories. What were the histories that the apostles wrote? Pardon? Acts.

And by the way, was Luke an apostle? No. But who was his sponsor? Who was Luke's sponsor? That was who he wrote to, but who was his sponsor? You're right, that's who he wrote to. But who, pardon? Well, who was Luke with as he was writing? He wrote with Paul, right?

And it's very likely he also met and consulted with Peter on this. So he had other apostolic sponsors. For any author of the New Testament who is not an apostle, what we find is there is an apostolic sponsor. Mark was not an apostle. Peter writes about being with Mark. So Mark had an apostolic sponsor, as he wrote. Yes, John Mark, that was the guy. He was also with Paul, and he got in trouble with Paul, and then Peter says that he was with him, and at the end, what did Paul write to Timothy? Mark. Isn't that something? Yeah. So Barnabas had a very valuable ministry with him in that interim time to restore him to fellowship and usefulness.

Here is, they wrote letters and histories. The Gospels and Acts are histories. The rest of it is in largely, Revelation might be taken as somewhat of a slightly different case. The rest of it is in the form of a letter. I, Paul, write to you, the church, at da-da-da-da-da, wherever it is, right? So, in the form of letters, except for Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and Acts. Here's Luke writing to Theophilus.

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word. This is not just rumor. This is not just rumor. It seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the exact truth about the things you've been taught. Very precise. And by the way, Luke has the training of a medical doctor.

Not certainly, but probably from the medical school in Philippi. Here is the timetable of New Testament books. I've gone in and made one change in the printout that you have, and I have Hebrews as question mark. We don't know who wrote Hebrews. It was probably not Paul. It was possibly Barnabas, but we don't know that with certainty.

There's also something we have in here and it's real blocky on here because this was a graphic produced in the late 80s. But Larry Crutchfield put this together and he shows, here's John who had with varying degrees of certainty contact with some of these other early church personalities. For example, Polycarp and Ignatius and Papias. Justin Martyr and Milito Apollinarius and Irenaeus. And so he documents that and you have that in a handout there on page three.

Whatever happened to the Apostles, we covered that in more detail in Lesson 9 of the Life and Times of John and Bible Backgrounds. So I won't go into that in detail. I will note a few things. One is Judas, of course, never did actually become an Apostle. Why? What happened to Judas? Pardon? He betrayed Christ. That's part one. And what else happened? He died. How? He basically hung himself and so he took his own life even before Christ was resurrected or anything, his life was ended.

James the son of Zebedee and John the son of Zebedee are like bookends for the apostles in this sense that James was the first, John was the last. James is the only death of an apostle recorded in scripture and that's in Acts chapter 9. John's death was the only one, so far as we have any record, that was natural. That is, he died of old age. The rest of them, from Andrew all the way to Paul, and actually including James, John's brother, died a martyr's death from any record that we have.

Those records, frankly, are of varying reliability. But there's no indication that there was anything other than a martyr's death for any of those from James to Paul. And this also is an important what we call apologetic point, and that is they didn't say, hey, let's cook up this story.

You know, let's all pretend. And then would you die for that? Got any volunteers for that? No, not going to happen. And they have a whole bunch of guys, a whole group of guys who when Christ was crucified and was buried and resurrected did not understand. To have them turn around and say, I'm going to tell you something and I'm willing to die for it. That just doesn't happen. Not on a fake. Not on a, let's pretend, not on a make-believe. Right?

Okay, now next one, 96-312, what you had is during the time of the New Testament era, including the time of the Apostles, up to 312, you had 10 cycles of persecution of Rome against Christians. So here it is, 96-312. Now, I put this on here, I actually didn't print it out because I have some points of observation and critique of this. This is supposed to show Christianity around 100 AD. But as I looked at it, I said, hmm, something doesn't sound right. Here are some of the things that it's missing.

There is possible evidence of the gospel heading all the way up into Britain by the end of the first century. We have record that Matthew and possibly others died down in Ethiopia, which would have been off the bottom part of this map. Matthew, the record has it, was killed by having wooden stakes driven through him, tying him to the ground while he screamed out the gospel. Several of the apostles went over into this area off to the east of here. And why would they do that? It's because there's a whole bunch of Jews from the Babylonian exile there who also speak Aramaic, the language that they already spoke. It was a natural. Here are Jews. They speak the language that I already know. Of course I'm going to go talk to those guys about the gospel.

And it's not even on the map. One more thing, Thomas, by both the extra-biblical written record and by the tradition of the church in India, Thomas took the gospel to Madras, India and established a church there. I talked to a fellow who was a pastor over there and he said, yep, that's the record and that's our tradition. So that is not shown here. One more thing, Bible accounts all the way to the birth of Christ in Bethlehem show up on Chinese tombstones in the 80s AD. So the gospel went that far. Did the apostles take it there? We don't know. But somehow it got there. It is unmistakable. that the gospel somehow got there by the 80s A.D., before 90 A.D. It shows up on Chinese tombstones.

Yes. Yes. No, we will be going over that, but no, it's not. The 10 cycles of persecution started with the persecution under Nero. in the 60s AD and continued all the way to Diocletian the 10th persecution. What was bizarre is here the Christians going through the severe persecution Constantine comes in and says Christianity is legal and it's like we're going all the way from I might die to you're just fine you know. It was quite a deal. Yes?

So when you say He says that's part of their tradition. What does that refer to, basically? Basically, aside from having an ancient written record, you're talking about Thomas? This is Thomas the Doubter, by the way. Okay? Thomas the Doubter. Aside from having a written record that he went to Madras, India, if you talk to the Christians there, they will also tell you the same story. That's what I'm saying. In other words, you have verbal tradition as well as written account. And they both tell the same story, that Thomas went there, and that's also where his life ended.

Here's Christians in the Roman Empire, and this is a pivotal thing too. Christians as a percentage of the total Roman Empire population. By the death of John, the number of Christians in the Roman Empire still was less than 1% of the total population within the empire. Even by the time, and I have the next one, even by the time Christianity is declared legal, that's the little triangle there at the right, the number of Christians is still somewhere around 10%. So here's Constantine declaring Christianity legal when in fact 90% of the Roman population was not Christian. we'll see here, by 324 he's declaring Christianity the only legal religion when most of the Empire is still not Christian. Here we have a chart that shows up on page four, there's quite a bit of detail in it, even including going back into the Apostolic Era. But it gives some sort of a timeline about key personalities and key events.

Yes? Oh, he had this vision, which is tough to say is this from the Lord or what, but he had this vision of the cross under this sign, conquer. And he in fact won militarily and he ordered his troops to put that cross on their shields. Now, how much of that is from the Lord, we don't know. But nonetheless, that's what took place and that's what was recorded. This is pivotal. This is big.

One of the problems, the Roman Empire was huge. I mean, if you were to say how many countries does this encompass right now and how many different cultures, it would be, it's phenomenal to ponder. We're talking, you know, North Africa all the way into the Middle East and then all the way up to Britain, looking at the Spain and Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula going up around the Black Sea. Huge expanse all under the Roman Empire.

But what happened is in 284, they just had difficulty administering all this. I mean, it wasn't like you could get on the cell phone and say, hey, you know, how's things going over on the other end? And so if you have, you know, here are the people in Britain who get notice that the people, here's Britain, right? They get notice that the people down in Judea have rebelled. And of the 12 legions that came to battle the Jewish rebellion, one of them came from Britain. You know, how do you get the message there and then get the soldiers you know, it's a huge thing.

So what happened is Rome essentially divided up East and West, there in 284, and this was before Christianity was declared legal. But it ended up being a huge, huge distinction. What is the language from here to the East? What's the main language? Pardon? Koine Greek. is the main language there, and so you have a language difference, just for starters. So you've got Koine Greek to the east, and you've got Latin here to the west, so you've got a huge language difference, and then all the cultural things behind that.

And so there was already, even before Christianity was declared legal, there was already a difference that ended up meaning that this went Catholic and this went Orthodox, like Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Antiochian Orthodox, etc. That was the later effect.

Yes? A lot of people say that the two legs in the Statue of Daniel is the Roman Empire, the division of the Roman Empire. Do you feel that? Yeah, I think that's pretty clear. Now, how exactly that divides and what that looks like at the end time is still in question. And I think people have jumped to conclusions too quick and too early on. And that's an important point. This East and West division people have largely overlooked. And that's two legs, right? So I think a lot of people have jumped to conclusions about this. I don't think it'll be clear or apparent until the last times, which might start today. I hope so. Yes.

What happens, I mean there have been people that have for centuries said, this guy's the Antichrist, that's the Antichrist. In around the year 1200, the Franciscan Order, headed up at one point in time by Francis of Assisi, the Franciscan Order that is Catholic, they called the Pope the Antichrist. If you can imagine that. Luther, you know, started setting dates and calling names. Over the centuries, people have said, this guy's the Antichrist, that one's the Antichrist, this is this, this is that.

You know, somebody was talking to me just before we started the class here about getting, you know, somebody telling, well, the United States is this and this, no, garbage. The reality is a lot of those things, people grab on to something and say, that's what this is. Well, nonsense. The truth is a lot of things will not be apparent and clear until the time of their fulfillment, their actual fulfillment.

There have been hundreds of attempts to say, you know, the Lord's coming back this date, the Lord's coming back this date, that's the Antichrist, you know, and it's all rubbish. God has revealed it, but the exact identity will not be clear until the time comes. The vision of the Roman Empire had and continues to have, up to this day, major impacts upon the character of the Church.

The Roman Empire went from western and eastern halves administratively in 284, and to two separate and crumbling empires by 395. Within a few generations, basically, it went from, hey, we need to make an administrative break here, to everything falling apart. After 395 Rome couldn't even defend itself. I mean the capital city couldn't put soldiers out there to stop invaders. Rome fell apart and the division of the Empire was the beginning of that. The Western and Eastern Church's connections to the Roman Empire beginning in 313 AD meant that as the Empire split so increasingly did the Church.

And we'll look at that in more detail. The Roman Empire was called Pontiff Maxim, and the divided empire was further subdivided into areas. Each of the areas within the empire was called a diocese. Ever heard that word? Yeah, it's not from some church thing, it's from the political names for the districts within the Roman Empire. And each diocese was headed by a vicar. Ever heard that term? It's all from a crumbling Roman Empire. And then the church ended up taking on its traditions from that.

Diocese and Vicar. Here is the Pontiff Maxim coin. Here's Maxim Pontiff. And you will hear the Pope now called Pontiff. It's actually from a Babylonian term that means chief bridge maker. It was the Babylonian high priest, yes. Yeah, yeah. And here's the emperor, a deity, right? So anyway, that's where the term pontiff comes from. From the crumbling Roman Empire, we have pontiff, we have diocese, we have vicars, right?

Next, so the Orthodox Church continued to move apart from the Roman Catholic Church, culminating in mutual excommunications in 1054. In 1054 AD, the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, excommunicated one of the Orthodox leaders, and the Orthodox leader in turn excommunicated the Pope. So now things were completely split until the Orthodox Church got in trouble and needed help. militarily, and we'll get into that, because the Muslims were coming. The Roman Catholic Church operated differently than the Orthodox Church and in different cultures, so only the geographical domain of the Roman Catholic Church later saw the Reformation and radical development of the Protestant movement. The Orthodox Church in the East never had a Reformation, but boy did they have trouble with the Muslims. Lots of it.

Now, 312, when Constantine declares Christianity legal, until 590, when Gregory I becomes the Bishop of Rome, the first to be called Pope. So, Christianity is declared legal in the Roman Empire in 312. By the next year, it is now the official religion, and by 324, the only legal religion. when only 10% of the empire, approximately, is actually Christian. So 90% of them were illegal.

Yes. Okay, so, if I get this correct, you're saying that the invasion of the Roman Empire to east and west, obviously Rome is on the left side of the empire, the west side, so that's the side of the Roman Empire that the Catholic Church basically took control of? That's right. That's correct. Okay, so what happened to the You said Muslim influence. Let me back up. We'll be going over this in more detail. No, it's no problem. You see this? What do we have? Here's Rome, but the home of the Roman Empire actually moved north to northern Italy. See that?

Of co-emperor Maximian there in Mediolanum. and the home of Constantius I and Maximian Caesar up there just west of the Rhine. So they actually moved away from Rome with both of those places, a double capital, but not Rome. And in the Eastern Empire, things went to Thessalonica and Byzantium and right across from there, what would end up being a major city just right across from that little channel that led to the Black Sea. So both of them ended up having double capitals.

So things were breaking apart. Double capitals, and they call it the Roman Empire, but Rome is not any one of the capitals by that. Isn't that bizarre? So let's get back here. So the Catholic Church experienced the Reformation, but the Orthodox churches in the East never experienced a Reformation.

Their opposition came from the Muslims. And so we'll get into that. In fact, we'll spend one whole Sunday, I think, on the Muslims. So looking at this, here is the layout 312. Christianity is legal. 313, it's the official religion. 324, it's the only legal religion. 90% of the Roman Empire was then, you know, you had black market religion, essentially.

So a history of the Christian Church to date was written by Eusebius and 50 copies of the scriptures were made. Why would they make 50 copies of the scripture when Christianity is made legal? What had they done with the scripture before? The Christians hid it and the Roman government made capital punishment, the penalty for having it. So they tried to reverse that by then making 50 copies, official, sponsored copies, as some compensation for having made the Bible.

So were those 50 copies targeted to the possession of certain individuals? It's interesting. I don't know that we have any of those 50 copies. We just have record that they were made. And Eusebius was kind of the center of this copying and writing the church history process. Pardon? Was he a scribe? Let me think here. Eusebius was a scribe and historian is probably the best way to summarize his role. He ended up being not the only person, but kind of the focal point for this copying and writing of the history of the church.

Since only about 10% of the Roman Empire's people were Christians, pagan temples were converted to Christian church buildings or eventually shut down. So essentially the influence was this pagan temple will now become a church building or we're going to shut it down. One or the other eventually took place. Councils were sponsored by the Roman Empire in order to resolve doctrinal issues.

So here for example, you ever see this cross with a circle? So here imagine, here's a temple to the Sun God. After all, the name of Sunday is Dias Salas. Here is a temple to the Sun God. Are you going to tell all these people, most of whom have been worshipping the Sun God from as long as they can remember, you can't do that anymore? How do you accommodate those people who have been worshipping the Sun God as long as they can remember and tell them you're going to be Christians from here on out. What do you do? You don't take the disc down. You don't take that circle down that's in the front of the temple. You just simply leave it there and put a cross in front of it. See there?

Indulgences indulgences where you pay a fee to have your loved ones have a better afterlife. That's what indulgences basically are in the Roman Catholic Church. It came from Egyptian religion. And so what do you do? You just say, well, we do the same thing. We just call it Catholic now.

So, Here are the imperial and early medieval church councils. The first one is Nicaea. So here's 325, a year after Christianity is made the only legal religion. You have, you know, various kinds of schisms. And so what does Constantine do? He pulls all the bishops together. And bishops, by the way, as being higher than elders, is a post New Testament tradition that's not in the Bible. The Bible calls elders and pastors and bishops the exact same thing. And by the way, it never gives them a title.

But the church had made these bishops and so Constantine pulls together these bishops and has them meet and one of the bishops that was at the Council of Nicaea was Saint Nicholas. St. Nicholas, the one who gets called Santa Claus. So one of those bishops is St. Nicholas. But at any rate, here's 325, the first council, they continue to have councils under various people from this crumbling Roman Empire on into subsequent centuries.

It is at Ephesus, remember at Ephesus, who was the Who was the one who was the focal point of the great temple, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world in Ephesus? The pagan goddess. Who was she? Penis. Pardon? Penis. Close, but Artemis, right? Artemis. And so remember, here's Paul in the amphitheater at Ephesus for two hours. They're yelling, great is Artemis of the Ephesians. Well, guess what?

Christianity is now displacing all that, but you've got this woman that you put all this focus on, right? So do you say we just can't do that anymore? Or do you put a woman in very high esteem? Yes, that's what they did. And so they said, here, you can't worship at the Council at Ephesus. You cannot worship Artemis anymore. But you may pay lots of attention to Mary. Pray to her. Venerate her. Right? All these things. Okay.

Now, continuing from 312 to 590, continuing decline in the political unity and the military power of the Roman Empire. Things crumbling more and more and more. increasing role of the Bishop of Rome in military and government matters of the western portion of the Roman Empire, an expansion of Christianity into lands and peoples more distant from the boundaries of the old Roman Empire, and increasing number of those who call themselves Christians in the western part of the empire. So now 590 to 1517, This is from the time Gregory becomes Bishop of Rome to the time Luther nails his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg. So in that time period, almost a thousand years.

Here is the Europe in the time of Gregory the Great. A lot of things have broken apart. Now different groups are taking over different areas and in fact names that have not even cropped up before. It's largely tribal and ethnic distinctions are now taking hold.

Now here, Islam also becomes critical at this point in time because here you have the birth of Muhammad in 570, so 20 years before Gregory I takes on the position of Pope. And then you see the sequence laid out here. Here is the Dome of the Rock. So the Dome of the Rock, essentially you see, here's the conquest of Jerusalem and Damascus in 636. By 690, so that's 100 years after Gregory the Great is Pope, 690 of the construction of the Dome of the Rock over what is very likely the foundation of the temple that the Jews had. So here's the Dome of the Rock. Interestingly, inside here is the rock. And what's very curious, see that? The dimensions of that exactly fit the dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant. Hmm. But why is that little, you know, rectangular or square construction there? Hmm.

Nonetheless, And we mark this, the death of Muhammad is in 632. By 732, 100 years later to the year, Charles Martel, means the hammer, says Christian Europe good, Muslim Europe bad. He finally turns around the Muslim invasion. The Muslims had gone into North Africa. They'd gone all the way into Asia. and they'd gone into Europe, in Tours France, which is not too far outside of Paris. Finally, the Muslim invasion was turned back. Not completely, but it was turned back. We'll go through this in more detail later, but there's the outline.

Now, here is the emergence of the Roman Catholic Church, and what you have there from 600 to 1546 is some of the key practices and doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church and when they were instituted. We have, for example, Latin used in prayer and worship imposed by Pope Gregory the first 600 and basically only within the last century has that been reversed. Prayers directed to Mary, dead saints and angels around the year 600. based on the declarations of the council at Ephesus. Kissing the Pope's feet began with Pope Constantine at 709 on down the list.

It wasn't until after the Protestant Reformation had begun that the Roman Catholic Church declared the apocryphal books, Bell and the Dragon. The first and second Maccabees, those apocryphal books finally declared as being canon, canonical books, even though they'd been around for one and a half millennia.

Okay, the Crusades took place during this time. The early Crusades took place more to the north. And then the southern path there, the later Crusades coming in through North Africa was the pattern. Seven Crusades, we'll go through those in more detail later. Seven Crusades. And by the way, the Crusades were largely a Catholic phenomenon, but it was at the request of the Orthodox churches who were getting overrun by the Muslims.

John Wycliffe was, during the latter part of his time, he was 14th century, sometimes called the Morning Star of the Reformation. He translated the Bible into English from the Latin Vulgate. So he didn't go into Greek and Hebrew, he took the Latin and translated it into English. If you read any part of that, and later on we'll give you some samples of it, it is very hard to read because the English back then was so different from what we have as English today. By the way, he was also the inventor of bifocals. Now, here's the printing press introduced in Europe by about 1455 by Johannes Gutenberg. The first thing he printed was the Latin Bible, that is what's called the Vulgate.

So each letter had to be set in place and each page printed independently, but that was a lot better than hand copying, as long as you didn't goof up in the letters that you put in there. In the decades after the introduction of the printing press, they'd have the Greek New Testament. Imagine, you couldn't get a Greek New Testament unless you copied it from somebody else's copy of the Greek New Testament, or somebody copied for you. You had enough money to pay somebody to do that. But now I'd be able to just print them out, you know, an entire Greek New Testament.

Greek and Hebrew grammars, here are the grammar rules. There's the way we do that. Greek and Hebrew lexicons, what does this word mean? Kind of a dictionary. Ancient documents providing background to the Old and New Testament. You get a copy of what Josephus wrote. Now we can do that and it isn't hand copied.

So, here's Erasmus, Greek New Testament, first edition, printed in 1516, the year before Luther. began the Reformation with his declaration of the 95 Theses. But one of the reasons why he would is he would look at that and say, whoa, I see what this says now. Now, 1517 to 1648, so Luther nails these 95 Theses to the Roman Catholic Church door at Wittenberg to the Peace of Westphalia signed ending the Thirty Years' War. So, how the Reformation came about. Three things, starting with an M. One is milieu, but that's trouble inside and outside. What's going on? What's the environment? The message, sola scriptura, and that is only by scripture, not just because the pope says or the bishop says or whatever. Sola gratia, that is completely free and by grace. And then sola fide, entirely by faith.

Those were the battle cries, if you will, of that time period. And finally, the means, the printing press. Now, I can study Greek, I can study Hebrew, and I can know what the Bible says. It isn't just what you tell me it says. That made a huge difference. The issues of the Reformation. What was new was the basis of authority.

Scripture alone. Sola Scriptura. The next, the basis of salvation, it's by faith. The church doesn't save me. I'm saved by faith in what God has done alone. That's big. Up until that point, the church kept telling everybody, we save you. If you're going to get saved, it's because of what we do and what you do for us. and personal Bible study and interpretation. I can read the Bible and understand it for myself and you're not going to tell me what it says. So those things were new. What was unchanged?

Political and militarily aligned churches. So what did Luther do when the Catholic Church said we're not talking about your 95 theses and we're not discussing it? Luther went and aligned himself with various political and military leaders. Nancy and I went and visited one of those places in Castle Coburg, saw his room where he stayed there. Why? Because that political and military leader protected him and the armaments that he had there were phenomenal. But that was able to hold them off from the militarily powerful Roman Catholic Church. John Calvin did the same thing. Political and military power and aligning with those ended up being what was nearly the ruin of Europe because of the battles that took place.

Next one, allegorical interpretation of much of scripture. Israel is now the church. The church takes over what was Israel's. I think Craig showed you this. This is a replica, 1611. Boy, you go through the Old Testament and they just, anywhere it says Israel, they just put in church. If it says Israel, it must mean church, and that was a universal assumption in great part. Here you have on page 9 a chart, and in order to make it large enough, I think I turned it sideways.

That chart is something we'll look at in more detail, but you see, here's Luther making his declaration, and you have Calvin in 1520, And the various other groups, the Anglican Church, basically a break off for purposes that Henry VIII could marry Anne Boleyn, which the Catholic Church was going to deny, etc. So anyway, we'll talk about that in more detail later. failed to provide a basis for unity among believers. So instead of having these groups named Protestants, you end up having Lutherans and Calvinists and, you know, we show one near Presbyterian with John Knox, but in fact, John Knox is the name, Presbyterian is the group that got started from it, and then that broke up into more groups. So while there was this big movement away from the Roman Catholic Church, it ended up splintering up. Christianity now consists of some 30,000 denominations. Yeah, shocking.

In spite of this appeal from the Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 1.10, Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, that there be no divisions among you, and that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and the same judgment. Is there a biblical basis for denominations? I don't think so. This is not any justification for denominations.

A Protestant doctrinal divide that still is a biggie. Calvinism, five points founded on God's sovereignty. T is total depravity and the P there is perseverance of the saints and I won't go into all the things in between. Arminianism makes man's free will primary and allows for loss of salvation.

At this church we teach neither one. Neither one. These are largely concocted distinctions, but they have in fact divided up the church hugely. Yes. So instead of certs, it's nerds. Stop. You're both wrong. Yes. Yep. You got that right. So that to this day has been a biggie to divide up the church. And not on biblical basis. Based on basically human philosophy.

Now the final one, the Peace of Westphalia signed ending the Thirty Years War. If the Thirty Years War had not ended, it was going in the path of destroying Europe. People were dying all over the place. When a battle goes on for thirty years, you've got people fighting it that weren't even alive when it started.

Nancy and I stayed, and this is back in 1985, we stayed in Bomberg, Germany. At that time it was West Germany. And there was a huge castle. I mean it just kept going and going across the river from where we were staying. And we asked one of the people, what's this castle? That castle was built by the guy who sold armaments to both sides. And he was very wealthy enough to build this almost endless castle because he sold armaments to both sides. But of course everybody was selling to use it to kill lots of people.

Here's 52 years after that piece of Westphalia. Just to show you, a lot of the current national lines were defined in that treaty where they said, let's quit fighting about religion. Let's quit fighting about religion. But it also meant that because people misunderstood many things, it also meant the death of Europe in terms of spiritual understanding. If we're not going to fight about it, then it doesn't matter anymore.

Modern and post-modern trend. Protestantism breaks into more and more groups, including cults, now numbering 20,000 plus, and I'd say that the latest number is closer to 30,000 now, in terms of different groups. Even the Roman Catholic Church, which we usually think of that as one group, is more like about 200. And there was recently a conference of various groups broken up out of Methodism, and there were 99 different denominations represented, and that wasn't all of them. Growing movements of liberalism and skepticism in Western culture.

Christendom has a decreasing connection with politics, military, and civil enforcement. And missionary activity and persecution increased by orders of magnitude into the 20th century. So missionary activity, a growth in missionary activity. Persecution, lots more. More Christians have died in the last century than the other previous centuries combined. Does anybody know anyone who's been martyred for their faith? I do. I met a guy named Rick in the East Bay. He came out of the Hell's Angels. He was dead in a week. They said, you're a Christian, you're going to die.

Key personalities. Friedrich Schleiermacher, and somebody would cringe at my pronunciation probably, but anyway, German theology professor claiming that the substance of religion is emotions. Influential in the next generation of German and other European theologians. Next, Soren Kierkegaard is of Lutheran background in this family. He laid the foundations for secular and religious existentialism.

This leap of faith, ever hear that term? Leap of faith was his term and concept. Verifying truth by experience. You make this leap of faith, this groundless leap, and then from there you verify it by experience. Experience and your connection to experience is how you verify truth. That's his teaching. It's not biblical, but that's his teaching.

John Nelson Darby, born 1800, so there's a nice round number, living until 1882, involved with the Plymouth Brethren, clearly expressed dispensational view about 1830, including a teaching regarding the pre-tribulation rapture. Pre-tribulation rapture, by the way, had been recorded as a concept in varying degrees of development for centuries before, many times, but he clearly formulated it And it has remained, as opposed to many of those previous statements of the pre-tribulation rapture that were kept under persecution, some cases even destroyed.

Next, Lewis Barry Schaefer, 1871 to 1952. That was the year I was born, 1952. He wrote a systematic theology, founded Philadelphia College of the Bible and Dallas Theological Seminary. His successor at Dallas Seminary, John Walvard, took over in 1952, died in 2002.

The year before that, I went over to his house a few times. So anyway, there's our quick sweep through church history. Yes? So when you look at pre-Reformation, Were there any groups or bodies of people that were experiencing truth? It's like there's always a movement that changes in a broader sense. We will go through those groups. The difficulty with many of them is the Roman Catholic Church would go to, here's a group of enforcers I would say soldiers, but they really didn't fight any battles.

They would say, we want you to go in and wipe out this group so that there is no memory of them. We want you to slaughter every last one down to the children. We want you to burn their houses down to powder. We want you to grind down the stones in their buildings until there is not even a memory of them. Some of them, the only record we have is the churches writing something negative about them. But yes, there were groups like that.

That's correct. That's correct. One group we'll talk about is the Anabaptists, that is those who didn't believe in infant baptism. And we would be among that group. But essentially it was capital punishment starting around, I think, the year 413, 412, 413. It was capital punishment. And so if you didn't have your infant baptized, they would come in and kill both parents and then baptize the infant anyway.

That's kind of overwhelming because then it brings the word to the surface chosen. Yes. So do you see this as a continuing adjuration and development toward the truth? history and culture? Well, and that's something we'll get into more in the class. We've actually got to close up because we've got people pressing their noses against the glass here. But yeah, and essentially you still have, you know, here we are now in the 21st century and how many places are teaching the truth?

Let's pray and call it good. Lord, we thank you for as we look over history, you are the Lord of history. You are managing all of history to the end that everything will be summed up in Christ. We do thank you. We do look forward to what you have to show us in the weeks and months ahead. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.