Importance of Church History

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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Wrap Report with Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications.

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Well, today we're going to be talking about history. That's his story.

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And to do such, we're going to have someone special on this podcast. Someone new to any of our listeners.

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He is new to this podcast, but he is a podcaster himself.

01:46

And his podcast is Today in His Story. So make sure when you look for his podcast, it's his -story.

01:54

So his name, he has a great, great first name. I'm just saying. Andrew Smith, welcome to the

02:02

Wrap Report. Thank you, Andrew. It's great to be on here. And can I say, you have a great first name as well. Yeah, for folks that don't know, our name means manly in Greek.

02:11

Now, I've seen you. You live up to it. I don't quite live up to it. So I've been listening to your podcast.

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Yours is a short podcast that basically gives different events that happened that day in history.

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And they're short. So for folks who like the shorter type podcasts, don't want things that are too long, it's a great one.

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And each day that you give something, it really does help with understanding the historical things because at times

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I know there's some other historical podcasts that do short things on history.

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They don't always deal with history. Yours always deals with the historical things.

02:56

So first off, what I'd like you to do for folks, because not everyone's familiar with you, can you start from when you were born, give your whole life history, and do it in five minutes?

03:07

I guess not. I wasn't usually gifted with brevity.

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You're a pastor, aren't you? Yeah, it's hard. But give folks an idea of the church where you're shepherding and some of the ministry that you have there so if folks want to get a hold of you, they'll learn more about you as we go through this and you can give a little bit more detail of your background.

03:35

Yeah, sure, I'd be glad to. Thank you for asking me, Andrew, and giving me an opportunity.

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I pastor Christ Reformed Community Church in St. John's, Florida, which is right in between the city of St.

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Augustine and Jacksonville, Florida. And the church that I currently pastor,

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I'm actually the establishing pastor of. It formed in September of 2015. And so we are an independent, non -denominational,

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Reformed church. And just trying to be faithful to the Lord, faithful to the

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Word of God. My ministry, the focus of my ministry, has always been the expositional preaching of God's Word.

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I was called to the ministry as a very young person. I remember as early as the age of eight, sensing a call to preach, at least for an eight -year -old, having a desire to do that, having an interest in that.

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And that interest only continued to grow. And then in my teenage years, I was encouraged by several of the elders of the church that my family and I attended to begin pursuing the ministry and pursuing opportunities to teach publicly and preach publicly.

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So those opportunities developed. It began in the youth group, talking to my peers, and then the larger church.

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And so then I followed the path to get an education and to go to seminary, and was privileged in the spring of 2018 to graduate with my doctorate degree from the

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Master's Seminary, where I pursued a degree in expositional preaching, studying under Dr.

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John MacArthur and Dr. Steve Lawson. And so I feel very blessed by the

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Lord to have grown up in a Christian home, to have known the Lord from a very young age, for the reality of sin to be real to me, the reality of heaven and hell, to understand the gospel as a child, and to learn to love

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Christ from a child is a blessing that, just in God's sovereignty, I was able to experience.

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And then also the blessing of being part of biblical churches. As I was growing up and having faithful parents who taught

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Sunday school and taught in Awana and drove the church bus and cleaned the church and played the piano and did all the things that mature

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Christians are to do as they use their gifts and just serve where they ought to serve. So my task,

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I feel, as a pastor is to preach the word of God, to be faithful at that. And one of the reasons

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I started the podcast today in Church History was not only because of my love for history, but also because I do believe, as you mentioned,

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Andrew, that the study of history is a means to talk about theology and to talk about God's truth.

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So I love the events of the past, not just because they are events of the past, but because they have a story behind them.

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And it's either a story about what someone believed, or it's a story about their courage because of what they believed.

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But there are so many different things to explore in Church History that can take us back to the scriptures, take us back to truth.

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And that's ultimately what I want to do as a gospel minister, is be faithful with the stewardship of proclaiming

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God's truth. So what was the name of the history professor or teacher that you had in school that got you to love history?

07:10

Oh, wow. You know, I don't think anyone's ever asked me that question. Well, see, because I've discovered that everybody who loves history seems to have that one professor, even if they can't remember the name, that,

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I mean, for me, I remember it was my history teacher in high school. I can't remember his name, but then

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I kind of lost it until seminary. And Dr. Burggraf was excellent at making history come alive.

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And I just always noticed that people who love history had that one teacher that knew how to bring history alive.

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So did you have one that you can remember, even if you don't remember the name? Well, now that you say it, our story is actually parallel.

07:53

I did have a teacher in high school. I hardly remember anything about high school, but I did have a teacher.

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I took a class on military history, and I think maybe that was my senior year.

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And that's when I always had a love for history because my dad loved history. But that's when

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I started to see, you know, there's a lot more to history. You can go in different genres like military or religious or whatever.

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And that developed a love. And then when I was in seminary, I studied under Dr.

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Tom Nettles and Dr. Gregory Wills. I think both of those men probably created a greater love for history because those are examples of two men, in particular

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Dr. Tom Nettles, who were men who took great stands for what they believed in, and they paid for it.

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And they took sacrifices publicly for truth. And their love for truth was really,

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I think, motivated by their understanding of history and understanding the significance of what they believed because history was on their side regarding these particular truths.

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And I'm talking about, in particular, the doctrines of grace. And so I would say, yeah, both those professors in seminary had a huge influence on my love for history.

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Because this is the thing I think for a lot of people, they think of history as being dry and dull, just a bunch of numbers of dates and places, and it seems so uninteresting.

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If you get a good professor, you get someone who can make history come alive, it really does change. So let me first ask, for folks who don't study church history, you do a podcast on it.

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Why do you think studying church history is important for, say, the everyday

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Christian? You're a pastor, people can go, well, you're a pastor, you need to study for teaching and things like that.

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But for someone who's in your pews, should they study church history? If so, what makes it so important? Yeah, well,

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I could give obviously a dissertation on that, but I'll just start with the basic answer that I think is scriptural and that is not difficult to prove.

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When you think of verses like Psalm 143 verse 5 where the psalmist says, I remember the days of old.

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I meditate on all that you have done. When you read verses like Psalm 145 verse 4, that one generation shall commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts.

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You begin to understand that God's people have always had a heart to remember the way that God worked in the past.

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And we need to remember that the psalmist wrote under inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So history was not just a hobby of the psalmist and we can take it or leave it.

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No, these are examples set by biblical writers where they glory in the fact that God worked in the past.

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And if he worked in the past, he's going to work in the present. And Israel, one of Israel's main problems, as you well know,

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Andrew, is that they had a problem forgetting. They had a problem forgetting what God had done in the past and delivering them from bondage.

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They had a problem forgetting the consequences of their own sin. And that's why you have some of the greatest sermons in the

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Bible. For example, Acts 7 where Stephen declares the mighty acts of God by recounting how

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God worked with Israel in the past. You see that history is inescapable.

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And if you think about it, most of our existence is history. I mean, even that statement that I just made is now already in the past.

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I mean, most of our lives are history. They become history the moment that we experience it.

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And then I think of verses like where Jesus, when he instituted the Lord's Supper, he said, do this in remembrance of me.

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And of course he instituted the Lord's Supper based upon the Passover meal where Israel was told to celebrate the

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Passover meal to remember their deliverance. So why should a Christian, why should every

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Christian be interested in history? The answer is because God's word tells us we should be. That's where we recognize

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God, and we recognize his sovereignty. Martin Lloyd -Jones said one time that our

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Christian duty is to learn history. And I would agree with that. I don't think it's just something for a few theological, intellectual sort of people.

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I think it's for every Christian, and it is unfortunate that sometimes people can make history appear dry.

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I remember Dr. Steve Lawson saying that it's a sin when preachers make sermons boring.

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Because what you're saying is that God's word is boring, which we obviously know God's word isn't boring, but a preacher sometimes can make it appear boring.

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And I think the same thing is true with history. We can talk about it in a way where it doesn't come to life, as you put it,

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Andrew. And I think that is a travesty. I think we need to recover the drama of history and make it come alive for people.

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Yeah, because I think for a lot of people, they don't understand some of the backdrop to the nation of Israel.

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You brought up Israel and their lack of memory, which is not unique to them. But why do we do the

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Passover Seder that we would do? I think you know, but maybe some of the people listening don't realize that I come from a

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Jewish background. We would do a Seder every year. What was the purpose? To remember. It was very interesting.

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One of the things that you have in the Seder is the very question, why do we do this? Why do we have this remembrance?

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And the answer comes back as we do this, all the ritual, so that when we forget, we keep doing these rituals, eventually we're going to be asked, why do we do these rituals?

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And the question is actually built into the ritual, so that we would remember the reason we're doing the ritual is to remember the actual events of what

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God did for his people. And so if people, we know the quote, right?

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Although I'll probably forget the exact wording of it. But if we don't learn history, we're doomed to repeat it. And there is something to that.

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And that's true as far as church history, too, because when we look at the heresies we have going on today, and there's nothing new.

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I mean, if you study the early church heresies, Jehovah Witnesses, well, that's not new.

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That's Arianism. I mean, that goes back, you know, first couple centuries. There's really, they just regurgitate old things.

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And if you study that stuff, it's like, oh yeah, I can identify that, I can identify that, I can identify that. I remember doing once,

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Matt Slick and I were doing a program, one of our Apologetics shows, we do Apologetics Live.

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And we had a guy, a seven -day Adventist who called in. And he's trying to explain his views.

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And literally, it was one of the funniest things. Matt's just listening to the guy and going, oh, that's this, oh, that's this, oh, that's this.

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Just naming one heresy after another. And they're all within the first 300 years. And this guy didn't even know what

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Matt was doing. I'm just cracking up because it's like, okay, yeah. And it's like, this guy's trying to say he's come up with something new.

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And Matt's like, that's old, that's old, that's old, that's old. Yeah, no, absolutely.

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And I think that's so helpful what you said, Andrew. And you really quoted Exodus 12.

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I think it's where God's giving instructions for the Passover. And it actually says there in Exodus 12 to Moses that when your children ask, why do we do this service, then you will be able to tell them.

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We do this because God delivered us. So it's a teaching moment. And I mean here's a practical reason.

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If people have children, if Christians have children, one reason they should be interested in history is for their children's sake.

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One of the things that we have enjoyed to do even during times of family worship, and usually it's sort of ad hoc, but I will tell the kids a great story in church history.

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And that was actually where the idea for the podcast came from, was actually my kids asking me why is it so important that we believe such and such after a reading of scripture.

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And so I would give a story, usually about one of the martyrs that showed they were heroic, and they stood up for truth, and they were willing to die for it.

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And that was kind of the impetus behind doing the podcast. I thought that if it's helpful for children, it's going to be helpful for adults because I know that it encourages me.

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When I read Fox's Book of Martyrs, or I read Reformation history, and I see the sacrifices that men made, so that I can freely believe and without much repercussion other than maybe people poking fun at me on social media or something like that.

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I can believe what I want to believe, and essentially say what I want to say. So I think that studying church history motivates us to follow in the footsteps of our fathers, and as you well put it, it also protects us against error because there is nothing new under the sun.

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And I think it was C .S. Lewis, wasn't it Andrew, that said that people who don't like history are guilty of committing chronological snobbery.

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And I think what he meant by that was that it's actually very, very arrogant to just dismiss history and to think that your little 70, 80, 90 years that you live on this earth, that that's all that matters.

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I mean, we're just a blip on the screen compared to God's redemptive history.

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Well, let's look at that and make it really clear to some folks who may not understand that.

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Just look in our culture at socialism. How many times has that been tried and failed, and why do people keep trying it?

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Because they think they're the ones that can make it work. Because they ignore the history and think, oh, well, this can work.

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We can make it happen. And that's what I think we need to see, is history does play a role in our life.

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It helps us to be able, within Christianity especially, not only to protect us against error, but I think, and we'll get to this later on, is how we understand our theology.

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Because I notice that people who don't study history have difficulties with theology.

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Their theology tends to be lacking in the sense where they may know some theology, but a lot of times what

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I find is they don't know what people were trying to argue when they developed some theology.

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There are people that we would look at today and say, heretic, but in their day we would say, brother, because they were answering things we don't always understand.

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Maybe it's because in our day with social media we think everyone's a heretic if you disagree with us, right? So you have that as well.

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So let's do this. I want to get into discussing some early church heresies and just what's on there.

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We'll do that after this break, but what I want to do is give you a moment to kind of just unpack early church history briefly, obviously, but some of the heresies and why they were issues and why we still see some today.

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So let's deal with that right after this break. The good news is Striving for Eternity would love to come to your church to spend two days with your folks, teaching them biblical hermeneutics.

19:59

That's right. The art and science of interpreting scripture. The bad news is somebody attending might be really upset to discover

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Jeremiah 29, 11 should not be their life first. To learn more, go to strivingforeternity .org

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to host a Bible interpretation made easy seminar in your area. Ephesians chapter four, verse twenty five.

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Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth. Each one of you with his neighbor.

20:29

For we are members of one another for his name's sake. What's up, everybody? I'm Jamal Bandy, the host of the prescribed truth podcast, where I seek to distribute the truth that the doctor prescribes to the church and the world today.

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The Lord graciously brought me out of a cold in 2010. Save me in 2013 and 2017 prescribed truth began.

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My mission has been to spread the truth of God's word while refuting dangerous lies affecting most churches and the culture at large from a biblical and reformed perspective.

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And remember, this world is full of errors. But the only thing that the doctor prescribes is truth.

21:27

Blessings. All right. And that is one of the many podcasts on the

21:32

Christian podcast community, a community of podcasters giving good Christian content.

21:38

And as he said there, you know, he he himself came out of a cult and that cult that he was involved in is nothing new.

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We can go back in early history, see some of the same behaviors in early cults where they were.

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You had individuals trying to do use ways of controlling people and things like that.

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So if you could, Andrew, give us real quick, just like a quick synopsis of some of the early church heresies, how we see them even affecting us today.

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Sure. Well, I want to opt to go more general than specific because I think the two things that I'm going to suggest,

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I think that essentially every heresy can can probably fit under these two things.

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And these two things are found in Scripture itself, in the New Testament, in the first century.

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These are two things that Paul dealt with. The first thing is legalism. The idea, you know, for instance,

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Paul's dealing with the Judaizers who believed that faith in Christ was good. That was part of salvation.

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But that you also needed to be circumcised and adopt other customs within the Old Testament law in accordance with the old covenant that was made with Moses.

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And that was a faith plus works mentality and way of salvation in which

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Paul was clear to the Galatians that anyone who preaches a different gospel is anathema.

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And so I think the legalism of something like the Judaizers taught is pervasive in every period of church history.

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But then the other side of that is antinomianism, this idea that, okay, well, if we're only saved by faith alone and Christ alone, then the law of God is simply not important.

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It has no bearing on the Christian's life. And most of the cults, of course, would fit more in the legalistic area probably.

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And I do want to defer to you, Andrew, on this because your expertise is apologetics. I'm sure that there are cults that have antinomian character qualities as well.

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But I think the legalism and the antinomianism, which are two extremes, have found themselves in every century of church history.

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The apostle Paul had to deal with it. He wrote to counter the

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Judaizers. He also said things like, should we continue in sin that grace may abound?

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May it never be, God forbid. So I think anything that tampers with Christ, that tampers with the gospel, which both legalism and antinomianism would tamper with, are the earliest of heresies.

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And then anything regarding the person and the work of Christ. So that's why you had very early on the

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Council of Nicaea, early on in church history, trying to establish the son's relationship to the father.

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And what that meant, you had men like Athanasius, who was very clear that the son is not inferior to the father in his essence.

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He had a different role, but he was not inferior. So Satan loves to attack Christ. He loves to attack the gospel, and he will attack the gospel either through the tactic of legalism or through the tactic of antinomianism.

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And so I think we need to be on guard against both of those ancient heresies. Well, those we see today for a very simple reason, same as those early years.

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Legalism and antinomianism are easy. As a preacher,

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I got to literate, so I call it liberality and legalism, because they require no thinking, if you really think about it.

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I'm saved, I can do whatever I want. Everything's under the blood of Christ. It's all at the cross.

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I can do whatever I want. Or you have a list of do's and don'ts, and if you do one of those naughty things, you're not saved or you have to be questioned.

25:53

I grew up in a Jewish home, but as a believer, my first churches were independent fundamentalist

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Baptist churches. And so you're going to have a lot more legalism in there. And I remember a guy coming in my home. I don't watch a lot of TV, but the fact that I had a

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TV in my living room, he started questioning my salvation. You know, okay, yeah,

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I don't think so. But you're right, most of the things that we see fall in those.

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Another area I think that much of the heresies fall into, back in the first century and even today, is a confusion over the doctrines of justification and sanctification.

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So often what I find is you see these heresies that start to use things that talk about sanctification and works in sanctification, and they apply that to justification.

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You know, like the Roman Catholic Church. That is a heresy. But the thing that you end up seeing there, though, is

27:04

I think that we see a lot of confusion there as well. So I think you're right. If we are to focus in, and just focus in on not going to the extremes of legalism or liberality, or keep in mind the idea of justification and sanctification.

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If we keep those things straight, that actually does save us from a lot of the early church heresies and heresies we see today that people fall into.

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Yes, yep, I completely agree with you. In fact, I agree with you so much that I wrote on this area for my dissertation.

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I wrote on the topic of sanctification and just dealing with the fact that in the

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Reformed world in today, in today's Reformed world, it's not popular to have a robust doctrine of sanctification.

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It's far more popular to talk about Martin Luther and to talk about justification by faith alone, which obviously all

28:07

Reformed people would talk about and want to talk about and love talking about. That is the gospel. But there is a robust sanctification that is taught by the

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Apostle Paul, and it is taught by the rest of the New Testament scriptures. I mean we don't have the right to throw away the book of James, for instance, which clearly teaches that faith without works is dead.

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We don't have the right to chop off the second half of Paul's epistles, which deal with behavior and how a believer applies his theology, the first half dealing with belief usually, the second half dealing with behavior.

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We don't have a right to just lop off that second half of Paul's letters, the exhortation, the imperatives, and tell

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Christians that all they need to talk about is justification by faith alone. No, there is a lot of exhortations and imperatives.

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God's law is still abiding, and if we think that by obeying

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God's law that somehow merits salvation, we fall into the trap of legalism. And that will damn us ultimately in an eternity of hell.

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On the other hand, we can also be damned to an eternity of hell if we prove that we don't know

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Christ. And how do we prove that we don't know Christ and that we've been saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone?

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Well, we prove it when our faith is dead, and there aren't any works, and there's not the fruit of the

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Spirit that is flowing from our life, that is poured into us by the Holy Spirit who indwells us.

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So if we could get back to teaching the whole counsel of God's word, instead of just picking isolated texts out, if there's a return to – and I mean real expository preaching.

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I'm not just talking about the term, because a lot of people use the term expository preaching, and you listen and it's just not an exposition of the text.

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We need a return to preaching the full counsel of God's word, which is slowly going through every verse, every phrase, every line, beginning at the beginning of a book of the

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Bible and going all the way through. And I think we would have far more balanced Christians and balanced churches if we would simply get back to biblical preaching.

30:19

Well, that would definitely empty out most of the radio programs and TV, Christian TV, if we did that.

30:29

If people understood how to do hermeneutics, the science of interpretation, if they understood that, everybody in the pew understood that.

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Okay, one, it does raise the bar for the pastor, because now he knows everyone knows how to interpret, so good, that's a good thing.

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And maybe that's why not enough pastors want that taught, but I think what it does is it protects the flock, because when they hear things on the radio, they recognize it's wrong.

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I had a guy who used to listen to me do open -air evangelism in New York City. He was only saved a few months, and he would hear people challenge me on the streets, well, what about this?

31:06

And they'd just quote some verse or part of a verse, and every time what I would do is, well, what verse is that?

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Okay, let's back up and read the context. Well, he ended up saying that he started doing that when he was in church.

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He would sit there and realize, oh, I've got to read the context, and he suddenly realized that this word -of -faith church that he got saved in wasn't teaching what the

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Bible actually said, because it wasn't with the context. That's the sort of thing we need to be doing in churches, is to protect the flock against the same early church heresies that we see happening again today.

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And maybe it's time we almost might need another Reformation, because not the same as we had before, but we do need some reforming of really what the

31:52

American Christianity that we've now basically pushed out all over the world. If you think about it, the

31:59

American church is where so many missionaries were coming from for several years.

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I mean, basically it was England and America. We see so much of it. And when you look at what we've been exporting in the last, say, hundred years, it's been really bad.

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I spoke to someone that was working with a pastor from Africa, and he said the word -of -faith is the only thing they know of Christianity in some of these places.

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That's why the study of church history is so important, because it helps us evaluate the times to say, okay, what is a fixed reality, something the church has always done, versus just a fad?

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What is fixed and what is a fad? What is just a trend? What is just passing through? And what is actually going to stand the test of time?

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I want to move to the Reformation, because there's a lot of good stuff. This is

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October, as we're recording, and we're coming up on Reformation Day, which some people call the

33:07

Holy Day. Oh, no, Halloween is what they call it. It's Holy Ween, yeah. Sorry. All Hallow's Eve.

33:15

Yeah. But because they don't know what the word means, you know. Holy, hallow, get the, you know.

33:23

But let's – I want to go to a commercial break, and I figured

33:29

I'd put you on the spot for the commercial. There'll be no music in this commercial. It's not planned. We're going to go to a commercial break.

33:36

After this, I want to talk about the Reformation, but I want you to give a commercial, aka plug, for your podcast.

33:44

Go. No pressure, huh? Oh, you got to do it in 30 seconds.

33:50

Go. No, I'll give you a minute. Well, if you are interested in history and you don't have a lot of time to listen to a lengthy podcast, you can search on Apple iTunes for Today in Church History.

34:02

History is spelled H -I -S hyphen S -T -O -R -Y. You can access and subscribe to these podcasts.

34:10

They're usually weekly. They come out, and we focus on a particular event in church history that occurred on that day.

34:17

It could be a council. It could be the death of a saint. It could be the martyrdom of a saint.

34:23

And we try to chronicle their theology, their life, what they stood for, what they believed, and then bring that back up to modern times to apply it to Christians today.

34:32

I always like to quote Hebrews 12, verses 1 through 3, which speak about the fact that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.

34:42

And this great cloud of witnesses is, as it were, spurring us on to lay aside the weight and the sin that so easily serves as an encumbrance and helps us to run the race with endurance.

34:55

So if you're interested in history and you want a quick lunch break listen once a week, a five -to -ten -minute listen, then search for Today in Church History, H -I -S hyphen

35:04

S -T -O -R -Y, on Apple iTunes, or you can visit www .heartaflame

35:10

.org, heartaflame .org. All right, there you go, folks. How was that?

35:15

Make sure you go and subscribe to that podcast, as I do. Let's get into the

35:20

Reformation, because you and I were talking before we recorded, you were recently on Iron Sharpens Iron with Chris Arnzen, excellent program, and you recorded there, and you were recounting on there a place where, as we were talking off air,

35:35

I actually was. And so let's get into what happened in England.

35:44

And there was some back and forth in England between the

35:49

Catholics and the Protestants, the Reformers. Basically kept fighting.

35:55

This is where I think some people don't even understand, for those who hold to a King James only position, if they understood church history, this would really be helpful for them.

36:05

Because what you see in England was this, okay, we're Catholic, and therefore the

36:11

Bible that everyone should have is the Latin Vulgate. No, now we're going to be

36:18

Protestant, and therefore we're going to get rid of that Latin Vulgate with the Apocrypha in it, and we're going to now, the only

36:26

Bible that everybody should have would be a Geneva Bible. And then it's, no, wait a minute, we've got to bring peace to this.

36:34

And in comes King James, who says, we've got to figure out some way to deal with this. I mean, this is history.

36:40

What does he do? Well, instead of keep fighting and taking everyone's Bibles away and giving them new ones, he says, let's have a new

36:47

Bible. Yes, it's in English, pleasing the Protestants. Yes, it has the Apocrypha in it, pleasing the

36:54

Catholics. So for all the King James only people that think in 1611 that was inspired, well,

36:59

A, that's not the King James Version we have today. That's from the 1800s. But it also included the

37:05

Apocrypha. When you understand the history of it, you understand what was going on there. But during the reign of Mary, there was an account that you talked about.

37:14

We know of the famous phrase, play the man. Let's talk about that and fill in some of the details of history so maybe some folks can understand when we speak of these men who have walked before us, they have walked a path that may for some of us be too difficult, but it was a path that we may get asked to walk ourselves.

37:40

And by studying some of these men, it may encourage our hearts when we are put to the test. Maybe we'll be challenged to play the man.

37:48

So why don't you recant? Recanting does come into this. I am not recanting.

37:58

For folks who don't know the story we're about to tell, they're going to understand why you and I are laughing about recanting.

38:04

But why don't you start with the account that we have here? Yeah.

38:10

Well, obviously, Andrew, you're talking about the Marian martyrs or at least three of the

38:16

Marian martyrs. I'm talking about Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Archbishop Thomas Cranmer.

38:23

These are also referred to as the Oxford martyrs. The Marian martyrs were a group of about 300

38:31

Protestants who were executed by Queen Bloody Mary when she came to the throne.

38:38

But the three Oxford martyrs are Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer. They were actually burnt on the same spot in Oxford.

38:49

Ridley and Latimer were actually burnt on the same stake back to back, and then a couple of weeks later Thomas Cranmer was burnt at the stake as well.

38:56

But all three of these men were very, very influential, and they were court preachers.

39:04

Thomas Cranmer was the Archbishop of Canterbury. So you're talking about the highest position you can have in the

39:11

Anglican Church. He was very close with King Henry VIII. And Hugh Latimer was also close with King Henry VIII.

39:21

He preached in the court. Nicholas Ridley was a preacher in the court. Ridley and Latimer were both bishops, and you mentioned the

39:30

English Bible. Nicholas Ridley made sure that there was an English Bible in every single church there around London.

39:40

Nicholas Ridley was a man who was staunchly opposed to transubstantiation.

39:46

So during this period he made sure that all the altars in the churches in London where he was the bishop, that they were all removed from the sanctuaries and replaced by tables.

39:58

So the Lord's Supper table as a table feast was an emphasis of him. So these were – both

40:04

Latimer and Ridley were Protestants, not just in the sense that they preached the Bible, but they repudiated heresies such as transubstantiation.

40:13

They repudiated the idea of venerating the saints. They repudiated the idea of purgatory.

40:21

And the thing that made them so influential over the people was the simplicity by which they preached.

40:27

They both were known as preachers. Ridley was more of a scholar or at least known for that, had a reputation for that.

40:34

He received several degrees and even a degree in Paris. Hugh Latimer was considered probably to be the better preacher of the two.

40:44

But they could preach, and they were able to preach so that people could understand in simple language.

40:52

And they had a pretty long leash with King Henry VIII. That was when he broke away from the

40:58

Roman Catholic Church, and I think it was the year 1534 with the Act of Supremacy, which made him the official head of the

41:06

Church of England. But he soon died, and Queen Bloody Mary came to the throne.

41:14

And she was the daughter of King Henry VIII and his first wife,

41:19

Catherine of Aragon. And Catherine of Aragon was the one that King Henry divorced. The Catholic Church, the pope, would not annul the marriage, so he just divorced her because she couldn't provide an heir for him, although she did provide this daughter,

41:34

Queen Mary. And that's why King Henry broke away. That's why he was Protestant.

41:39

It had to do with the fact that he wanted a male heir. So once he was dead and Queen Bloody Mary came to the throne, she was

41:47

Catholic like her mother. And she held a grudge against her father for divorcing her mother.

41:54

And so she arrested these three Oxford martyrs. And the interesting thing is that all three of these men were held in the same room, in the same tower there in London.

42:07

And Ridley and Latimer, as I said, were executed on the same day. And one of the tactics that the

42:14

Roman Church would often use is they would force Protestants to watch the execution of other

42:22

Protestants in an effort to force a recantation. To recant is to deny what you say that you believe.

42:30

So in Cranmer's case, he was Protestant. He believed in the evangelical truth of the

42:36

Bible. He believed in the pure gospel as opposed to the Roman Church. And so he was taken up to a high window to view this execution of Latimer and Ridley.

42:48

And of course that's where Latimer famously spoke to Ridley, Master Ridley, play the man.

42:54

And he said that we're going to today light a candle by God's grace in England that will never be put out.

42:59

And of course those words have gone on because their heroic stance for truth and being willing to die for the faith actually ended up forcing a law in England which said, and this was a few years later, that no more executions would be public.

43:15

Because this public execution won the crowds over and really turned the crowds against Queen Bloody Mary.

43:22

But anyways, Thomas Cranmer, who was the Archbishop of Canterbury, is watching this execution. And Archbishop Canterbury actually at one point did recant his faith in the

43:33

Protestant gospel, the one and only true gospel of the Bible. But he was given another opportunity, and in this other opportunity he took back his recantation.

43:45

So he recanted his recantation, and famously when they took him to be burnt at the same place that Ridley and Latimer were burnt, he famously put his hand, his right hand, into the fire.

43:58

And said this is the hand that signed the document that recanted the one true precious faith, the gospel.

44:04

So it will be the part of my body that burns first. It's amazing because as his two friends are burning, he's literally, we talked about this beforehand, is that I was actually at Oxford, at that place.

44:19

We stood right where the two were burned, and we could look at the tower room, and you think of a tower, it's not a tower, it's a house, where he was forced to look out the window, they had guards there.

44:30

And as his friends are burning, that's when they give him this document to sign that he recants, under the pressure of watching his friends burning alive.

44:41

He signs it, and part of what he was supposed to do is to go before the Queen. Queen Mary's going to be there, and he is to come up.

44:49

One of the things is, I mentioned the Bibles, this Archbishop is the one that was very vital in trying to get the

44:57

Bibles replaced in the first place with Protestant Bibles. And so here you have, he's a major, major figure in the

45:08

Protestant movement. He's just recanted, they want this to go public, and he's going to sit with the

45:13

Queen right there in the front row, he's going to read his recantation.

45:19

And so everyone's there with the expectation he's going to read this document, and I've actually been where they were in that church where he was reading this, and he reads and says,

45:32

I recant of this right hand that signed that document.

45:38

So what he was recanting of was the recantation, and Queen Bloody Mary just basically flips out and goes nuts.

45:45

No, we've got to burn him right away. I mean, right then, they drag him right from there, and I've walked from that pulpit all the way, they march all the way back to where his friends were burned in front of him, and go right to that spot.

46:00

And one of the things that's amazing is they didn't tie him up by his own request so he could stick his hand in the flames first.

46:08

He wanted, as you said, he wanted that right hand to burn, and if you look at the picture that I'm going to put for this podcast, that is a picture of the very spot where these men that Andrew's speaking about burned, and all of us that were there in England to do evangelism, we took a picture of all of us putting our right hand down on the ground at that very spot, and took that picture.

46:33

Because that's where you see the faith of these men, that he recognized in the fear, and we are all emotional beings, here in that moment, he could be so fearful that yeah, he signed this document, and realized what a mistake that was.

46:52

But in God's glory, the reality is that Mary wanted to put an end to Protestantism, and had he possibly, had he just never signed it, the account that we know of today might not be as known.

47:08

So much of the account is the drama that he recanted, and what a mistake

47:13

I made, I'm blaspheming my Lord, stands before the Queen, and basically calls her to repent to the

47:20

Queen herself. Yeah, and there's another part of that story too, Andrew, I don't know if they mentioned this on your tour when you were there, but when he sat before the

47:30

Queen, one of the other tactics the Roman Church would use is they would shame people.

47:37

So for instance, at Ridley and Latimer's execution, they actually hired someone from the

47:43

Roman Church, a priest or someone who would preach like a 15 or 20 minute sermon.

47:51

And this sermon was against Protestantism, and it was geared to speak to the people being executed as martyrs, to shame them.

48:00

But it was also a sermon that was to the people who were listening, and they would say things like, these people have challenged the

48:08

Holy Mother Church, and they're getting ready to enter an eternity of hell, etc.

48:15

With Archbishop Cranmer, I've read an account where when he sat before Bloody Mary, the other thing that he had to sit through was like an hour -long or two -hour -long sermon that basically attacked every single

48:29

Protestant belief that he stood for. And that's a piece of the drama that I think is interesting, that it's almost as if he's sitting there listening to them just rip the

48:40

Bible to shreds, and rip truth to shreds, that he gets the courage to say, you know what, I was wrong for signing this, and I'm not going to recant the faith,

48:50

I'm going to recant my recantation. And so I think it shows on the one hand the weakness of the flesh as he's looking out the window, and he's saying, that could be me if I don't recant.

49:02

On the other hand, it shows the power of truth, that when he heard this sermon, he realized, you know what,

49:08

I do believe all of the things that they're preaching against, and I am willing to die. And I think that's a perfect podcast for today's church history, because it reveals the weakness of the human flesh in one moment, and then the ability to be courageous in the next.

49:23

Sort of like Peter, you know, Peter denies the Lord, but then Peter then does wonderful things for the

49:30

Lord. I was thinking of a great example, and you have to go biblical on me. I was actually thinking

49:35

Martin Luther. Like, we think about Martin Luther, we have, I mean, from the time you and I are recording,

49:42

Reformation Day is only a few days away, but you think about Martin Luther, and he gets this, here's all his books, you have to recant of everything you've written, and everyone thinks of the movies where he stands boldly, you know, unless I'm convinced by scripture, but he first said, can you give me a day to think about it?

50:02

There was some quivering, and I get encouraged by that, because I'm not always the one that the first time stands up bravely to defend the faith,

50:15

I'm more the guy that says, hey, I'll push you forward. But the reality is that these guys were men just like you and I, they had the same fears, they had the same concerns, family and things like this.

50:31

I think it's an encouragement to us to realize, because I do believe that there is another time coming that is going to be great persecution for the church.

50:41

I really think that, and as I look at that, I say, we need people that are going to be strong.

50:47

I would like to think that I'm going to be strong, but, you know, I don't know.

50:52

I look at these other great men that were such, like a

50:57

Martin Luther was such a bull, I mean, he was just willing to take anything on, and then in that moment, there was a little bit of quivering.

51:04

But yet, what happened in the end? In the end, no, he stood up, okay,

51:09

I know the result of where this is going to go, but so be it. And I think that one of the things we see in church history is that we can end up idolizing these men, end up putting them up on pedestals because we see the end of their life, and we forget that they were men like you and I.

51:25

I mean, you could go, you know, you go scripture, I've got to go scripture now, you just up the empty.

51:31

You could look at someone like Abraham, right? It boggles my mind.

51:37

Abraham, it's like, let's go into this town, you tell everyone you're my sister, okay? Not once, but twice.

51:44

And you go, where's this guy's faith? Well, his faith is just like ours. It's in progress.

51:49

It's growing, you know? So, I mean, I just, I think of the account with these guys, and it's amazing.

51:57

It's just, it really does help, I think, for folks to understand history.

52:03

I want to move into discussing one other thing after this commercial is

52:09

I would like to talk about how our theology really developed over time.

52:16

And understanding history helps us to understand our theology, because it's an important thing that a lot of people don't really think about.

52:23

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So that's a great book. Even if you don't have too many Mormons in your life, there's a lot of different ideas of how to evangelize, a lot of different tactics in there.

53:44

So let's talk about history and theology. This is something that I actually, when

53:51

I was in seminary, had a conference, and I invited the dean of my seminary to speak.

53:58

He was one of the several people I invited to speak, and I gave him a topic. I gave him the topic of the history of theology.

54:07

And he said it was the first time he ever had to study out really how history developed over time.

54:14

Now, he teaches church history, he taught theology, and he did an excellent job with both because he always kind of brought those two together.

54:23

And it really helped me to understand the theology, how it developed over time, and that's why

54:28

I gave him that topic. He ended up really seeing so much value in it, he actually started a seminary class that became a history of theology, which

54:41

I loved taking the class because I got a whole semester of it. And I think that as we understand, we mentioned earlier how just understanding the history helps us to understand some issues with King James -onlyism, the people who say that 1611 itself was inspired, presents a problem for them because they have to accept the

55:01

Apocrypha, which I always laugh because they're like, no, the Apocrypha wasn't in the original. Okay, do you know why

55:08

King James did it? People will be like, oh, because he wanted an English translation.

55:14

There was an English translation, the Geneva Bible. Why did he need a new one then?

55:20

I mean, much of the King James isn't even original with them. I mean, when you actually look at Tyndale's translation, much of it, like 75 % of it's

55:29

Tyndale. So why did they need a new one? Because they needed to add the

55:34

Apocrypha, and then King James -only people don't want to know that. So you and I were talking about this.

55:41

How does understanding history help in our study of theology? Yeah, I mean,

55:47

I think it has everything to do with that. The goal is to understand what

55:52

God is trying to accomplish. We're not Marxists, so we don't believe that history is cyclical.

56:00

We believe it's linear. We believe there's a beginning, there's a middle, there's an end. We believe in the divine drama of God's storyline.

56:08

It is his story. And so from creation to fall to redemption, you have

56:15

God working out his purposes and working out his plans. And we see the faithfulness of God, that great is

56:24

God's faithfulness. His mercies are new every single morning. And when we reflect on that, when we reflect on the fact that God is preserving his church, that he says he will build his church, the gates of Hades will not prevail against it, that evokes within us a heart of worship where we want to, as the psalmist says, recount all of the wonderful deeds of God.

56:48

But I think in that study of history is recognizing, as you said, Andrew, the development of theology, the development of our understanding of some pretty significant truths.

57:05

We were talking about Martin Luther, and obviously it's hard not to think about Martin Luther in the month of October.

57:13

But you're dealing with a guy who was really the first guy to have to find a way to dispel the falsity and the error of transubstantiation.

57:27

Because from the year 1215, which was the fourth ladder in council, that's when the doctrine of transubstantiation was established.

57:35

And so for 400 years, no one had, you know, 300 years at least, no one had questioned the doctrine of transubstantiation.

57:45

He had to find a way to articulate what he believed the Bible taught on this.

57:51

But he disagreed with people like Zwingli and Calvin, who came later than them in terms of the timeline of when

57:59

Calvin actually started writing On the Lord's Supper. Calvin differed from both Zwingli and Luther on this.

58:06

So you had in a very, very short period of history, you had from 1215 to basically 1520 when

58:13

Luther wrote the work about the Babylonian captivity, and he began writing against transubstantiation.

58:22

Until that time, people pretty much just held the transubstantiation. But between 1520 and 1536, you not only had transubstantiation, but you had consubstantiation, the memorialistic view, which was the view of Zwingli, and then you had the spiritual presence of Christ view by Calvin.

58:40

And because I'm Reformed and pastor of a Reformed church, and my convictions are such that I believe that the

58:46

Bible teaches a spiritual presence of Christ within the Lord's Supper, I like to point to that development of theology as a wonderful example of really the benefit that Calvin had.

59:01

You know, he was able to read what Luther wrote on consubstantiation or what came to be known as consubstantiation.

59:07

He was able to read and even talk with Zwingli regarding the memorialistic view, and he sort of had an advantage to step back from both of those views and to come up with, in my opinion, is the most biblical view, a sort of mediating position, but one that matches the scriptures the closest.

59:27

And I think it's a good lesson that the development of history, or the development of theology, excuse me, is something that God is sovereign over within the redemptive course of events in history.

59:40

I mean, we can look at a whole bunch of the other, I mean, the other ordinance we have is baptism. I mean, it was, when

59:47

Christianity started, we see that baptism was done by immersion. It mimicked a

59:52

Jewish ceremony, a mitzvah, and it was a full immersion. But we even see in the

59:59

Didache, over time, it's like, okay, if you don't have a lot of water around, yeah, you could do a pouring.

01:00:04

But once they started, you see the theology start changing, you're bringing children in to the covenant relationship, when they start to look at that, suddenly pouring or sprinkling becomes easier because you don't want to submerge a baby, right?

01:00:21

So these things affect things, and now— Of course, the Greek Orthodox don't have a problem with that.

01:00:28

But you think about as— Most people don't immerse their baby. Yeah. Most don't want to.

01:00:35

But you think about, as you were saying, people are starting to question the Lord's Supper or Communion, and as these things are being questioned now, it's like, well, what about this baptism thing?

01:00:47

And people start going back and, you know, let's re -baptize, let's get baptized as believers because that's what we see in the

01:00:54

Bible, not as that covenant. And these things developed over time.

01:00:59

We end up seeing that some of our history that we have—think about, if you get my book,

01:01:05

What Do We Believe?, I give the definition of the Church. One of the things I do through the Church is I work through how the idea of Church has developed over history.

01:01:16

So if anyone that has that book has read that chapter, you see that early on, the word ecclesia, it actually started—it's a

01:01:23

Roman word, started the first usage we know of as in Ephesus, where we end up seeing it was just a call for a vote, an election.

01:01:32

You know, when they call elections, they gather together for a purpose. But that word starts to morph, especially after Christ.

01:01:40

After Christ, it has a specific purpose of the worship of God. But, you know, through those dark ages, things start getting muddy with what the

01:01:52

Church is, and you end up starting seeing the word, it goes from just being about the meeting of God's people for the worship of God, to the

01:02:01

Puritans start being a little bit more specific with it to say, no, no, no, there's three elements to the Church. It's the proclamation of God's word, the practice of the ordinances, baptism and communion, and—this should shock some people because this was so important to the

01:02:17

Puritans— the third thing was the practice of Church discipline, the purity is kept by Church discipline.

01:02:23

So there were three elements of the Church. Not only do you gather for the worship, you also see over time a distinction being made between the invisible

01:02:32

Church and the visible Church, or what some would call Church universal, all those who are believers, and the local body that meets, because not everyone in the local body is part of the universal

01:02:41

Church. So you see it changing over time. Now I, in my position, having the position

01:02:48

I hold to, I'm going to see that there's even more in the recent years changes in our understanding of Church because I'm going to say we start to see that there's a distinction between the nation of Israel and the organization we call the

01:03:01

Church. We end up seeing that this develops over time. Now so many people want to say, well, if it's new, it's wrong.

01:03:07

That's really bad to do because all the theology we have was new at some point, and it was often responding to something.

01:03:15

If you think about it, what was new in Augustine's time? Well, much of what he was responding to was this idea that God would give, would not so damage our will in giving us a sinful nature, that he's got to give us an ability to respond to the call, and it has to be something within us, not something because he's commanding us to do it.

01:03:39

That actually came first, so Augustine came second in saying, no, no, we have a sin nature, and that had affected our will, so we cannot in and of ourselves call out to God.

01:03:53

That was actually new. The Trinity was a new doctrine at one point. Why? Because when we look at history, they were struggling.

01:03:59

They're looking and saying, well, if Jesus Christ was not God, then how could he as a temporal being pay an eternal fine?

01:04:06

How could he as one being, if he was just a temporal being, just a man, he'd never be able to pay an eternal fine, let alone for other people.

01:04:17

So that limits what he could do. So he has to be

01:04:23

God, is the argument some would make, but then others say, but if he wasn't a man, then how could he have died for men?

01:04:30

He's not a real sacrifice. He's not a real substitution, because he has to be like us and having lived perfectly under the law to be that proper substitute.

01:04:40

So then he's got to be a man. How do you rectify these things? This is why I always say, the Trinity is not a problem, it's a solution.

01:04:46

They were struggling with this, and then we got an explanation. We have a way of explaining what we see in Scripture.

01:04:54

It is in Scripture, but the term's not there. And so we all know the Trinity, three persons in one being, and we know that, but that came about through history, through struggle with heresy.

01:05:08

If we think about this, if it wasn't for men like, men that we would look at as heretics, and if we didn't have them, we wouldn't have these doctrines.

01:05:19

Much of our theology was reaction to heresy, and we have to understand that when we come to our theology to say, what are they responding to?

01:05:28

Because not all of the theology was perfect, right? So we see that development because they're responding to things.

01:05:38

And as we look at that response, we end up seeing that we have to put it in its historical context to see, what is it

01:05:44

Augustine was responding to? What is it that Luther was responding to? I mean,

01:05:49

I always find it funny when people, if you haven't read the book, excellent book to read by Martin Luther, Bondage of the

01:05:56

Will. People love that book and they say, man, Martin Luther just nailed it.

01:06:02

I mean, he just, he put Erasmus in his place. And the question, whenever I hear people that say things like that,

01:06:08

I always ask the question, did you read Erasmus' Freedom of the Will? And I'm always amazed no one's read that, which is probably good.

01:06:16

But if you read Erasmus, Erasmus literally spends like the first 75 pages saying,

01:06:22

I don't know why I'm writing on this anyway. I don't think it's that important. All my friends want me to respond to Luther. So I'm going to write this book to be a response to Luther because everyone wants me to do this.

01:06:31

You know, it was like, you know, Erasmus destroyed Erasmus because he basically was like,

01:06:37

I don't even understand, I don't care about these issues. I don't really understand them as well. I just, everyone wants me to respond to Luther.

01:06:45

And you know, but it did serve it up as a T for Luther. I mean, it made it easy for Luther. Well, no,

01:06:52

I think you bring up a great point just in terms of the, you know, you have a spectrum of first tier issues, second tier issues and third tier issues.

01:07:01

You know, not everything is worth dying for. I mean, all truth is, is important.

01:07:07

We should love all truth, but no one would say for instance that the book of Philemon is just as important as the book of Romans.

01:07:16

I mean, the book of Romans has the gospel all through it and detailed understanding, basically the apostle

01:07:22

Paul's systematic theology of what the gospel is. Both books are inspired. Both are equally true, but if you're talking about in terms of which one conveys the most important truth, we would definitely say that the book of Romans does.

01:07:38

And in the same vein, there are, there are issues throughout church history that many of these great theologians were called upon to write about and to think about in a public format.

01:07:50

They were forced to do that in God's sovereignty because of gifts that God had given them.

01:07:55

But you think that you, you mentioned Erasmus and sort of his, he's writing the freedom of the will and is kind of questioning why he's even writing on it and kind of wavering a little bit.

01:08:04

And it reminds me of even Luther himself who is, was not prone to wavering on too many things.

01:08:10

But when it came to the word supper and it came to consubstantiation and this, this whole matter of this is my body.

01:08:18

Luther's basic argument was that that's what the scriptures plainly say.

01:08:24

Hawk asked Corpus name. It says, this is my body that the Latin phrase of that.

01:08:29

And Luther simply said, if God's word says it, if Jesus said it, then, then I'm going to believe it.

01:08:36

And you have the whole Marburg colloquy in 1529, where Luther famously debate

01:08:42

Zwingli and he writes on the table that famous Latin phrase. and but there are accounts after that that suggest even

01:08:51

Luther himself was not as adamant about his position on the Lord's supper as some people might think that he was, that he actually came across Calvin's writings and Calvin wrote much later.

01:09:04

As I said, the Marburg colloquy was in 1529. Calvin wasn't converted until 1533.

01:09:11

He didn't even begin writing the institutes until 1536. So Calvin started articulating his view of the

01:09:18

Lord's supper many, many years after Luther and Zwingli already debated. So he had the advantage of, of looking at scripture, looking at both positions, seeing the advantages and disadvantages to both.

01:09:29

And I've heard, I've heard the account from more than one reliable source where Luther actually said that had

01:09:37

Calvin's view been around during the Marburg colloquy, that there would have not been a division in the reformed church between the

01:09:45

Swiss and the Germans, that there would have been an agreement on the issue of the Lord's supper. Well, I mean, that's a huge issue.

01:09:51

You're talking about one of the sacraments, you know, of the church and even Luther himself, you know, was not as adamant about his position as many people might think.

01:10:05

That he was when you look at the whole breadth of church history. So remembering that there are first tier, second tier, third tier issues,

01:10:13

I'm not going to break fellowship with my Presbyterian brothers that, that sprinkled babies.

01:10:19

You know, that's just not something I'm worth breaking fellowship over. And so these are, these are issues that even church history itself has not fully worked out.

01:10:30

And, and us seeing complete unity with the faith once for all handed down to the saints, but we must be willing to die for those first tier issues.

01:10:39

We must be willing to break fellowship over those issues as well. we must understand what they are first because, you know, we, we hold these things strongly in a social media, as you know, people look on social media, everything's a first tier issue to so many people, unfortunately on social media.

01:10:54

But I was preaching, I'm a, I'm Baptist. I was preaching in a Presbyterian church.

01:10:59

And someone comes up and the pastor of the church is right there next to me. And this person comes up and says, he's, it's his first time visiting.

01:11:08

He saw me at the pulpit. So he wants to talk to me. He said, it's my first time here. I grew up in a

01:11:13

Baptist church. What would be the differences with this church and the church I grew up with say on baptism?

01:11:20

Well, now he's asking me, right? I could sit there and say, well, let me tell you about this baptism because that's the most important thing.

01:11:26

I said, well, I'm a Baptist. I said, so I would, I would have a differing view within this churches, but let me explain to you the view that this church would hold to.

01:11:36

And we, the pastor and I walk away for go have lunch. And as we're walking to go grab lunch, he says to me,

01:11:42

Andrew, I got to tell you, I wish that some of the people in my congregation understood Presbyterian baptism as well as you, a

01:11:49

Baptist do, and can explain it that way. He, I didn't have to draw a division there.

01:11:55

I, does it matter if he goes to a Baptist church or, look, he's, he walked in that church. That's the one

01:12:00

I'm going to encourage him to go to. And, and if he puts membership in good, it's, those are not issues, but there's other issues that people, they, it's like,

01:12:10

Oh no, we got to divide. I mean, we were mentioning that the charismatic, I have friends who believe in the charismatic gifts. Do I split from them?

01:12:16

No, I disagree with them. Now, when it gets to word of faith, when you start saying that you're a little

01:12:22

God and that God is subservient to your words and wishes, okay, we got a totally different gospel.

01:12:29

Now, now it's completely different. Now it's a first, it's because now you're attacking the, the very nature of God.

01:12:35

God's not sovereign. He's, he's a slave to your wishes. He's subservient to what you want and what you call him to do.

01:12:43

That's a different God. That's the first level issue. Yeah, absolutely. And, and then also keeping in, into account the, um, the, and, and both you and I both come from, um, traditions that believe in the autonomy, you know, of the local church, that the, the local church leadership, the elders are the, the ones in that congregation as a whole.

01:13:04

So you're saying we don't have to, we don't have to deal with the mess of the SBC right now. I'm just saying we can avoid that one.

01:13:11

Yeah. Thankfully, although I used to pastor in the SBC, so I, I used to have to deal with, with that mess.

01:13:17

Wise man, you came out of it. Well, and, and, and to speak to the SBC, I mean, they, they, um, those churches are considered locally autonomous churches.

01:13:26

Yeah. Um, but it's the influence of, of the denominational, um, heads of different committees and things that really influences the culture and the tradition of the way things are done.

01:13:37

But, but if you, um, if you're part of a local church that, um, decides, uh, because you have to make a decision as elders on these issues.

01:13:48

Um, one, one issue when we planted the church, Andrew, that we actually talked about, and we didn't talk about it.

01:13:54

Like when I say we talked about it, it's not like we spent five elders meetings on it, but, but we did spend at least one elders meeting or at least one part of one elders speaking, talking about when we serve the

01:14:06

Lord's supper, um, are we going to, to use grape juice? Are we going to use wine?

01:14:11

Are we going to offer both? And we both were in agreement that, um, I started the church with another gentleman who was the other founding elder.

01:14:20

We both agreed that, uh, we would just serve grape juice. Well, very early on, uh, when the, the church started meeting in a school, we started getting more and more visitors.

01:14:32

And we, we had, I remember at least one, there might've been more than one person, a couple that loved the church, loved everything about it.

01:14:41

Uh, and we did not serve Lord's supper that particular day that they visited. But their question was, when you serve

01:14:47

Lord's supper, do you use wine or do you use grape juice? And when I explained to him what I just explained to you, almost verbatim, that really it was an indifferent thing as far as we were concerned, but that we had chosen for this church, we were just going to distribute grape juice.

01:15:02

Um, he left and never came back. I mean, that was a breaking point for him. And so I would look at that brother and I would say, okay, it's a little bizarre that that would be an issue that you would, you would, um, find unacceptable if you find everything else in the church checks out.

01:15:17

And that's the one issue. And that's what you want. You're going to walk away from the church on. Um, that's a little bizarre in my opinion.

01:15:24

But on the other hand, I told him, look, you don't have to agree with our position, but as church leaders, we have to make a call one way or another.

01:15:32

You can't just believe everything. And so, yeah, there's first, second, third tier issues on some of those third tier issues.

01:15:39

The leadership just has to decide what way they're going to go. And another example in our church is, yeah, you can be a member of our church if you believe in the charismatic gifts, but you're not allowed to practice them.

01:15:52

You know, you're not allowed to, to, um, endorse your teaching, um, or to try to influence other people to believe that because we are a confessional church and we do not believe in those gifts, that those gifts are still around today.

01:16:05

Um, but that's the decision our church makes without ostracizing an individual believer that, that maybe believes those things, but that keeps them those things to their self.

01:16:16

So I don't know if that's helpful or not, but, but I think that's, you know, church ministry, as you know, Andrew is not always black and white and cut and dry.

01:16:24

You know, there are, there are many issues of discernment and prayerfulness and wisdom that you, you have to think through how to handle things.

01:16:30

And sometimes you just got to decide one way or another and say, this is the way we're going to do it. You don't have to agree with it, but this is the way we're going, uh, as a church.

01:16:39

Well, it's interesting you bring up that. I, I have a video that I did of the rap report.

01:16:45

That's a little bit longer than two minutes. The, the shorter my rap report daily used to be closer to five minutes until I learned how to get it down to two.

01:16:53

But I dealt with that exact topic of all these people that say, well, you have to use real wine. And my question is, do you use unleavened bread also?

01:17:01

Like I don't see anyone ever splitting over unleavened bread, but it's like they make up, they make an issue that it should be real wine.

01:17:08

I really, I do sometimes wonder about that. I, I've never, I've only once been in a church that had real wine.

01:17:15

Um, and, uh, it was a little disturbing because they basically had little shot glasses, you know, the little small cups of, of grape juice.

01:17:25

And they had like large wine glasses for the wine and they were like filled. And I, I, I just,

01:17:31

I watched this pastor let's, let's take together as he took a full wine glass and gulped it down. I'm like, yeah, that would probably put me out.

01:17:37

Like for me, I would be, I would, I'd be more than tipsy with that. But, but, um, I was just like,

01:17:44

I, I mean, that was the first time I was ever in a service that did that. And they use leavened bread. And that's,

01:17:49

I was like, boy, that seems, you know, different. So let's do this. Let's, we're going to go to a game and you don't know what this game is, but I want to let you know, there's no pressure on you.

01:17:59

So let's, let's play some music for our game. It's time now to start the spiritual transition game.

01:18:09

All right. So I'm going to explain to you, Andrew, how this game works. And like I said, all the pressure is on me.

01:18:15

So this is how this game works. Most people, they find evangelism a lot easier when we start already in a discussion of spiritual things.

01:18:22

The most difficult thing for most people is that swing from the natural world to the spiritual.

01:18:29

Now there's so many different ways to do it. Some people who just have a way of being able to do that with anything. If you ever see

01:18:34

Ray Comfort, he just, no matter what you talk about, he'll say squirrels. Well, talking about squirrels, do you ever, do you consider yourself to be a good person?

01:18:41

He can get away with things like that. But when we talk in the natural world, we talk about things and it's hard to figure out how do

01:18:49

I transition from whatever we're talking about to the gospel. And I've was trained by my pastor to kind of be, learn to do that.

01:18:59

And I've turned it into a habit. I've turned it into a game called the spiritual transition game. So Andrew, you're going to give me something, whatever it is.

01:19:05

And this part doesn't get edited out. So if there's long pauses, it's because you stumped me. And I have to get from whatever you give me, whatever object or whatever thing, whatever it is,

01:19:14

I have to somehow swing to the gospel. So whenever you're ready, you let me know what you have for me to have to get to the gospel.

01:19:24

And folks sit there and say, well, this is, I, they think I make this look easy. I've been doing it for like almost 30 years.

01:19:31

On a regular basis. I have people that just walk up to me at conferences, you know, artichoke hearts go. And I got to get to the gospel.

01:19:39

Can I ask a question before I participate in this game? You just did flung on me at the last minute.

01:19:45

You just, you just did ask a question. So that's it. You're done. No, I'm done. You asked if you could ask a question, not two questions.

01:19:55

So can I say a word or do I need to say a phrase? Oh, it could be a phrase. It could be a synonym. It could be whatever you want.

01:20:02

Okay. Sure. So, um, tell me about Yeti cups. Uh, okay.

01:20:07

I have to Google a Yeti cup. Hold on. What is in the world is a Yeti cup. It's one of those, is it some pop culture thing that, that I don't know.

01:20:18

It's like those, those big cups. okay. Uh, I don't know. I can't describe it.

01:20:24

They look like they're the hip, hip kind of the hipster kind of cups or something. Yeah.

01:20:29

They're like really big that, you know, you can put like a two liter of Coke in it, you know, big old metal cup with a big old handle.

01:20:36

I like these that people walk around with and keeps your, your beverage nice and cool or, or, uh, nice and hot.

01:20:45

I guess it's sort of a, which is, which is nice. Cause you want your, you want your cold drinks cold and your hot drinks hot.

01:20:51

So that, that could be an important thing. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it is kind of, it's, it's amazing to me though, as I'm just looking at all their different things they have and the different colors and sizes styles, you know, but it's amazing.

01:21:06

Two things. One, the amount of that people put into just keeping their hot liquids hot and their cold liquids cold.

01:21:13

And then you look at how they have to make it all stylish. So it looks really hip to carry around this huge water bottle or whatever, right?

01:21:22

You gotta make it look cool. and yet it, there, the, the fact is, is that you have hot drinks that can serve a purpose cause you enjoy hot coffee, hot tea, whatever it might be.

01:21:36

Soup. You want those things to stay hot for a long time. You want your cold drinks to stay cold.

01:21:41

I, I, well, I don't have been training jujitsu in a while, but when I used to, I used to love having a big bottle of ice water because afterwards

01:21:50

I needed to cool down and I need something that would hold, hold that, you know, coolness in after two, three hours when

01:21:57

I finally got to it, you know, it's, so it's, it's a thing where, you know, it's amazing to look at how much people put into something that we would, we, you know, years ago, generations ago, they'd be like, just drink it like who cares.

01:22:13

But you know, when we think about these things, it, it shows that as we have advanced as a culture,

01:22:19

I think that we've, we end up focusing so much on keeping everything comfortable for us.

01:22:25

Everything should be right to our liking. We shouldn't have to, you know, maybe this is, you know, a first world problem for people, right?

01:22:33

We, we shouldn't be able to, or shouldn't have to have something that cools down. Everything should be the exact temperature.

01:22:40

I know they have, they have the Ember cups that actually heat the cup up. That has a, it's a battery. So it keeps it at the exact temperature.

01:22:47

It just shows that we have become a culture that wants to be comfortable. We don't want anything to upset our comfortability.

01:22:56

And we don't really want to face the reality that life is not comfortable. There's things in life we don't like.

01:23:02

There's things in life we, we don't want to have to deal with. And when those things come, when we're trying to live a life of comfort, and we have those things come in, it becomes a problem.

01:23:12

The biggest problem, I think that we, we don't want to face the thing that we want to be most comfortable at avoiding is the very thing we can't avoid.

01:23:21

It's what happens a moment after we die. Because a moment after we die, it's too late to go, what am I going to do about it now?

01:23:27

Because every one of us, as comfortable as we want to be in this life, we still break

01:23:33

God's law. And we're going to be accountable to him on that day of judgment. And he is not going to judge us on how we think he should judge us.

01:23:41

He's going to judge us by his own standard. Living his law perfectly, which none of us can keep.

01:23:46

And that's why we need him when he came as a sacrifice for us. And only him, because we can't work our way to heaven.

01:23:53

We can't add works to what he did. He being the perfect God, did what you and I could never do.

01:23:59

He became the fine that we owe. And he took that upon himself that we could be set free and have eternal life.

01:24:06

So that's how I would go from a Yeti cup to the gospel. Very good.

01:24:11

I give you an A+. You did an exceptional job. Especially, I'm just more surprised that you didn't know what a

01:24:18

Yeti cup was. Oh, my audience has no fear with that. I was having difficulty explaining what it was.

01:24:27

And I have one. And I couldn't even explain exactly what it was. So let me give you a couple minutes. Anything you want to share before we sign out?

01:24:34

Anything about the ministry there? Your podcast? Oh, I appreciate the opportunity to come on,

01:24:40

Andrew. You and I met at the Shepherds Conference, I think a couple of years ago.

01:24:45

And have stayed connected since then. And Andrew has been a help to me with my own podcast.

01:24:53

I was able to ask him some questions as I was at the beginning stages of it.

01:25:00

So if you want to know what a professional podcaster sounds like, listen to Andrew. Not this

01:25:05

Andrew, but the other Andrew. Yeah, but you have the better voice. You have the better voice. Just for the record.

01:25:13

Well, I don't know about that. I mean, you're from Jersey, so you've got like the... The attitude. You've got a little bit of an accent.

01:25:19

I don't know if I have an accent. Do I have an accent at all? Yeah, you've got an accent. Just saying. And I know you're struggling there in that hard place to minister in Florida there.

01:25:30

Yeah, the promised land is difficult to survive. It is the Jewish promised land.

01:25:35

We moved from Brooklyn down to, you know, Miami. That's right, that's right.

01:25:41

No, but I just appreciate the opportunity to come on. I've really enjoyed our conversation and talk about church history.

01:25:48

And I've at least taught you one new thing, and that is the existence of Yeti Cups. Yeti Cups, that's right.

01:25:55

To accomplish something. Hey, okay, so here's a question I like to sometimes ask folks that come on.

01:26:01

If you could change one thing in American Christianity, what would it be? One thing in American Christianity, I would change the music of churches.

01:26:13

Right. I feel like I maybe should just at least make a clarification. I think there's too much frivolous, kind of loud, fast, upbeat, trendy music.

01:26:25

I think we need to get back to simple, and simple hymns that I think would really add a dose of reverence to our worship.

01:26:36

I would say the simples makes it easier for everyone in the pews to sing, which is one of the things

01:26:42

I have a difficulty with. Some of the songs, you just can't hit the notes. But I'd agree with you in a different way.

01:26:49

Music for me, so much of music today is about me and not God. And that bothers me.

01:26:56

All right, second question for you. If you go back in time to before you were in ministry and you could tell that younger version of yourself anything, what would you tell yourself?

01:27:08

As it pertains to ministry, and the life of being a minister, I would probably tell myself that don't get too high, don't get too low, because the joys of ministry are a taste of heaven.

01:27:21

The lows of ministry are pretty miserable. And just don't get too high, don't get too low, because the

01:27:30

Lord sees faithfulness. So if there's not outward successfulness by other people in the way that they judge, don't worry about it, just be faithful.

01:27:39

The Lord sees everything. Amen. Well, I thank you for coming on. It was a blessing to get to do a show with you and spend more time with you.

01:27:48

Like you said, we first met at Shepherd's Conference. I think we were holding a 300 -pound Bible. Okay, well, all right, maybe it was a $300

01:27:56

Bible, but it felt like 300 pounds when they gave out those preacher's

01:28:02

Bibles that I actually used this Sunday in church when I preached. Did you really? I did.

01:28:08

How was it? How was your experience? Well, the issue is, so my pastor, when we were at a church plant and when he came, he decided he was going to use his preacher's

01:28:18

Bible. So out of respect for his pulpit, I brought my preacher's

01:28:23

Bible. But it was hard for me, having done the study and done so much in the

01:28:29

ESV and then reading from the NASB, I had trouble with that. And so I may never do that again.

01:28:37

But I'll see. I really wanted to show the respect to my pastor and his pulpit and try to honor that.

01:28:45

So maybe what I need to do is I may have to put more study into the words in the

01:28:51

New American Standard when I'm at his pulpit. But it's definitely nuts.

01:28:57

And I did have someone who decided they were going to do open -air preaching with it. He was on the street and I said, dude, no, no.

01:29:04

He's like, no, I think it'd be good. It's a big Bible and nice big words. I can read it. For folks who don't know, this is like an eight -pound

01:29:12

Bible, I think, is how much it actually weighs. No joke inside, like an eight -pound. And this guy's up there holding it with his left hand for about,

01:29:21

I don't know, it felt like maybe 10, 15 minutes, and then he's like looking at me. And he moves the mic away from his amplifier, looks at me, and says,

01:29:30

Andrew, can I have your Bible? I was half -tempted to say, no, you wanted that.

01:29:37

Oh, that's hilarious. Yeah, I think James White called it the assault Bible.

01:29:44

Yeah, yeah, fittingly so. But there was two things. One of the things I was looking forward to was not having to squint when

01:29:51

I read the Bible, and that's actually why I often use my computer. But I didn't have to squint for two reasons.

01:29:57

One, the print in the preacher's Bible is nice and large. The second reason was

01:30:03

I didn't realize exactly how tall my pastor was until I was at his pulpit.

01:30:10

My Bible was a lot closer to my face than I was used to. Oh, that is – well, and if there's people listening that aren't preachers, which

01:30:20

I'm sure your audience is large enough to have more than just preachers listening, this just shows you how finicky preachers are.

01:30:29

We can talk about pulpits and Bibles all day long, and we definitely have our preferences.

01:30:36

And I'm on the shorter side, so I definitely like shorter pulpits. I guess

01:30:42

I'm not to the point now where I need the larger print in the Bible. I use probably a smaller

01:30:48

Bible than most people use. But that's because I don't use full -size paper for my notes, so I can just kind of tuck small papers into my smaller

01:30:59

Bible, and it tends to work well for me. Ah, youth is a wonderful thing. You'll get there one day.

01:31:06

I'm sure, I'm sure. Hey, folks, until next week, I believe that –

01:31:11

I'm not sure the order I got. I'm recording a couple of podcasts together. I know that from the time we recorded this, if I do this one first, we got some time -sensitive things on the next one, so I don't know if the one that I'm going to do with Bud will come before this or after this, but we're going to be dealing with some topics either before this, after this.

01:31:31

We're going to be dealing with some things dealing about this whole thing with Kyan West's pastor.

01:31:42

I don't know that we'll actually deal too much with that. We'll probably, though – we're definitely going to address some issues that folks don't want to deal with,

01:31:50

I think. We want to talk about some things with this dad who is trying to get a divorce with us and the whole case with his seven -year -old son now and how we're really having gender wars attacking

01:32:07

Christianity. We're also going to talk, if not on a future episode, maybe the next one, on what red -letter

01:32:14

Christians are and why we shouldn't be red -letter Christians. So that'll be coming up on the next couple of rap reports.

01:32:22

I hope you look forward to it. If you enjoy this, please share it with your friends. You can write a review.

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It does absolutely nothing for our rankings, but boy, is it nice to know what you guys think.

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I try to read those so that I get encouraged with what you guys think of the podcast. Please subscribe and share it.

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That's a great way for others to find out about it. And remember, until next week, to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

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This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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