The Middle Ages

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We continue tonight in our study of church history, examining the creeds and the confessions of the church through the ages and why they matter.
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And tonight we are in lesson eight.
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We are going to be looking at the Middle Ages.
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So far in our study of history, we have begun with an overview of church history.
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We have looked at the creeds which are in Scripture, and we've also looked at the early church creeds and councils.
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Going all the way to the Council of Orange.
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And tonight we're going to be covering a very large portion of history, the portion which is referred to typically as the Middle Ages.
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This lesson covers a thousand years.
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So there is going to be much more which is unsaid than is said.
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I have to admit that from the beginning, I am not going to say everything that happened in a thousand year period.
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But there's a reason why I'm covering a thousand years at a shot.
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The reason for this is because this time in history represents a bridge between the great ecumenical councils of the first few centuries of the church and the great Protestant Reformation, which was in every sense a revival of biblical truth.
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So when we look to the Middle Ages, they do represent a bridge between a good era and another good era.
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But on that bridge is much, much bad.
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So tonight we are going to look at the bad.
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We're going to look at three major developments which occurred during this time in history that we call the Middle Ages.
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I'll go ahead and put the three up on the board.
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We are going to look at the rise in Roman Catholic theology.
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We are going to look at the spread of Islam and we are going to look at what I have entitled the lights in the darkness, because though this time is called the Dark Ages and it's called the Dark Ages for a reason.
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This is a time of great theological covering, if you will.
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There's shadows over good theology, which are cast by bad theology and heresy all through the land.
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But yet there are lights in the darkness.
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There are those flickers.
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God's remnant is never extinguished.
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God's people are never put under.
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The Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save.
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And there were always those numbered among the elect, even within times where there was great apostasy.
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And that's what we must remember in this time.
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Yes, there was badness, but in that badness were God's people.
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As the prophet of old said, Lord, I am the only one.
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And God said, I have kept for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.
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So, too, during this time where there are those beautiful saints of God who had not bowed their knee to the false teachings.
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So with that being said, we will begin tonight by looking at the rise in Roman Catholic theology.
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I'm going to give you the first blank on your sheet.
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There have been false teachings which have attempted to invade the church from its inception.
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However, none has been so pervasive and destruction and destructive as the exaltation of the pope.
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The pope is the answer on the first line.
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The first time that the title of pope was given was to Boniface III by the Emperor Phocas in AD 607.
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The word pope comes from the Latin word papa, the Greek word papas, and it is the child's version of the word which describes father.
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Much like today, most of you who are grandfathers, your grandchildren call you papa or maybe even children call their dad papa.
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Well, that's where the word pope originates.
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The bishop of Rome is considered to be in Roman Catholicism the father of the church.
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He is the universal Christian father.
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There are other titles which have been given to the pope, all of which demonstrate varying degrees of blasphemy.
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One of the titles, this is not on your notes, but I'm going to write it down.
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One of the titles which is given to the pope is that of Vicar of Christ.
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Vicar of Christ.
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The word vicar means vicarious.
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A vicarious is a person who is in a position for another person, a substitute.
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The problem with calling the pope the Vicar of Christ is there is already one in the world who is the Vicar of Christ, and that is the Holy Spirit of God.
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Jesus says, I will go away, but I will send to you all those percolators.
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Allos in the Greek means another of the same kind.
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When Jesus talked about another comforter, all those percolators, another comforter, it was the Holy Spirit who would come to do the ministry of Christ in the hearts of the believers as Christ has gone to be at the right hand of the father.
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It is the Holy Spirit who lives within us.
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It is the Holy Spirit who is in the place of Christ with us, ministering through us the gifts.
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So to call himself the Vicar of Christ, the pope has, in a very blasphemous way, adopted a title which is reserved for deity.
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He is also called Pontifex, I'm sorry, Pontifex, that's an X, Pontifex Maximus, Pontifex Maximus.
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That title has a little bit of a longer history, goes all the way back to the College of Pontiffs in Rome.
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A pontiff is a bridge builder.
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That's what that term means.
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Thus, the pope is considered to be the greatest bridge builder.
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He builds the bridge, if it were, between God and man.
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Now, this is not one of the pope's official titles.
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However, it is used on buildings, coins and monuments to the pope.
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So though it would not be written down as an official title, it is officially on many things.
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This title can be associated with the title of High Priest, the Pontifex Maximus, the bridge builder between God and man.
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And the High Priest, who is it? Who is it that takes the position in the Christian life as the High Priest? It is Christ.
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So the pope is called Father.
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He is called Vicar, substitute for Christ.
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He is called Pontifex Maximus.
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He has taken the title of all three members of the Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Spirit.
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All of his titles are blasphemous titles.
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You know, there are a lot of folks who like the new pope.
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What I'm about to say may be very unpopular, but I'm going to say it anyhow.
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A lot of people say, I like the new pope, he's very humble.
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That is not true.
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I don't care how humble he may think he is.
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Any man that would allow other men to bow before him to kiss his ring and to call him vicar and pontifex and father of the church can have no right claim to any level of biblical humility.
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He is not humble.
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He has accepted a blasphemous title.
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During the Middle Ages, the authority of the pope was greatly expanded and as a result, so too were many false teachings.
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I want to share with you this is not in your notes, but I want to share it.
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Wait a minute.
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Let me look at your notes real quick.
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No, I didn't.
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I didn't outline these for you.
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I'll give them to you quickly and I'll be happy to give anyone my notes after if you don't get all these.
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But here are just a few of the false teachings which arose in the Middle Ages.
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The prayer to Mary and the other saints and angels arose circa 8600.
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The worship of the cross, images and relics such as vials of milk from the breast of the Virgin Mary and bones which were supposed to be from ancient saints and supposedly a tooth from the mouth of Christ and wood from the cross were all or were all called relics and worthy of worship.
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This worship of the relics began in 87, 86.
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The use of holy water, which had been blessed by a priest, 88, 50, the praying of the rosary, 80, 10, 90, the sale of indulgences, which would later spark the intentions and attitude of one Martin Luther, which would cause him to rise up against the church, 11, 90 and the doctrine of transubstantiation, 80, 12, 15.
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And it is that final one that I want to spend a moment on.
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Transubstantiation is the doctrine that truly demonstrates to me that Rome has abandoned the gospel.
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Transubstantiation is the belief that the bread and the wine of the Eucharist, the Eucharist is the bread and the wine of communion.
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That's what's called the Eucharist.
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Transubstantiation is the belief that the bread and the wine of the Eucharist literally become the body and blood of Christ.
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Now, that in and of itself is not the most repugnant of teaching.
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You may say, well, that's pretty bad.
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That sounds really awful.
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It is.
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But that's not the worst part.
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What makes it so vile is the reason for the change, because it is taught within Roman Catholicism that the reason for the change of the substance is that Christ must be perpetually sacrificed for the sins of his people.
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Hmm.
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OK, that this sacrifice must be perpetually made.
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I have some quotes that I want to put on the board.
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I went and made sure that hopefully everybody can read them, because I know that the last few weeks I've had them kind of small.
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I want to just show you a few.
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Here's one quote.
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The mass, the mass is the participation in the Eucharist.
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The mass is the sacrificial memorial in which the sacrifice of the cross is perpetuated.
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They might say, well, that's not that, you know, that that doesn't really say a whole lot.
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I'm not finished because that says a lot that says a ton.
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But that's a short quote.
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Let me move on to the next.
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The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice.
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It is a sacrifice.
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Remember that in Roman Catholic theology, the bread and the cup are a sacrifice.
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The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it represents makes president, we present it makes present the sacrifice of the cross and because it applies its fruit, the forgiveness of the sins we daily commit.
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The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice.
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The victim is one and the same.
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In this divine sacrifice, which is celebrated in the mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner in the seed.
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It is it is the seed of eternal life and the power of resurrection.
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So what are they saying? Christ offered up himself once bloody, but now he offers up himself perpetually in this unbloody sacrifice.
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Let me read to you now from a book entitled Faith of the Faith of Millions by Father John O'Brien.
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This is what is taught in Roman Catholicism, and this to me breaks my heart every time I read it, but I want to read it to you.
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And I want you to hear it when the priest pronounces the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into heaven, brings Christ down from his throne and places him upon our altar to be offered up again as the victim for the sins of man.
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It is a greater power than that of monarch and emperors.
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It is greater than that of saints and angels, greater than that of seraphim and cherubim.
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Indeed, it is greater even than the power of the Virgin Mary.
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While the Virgin Mary was the human agency by which Christ became incarnate a single time, the priest brings Christ down from heaven and renders him present on our altar as the eternal victim for the sins of man, not once but a thousand times.
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The priest speaks and lo Christ, the eternal omnipotent God, bows his head in humble obedience to the priest's command.
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Of what sublime dignity is the office of the Christian priest who is thus privileged to act as ambassador and vice regent of Christ on Earth? He continues the assertion ministry of Christ.
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He teaches the faithful with the authority of Christ.
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He pardons the penitent sinner with the power of Christ.
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He offers up again the same sacrifice of adoration and atonement, which Christ offered up on Calvary.
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No wonder that name, which spiritual writers are especially fond of, applied to the priest is that of alter Christus, for the priest is and should be another Christ.
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Beloved, that should break your heart, for such is blasphemy.
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And I make no bones about those words that is blasphemy.
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But yet it is what is taught, and as the title of the book describes itself, it is the faith of millions.
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Beloved, that to me is a heartbreaking thing.
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But I showed already that that doctrine did not arise through Christ.
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That doctrine did not arise in the first thousand years of the church.
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That doctrine arose during the darkness of the Middle Ages.
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And it was a false teaching and continues to be the blasphemy of Rome.
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Now, before moving on, I want to address another historical problem.
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This is the next blank on your sheet.
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The other historical problem which rose in Roman Catholicism was not just doctrinal, but it was the rise in political power, political power on Christmas Day in the year 800, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as the Roman emperor or rather the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
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He established by crowning Charlemagne, he established the new Holy Roman Empire.
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And what's interesting about Charlemagne, Charlemagne was a Frankish king and he was actually surprised.
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He had come to the pope to receive the Eucharist while on his knees to receive the Eucharist.
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The pope produces a crown likely from under his his vestments.
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He produces a crown and sets it upon his head.
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Charlemagne knew nothing of what was to happen, but the pope did this for a reason.
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It was a political move which did not go unnoticed by Charlemagne himself.
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He knew that the one who crowned the king demonstrates himself greater than the king himself.
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That would eventually lead to the division between emperors and popes, which would move on into the time of the Reformation.
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Both offices claiming to have authority one over the other.
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There arose two parties.
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You had the papists who believed in the ultimate authority of the pope and the imperialists who believed in the ultimate authority of the emperor.
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In regard to Emperor Charlemagne, who I wish I had more time to speak of, I've spent some time really investing in just in just learning about this man.
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He had an interesting life and I encourage your reading and study on his life.
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But one of the interesting things that he made the point to the pope that the pope was the vicar of Christ, but that he as the emperor was the vicar of God, the father.
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So so he established his own reign.
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And one of the divisions which came between he and the church was that he would make rules that would affect the church.
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He he he what the probably the worst thing that he did, he would convert by the sword.
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You would become a faithful Catholic or you would die.
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So he is no hero in one sense.
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But yet at the same time, he has a very interesting time in history wherein we can see so much political change occur as a result of his reign.
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One could argue that the pope always maintain a certain level of final authority when it came between the level of influence.
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The pope always had final authority with the emperor because the pope had the power to excommunicate the emperor.
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And the person who will always have final authority is the person who can condemn your soul to hell.
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And because the pope maintained that level of authority, he always maintained somewhat of an upper hand with the emperor himself.
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But so much power was invested with the office of the pope and corruption came as a result, as is said, power corrupts.
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And what is the rest? An absolute power corrupts.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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That's what happened.
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Your next blank on your sheet, it was this corruption and hunger for power which would lead to the Great Schism, which occurred in A.D.
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1054, getting to 1054.
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When people discuss the divide which occurred between the Eastern and the Western Church, what we would call the East-West Schism, the Western Church was Roman Catholic, the Eastern Church was what is known as the Orthodox Church.
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The issue which is often brought up is what is called the Philokee Clause.
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The Philokee Clause, that means the son of the son, and it is referencing a clause which was in the Nicene Creed.
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The Nicene Creed says the son is begotten of the father and the spirit proceeded from the father.
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The Philokee Clause was added later to say that the spirit proceeded from the father and the son and of the son.
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That's the term Philokee there.
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So that clause was added into the Nicene Creed.
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And what created, people say, well, that that seems like a small thing to divide over.
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The whole church, East and West Church split over one word.
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Well, let me just mention two things.
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One, doctrinal matters are serious.
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And the nature of God had been a point of contention and debate for a thousand years up until this point.
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Men had been excommunicated for their denials of God's nature.
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So it makes sense that the church would split even over a single word because this word is pregnant with meaning.
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But the reality is they didn't split over the word.
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They split over the inclusion of it because the inclusion of it was done by Rome apart from the Eastern Church's approval or sanction.
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It was a power position from the Pope to say, I can make this decision, I can establish this position and no one can debate or come against me.
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So it wasn't just the words inclusion.
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Now, remember, the Nicene Creed is hugely important.
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The Nicene Creed is one of the creeds that all other creeds kind of look back to as being this formulaic, powerful creed.
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And thus, he's changing a foundational document within the church.
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And yet he changes it somewhat unilaterally, even though there was positional or there was the Eastern Church, which opposed its inclusion.
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There were other issues which brought the division, such as the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist, the place of Constantinople, which I already mentioned a moment ago, whether or not Constantinople should be considered one among the Pentarchy, which was the five major Episcopal sees and, of course, the universal jurisdiction of the Pope.
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This led to a serious split based on serious differences, not the least of which was the position and the power of the Pope.
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I keep going back to that because it was this rise in papal supremacy.
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It was this rise in the position, this pontifex maximus position of the Pope that would ultimately lead to this division in the church.
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It's the Achilles heel of Rome.
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It really is.
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There is no biblical justification for the office of the Pope.
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There is no biblical justification for the office of priest, a man who calls himself priest.
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When the Bible and the New Testament offers no position for priest, because that position is filled by Christ, who is the high priest and we all.
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There is a priesthood of believers.
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We all are able to go to God through Christ, our high priest, and need not a man to sit in a booth and to absolute our sins by his false forgiveness.
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We do not need that.
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And such is blasphemy.
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By the way, can you tell him a little serious about this? It breaks my heart that there are a billion people in this world who claim Christ, but claim him through a false prophet called the Pope.
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And so to me is a serious issue.
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It is a dreadfully serious issue.
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So let us now move on.
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There are so many serious political issues, so many things that we could say about all this.
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But these are the matters which I wanted to point out, because all of these will eventually lead to the Reformation, which is what we're going to talk about next week with the with the advent and the coming of a man by the name of John Wycliffe.
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You might think I would start the Reformation with Martin Luther, but you'll see why next week.
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It was not Luther who really spawned the Reformation.
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But Luther, Luther was one.
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He was standing on the shoulders of giants when he stood.
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So the spread of Islam comes next.
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And I have to mention this because you cannot talk about history, Middle Ages history without addressing at some point the fact that this is the time which Islam came on to the scene.
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Prior to September 11th, 2001, most Americans had no understanding of the influence of Islamic culture around the world.
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They didn't know and they really didn't care.
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But on September 11th, 2001, the world changed.
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And since then, there have been more books written about why Islamic people believe as they do, why Muslims, the faith is as it is, and what would cause a man to murder other men in the name of faith.
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So it has caused much inquiry.
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And I would say people know more about Islam.
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Some people know some people are ignorant still, but I would say people know more about Islam now than probably they did the first two decades of my life.
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Because growing up, I never heard much about it at all.
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Well, it's interesting also, and I just want to throw this out.
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It's interesting also that the September 11th attacks also had a profound impact on my ministry.
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My first sermon that I ever preached from the pulpit of this church was on the Sunday following September 11th, 2001.
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And it was because our former pastor had had a back injury and he had been out of the pulpit for a few weeks and he had recorded messages for us because we did not have an associate pastor at the time.
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It was it was very interesting what we had to do.
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And the elders came to me and said, we don't want a recorded message this Sunday.
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We need somebody to preach.
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So the first time I stepped into the pulpit on a Sunday morning was the Sunday following September 11th.
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And I preached from Romans 13 that the government bears not the sword in vain.
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It was basically saying there is a time to stand and fight.
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So interestingly enough, I have somewhat of a history of my own ministry with this.
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Islam began with the preaching of a man named Muhammad in the seventh century.
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Muhammad was born in 570 in a place called Mecca, which is in Saudi Arabia.
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In 610, when he was 40 years old, while sitting in a cave, he received what he would describe as the first of many visions from Allah, which is the Arabic word for God.
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In 612, he began to preach and he started accumulating converts to his new teaching.
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He and his converts, though, were many.
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Yet they were still run out of Mecca and he was forced to go to another city called Medina.
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Soon, a great battle erupted between the followers of Muhammad and the people of Mecca and the followers of Muhammad conquered the city, effectively reclaiming it for Islamic use.
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And after that conquest, Muhammad's power would extend over most of Arabia and he would be known as not only a powerful religious leader, but also a powerful governmental leader and a powerful military leader.
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And the worship of Allah would be enforced by the sword.
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Muhammad was and still is considered by the Islamic people to be the greatest prophet God has ever given to mankind.
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And that's the next blank on your sheet.
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The words that Muhammad spoke were considered to be the prophetic utterances of God, and they would eventually form the Muslim holy book called the Quran.
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The writings of the Quran would become the basis for the Islamic religion.
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And it is believed by Muslims to be the absolute word of God written in the language of God.
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It is not considered the Quran if it is written in English or any other language.
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It is only the Quran if it is written in Arabic, because that is the language of God.
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Muhammad was effectively illiterate.
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Another historical, I'm not saying that to denounce him in as far as intellectually, obviously, he was a smart person, but he was effectively illiterate.
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So his disciples were the ones who wrote his words.
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The term Quran literally means the reciting or the reading.
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There is an evolution in Islamic teaching.
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And there is an interesting change which came during the life of Muhammad.
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In the beginning, he was very willing to coexist with Christians and Jews.
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However, as his following began to grow and his power began to grow.
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His temperament for those who disagreed.
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Or his rather his tolerance for those who disagreed would begin to lessen.
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Finally, in his later teachings.
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He would say that the infidel does not have the right to live.
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And here's the thing about that in Islamic teaching, they have the belief that later revelation can correct earlier revelation.
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You see, those of us who believe the Bible believe the whole Bible is true and nothing contradicts anything else.
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But yet in Islam, it is believed that if the prophet gives a revelation at a later time than an earlier revelation, then the later revelation can trump the earlier revelation and discount the earlier revelation and replace it.
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So whereas you will hear people who study the Quran and who believe the Quran, they will say, yes, there is so much in the Quran about peace and living in tolerance.
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But you will also note that those are early surahs.
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The surahs are the chapters of the Quran like we have chapters of the Bible.
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The earlier surahs speak of peace and coexistence.
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But the later surahs, which trump the earlier surahs simply by Islamic teaching that it can trump those things.
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The later surahs are the ones which speak of domination and of jihad or to go to war on behalf of Allah.
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Interestingly enough, the only way that an Islamic person can know for certain that they will go to heaven or to paradise at death is to die for the cause of Allah.
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You cannot have any assurance, whereas the Christian would say our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.
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Our hope is in Christ.
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You know, that's where we believe our hope is.
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And we believe we can have confidence because we trust in Christ.
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The Islamic believes that at judgment, their good will be weighed against their bad.
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And there's no way to know for certain if your good has outweighed your bad unless, of course, your forgiveness or sin.
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It wouldn't be atonement because they don't believe in the type of atonement that we do.
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But they believe that your entrance into the presence of Allah is granted for certain if you die in jihad to battle for Allah, which is why men would be willing to strap bombs to themselves.
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They would be willing to get on an airplane and send it into a building.
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This is why those things are true.
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All right.
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Now, let's let's go on to the next portion.
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It was the rise in Islam which gave, which led to the Crusades.
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It was the rise in Islam which led to the Crusades.
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Of all of church history, there is not a time which is more vilified by those who oppose the church than the Crusades.
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And it stands to reason because during the Crusades, many atrocities were perpetuated by the church.
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And by the church, I mean the Roman Catholic Church.
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There was great brutality which was demonstrated and many people were forced to convert to Christ under the threat of the sword.
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So whatever we would say about Islam now, we should be willing to say about the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages.
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Just remember that they were heretics anyway, I have no doubt.
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But my point is, we don't support the Muslims now, we shouldn't support them then.
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But we do need to understand the purpose of the Crusades because it is important that there is history here.
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And the Crusades themselves did serve a purpose and to condemn it totally and outright would not be right.
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Let me read to you a quote very quickly.
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The Crusades were responses to Muslim invasions on what was once land occupied primarily by Christians.
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From approximately AD 200 to 900, the land of Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Turkey was inhabited primarily by Christians.
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Once Islam became powerful, Muslims invaded these lands and brutally oppressed, enslaved, deported and even murdered the Christians living in those lands.
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In response, the Roman Catholic Church and quote unquote, Christian kings and emperors from Europe ordered the Crusades to reclaim the land that the Muslims had taken, end quote.
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All right.
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So one thing we can say about the Crusades, it was a defensive effort.
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It was not intentionally at first an offensive effort.
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By the time the Crusades were fought, all of the churches of Revelation, remember the seven churches that Jesus wrote to in Revelation, the first two, three chapters of Revelation, all of those churches, all of those lands were under Muslim occupation by the time of the Crusades.
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Muslims had occupied from India to Spain.
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And it was spreading, it has been pointed out, and I believe it to be true.
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And if it were not for the Crusades, there is a good chance that we could all be speaking Arabic right now.
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So can we say, can we say that there was atrocities during the Crusades? Absolutely.
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Can we say that no one should ever be converted to Christ by the sword? Absolutely.
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Can we say that God has a purpose in all things? Absolutely.
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So in that there is truth.
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Conquering lands in the name of Christ was never the purpose of the church, never supposed to be the purpose of the church.
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Do we conquer through the gospel, not through the sword? And that's the failure of the Crusades.
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But God had a purpose.
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By the way, the one who made I want to I want to any time I quote somebody I like to make mention, it was Brian Borgman, Pastor Brian Borgman, who was the one who said that about the fact that if we if the Crusades had not happened, we would likely all be speaking Arabic now.
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I think it's I think it's important to mention that.
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All right.
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So that gets us through that portion.
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Let's now turn our attention to a positive note as we bring this portion to a close.
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And I realize we have we have really ran through this, but I want to get to the lights and the darkness because these are the parts that make my heart sing.
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Because when I look at this time in history, there is much that makes my heart ache.
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But there were men, there were Christians.
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Who during this time stood for the truth, and I've given you two blanks, the two groups I want to mention is the missionaries and the dissidents, the missionaries and the dissidents, the Middle Ages were dark.
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That's why they're called at times the Dark Ages.
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But beloved, the gospel still was spread even in those times.
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Two missionaries I want to mention by name.
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One actually preceded the Middle Ages because he was in the 400s, but his ministry went on and really took hold.
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And the results of his ministry went out in the Middle Ages.
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And that is a man by the name of Patrick.
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Probably you've heard of them.
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If you've ever been pinched for not wearing green on a certain day of the year, you've heard of Saint Patrick.
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Well, most of us know the name Patrick, but we don't know much about his life and his ministry.
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So let me share with you a little bit about Patrick.
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He is credited for having taken the gospel to Ireland.
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He was kidnapped by Celtic raiders at the age of 16, and he spent several years of his life as a slave in Ireland.
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After escaping back to Britain, he studied to become a bishop in the church, and then he returned to Ireland to bring the gospel to the Celtic people.
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He is responsible for taking the gospel of Jesus Christ to tens of thousands of people in Ireland and as such should be commended.
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And history bears out that truth.
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So that's one of the missionaries.
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The other is a missionary by the name of Boniface.
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That's B-O-N-I-F-A-C-E Boniface.
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Now, the word the name Boniface is actually a lot of people have that name in history.
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So it's easy to get confused.
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There's actually a couple of popes that were titled Boniface, but this is not a pope.
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The word Boniface simply means doer of good.
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Boniface was a missionary responsible for taking the gospel to the Frankish Empire.
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He was known as the apostle to the Germans.
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There's an interesting story about the life of Boniface.
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When Boniface went to see this people that he wanted to evangelize, he noticed that they would gather together and worship at an oak called Donar's Oak.
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They believed that it represented the power of Almighty Thor, not the Marvel comic character.
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There was actually a time wherein it was believed that Thor was the God of Thunder and that God, he was this powerful God.
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And they worshipped around Donar's Oak, this oak of Thor.
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Boniface was brokenhearted to see people worshipping a false god.
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So he begged them to follow Christ.
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He proclaimed the gospel, then they would not listen.
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So he and his associates took their axes to the tree and he chopped the tree.
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And in the midst of chopping the tree, a great wind blew and everyone stopped moving because they thought that Thor was about to bring his wrath upon these upstarts of of Christianity.
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And yet instead, the wind that blew brought the tree down and the people who saw it.
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Believed that the God of these men was greater than the God of Thor, was greater than the God Thor, and thus they repudiated their false beliefs and trusted in the God of Boniface.
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It's very interesting.
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It sounds so similar to the story of Elijah on Mount Carmel with the with the prophets of Baal.
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There he is proclaiming the gospel and God brings this great movement.
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And here we see this miracle and Germany is converted for the gospel.
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Wood from that oak was later used to build a church, coincidentally.
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So that's just two men.
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As I said, there's lights in the darkness.
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God's people are there even in the midst of all of this false teaching.
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Finally, I want to mention the dissidents, and I encourage your attention for just another moment, the dissidents long before the reformers would ever live, there were groups who took issue with the excesses of the false theology of Rome.
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Time does not permit a proper recounting of these groups, so I simply want to give you to first is the Waldensians.
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Waldensians spelled Walden, W-A-L-D-E-N-S-I-A-N-S, Waldensians.
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The Waldensians lived during the Middle Ages, translated the Bible into the common language, something that was illegal to do, but yet they did it.
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They believed and taught doctrines which would be similar to what we would call today the doctrines of grace.
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And they stood against the power of the pope, but they were in hiding because of, of course, the danger of taking such a stand.
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Also, there were known a group called the Polesians, not Polesians, Polesians, it's the Apostle Paul, P-A-U-L-I-C-I-A-N-S, Polesians.
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The Polesians refused to affirm the veneration of Mary.
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They denied baptismal regeneration, the false teaching of Rome that baptism washes away original sin.
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They believed it was their duty to live holy lives, to preach the gospel and to raise their children in accordance with scriptural principles.
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It was like a middle age, sovereign grace family church.
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They were homeschool family.
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But it's just it's interesting when you read about these movements, they were not perfect.
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Certainly there would have been theologies among them that we probably would disagree with.
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But you can see that the gospel is not lost.
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You can see that the gospel is still affirmed even in the midst of great heresy.
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The truth will stand.
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And there are other groups.
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The problem is it is very hard to find information about these groups because the only history that is left about these groups is written by the Catholic Church, which was opposing them.
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And it would be like if we were to take and ask Annas and Caiaphas to give us a recounting of the ministry of Christ.
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That would probably not be the best retelling of the ministry.
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And thus much of what is said about the Polesians and the Waldensians and all the rest are not good things.
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But that which we do know about them was very positive.
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So let me conclude with this.
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The evils and excesses of the Roman Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire are well documented and very sad.
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They are often used by unbelievers as reasons to denounce Christianity in full.
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But certainly the Roman Catholic Church, which arose during this age and still exists today, is not the true representation of the Christian church in the world.
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The church of the Middle Ages was in desperate need of reformation, which came in the revival of the teachings of men like John Wycliffe, the morning star of the Reformation.
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And we will see Wycliffe and Huss and Luther and Calvin and Zwingli in our next lesson.