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We'll begin. Father, I thank you for this day. I thank you that almost 500 years ago, you sparked a fire which would become a flame which would burn through the entire world. And Lord, we call that the Protestant Reformation.
And we are here today in a church which is independent of Roman authority because of that event. And we're thankful for that. And I pray Lord that in the short time that we have, I'll get to express some of the blessings that are associated with that event and why we ought to be thankful that men like Martin Luther and others were so willing to take stands for truth.
In Jesus' name, Amen. Tomorrow is October 31st, 2016, which marks the 499th anniversary of the day that Martin Luther took the 95 theses and nailed them to the castle church at Wittenberg's door, thus igniting the fire which would become the Protestant Reformation.
Now there is some debate historically as to whether or not that event actually occurred. There are some who believe that Martin Luther didn't necessarily nail them to the door, but that he sent them out via mail to the different governing bodies to read them.
But some people see the whole nailing of the door issue as being quite a bold move. He's going to take his theological premises and he's going to pound them to the door as if somebody went today and just pounded their lectern and shouted out.
But even if he did nail it to the door, that wasn't an uncommon way to begin theological debate of the time. It wasn't as necessarily as bold as some might make it from somewhat of an anachronistic historical...
The electronic message board.
Yeah, it was their version of email or whatever. It's how they put things out in the public square was to go and to put it up for people to read. So whether it was nailed or mailed, I don't believe that Luther ever had the intention of creating the stirrer that he did and thus creating the division that he did.
But God had the plan and Luther was just the man. God was the one who had the idea of what he intended to do through Martin Luther. And Martin Luther was a broken vessel. I've said many times Luther is my hero, but Luther is certainly a person who had his share of issues.
Theologically, he was in error in several places. Personally, he had a mouth that would get him in trouble today for sure. He was not politically correct. One of his things that he would speak out against his enemies and call them all sorts of names.
And that was par for the day. So it's not as if Martin Luther is coming out on a white chariot with wings of gold and a halo of silver to be this saintly figure. He was a failed man as am I. But to me, he's a hero because he was willing to stand essentially against the world.
And he, like the men that preceded him, Jan Hus and John Wycliffe, and even before them, the Waldensians and the Polysians and the others, who had been standing against Rome for many, many, many centuries.
He stands as one of those men in history to look back upon and say, here's a guy who God used and is still using in a sense today. So what I want to talk about, and I know we've been doing another study in our book, but we are going to take a break just for today because it is Reformation Sunday.
And we're going to look at the events which led up to the Protestant Reformation. Oftentimes, we start in 1517. We start at the nailing of the thesis as it were. But really, the Reformation began as a result, in a very real sense, as a result of the events which occurred in what are called the Middle Ages.
The Middle Ages. Now, keep in mind that all of history is seen through the lens of the now because, you know, every day, today becomes history and tomorrow becomes today. And we're always looking at history from now.
You know, think about how many of you weren't alive when 9 -11 happened? Everybody here was alive? Okay, I was just checking. The 9 -11 happened in 2001, right? Cody, you were one year old when 9 -11 happened, huh?
Eleven months old. You weren't even a year old, so you don't remember the event. But what I'm trying to get around to is for those of us who were there, we can imagine being there. We remember what it was that day.
It was a real event in real life. We saw it in real time on television and everybody around the world watched as those two buildings fell. Cody wasn't there. Now, he was there, but mentally, he wasn't there.
He was 11 months old. He was still trying to figure out, you know, just what are these? Yeah, these fingers on the ends of these phalanges. What are these things, you know? And so, Cody doesn't have as real an understanding of it as we do.
From Cody, it's a historical event and he can see it on television, which makes it a little more real because you can see the event, but the historical... Do you remember where you were when it happened?
Yeah, you don't remember it either, really. And that's my point is none of us were there, all right? But when we look at the Middle Ages, you say, well, why do we call it the Middle Ages? Because we measure everything by ourselves.
And if you think of Christ as the beginning of modern history, we call it AD. What does AD stand for? Anno Domini. It's in the year of our Lord, all right? And we all base everything on Christ. Even the people who don't believe in Christ, it's still 2016.
You know, they've changed that, right? It's no longer AD. Now it's CE. If you look at modern dating methods, if you go to a museum or whatever, it's CE, Common Era. And then there's BCE, Before the Common Era.
They used to be BC, Before Christ, and Anno Domini in the year of our Lord. Now it's BCE, Before the Common Era, and CE, the Common Era, because the secularists have won the day in the field of science and history and art, and they have made their inroads in so many ways, and that's one of the ways they've done it.
But the reason why, again, I'm telling all this, it's called the Middle Ages, is because if you consider the time of Christ and the time of today, because you measure everything by the now, we call this the Middle Ages because it's the time that was between 600 and 1600.
Around 600 is when we begin to see a decline in the ecumenical nature of the church. You know, the first couple centuries of the church, there were the councils, the Council of Nicaea and others. We call those ecumenical councils, which means a gathering of the entire body.
The entire body comes together for these councils, and you have Nicaea and others. But by 600, we start to see a division in those. By 1058, there's huge division. I have to look that again. It might be 1056, but it's the time when the Eastern Church, the Orthodox Church, split from the Western Roman Church.
So that would be in the 1000s. That's the true middle, if you will, all the way to 1517, which is Martin Luther's sparking of the Protestant Reformation. So when we talk about the Middle Ages, we're talking about the middle from the time we are to the time where Christ is, what happened in the middle.
Now, a thousand years from now, if the world is still here, and the Lord so tarries, we might not call it the Middle Ages anymore, because at that point, it'll be the first third. But that's why it's called that, where it lands historically from where we are and where it is.
So it's the Middle Ages. So we're going to look primarily at what happened during this period in time. During this period of time, we see three major things happening. If you want to write these down, if you want to take notes, that's fine.
If you don't, that's fine too. I'm not going to make any one, but I'm going to give them to you and I'll write them up on the board. So just in case we don't get to everything today, you'll at least have a broad outline.
From the period of the 600s to the 1600s, we have the rise in Roman Catholic power. The rise in Roman Catholic power. We have the spread of Islam during those periods. We have the rise in Roman Catholic power and we have the spread of Islam.
And there is a third one here I want to mention as well. We have the lights, and I'll just put a star for that one, the lights in the darkness. Because there are people who will say, well, there was a time when there was only a Roman Catholic Church, but there have always been dissidents.
There have always been reformers, even in the Middle Ages, there were men who stood against Rome. So don't think for a minute that while Rome had the power, that Rome only had the gospel. The gospel was out among men and we're going to talk about those.
So the rise in Roman Catholic power, the spread of Islam, and the lights in the darkness are the things that I like to point out because these are really what give rise to the Protestant Reformation. Let's look first at the rise in Roman Catholic theology.
There have been false teachings which have attempted to invade the church from its inception. However, none of those have been so pervasive and destructive as the exaltation of one individual, and that individual's name is the Pope.
The first time the title Pope was given was to Boniface III by Emperor Phocas in AD 607. You will hear Roman Catholics say that the papacy goes all the way back to Peter, but the first time the title is used is in 607.
The word Pope comes from the Latin word Papa, the Greek word Papas, and it is a child's word to describe a father. Oftentimes we'll still use that word today, we'll call our father Papa. That term Papa eventually became the Pope.
He is the father of the Roman Catholic system of theology. The Bishop of Rome is considered to be the universal father of the church. There are other titles which he has been given, all of which demonstrate various degrees of blasphemy.
One of the titles that the Pope is given is the Vicar of Christ. Anyone know what the word Vicar means? Yep, absolutely. Vicar is vicarious. Well, you've heard that word vicarious means to stand in place of, right?
And so Vicarious, or Vicar of Christ, means that the Pope stands in the place of Christ in the world. Interestingly enough, that title is given to a person in Scripture, and it's not the Pope. Who is the Vicar of Christ, the true Vicar of Christ according to Scripture?
No, no, I'm thinking in a positive way. Yes, yes, you're thinking of the false Vicar, the one who stands in place. But the Holy Spirit, Jesus said, I will pray the Father, and he will give you another comforter, right?
That word alas in the Greek means another like me. You know, he will come and be like me. The Holy Spirit lives within us to be what Christ is within us, what he was in the world when he was outside of us, when he was here living as a man.
He is now in us in the person of the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit is the Vicar of Christ, not the Pope. The second he is called is Pontifex Maximus, which sounds like a really, it's almost like they were looking for a devilish name.
They were looking for something that just sounded ominous. Pontifex Maximus sounds like a wrestler. You think about like WWE and coming down the line is Pontifex Maximus. It just sounds crazy. Yeah, yeah, from the Pontifex Maximus.
This title has a long history which goes back to the College of Pontiffs in ancient Rome. Pontiff means bridge builder and Pontifex Maximus is the greatest bridge builder. This is one of, this is not one of the Pope's official titles, but it's used on buildings, coins, and monuments to the Pope and it can be associated with the term High Priest, a title of which of course Christ alone carries as he is the one who makes the bridge between man and God, not the Pope.
So along with the term Father, he is called Holy Father, he's called Vicar of Christ, and he's called Pontifex Maximus. He is in a sense robbing the Trinity of the titles which belong to deity alone. The Father is the only Father and yet he calls himself Father.
The Son is the true bridge builder and yet he calls himself the bridge builder. And the Holy Spirit is the Vicar and he calls himself the Vicar. He truly is a man of ill humility and there are people who will say, oh don't you just love the new Pope, how humble a man is he.
There is no man in the world who is truly humble who will allow another man to bow before him. The Pope allows not only people to bow and to kiss and to kiss his feet and to put, you know, all kinds of accolades in his direction.
What happened when a person bowed to Peter, who they say is the first Pope? Stand up, I'm a man like you. The Pope does not sit in the seat of Peter, neither does he bear his authority, for if he did he would also bear his behavior.
Peter didn't accept that worship, but yet some king who did.
Paid a terrible price for that, except to praise a man who called him God.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we have this position of power which rises up, you know, in the early part of the Middle Ages. This man of authority rises up in the early part of the Middle Ages and there is in this authority and this power a lot of, I'm looking for the word, and it's not conspiracy, but it's crookedness, but I can't think of the...
No, in government when there's corruption, thank you, I couldn't for the life of me come up with the word corruption. Yeah, well, yeah, there becomes a lot of corruption and out of that grows many, many false teachings.
I'm going to just give you a few. These are still believed by Rome today, some of them vehemently defended by Rome today, and I'm going to give you the time estimated of when these beliefs began to rise.
Prayers to Mary, the saints, and to angels, which again in scripture, unbiblical to pray to an angel or to Mary or to anyone else, would have been around the same time as the first call of the Pope by name around the 600s.
The worship of the cross, images, and relics, which would later become so amazing that they would put them on display and people would come and bow before them, kiss them, pray to them. This was all in 87 -86 was the time that that began.
The use of holy water by the priests, 88 -50, praying of the rosary around 10 -90, sale of indulgences around 11 -90, and the doctrine of transubstantiation in 12 -15. Transubstantiation is the one that I think really is, for me, the ultimate proof that Rome is far afield theologically.
And given the opportunity to speak to a Roman Catholic, very rarely do I issue a debate regarding their position with Mary or their veneration of the saints or their use of relics or things like that.
Normally I will go right to the issue of transubstantiation because there are people who believe, even in Protestantism, that the bread and the cup literally become the body and blood of Christ. That is not the issue.
But the issue in Roman Catholicism is not what we call real presence versus what we would take as the memorial view or a spiritual presence view. But the position with Roman Catholicism is that when the Eucharist, which is the bread and the cup, when the Eucharist is occurring, when this mass is happening, that Christ himself is being represented as a sacrifice again on the altar for the sacrifice of sins that the priest is performing.
That's why he's called a priest, not a pastor, an elder. He's called a priest because he is performing again the sacrifice of Christ. I want to read to you from the book, Faith of Millions. Some of you have heard me read this before, but I find it to be the most damning of quotes.
And it's one not repudiated by Roman Catholics who know their theology because this is in line with what they teach. This is by Father O 'Brien. This is what he says happens during the mass. Listen closely because this is terribly, terribly important.
When the priest pronounces the tremendous words of consecration, he reaches up into heaven, brings Christ down from his throne, and places him upon our altar to be offered up again as the victim for the sins of man.
It is a greater power than that of monarch or emperor. It is greater than that of saints and angels, greater than that of seraphim and cherubim. Indeed, it is greater even than the power of the Virgin Mary.
While the Virgin Mary was the human agency by which Christ became incarnate a single time, the priest brings Christ down from heaven and renders him present on our altar as the eternal victim for the sins of man not once, but a thousand times.
The priest speaks to and lo Christ, the eternal omnipotent God, bows his head in humble obedience to the priest's command. Of what sublime dignity is the office of the Christian priest who is thus privileged to act as ambassador and vice regent of Christ on earth?
He continues the assertion ministry of Christ. He teaches the faithful with the authority of Christ. He pardons the penitent sinner with the power of Christ. He offers up again the same sacrifice of adoration and atonement which Christ offered on Calvary.
No wonder that the name which spiritual writers are especially fond of applies to the priest is that of Alter Christus, for the priest is and should be another Christ. End quote. There was more, yes, there are so many layers of blasphemy in that sentence, in that paragraph, and this is why I take such great issue with those who would simply say, well Roman Catholicism is just another denomination of Christianity.
No, it has denied the gospel, and it has set up a false system based on a false view of the atonement and a false leader. It is as far afield as Mormonism in many ways. The Faith of Millions by Father John O 'Brien.
Talking about what do you have to do if you accidentally break the wafer and it falls on the floor. Oh my gosh, you know, I mean it's a big deal like can you sweep it, are you allowed to do this with, I mean.
Oh yeah, it's a, it's a, you'd think it was a joke, but it's,.
It's very much a system of, of superstition. The wine is drunk by the priest, whatever's left, so as not to be dumped or poured out.
Yes, dear. When it comes to the accidental spilling of the wine back around the Middle Ages, that was such a concern to them that sometimes like they'd only give the common people the bread and then the priest would keep the wine themselves because like, well, it could get.
Spilled. Well, there was a time, in fact, historically in Roman Catholic theology where, and it's really up until recent times, that the people would only receive the bread, and they had a theological argument for that as well, not just for the spilling, but just because of the position of the hierarchy of the priest over the people, and so they would receive only the bread.
I wish I could say more about this, but along with the Pope and the Roman Catholic authority and these false doctrines also came a lot of political power, because when you have in your position of religious belief an all-powerful authority in the world, the man, the Pope, and you live in a place of monarchs and kings, there's going to be a question as to who has authority over whom.
Who is the more authoritative person? And the king has the authority, but only so far as his reign allows, the Pope has universal power over the soul, and so often the Pope had the power to, as it were, excommunicate the king, and so the Pope would exercise an authority greater than that even of the monarch, and so you have the division there in the creation of the Anglican Church.
So like I said, there's a lot, there's Emperor Charlemagne and some things that happened with him in the 800s. Charlemagne was a Frankish king who was crowned by Pope Leo III and didn't know it was going to happen.
He was there to receive communion, and the Pope produced a tiara or a crown from his robe and placed it on the king's head when he was taking communion, or making him king, and this was sort of what helped establish the rise of the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, but the point in doing so was what the person who crowns the king is what?
The person that has the authority to do so, and so he's establishing by crowning the king his position of authority over him. So there was a political motivation in it. Like I said, there's so many things that we could consider in time that won't allow it, but I do want to very quickly jump to the issue of Islam because, and by the way, I mentioned earlier about the divide with the Eastern Church.
That was 1054. There was a divide between the Western Church and the Eastern Church, and it was about authority. Who has authority in the churches? When the Western Church is saying the Pope has all authority and the Eastern Church is saying, no, we have bishops and our bishops also carry the same weight of authority, there's going to be division there.
You either have all authority or you don't, and so there was division and part of that was created as a result of the question of whether or not the Son proceeded from the Father alone or from the Father and the Son, or I'm sorry, the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father or from the Father and the Son.
That was called the filioque clause. The filioque clause is the question as to whether or not the Spirit proceeds from the Father only, that was what the Eastern Church took, or from the Father and the Son, and this was a question of the Nicene Creed because it says that the Spirit proceeded from the Father and later they added the addition and the Son, and the question was whether or not they had the authority to add that addition to an ancient creed, and of course the Pope believes he has all authority, so the Roman Church believed it could do it without any consensus among the other churches, and without that consensus they created division.
And you might say, well, that's such a small thing, whether or not the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Father or the Son. The issue is authority, the issue is not the question of doctrine, which is important, but the issue is who has the right to make doctrine?
You've changed an ancient belief, you've added to an ancient belief, something that Christians have believed for 700 years. Well, we have the authority, we have the Pope, we have the magisterial authority of the Church.
Who are you to question us? Well, we're going to make our way elsewhere, and thus the division between East and West, and I will admit this, I've not done as extensive a study into Eastern Orthodoxy as I have in Roman Catholicism, but Eastern Orthodoxy carries its own false teachings.
It has a lot of mysticism accompanying it, which is itself an issue. So very quickly, let's move to the spread of Islam. We don't have a lot of time, but up until September 11, 2001, not many people in America cared much about the issue of Islam.
I mean, we knew that over in the Middle East, there was a lot of fighting going on, but there was a time in history where we as a country would have stood on the side of the Islamic people, such as when they were fighting with Russia over the invasion of their land.
You remember this, those who are old enough to remember this. There was a time when we would have stood with what we would have called freedom fighters, those who were fighting against the invasion from Russia.
But now, having been attacked in the last 15 years since the attack in 2001, much has arisen about the dangers of Islam. And it is. Islam is itself not only a religious system, but it's a political ideology, and it does bear with it serious consequences for those who participate.
If you look at the lives of those who participate in Islam, the women are treated certainly not only as second-class citizens, but as almost chattel, as owned by their husbands who are their owners. They're not allowed to do many, many things that women in America are allowed to do, certainly not to walk around uncovered.
And we see those things happening. And we see also, in a majority of Islamic countries, the danger of living and not being a Muslim. People who are Christians who are forfeiting their lives, having the Arabic letter N painted on their homes because they follow the That's what the N stands for.
And so they are then marked. They begin with taxing them at different rates and causing them to have to pay more. And then that becomes an indication of who they are, being able to worship by higher taxation, which then gives birth to persecution and ultimately, at times, death.
People having to die for their faith. But it all began in the with a man named Muhammad. Muhammad was born in 8570 in a place called Mecca, which is in Saudi Arabia. In 610, when he was 40 years old, while sitting in a cave, he received what he would later describe as the first of many visions from Allah, which is the Muslim name for God.
In 612, he began to teach and began to accumulate for himself converts. He and his converts, though many, were effectively run out of Mecca, and he was forced to flee to another city called Medina. Soon, a great battle erupted between the followers of Muhammad and the people of Mecca, and the followers of Muhammad conquered the city, effectively reclaiming it for Islamic rule.
And after the conquest, Muhammad's power would extend over most of Arabia, and he would be known as not only a powerful religious leader, but also a powerful governmental ruler as well, with the worship of Allah being enforced greatly.
Muhammad was and still is considered by the Islamic people as being the greatest prophet God has ever given to man. You won't hear a Muslim say the name Muhammad without saying, peace be upon him. His name is sacred, so they will say, Muhammad, peace be upon him, as they're speaking.
And they do the same with Jesus. Just so you know, if you ever hear they'll say, Isa, peace be upon him. Isa is the way the Arabic would say Jesus. So it's not just limited to Muhammad, but you won't hear the name Muhammad without.
In fact, if you read, like, texts online, you'll see someone will say Muhammad, and it'll say in parentheses, P-B-U-H. P-B-U-H looks like Piba, but it's peace be upon him. The words Muhammad spoke were considered to be prophetic utterances from God.
They would eventually form the Muslim holy book, the Quran. He did not write the Quran. He dictated the Quran. Most people, and even Muslims don't deny this, believe that he himself, Muhammad, was illiterate, unable to write.
So he wrote, or he spoke, rather, what was written by his dictators. Muhammad, by dictators, that sounded, by those who took dictation for him. Muhammad was effectively, like I said, illiterate. And the thing about Islamic teaching which is most interesting is the evolution of the teaching.
Because there's a change in the life of Muhammad, which is actually seen in the surahs of the Quran. If you read the Quran, and you look at the Quran, you'll notice that it's not organized by virtue of when things happened in a narrative sense.
It's put together in a different way. So you'll be reading a certain surah, and it'll be talking about something that happened early in his life, and you'll read another surah, and it's talking about something that happened later in his life.
So there is that. But the reality is that you will notice that the earlier written surahs, not the earlier surahs in the text, but the earlier written surahs are much more peaceable and more willing for sort of a live and let live position.
But as power began to be codified in the person of Muhammad and in the position of Islam in the world, at the place that it was, he began to become less tolerant of opposing viewpoints, to the point that it became, in the later surahs, that if a person was not a believer, he was worthy of the sword.
And this is often the way power arises. It arises through willing to negotiate in the beginning, but unwilling to negotiate in the end. And so we see that throughout the positions. And a lot of times you will hear Christians, if you talk about Islam, and you talk about the, I'm out of time, but I need to say this, you'll hear Christians who will say, well we can't talk about the terror of Islam because we had our own terror, the crusades.
Of all of church history, there is not a time which has been more vilified by those who oppose Christianity than the crusades. And this stands to reason because there were many atrocities which did occur during the crusades, perpetuated by what was the Roman church during this period, and there was great brutality.
Some were forced to convert to Christianity by the sword, which is unbiblical and ungodly. So I'm not defending that, but it has been pointed out, and it is true, that by the time of the crusades, all of the churches mentioned in Revelation, all the churches of Asia Minor, were in Muslim-controlled lands by that point.
By the time of the crusades, Islam had spread so far that in so many places where Christianity had gone, created churches, and thrived, they were being overrun and destroyed by the Muslims. And I believe this is true.
Were it not, and this is from Pastor Brian Borgman, I'm quoting him on this, but I believe it's true. I'll stand with him on this. Say what you will about the crusades, but if it were not for the crusades, there's a good chance we'd all be speaking Arabic right now.
Wasn't good what all they did, but God did use it to stem the tide of Islam, which was spreading across the West, or spreading to the West. I'm not saying they were good. It was a danger and needed to be dealt with.
So again, not defending the crusades necessarily, but God did use them to defend his church in a sense. So last but not least, and I know we're out of time, but the lights in the darkness during the time of this period where it would seem like the church was most in darkness, and it was called the Dark Ages, there were still lights in the darkness.
The missionaries, the dissidents, those who stood against Rome, and those I would just point out too, and if you want to look these up, go and spend some time reading about the Waldensians. They translated the Bible into the common tongue, which was against the law.
They believed and taught the doctrines, which would similarly be the doctrines of grace that we teach today. Not a tulip like we have, but in a sense the same doctrines. They were early, early reformers, and also the Paulicians.
They refused to affirm Mariology. They denied baptismal regeneration. They believed it was their duty to live holy lives, preach the gospel, and raise their children according with scriptural principles.
Sounds a lot like us. So my point being, the truth has always had adherence, even in times of great darkness. I'm going to begin in our sermon sort of where I'm leaving off today. So hopefully this was an encouragement to you.
Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this time to study. I pray and thank you again for those who stood against the world, against even the established church, which was in error during these times, and we thank you for this opportunity to look again at this history.
In Jesus' name, amen.