Anabaptist History (Day 4) the Church Councils and the Pilgrim Church — Dean Taylor

The Pilgrim Church Amid Church Councils

Okay, I think that's all my preliminary things. So today we're going to touch on the church councils, and we're going to see the concept of, at least touch on it in this brief class of the Pilgrim Church.

I'm a Pilgrim Church man, some people debate on those types of things, but I believe God has always had a people that have worshipped Him, even though sometimes we don't have historical records about them, sometimes we don't have their books because they were burned, sometimes people have tainted their writings, but I believe God will always have a people, and I think there's always more people than you, you think, you know, fortunately, I hope so.

So let's start with prayer as we look into this interesting period of history. Oh, dear Heavenly Father, as we look through this period, dear God, we ask you, Lord, to be able to speak to our hearts and let us see a time that sometimes, as the persecution comes and the difficulties that come with that, Lord, it's very difficult.

And I pray that you can let their examples encourage us, encourage us to be faithful to the end. God, be with me today with my voice and all of us that are listening, that we can hear what you want us to hear about this period of what you did in people's lives in this period, in Jesus' name, amen, amen.

Constantine and the Transformation of Christianity

Just to sum up also the councils, and I wanted to end up this sort of period that led to the end of early Christianity and brought in the advent of the Pilgrim Church concept, I was going to just touch on the council period.

If you remember yesterday, I guess I could turn that off until a break, or does that not trouble anybody? I'm really taking a chance there, they'll never get it back going. If you remember yesterday, we talked about the concept that you do need to deal with things, we do need to deal with things in church life that are off perhaps center, but the difficulty we see in the councils is that the things that we began to need to deal with became the target.

And I'm going to ask you in a little bit what some areas that perhaps we do that as well. But let's take a look at this. I found this quote from Leo Tolstoy in Mere Discipleship that I think is a good quote talking about the idea of, well, what did Constantine supposedly convert to Christianity?

What was it that he thought he was converting to? I mean, remember when we read Justin Martyr and he was explaining to the emperor, well, this is what Christianity is like. Do you think that emperor wanted to join Christianity?

Not in your life. Oh, so you live these simple lives, you have all this purity, you even give to the poor and all these types of things, why would I want to be involved with that? But for some reason, when we get to Constantine, the Christianity that he was handed was something he said, hey, it sounds good.

And here's Leo Tolstoy, Tolstoy, I don't know what to do with him. I think he's a guy who really tried to enter the kingdom, whether he ever really did, I don't know. Towards the end of his life, he did some interesting things.

But anyway, here's a good quote nonetheless. Leo Tolstoy's comment about Constantine. He said, speaking of what they gave him, no one said to him, Constantine, the kings exercise authority among the nations, but among you it shall not be so.

Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not lay up riches, judge not, condemn not, resist not him that is evil. But they said to him, you wish to be called a Christian and to continue to be a chieftain and a robber and kill, burn, fight, lust, execute, and live in luxury, that can all be arranged.

And they arranged a Christianity for him and arranged it very smoothly, better even than could have been expected. They foresaw that reading the gospels, it might occur to him that all this is demanded.

All that stuff that Jesus talked about. And not the building of temples and worshiping in them. This they foresaw and they carefully devised such a Christianity for him as would let him continue to live his old heathen life unembarrassed.

On the one hand, Christ, God's son, only came to bring salvation to him and to everybody. Christ having died, Constantine could live as he likes. More even than that, one may repent and swallow a little bit of bread and some wine and that will bring salvation and all will be forgiven.

Being sarcastic there, but the idea that Tolstoy is raising here is, was that Christianity? Was that Christianity? I asked the question, was it a few days ago, why was Arius not a Christian? Was Arius a Christian?

If somebody in your church had Arius' thoughts, would he be a Christian? And so I just want to beg the question, what does it really mean to be a Christian? To be someone who's born from God and not from man or from philosophy, but to be truly a follower of Christ.

And that's the question I'm going to be posing during this changing of our focus. I need to bring up Athanasius of Alexandria. Athanasius is remembered for his role in the conflict with this Arian and Arianism.

In 325, at the age of 27, Athanasius had a leading role against the Arians at the first council of Nicaea. At the time, he was a deacon and personal secretary of the 19th Bishop of Alexandria, Alexander.

Nicaea was convoked by the Emperor Constantine on May through August 325 to address the Arian heresy that Christ is a distinct substance from the Father. In June 328, at the age of 30, three years after Nicaea, and upon the repose of Bishop Alexander, he became Archbishop of Alexandria.

That guy who had that big dispute, he became the next one. He continued to lead the conflict against the Arians for the rest of his life and was engaged in theological and political struggles against the Emperor Constantine and Constantinus and powerful and influential Arian churchmen led by Arian Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia with others.

I'm sure I'm slaughtering that. Within a few years of his departure, St. Gregory of Nazianzus called him the pillar of the church. His writings were well regarded by the church fathers who followed in both the west and the east.

His writings show a rich devotion to the word became man, great pastoral concerns and profound interest in monasticism. He ended up being also attracted to the desert fathers which we're going to talk just briefly about.

Athanasius and the Doctrine of the Incarnation

So the question is this, is it important that Jesus Christ came in the flesh? Do you think it is? Why is it important? He gave us a... Amen, amen, very good. He showed us that kingdom life could be lived out as one of us.

Some other things. What are some reasons why he is... You're exactly right. Other things, any thoughts? I'll just pose this question, okay? The validated scriptures because the scriptures spoke of that, okay, amen.

Was it important that he took Mary's flesh? We're going to talk about this a little later with Men of Simon. Well, was he made flesh like Adam or did he actually take our flesh from Mary? Think about it.

Here's some of the quotes Athanasius had. It comes up in a big debate, ended up the entire Dutch church excommunicating the Swiss Brethren over that issue. And so it's a heated topic but I'm bringing up Athanasius because I think the incarnation is important and this comes up.

Athanasius was one of the most honored names in all Christian history but in a particular moment he was with the Altshulth Emperor Constantinus. Now interesting, Constantine who was obviously the big man for this Nicene Creed actually towards the end of his life began to change his mind a little bit and go with Herias.

As a matter of fact, the bishop who baptized Constantine on his deathbed was an Arian. The very people that he said was anathema was cursed because of the council that he led, interestingly. So Athanasius would go into different things.

Then when the Arians began to rise in power, they wanted him more than anyone else. There's a scene I wrote here, I gave it here, the account in your writings there that they one time surrounded an entire church.

He was arrested and gotten back five or six times and one time he arrested a church and this time it looked like for sure they were going to come and get him. All his other monks ran out and he said, no, I'm going to stay here until they come to defend the church or whatever.

Fortunately he fainted and the monks dragged him out and he lived. It ended up with this famous slogan from early church and it's an interesting one, Athanasius contra mundum, which rather translates to Athanasius against the world.

He felt at a time that he was the sole person defending what's called orthodox understanding of Christology and when it seemed like everybody was turning back to the Arian heresies, so to speak, he then was a great defender of that.

He had some great things to say about the incarnation. I have number three there. Where did Athanasius believe that Jesus received his flesh? He says, the word visits the earth where he has always been present and sees its evil condition.

He takes a human body born of a pure virgin in whose womb he makes human flesh his own. Catch that. Born of a pure virgin in whose womb he makes human flesh his own in which he revealed himself, conquered death and restored life.

For this purpose, to restore creation, to suffer for us and to appeal on our behalf to the Father, the incorporeal and incorruptible word of God comes to our realm. This is like what you were saying there, showing out that we can do this.

But he was never far from us because no part of creation has been emptied of his presence. He fills all things everywhere while remaining present with the Father. But he humbled himself and came to show us his love for us and to visit us.

He could simply have appeared to us, coming to us in some grander way, but this was not what he wanted. He took a body like ours from a pure and spotless virgin who had never been with a man. Being the powerful creator of everything, he prepared this body in a virgin as a temple to himself and appeared in it and lived in it.

Simons could have taken that, if it wasn't for the other quotes, could have taken that last quote. Well, he appeared in it, so do you mean... And here's the verse that comes up later in Anabaptist debates, and it's this word here.

And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. That's the main scripture for the incarnation. Simons, middle Simons, argues, well, it doesn't say he took flesh, he became flesh, and that's where he got himself into some trouble, but we'll talk about that in a few weeks to come.

And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and that was what was shared there. And that's the basis of this beautiful concept of the incarnation. And I agree, it's one of the most precious teachings is to think the idea of God, the word of God becoming flesh and dwelling among us to show us an example and to die for us.

When he takes upon our human flesh and then he dies for us, the atoning sacrifice to God makes that salvation possible, and it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. And I'm going to have to go on from that, but it's just a precious, precious teaching of our scriptures.

The Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed

But somebody asked me yesterday, and I thought it would be appropriate, well, what were some of those creeds? So I gave them here to you. There's two famous ones, the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed.

Neither of these would definitely be traced all through the anti-Nicene fathers. Yes, sir? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're right. Now, they were weakening tremendously. I mean, by Cyprian's time in 250s and such, they were, the kind of councils and things that they were discussing shows a very weak church.

By the Council of Alvar, they were talking about things that a deacon should do and shouldn't do that really is not even appropriate to talk about in this classroom, and they had to have a standard that a deacon can't do those things.

And so you can see by the time you got to Constantine, the church was already weak, at least the church that we're reading about in these texts. Again, I believe in a pilgrim church concept. And Jacob asked me after the class yesterday as well, well, what about the people who didn't go for this?

And I do believe. Some of the writings mention Constantine, some of his rules against those who didn't agree with him, and the punishment that they would receive shows that there was a remnant church that existed through this time period.

The monks didn't translate their writings, and if they found them, they burned them, so we don't have them. But God will always have his people on earth. So yeah, good question. Yeah. Yeah. And you're right, when the ease of persecution began to happen, the church in a whole 40-year period grew very lax in an entire generation, got into debate, started baptizing babies by just, you have to, and it became a different church.

Yes, sir? Yeah, probably so. Did you hear, Lyndon, he said each generation needs to have their doctrinal distractions to define themselves. What's that? Mm, okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, beautiful, beautiful point.

Who was that in that conference we just saw? They had this beautiful analogy, what was his name? That each generation must take the word of God. Yeah, Mark Reed. Frank Reed. And create a community out of the word.

Each generation must do that again and again. We must come back to the word of God and allow it create a people. It is a sure word of prophecy, and particularly, at the very center, must always be Christ.

And we're gonna see how that differs in these creeds here, or not, no, the creeds, but what in response to the people who did these types of creeds. We have the Apostles' Creed there. I gave it to you there.

It's not, we don't find that in those exact wordings in the early church, but writings like Tertullian and things did have a baptismal formula, and they come close to this creed. And so it's, I gave a little footnote there when it was first discovered, or at least in the writings.

But then I gave you the whole Nicene Creed, and if you would, you don't have to say this to God, but let's say it out loud, because that's the way it's done in liturgical churches. I have it there for you.

All right, everybody. The Nicene Creed. I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary.

He was made man and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of the Father, and He shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.

And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets.

And I believe one holy Catholic, meaning universal and apostolic church, I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, amen.

And that's the Nicene Creed. We do, that's why I stuck in there, meaning universal. I said that. Yeah, exactly. Now, it means different things to different people, but in its typical sense and it's used in an academic setting, it just means the whole worldwide church.

And that's, I think that's what they intended here, yeah, I do. You see how the and the Son was in brackets, I don't have time to get into that. But if you ever want to know what's the difference between the East Orthodox and the Roman Catholics, if you ask any self-respecting East Orthodox person, they'll point to one thing, and the Son.

And I don't have time to go into the entire schism that led, there's of course a lot of different things. They would say having a Pope and different councils that have come on without having an ecumenical council.

But if you had to say, give me one thing that divides you, this word, which in the Latin is the word philioque, which means and the Son, the Greek Orthodox believe that that was added later by the Roman Catholics.

And they think it makes a big difference if the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son and from the Father. And they believe it makes a great confusion. I had a man come to our church, Darren Tyler, who trained under Caliscus Ware in Oxford.

And he came again at the same time that he came to convert us to Greek Orthodoxy. And in his opinion, everything, all problems of the world, communism, Marxism, post-modernism, everything came from the philioque.

So that's the way he sees it. So I just throw that out. But the creed, it's good, isn't it? I mean, you see some of that Athanasius coming on and that idea of the Son there, God of God. So there's nothing lesser of what's coming, you know, out of the Father, God of God, light of light.

There's that analogy there, very God of very God, begotten, not made. It's a beautiful creed. And so it's just the spirit that went around and did this. So the problem is, now we have that creed, and here's a huge difference.

When Creeds Replace the Sermon on the Mount

Is creedal Christianity, Christianity, is believing in a creed, whatever that creed may be, meaning you're a Christian. Somehow they got to this point that Constantine could say, yeah, all right, yeah, even though you can still add your sun gods and things like that.

But the focus then, that although they needed to hammer these things out and make a creed, now the creed was the emphasis. So we got to make sure our creed is perfect. Back here was the Sermon on the Mount, crying out to be heard again.

Back here were the teachings of Jesus saying, this is what kingdom Christianity is all about. Back here was the target, but the target had moved. After that, the councils, they went into centuries of debates.

And only these seven that I mentioned here on your paper is what was received by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox as the ecumenical councils, meaning everybody. They certainly weren't ecumenical in trying to include everybody, but they used the term meaning supposedly the entire church.

And these are the things they discussed. You can see the list through there. But again, you can see from the spirit that were in the people that did those creeds was something that unfortunately was very scary.

Let me give you one example. In 449, if you can see between the third and the fourth council, they wanted to talk about the idea, okay, we need to get this hammered out. Okay, Jesus is fully human and fully divine, right?

Or is he half human and half divine? Oh, he must be fully human and fully divine, okay. That we can agree with. Okay, well, exactly how is that fully human and fully divine inside the person of Jesus?

Is it all mixed together, or is it setting side by side? We need to spell this out. Okay, well, yeah. And so they actually had a huge council to decide this, and a whole portion of the church was excommunicated because they didn't agree to exactly how that was spelled out.

That was the priest that I said earlier who came and gave us the explanation of this, and he gave the exact monophysite position. But the councils leading into that, here's a little story. In 449, in the famous New Testament city of Ephesus, bishops from all over the world gathered to discuss what they saw as a life and death point of theology.

The issue? They wanted to nail down just how the two natures of Christ coexisted in the person of Jesus. Fully divine and fully human, that they all agreed. But that wasn't enough. Precisely how those two natures existed in the person of Jesus was the debate.

At first glance, you might probably think this might have only been a fine point of theology reserved only for the elite theologians, but no, this got big. Just as always, the root of the issue wasn't theological.

Personal differences, political agendas fanned the fires of dispute. Going on down. In the case at Ephesus, the dispute went public. Not just the theologians, not just the priests. This is what Christianity looked like at this time.

Everybody started going here with their focus, here, instead of Christ, here. It's all in our creed. It went public. The local Christians, who probably, I wrote, never experienced an ounce of the engrafted nature of Christ, were getting in on the debate everywhere.

It was sort of like our presidential elections or our sporting events. People taking sides. There's even reports that in the Hippodrome, which is where they'd have these big crusades and things, the Christians, the Orthodox, could be seen wearing colors on the sleeve to represent their theological sides.

Seriously. The Orthodox, so to speak, wore blue ribbons, and the ones who were later called Monophysites wore green ones. So you can imagine the Hippodrome, and yeah, those are the Monophysite people in there.

It was like this huge political debate on, and you'd think any of these people understood how the two natures of Christ could be inside one person, but it became this huge theological and political debate.

Well, it went on. It got bad. Once the theological debate got underway, things went from bad to worse. When one side of the debate didn't feel that things were going their way, a group of monks accompanied by a gang of militia proceeded to take over the debate by force, threatening everyone with their life.

They took a blank sheet of paper. So first they said, all of you, you know. Threatening with their life, they took a blank sheet of paper and made the bishops all sign it. So imagine, here's a blank sheet of paper, just sign right here, you know.

We'll fill in the details later. They planned to later simply put on what they wanted on the blank section. After they got the signatures, they turned to the leading opponent, Flavian, and cried out, slaughter him.

Ouch. Immediately, a band of monks proceeded to beat the bishop so badly that he died a few days later. At last, when they felt the debate was settled, the synod proudly pronounced, here was the anathema, would those who divide Christ be divided with a sword.

May those be hewn in pieces. May they be burned alive. Through the centuries, this little meeting has affectionately been called the Robber Synod. Would you agree with me? Somewhere. We're off. Okay, settle the dispute, but for crying out loud, if you can cut people in half because they think you can divide the nature, you've missed Christ completely.

You've missed Christ completely. These kind of things went on with different debates. I asked the question, were there ever councils that met other than Christology? People would argue this was still concerning Christology, but another big debate was over whether or not you can have images in the church.

This actually came up around in this time period of the Seventh Council. It came of asking, could we have images in the church? Around 787 was the Seventh Council. First they had a council, and they got all these bishops together, over 300 bishops together, and they decided you can't have images, you can't worship images, at least you can't bow down to them and venerate them.

Well, that didn't go over very well, because then the other part of the church said, no, we want to be able to kiss and venerate and pray to images. There was a man by the name of John of Damascus who wrote a book trying to defend the idea of images.

Then there was a lady, she was a queen, an empress, and her name was Irene of Athens. She really liked images, and so she really brought things together, and she called for another ecumenical council to defend images.

Later on her son, who was named Constantine, interestingly, later he joined the iconoclast, and so she felt that was a rival, but he lived that for a while, but then finally he changed his mind and said he came to live with his mother.

This mother was a little nervous about having a son who was so wishy-washy, so she ordered that some men seize him to kill him. So they grabbed him while he was riding his horse through the city one day, and he said I want his eyes gouged out, since he doesn't like looking at images, I suppose.

So they gouged his eyes out so brutally that he, I guess, bled to death. She's a saint now in the Greek Orthodox Church, and you can pray to her. She has a feast day on August 7th. Constantine's is May 21st.

So somewhere these people are getting off, and here's the curses. Along these councils they would have anathemas, or I could use the word curses. If you didn't agree with this, you were cursed, you were damned.

This meant Christianity, and if you don't believe these things, you're cursed. Here's some of the curses, the anathemas, from the Seventh Ecumenical Council. I wrote them on your page seven. They say, anathema to them who presume to apply to the venerable image of the things said in Holy Scripture about the veneration of idols.

In other words, if you use Scripture to say it's wrong to venerate idols, curse you. Anathema to you, you're going to hell. Anathema to those who refuse to venerate with proper reverence the holy images of the Lord and his blessed saints.

You don't do it with proper reverence, you're going to hell. Anathema to those who call the sacred images idols. Anathema to those who say that Christians resort to the sacred images as to God. Anathema to those who say that any other delivered us from the idols except Christ our God.

Anathema to those who dare to say that at any time the holy church received and worshiped idols. Let them who do not venerate the holy and venerable images be anathema. If you don't do this, you're going to hell.

Anathema to those who blaspheme against the honorable and venerable images. To those who dare to attack and blaspheme the venerable images and call them idols. Anathema to the culminators of Christianity, that is to say the iconoclasts.

Anathema to those who do not diligently teach all the Christ-loving people to venerate and to salute the venerable and sacred and honorable teachings of the saints who please God and their several generations.

Anathema, if you don't teach people to do this, anathema. To those who even, listen to this, have a doubtful mind and do not confess with their whole hearts that they venerate the sacred images, anathema.

Wow. You know, Jesus once said, blessed is he who keeps and teaches these things and he'll be called great in the kingdom of heaven. These weren't the things that he said would be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus said that if you don't, those who build his rock upon the sand, one day when the rains come in, great would be the fall of that house and many will call me Lord, Lord that day and I'll say I never knew you.

But somehow, step by step, now they're in the 700s, that thing had got, well, I don't know. I don't know where you put the target, but you know, out here. Was there any good that came from these councils?

Church History as a Mirror for Anabaptists

I appreciate Broadbent. I always had you get this, but since it was only one day of this lecture, this is a great book. The Pilgrim Church by E .H. Broadbent. Also, like Mike Atnip's book, The Birth and Death of the Bohemian Revival, excellent book too about another period we usually don't know about.

Broadbent said, although the decisions reached was right, not that one, but the Council of Nicaea he's talking about, the way of reaching it by the combined efforts of the emperor and the bishopric and the bishops and enforcing it by the power of the state show the departure of the Catholic Church from Scripture.

So, you know, we study, we study, sorry, we study church history. One of the reasons to study church history is to take a look at ourself. The question I ask here now is how do we as Anabaptists often allow the focus to get away from Christ?

Can we fall into the same trap in our things? There's lots of church flits, you're right, brother. So let's not just throw our, you know, our accusations against these people. What about us? Remember, some things genuinely need to be dealt with.

Let's say, for instance, you're in your church and you really think that, let's think of something ridiculous so I don't offend anybody, that, you know, wearing white tennis shoes is wrong, okay? And you have some good reasons why wearing white tennis shoes is wrong.

So you get together with the brothers and you say, okay, you know, this, all right, all right. Well, let's say you come to your senses and you realize that white tennis shoes are wrong, all right? All right?

And you get together and you say, all right, okay, let's look at this. So you get together and say, okay, we're going to decide in our church, you know, this is a concern of ours that white tennis shoes are wrong.

But then you see, and some things need to be dealt with, okay, and I'm just throwing white tennis shoes as an example. Some genuine things. And even as communities have come together, I think, I don't have a problem with brotherhoods coming together to work out the way they're going to live their lives together.

I don't have a problem with that. We can discuss that later in the weeks. But what can happen, though, is you begin to say, well, the only Christians are those who what, wear dark, wear black tennis shoes, brother, come on.

Wear black tennis shoes or non-white tennis shoes. And then you say, well, okay, I notice that some people have shoelaces that kind of hang out, you know, and so you begin to get into discussion of your tennis shoes and next thing you know it, you're over here and you're actually saying bad things about the other church that wears the white tennis shoes and you're not greeting them anymore and you're excommunicating them and you're saying all manner of bad things from them.

And again, I'm not against. I'm not a person who are even against standards and things like that. You're going to hear me talk about that in weeks. We can debate that, that's fine. But the point is that in every step of the way, we better do one major important thing.

What? It's got to be coming back to Jesus. If what we're doing doesn't look like Jesus, we're losing it and we're going to end up way over here and it gets, and you all know it more than I do, it gets ridiculous and it gets painful.

And I think in a lot of ways, maybe we don't actually cut people in half, but maybe spiritually or with our words, perhaps we do sometimes, all right? So it is, I almost think I would, you know, if every, beginning of every intense brother meeting, should we open up the Sermon on the Mount and say, let's hear what Jesus said the church looks like.

You know, David Brisseau in his book, The Theologian, Please Sit Down, mentions he said, you know, no one's ever been thrown into jail and persecuted or burned at the stake for not helping the poor, not visiting the sick.

We never had debates over those things. It's the things that aren't, that Jesus didn't talk about, which got people thrown in jail and in prison things. So as long as we're maintaining our focus on Christ, I agree, just like these debates on Christology need to be talked about, there's several lifestyle issues that I think need to be hammered out in the community, but, wow, every time we do, we need to go back to Jesus.

Yeah, yeah, just like the guys who are wearing the green ribbons and the blue ribbons, I'm with the Monophysites, or I'm with the Orthodox, you're with the black shoey, you've got white shoes though, no, you know, you're with that and that, and you're right, pride in probably in all these situations is the underlying problem there.

Yes, brother? Yeah, yeah. Oh, good point. The white shoe is a lot easier to talk about than that. Good point. Remember the first, yeah. Imagine if your next brother's meeting and you have this big debate, we have brothers in our church who are no longer visiting the sick, hmm, I mean, your church doesn't have people visiting the sick, yeah, that's the not visiting the sick people.

It almost seems ridiculous, but like Lyndon said, that takes crucified life, that takes a heart, you know, that really looks at the words of Jesus and saying, are we really living out His dreams for humanity or are we not?

Okay. And I've always wondered if our disciplines as brothers were going to be united and digestive at the end. That's good, brother. What would happen, I think, would be a little shorter, but the most important element of that, we would continue to fight for, but the white shoe may go away.

That's good. You hear what brother Lyndon's saying, that we don't review these things, we just put them in our books or put them in our things and let them stack away. He said if really these things are important to us, the reviewing of those things year to year would be—.

Sorry, I'm going to take another question. Good thing.

Okay, go. In my culture, we never review, so I really never owned it. You never owned it, yeah. So the point is that the responsibility for every generation to give their generation an opportunity to buy into it and speak into it.

Say that last part again.

That's good. It's a part of every generation for them to give their generation the opportunity to buy into it, speak into it, and to own it. Amen. Very well said. That's why there's no grandchildren in the Kingdom of God that each generation has to buy into and own it.

It's a good point. If we just stack these things up, it gets painfully out of focus. We can laugh or cry over the council period, but if in our heart we're slicing people in half at our brothers' meetings, then we're in trouble.