#66 From Jesus to Today's Denominations: Church History, Heresy & Authority + Dr. John Woodbridge

Jesus, the Apostles, and the Need for Church History

Jesus lived, he died, he rose, and then what? If Jesus founded the church, why are there so many denominations?

Nero was an emperor in 64, he lit Rome up with fire, but he blamed the Christians. They were put on crosses, dogs went after them, they were persecuted rudely.

So who's keeping them united?

Bishops around the Mediterranean Basin prosecute the blue of the church.

If I was living as a first century Jew during that time, what powers, politics, events directly impacted these theological decisions?

Some of the movements claim to be Christian, but will be

Hello, hello.

Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino, and I'm your host.

In this podcast,.

We talk about the Bible in simple terms with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding God easier. These conversations have transformed my relationship with Christ and understanding of religion.

Now I'm sharing these recorded conversations with you. On this podcast,.

We talk about the facts, the history,.

And the translations to make the Bible make sense so we can get to know God our creator better.

Hi, it's Cass. I wanted to first start off by saying thank you for listening. I created this because I could not find it anywhere else on the internet. And it takes a very small team and a large upfront investment to make it all possible.

I really hope that you find it valuable. I would never expect anything from my listeners, and I'm always gonna do my best to first outsource support from brands. However, if you do find value in this episode, I invite you to contribute an amount equal to the value that you have received, either through a one-time or a monthly donation linked in the show notes below.

I understand that not everyone, though, can donate monetarily. So I ask that if you love Biblically Speaking and you cannot donate, please show your support by subscribing to this channel wherever you're listening so that it tells the hosting platform to show Biblically Speaking to more curious and confused Christians.

In exchange for the support, I personally promise to you to always create the highest quality production possible. Thank you so much for listening. Now let's get to the show. Hello, hello. My name is Cassian Bellino, and I'm the host for Biblically Speaking.

The Church After Jesus and the Rise of Persecution

I've got a couple of questions today when it comes to the timeline of church. Because if you're a Christian and you're listening, okay, we started with Jesus, but there's so many denominations out there.

Today, we're going to explore what happened between then and now. Because if Jesus founded the church, why are there so many denominations? What happened? Jesus lived, he died, he rose, and then what?

What did the apostles do? What happened after the apostles died? What started the split in churches that we now know today? This is going to tackle those questions today with a very respected voice in church history.

If you know me and you know any of these episodes, I love historical breakdowns. I love the context of understanding what was going on beyond the pages of the Bible that adds value and enrichment and reasoning to the splits that we saw throughout history.

Today, we have Dr. John Woodbridge. You are a research professor of church history and the history of Christian thought at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. You taught at Northwestern, the University of Toulouse, and the Sorbonne.

I think I'm saying that totally wrong, but your expertise spans evangelicalism, the French Enlightenment, and the history of biblical authority. Welcome to the show, Dr. Woodbridge.

Thank you very much. It's a real honor to be here with you, Cassian. I mean that.

The honor is all mine. I am so excited to understand the historical timelines here and how we got to where we are. How did you find yourself focusing on this personally?

I was raised in a Christian home, but left the faith when I was in college. And as it turns out, I started studying history. And it's too long a story to get into for today, but it was studying history.

I like to go to old bookshops. And I went to one, I was studying at the University of Toulouse in France. I picked up a book by a Roman Catholic. His name was Daniel Rose. Title of his book was Jesus Christ and His Times.

And I read it, and he talked about Tacitus and Pliny the Younger, and I was not a believer. And I was struck by the fact that Tacitus and Pliny the Younger spoke about Jesus, and they were pagan historians, and they had no reason whatsoever to keep the Jesus myth alive.

So that stunned me, and I thought Jesus probably actually lived. These pagans didn't have any reason to believe he did, or to hold onto that. And so God started to work in my life, and it was in a Roman Catholic church in Toulouse, and I walked in one evening in a pelting rainstorm, and I said, God, if you exist, help me out, because I don't believe anything.

And that was the start back. So I got into this field. I was in the area of history already, but then became very interested in Christianity.

Oh, wow.

So how did history before Jesus and history after Jesus, what was that like?

Well, history before Jesus was, I was trained technically as a historian in Europe, and very much oriented towards what was known as the Now School, social and economic history, so that I did my work from the point of view of explaining things in terms of horizontal factors, because, and then it turns out that we now know that we have to be very careful.

We can't explain everything by horizontal factors, and people don't always do what they should do, given their background. And so this made a tremendous difference, looking at history, because there became another factor in history, and that's God.

And then the question is, how does God relate to talking about history when you've been trained more or less towards the left of Marxist historiography?

So I like how you put that, historical understanding versus vertical, and understanding God's work within history, and how he can kind of shape the timelines, and how people act in events.

That's right.

Okay, well, speaking of God, let's get right into it. I kind of think on a horizontal timeline, and it's Jesus lives, he dies, and then he ascends. What happens to that Christian community after his resurrection and ascension?

What do people do, and how did it look?

Yes, that's a very good point to raise initially. I wish we had far more documentation on early Christianity than we do. What we do have, we have the scriptures, and then we have a group of people who are known as the apostolic writers, and we have apostolic apologists.

So we're so much limited in terms of what we can say from a Christian point of view. We obviously know the Roman background, and so forth. In brief summary, let's say, let's pick up in the 90s. John passes away, and so your question comes to the fore.

What was the church like? Already it had been suffering persecution. In other words, Nero had done a number on the Christians in Rome by 64, and that's very important to understand that because the Book of Romans takes on a whole different light when you understand the Neroan persecution, and you go into Romans 8, where Paul says, nothing can separate us from the love of God.

He's writing that book to the Romans who are suffering things. So persecution has already hit, and in the 90s it hits again, and underneath a man named Domitian. So one element of what the church is facing is already rounds of persecution.

A second issue that they're facing is the fact that most of the early Christians were Jews, and so consequently, as you know, the Council of Jerusalem and so forth, the issue comes up as should the Gentiles be reached, and questions are coming up in the latter part of the first century about what should be the strictures for Christians?

Should Jewish customs still hold on to the Christian? And that takes us right into the Book of Galatians. So by the time you get to 100, you're working, the Christians are dealing with the question of how do they relate to their Jewish brethren if they don't happen to be Jewish?

And then they also have to deal with Rome. The question then comes up towards 100, what were the beliefs? And I'll cease and desist because I get off on this too much.

We love a self-aware guest.

But the point is that we already start by 100, we start to know what they're believing in. There's a work we could talk about a little bit. It's called the Didache. It comes out towards 100 or thereabouts, and it tells us what they believe, but that's a start.

Okay, okay, yeah, I definitely wanna get into that. But you're thinking, okay, so the church is Jewish, the church, the people that are still believing what Jesus was teaching, but they're undergoing mass persecution.

Who's leading?

Because you would think that once people start getting killed they would kind of scatter, they would kind of give up. So who's keeping them united?

Right, that's a really good question. The key point, I think, comes in some regards with Paul's admonition to Timothy. Pass on the word to faithful people. So there are faithful people. The question is, who are these faithful leaders?

Just your question. And we get a sense of who they are already in scripture because in Acts 20 and also in the pastoral epistles, the leadership turns out to be individuals who are called presbyteros or episkopos.

In other words, either presbyteros or bishops. And that's the vocabulary for the leadership in the church. Basically the words at presbyteros and episkopos, the words are used simultaneously for different positions in the leadership of the church.

Was that, were those words that were used in like other church settings or were those brand new words for this specific Christian movement?

They probably have some backdrop in Judaism. I don't, I'm not as familiar with that as I should be. But the word presbyteros has to do, ultimately will be presbyter. Episkopos means bishop. So what's gonna happen between those letters in scripture, when we get to the first century, a gentleman whose name is Ignatius of Antioch, he's gonna be the individual who's gonna change the format, taking the, this is a little complicated, but taking the episkopos, the bishop, and making him higher than the presbyter.

So you start to have in the first century in terms of leadership, bishops who are over presbyters. Now presbyters going laterally, they become priests. So that by, in the first century in terms of leadership, you start to have around the Mediterranean basin, groups of individuals who are called bishops.

And they're around the Mediterranean basin, and they have underneath them, the presbyters. This is really quite a development. And this makes a lot of difference in terms of the way you think about the authority of the church.

For the Orthodox, this is exactly bread and butter for them. And as they think about it, also for Protestants as well, that the early church had bishops, they were the dominant forces. Now, from a Roman Catholic point of view, the argument will be that the Bishop of Rome was already in development there, but see, there's where you have a discrimination.

You talked about divisions between Roman Catholics, Roman Protestants, and Orthodox. The Protestants and Orthodox more or less have the same interpretation, that the early bishops, they constitute the authority of the church.

And that's called what is known as mono-episcopacy around the Mediterranean. But when they get together, that's a new concept that comes into being, it's called collegial episcopacy. All the bishops together, the sessiprian, constitute the glue of the church.

And so when bishops get together and they decide something, that becomes the authority structure for the creeds. So that's when in Nicaea, Constantine calls the bishops together. What gives the authority to Nicaea, and these councils that we're talking about?

It's these bishops. These bishops were post-death of the apostles.

Yes, these are the trouble. See, I'm obviously biased. I'm an evangelical Christian, in the sense that I think the Bible talks about bishops and priests together, but this big move that takes place between scripture and Ignatius, when you start to separate things out so the bishop becomes important.

Ignatius is going to suffer persecution. He's a great Christian man. You know, he's taken to, he dies in an arena in Rome, but he's going to say, nothing can really happen without the bishop. So the bishops become very, very important.

And they become, in orthodoxy, they become the patriarchs ultimately, backdrop. But in the Western church, they are the bishops. And then as it turns out, their authority creates the context for these creeds.

Now, consequently, in terms of the Roman Catholic way of things, thinking that this is not quite right, because the Bishop of Rome is supposed to be over all of them. And that's where the disputes ensue.

And from an orthodox point of view, and from a Protestant point of view, I think most orthodox historians or Protestant historians would say, full-fledged sort of Roman Catholic way of things doesn't really become dominant until the fifth century, when the papacy emerges.

So if I were orthodox, I would say on your program, I would say, we never submitted to the Catholic church. And Protestants would say, we never submitted to the Catholic church. And the Catholics would say, oh, yes, you did.

We're in charge. So that's sort of part of the structure.

Heresy, Creeds, and the Rules of Faith

Okay, this perfectly leads into my next question. Thank you. Okay, so we have divisions here. And I think it's really important for me is like, okay, we've got Jesus, apostles, and then we've got these group leaders, these bishops that start coming.

When did the major divisions start? How did we even get to a point where we're discussing Protestant versus Catholic versus orthodox, and what was causing these splits? Because you would think that we all just witnessed everything of Jesus.

We have the writings in front of us. We have leaders kind of guiding us forward in this faith. Why are we splitting off? Where did these different beliefs even come from?

Yes, as you may remember, there are already divisions that are talked about in scripture itself. You know, the Corinthian church, there are splits there. Paul tries to deal with them. Then the Bishop of Rome, his name is Clement, in the 90s, he writes a letter to Corinth, a First Clement letter.

And he's still dealing with divisions already. Their divisions seem to have come very, very early on. And it gets down to the issue of interpretation of scripture. But then there's another issue as well, and that is very early on, what is known as heresy kicks in.

And so some of the movements that will emerge to bring about splits will claim to be Christian, but will be, in point of fact, heretical. So that some of the splits that we're talking about in the early church, sometimes they're between pretty conservative Christians, but sometimes the splits are often with these other groups of Valentinians.

There are all kinds. Irenaeus says there are over 200 views, 200 types of Gnosticism. So the church faces all of these groups. So then the question comes up, and your question is really good. What do you do about that?

And so that's part of the backdrop for having creeds. And that's part of the backdrop for having what are known as rules of faith. How do you get over divisions? And so the question comes up then, how do we know for sure this is what the Christian faith is?

And very early on, and this is pretty, for me personally, it's pretty exciting because your question is so good. How do you know it's the real deal? The real deal is that the Christians, they led by the Holy Spirit, I believe, Irenaeus, Tertullian and others, they draw up rules of faith and say, this is it.

So when I teach this class in this church history, I read these rules of faith. And again, I'm biased as an evangelical, but when I read the rules of faith, I think, wow, we could use that in our church.

That rule of faith is, the rule of faith of Tertullian says, all those who believe. It talks about all the things that most of us would believe in. So these rules, because of the problems we just talked about, you raised, that's how people then are able to, in one sense, try to deal with splits.

One will be rules, and the other thing will be to have bishops, to have authority structures for people who are in authority to say, this is what's right, this is what's wrong, because these difficulties take place.

And in God's grace, I mean, it's amazing. We're talking about something that's less fun to talk about, but the church is growing like crazy. I mean, when you read the letter of Pliny the Younger to Trajan in the early part of the second century, Pliny is saying, look, Christianity, he's from Bithynia, which is in Turkey, today's Turkey, Christianity is spreading like crazy.

By the time you get to the latter part of the second century Tertullian will say to pagans, we've only left you your temples. Christianity is spreading dramatically. So despite all this other stuff, the gospel is going forward in these various places.

Wow, okay, so we have this split, and I understand that. There's kind of this pagan world that people are existing in. Of course, there's gonna be Gnostic and heretical interpretations of the word. That's kind of splitting out these different denominations that the Bible itself addresses.

But then you have the Catholics and the Orthodox and the Protestant, all of which are slightly different, but all rooted in these rules of faith, these creeds that you discuss. It sounds like those worked, though, despite these changes.

There's a small jump from these are heretical beliefs to these are the rules of faith, and we're gonna stay Protestant, we're gonna stay Orthodox, we're gonna stay Catholic. Which one came first? Does it matter?

No, in some regards it doesn't matter because Protestants see themselves as Catholics. I'm a Catholic. We believe that it's church universal.

I am?

I would say I'm Protestant. I guess I didn't know that.

No, I'm a Protestant, but Catholic, the key issue is the adjective Roman. In other words, the word Catholic has to do with the universal. You believe in the church. There is a church that is universal to which believers adhere.

But when you put the adjective in, the Roman, that localizes things. It takes it down to a particular group of people the same way with Orthodoxy. Your question comes up, and it's a very good question.

If I just, just a few words on it. By the way, you know we're dealing with big time stuff. This has a lot to do with a lot of things, but I gave a lecture once at a Catholic seminary because on these issues, and the provost came up to me afterwards, and when it's the provost, you listen to him.

He came up to me, he's a Catholic, and he said, John, you're talking about these divisions, just like you and I are, Cassian. And he said, do you know where the real, part of the real difference comes?

I said, I thought I did, because we can talk about what happens between Orthodoxy and Catholicism and so forth. There are divisions, theological. The Orthodox are very concerned about what is known as the filial clause.

There are all kinds of issues that they're concerned about. But this provost said to me, he said, it gets down to St. Augustine. I said, to St. Augustine? How so? He said, particularly the issue of sin, that Augustine, you know, who writes in the early fifth century, he will argue that we were impacted by sin in a dramatic way, and he, in Latin, he actually comes up and says that we cannot help with sin.

And so this provost was telling me that that is a key issue in terms of the split issue, because in Orthodoxy, there is, at least as I understand it, and I worked in Orthodoxy somewhat, there is a goal to live the Christian life and to come to be more like Christ, work towards perfection.

And that whole idea of working towards perfection, you work hard at it, and the Orthodox are wonderful in many regards on this, with their liturgies and singing and with emphasis on the book of John and the Eucharist and so forth.

But from an Augustinian point of view, I think this Catholic was trying to tell me, that becomes a very difficult thing because you may be minimizing the full impact of what sin does, the goal of perfection, yes, but coming close to achieving it.

That's a pretty hard thing to do, given our sin nature. And the same thing will be true in some regards, from a Catholic point of view, is working on our salvation. So some of, and talking about Christians now, Christians have different views in some regards of what's capable for us as believers, whether we can work out our salvation, and that means that we actually win our salvation.

And that's why in my own, you know, I came from unbelief. One of the things that was so striking to me is it is, that's before a lot of people who are Catholics and Orthodox, is John 5, 24, and these are written, that you may know that you have eternal life.

That idea of knowing that you have eternal life, that transfixes the concept of being able to work towards winning your salvation. And so for, I worked with evangelicals and Catholics together for 30 years, these wonderful people.

And one of the issues that's at stake is this is working out your salvation, but then not being overconfident as an evangelical or anybody else, but your salvation is available to you. And that is the same thing for Orthodox folks as well.

Talking about splits between evangelicals, Orthodox.

And

So it doesn't really matter on which one came first.

No, it really doesn't matter which one came first because in one sense, the issue is, most will uphold the creeds. So the point, a lot of this comes down to in terms of your own personhood, to your own beliefs.

I mean, Luther, for example, will argue that Europeans are basically Christian up to the 12th century, that's Luther. That the gospel was there in various places, even in Catholicism from his point of view.

And so to say there's this one time where everything splits is really, I mean, people have often said that in history books, 1054, the split, but boy, there are a lot of other things that happened beforehand and a lot depends on individual churches and people.

Roman Authority, Tradition, and Justification by Faith

I wanna take a minute and say thank you to the recording service that has made this podcast possible, Riverside. When I started my podcast, I had literally no idea what I was doing. And I just wanted a single way to record, edit and share content without wasting time.

On different platforms.

Then a friend suggested Riverside to me.

And I'll tell you what, it was literally an answer to prayer.

With just one login, I can record my interviews with scholars, clip interview moments into Reels for Instagram and TikTok and post directly onto my RSS feed and Spotify, all without the extra downloads, platforms, all of it.

So for the curious and confused people like me, the best part is that the crew at Riverside actually listens to their users when they need help. I wanted an editing preset to save time on creating Reel templates and they listened.

They literally implemented a new feature. And since using Riverside, my social clips have reached over a million people each month. And I haven't even unlocked all the features yet. Live streaming is gonna be next.

So if you're considering starting a podcast or you just need to edit at a pro level for content or interviews, I cannot recommend Riverside enough. If this is helpful for you, I ask that you click the affiliate link I provided in the show notes description.

It costs nothing extra to you and it gives a small kickback to me, which helps the channel stay alive. Thank you so much.

Now back to the show.

Got it.

I think one of the things that really fascinate me about the Bible is like what was happening beyond the pages. Like if I was living as a first century Jew during that time, and of course we're recording our faith and we're participating our faith, was there other factors at play that maybe didn't make it into like the pages of the Bible?

But if you lived at that time, you would have been aware of them and experiencing them that clearly had an impact on the development of history. And I guess my question is like, during this time of the church forming and the church splitting into these different denominations, what powers, politics, events were happening at that time that directly impacted these theological decisions?

Like was there decisions by the emperor that kind of gives context to what was happening in the Bible?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, to talk about impact, it's Nero. I mean, starting off with these

Who is Nero? I don't actually know that name.

Nero was an emperor in 64. And he decided that there needed to be a new building program and probably this is his thought in Rome. And so he lit Rome up, fire, but he blamed the Christians. And so he blamed them and they were put on crosses, dogs went after them and they were persecuted rudely.

And that's why when Paul wrote, as I was mentioning earlier, to the book of Romans, the book of Romans and he writes to the Romans and they receive the wonderful chapter Romans 8, nothing can separate us from the love of God.

The book of Romans takes on a whole new, at least it did for me, a whole new flavor going back to your topic of knowing what's going on in a larger world that shapes a lot more what you're thinking about in terms of reading Romans.

You read Romans 8, persecution, you read Romans 1 and 2, where Paul talks about how perverse Rome is and so forth. So for Christians living a lifestyle that would be different than the Roman system and see for the Christians, they face this, as you probably may remember, they were charged with all kinds of things.

They were charged with cannibalism, as you may remember, because they had the Lord's Supper. They were charged with licentiousness because they were to kiss each other and so forth. All kinds of things that they face so that the apologists who come out, talking about the larger context, the apologists of the second century, what do they have to do?

They not only have to defend that Christianity is true, but they have to defend Christian lifestyle because of your topic, that is what's going on in the Roman world, because from the Roman point of view, there's a wonderful book by a man named Wilkinson.

It's called The Christians as the Romans Viewed Them. And in that book, he points out the Romans were really bothered by the Christians because they had these secret meetings and having secret meetings that was associated with sedition.

The Christians wouldn't participate in the Roman games. So you have all that going on. And then the question comes up, well, how could they spread? And that takes us right into the world of persecution.

And the fact is that the early Christians had a, I wish I were like them. They really believe that when you die, you go to heaven. So that when you, I mean, I believe that too, but they were really ready to go.

Consequently, they were very difficult to put down and spreading because they were willing to die. So the person we have coming in and talking about your topic, the persecution, first of all, you have persecution by the whim of the emperor, Nero, Domitian and so forth.

Then you have persecution laterally by people who don't like the Christians. And then ultimately you have the first sort of serious world Roman persecution takes place under Decius. So the world situation really, in terms of the Romans and others, that does affect the Christian life in a dramatic way.

But the thing that is so stunning to me personally is a Stertullian says, the more you mow us down, the blood of the martyrs is a seed. And so Christianity spreads. So we teach church history, you say, people say, wouldn't it be wonderful to be back in the early church?

Yeah, maybe for some parts of it. Maybe for some parts, but man, I tell you, these wonderful Christians, they died for the faith and so the gospel couldn't be held back. This is why it was very hard to put down the Christians.

Running my own podcast, I'm always moving too fast. I'm finding guests, I'm editing episodes, I'm creating reels or guesting on other shows. Not to mention, I just live in a world that moves fast.

Notifications, trends, endless to-do lists.

You know what feels like a blessing in all that?

Slowing down.

I love nothing more than a moment to pause, be present and choose something timeless. That's exactly what Dwell Label is all about. When I first discovered Dwell Label, it wasn't just about the clothes, it was about a mindset, thoughtful, intentional fashion that doesn't scream for attention,.

But instead invites you to slow down.

Their pieces are modern takes on classic styles, made to last, not just for the season, but for years. I love that I can throw on a Dwell Label outfit for editing in a coffee shop, Bible studies or looking professional in an interview.

It always feels right, comfortable, effortless, elevated.

And here's the best part.

Dwell Label does not just talk about rest.

They live it.

Their website literally doesn't work on Sundays because they believe in pausing and dwelling on what matters most.

So if you're looking for high quality, timeless fashion.

That aligns with a lifestyle of intention and presence, I can't recommend Dwell Label enough.

Shop Dwell. Label with the link in the show notes.

And use my code BIVSPEAK15, B-I-V-S-P-E-A-K 15 for an exclusive discount at checkout. Take a breath, slow down, and dwell in the good things.

Now, back to the show.

The Middle Ages, Scholasticism, and the Road to the Reformation

Is there even a time in Christian history that you would wanna go back to other than now?

Wow, that's a good question.

What's the golden age of Christianity, if not today?

Well, that's, you know, frankly, I've never even thought about that.

Jesus, just when Jesus, just go back to that time.

Right, no, but I have to tell you, I think for me personally, if you were gonna give an illustration, which was amazing, I think, 1857, 1858, an awakening went through the whole United States. It's not talked about much in our history books.

I think I've taught at secular universities, as you said. It's not there, but you talk, think about a person like Dwight L. Moody. He says he could only really wish to go back to 1857, 58. Now, there are other illustrations of this.

What happened in those years?

Wow, what happened is that a young man whose name was Jeremiah Lamphere decided to pray. And so what he did was he sent out a pamphlet, made pamphlets, passed them out in New York City, and he invited people to a prayer meeting in October of 1857.

And businessmen came. It's known as the Noonday Prayer Meetings. They started between 12 and one o 'clock. They started to pray. And then using the telegraph system, the prayer meeting started to go out through New York, from New York to Boston, and across the United States, and probably a million individuals came to Christ between 57 and 58, right before the Civil War.

So there have been these times, and again, I had never quite thought about it personally, but to have been there is absolutely stunning. And the fact that Moody wanted to be there gives at least some justification for wanting to be back there.

So it was kind of like this mass movement of people starting to pray?

They prayed, but how they prayed, they met from 12 to one, the businessmen did in these meetings, all across the country, Wisconsin, any state, there were these prayer meetings. And what did they do? They had signs up, and the sign said, you can't talk for more than five minutes.

You can't get into any controversial issue about theology. What you can only do is say a verse, say a song we should sing, but also we wanna know if you have prayer requests. And so they started to pray for people, their husbands and wives who were not Christians.

And that lit a fire that went right across the United States. And so the chief church for this was a Fulton Street Church in New York City, it's down Wall Street. And that launched something that's one of the most amazing awakenings that's ever came to America.

So I never thought about thinking about going back to that, but that would be a wonderful time. And in fact, the power of the Holy Spirit was so great that when people got on the docks of New York City, they sensed it.

The whole areas of town were impacted by this. Down in Georgia, they closed down some of the prison because there were no takers. I mean, it's that sort of thing.

Whoa, oh my gosh, that was a great answer. Thank you.

I didn't know any of this.

This is insane.

Well, it is insane in the sense that if one were gonna make a PR piece for doing church history, one of the things I would put in it is to tell the stories of God at work in great power and particularly in revivals.

Because sometimes, Jonathan Edwards said this, if you want revivals to take place, the question, you need to talk about them. People, sometimes we have scripture, but then they wonder if scripture, quote, unquote, really works.