38 - Fall of Rome and Rise of Islam

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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All right, well, we'll go ahead and get started Get a full 45 minutes in here.

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Wow That's good Good to be back with you If only for a brief period of time

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Leaving I think on the 19th. Yeah for Berlin and Then the the list of places is going to be interesting.

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I got to remember to think I have to upgrade my phone So I have enough room for the pictures but Worms and Vartberg and Erfurt and of course

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Wittenberg and all over Germany The fellow who

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Organizes these these things he had just gotten back from Germany and he was like off You can't get the

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Germans to do anything for you. It's just always no we can't do that. No, we can't do that And I said, I'll tell you what we're over there

01:00

I'll try to grease the skids with a little bit of German because my friend doesn't speak any

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German and I happen to know The Germans don't like it when you come to Germany and you just demand they all speak

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English But they don't like when you don't even try to speak speak any

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German they don't care if you stumble all over yourself and They recognize that if you don't live in Germany, you'll never there it's daredee oder das they have they have

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Masculine feminine and neuter pronouns at least for now. Who knows when Zack that's gonna change. I mean that totally mess up everything but all

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German nouns have gender and so foreigners just Mess that up because if you're unless you're using it or reading it regularly, you just can't remember and So I'm sure that especially on that level.

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I really destroy things, but I can I can communicate so I'm gonna try to sort of help things out a little bit along those lines maybe we can get a little more a little more cooperation, but I Did discover that?

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at Worms where Luther of course Had the here

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I stand I can do no other speech As little as two years ago

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You had to clear leaves out of the way to find the plaque and the open field that is because that buildings gone

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Well last year they installed Believe it or not a big pair of open shoes.

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You can stand in so it's literally there they're Like brass shoes so you can stand where Luther stood and you can have pictures you can stick your feet in and it's like Okay, whatever you say weird stuff weird stuff

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But I'm still looking forward to that though. I will not have any pictures taken of me standing in in Luther's very large shoes because I think that would look really silly but Anyway, so that's we got coming up.

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So we need to press on We I believe had looked at purgatory last time

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Does that sound about right? Okay. All right, so And I did we talk a little bit just basically about the fall of Rome Well, not the rise we'd have to go back way way back for the the rise of Rome But the fall of Rome I'd already mentioned to you the the date 410, which is a date you want to know

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August 24th, if anyone is, you know wants to put that on your calendar, you know You can amaze your friends at work by saying, you know on this date 410

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AD Alaric the Visigoth sack Rome and they'll look at you like You're very strange, which you probably are anyways

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But he left 13 days later Sort of just you know, he's just a visitor, you know, just just came to you know, check out the pools and so like that The city itself was not seriously damaged by his visit in 451 to 453

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Attila the Hun Yes, you've heard of Attila the Hun and it was not someone who used to work for either

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Attila the Hun invaded Italy 451 to 453 and 455 the

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Vandals Overran Rome and you can imagine why we use the term vandalism

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It probably means the Vandals were were not really builders. They were they were more destroyers than anything else and finally in 476 the traditional date of the end of the

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Western Roman Empire Romulus Augustulus Was deposed by the barbarian king

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Odoacar Odoacer and so that's pretty much it

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So from 410 to 476, it's a period of time No, I don't because Kelly's not here

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Kelly's Kelly had to work today so That means I am under no particularly impressive pressure to write on the on the board, but since since you since you asked

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And that was 476 The deposition of the final leader of the

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Western Roman Empire and I say Western Roman Empire Constantinople still stands and it's the eastern seat and of course it had been

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The seat of power for quite some time at this point anyways, but the West has now has now declined

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Now what was the impact of the fall of Rome? We have often spoken of The great benefit of what was called the

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Pax Romana the Pax Romana the peace of Rome It does seem that if you wanted the gospel to Go out in the fastest widest way it could

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This was a particularly providentially blessed time In the first century for that to happen

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There's a tremendous amount of trade The Roman Empire holds sway from from Britain All the way into you know,

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North Africa and into the Middle East and So there is a tremendous amount of travel and ability to communicate to send letters things such as this but once that ends

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You end up with petty little kingdoms fiefdoms lots of little wars going on and Travel becomes something that is extremely difficult trade plummets

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Trade plummets as I've mentioned to you by the time we get into the heart of the medieval period

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The average person in medieval world never moved more than seven miles from the place of their birth therefore the world became a very small place for the vast majority of people as well as obviously your knowledge of other places would diminish

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Commensurately Population centers cities began to decline due to lack of trade this ended up leading to feudalism to where you have the little feudal lord living up in his castle and he's got maybe some knights and he's got serfs working the land for him and That's about all there is to it not much room for things like universities and education literacy things like that But cities obviously as we know require trade and The ability to bring food in you know if you can't have

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Agriculture in certain areas, and then the food from that agriculture being brought into the cities. You can't have cities and All you had to do is watch a few episodes of The Walking Dead to realize that I mean that's pretty simple

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But it is a reality in history as well, and so once you don't once the cities begin to become depopulated

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Then you don't have a basis for Universities education, you don't have markets for Works of literature and literacy in the same way that you do at other times so on and so forth

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On international politics you have splintering and factions. You no longer have a unified governmental system, and so you begin to get

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Much more in the in the way of not even nation -states You you just have little petty kingdoms that are very very small and That tend to war often with those with those around them even though these would be small

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Relatively small battles not the huge types of things we would think of So this eventually leads to what is called feudalism feudalism was based upon land ownership

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The landowner was a king if he owned lots of land a lord if he owned a smaller amount In England he would be called an earl

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Followed by Knights These were the protectors the producers were the serfs

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The producers were the serfs the priests were the prayers So you've got you've got protectors producers and prayers the knights the serfs and the priests

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This resulted in a very rigid class system that was hierarchical in nature You knew who your master was there was very little social mobility

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It would be very rare for a serf to be able to ever have the opportunity of moving up You could you could move down, but it was next to impossible to move up You know tragedy or disease or things like that could cause you to go downward but upward not not not not really a much of an opportunity and this is going to prevail in Europe for a very long period of time for centuries on end after the fall of the the

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Roman Empire and of course an education decline in literacy and Education Roman schools had been excellent.

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They had taught the seven liberal arts including rhetoric music history

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Mathematics and we tend to forget this and I was reminded of this I may get a chance to mention this a little bit later on the class, but To this day it remains a major thing, but especially up through the

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Renaissance Astrology was extremely prevalent even amongst

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Christians and there's different forms obviously and the

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The distinction that we make between astrology and astronomy You know we have

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Astrophysicists and things like that and and we have high -powered instruments by which we scan the heavens and I Think it's interesting we who live in cities

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We rarely look upward anymore because the light pollution You know you get to see

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Jupiter and Saturn and Mars and Venus once in a while and just couple just matter weeks ago

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We on a Wednesday night. I mentioned that I had seen online that the space station was gonna be going right over Phoenix like 806 or something like that, and we went outside and watched it very clearly right right across there

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It was moving and but generally Until you get out of the city there ain't much to look at It's just sort of a bland

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Yellowish sky You get out of the city with light pollution. Wow there's a lot out there

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It's gorgeous and so man spent a lot of time You know looking up at that because he didn't have any electric lights to sort of mess things up and so there's a tremendous amount of astrology and a study of the conjunction of the planets and and You'll find liberal references to Astrological conjunctions and things like that in papal pronouncements and stuff it was just very much a part of human human thought

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But there is a decline obviously you know the Roman schools ceased to exist and so monastic schools rose in importance the monastery becomes a center of What's left of education?

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They taught Latin though most monks knew little of such things as geometry or anything like that Soon clerical literacy declined as well

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Since they couldn't exegete the scriptures any longer the sermon shrank down to a 10 -minute homily

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I remember brother broils once after a sermon pastor

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Frey had gone a little short one day and So brother broils Came over and said well.

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I just want to Remind you what we heard once he says sermonettes make for Christianettes and So the sermon shrinks down to about a 10 -minute homily and This resulted in a great rise in bringing in teaching aids into the church like statues frescoes

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Pictures and of course the the stained glass windows of so many medieval churches that we would see were a part of The reality that In many instances 95 % of the people in the church couldn't read a book, but they could look at a window and So it was a matter of you know you'll see these windows.

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You'll have the twelve apostles So in other words picture books. You know if you if you can't read the book

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You know I'm reminded Wednesday night. We were talking with with the good doctor historian who's going to be publishing a hopefully publishing a book and Pastor Frey said is that is that on the same topic you gave me a paper on that I couldn't read

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They said well similarly it might be it might be a little bit easier for the lay person to read and pastor

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Frey said we'll have pictures and And brother brother Barrett said yes, it will then pastor

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Frey was like yes great well there you go there is an illustration of why we ended up with with stained glass windows with all sorts of stories being told in them as they were literally a a means of teaching now

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I don't have this in my notes I'm gonna have to add it in these notes are very very very old not like history's changed much, but I am attempting to Do a little more you know fresh study after you know many years in Preparation for next couple weeks in Germany.

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I want you know I'm gonna be asked to be speaking in a lot of different places and and so one of the one of the things that I've always recognized was a very important element to the rise of the

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Reformation and Hence I want to do some extra study on it was the black plague

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It was never the black death. It was it wasn't called that at the time at the time was called the great mortality or just the plague the great mortality and the bubonic plague as we would describe it today and So I've been reading

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I've about a book and a half so far Book and a quarter on on the subject and it's

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Wonderfully depressing and at times rather disgusting in its descriptions of things But especially when you come to discover something a little little side note here little side note here probably not one of the things you expected to learn in Sunday school this morning, but Theology matters some people say that once in a while and and We've seen a degradation in the

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Christian theology of the body male and female relationships family marriage we've seen tradition the monastic tradition remember the

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Remember the the the desert fathers we talked about the pillar Saints We talked about people that would you know allow bugs to crawl through their teeth demonstrate?

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How godly they were and so like that well? This resulted in a

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Perspective in Western European society that Well let's put this way one of the the great saintly aspects we'll look at the mystics

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Later on that arose especially during the medieval period and you probably have heard of Catherine of Siena one of the the the great evidences of Catherine's Sainthood and godliness

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Was the fact that she lived her entire life without ever bathing because while in the

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East Muslims had a emphasis upon ritual purification and hence bathing

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In medieval Europe It was not uncommon For a person medieval

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Europe to go to a place where there was no year without changing their clothes Because bathing was considered to be immodest so We're all sitting here going.

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I don't even want to think about that no no don't even want to think about that I I Personally have exceptionally thankful for something called deodorant

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I think I think that's a one especially when you're in a in a elevator a lift That's it's just such a wonderful thing, and I'm glad I don't know

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I'm glad I didn't live back then, but All what what does all this have to think well the plague?

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The conditions were ripe for the plague especially in cities

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Most cities Rome had developed aqueducts and indoor plumbing But after the decline of Rome most of the cities that began to arise after the turn of the

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Millennium When around 1100 We had a an uptick in temperatures

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We know this historically this is something that historians have known for a long long time Al Gore just haven't hasn't gotten this this hint yet, but but he he has a

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Nobel Prize anyway, so doesn't matter but historically around 1100 the temperature started to rise and Places even in Greenland that had never been plowed or used before were

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Began to be used for production of food and and in England and things like that you know we find places

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There are even names in England That go back this time period that refer to vineyards which even today

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Cannot be used for growing those it's just too cold but they had in the past you can tell by the pictures you can tell by the artwork and the names they and There was a tremendous increase in human population because all of a sudden you grow more food more food more people

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Well that resulted in more cities, but these cities were not as advanced as they had been during the

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Roman period and even into modern period You've ever heard have you ever heard the phrase look out below?

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You know where it came from Yeah, some people do some people don't you may not want to find out where it came from but you're gonna find out about now

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It came from the fact that if you lived on an upper floor of a building in a city you had something called a chamber pot because you didn't have a toilet and You know how you got empty your chamber pot you threw it in the street

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Not the pot what was in it you threw in the street, and so you had to repeat three times in a row

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Look out below look out below look out below, then you checked it out the window That's can you imagine what city smelled like because you not only had that then you had the animals

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And you know the horses going up and down and and so on and so forth monitor modern sanitary conditions and things like that just didn't didn't exist and hence gave tremendous

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Grounds for disease and things things like that one of the reasons that Human life expectancy was considerably shorter during this period of time than it would be today.

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Well. What's interesting is most people know that the plague struck

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Europe Starting in late 1347 extending through 1350 so about two and a half years time period really 1348 especially 48 into 49 tapering out in 50

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We'll talk about this more later on the numbers Are interesting as to the argumentation

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Historically it has been said that one out of every three people died a lot of modern studies that have been based upon actually examining the records of the time as far as burials and Tax records things like that suggest to some places.

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It was it was as high as two -thirds And in some cities 75 %

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Many people thought was the end of the world Be pretty if how Lindsay had been around back, then it would have been real easy to tie everything together

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And that this is it you know all the plagues the the dark Anything from the book of Revelation did get used

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During this time period as an explanation for what was what was going on, but what and most people know that while it

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Disappeared for a while it would come back in smaller waves All the way through the plague struck in Strasbourg in 1537 37 38 39

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I'd have to look it was when Calvin was there. He'd been kicked out of Geneva and He risked his life to minister to the parishioners in the

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French congregation there where he was pastor before he was called back to Geneva We'll look at that later on and in Calvin's life, but so There there was a large

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Spade of the plague in starting in the late 1800s So it's it's come and gone, but the big one that that reshaped

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European culture late 1347 to 1350 But what most people don't realize is

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I'm not skipping that far ahead is That there's pretty clear evidence that the plague had hit

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Europe before that Specifically right around the time period we are right now, and that was around 540

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The plague hit Europe it was Devastating however because the population that did for a plague like that to to maintain itself there has to be enough people

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The the fleas on the rats The the specific carrier was ratus ratus, which is why we call them rats.

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That's it's a specific genus and species ratus ratus Once the they wipe out the rats, then they they don't like human blood, but it's better than nothing and when all the rats are gone you you go for humans and then once the human population gets thinned out it can't continue and So it doesn't seem to have been as devastating

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Simply because there weren't as many people as there would be in the 1300s but still it was a

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You're still talking about mortality rates that are just unbelievable The different forms of the plague and it's hard for us to look back and know exactly which form it was but we we know the bubonic plague

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Would have a mortality rate around 70 % The pneumonic form which infected lungs 98 to 100

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Some people just say there's absolutely no evidence that anyone ever survived that And then if you were bitten by an infected animal 100 % and within 12 hours

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I mean just boom unbelievable So you can you can understand how the stories of God's wrath, you know

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Just even looking, you know, a lot of people said if you just looked an infected person in the eye you would die well

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You know when you when you don't know the mechanisms, it's easy to understand that somewhere around this time period around 540

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The plague strikes in in Europe. I don't have I don't have any evidence that it struck in You know where else it struck, but there was some evidence in in Europe.

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So it had hit before But the true striking would would be coming from at another another period of time and so it's it's

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Just a reminder to us that Until modern period until the modern period very very modern period

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I mean past 40 years Mankind has been

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Now 60 years mankind has just been surrounded by death regularly and we need to remember how many millions of people died in World War two

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You know that generation is just now passing away, but you're talking worldwide 65 million When there was an

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American professor that created a scale of human death events and World War two is number one

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In in mankind's history number two is a black death from the 1300s

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And then I think World War one after that because the casualties there were just unbelievable But it

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I think one of the explanations For a shift in the theological outlook of even evangelicals is

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Due to the fact that we are so Isolated from and protected from the presence of death around us

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Justification by faith is not nearly as an exciting thing to people Who have put all thought of mortality and judgment far away from their everyday thinking far away from everyday thinking

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It's not gonna happen to me until I'm old and ready for it and so you don't think about the need of having peace with God and being right with God and the basis of that and It has an impact

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I Comment many times I was speaking at a church in South London Two weeks ago less than two weeks ago last weekend yeah,

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I was actually a week ago yesterday and I Made the comment then where we were talking about Reformation issues, and I said we could have filled this place up if we would have talked about Prophecy or Christian finances or something like that, but there's a reason why people are not nearly as Focused upon the importance of these things and a lot of it has to do with what's what's gone on around us

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There's no there's no question about it, so it is fascinating to keep that in mind and of course we will pick up the issue of The black death and things like that as we as We move on during this this time period we still have things to cover between now and then

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Now it is interesting to me to look at my notes that I developed in teaching church history

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Coming up on 30 years ago now and to look at the section on the rise of Islam Obviously it is a subject that I've now written a fairly lengthy book on and that was just simply on on the

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Quran though I use the Quran as a introduction to all of Islamic theology But Given the

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Interactions I've been having since well my first debate with a Muslim was in 1999

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But I have often said that I do not consider that my first Islamic debate. I was simply defending the

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Trinity I had not yet begun my studies of Islam in 1999 my first Islamic debate was in 2006 at Biola University in in California with Shabir Ali But I've now done more debates with Muslims than any other group

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Roman Catholics are second on that that list for a long time. I figured they'd always be number one well that's that's not the case any any longer, but there's a

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It's fairly close. It's fairly close though. The Muslims are taking a substantial lead now, but Obviously in the time period you know in looking at what was given to me as a student and again,

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I had a wonderful church history professor and and Very thankful for that that introduction that I that I got but still

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There is the material was accurate, but it was brief and there wasn't a whole lot of discussion of the real impact

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You know the very last point of The whole outline was that Islam had a great impact upon the

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Christian Church But there really wasn't much discussion of exactly how how that worked and I can understand why

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This was you know initially. I think I took my first church history class and seminary somewhere around 1986

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I would say and Islam just wasn't a world

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Changing subject in 1986 People looking forward who had keen eye of future events were probably seeing that things were things were changing

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But the global jihad and The rise of groups such as a

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Haida or Boko Haram or any of these other groups

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Isis was yet future and And the the soil of that was not yet clearly able to be seen and so Many generations of Christians have lived and died and not given much thought to Islam outside of it being a missions field and Of course there have been many missionaries sent out by good reformed churches to Muslim lands, but when

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Islam was basically a backwater religion

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Having had There was a period of tremendous

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Islamic predominance and a very high culture With tremendous emphasis upon science and art not the drawing of people but geometric art science mathematics philosophy a man named

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Averroes That Culture was actually brought down by the form of Islam that we struggle with globally today that tends to be

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Destructive rather than constructive and So it went into this period of great decline and Though it had been

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During Luther's day. Did you know Luther believed in two Antichrists? We'll get to this later on but he believed in two

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Antichrists the spiritual Antichrist was was the Bishop of Rome The physical

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Antichrist were the Muslims the Turks because the Ottoman Empire was spreading westward and and There was great great danger.

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They were knocking on the gates of Vienna and if Vienna had fallen There was such against disunity in Europe itself that coming up with a unified fighting force against this unified

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Muslim force was very difficult and One of the one of the things we'll discover one of the reasons of opposition to the

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Reformation and especially to the Anabaptists were the Turks Because the

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Christians who held these positions were seen as traitors against the state and hence

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They were assisting the Turks in the destruction of Europe. So the politics were all there but those

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Empires especially after World War one had had collapsed the last

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Caliph had been deposed after World War one and and Islam seemed to be on the decline as just a cultural artifact

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Well as we know that's that's no longer no longer the case even though One might argue about what the state of health of the

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Islamic faith is in the world today So it is interesting to look at the relatively small amount of Information that was given in 1986 and it's a function of where we were then and Who who knew that 15 years later in 2001?

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All of that was going to was going to change in a in one Amazing morning as we as I would imagine everybody almost everybody in here

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Can recall I'm looking at some of the younger people and starting to realize oh my goodness. They're actually

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They're actually people that don't remember September 11th that are getting getting close to the age of majority

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Won't be long. That's hard. It's hard for those of us that Can remember so clearly

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You know is the guy who organizes who's organized our Our trip in a couple weeks was the one who called me from Florida And he said are you watching this and I'm like watching what?

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and I turned on the TV and Started joining everybody else, and that was the first day of Classes I was that was the one year.

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I taught at Grace Christian school right before it closed And I was teaching high school high school Bible and I remember

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Going in there that day and saying to those young people you have no idea

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But your lives changed Radically this morning you have no idea how much your lives will change because of what happened today

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And what's interesting is one of the problem students. I had in that class, and he was a problem student

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Now is a multiple tour bomb disposal expert with the

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Marines and he has reminded me of what I said that morning and Has said

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I remember you saying that and man looking back now You were spot -on

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You were spot -on And it's and it's true, and he's proof that God's grace can do anything

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He And Josh are good friends

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Josh isn't here to hear all this, but it's been neat to keep in touch with him over the years and He's a good guy anyway

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So the rise of Islam There are people today

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And there's different ways of spelling Muhammad Sometimes with an

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O etc. Etc. But Basically 570 to 632 are the dates that are assigned to Muhammad There are people today who have published books questioning the very existence of a historical figure named

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Muhammad There is for example a

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Theory that is Has gained some traction there there's definitely interesting elements to it

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I am a person Who believes very strongly that we need to be very very careful in the argumentation we use against?

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someone else Any arguments we use against someone else must be consistent with the arguments we use in defense of our own faith and So I'm not one of those people that is easily

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Impressed by the most radically skeptical Arguments that are out there against Islam or Mormonism or whatever else it might be

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I think you need to be very careful at that point There are people who do not believe

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Muhammad as a individual existed Nor that that Islam Originated in what is now called

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Mecca They point out that there are and there are some rather serious questions about the description of Mecca in the

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Quran and modern Mecca and They actually argue, and they have their they've got some very interesting factual argumentation

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I don't think the Muslims have taken this seriously enough yet But they they argue that when you look at a number of the early mosques and What's called the

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Qibla? The the Qibla is The architectural structure that points you toward it's where you're supposed to pray towards so if you

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If you go over here on i -17 To the large mosque that has been built right along i -17

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What is it between northern and Glendale or Glendale and Bethlehem? I forget where it is somewhere along there if you look at the structure you will find that it has a

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Qibla and the Qibla will be pointing the shortest direction to Mecca and So everything in the mosque in the place of prayer will be oriented so that when you bow down you're facing toward The Kaaba in the

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Great Mosque in Mecca well people point out that some of the earliest

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Islamic structures are not pointed at Mecca Then I'm pointed Jerusalem they're pointed a place called

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Petra and When you look at Petra and you read the

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Quran The Geographic stuff lines up It's a fascinating theory.

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It's fascinating theory If that were the case it would cast a lot of doubt on the idea.

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There was an actual historical individual named Muhammad But the problem is so much of this stuff remains extremely theoretical and The vast majority of Muslims with you're gonna be dealing have a very fixed historical understanding of who

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Muhammad was and So in general I deal with what? They are talking about because you can make a very strong argument regarding the inconsistencies of Muhammad's teachings without the

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Bible but at the same time I obviously Think that some of this material is quite fascinating.

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We just have to be very consistent and Not rush things We can't do what we did with the alleged

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Markin fragments a few years ago going back to the first century of the Gospel of Mark that Hasn't panned out and some people jumped the gun on that well

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I think you need to be very careful with some of this material as well and so Assuming that there was someone named

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Muhammad and and given that there are volumes of stories

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About Muhammad what Muhammad said and did called the Hadith The Hadith literature

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And when I say volumes The Sunni we'll talk about these divisions later on but the

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Sunni have their Hadith the Shia have theirs the Shia Hadith are really weird. I'll be perfectly honest with you.

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The Sunni Hadith takes much more of what we would consider a historical Nature or flavor to it

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But when I say volumes the the two most most authoritative collections of Hadith Are those and these are collected 300 years after Muhammad?

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but are those of What's called Sahih al -Bukhari and Sahih Muslim.

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Sahih means sound. So these are the sound narrations of Hadith by Muslim and Bukhari and Those are eight and nine volumes

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Respectively containing thousands of Individual Hadith many of them are repetitive, but still containing thousands of of Hadith there are six sets sets of Sunan Abu Dawood and some others of the

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Hadith That it's difficult for me to read all of that I've read all

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Bukhari and Muslim and major portions of Jamiat Termini and Sunan Abu Dawood and things like that Spent a lot of time on this

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It's difficult for me to to think that all of these different stories all go back to pure mythology

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There's so many different Directions in which they've come and yeah, they they're clearly oral stories that have been passed down over time

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It's possible, but it just seems a little bit of a stretch to me That there wasn't someone named

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Muhammad now. There's obviously great Expansion and yeah, there's obviously stuff in there that Muhammad never said or did that's that's clear, but It just seems to me that it's rather Difficult to come up with the idea there never was a guy named named

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Muhammad so what we'll do next time that we get together is we'll look at the

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Islamic view of Muhammad their story of his life and Then look at the expansion of Islam I'm not going to have time to go into all the theology and things like that.

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We could spend way way too much time I'm going to try to stay primarily on the historical aspects But do need to make some application.

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I think in light of how Important Islam has come become in our in our modern world, but we'll we'll pick up with Muhammad on The next time which will be next week.

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I am here for a few weeks yay So let's let's close a time of the word of prayer

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Our Heavenly Father once again. We thank you for the freedom We've had to consider the history of your work in this world and once again

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Lord We ask you would help us to remember that we might have a solid foundation not only to be thankful for all you've done but also as we look forward to recognize that we are a part of this great work and that we should

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Seek the wisdom of those who've come before us learn from their mistakes as well as from their successes