15 - Response to Persecution

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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For those of you sitting in the back, I fired up the fan over there because I really don't think the unit in the back is working.

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And the unit in the front wasn't designed for this entire room. So there you go.

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Hopefully we can move Samara back there and maybe leave the back door open or something and let

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Samara in that way. So we weren't expecting the shot of humidity. I got up really early this morning and got a little run in and I looked at the radar and there was this little teeny dot that just started to develop just out south of Gila Bend.

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I thought, oh, it's red and orange and yellow. That's a pretty strong little teeny tiny thing.

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And it just goes whoa. And, you know,

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I'm sitting there, I start hearing wind blowing, I'm like, what's going on? I go back, look at the radar, and it's just gone blah.

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And so, hey, my trees and my cacti are very, very happy that it went blah all over all of us.

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So that's a good thing. All right. We are studying church history in Sunday school.

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And I have announced that this morning we're starting a new sermon series when

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I'm speaking. And it will be, I can guarantee you, and you can already sort of tell why if you have the bulletin, simply the most unusual sermon series ever, certainly in a

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Reformed Baptist church. I really doubt that there has been anything quite this interesting.

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But we'll let you know about that in the service. In case you're looking around going, things look strange, no, there is no

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Elder Callahan, no Pastor Fry, no

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Roxy. You're stuck with me for everything today, including even trying to start the hymns, which could prove to be quite interesting, especially by this evening.

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So we will hopefully be able to survive all of that. But we continue in the 15th installment of the church history series.

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Last week we looked at the persecuting emperors.

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We sort of looked at the subject of persecution under the Roman Empire, under the subject of the emperors who led the persecution, so sort of a bird's eye view.

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And we talked a little bit about the nature of that persecution, the fact that over time the persecution goes from being localized to being empire -wide, it becomes more intensive.

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From the beginning, it could lead to a person's death, certainly. But from the empire's perspective, it almost sounds like I'm talking about Star Wars here, but from the empire's perspective, the minimum level of persecution kept inching upwards until that final period between 250 and 313, where things get very, very bad indeed, leading to finally the peace of the church in AD 313.

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And I've mentioned a number of times that it is, certainly there were doctrinal issues that were taking place during those first almost 300 years, let's say 250 for a round number.

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You have, in the East especially, you have the issue of what's called

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Sibelianism or Modalism, we'll look at that a little bit later on, but a denial of there being three divine persons, instead there's only one divine person who sometimes acts like this or acts like that, it's called

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Modalism or something like that, depends on which form it's taken. So there were doctrinal issues during this period of time, and of course you also have the development of the canon of scripture, of the

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New Testament, the Old Testament, pretty well settled even before the time of the

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New Testament with very few exceptions, but that process is ongoing during this time period as well.

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But those are internal things, and the church is facing pressures from outside, and the single pressure that brings the most dissension and difficulty inside the church is the issue of persecution.

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And it's not so much how to respond to persecution as it is how to respond to those who lapse under persecution.

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So it was pretty much a given, you did not cooperate with the

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Romans. So if the Romans say give us your scriptures, then you don't do that.

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You don't give them the scriptures. If the Romans say sacrifice to Caesar, you don't sacrifice to Caesar.

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There's nothing you can do to appease the state when it says we are going to exercise this inappropriate authority over you.

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But the real problem came about when, from 250 onwards, everybody was facing that.

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But up until that time period, persecution would wax and wane. It would come into an area, then leave that area.

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Well, once it leaves, and the pressure is not on any longer, what do you do with the people that gave in and now want to come back?

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This was, this created the first great schisms in the church.

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It's interesting, it really wasn't so much doctrinal things, well this is a doctrinal thing, obviously, on one level, but it wasn't so much a division over doctrine as it was over practice and application.

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And you can see that it would be an extremely emotional thing, very, very strong emotions involved in this as well, especially if it ended up dividing families and things like that.

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So what was the response to persecution? Well, first of all, you had hiding and fleeing.

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Following the directive of the Lord in Matthew 10, 23, many

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Christians fled from areas of persecution. Many church leaders resisted the growing tide of feeling that exposure was the best path for the

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Christians to follow. So there were those who sought out, we're leaving that open to let some cool air in because it seems that the back unit is no longer working.

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Looks like it's, it says it's supposed to be on but it ain't doing nothing back there, so we got a problem, so we need to have that looked at.

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Anyway, there were those who sought out persecution, who exposed themselves, you know,

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Rome said we're going to do this, that, and the other thing, throw me to the lions for the sake of Jesus.

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Well, it was church leaders primarily who were the ones who said no, Jesus said if they persecute you in one city, go to another.

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There were sort of cities of refuge, places you could hide. It was not something that a person was to be seeking to be, to lose their life.

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In, you know, even though, you know, martyrdom, you looked up to martyrs, yeah, but that wasn't something that you were to seek for yourself.

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If that's what the Lord brought to you, he'd give you the grace for that, but it wasn't something you were to be seeking. Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, who lives in the middle of the third century, so right at the beginning of the empire -wide persecution, left

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Carthage and governed the church by epistle for a period before being forced to return by pressing matters regarding the lapsed, regarding those who had given in under persecution.

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It was, he ends up becoming a martyr because he had to come back because Carthage was being torn apart about the very issue of persecution, how to respond to people who had given in and yet now were repentant.

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What do you do in that situation? Many who sought martyrdom felt that fleeing was a compromising act.

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And so, it's a little bit, in one sense, like the situation in regards to the weaker brethren and the stronger brethren that we looked at in Romans chapter 14, it's also in 1

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Corinthians 7, 8, so on and so forth. But in this situation, obviously, those who consider themselves the stronger brethren were those who exposed themselves or sought martyrdom or did not flee or hide but experienced persecution and they looked down on others as the weaker who would flee and hide, though the ones who fled and hid were following Jesus' own commands in Matthew chapter 10.

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So may have viewed the other ones as being overly zealous and ignoring biblical teaching or something along those lines.

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This obviously would result in not only a division during persecution, but then afterwards how you responded to it would be very much dependent upon what your attitudes were along these lines.

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The catacombs of Rome may have provided temporary havens, but most likely this would have been a rarity rather than a norm.

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I know the story is, well, the Christians fled to the catacombs of Rome, and it may not really be the case.

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The catacombs are a fascinating study in and of themselves. I've been to Rome only once.

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It was a long and rough day. And I didn't get to see them at that particular point in time.

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But they stretch over 350 miles and contain as many as four million graves.

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That's a lot of graves. And the art contained in the catacombs shows us that most of the early

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Christians were poor uneducated folks, very similar to what we read in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 18.

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Not many of you have been well -born, powerful, etc., etc. So some hid and fled, catacombs, wherever else it might be.

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But then you had the reality of apostasy. By the end of the period of persecution, three groups of the lapsed were identified in the church.

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So there's extensive discussions of letters and epistles and everything else.

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But you had basically three. And since they are written in Latin, and I noticed that the...

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Have you noticed that the markers are slowly disappearing? I have more. You have more?

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I can bring them. Okay. All right. Well, we'll see if these work. The first,

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Sacrificati, doesn't work overly well. Let's see if the red one's any better.

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When they're stored sitting up, that's not really good. The Sacrificati, the

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Liberlateci, that's a little bit better.

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And the Traditores, yes. So these were the basic three categories into which the lapsed were identified.

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The Sacrificati were those who had made sacrifice to the emperor. And obviously, if you offer that pinch of sacrifice on the altar to the genius of Caesar, you say

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Kaiser Curios, Caesar is Lord. That's pretty much the worst form of apostasy, because it would involve a denial that Jesus is

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Lord. And this would be the strongest form. The Liberlateci were those who, while not sacrificing, obtained the libelus that indicated that they had.

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So remember the libelus. And we found these. We have, I didn't bring any with me, but we have images of the libelus, which was a legal document signed by some kind of local magistrate or someone like that, that would say that I testify that such and such an individual sacrificed to the genius of Caesar on such and such a date, and this is valid until such and such a date, so on and so forth.

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And especially during the latter period of persecution, this was necessary for doing business and doing transactions, business transactions, stuff like that.

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They were really trying to close all the loopholes. Behold, it's easier to do that today than it was back then, but they were still trying to do that.

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Powerful governments sort of work along the same lines all the time, actually. But so how would they get one?

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Well, a little money under the table, a little extra grain in a particular transaction to somebody.

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There are ways of doing it. And it's interesting, there are, like Jehovah's Witnesses cannot serve in military capacities, but there are certain nations around the world where that is required of everybody.

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And so it's pretty well known that in certain African nations where that is required, that one of the sort of scandals that has come up amongst

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Jehovah's Witnesses is Witnesses, little money under the table to get the card that says you've done your service, so you can do what you need to do in the society, but you didn't actually do it.

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And the thinking being, well, the evil thing is offering the sacrifice, not carrying around a card that said you did.

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So it was considered a lower level by some. Now, obviously, you'd have some super strict people, and they would look at all these, and it doesn't matter what you did, you're in apostate period and discussion.

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But then you would have people that would look at it and go, well, no, there's a difference between the gradation, so on and so forth.

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So, the Sacrificati, the Libellatici, and then the Traditores were those who, under the later persecutions, surrendered sacred books to the authorities, some, however, turned over secular books, knowing that the

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Roman authorities were ignorant enough of Christian beliefs to accept almost anything as being a sacred book. So some smelly, sweaty

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Roman soldier comes to your door, you've been accused of being a Christian, will leave you alone if you turn over the scriptures.

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So you go and get Aunt Mildred's book of poetry, which you never liked anyways, because she was a really lousy poet, and you turn this over.

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It's written in Greek anyways, and this Roman soldier can't read it, so they leave you alone.

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Or you turn over your scriptures. There would be different levels, and again, the thought would be, well,

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I tricked them. I gave them the funny papers, and they didn't know the difference.

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But again, after the persecution's over, the strict constructionists look at that and say,

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I don't care what you gave them, they thought you were giving over the scriptures, and therefore they interpreted it as an act of apostasy on your part, an act of unfaithfulness, a bowing to Caesar rather than to Christ, etc.,

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etc. So these were the categories into which people were placed, depending on what they had done.

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Now the church struggled greatly with the question of what to do with the last two upon the cessation of persecution desired readmittance to the fellowship.

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From the beginning, public penance was a common practice, and many applied it to the lapsed as well.

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It was a given that if a church leader had lapsed, he would never again be allowed to hold the position he once did.

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That was pretty much a given. If you were a bishop, and you lapsed as a bishop, you might in some circumstances gain readmittance to the church and the fellowship of the church, but never in a leadership position.

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That just isn't going to happen. Indeed, a layman who lapsed would never be allowed to hold any church office at all.

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The periods of penance prescribed were very long, and in effect many of the lapsed remained in a separate class in the church.

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In fact, some of the prescriptions were so lengthy, literally years in length, that what you did end up having was sort of a subculture.

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And again, depending on the strictness of the interpretation, the particular area where you're in, what you would have access to in the church in regards to, you know, initially the ordinances of the church were biblically only two, but during this period of time that's beginning to expand.

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And it expands differently in different areas.

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Once again, I warn you against the simplistic and inaccurate view of history to where you have these books and charts where you're given a year and this is when purgatory begins.

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This is when penances start. No, it didn't work that way. You know, in today's world, you can have something that starts and immediately spreads worldwide because we are so connected.

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But it's hard for all of us, I think, to keep reminding ourselves of how unusual our modern day is.

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For us, it's, you know, especially if you're younger, it's always been this way. But you have to understand that the speed at which things happen today, the speed of communication,

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I posted a picture on Facebook, some of you liked it,

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I, almost everything you get on Facebook you stole from somebody else anyways, but it was just a plain old picture of a 1970s vintage phone on a wall.

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And it said some long lines of, can you believe that my phone once hung on a wall and I would actually pick it up and talk to people when

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I didn't know who was calling? I'm amazed I'm still alive. And I wanted to add to the meme, yeah, and you could only walk a certain distance from that point.

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Do you remember getting the uber, super long cords on the handset, but then they'd always end up tangled around themselves, you know?

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And you're sitting there, you know, doing this number, trying to untangle the thing because you're trying to get across the kitchen to try to, you know, do something over here and remember that?

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You know? And your young people are going, you all survived that? Hey, we survived

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Jiffy Pop popcorn, okay? You got to understand, I mean, you once had to sit there, especially on the old stoves, and do this thing for quite some time, then you sort of watch and watch, oh,

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I don't want to have too many left, I don't want to burn them, okay, right about there, you know? That's how you got your popcorn.

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And young people are going, hats off to you folks.

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And then you had to be really scared because while the Jiffy Pop was popping, it might attract a dinosaur outside.

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No, it's not quite that bad. Anyway, yes, are you asking questions about Jiffy Pop?

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Yes, okay, no. Two brief questions. Was there any talk about the discussion of Peter's denial and how that was an example of someone who denied

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Christ in a moment of possible persecution and yet was readmitted fairly quickly back into communion with the saints?

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And then my second question is, when the Romans were part of it, they said

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Caesar is Lord. Is that Lord in the sentence? Well, both in regards to the second, but certainly the beginning and the initiation of Caesaro -papism, the worship of the

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Caesar had begun really back around the time of Christ. So there wasn't a, the division between religious and non -religious really didn't exist.

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So yes, it definitely had, it had always had religious significance.

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The Jews had seen that, which is why they had gotten the exception to such things. So yeah, it definitely had both applications to it.

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And sure, there was discussion of Peter. Peter was, Peter is the prince of the apostles. His restoration is seen as, you know, having exceptions from what was expected of Christians in that time period who had been given more light and understanding and having the scriptures and, you know,

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Peter's own epistles about suffering and stuff like that. But sure, Peter was brought up, but the general understanding, and again, it was general, there were exceptions, was a fairly strict response to persecution.

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Interestingly enough, though, the great struggle centered on whether anyone could ever be readmitted to the fellowship of the church after apostasy.

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The range of beliefs was wide. Some allowed all classes of the lapsed to be readmitted with but little penance.

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Now this is what's interesting. The confessors in Carthage did this, prompting Cyprian's return from hiding.

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What does that mean? What's a confessor? A confessor is someone who has suffered persecution, imprisoned, beaten, often scars upon their bodies, maybe even missing a limb, whatever it might be, they had been imprisoned.

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I'm going to read you something here about the Christians who were put in the mines in North Africa. But then when you were released from prison, if you were, if you survived, then you were called a confessor.

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You had confessed the name of Christ, and guess what? You ended up having a special authority in the church.

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You know, just like, you know, same thing would happen today. I mean, honestly, if somehow a group of Christians from North Korea escaped, who had undergone horrific persecution, you'd look upon those folks as hopefully testaments of grace, but as someone whose faith has been tried by fire, basically.

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And so what happened in Carthage was those who had survived persecution, while Cyprian is away, governing the church by epistle, hiding, because they're looking for him, they're especially going after leaders.

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They come back, and they're like, you know what? And it's interesting. It's the ones who were persecuted who were the most likely to say, let everyone back in.

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And penance, light, light penance. We understand. We've been there.

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We've experienced this. And so you let these people back in, and they even went to the point of basically overthrowing the authority of the bishop.

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And that's why Cyprian has to come back, and he ends up being martyred, because he's captured when he comes back. So these are called the confessors.

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And so the confessors seem to be the ones who allowed all, even those who are either the sacrificati, back into the church.

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Others required stiff repenances, but still allowed all classes of the lapsed back into the church. Others distinguished between the classes of the lapsed, feeling that, for example, one who had sacrificed to curse

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Christ could not possibly ever be readmitted. While a traditor could be readmitted after a long period of penance, others who ever felt that no apostate could ever be readmitted to the church.

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Those who allowed readmission accused those who did not of not being loving or forgiving.

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Those who refused readmission accused those who allowed it of weakness, impurity, and of a denial of the importance of Christian confession.

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And so you can see, especially when you end up with a group of people, a mixed group of people, and there are people in there who have suffered persecution, and they're saying one thing, and then there are other people that risked suffering it, but didn't just happen to experience it, and yet they're going, but the

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Bible says this, and the Scriptures say that, and they're taking a very hard line, and wow.

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You can see that it was a tremendously trying subject for the church to be dealing with.

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The controversy produced schisms in the church, and one of the most important of those schisms takes place in North Africa.

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Now, I realize sometimes this can seem like a long time ago, and maybe not all that relevant to us, but this schism especially you need to make note of, because whether you realize it or not, your theology has been impacted by what took place in this particular instance, whether you know it or not, because this fundamental division ended up leading to the establishment of an ecclesiology, a doctrine of the church, and a sacramentology that was not only central throughout the

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Middle Ages, but was very important at the time of the

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Reformation. And hence, what did we just do in the opening, in the other room?

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We read from the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. Well, I can assure you that sections on the church, ordinances, forgiveness, there's a bunch of places in there where there is language that is a specific response against a position that historically goes right back to this time period.

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So whether you have ever heard of Cyprian, or Cornelius, or the

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Novationist controversy, or any of those things, you've been influenced by it. Many of your favorite authors have been influenced by it.

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And so, that's another reason why we take the time to study church history, is it's good to know the influences that resulted in the use of language that's found in even the systematic theologies that we're reading.

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If you're reading Burkoff, or Hodge, or Warfield, or whatever, they've been influenced by these things.

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That's an important element of it. So, what happens is in 251,

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Cornelius was elected bishop of Rome by the people. Now, the bishop of Rome was elected by the populace of Rome up until 1059.

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That's not how it's done today. If you watched when John Paul II died, you get the conclave of cardinals, and white smoke, black smoke, etc.,

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etc., etc. That's not how it was done in the ancient world. Up until 1059, the bishop of Rome was chosen by the populace of Rome itself.

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Now, Cornelius offered penance and readmission to the lapsed.

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One of the leading clergy in the city, Novation, rejected Cornelius' action and split from his authority insisting that no readmission of the church was possible.

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This engendered what was called the Novationist controversy. And so, it's easy for us to look back and go, they went that way, and they went that way.

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Let me tell you something, folks. If you want to drive somebody out of the ministry, if you want to destroy the work of Christ in an area, have church schisms.

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There's almost nothing that is more debilitating than church divisions, than splits in the church.

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And especially, you can imagine the frustration when the church is under persecution.

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When the government's saying, all right, the thing about this, here's where some of the application comes to us, because we may be going into a period of persecution where the divisions already exist.

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And I've been saying for a long, long time that as the space in which we are allowed to express ourselves becomes smaller and smaller and smaller, we're going to be pushed closer and closer together.

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And the foundations of the divisions that exist are going to be examined.

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And there's going to be a lot of people that are going to go, you know what? There's no reason for these divisions.

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And if you won't come along with us, then it's not because of us.

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We're trying to do what's right, and you're the one that's trying to do what's wrong, and you're the enemy of all that's good, and so on and so forth. How are we going to respond to such pressures?

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And where do we draw the lines? And in other words, the day of, well,

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I just don't go to that church because I just wasn't raised that way, you know?

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Well, I don't... Them there folks, they wear a robe when they preach, and that's weird.

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They've got green pews. I can't go to a church with green pews. Whatever else it might be.

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If it's all just tradition and taste, those aren't really good reasons for division.

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But if it's gospel, if it's God, if it's scripture, if it's foundational and definitional, well, what is foundational and definitional?

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A lot of people don't know today, haven't thought it through. And so you're talking life and death in this context because the persecution really becomes empire -wide right at this very same time period as the

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Novationist controversy. And this is in Rome. And you might say, well, why is that important? Well, I suppose it's good to point this out one more time.

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It'd be nice if I had a projector or something and showed this to you, but most of us used to have a

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Bible and in the back there'd be maps. You know, the 28th book of the New Testament called Maps.

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Actually, it's the 29th, it's after Concordance, which is the 28th. If you think of the map of Paul's journeys, for example, it normally shows pretty much the

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Mediterranean. And if you can think of the Mediterranean, I'd draw something that looks like the

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Mediterranean on the board, but then everyone would start chuckling and laughing because it actually looks like an amoeba or something like that, and so it would really completely ruin any of the illustrations

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I might be using. But if you think of the Mediterranean, and if you draw a line pretty much right down the middle, maybe somewhere through Greece into North Africa, and then you look at it and you identify the cities that claim to have been founded, the churches in those cities claim to have been founded by an apostle, you'll notice something interesting.

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In the east, you'll have Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, even

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Caesarea. Eventually, you've got an extremely important city called

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Byzantium -Constantinople, modern -day Istanbul, which, while not apostolic, as the

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Roman Empire collapses, the center of Roman authority moves to Constantinople, and so the emperor is there.

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So this heightens the authority of that particular church.

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But to the west, what do you have? One city, which also happens to be the capital of the

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Empire until it moves to Constantinople, Rome. And so, you've heard the old saying, all roads lead to Rome.

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Having a church in Rome, naturally, as we've already discussed, leads to that particular church knowing a lot of people.

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And when you know a lot of people, you communicate with a lot of people, automatically you have an exaltation of power in that particular place.

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But what's interesting is when you look at modern Roman Catholicism and you look at modern

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Eastern Orthodoxy, the ultimate authority paradigms in both are different.

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In Rome, it's one person, the pope, who's the head of the magisterium, rulership from the top down.

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In Eastern Orthodoxy, it's collegiality amongst the patriarchs. Why? It's a historical development.

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In the east, you had Alexandria, Egypt, you had

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Jerusalem, you had Antioch, you had Constantinople, you had these major cities with powerful, powerful patriarchs.

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And they had to learn to exist together and so the theory of authority became diffused amongst these primary patriarchal seas, or apostolic seas, but there were five, really, in the east, but only one in the west.

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And it's no accident of history. Well, no, it is an accident of history.

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It's no coincidence that the eastern and western have these different perspectives to them.

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So, you can see how troubling it would have been to people for this major schism to be arising in Rome.

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Because if it can happen in Rome, where can't it happen? The whole church is going to fall apart.

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And so there's great uncertainty that is introduced into the thinking of individuals. But then we have in North Africa, in North Africa, just real quickly here, we'll only be able to introduce this,

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Cyprian's teaching became the center of controversy for hundreds of years. And this is what's really important to us.

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With regards to the sacraments, baptism, ordination, the

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Eucharist, these were all developing, they were at different stages of development in different places at this time, but they're all developing at this time.

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He taught that they functioned, and you will definitely want to write this one down,

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I already gave this to you once, but I'm repeating myself, I realize that, but now you get to put it in context. Ex opera operante

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Ex opera operante I put my ante up there before it was supposed to be there.

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Ex opera operante This is Cyprian, now remember,

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Cyprian's Cyprian's beheaded, he's a martyr, he wrote extensively, he's very important, for example, in demonstrating the bishop of Rome did not have ultimate authority, he was called

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Pope by the deacons in Rome, I mean, this is a major, major person in the history of the church, right in the middle of the third century.

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And he taught that they functioned ex opera operante by the operation of the one operating, that is the operante, the one doing the operation, the one performing the sacrament, if he's in, if he's right with God, then he has the right to be doing this, if he's not, then he doesn't.

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And so an apostate can't properly baptize someone. An apostate cannot ordain someone, an apostate cannot marry someone.

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The state of the soul of the individual doing the act is vital to the reality and blessing by God of the act itself.

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Ex opera operante. So, if a priest, for example, had lapsed, and the priesthood actually was just now developing, but if a priest, for example, had lapsed, the priest, the sacraments he performed after his lapsing would be invalid because he was separated from the church by his apostasy.

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Cyprian was in controversy with the bishop of Rome, Stephen, who held a different view, that of ex opera operato.

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So, ex opera operato.

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That is, by the functioning of the action itself, not by the one performing it.

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And so, this view taught that the sacrament functioned on its own power, separately from the moral or spiritual condition of the individual performing it.

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Now, this division was going to lead to the greatest division.

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The innovation controversy was primarily limited to Rome. This issue in North Africa, and we're going to run out of time here, so I will pick up with this next week, but this led to a division that 140 years later would not only still exist in North Africa, but the schismatic group, the group that splits off, and of course that's always a matter of perspective, isn't it?

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From their perspective, it was the other folks that split off. It's always a matter of perspective.

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But 140 years later, Augustine would note he'd still be fighting this.

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He'd be fighting this very issue in his early years of his ministry. And that in his days, the group that split off, the

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Donatists, could have meetings of their bishops that would have 700 bishops in attendance.

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So this represented a huge portion of North African Christianity, and it comes back to this very issue.

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And that's going to end up having a big impact on the Reformation, and us, and I've mentioned it to you briefly before, but now we get to put it in its historical context.

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So we'll pick up with the Donatist controversy next week. Let's close with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for this time.

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We do ask now that you would be with us as we go into worship. May what is done be honoring and glorifying to your name.