WHO Treaty then Church History Is a Bit Messy

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:35

Greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. Welcome back to the big studio today. We're gonna try to sneak this one in even though there's something going on elsewhere in the building that might create some background noise.

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We'll see. We'll see. Gotta roll with the punches as they say. Before we get into the main subject today, which will involve the use of the big board and some church history discussions and hermeneutics and all sorts of fun stuff like that.

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There is something that has certainly caught my attention. I have been hearing about it for a while, but really,

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I'm focused upon it now because it is happening right now.

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But the World Health Organization is pushing for a pandemic treaty.

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I've heard about the movement toward this kind of thing, a global authority to handle pandemics in the future.

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But you need to understand that a treaty overrides constitutional authority in the

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United States. So if the crazed leftist communist morons in charge in Washington, that's the only way to describe them.

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I mean, every time I listen to the leadership of our government today speaking,

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I just go, how are we even still functioning? I don't understand. You listen to our new spokesperson who is an advertisement for sexual depravity and again, the vice president, the president, they are all experts at word salads.

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What they say makes no sense. And yet everyone sits back politely and goes, oh, isn't that beautiful?

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Isn't that wonderful? It doesn't mean anything. But anyway, these people would sign away our sovereignty in a second.

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And so I just want you to think about what it would be like if we lived in a world where some elitist in Belgium someplace who is living high on the hog has control over whether your three -year -old has to have experimental drugs inserted into their body with the force of law.

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And if you want to see what that looks like, just go online and start watching everything happening in China. Because that's what these people want for us.

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They want people in hazmat suits running around through our neighborhoods, locking us in jails, and beating us.

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Obviously not enough. I mean, there are people literally jumping out of high -rise buildings in China, committing suicide just to get out of these places.

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This is what these people want. That China is there. Oh, isn't that beautiful?

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Isn't that wonderful? That's what they think is just so awesome. And obviously here in the

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United States, there would be blood in the streets if that were to happen. There's no question about it. But we don't want that.

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And so we have to be very awake. Unfortunately, that's an issue for the

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Senate. Both of the senators from my state last week demonstrated themselves to be people without moral fiber in voting for the establishment of unlimited abortion rights up to the point of birth.

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So I get the feeling they would be just fine with some of that stuff, too.

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Though one of the two of them is very strange, in every way that you can be strange. She's something else.

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But anyway, be aware of this, be praying about it, be looking for it, be talking about it.

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We need, there are a few things that we've needed to be more clear about. I mean, this is, this is one of the things in the

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United States that has been a blessing, is that we still have some shred of constitutional and federal authority left.

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This would do away with all of it. And would hand our sovereignty over to unelected, unaccountable.

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Basically, it would make Bill Gates the king of the world. Because he has all the influence of WHO.

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So this is literally Bill Gates's attempt to take over the world. And you go, no.

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And I go, yes. Yes. All the rest of this stuff has been preparatory.

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And here's old Bill, who's buying up all of our farmland and doing all the rest of this kind of stuff.

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Literally making a play to be, he doesn't need a Titanic. He can be king of the world from wherever it is he is right now.

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And so it is very concerning. And we need to be very active in denouncing those who would seek to become techno tyrants over us.

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Because that's what these people are seeking to do. So be watching for information on the

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World Health Organization, WHO, and the pandemic treaty. Because that is the play.

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That's where they're going. That may be one of the reasons for a lot of the other stuff going on, just to distract everybody.

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So you're not even paying attention to it. You go, let's talk about Ukraine. Let's talk about this. Let's talk about that.

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One other thing, though, like I said, our primary topic today is far removed from all of these things.

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Whenever the Lord lifts his hand of restraint, and we see the depth of the evil in the heart of man, as we saw in the mass shooting over the weekend, as we saw a year earlier, when a man drove his vehicle through a

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Christmas parade, neither, those two were not treated the same way, but they are.

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They're the exact same thing. They're not treated the same way in our world today, because there are certain people who can't be evil on a certain level.

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When we see these things, we are truly reminded of how regular the extension of God's grace toward all of us is.

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Because that kind of thing could happen all the time, if God were not restraining people from doing it.

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What's really interesting is, I think, and it's a challenging area, and it's easy to jump off the cliff into weird stuff, but the relationship between pharmaceuticals, drugs, and the occult, and demons, is biblically fascinating.

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They're frequently associated. They're closely associated with one another. And most

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Christians today just won't even use terminology like demons.

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And yet, when you see a young man, in this case 18 years of age, recent high school graduate, who at that early age is turned over to that kind of hatred, and again, this has nothing to do with race.

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I know right now, in our country, it only has to do with whites. Only whites do this.

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Far more blacks will be killed by blacks in Chicago this summer, by multitude of factors, than were killed in that shooting.

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But no one will care, and no one is even allowed to say that. Again, it all goes back to the spiritual realm.

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It's demonic. I mean, what's the primary push? What's the primary thing that causes murders in Chicago?

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Drugs. Gangs. Drugs. And how do gangs get money? Drugs. And of course, the current regime is allowing drugs to just flow over the southern border, along with people, millions of them, because they want to change the voting demographic in the

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United States. And it's evil, and it's traitorous, it's treasonous. And they don't care how many people die as a result.

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The regime has no concern about human life whatsoever, and knows that their policy is a result of this, but they do it anyway.

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But the point is, these are spiritual things, and a lot of us are afraid to even point out when you withdraw a hand of restraint, you're opening up a vacuum for other things to come in, and those things will always destroy human life.

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And we see this happening around us. We see it happening in our major cities. It's astonishing.

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When I just think of how much my own city has changed in the past 10 years, and the acceleration recently, because we have a mayor that is part of the

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World Economic Forum stuff, and hence is a part of a traitorous movement to destroy the

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Constitution of the United States, and our lives. And I can see it practically.

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I can absolutely see it practically. How? I used to be able to get up.

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I remember back when I was first studying Islam, I would, this is back when

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I could get up real early in the morning, too. So I've seen the decline of Phoenix, and it seems to be going along with the decline of James, as age just hits you every which way.

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Anyway, I used to be able to get up in the morning. I remember one morning, I wanted to get a particular,

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I wanted to get a particular portion, I think it was all, I wanted to get a

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Surah 112 memorized in Arabic. And so I had it all set up to be able to hear it, listen to it, while I was writing.

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And so before sunrise, I could go out, and I could go out onto the Arizona Canal, and I could ride on the

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Arizona Canal, and we could, you could, they're really neat, you could

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I could do an almost 70 mile loop, and only cross one street, because they had put underpasses in every place else.

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And it's really, really wonderful. That was 12, 14 years ago.

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I can't do that now. The underpasses are not passable any longer. They are fundamentally,

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I would not call them homeless shelters. They are drug houses.

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They reek to high heaven, because they use the storm drains as sewers. They're dangerous.

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I remember a number of years ago, one of the guys was going through cleaning, you know, for this city.

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They don't bother with that anymore. The cops don't bother with it anymore. They don't clean it anymore. And he said he had found,

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I think in that one underpass, when I stopped to talk to him on a bike ride, he had found eight needles in that one underpass, that one day.

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So they're just not safe. Even though they have lights on, they just take them over.

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And there's dogs and everything down there. And now they're moving out of those to where you're getting tent cities.

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And so I can't, the very places that I was riding, and I didn't have to give it a thought back then.

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Just, you know, riding along, and, you know, I've got a real good light and stuff like that, and you can't go to those places anymore.

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If I want to ride from my house out of the city, I get to play with the cars now. And at my age,

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I don't like playing with cars as much as I used to. I think back in my 30s, some of the stuff that I would do, some of the times

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I would ride, and I look at that now and go, yeah, no,

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I don't think so. I'd like to, I'd like to see my grandkids get married. And so I've got different priorities now.

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So things have changed, and it's been purposeful. It's absolutely purposeful all the way along.

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And we pray for repentance and reformation in our land.

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Now, so keep that in mind, World Health Organization treaty, pandemic treaty, bad, tyranny, end of, well, it's end of sovereign nation.

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I mean, that's, you won't have sovereign nations anymore. You will have one global government run by unelected people.

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And frequently, you won't even know who they are, where they live, what their background is, and how they got that power, other than Bill Gates.

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You will, you will know exactly how he did that. And you will remember, like I do, how many blue screens of death you had to suffer through for that man to become king of the world.

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Okay, let's switch over to something of vital, well, this, that was a vital importance.

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This is a vital importance in a very, very different area. We struggle, honestly, in the church, often, to place ourselves within the proper context of church history.

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Where, where, where are we? And we have, we have joked more than once that, that church history, for, for most people, starts with Billy Graham.

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And honestly, as I get older, I'm starting to wonder how many people hear me say Billy Graham, and they go, who?

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And I'm sure. And so we tend to see ourselves within a very, very short context.

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And so when people start talking about church history, it's very easy to be misled and misdirected as to exactly what's, what's going on, and exactly what's being said.

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And so, unless, unless Rich tells me that, that we're just not going to be able to do that program today, because we are hearing large amounts of sound coming into the room right now, as, as long as,

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I, I can't even, how would you even know? You don't have, you know, you know, if you, well, that's true.

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Yeah, we just talked over it. We'll just, if you, if you hear stuff in the background, don't worry about it.

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There's nothing, there is nothing we can do about it. And yeah, that's, that's exactly how we're gonna have to handle this.

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Pay no attention to the noise behind the curtain. When we, when we think about church history, the problem, normally when we, when we look at church history, we, let's, let's put the cross right here, okay?

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And so here's, here's church history, and let's, let's go over here, and here's, here's where we are today.

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And if you've ever, that was a really bad line, wasn't it? Yeah, anyway, um, if you've, if you've ever looked at books that try to provide a kind of, it gets really complicated really quickly, because you have so many things, so many areas of development and, and change, and, and it, and if this is church history, well, world history is going on.

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And so the history of the church in a particular nation, or in a particular area, is going to look very different than history in, you know, history in, the church in England, or what we would call

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England today, very, very, very different line than what we would see in regards to China, or regards to North Africa.

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And yet, there would also be links between them. And so, you know, you've got the

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Roman Empire in there, and then you've got the fall of the Western half, the Roman Empire, and then, well, what happens with, you know,

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Byzantium, and, and then you've got the rise of Islam, and, and you've got technological changes going on here.

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It's just incredibly complicated, so much so, that a lot of folks just don't even want to necessarily put out the effort to look at it.

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But from a theological perspective, we have to look at this, because we have the promise, the one there on the cross said,

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I will build my church. And so, whatever we do with this here,

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Christ has been active in building his church. Now, you're raised in a fundamentalist context.

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It's sort of, fundamentalism sort of, sort of does this, and then it picks up there.

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And there's just, there wasn't really, well, and, well, but, but actually what the fund, what the fundamentalists, they've got it, and then and you get the

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Waldensians and and these are the real Baptists but they're all hidden you know it's the trail of blood stuff which we've talked about before and and it's it's just all so we can't we can't go there that's that's just simply wrong and so we have to deal with the reality that that there has been a work of God the work of well the triune work of God in building the church and hence we have to ask ourselves the question what what does the church look like in these ages and if you take the time to read the writings of those who've lived before us remember 99 % of the of the people that have been a part of this we don't know their names we don't have anything they ever wrote we have buildings they built and a lot of those buildings man they some of them would take 200 years to build and so generations would build but we don't know the vast majority of these people and we don't have anything written by them that we are that we would be able to to look at and to and to understand and so we have the writings of leaders and then once in a while I remember one of them it was obviously one of mr.

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professors favorite stories back in 1987 or whatever it was yeah

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I was about 87 and and that was oops there was a story about it somehow ended up in a

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I think it was in a biblical manuscript I forget how it was how it was preserved but it was from the medieval period and it was from a monastery and it was someone complaining that someone up in the choir so the choir would frequently not be up front it would be behind you which is really good for acoustics by the way and it also helps to you not to be distracted by them you're still looking toward the front and and that in that context would be the altar but it was a complaint that there was someone in the choir that kept because if I think this is during night vigils during the night prayers and so you had to have candles there's no electricity and someone in the choir was dripping wax from their candles on the people down below them and no one could figure out who it was you know so there's there's someone who sort of snuck into church history a little bit we don't know who it was maybe we'll find out someday

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I don't know but anyway the point is that we are we do have the ability to sort of look at little snippets of time and when we do so we recognize that it doesn't matter whether you are

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Roman Catholic Eastern Orthodox any of the various forms of the

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Protestant churches we are all different today than they were back then now some of them if you're

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Eastern Orthodox you pride yourself on looking and believing just like they did in the 7th and 8th century that's that's part of your thing that's part of what makes you who you are and you literally do pride yourself on that but at the same time you even amongst the

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Orthodox are arguing about things today that they were not arguing about back then and you're using methodologies and and you you get to church in a different way and things have changed and but then you know that's the one side and on the other side amongst

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Protestants you don't even even care what somebody in the third century was doing or why they worship the way that they worshipped or you know anything like that and so you have differences in our perspectives at that point as well and so today you know let's let's say that this here is here's the

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Reformation okay here's the Reformation now again from the

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Eastern perspective they don't care it's just that's something you all were doing and and we didn't need to worry about that but in most

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English -speaking places today that's still a rather important aspect of it and so if we are heirs of the

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Reformation there are certain beliefs that are central to us frequently put in the form of the

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Solas even though that's not historically how they themselves did we look back and we go okay then the material principle the

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Reformation sola fide justification by faith alone the formal principle that gave form sola scriptura scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith of the church over against the

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Roman Catholic theory of sacred tradition and oral tradition and written tradition and and the papacy and and the things that go along with that and so we we look at this and and we we believe that there is a great increase in light post -Tenebris looks after the darkness light right a great increase in light after the

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Reformation but why would there need to be a need for an increase in light well because the idea would be that along in here there is a a diminishment from the apostolic period a diminishment of light that led to darkness and this has been a standard understanding of reformed historians and scholars and things like that but what that frequently results in is that we don't really care much about what's in here who cares

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I mean is a period of darkness you've got indulgences being sold you know

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Rome has fallen back about here or so and so in the

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West you know you've got the Carolingian dynasty and and you've got some periods where there's important alchemy and preservation of manuscripts and things that helped maintain culture in what we call

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Europe today so you do have stuff going on in here that's important and of course about right here or so you'd have

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Thomas Aquinas so let's let's put good old TA in there because he seems to be so vitally important today and so but but we were not really sure what all this looks like and the the tendency is to say yeah you had and so there is obviously a tremendous amount of nominalism today in in many nations there's nominal

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Muslim Islam there's there's nominal Buddhism there's nominal Christianity obviously and you look at a lot of Roman Catholic nations today and you have a tremendous amount not only of nominalism but you also have a tremendous amount of just superstition in your

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Central American countries it's just so obvious that Roman Catholicism came in and just co -opted all the local gods in essence and turned the

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Saints into gods and you have mixtures of in the Caribbean you have all sorts of weird mixtures of of pagan magic and and Catholicism and stuff like that and so we sort of look at that and we sort of figure that's going going on back here but what we frequently don't recognize is that you can have you know when we look at this let's say the

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Council of Nicaea is about here so there's Nicaea and so Rome falls about here and so this is this is your medieval period that's that wouldn't that wouldn't do it either it's

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MP medieval period and this is where this ends because you can you can break this you can break this up you you you've got the

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Renaissance period right here where you start having universities you actually got universities all the way back here but enough that it really starts impacting things and the

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Reformation can't happen without this there's it's it's obvious and so we see all these things and we struggle with where were the key the key beliefs the

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Reformation who in here is still holding these things and if and how much mixture of error can you have and still have sufficient truth for the church to exist because the

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Reformers were not saying we're founding a new church the whole point of the Reformation was know that the church is founded back here we still believe that but there has been a fundamental departing of the church and so there needs to be

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Reformation and it's to be Reformation and the

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Reformation needs to take us back to certain principles and there certainly was a claim that basically in essence if you looked at you know sort of like like this area they're saying we're back to there and we're gonna we're gonna put we're gonna put

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Augustine about right there we're gonna you know there's there's somebody that believe what we believe in certain areas but there's a recognition that but not in all areas and so you have a great respect for Augustine and yet we're not following Augustine slavishly and we're saying he was wrong about certain things is he the last light no no you've got

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Gottschalk in here you have in fact

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I wanted to read you a portion here of something you have a man by the name of Fulgentius and if you're not familiar with Fulgentius and most

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I would guess 99 .5 % of our audience is not familiar with Fulgentius and that is perfectly acceptable we don't have to get too upset about that but Fulgentius was

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Bishop of Rusp and let me pull this up here where did where did he go

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I hate when stuff just disappear oh there you are there it is all right you may have actually heard of Fulgentius I quoted him in a debate

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I did in London number of years ago on the Marian dogmas his years are 467 to 532 so into the early 6th century so the end of the 5th early 6th century listen to what

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Fulgentius says about the issue of Mary this is a grace whereby it came to pass that God who came to take away sins because sin was not in him was conceived and born a man in the similitude of sinful flesh the flesh of Mary forsooth which had been conceived in iniquities after the manner of men repeat that again the flesh of Mary which had been conceived in iniquities after the manner of men was indeed sinful flesh which bore the

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Son of God in the similitude of sinful flesh we must believe the only begotten

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God did not derive the defilement of sin from the mortal flesh of the

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Virgin truly therefore Mary conceived God the word which she bore in sinful flesh which

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God received now you can see the immediate relevance of this you have a bishop literally half a millennium after the events of the crucifixion so he dies in 532 and you have very clearly he has no concept of later

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Marian dogmas in regards to Mary immaculate conception certainly no nothing about the bodily assumption anything like that at all

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I also just in passing being the weirdo that I am notice he uses the phrase only begotten

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God I would love to see what the Latin on that is and see if that's a reflection of John 118 because that's when

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I'm gonna stay off the sexual variant they're very interesting but he also elsewhere listen to this for this reason regarding all those whom

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God wishes to say we must understand that we do not think anyone can be a saved apart from God who wills it further let us not imagine the will of the omnipotent

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God either is not fulfilled or is in any way impeded in certain people for all whom

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God wishes to save are unquestionably saved and they cannot be saved unless God wishes them to be saved and each person whom

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God does not will to be saved is not saved since our God quote has done all things that he willed end quote therefore all are saved whom he wishes to be saved for this salvation is not born of the human will but is supplied by God's goodwill nevertheless these all men whom

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God wishes to save include not the entire human race altogether but rather the totality of those who are to be saved so the word all is mentioned because the divine kindness saves all kinds from among all men that is from every race status and age from every language in every region sound familiar yeah that's how reformed people address those key passages as well and this is a bishop of what would be called the

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Catholic Church halfway into the first millennium and I could give you all sorts of quotations from Fulgentius promoting what we would call sola scriptura now does that mean that Fulgentius was a reformed

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Baptist no it does not and that is an abuse of church history to even try to anachronistically read categories that we have today back into the early church is one of the reasons that when

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I when I listen to when I bother to waste the time and listening to Roman Catholic apologists trying to deal with with church history it's difficult it becomes more and more maybe

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I'm just not patient anymore but because more and more difficult for me to listen to these things because it's just such an abuse we do not have to turn

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Fulgentius into a reformed Baptist they do obviously he was a bishop of the church for crying out loud and this is they are told that their beliefs have been what's been believed every age of the church and blah blah blah blah blah and so they've got to attack him and he's not the tradition of the church and nyan -nyan -nyan -nyan

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I just tire of the sophistry that marks the vast majority of that kind of stuff but Fulgentius allows us to stop and to think about the fact that the church in every age gives to us this challenge we don't know the true and the false we we ask for professions of faith we do the best that we can we have to out of grace accept the the claims and the the assertions of people and sometimes we get taken for a ride sometimes we end up with people in our midst who are not truly believers and we leave that to God but that's the case in every in every age with the church that's been her reality from the beginning what you have is a mixture and there are times when there is more light and there are times when there is less light and it's not our job to try to climb into the hearts of these individuals and determine their salvific status though for some reason we and not resist the temptation to do so we try to do it no matter what our goal really

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I think our mindset should should be to hope for the best for as many as we possibly can that's again not my background that that's not a fundamentalist background at all but it should be

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I think from a New Testament perspective we should hope for the best in those situations but you get a mixture of beliefs and consistencies and level of consistencies and to be honest with you

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I would say there were times you know just remember almost every person in this audience right now has a digital device like this now and on this digital device you have access to thank you summer

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I will try to ask look when you're when your daughter's carrying hopefully your fifth grandchild little boy and she asks you to check out the the homeschooling place next door because she doesn't want to drive halfway across the valley and I'm going out these these valley tomorrow anyways you do what your what your daughter asks you to do and you help take care of the grandkids that's that's how it works so I will

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I'll do my best well actually when do they close you don't know oh so we now have a limitation to how long the program can go thanks to summer so if any of you want me to go farther and that's

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I've just got to gotta have my priorities so Moses was in the bulrushes and oh yes full

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Gentius okay so when you think about it we have on this unit access to more translations of the

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Bible and information about the Bible than any generation before us there do you realize how unusual it is in all that church history to own as a

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Christian to actually have direct access to the scriptures for yourself at all

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I mean I would say that starts I mean that obviously is a big thing the

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Reformation but it's really from about here onward you can have at least a copy of the scripture as a believing

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Christian they become affordable enough to have about at that point before then just not possible just not possible

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I mean when you think about that it's astonishing and so is it not understandable that there would be a real mixture of light and darkness truth and and so with with that with that what

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I want to ask touch on briefly is the concept of the great tradition this is the new buzzword all popular the great tradition and we had a here's here's see if I can find this here there was a see

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I opened way too many of these things there it is there it is okay dr.

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Craig Carter again dr. Carter a brilliant man sure he's a wonderfully nice fellow and when

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I was looking through his timeline it seems he and I agree on a lot of things in regards to the wackiness of what's going on in the world today so we would probably get along like gangbusters along there but he's one of the major proponents of the great tradition and he tweeted something last week on the 14th and it says to assert to assume that the current

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Roman Catholic Church is the same as the historic church that existed prior the Reformation is a big mistake as Hagen says the

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Roman Catholic Church is not the Catholic Church of the first five or six centuries of the patristic era the

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Reformed Church is the era of pre -reformation Catholic Orthodoxy okay what was confusing about this was okay the current

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Roman Catholic Church is not the same as the historic church that existed prior to the

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Reformation okay prior to Reformation when because there's a lot of time prior to the

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Reformation and there's a lot of development during that time period and there are big big big monuments of development

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Nicaea's big big chain big chain the you know obviously the piece of the church of 313 and then at the end of that century you have

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Christianity becoming the not just a religio licita a legal religion but now the religion of the state that happens at the end of you know around 380 and so that's a completely different time period than the schoolman scholasticism

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Aquinas that's a there's been a lot of development in that in between those churches and so Michael Hagen state which

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I'll read to you in a moment first five or six centuries of the patristic era okay up through Fulgentius all right let's use

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Fulgentius he's right at that at that shift right the beginning of the sixth century is that different than the

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Roman Church that Luther reacted against of course it is massively so but in what ways specifically in what way now that's that's a fascinating question in and of itself that's a fascinating question in of itself because the the argument today is on the doctrine of God nothing changed well okay let me take that back nothing fundamentally changed but there is a continuing development in fact dr.

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Carter has been one of the people that has said that the doctrine the Trinity finishes its development in Aquinas in the medieval period and so there is this concept of a continuing development that evidently he considers to be a good proper and necessary development from the patristic

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Church all the way through the 12th century that's a long time a very long time and I would argue that the specific developments within Aquinas require input from sources that we need we just simply need to be extremely concerned about and that would include obviously

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Aristotle now what's the statement from Michael Hagen I just realized I'm never gonna get through all this and I have forgotten to mention that we have a special program on Thursday it will be in here and we will have numerous guests

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I guess I should have mentioned this to you cross -politic is in town and speaking

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Thursday I will be speaking I will be part of the panel Thursday evening at their event here locally and they would very much like to bust in and and say hi in fact that was

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Gabe wrench that was texting me right there and asking about details about that and so yeah we'll well hey you got two days you have plenty of time it's just a matter of finding some place for some of the stuff stored over there anyway so yes we will have a special program on Thursday and it's that means

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I won't be able to continue this subject on Thursday because I don't really think the guys are gonna want to be discussing these things but we will have to continue this because there's all sorts of stuff on hermeneutics that we need to get into as well

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I have to look at my calendar and see if we can't sneak another one in here because this this is important stuff and I just too much stuff going on here's what

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Michael Hagen and said had said so at least let's get the context he says

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I've spent a lifetime of study engaging in resourcement that is in the retrieval of the riches of church history for the present day in my early academic career that retrieval was centered upon the patristic era today it's mostly the particular

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Baptist of the long 18th century one thing that was etched deep into my mental light from that study of the patristic world had to do with the question that I asked from time to time how could

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I study the father's so deeply and not swim the Tiber and become a Roman Catholic well first of all

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I had grown up in the pre -vatican to Roman Church and had seen some of its worst problems then and since and there is a lot to be said about that much more significant was this their own

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Catholic Church is not the Catholic Church the first five or six centuries of the patristic era that's what was being referred to earlier in fact

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I am more and more convinced as a historian that the Roman Church of the present day is mainly a product of the high

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Middle Ages and the counter Reformation but be that as it may not I can't let that be a be as it may listen what's that said the

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Roman Church of the present day is mainly a product of the high Middle Ages what's the high

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Middle Ages the schoolman and Thomas Aquinas the high

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Middle Ages and the counter Reformation and yes Rome was deeply influenced by the

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Reformation and hence the counter Reformation in other words if I want to join a church that claim with claims to antiquity it would not be present -day

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Rome and see I I would say all this stuff I would have said this before Francis came along but now with Francis Oh good grief everything has changed completely what is critical is this is my faith and that of my church built squarely on the foundation of the

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Apostles and prophets with Jesus Christ at the cornerstone that is the crucial matter that is what the

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Spirit of Christ has anointed so what if I can trace an organic succession of material churches if half of them were theologically askew what

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I want is that new mythological line of succession that is true Catholicity John 839 okay so that nothing shocking or unusual about that but it is fascinating to to think about the modern

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Roman churches as the product of the high Middle Ages and the counter Reformation because that throws Aquinas right in the middle of it and so what we've got going on today is we have people who want to get back to Thomas and get to back to using

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Thomas what they want to do is they want to edit Thomas and they want to edit the great tradition and so for them the great tradition is primarily doctrine of God okay that's that's what this great tradition that's the good part of the great tradition that we can we can borrow that we can come we can use we need fact we need this in fact

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I heard someone recently say that if we don't use the hermeneutical principles that come out of the great tradition in other words this is the other area that I don't know

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I'm gonna get to today I don't know but if we don't you if we continue using modern interpretation rather than pre -modern interpretation we make quote mincemeat mincemeat out of our confession and most that has to do with Doctrine of God simplicity in several operations the things that Aquinas emphasized but that's it because there's so much more to any meaningful understanding of what the great tradition would have been well first of all how do you even define it there is no one great tradition what they're saying is well we can we can trace a particular concept of the

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Doctrine of God that we think is very important to continue to hold but the people who made up the great tradition would not have accepted the idea of the separation out from that of everything else what about ecclesiology what about doctrine of baptism whether about the doctrine of infant baptism for regeneration a

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Baptist does not hold to major portions of the great tradition and self -consciously and to explain why requires you to be a okay

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I'm only gonna show this for a second because it's a bad bad word it this is this is really bad requires you to be a biblicist

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I'm sorry yeah I'm sorry it's yeah if I have to erase it's just oh it's just today there some of you screamed and and hid behind somebody else when

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I when I wrote that because oh it's so bad to be a biblicist now but if you're a

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Baptist in regards to great tradition that's what you have to do you you don't have any choice that's how we got here and to turn around and now saw off the the branch you're sitting on well okay on ways down but I do that that's okay so how do you define this thing what what is this great tradition and if you want to boil it down to and say well it's just this and you know there are people who've been doing this for a long time remember how for how many years have

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I I've been criticizing mere the mere Christianity move not mere

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Christendom that's something different the mere Christianity movement where you know you know it's really the only thing that we can all really get together on is the

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Trinity and the deathbed resurrection of Jesus and that's that's enough now we're good and you go it's not what the

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Apostles in fact the only place the Apostles I mean they anathematized people who taught a different what gospel yeah we're never gonna agree on that so let's we can't go there what's the gospel of the great tradition are you telling me you can actually have a love for the great traditions doctrine of God but not the great traditions doctrine of the gospel you know they don't go together they're somehow separable hmm that's a interesting way of looking at things isn't it yeah it's a very very interesting way of looking at things now let me

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I was going to you know let me go ahead and mention this just because it does bear that I should mention this just a little bit earlier this mixture thing this is this is illustrated for us

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I think fairly clearly in the love that the Reformers had for Bernard of Clairvaux now

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Bernard's years are 1090 to 1153 and so he's in that same basic time period and it is very clear that many of the

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Reformers Calvin especially have a very high view of Bernard of Clairvaux there's quotations of him some of you sing songs based on things that that Bernard wrote and what is interesting is when you dig into Bernard let me see if I can find the quotation here where'd it go yeah okay

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I think what word did it okay here it is for what could humanity enslaved by sin held in the devil's strong grip do of itself to regain the righteousness it had previously previously lost therefore the one who lacked righteousness listen to this had another's righteousness imputed to him it was humanity that owed the debt it was humanity that paid it ie in the man

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Christ Jesus whereas Paul says if one died for all than all died so that the one bore the sin of all the satisfaction made by one is imputed to all there's an there's a clear imputation of righteousness in his thought now is is there does it have you see the

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Reformation bring provides us with the ability to make specific differentiations it forces us to ask specific questions that we're not being asked at this point in time and so until you have that that clarifying lens there can be an issue and certainly you're gonna be able to find things in Bernard where you go well that's not how we would say it today okay but he does give us that that example of someone not that far before the

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Reformation where you would have the Reformers going yet is here is a believer here is someone that's still building his church he's still saving his people but he would be in he would he would be supporting things that in later century no you can't do that there's been a clarification there's been a there's been an understanding but can we look back and say yeah but Christ is still building his church even though you'd have a tremendous amount of nominalism and many of these men were were pained by the the ungodliness of the of the church around them and all the things like that is that not an aspect of it too and and and the answer would be yes yes it would be but that gives us an understanding this was an article was sent to me by a dear friend and it's it's an excellent article that goes into Bernard and and some of the things he did now one of the things that I really needed to make sure to get to today that I was going to do at at the beginning

58:49

Rich and I are sitting here chuckling as we listen to what's going on next door let me let me read you some some quotations okay

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I think this is this is important quote on this account we are bound to avoid them but to make choice of the things pertaining to the church with the utmost diligence and to lay hold of the tradition of the truth for how should it be if the

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Apostles themselves had not left us writings would it not be necessary in that case to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those whom they did could to whom they did commit the churches and so here is a statement that would seem to sound like here very early on this is from Irenaeus against heresies this is 170 to 180 this is in the second century talking about tradition handed down to those to whom they did commit the church now it's it is said within this context for how should it be if the

01:00:05

Apostles themselves had not left us writing well his point is they did but he says some things such as as I have already observed the church having received this preaching in this faith although scattered throughout the whole world yet as if occupying but one house carefully preserves it for although the languages of the world are dissimilar yet the import of the tradition is one and the same sounds like there is an oral tradition that is being passed around the world and that all the churches possess right that's what it sounds like and so when what we're we're hearing from people today is that there is a need for tradition and I've been dealing with this for years because of course this is the

01:00:55

Roman Catholic argument but let's leave Rome and its specific arguments out for a moment we now have people saying that there are things we need outside of Scripture and that the term tradition is an acceptable term to use for these things that we need and here's

01:01:15

Irenaeus and Irenaeus is very very early on and Irenaeus is talking about this tradition that exists in the churches now the first thing to recognize

01:01:26

I want to make sure we talked a little bit about today was the fact that we do need to look at when we look at someone like an

01:01:33

Irenaeus what situation is he in he is writing very early on most of the canon is recognized but not necessarily universally this is still during that period of development and recognition of the canon not development of the can canon one but recognition in canon two and he is one of the leading people in defending the

01:02:06

Christian faith against Gnosticism which I was thinking about this earlier today we use that term all the time today to take shots at people but the fact the matter is if you can't name if you can't tell me what a demi urge is and can't name some of the eons don't talk about Gnosticism okay it's way too easy to take shots at people when you're actually talking about dualism and it doesn't have anything to do with Gnosticism Gnosticism was a massive threat to the church a massive threat to the church and Irenaeus studied it carefully for many years his stuff was almost all we knew about Gnosticism came from Irenaeus until we found the

01:02:52

Nag Hammadi libraries the Oxyrhynchus papyri and things like that and found the original writings of the

01:02:57

Gnostics and he did a great job in describing them he really really did and so he's in the middle of a battle and the

01:03:07

Gnostics are claiming apostolic authority they are they are claiming the right to interpret the

01:03:12

Christian scriptures and to change the Christian script and so you always have to look at what was the conflict what was the great battle in that day of that particular individual and so those were difficult days those were we have 2 ,000 years to look back on they had nothing and so that that's a that's a massive challenge there's no two ways about it but you always have to keep reading you always have to keep reading because what does does does

01:03:44

Irenaeus ever define for us this tradition this rule of faith that you are to have that's that's the that's the really important thing is when you talk about the rule of faith does he ever define it for us he does let me read it for you these have all declared to us that there is one

01:04:03

God creator of heaven and earth announced by the law and the prophets and one Christ the Son of God if anyone does not agree to these truths he despises the companions of the

01:04:12

Lord name more he despises Christ himself the Lord yea he despises the father also and stand self -condemned resisting and opposing his own salvation as is the case with all heretics and so there is the tradition there is the tradition what is it one

01:04:33

God creator and have of heaven earth announced by the law and the prophets and one Christ Son of God everything that I read to you what is it it is sub biblical in the sense that it is derived from Scripture it is not a tradition that is outside of Scripture it does not contain revelation that is outside of Scripture that is then necessary for us to then interpret

01:05:04

Scripture the Gnostics didn't start at the right place they rejected fundamental and of course they would change they you know

01:05:15

Marchione would would change the actual Scriptures he'd get rid of the Old Testament he would they the

01:05:21

Gnostics literally were teaching that the God that we would know as Yahweh was yelled about oath a almost an abortion in a sense a a beast that should not have come forth from wisdom a mistake a foolish

01:05:45

God and so he's not saying that there is revelation that we need to have that's outside of Scripture all those beliefs it even says testified by the law and the prophets you can't even go there unless you recognize that we're talking about stuff that has been derived from Scripture what he's saying is there is a fundamental basic starting place that Scripture itself provides and if you reject that if you remove the portions of Scripture that teach those things you're never gonna have anything even close to what the

01:06:18

Apostles themselves because the Apostles are the ones that gave us these scriptures now the reason

01:06:25

I bring this up is what we'll get into the next time we address this what we'll get into is this concept of pre -modern hermeneutics and exegesis and interpretation this is in my opinion as I listen to my fellow

01:06:45

Reformed Baptists talk about the greatest things that have changed in their understanding over the past ten years this is what it is we have

01:06:54

Reformed Baptists today talking about well let me just describe this and then we'll you'll see why we need to go here

01:07:06

Reformed Baptists today basically saying that if your goal in the interpretation of Scripture is to start by knowing what the original author intended to communicate to his original audience so you you're reading 1st

01:07:29

Corinthians and so the first thing that you want to think about is what was

01:07:35

Paul seeking to communicate to the church at Corinth what what were the issues that he that he raises what were the problems that the church is experiencing and you you start there and then you seek to make application we're being told now is wrong wrong wrong don't go there that's that's not how you do it when

01:08:01

I hear that I just go what on earth has happened what is going on here because I will simply suggest to you if you don't start there you've got nothing left you got no place to go well we need to we need to understand that the

01:08:18

Bible is a whole of course it is but you don't have a Bible until you start reading the word and the only way to discuss what the

01:08:28

Bible says is to start with the initial context you can't start outside of you can't you can't say well what you need to do is you need to have the dogmas of Nicaea really

01:08:43

I thought the authority of the dogmas of Nicaea was their fidelity to scripture I've heard people actually saying that the way to interpret the

01:08:53

Bible is to do so only within light of the dogmas of Nicaea which came first what comes first I can assure you anybody who starts the dogmas of Nicaea has probably never attempted to present this to Muslim or to Mormons or to they're not doing debates they're not doing apologetics this they're going different direction but this deeply impacts the the idea of how we interpret scripture now unfortunately what

01:09:28

I've heard and I've heard this more than once is a very shallow narrow idea that well

01:09:38

I was taught that all of exegesis is just simply the author's intention and that's it that's it it's like what that's where you start you have to know what the words mean you have to know lexicography you have to know grammar you have to know syntax because that's how we talk and when

01:10:00

God spoke to Eve he used all those things and did not require her to go to philosophical school to understand them okay so to say well oh but we can we can talk about the philosophy of all these things no duh we're well aware of that that doesn't make those things prior to scripture in its authority because God made us and held us accountable so that means he made us to understand okay so we can we can take all the stuff apart if we want to that does not make that prior to and something we can use to fiddle around with the meaning of scripture itself but you can't talk about the meaning of scripture until you start there you can't do it and nobody who's who's saying that it's wrong to start with looking at the scripture in that way they all want you to interpret their books that way they want to be interpreted that way well if they've written books they want you to actually understand what they meant to communicate it's funny you could actually write a book saying that you shouldn't actually be concerned about what

01:11:04

Paul initially Paul wanted to communicate to the Corinthians in a book where you want to make sure that people are concerned that they're understanding what you're meaning to communicate to them it doesn't make any sense but that's what people get stuck in so so whenever we get this chance to do this again because I forgot to tell

01:11:26

Richard what's going on we need to talk about hermeneutics and we need to talk about the fact that Paul's epistle to the

01:11:38

Corinthians Isaiah's prophecy Amos's prophecy even the book of Revelation had a fixed meaning before anyone dreamed this up okay it had a fixed meaning that does not mean that it is wrong for me upon encountering the text and reading the text to avail myself of the wisdom of others and so I I have the ancient commentary on scripture where I've taken the time to look at what people thousand years ago had said about a particular text of scripture and the reality is there are many times

01:12:24

I've looked at what they said and while they can while I could appreciate what they were saying

01:12:29

I had to reject it because they missed what the text itself said and if you make this your your filter you can't do it anymore they got it right and if that becomes part of the quote -unquote great tradition well what are you supposed to do are you gonna be unhumble enough to question the great mission you see and scripture becomes well as somebody said a wax nose that you can just form into whatever you want based upon your interpretation because we all get to interpret the great tradition the great tradition hmm

01:13:01

I think this is really really vitally important that we have a balanced hermeneutic a hermeneutic that is first and foremost something that will allow the

01:13:18

Christian faith to be the Christian faith many generations from now and not something that is under this external authority that that filters things out

01:13:30

I get where some of these writers are coming from and but they're always reacting against modern exegesis that does not allow the

01:13:44

Bible to be the Word of God I believe the Bible is the Word of God and that is part of your hermeneutics it has to be we're not just dealing with human words but you have to start with what the words are before you can discuss their relationship to any other words and you have to know what

01:13:59

Paul was saying before you can relate Paul in Corinthians to Paul in Romans to Luke in Acts to John and you have to to abandon that is to is to abandon any kind of ability to define the

01:14:14

Christian faith in any meaningful fashion and so we will look at hermeneutics and then a fascinating conversation that took place just last week over the weekend where someone asked about the

01:14:28

Kami Ohanian the clearly clearly unambiguously unoriginal edition first time five seven and posited an inconsistency described as being odd that I would appeal to textual data in regards to the subject when

01:14:53

I'm holding to solo scripture it was one of the most massive confusion of categories this particular individual confuses categories regularly but other people are picking up on it and I definitely want to talk about that because that's just this is basic Christian defense 101 if we can't if we cannot even go there we're and by the way one of the things

01:15:19

I do want to do as well there was a excellent I tweeted it out but there's awesome article that I ran across that was sent to me on the quote unquote confessional bibliology perspective it just it's sad to see that movement continuing but from a historical perspective it's dead it's it's inherent self contradictory nature is so clear and so doc had been so documented it's amazing but it continues to attract people and that got connected in with all this as well as we're talking about hermeneutics so anyways so sorry to have not gotten to everything

01:16:00

I wanted to get to today but there's just there's just too much there's so much that we need to be thinking about and try to think about consistently with clarity and hopefully helping you to do those particular things so like I said on on Thursday the plan right now is to have the cross -politic gang in for yeah mm -hmm yeah yeah well you used to say you're good so yeah we may have to put a microphone like one of these out and you know in front or you know do stuff like that yeah yeah well get to it um so we're gonna have the cross -politic gang in and then tomorrow

01:16:54

Thursday evening we're all we get together someplace out in Gilbert or someplace like that I I don't

01:17:01

I have to look it up before I get there so that that's always an interesting encounter when you get chocolate knocks in here and so he's gonna be very nervous

01:17:11

I'm sure coming in here he's just sort of a nervous guy you know he seems really calm cool and collected on the program but nice around me anyways he seems to be a nervous guy so and ritual ritual control the buttons and oh that also means that means we need to we need to find a

01:17:31

Wurlitzer organ sound effect somewhere in there just to make him feel at home because he's he's the one does he does the set the organ sound effects and stuff