Apologetics Session 40- Ecclesiology - Part 2

The church is a community of all true believers for all time, true believers being those that are in Christ.

That's where the Spirit is dwelled in. Drew, last week, had mentioned about, you know, understanding what a true believer is.

And the church is, first and foremost, is the church for the elect, and that's unequivocal.

Okay? And we have scripture to break that up. Goes on to there. And so, why is the church created?

And that's the last thing that is said in Matthew, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in your name, and so forth and so on.

And we go through that. What does a church do? And what runs a church? And we talked about that.

And then we had the different, the Greek, the different things of pastors.

And what's the definition of a pastor, shepherd? I'm running through this very quickly. Please stop me if you want to talk about it some more.

But we talked about this at length, why the church is not. And then we talked about this. And we see a lot of these different things.

And we'll talk about this towards the end there. And I don't know if I even went over this slide because I may have been going through technical problems.

But the church is not a place, you attend for spiritual input two or three times a month if you don't have anything better to do.

We're not here to provide the best show in town for spiritual enjoyment. We were trusted in Christ.

You were organically joined together members. So that one body with them under the head and you're a member of the family of God related to other family members with the

God -given ministry to fulfill. Meaning is, and this last part is actually extremely important, is that it really shouldn't be a tolerance of people just to stay in the sidelines.

They need to be involved. That's why we come together as a church. All of us are involved in it.

Okay. Should a church be political? And we had a discussion about that. We're going to revisit that. And then give you a scripture based on that.

And I never even got a chance to even talk about this. But the last part is first.

And Matthew 16, 19 says, What will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven?

Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

And what does that mean? Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. And Greek was a person bound in sin and wickedness who was loosed through the preaching of or judged or disciplined by the church based on their works.

So part of the role is there as a church body is overseers of people who are in the church and understanding what that means.

And seeing that. And not judging from our own judgment in terms of our human frailties.

But judging from what scripture has. And seeing what happens with other people. And I love this quote.

The world seems to be offended except for sin. Absolutely. And we're seeing that. We're living that right now. Is there really a divided church and state?

No. And it doesn't mean that we can't practice our faith in public. And it doesn't mean separating morality and public policy.

As long as we have religiously informed arguments. This is when

I really started loosing a lot of text on. What the church does when it does nothing. And this is the secular world view.

But as you can tell, a lot of this is starting to creep into the church right now. So we're finding that this is a real problem there.

I thought a few years ago too. And not that it's not a problem.

But all of the genetic testing. And the genetic enhancements.

And the cloning. That wants to come down the pike. I thought that was going to be worse than it is right now.

But it's coming too. That's really. Oh absolutely. It's not necessarily on hold.

It's still going on. And there's still going to be a lot of that nonsense coming down the pike. So to that point.

And actually a very very important point. So we just went through this whole schism.

Between the COVID and the vaccine. And what was happening there. And it really divided the church.

In doing that. There is a lot of speculation. That some of the churches were being paid by pharma companies.

To go ahead and promote it within the churches. And what do you do with that.

And we're looking at. Is this an example of the end times. Is it an example of the mark.

Is it an example of all the different things that people are talking about. With them trying to wipe out the human race and stuff like that.

I'm not worried. Because I don't think this is going to be going on YouTube. But there is a lot of speculation there.

And it really divided the church. And understanding of what

Christ wanted us to do. And the lies that were coming up.

That people naturally got the vaccine. Based on various different things that were happening there.

Now we're finding out as it's leaking. That it didn't happen. So what does the church do? Do they apologize?

Do they go to the parishioners. And they say we were wrong. To take a stance. Whatever. I doubt it.

It could happen. To your point about genetic testing.

And DNA. Genome changes.

And everything else like that. We're going to find out in the next months. That this was much worse than we actually thought.

So. I won't get into this one yet. But this was a publication.

You'll get to see it when you go online. But basically it's talking about the gay community.

Trying to radically infiltrate into the churches. It's part of their agenda to go ahead and do that.

And change that. Prosthetia was the one who kind of uncovered the story. It's a very interesting story.

It's not by half a chance. It's actually part of what they're trying to do. To undercut the church.

And then we have these two books. And I had spoke about it last time. Yes. If you haven't read them.

I would recommend you read them. And I would warn you. There's no neutral ground in them. Either on one side or the other side.

It's also why there's a little bit of tension that's happening right now. With the EFCA and this.

Which Jeff, when the time comes, he'll talk about that.

Are they findable on the web? I'm sorry? Yes. Yes.

You can get them on Amazon. Thank you. And Pastor has copies of them in his office too.

Yeah. Okay. In book form. In book form. Yeah. Russell, I talked to you last week.

They're only available in book form right now. I talked to a person that I've gotten. That I've contacted that can put

PDF copies together of books. That can be viewed on the screen. I haven't gotten an answer back.

But as soon as I hear all of them. I'm sure Pastor has a copy of it too. An electronic copy?

I'm sure he does. In his computer. That would probably be the best source. Certainly that's the best source.

Yeah, it is. It wouldn't charge. It wouldn't charge. I doubt he's going to charge

Russell. Anyway. So we're seeing that the church is starting to become, in certain respects, irrelevant.

Denominations have sought to accommodate themselves to unbiblical, godless ideologies. And you're seeing a decline of what's happening.

However, the ones who are sticking with scriptural truth actually are growing right now.

So there's a lot of praise for that. So, this one thing you want to hear about this.

You've heard the saying that Christianity is mainstream. But it's not. It's the biggest lie ever.

So, it's one of Satan's greatest lies against the church. Why? It neutralizes the gospel and makes it

Satan's religion. And also depends on how you define Christianity. Yeah. And so there are many,

I'll just say religions, that appropriate Christianity. Correct. Well, 67, so the

Barna report said 67 % of Americans claim to be Christians. And that's divided into many different sectors, but yeah.

So that's just asking them that question. Yeah. I have a question. Sure. You hear this term,

Christian Nationalist. Right. Is that a term that the left is trying to use to be derogatory to us?

Or is that, because when somebody says, oh, you're just a Christian Nationalist. I don't know whether that's a compliment.

Or that it's like they're trying to pigeonhole me as some kind of crazy person.

Because, you know, it's almost like when they labeled Trump a white nationalist, okay?

Where he was white and he believed in the sovereignty of our country as opposed to a globalist.

So in my mind, a white nationalist would not be an evil person per se.

But the way the left pigeonholes people and they try to create this derogatory. And I understand amongst a lot of Christian groups, there's this whole thing going about Christian Nationalism.

And the response, I guess, should be is, when somebody calls you that is, well, what do you mean by that?

And have them explain it further before you say, yes, I am. Because the way they want to argue their position on that is that we're some kind of crazy people.

Right, right, right. So a couple different ways to look at the answer to that.

One is, if you know church history, you know Christian Nationalism has always been around. Because every single denomination or every single sect always wanted to be

Christian Nationalists. They never were just sects or pockets inside a country.

They wanted to take over the country. And you can put that for Roman Catholicism. You can put that to reform denominations.

You can put that to the Puritans. So that part of it, yeah, they all wanted to be

Christian Nationalists. They want their country to... It's kind of a new term though.

Right, but the new term they're trying to do is a punitive term. And it is trying to split and divide.

Kind of like slicing and dicing of the rhetoric to make it more of white nationalism history that was happening recently.

So they're trying to connect the two. And trying to make that happen. And of course people are falling for that, you know.

And on top of that, when you put the Christian part to it, right, they're denigrating what

Scripture is saying with that. So, you know, white nationalism, white supremacy, you know, the white person has been a colonist, who's been imperialist, who's always been trying to take over.

And then they've been guided by the Bible. And so they connect those two. And when you connect those two, what do they go after?

Do they go after gay people? Do they go after black people? Do they go after transgender people? You know, they go after that.

And that's the whole chaos.

Now, I've spoken about this a number of times. One of the main axioms we should all take away, whoever starts the chaos is the master of the chaos.

That's an axiom. Once they start the chaos, they can go ahead and change the narrative any way they want. By the time we're catching up, we're in a reactionary mode, we cannot go ahead and defend ourselves.

We're just reacting to what's happening there. And a lot of that, and I'll talk about this not here, but I'll talk about this with biblical literacy, the class

I'm going to be teaching, the more we know what scripture construct is, what scriptural pillars are, the more we can go ahead and defend what is happening with that type of rhetoric, which you can't do anything with right now, because they're just lobbing things over the wall, and it's just exploding.

So Christian nationalism is gaining a lot of attention. So is it a derogatory term?

Yes. This is not a plug for Christianity today at all, but this is the definition they have.

Christian nationalism is the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way.

Popularly, Christian nationalists assert that America is and must remain a Christian nation, not merely an observation about America's history, but as a prescriptive program for what

America must continue to be in the future. And then there's other links to Anglo -Protestantism and white nationalism.

So it's a derogatory term. At least, that's what it's intended to be.

It's intended to be a derogatory term, and to imply that what we're looking for is a theocracy, rather than a democracy.

Okay. Well, thanks for clarifying. I'm seeing that more and more. Way in the beginning, when

I taught the first class, I talked about tribal spiritualism, the paganism part of it, that's permeating in the churches right now.

And part of that whole tribalism is splitting things up. And I talked about the church of abortion, the church of transgender.

They have all their special goals and things there. That's one of the things that they're going to be against.

But to contrast Christian nationalism, what they're trying to do is emphasize the separation of church and state, which is a false dichotomy.

And Christian nationalism is different than saying that you should vote for values that you agree with.

You should absolutely vote for values that you agree with. You should absolutely try and push.

This goes back to the, should the church be political? Yes, we should be political. We should be pushing for ends to things like abortion.

We should be pushing for things that are virtuous and biblical. That doesn't mean that we're going to be a theocracy.

It just means that we want to be a more virtuous nation. And to piggyback on what he's saying, and what

I'm going to say next is controversial, but you have to take it in the context there. So there is a way through theonomy of God's law, depending on how you look at it, because people can be a fundamentalist and go far, but it's really about God's law.

What is God's law, which oversees everything anyway? And so people who are in Christ, who are following God's law,

I guess they would call them Christian nationalists, you know? But that theonomy is something that is scripturally based, and that's why we're doing that.

Well, it seems like our founding fathers, from the beginning, wanted to base the founding of this country on Judeo -Christian principles.

Right, right. Now, with that being said, remember five or six years ago, remember the

Islamophobic whole thing that was going on there, and how, you know, how dare any

American think that, you know, you think we're a sovereign nation and we're going to be doing anything like that?

And there was that pushback, and that was a trend that was there. Now it's not really part of the dialogue.

So this is coming out there, you know? And so they're kind of being myopic, and they're starting to pinpoint different people and put it in there.

Politically, you know, civically, they're going to try to make that front and center. There is a bill in the

Jersey House to make Diwali a national, or a state holiday. Get a day off of school.

Yeah. The Muslims want their day off, too. Right. You've got to salon every group out there so nobody's offended.

Is Diwali a... No, Diwali is Indian. It's Indian, not Muslim. Because I see signs, well hang your

Diwali lights. I never knew there was Diwali. It's essentially Christmas. I may have misspoke the word, but I remember the

Muslims want a holiday, whatever they call it. I was just thinking it was Diwali. They have a bunch of holidays.

But an official holiday off of school, off of work, a paid holiday. So it elevates them to the status of Christians and Jews.

Well, we are a pluralistic nation. Alright, guys. Here we go again. But we're not going to stay there.

So what I'm going to do is... This is just more work for me in the end. Let me get out of here.

Let me just do this and get this. Maybe I can connect really quick. And if it doesn't connect, I'll switch over to this computer.

But... I'll tell you why. I think it's the cable.

Is it the cable? I think it's the cable. It's a legend of once in a while too. It doesn't happen in megachurches.

You never, never read that one. Oh my word, that was great. That was so much fun. You know

I was kidding. It's all going to end up on the editing floor. So all this stuff gets...

It looks like, when I'm in the middle of editing last week's, it looks like it's just one continuous thing.

All of the technical difficulties get sliced right out of me. That's... I have to do my own movie.

There you go. There we go. There we go.

So... Let's get to it. Okay.

There we go. Alright. So church history ancient. So the early church...

Again, I'm going to run through this part. You can get to research it. But early church beginnings, really is the story of the abandoned outlaws.

And when we think about that, and you think of when you're reading Acts 1 -5, you think about how

Peter was basically holding this new church and just trying to keep everybody away from being killed by the

Jews and Paul, or Saul at the time. So it really is a story. They were considered outlaws that was happening there.

And it begins at the Pentecost. So ascensions happened before.

So the Jews at the time and some Gentiles knew about what ascension was, but they didn't understand the connection between Jesus being ascended to heaven.

But they had examples with Enoch and Elijah at the time. So both were bodily ascended, widely known to Luke's audience in Acts.

This was important for the people to understand that when Jesus explained the only way to receive the Holy Spirit, he needed to ascend back to the right hand of God.

So that was the example that they can go with at the time, because that's what they had.

So the important takeaway is, without Jesus' ascension there would be no Christian church, because then the Holy Spirit would not come down to us.

Does that make sense to everybody? Okay. And while we were staying with them, he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the

Father, which he said, you heard from me, for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the

Holy Spirit not many days from now. And sure enough, he came like the wind. And then continue with Acts 1, 7 -8, it is not for you to know times or seasons that the

Father has fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all

Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. And the church was born. That actually ends up happening now.

So we have that taking place, and it's still going today. So the early church really penetrated all these different areas in a very short period of time, within from Jesus' ascension, which was approximately about 33

A .D. to about 40 A .D. And Paul was a big part of this, was going all over and it was just turning everything upside down.

Okay. During that time it started to branch out into three major branches of Christianity, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant.

Okay. I'll save my comment on that there.

For several centuries it was unified structurally and had not taken the current three -fold division that we see today.

Why? The original churches had major centers throughout the Roman Empire, managed by appointed bishops. So Rome, at the time that this was going on there, did not want to have insurrection.

So they played along, just like Pilate did, was playing along with, or tried to play along with the

Jews. Now you have Christians that are coming out there. What was interesting was the Jews were fighting back with Pilate.

The Christians weren't fighting back. They wouldn't fight back. They actually were very complicit on whatever the

Roman authorities had at the time. So they allowed it to happen. But this is when they started appointing overseers on there and they were calling them various different things as bishops there.

Second century major centers were Jerusalem, Antioch, and Andrea, Ephesus, and Rome.

And later Ephesus lost its influence. And Jerusalem's influence was destroyed by 70 A .D. by the

Romans. This began the paganization of the Jews by the Romans, which ultimately led to the

Bar Kokhba revolt in A .D. 155.

Why is this so significant? Let's talk about this, because this is not something that is brand new to what happened there.

Think Old Testament. Think New Testament. Think of what the Jews did and what God allowed to have happen to them in the

Old Testament. They were taken over by the Assyrians. They were taken over by the Amalekites. They were taken over by the

Babylonians. The Egyptians, they were constantly because of what?

They were turning their back on God. God allowed this to happen to teach them for what their sinful state were.

And then in the New Testament, now you have that happen again. So we have the Pharisees, the

Sadducees that were pushing back and eventually the same thing happens again.

So it came in cycles that was going on with them. So put that in the back of your mind there.

And I don't know if you can read that, but basically what ended up happening was in short was

Rome had a handrum had taken over and in Jerusalem and Judea, that part and they were with the promise that they were going to allow the

Jews to do their own worship there. But they changed their mind. He changed his mind and started to oppress the

Jews. And what happened was the Jews, some of the Jews acted like guerrillas and they went outside of Jerusalem and they started burying themselves in tunnels and getting themselves as warriors or guerrillas come back to go ahead and fight them.

And when they did try to go fight them, they were wiped out. They were totally wiped out. And the last line is probably the most important thing.

The Jews lost went into slavery and their land, and you may have known this, from Judea to Syria, basically

Palestine. They changed it to Palestine from what they know today. Wasn't Simon Bar -Katba thought to be the

Messiah that would free them from the Jewish tyranny? Right, yes. And he was the one who also said he was trying to stop them from being warriors.

He didn't want to have a war. Because he knew they'd lose. He knew they'd lose. So that made a this hasn't changed.

Palestine and Israel are still at odds with each other in Syria. So when the

Jews fell, they became paganized and the outgrowth of that were branches of Christendom, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant, which developed over 15 centuries.

So these are some of the church milestones that I'll go through fairly quickly. Constantine, you've heard of, became a

Christian, changed the Roman government, declared Christianity as the official religion of the empire. His mother,

Helena, made it her mission to go into the Holy Land and fix it as a way of giving back to God.

And Constantine was instrumental in affirming Christ's deity to the Council of Nicaea as expressed in the

Nicene Creed. He was part of bringing that together. And then there was

Mohammed who was on the other side that was pushing back 7th century Arabian claims that he was getting revelations from God, gave rise to the

Koran and Islam, claims God's revelations were the same as Moses and Jesus, but he thought

Jesus Christ was just a prophet and never more than that. And his faith was accomplished only by the power of his sword.

So it was completely opposite of what Jesus Christ talked about. He felt that the only way to go ahead and have people believe is either they believe or you wipe them out.

And it still goes on today. Then we have the Crusades that called to deliver to the Holy Lands from Muslim conquerors of the century.

The first Crusades captured major cities in Asia Minor, attracted soldiers with the promise of immediate entrance into heaven and forgiveness of debt and freedom of taxes.

The last two was probably the biggest driver of having them there. And then the

Jews were slaughtered during these raids. So the Crusades is and there will be more information on that but it was a terrible time because there was no allegiance, although they're using, no different than what we have today, they're using as Christ as the reason why they're doing what they're doing.

But they were going to cities and they were basically saying, do you believe in Christ or not? And they would just kill them.

They would just destroy them. And they would attract, particularly even though they were supposedly going after the

Muslims, they would attract some of the Muslims to work with them to go ahead and kill the Jews. They killed more Jews. Yeah, and they end up killing more

Jews because of that. Okay. And then there was the Reformation with the Roman Catholic Church controlled by the unfeathered religion politics, land capture.

So when we think about the Roman Catholic Church and we have people say, well, you know, they're kind of Christian and everything.

Well, they used the religion and politics to go ahead and do land grabs all throughout

Europe. And they wanted ultimately to take over Jerusalem. And Germany started to push back.

This is where we started to get the Reformation with Martin Luther and then John Calvin came on board and John Knox.

That's everybody knows about. Okay. So the Catholic Church had the seven sacraments, indulgence, purgatory,

Protestant Church was Lutheran or Calvinism during that time. And so Calvinism really moved quickly through the thinking of everyone and Switzerland was mainly

Calvinist. The Purges were England, Presbyterian Scotland, and so forth and so on. Okay.

Now the Huguenots very interesting story. They were more they actually fought the

King of France and they were actually fighters as well as believers in Jesus Christ.

So they were much more active in that respect. And I won't go through everything here, but this kind of gives you the idea of the mapping of the early church and the emerging church and the conquering church and the different things that were happening during that time.

Notice over here the factors there. In the early church was the descent the descent of the

Holy Spirit and the New Testament books written, the unity of the Jews and Gentiles but we were starting to get

Gnosticism as one of the first heresies there and meaning that certain individuals had spiritual enlightenment and knew what's that?

Special knowledge. Special knowledge, right. Yeah. And then the emerging church there was a clarification of doctrines of the

Trinity and the deity of Jesus Christ and then we began to get the heresies starting there with the conquering churches which really coincides to what happened with the

Roman Catholic Church. So what is

Orthodox Church? That was a split almost akin to what the

Pharisees would do in there. So they were they wanted to keep the church away from everybody and not and follow strictly scriptural truths within there but to the point where what we call analysis fundamentalism, legalism was happening.

When you say the Orthodox are you talking about Greek Orthodox? Greek Orthodox came later the Orthodox line was a sect that was happening before the

Greek Orthodox was established Orthodox happened when they broke away from the Roman Catholic Church. This was certain groups of people that just kind of like went away.

Augustine was more Orthodox a lot of the monasteries that were happening they just kind of clustered themselves away from everybody and would not do that.

So they didn't follow the Pope? They weren't following the Pope they weren't following any they followed

Jesus Christ but they kept themselves like totally separate from everyone there.

Okay so what is the Roman Catholic Church? And this kind of gives you an idea of what was happening there. They believed in the double predestination and these were all the things that were starting to happen there.

They were moving away from Platonic Aristotle thought natural theology for Aquinas was starting to take hold and the

Reformation Church then broke away back in 1500 AD 1550

AD Nationalism started. Okay does anybody have any questions on that?

It's a lot to take in that's why in a little short time it's hard to go through it.

So the Roman Catholic Church is an ancient religious institution boasting over a billion members worldwide. As such it is the largest, what they call

Christian ecclesiastical body of the world and the church at Rome would later develop into what was known as Roman Catholicism and was started in the apostolic times around 15 to 95

AD with different pockets that were happening there. And then the great schism that took place was split in two and divided the church from Latin speaking

Roman Catholic Church to the Eastern Greek speaking Eastern Orthodox Church was one of them. That's when that happened.

And it precipitated over two main doctrinal disagreements. One was obviously the role and authority of the Pope the other one was the

Philokee clause of the Nicene Creed Western Catholics believe that the

Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son while the Eastern Orthodox believe that the

Holy Spirit proceeds only from the Father. So each one of them had their issues there.

And there's a video here but for time's sake

I won't play it because it's a little bit long. And this is the seven sacraments of the

Roman Catholic Church. So anybody who was Roman Catholic before are probably very familiar with that.

For us there's only two sacraments baptism and communion. For them these are those.

Is that baptism actually the christening of babies or is it the baptism as we know it?

Why are you throwing that bomb over here? R .C. Sproul, John MacArthur It all depends on how you want to take it.

I believe in baptism on their word. My brother

Art studied to be a Catholic priest and he said he was saved because he was baptized as a baby.

What nonsense. A lot of Catholics believe that. R .C.

Sproul made an argument about baby baptism and John MacArthur says scripturally you can't account for it.

So you have different thoughts on that going there. The biggest thing that happened here was the indulgences and that was what divided really was the beginning of the

Reformation. Originally the indulgences was the priest would go from town to town and go into people to people asking and he would ask each person for money for forgiveness of sin.

And then the coffers would go back to the church and the church was using it to go ahead and build other churches while the

Pope was pocketing a lot of that money. And John Tetzel's saying was when once the coin in the coffer rings the soul from purgatory springs.

Right. A piece of blood into it too. So Martin Luther he attacked that but this kind of gives you an idea of what was going on there.

They would go there Not so much different than what Matthew was doing in taking the taxes from the

Jews. People would come up there and pay their indulgences and supposedly forgiven.

So the differences between the Catholic and the Protestants the belief in Scriptura the word of God the church tradition interprets scripture it's the church's responsibility to interpret it.

In terms of salvation or Christ alone is the head of the church the

Pope is the vicar of Christ and so the Pope is the head of the church from their point of view. Sola fide, faith alone or justification they believe we believe that the only way to go to heaven and to believe

Jesus Christ is our personal savior and being justified for his propitiation for us as part of our justification.

Going back to the Pope as the vicar of Christ I believe they also believe,

I've never been a Catholic but I believe they also believe that the Pope can actually overwrite scripture because of his position.

Oh absolutely. Ex -Cathedra He's infallible in faith and moral.

Did you cover that with the Catholic with the Catholic Canons because there's like 77 or 72 books in the

Catholic Canons Yes I covered I covered the fact that yes they have what we consider extra -biblical as part of the apocryphal.

Right. So So the

Protestants are saved by God's grace and then in Catholics the justification involves being righteous and holy, it's really workspace as well as that.

And then we believe after death regeneration, people go to heaven unregenerate go to hell for them it's purgatory or temporal punishment

So they think everybody will emerge from purgatory into heaven? So they don't believe in any sort of final punishment?

I had that lesson on heaven and hell. It was more on hell, eternal punishment and they do believe there are some that are going to be lost in hell.

But for those who are not going to be lost in hell, purgatory is like a cleansing like a purification purification period purging, purgatory like that Christ's sacrifice was not enough to make a person holy and blameless before the

Lord they have to do this extra suffering Read that bottom quote very scary Christ's death on the cross is inefficient but blasphemy that's ultimate blasphemy

So Christ's death alone paid the price for those who believe but this is really and Jeff talked about this a little bit there they they do

Christ's death every week when they do the Eucharist transubstantiation this is why you'll see

I forget what they call the little chest where the wafers are and stuff but this is why they bow to it and all of that So these are some of the early church heresies legalism, ebionism non -racism, arianism modalism this was all coming in from all different ways and these are basic when you think about heresies think of power plays that happen in the church that you cannot live up to because of these things that are coming up there narcissism probably had the biggest impact because certain people had spiritual revelation and so how can you ever understand who

Jesus Christ was so then we go to the modern church and I'm just give you a quick idea about what's happening in modern church so denominational church started to happen as after the reformation all these leaders started to break away and forming their own denominations a question that comes up um who believes in denominations do you believe we need denominations

I believe we need statements of faith yeah a lot of denominations are not all but a lot of denominations are separate based on their statements of faith

I I think it's changed it's sort of morphed into something else now and for for the worst not for better of that it's a sense of tribalism that is not necessary we have the bible we don't necessarily need to have division but not all denominations believe wrong things there's denominations you can fellowship with I mean a perfect example of this is look at MacArthur and Sproul they believed certain things differently but they were both faithful teachers because the core of Christianity was preserved in both of them absolutely yeah

I just think there's a place for it but it shouldn't be a driver of that I would say that it wasn't necessary like you said but the

Lord in many ways has used it to his advantage to build this church that he's had all these different facets going out and yeah some say things a little bit differently but he's still building his kingdom based on using these people even though we're all infallible like the

Moravians I've always heard wonderful things about the Moravians I think that was a splinter I can't remember where they came from in Europe where they split off from but there's other groups that were just so on fire for the

Lord and kind of had their own denomination but the Lord used them and now this is where I really wanted to get to so as I went through this

I know I went very very quickly and so the purpose really is to get an idea a flavor of what church history is like and you can look at it your own but today we have fault lines that are actually affecting us one of the biggest ones is the feminization of church that's happened and that's a real problem because what is taking place now is the fallout for this happening and so today's church is feminization it's really started in the 1700s it started when basically around the industrial revolution was starting to take place and men weren't going to church anymore and so the churches were being dominated by women not that that's a bad thing in a sense but over generations of that now you're starting to see a change of the way churches are being approached and so we had some gender gaps in the 17th century when more women than men were attending church and it was a 4 to 1 ratio of women to men in churches there from 1750 to 1769 59 % of the new membership in church were women by 1899 it was up to 69 % almost 70 % all in the major cities when you went to a church it was mainly women that were in the churches and by 1929 a more masculine evangelical movement occurred but it was happening in the tent revivals so men were more willing to go to a tent revival than they'd rather go to a church and in their psyche women go to church men would go to these things and then during the post war of 1950s 60s men membership had dropped to about 59 % and it remains the same to this day and the question is why

Ivan is that more because there weren't men willing to stand up and be the teachers of the church and the leaders of the church or was it actually the woman taking over the church that came later it was because some of it was because they were working like 12 hours a day 14 hours a day and they were like they did not want to go there also was that the pastors were starting to change the way they were doing their approach they were making sermons and making the social gathering more feminine than masculine to attract the women there because they were willing to come and stay there to get their congregations full so they were softening the message to allow women to come in and doing that and also the higher death rate of men probably there so these were some of them there were many there the rise of industrialization the new economic value system they were having there so it wasn't just having a woman staying home and just raising children now they were starting to become into a place where if they wanted a bigger house both men and women were starting to work they were starting to change there and women wanted to have more of a say in what was happening in the church and since they were already there going to the church they were getting that say

Piety was a posit for more towards women than men and this is interesting

Mother's Day becomes a focal point instead of celebrating Father's Day more churches were more geared to celebrating

Mother's Day so they were putting women on a pedestal which is not a bad thing but really both should be as parents should be on a pedestal okay it continued the lack of masculine pastors or leaders was starting to do your point was starting to take off softer theology messaging was geared towards women sentimental romantic music was starting to play more of a role church adorned with feminine aesthetics and lack of risk and innovation to really talk about spiritual truth it was more of an emphasis on emotion than verbal expression which was more attractive to women than it was to men and we see that today that men are not yet as involved this church is different but in a lot of ways a lot of churches are not like that at all and let me see if I can do this if not

I was going to do that was that I was going to do that Tim the Toolman wait

I can do this I really can do this let me just escape this

I'm really not that bad sure I don't know the facts when we get back to the blue screen you will end up dead there we are oh oh that is so wrong and right don't worry this will get cut out of the

YouTube video or will it ok

I want you to listen to this and tell me what you think do you consider the media in your state as your thoughts or your passion

I'm not going to say anything naturally is this meant to be a video come on bud easy guys

I love you Ivan I try my best guys seriously do you need to drag it to the virtual screen there yeah

I'm trying to drag it here I'm just giving you more work to do yes you are truth be told

I thought I saw something on that side you're sharp oh guys no pressure

Ivan you don't better help me out I think I recognize the bass voice

I think I actually played that video she's not a believer right she's like in a garden like talking about how the men have been so weak wait how do

I there's your mouse make it full screen the little thing on the top left top left right there expand expand it now drag the little thing back turn the volume up go to town ok that's not the one

I had TV can go up TV volume up right side right side so the top right of the screen is working see the top right of the screen and I don't think we're ever going to necessarily judge success we do but we struggle

I know two of the things that I think about are my music and my preaching so with worship singing we need to this is too feminine is the church too geared towards women well we're in Rachel Mosley joins me in studio to share some of her views she's an

Anglican vicar and is going to be sharing her thoughts on this topic good morning to you Rachel Rachel no two churches are the same obviously but generally how geared towards women do you think our churches are

I think you make a really good point I think we have to be very intentional we have to gear our churches to both genders we have a

God who exhibits both genders we're made in his image and it's really important that we don't create clubs within clubs so this is a really interesting topic and one that's important to me as of course the female leader of a church obviously as the leader of a church how challenging is it to try and make sure that you cater to the needs of every person and all the different variety of needs in a church it's hard and I don't think we're ever going to necessarily judge success in the way that we do but we struggle

I know two of the things that I think about are my music and my preaching so with worship singing we need to balance our hymns not everybody is comfortable singing intimate songs about God and so we need to remember those great hymns of a heritage guide me oh thou great redeemer be thou my vision how great thou art and I hear that those kinds of anthems are more attractive to men and to women because there's something of that sense of the fight and the challenge that's at the heart of the gospel do you think it's fair then

Rachel when someone says I think the church is too feminine would you agree with them I don't want to agree with them

I think if I can be shown the evidence then I'd obviously have to take note of it I know there's some research that's been done across the pond that says that if a father becomes a

Christian his family follow him to a much larger extent than when a mother becomes a

Christian so we need to pay attention if there's some statistical evidence but I think rather than reacting and feeling negative we've always got to think positively about what we do to be the inclusive and generous church that God intends us to be to both genders there'll be some women listening

Rachel who'll be thinking well far from the church being too feminine I actually think it's too focused on men there are more men in leadership than women how do you respond to that?

I think that's a really interesting point and actually just to be a bit provocative perhaps we have to say to the men who have been in leadership for millennia why are men leaking from our churches that actually men have had an ability to have an impact on that and men too in positions of leadership need to ask themselves why we are hemorrhaging men well we're going to talk to a man who's actually involved in men's ministry,

Nathan from Christian Vision for Men good morning to you Nathan hello good morning

Nathan do you think our churches in the UK are too focused on women, too geared towards women?

well I mean if you look statistically you're more likely to get a church if you're a middle class married woman we can certainly see from data there's more ladies than there are men in church but I don't think

I'd say that the church is too feminist or has been geared in that way we look at things like the church has been romanticised a little bit we look at stuff like church decoration banners, popestries, flower roses, worship as you were just discussing that doesn't connect with that real heart and mess of the gospel of proclaiming truth we think that stuff can switch off guys from engaging with church why do you think then that there are more women is it because we're not making our church buildings and the environment perhaps male friendly yeah well

I think it's probably to do with the perspective that people get, I mean we've got some data on our website where we quote some guys saying look church is irrelevant it's for wimps and for women so the perceived sort of impression that church is giving is that it's just not for guys, it's just not connecting and I think church is very good at reaching middle class men

I'm in the men's ministry here so I'm referencing men here but working class men, we really struggle to make those inroads with working class fellas and I think there's a lot to be said about Christian blokes in church saying to these

Christian blokes come on fellas, stand with us let's lead a movement and let's create this balanced church that's an amazing place for men, women and children.

Rachel it's interesting now that Nathan's saying that men need to be catered for, we've just been saying that some women need to be catered for if they feel called to leadership so it seems that everybody's unhappy in one way or another with the way the church is being run we can't please everyone can we?

Indeed I think obviously we're kind of fallen and we like to lament and we like to moan, I think we need to be proactive and I think we need to rise to this challenge, what is

God saying to us at this point in our history? I think it's quite natural as well sometimes for pendulums to swing and maybe at the moment the pendulum is swinging and there's something about women who perhaps have felt more marginalised and they're sensing that liberation of the gospel, perhaps the church is catching up in some sense with the radical message that Jesus has always had for us and has for us, of course in the

Church of England we just saw at the beginning of January the consecration of Libby Lane and so we have our first woman bishop, but we have to retain obviously both genders in leadership in our pews and we also, in response to Nathan we need to continue to preach the grit the radical message the distinctive call that is a gospel call that's full of challenge, that's full of risk that is that radical battle between good and evil, it's not some mild self -improvement so we need to keep preaching it.

Nathan, do you think we've made Jesus a bit too kind of weak and girly rather than a man

I just want to stop it here you notice how she's spitting out the bible verses left and right and I'm doing that not doing that this attitude is totally pervasive in what is happening now, it's not it just happens to be, this is in England this is pervasive across the

US, this is actually the conversation that's going on here so I have a counter line there if I can do this without hurting myself and this is not as long

While you're doing that, Ivan, may I ask a question? Sure. Of Matt and Drew and anybody else that's observing our church here, what do you see?

Are we more feminine side or equal?

And I'll before you answer that, exclude the fact that we have a lot of widows here, which may weigh more towards the female side kind of what the demographic is as far as the percentage of men and women, if that's what you mean but as far as teaching and preaching the gospel leadership is more male it's going to be biblically based so we're not we're not going to cater to the culture in that sense and I think way back when we were doing the

Michael Foster stuff and he was talking about why men aren't attracted to churches he basically said it's the watered down preaching it is the decorations making people feel comfortable and emotional and instead of talking about Peter or Paul who was willing to risk their lives for the sake of Jesus Christ and how that appeals to men because it's like a conquest kind of a thing and basically talking about our commitment to Christ and our hearts being just given over to him that's a message that appeals to men

Yeah, to give you my answer I don't think that we want to orient to femininity or masculinity

I think we want to be biblically oriented and let the rest of that take care of itself.

I think that our worship is certainly a mix of contemporary and I love the fact that this

Sunday we sang a hymn I love the fact that we mix some of that into it but we're also not emotionally driven as a church we're not trying to elicit from our worship emotions to make people feel like emotion as a substitute for the

Holy Spirit actually being in our midst, which I think is a huge difference because if you look at a lot of the megachurches there are a lot geared towards eliciting that emotion, making people feel a certain way and we're not

There are a lot of people a lot of people who talk about God in very affectionate ways, ways that I think are borderline blasphemous

Jesus is my boyfriend, worship music they talk about Daddy God and my lover

Jesus in ways that are really blasphemous they're gross it is not biblical it's weird it's really weird and the reason that this goes on is because the church is feminine because men don't go to church and chicken or the egg don't want to just beat up the men men don't go to church because church isn't for men every church has almost almost explicitly said at this point hey if you're a man, we're not here for you we exist for women and children and if you are going to come to church we're going to treat you like Homer Simpson we're going to treat you like you're dumb you're stupid we can't preach for an hour we can't use theological terms

God forbid a man has to use Google on the way out the door you didn't define that term

Pastor, great, look it up nobody talks seriously, no 21 year old goes to their professor in university after class and says

I don't appreciate you using a difficult language the professor would say well buckle up buttercup get your big boy pants on let's be an adult but we have made church for the weak for women, for children there's activities there's coloring there's snacks, there's food it's a 25 minute long sermon no theological terms being used and men would rather go hunting shocker because they're men that's why men have failed in multiple arenas but it's not just men here's another thing that you see in church it's just a show of the effeminacy the feminization of the church every

Mother's Day you hear a sermon that says thank God for moms and I would say yes and amen every

Father's Day you hear a sermon that says do better dads I think that there's a problem with that if any sin ever is preached about in the church, it is always some kind of masculine sin but that's not the way the

Bible reads right, it's not always that a man is a predator, that a man is an abuser and the problem is we see that there is a wayward woman that her feet never stay at home she's a feminist she's an entrepreneur she's a young professional her feet are never at home and she's going out into the street to and fro looking for men to devour any time we see sexual morality in the church, what do we immediately assume?

the man devoured the woman that's entirely possible, we have

Bible verses that talk about that too but we have like about a third of the book of Proverbs talking about a woman, it says her room she goes out, she seeks men she's not being sought by she goes and gets them, leads them like a lamb to the slaughter and it says in her house, there are dead men's bones she's a man eater she's a man eater like that's a biblical song there are women like that that devour men but pastors don't preach about that, why?

because, well, biblically, pastors should be men and we feel like only a woman can challenge other women no, the word of God is what speaks to us we don't speak from our experience the authority of preaching brothers and sisters, is not the experience of a man the authority of preaching is the truth of a word the reason why

I can confidently say, to men, women or children, thus saith the

Lord, is because God wrote a book he wrote a book and it's really clear and it speaks to all of life and it speaks clearly to all of life this guy is a big theonomist big theonomist, if you ever want to find out about theonomy, watch his videos so I was trying to find something to end this on a right note and Google it what's theonomy but Bob was gracious enough to send this to me and it was actually spot on I thought it was great

I thought it was absolutely the best way to end this in terms of finding the right church and there's a list of eight characteristics that he had sent to me, but I think they're spot on.

In the first place Jesus himself has to be the overwhelming focus characteristic number two when you're looking for a church is, not made with hands trusting

Jesus' work over human effort number three is devotion without obligation community grows from the desire of a transformed heart number four is, and these are all things that as you're going to church you should be observing and judging scripturally judging it excellent appropriate characteristic number four is gathering without meetings the depth of relationship is gathered over pre -planned meetings and then number five is the authority without hierarchy and as I mentioned before Jesus runs his team as a flat organization.

Authority rises from the revelation of Jesus and from well staffed structures characteristic number six is order without control order comes from a mutual respect and affections not from policies and rules.

Characteristic number seven is unity without conformity unity emerges from a whole hearted agreement and not from conformity imposed from outside and then number eight is equipping without subduing.

Everyone is equipped to follow Jesus and I think it's an excellent way to end this while I'm doing that I really appreciate it

I thought it was so funny because he sent me this email and I had been struggling saying how do

I end this in a positive note and boom you sent this to me but it's actually apropos and it's the right thing to do and we are look guys the bottom line here is we're men.

Part of our mandate is to be leaders within our home, within any place we're at.

We are representing Jesus Christ. It is something that we have to even begrudgingly have to grab onto and expect that our lives expect the leadership the church expects the leadership people outside they may not understand that but as an image bearer of Christ that is part of our role here and as you can tell and when you go look through church history you can see how the churches were used for various different things for politics, for power, for money in there.

Christ's church is not that. Christ's church is for him for each other to uplift each other and we didn't even talk about church discipline but to discipline the saints when it needs to have happen.

It is a huge responsibility to do this. We may not put as much emphasis on it but each one of us has a responsibility to go ahead and represent that and we have to depend on each other, on helping each other through that.

Through love through trust through faith, unified faith to do that and we're seeing this with the church that we have here that's happening there and when we step up we can help control the wolves that will come into this church we know that it will happen at some point but using this as a diagnostic we can see breaks that can possibly happen so I'll leave this with you guys.

Thank you so much for allowing me to teach this and I look forward to the next teaching class.

Can I just mention a moment because the issue came up and I think

I'd like to say something about it about the feminization of the church and what

I've seen over the years as many men not wanting to take a leadership role in the church basically bowing out and saying that's too much commitment that's too much to do maybe

I've been there, done that and I've felt like I've gotten burned or whatever but we need this in the church today you're just talking about we need to be leaders in our homes we need to be leaders in the church we need to stand up for the truth and there are a scant few who are willing to do so and get in the cross hairs and be able to take it and I'll spill the beans here

I want to thank you for being willing to accept the nomination of an elder in this church and nobody knows that yet but it's going to be up for vote in March and we're going to be voting on Ivan as a potential elder and we're very thankful that you're willing to accept that nomination and I thank you for that I thank you for your role as a teacher here and all the other things you guys are doing you aren't

Jewish yeah it's an honor but it's also an obligation that we all have we take it very seriously when

I'm here teaching this my stomach is churning because I want to be able to glorify

God and edify my brothers here in truth and it's something that I take very very seriously although I joke a lot but this part

I do take seriously and I see that the church is hurting not this church we're very blessed on seeing what's going on there but I've seen and I'm sure all of you have in some way shape or form of churches that have just fallen apart and you don't know what to do and we're blessed to have this opportunity there.

It doesn't really come too often but as men to do that we don't have to be the archaic dogmatic man that my way or the highway type of thing but if we're living in God's truth with love we can make a difference and you have no idea how much each one of you can make a difference in a person's life and again

I go back to Louise she's a woman of course but just her little bit in her life affected so many people how much more can ours do that and it's the right thing to do and I thank you guys it's an absolute privilege for me to speak to all of you.

I love all of you so much and so I am blessed.

God gives us an opportunity and able to fulfill that.

Drew can you close us out with a prayer? Father we thank you for these lessons that have come before us and we're thankful for Ivan's preparation and Lord what you're doing in each one of our hearts

Father through these lessons that when we come face to face with something that challenges us

Lord where things we may not have understood before Father we're grateful for your illumination and we pray

Father that we would not just take this as more knowledge Father but go out and walk the walk of Jesus Christ and be the light and the salt you want us to be in this world

Father Lord we see just such twisted theology that propagated in the churches and Lord we pray that we would be diligent and study as a workman not needing to be ashamed

Father but brightly dividing the word of truth and we pray that we would do so and we would be willing to speak up for you in this world that needs you so badly we thank you