Early Reformers

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Amen, and I want to invite you to take out your Bible and turn with me to the book of Isaiah.
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And we're going to be in chapter 55, and this is the passage we started to look at last week, but we shortened the message due to some difficulties with power.
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Not power from God, hopefully, but electrical power, but we will be finishing the message that we started last week.
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Isaiah 55 verses 10 and 11, for as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth.
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It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you that even now we have an opportunity to study, to look at the history of how we came to be who we are and what you have done in history to bring about the promise of this scripture that you will ensure that that which you purpose for your word will be accomplished and that it will never return void.
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And I pray, Lord, now that as I seek to preach that you would take me in your hand and guard me from evil, evil thoughts, evil statements that are not in line with your word.
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And I pray that you would guard the heart of your people, protect them from anything that I might say that would be wrong.
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And I pray, Lord, for those who have come today who know not Christ, that they would see in him today a perfect Savior and by the work of your Spirit receive the regeneration of their soul whereby they would cry out to him in repentance and faith.
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For, Lord, there is no other way whereby a man can be reconciled to God than through Jesus Christ.
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We thank you for him and to him be all glory and honor.
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In Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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Over the past two weeks, we have begun a series entitled Foundations for the 500th.
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And I realize many of you have been here, so you know what this means.
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But for those who have not, I want to just very quickly give an overview of what we're doing.
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This year on October 31st, we will mark the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.
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And you say, well, how can we date something like the Protestant Reformation? It had so many watermarks, so many things that happened.
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How can you date? Well, the October 31st date of 1517 was actually the day that Martin Luther published the 95 Theses and began what would become the debate of the Protestant Reformation.
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And what I've been doing over the last two weeks and I will try to complete today is I've been trying to bring us to that point in history because if you don't understand what happened prior to October 31st, 1517, then you might not understand the significance of what happened on October 31st, 1517.
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And I really think this is where we have come.
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We have become a people, not necessarily just the church, but the world.
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We have become a people who just do not care about history very much.
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And we don't really see how influential and powerful history is.
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And as I said in the first session of this series, I said those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it and those who do know history are doomed to watch others repeat it.
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So we're all doomed in that sense because so many people don't know what has happened.
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And I believe in my heart that we've reached a place in the church where people think the Reformation no longer matters.
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In fact, there's huge movements towards something called ecumenism.
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And ecumenism is the idea that we should not have any denominational division.
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And we should not have any division with Roman Catholicism or with Eastern Orthodoxy or with anyone else, but that we should all gather together and hold hands and simply proclaim the very minor points of Christianity, what would maybe be called mere Christianity, and forget those things which divide us.
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The problem with that, while it may sound very noble, the problem with that is those things which divide us are essential to the gospel.
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It's not as if we are simply divided over whether or not a pastor should wear a robe or a pointed hat or a ring.
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It's not as if we're divided over whether or not we should use the King James Bible or the ESV, even though I know that does divide some.
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That's not the central issues that's dividing.
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The central issues is things like veneration and worship of Mary and saints and worshiping at the feet of relics and the uplifting of a man called a Pope.
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And beloved, as much as I love people in all walks of life, and I do want to make this clear, I think somebody could hear what I've said in these last couple of messages, what I've said today, and they think, well he just dislikes Catholics.
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That would be so, so ignorant for someone to think.
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Because this has nothing to do with Catholic people.
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This has to do with a theology that led to a necessary protest.
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By the way, that's where Protestant comes from.
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The theology of Rome had become so far removed from Scripture that those who loved the Scripture had to stand up and say, no mas! It can't continue! We must protest this! And they did so in what was called the Protestant Reformation.
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But see, a lot of people think that the Protestant Reformation began with Martin Luther.
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And while we do celebrate the 500th anniversary with the celebration of what Luther did, the Protestant Reformation did not begin with him.
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You see, it's not as if one bad Pope came along, and as a result there needed to be this uprising and pushback.
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No, it was an entire theological downturn that happened over hundreds of years, beginning in the Middle Ages and down throughout the Middle Ages.
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And because of that, there were those who stood against it.
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As I was preparing this message, I began to think about just the subject of the Pope himself.
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Because if you ask a Roman Catholic, what is the Pope? Now, some Roman Catholics are ignorant of their own theology, but if you ask a learned Roman Catholic, what is the Pope? The Pope is the vicar of Christ on the earth.
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Vicar means it's a shortened version of the word vicarious.
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Vicarious means to stand in the place of someone else.
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If I couldn't go somewhere and one of the elders went in my place, they would be going vicariously.
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They'd be going in my place.
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Or if one of the deacons went, they'd be going in my place.
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That's what vicarious means.
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It means to be in the place of someone else.
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So when the Pope is called the vicar of Christ, he is being called the one who stands in the place of Christ in the world.
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And because of this, the Roman Catholic Church has placed upon the Pope the definition of infallible.
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The Pope is called the infallible teacher of the Church.
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And you know what infallible means? It means he cannot make an error in his teaching.
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Here's what is so ironic about that.
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Because they will say that the Pope goes all the way back to Peter.
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Peter being the first Pope, the rock upon which the Church was built.
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And every other Pope that comes along sits on what is known as the Cathedra Petri.
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The Cathedra Petri is Latin for the seat of Peter.
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They sit in Peter's chair, ruling from Rome over the Church of Jesus Christ.
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The problem is when you look at the history of the papacy, it does not bear the marks of infallibility.
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In fact, it bears the marks of corruption.
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It's interesting when you just study the history of the papacy, you come to find out that there have been Popes that have been condemned as heretics.
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How can you be both infallible and heretical? Pope Honorius, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia.
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I didn't write this.
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This comes from the Catholic Encyclopedia.
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Quote, on the issue of Pope Honorius, His chief notoriety has come to him from the fact that he was condemned as a heretic by the Sixth General Council in 680.
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Now, I don't know about you, but I find that somewhat problematic.
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But here's the answer.
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The Pope is only infallible when he speaks on issues concerning the faith.
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He's not infallible in his day-to-day life.
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He's only infallible when he speaks from the chair of Peter, when he speaks ex cathedra, from the seat.
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Only then is he infallible.
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Okay, so now we've changed the definition of infallibility.
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We've limited it to only when he speaks about the faith.
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But then I go back and I say, well, what was Honorius condemned as a heretic for? He was condemned as a heretic because he supported monophysitism, which, not to spend a long time on it, but it was a denial of the nature of Jesus Christ as having both a divine and human will.
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It was considered by the council as an absolute heresy.
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And it is, we would still consider it today, a heretical view of the nature of Jesus Christ.
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So, was Honorius speaking of an issue of the faith? Was he supporting an issue of the faith? Absolutely! This is why he was condemned as a heretic.
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But they say, oh no, it doesn't count.
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Because Honorius was not proclaiming in his infallibility.
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He was only speaking as a man.
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We say now, if you can limit infallibility to only when he's right, then I'm infallible.
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If I limit infallibility to only when I don't get it wrong, you're infallible.
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If that's what you're saying, it's absolutely ridiculous.
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And you say, well hey, it was one time.
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One guy, you know, done messed it up for everybody.
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No.
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There is a continuous, erroneous issue that arises in the history of the popes.
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Pope Stephen VI in 896 AD demanded that one of his predecessors, also a pope, Pope Formosus, I can't say it.
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F-O-R-M-O-S-U-S, Formosus.
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He demanded that the pope that preceded him be put on trial and be condemned for his crimes against the church.
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So this is one pope calling out another pope.
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Here's the problem.
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Formosus was dead.
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So in 896, they exhumed the body.
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Look it up.
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They exhumed the body of Pope Formosus.
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They placed him in his papal robe.
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They sat him in the throne and they had a deacon sit behind him and answer as if it were him.
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The claims against his papal rule.
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He was condemned as a heretic.
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He was stripped of his sacred vestments.
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Wild dead, mind you.
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Deprived of three fingers from his right hand.
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Those are the blessed three fingers.
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Clad in the garb of a layman and buried.
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But then re-exhumed and thrown into the Tiber River.
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And all of the ordinations that he had made were annulled.
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So if you were a priest under Pope Formosus, you were no longer a priest.
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And again, I'm not getting this from, you know, every Protestant's witch hunt magazine.
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This is from their history books.
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Pope John XII became the pope when he was 18 years old.
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In 955, he was accused of everything from murder to arson to gambling.
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And the church leaders of his day claimed that he turned the papal palace into a whorehouse.
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And there was a time in the 14th century when three men at the same time all claimed to be the pope.
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And each man claimed the other one was wrong.
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And by authority of the Apostle Peter, condemned the other as a heretic and excommunicated him and damned his soul to hell.
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There's a man by the name of J.F.
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Broderick.
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He wrote in the book, The Sacred College of the Cardinals.
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Because you ask, they'll say there's a line that goes back to Peter.
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So what about when there were three popes? Which one of those takes the line back to Peter? This is what J.F.
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Broderick writes in The Sacred College of the Cardinals.
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Again, a Roman Catholic writing.
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He says, quote, Doubt still shrouds the validity of the three rival lines of Pontiff's during the four decades subsequent to the still disputed papal election of 1378.
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To this day, the church has never made any official authoritative pronouncement about the papal lines of succession for this confusing period.
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End quote.
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To this day, they still haven't decided who was the right pope.
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Now I've listened to men try to defend this.
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I've listened to Roman Catholic scholars try to defend this.
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Two specifically I listened to in debate.
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Listened to them try to defend this and essentially they made the point that the infallibility of the pope is so extremely limited that it has to be meaningless.
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It's so extremely limited that it can't really mean anything.
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And yet it is the foundation upon which the church must be built.
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And the problem is it's an unfalsifiable claim.
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If you're saying he's only infallible when he doesn't say anything wrong, you can't falsify that.
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And I stand convicted.
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I stand convicted that the papacy not only is unbiblical, but it has been one of the most detrimental establishments in the history of the world.
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It's had more damage to the souls of men than any ruler.
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I don't care how dangerous or deadly he was.
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There have been more men who've killed physically, but there's never been a man who killed more spiritually than the pope.
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And you say, well, that's hurtful.
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Why can't we all just come together and sing Kumbaya? Beloved, if I were to do that today, I would be spitting in the face of my spiritual ancestors who saw that man for what he was and stood against him.
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Because our spiritual ancestors saw the danger of what was happening.
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They saw the danger of what was happening to Christ's church.
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And you know what they said? This word, this word needs to be the foundation.
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Because what had happened is that throughout the church, the friars and the bishops and the monks had become corrupt because they didn't know this.
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They didn't understand their Latin.
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And the Bible was only in Latin in this particular time in history.
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They didn't understand what the word said.
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And because of that, so many false theologies and false doctrines arose.
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You know, there was a theology at one point that was put forward in the medieval ages that a child who died in infancy, who wasn't baptized prior to death, their soul became encapsulated in a lightning bug.
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You know those bugs you see out in the swamp? This was medieval mysticism brought into the church.
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And you know that not only is that foolish theology, an unbiblical theology, but imagine the mothers, imagine the mothers of babies who've lost, sitting on their porches and wondering which one of those little glowing dots was their baby.
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How sick, how perverse.
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Again, I have nothing, one of the sweetest men in the world that I know is a Roman Catholic man.
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And he has a heart, he'd do anything for anybody.
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But I pray for his soul.
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Because the theology of Roman Catholicism is not the theology of the Bible.
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It's not the theology of Christ.
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It is a perverted, subverted, false view.
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And Martin Luther was not the first to say it.
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And so today I want to just introduce you to some people through this series.
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And again, the heart of these men was Isaiah 55, 10 and 11, that God's word was not going to return void, that they were going to stand on the word of God.
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The first that I want to mention to you are the early dissidents.
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A dissident is one who stands against, one who's fighting against.
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And long before Martin Luther or any of the rest, John Calvin or any of those, there were groups that took issue with the excesses of the false theology of Rome.
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One of those groups was called the Waldensians.
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Now, if you've studied history much, you could probably find something about the Waldensians with which you would disagree.
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But I want to think about the things about them that I agree with, because this is the issue.
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You're talking about a people in the Middle Ages who are fighting against the worldwide church.
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Yeah, they got some things wrong, but let me tell you what they got right.
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One, they translated the Bible into a language they could understand.
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Because to them, the first and foremost thing was to understand what God has said.
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And they believed that God gave us His word in the Scriptures.
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And so they translated the Scriptures into a common tongue, which was against the law.
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It was against the law to have the Bible in anything other than Latin.
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And the Bible wasn't even written in Latin.
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The Bible was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
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But it had been translated in the 4th century by Jerome into Latin, and for a thousand years it had been the Bible of the church.
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And the Waldensians translated the Bible into the common language.
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And they believed, and they taught doctrines, like justification by grace through faith alone.
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Does that sound anything familiar? They believed things very similar to what we would call the doctrines of grace, the total depravity of man, the unconditional election of God, and the perseverance of the saints.
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I must admit there's not much left of their writings because they were all but destroyed by the Roman Catholic church.
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And much that is written about them was written by Roman Catholic historians did not write them in a very positive light.
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It would be as if Caiaphas was to write about the life of Jesus.
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You might get sort of a skewed view.
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But what we do know about them was they were taking on that power, and they were standing for the Scriptures.
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The second group is called the Polyseans.
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The Polyseans, of course, bearing the name of the Apostle Paul.
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And they refused to affirm Mariology.
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Mariology is what? The veneration of the Virgin Mary.
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They refused to venerate her.
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They refused to worship her.
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They refused the rosary and the prayers to Mary.
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And they denied baptismal regeneration.
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See, you understand that in Roman Catholic theology, you have to be baptized to be born again.
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In Roman Catholic theology, that is why they baptize infants.
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They baptize an infant because an infant is born with the taint of original sin.
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And because the child is born with the taint of original sin, he must be born again to be able to experience the grace of God.
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And so they pronounce upon him regeneration through baptism.
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The Polyseans said no.
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They denied that.
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They believed it was their duty to live holy lives, preach the Gospel, and raise their children according to Scriptural principles.
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I think they'd be right at home here.
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Maybe not right at home, but they're so close.
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And these two groups were very influential.
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And they moved many souls away from the false teachings of Rome.
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But they did not have the influence that the next one had.
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And this man, if you don't know his name, you've certainly heard it.
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If you don't know who he is, you've certainly heard his name.
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And that is the man by the name of John Wycliffe.
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150 years before Martin Luther, there was a man who was opposing Rome.
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And his name was John Wycliffe.
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He was a brilliant student of the Bible.
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He was entered into Oxford at the age of 16.
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He spent 12 years studying for his doctrine.
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And in 1371, he was acknowledged as their leading theologian.
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Yet, as he studied the Scripture more and more, he came to realize the failures of the Roman Catholic Church.
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And as he began to teach these failures, he was quickly expelled as a teacher at Oxford.
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And he lost his teaching position.
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So he moved to Lutterworth.
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And in Lutterworth, he translated for the first time the Bible into the English language.
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If you ever think the King James, the first English Bible, not even close to being the first English Bible.
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The first English Bible was translated by John Wycliffe, handwritten by his deacons.
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They didn't have Gutenberg's press.
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And it was disseminated throughout the countryside by his Lutterworth preachers who would go and preach the Word.
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Wycliffe desired that people would know Scripture so that they would know their faith.
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And he died during his preaching service.
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He was preaching on New Year's Eve, 1384.
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He died in church.
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And a few years later, the Council of Constance would gather, the Roman Catholic Council would gather, condemn him as a heretic, dig up his bones and burn them, and pour them in the River Swift.
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A later chronicler recounted this.
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He said, John Wycliffe is called the morning star of the Reformation.
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You know what one doctrine made him have the most difficulty? It was when he preached against the Mass.
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And that's what I talked about last week, about what they believe about the body and blood of Christ, and how it's a perpetuatory sacrifice.
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It was that that created such a conflict.
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But he proved from Scripture that the teaching of the Mass was heresy.
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And he was hated.
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The next man, and this is going to be the last one I mention today, because next week we will arrive at Martin Luther, Lord willing.
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But the last of these pre-Reformers that I want to mention is a man by the name of Jan Hus.
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Hus was a rector and a preacher at the Church of the Holy Infants of Bethlehem in Prague.
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And he was influenced by the teachings of John Wycliffe, and it led him to become more and more desirous to see the Reformation of the Church, and Prague was a center for early Reformed thinking.
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And the chapel where Hus was appointed was raised in 1391 by a rich merchant to be a center for Reformed preaching.
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But because of his preaching, Prague, the entire city of Prague, was placed under an interdict by the Church, which meant this.
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You couldn't have any real religious services there.
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No one could be married in the Church.
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No one could have their last rites given, which were necessary as an act of grace on the dying.
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You could get nothing from the Church because of the teachings of Jan Hus, and the people demanded that he leave.
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And through a final series of events, he was forced to face the Council of Constance, which was the same council that condemned John Wycliffe and burned his bones.
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John Hus stood before the council, and he had been promised safe passage.
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Come and state your case and you will be safe.
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And Emperor Sigismund said, you will be safe.
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Come before us and you will be safe.
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But as he preached to the council his doctrines, which were from Scripture, the leaders condemned him as a heretic.
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They said to the Emperor Sigismund, you do not have to give safe passage to a heretic.
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A heretic does not deserve your protection.
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And so, they led him away to the fire.
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Jan Hus' nickname was the goose.
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And if you've ever heard the phrase, your goose is cooked, it finds its original meaning in the burning of Jan Hus.
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As he was tied to the stake, and as the fire was lit to burn around him, he died singing, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.
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Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.
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Later, Martin Luther would be called a Hussite because of his doctrines, a follower of Jan Hus.
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We open this morning by reading Isaiah 55, 10, and 11.
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And I want to again just point you as we begin to draw to a close to the great promise of this text.
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Isaiah says, in speaking of the natural, he says, For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return but water the earth, making it bring fruit, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word that goes out from my mouth, it shall not return to me empty.
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I love the older translation which says, It shall not return void.
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The Reformation was based on one simple idea, that the Scriptures are the sole infallible rule for faith and practice for the Church.
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That's the doctrine of sola scriptura, Latin, Scripture alone.
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And the Waldensians believed that.
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The Church had denied the Scripture and thus they had to deny the Church.
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The Paulicians believed that.
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John Wycliffe believed that.
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Jan Hus believed that.
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And they trusted that God's word would not return void.
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That if we simply stand on the word, we can be confident that God will see us through to success.
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And that is why 500 years later, the Protestant Reformation has not ended.
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But it continues to today, because we are standing, not on the doctrines and opinions of men, but on the solid foundation of the word of God.
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Beloved, if you came today, and you didn't understand these things, and I've said something to you that stirred your heart, about maybe where you are, maybe you have believed things that are not in Scripture, maybe you've come today and you're convicted about what you believe, I want to call you to a fresh understanding of God's word as being the sole and fallible rule for faith and practice.
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Many of you grew up in the South.
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Many of you grew up where Church was a tradition.
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And you grew up with many traditions that weren't coming from the Bible.
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Beloved, my friends, we need to always, always, always be willing to have ourselves personally reformed by the word of God.
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To seek to be like Wycliffe and Hus, and later as we will see Luther, willing to go back to Scripture and be changed.
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Let's pray.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I pray that even now that your word would draw close into our heart and move us to a better walk with you.
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And that we would have a desire, like these men who came before us, a desire to turn to Scripture and be confident that we will find within it all that is needed for godliness and life.
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I pray Lord for those who came today who may not know Christ.
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I pray that they would understand that Christ is the very center of the word.
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That he is from Genesis to Revelation the very focus of the word.
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And that his work of redemption is for everyone who will believe on him.
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And his word has said clearly that all the father gives him will come to him and whoever comes to him will in no way be cast out.
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So we thank you and we praise you for him.
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In Jesus name.
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Amen.