{"id":18884,"date":"2017-07-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-07-02T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sugar-land-bible-church.local\/sermon\/protestant-reformation-004\/"},"modified":"2017-07-02T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-07-02T05:00:00","slug":"protestant-reformation-004","status":"publish","type":"sermon","link":"https:\/\/slbc.org\/es\/sermon\/protestant-reformation-004\/","title":{"rendered":"Protestant Reformation 004"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","book":[85],"series_event":[480],"sermon_service_type":[473],"speaker":[6],"class_list":["post-18884","sermon","type-sermon","status-publish","hentry","book-matthew","series_event-protestant-reformation","sermon_service_type-sunday-school","speaker-dr-andy-woods","no-post-thumbnail"],"acf":{"sermon_title":"Protestant Reformation 004","sermon_date":"20170702","sermon_month":"7","sermon_year":"2017","sermon_notes":4770,"sermon_slides":4771,"sermon_mp3":4775,"sermon_id":"7217103366","series_or_event":480,"service_type":[473],"speaker":6,"books_of_the_bible":85,"chapter_and_verse":"16:18","sermon_transcript":"Andy Woods\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Protestant Reformation 004\n\nMatthew 16:18\n\nFather, we\u2019re grateful for this morning and we\u2019re grateful for Your Word and we\u2019re grateful for Your truth; we\u2019re grateful for the United States of America and this special weekend where we commemorate the miracles that you did to liberate us from a situation where we had no sovereignty over our leadership, and we praise you for that.\u00a0 And make us mindful of those things this weekend; help us not to be just a weekend about barbeques and fun but help us to reflect upon what You\u2019ve done here on these shores. And I just pray you\u2019ll be with our teaching time this morning, both in Sunday School, all of our Sunday School teachers and the sermon and communion, the time of fellowship afterwards.\u00a0 And I just ask, Father, that if it\u2019s Your will people would leave here eternally changed.\u00a0 We\u2019ll be careful to give You all the praise and the glory.\u00a0 We lift these things up in Jesus\u2019 name, and God\u2019s people said\u2026 Amen.\n\nGood morning everybody.\u00a0 Happy Fourth of July weekend.\u00a0 I think so far Wayne Thompson wins the award for the most patriotically dressed\u2026 I said Wayne, you win the award for the most patriotically dressed.\u00a0 I thought I was going to win it today but I have an Israel tie on and I\u2019ll explain why that is when we get to this sermon.\u00a0 But anyway, if we could take our Bibles and open them to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16 and verse 18. Of course, I want to thank Jim McGowan for subbing in last week.\u00a0 Did you all enjoy Jim\u2019s ministry last week in Sunday School.\u00a0 All right, praise the Lord.\n\nIn case you have forgotten, because we had a one-week lapse as I was in Australia last weekend, we\u2019ve been talking about the Protestant Reformation.\u00a0 We\u2019ve done about three lessons on the Protestant Reformation and this is lesson 4.\u00a0 The reason we are talking about the Protestant Reformation is because as we\u2019ve said before, this October 31st<\/sup> will be the 500th<\/sup> year anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the Cathedral door in Wittenberg, Germany.\u00a0\u00a0 So everybody is going to be talking about the Protestant Reformation and I don\u2019t think we fully understand as evangelicals the significance of the Protestant Reformation; it\u2019s just sort of something that happened 500 years ago and we don\u2019t really understand what God did.\n\nSo we\u2019re doing something a little different, we\u2019re not doing a verse by verse study through a book of the Bible; we\u2019re taking a look at what God did after the canon of Scripture was shut.\u00a0 And when you understand that you begin to understand the need for the Protestant Reformation and its significance.\n\nSo here\u2019s the outline that we\u2019re using.\u00a0 We started off with the early church.\u00a0 The early church would be the first generation of Christians following the apostles.\u00a0 And what we discovered there in that circle up north is there arose a school in Antioch that took the Bible which way?\u00a0 Figuratively or literally?\u00a0 Literally and that\u2019s basically the approach of the church, particularly in the area of Bible prophecy, for its first two centuries.\u00a0 There\u2019s another map showing you Antioch.\u00a0 And unless you understand that first bullet point you can\u2019t really understand what was lost and you can\u2019t understand why God raised up the Reformers.\u00a0 The Reformers were basically raised up to get us back to Antioch.\n\nThe second big area we looked at was the Alexandrian eclipse and this is where we discover what went wrong and that\u2019s that second circle towards the bottom there in Alexandria, Egypt or North Africa; it\u2019s down there in the south.\u00a0 There\u2019s another map showing you where Alexandria, Egypt was.\u00a0 There developed a rival school and these are folks that introduced the allegorical method of interpretation, which we\u2019ve talked about, allegorization.\n\nAllegorization basically is the idea that you don\u2019t take the text at face value, you use the text as a vehicle for bringing in a higher meaning that only you are aware of as the interpreter.\u00a0 So Philo, who did this with Judaism, just before the time of Christ, said that the four rivers in Eden, the Pishon, the Gihon, the Euphrates and the Tigris, are really not four rivers, those represent different parts of the soul.\u00a0 So that\u2019s what you call allegorization and I think I\u2019ve showed you what they did with the gates around the walls of Jerusalem, as described in Nehemiah 3.\u00a0 They basically would say these are not literal gates but each gate has a higher spiritual meaning.\u00a0\u00a0 We\u2019ve talked about that, haven\u2019t we.\n\nAnd we\u2019ve talked about basically why this method of allegorization is wrong.\u00a0 We gave four reasons for that.\u00a0 Number 1, the text is not being interpreted.\u00a0 Number 2, authority is being transferred from the text to the interpreter. \u00a0Number 3, there\u2019s no way to test the interpreter.\u00a0 And number 4 there\u2019s no way to control the interpreter\u2019s imagination.\n\nAnd from there we began to explain how it was that Alexandria, Egypt, won the day and eclipsed what was happening at Antioch, even though the Antiochian mindset reign supreme for two centuries something shifted, probably around the close of the second century, and we began to explain why that happened.\u00a0\u00a0 We gave six reasons, the need for relevance, the experimentation with human philosophy, gnostic dualism, the decline of the church\u2019s Jewish population, Constantine\u2019s edict of Milan, and then finally everybody said you can\u2019t take these prophecies literally because by the time Alexandria took off the Jews had already been pushed out of their homeland by the Romans in A.D.\u00a0 70.\u00a0 So it seemed anybody that took these prophecies literally was crazy; there\u2019s nothing over there but a barren expanse and it\u2019s under Roman control now.\n\nSo you put all six of these together and you begin to see how over the course of time Alexandria, Egypt, eclipsed the literal approach that you find happening at Antioch.\u00a0 And I think I introduced you to two major allegorizers, didn\u2019t I?\u00a0 One of them was Origen, and who was the most influential one?\u00a0 Augustine, and by the time The City of God<\/em> is written, which is the first formal treatment of amillennialism in church history, it was almost a sealed deal and the church shifted away from chiliasm, which is premillennialism (which is what it taught for the first two centuries) into amillennialism which is the idea that you spiritualize Bible prophecies.\u00a0 And the reason I\u2019m using Bible prophecy as sort of a bellwether here is because your attitude towards Bible prophecy, once you begin to spiritualize it it\u2019ll quickly move into spiritualizing other aspects of the divine truth.\n\nSo allegorization took off\u00a0 and that shifted us into Roman numeral III ( I think we started barely talking about this last time) a period of time called the Dark Ages.\u00a0 So what were the Dark Ages all about?\u00a0 The Dark Ages lasted for over a thousand years, which is a long time.\u00a0 It lasted from the fourth century A.D. (roughly) right up to the point in time where Martin Luther, in the sixteenth century, nailed his 95\u00a0 Thesis to the cathedral door in Wittenberg, Germany.\u00a0 So that is the significance of the Protestant Reformation; they\u2019re pulling us out of the Dark Ages.\n\nAnd what happened during this time period is the study of prophecy, particularly, became almost obsolete.\u00a0 The church really had very little interest in prophecy, they had very little interest (with some exceptions) in the end times.\u00a0 They had very little interest in God\u2019s future program for Israel.\u00a0 You know, all the subjects that we bring up here in this church over and over again, those subjects are by and large lost to the church from about the fourth century to the sixteenth century and what begins to dominate the thinking of the theologians and the church leaders is what\u2019s called Augustinian amillennialism.\u00a0 So chiliasm was sort of looked at as your grandfathers grandfather\u2019s way of thinking; that\u2019s a forgotten thing, that\u2019s just a fable that people once believed.\u00a0 And what starts to dominate Christian thought is amillennialism, coming from Augustine, and The City of God<\/em>, who I believe Augustine largely got his hermeneutic of his method of interpretation from the Alexandrian school there in Egypt, allegorization.\n\nSo I don\u2019t like to just make statements, I like to show you where I\u2019m getting this information from.\u00a0 Renald Showers, who\u2019s really a top notch scholar, I believe he\u2019s with Friends of Israel, if I\u2019m not mistaken, he\u2019s written a lot of wonderful books, wonderful articles, he makes this statement.\u00a0 He says concerning the Dark Ages, \u201cAugustinian\u2019s allegorical amillennialism became the official doctrine of the church.\u00a0 Premillennialism,\u201d which is what we believe here, \u201cor chiliasm as it was taught for the first two centuries in Antioch, went underground.\u00a0 Some aspects of premillennialism were even branded as heretical.\u00a0 The Roman Catholic Church\u201d which by the way was the only church during this time period, \u201cThe Roman Catholic Church strongly advocated and maintained Augustine\u2019s amillennial view throughout the Middle Ages.\u201d Sometimes people call the Dark Ages the Middle Ages so both of those terms are synonymous.\u00a0 \u201cDuring that span of time occasionally\u201d see God always has a remnant, \u201cpremillennial groups formed to challenge the doctrine and political power of the major part of organized Christendom but they were not able to restore premillennial\u00adism to its original position as the accepted orthodox view of the church.\u201d\n\nSo the Antiochian school of thought lost ground and it really couldn\u2019t be recovered, except for a few blips on the radar screen, throughout this over one thousand year period called the Middle Ages or the Dark Ages.\u00a0 And we look at all of that and we say well what about Christ\u2019s promise here in Matthew 16:18, \u201cI also say that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will built My church and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.\u201d\u00a0 Well, God always has a faithful remnant.\u00a0 Isn\u2019t it right, in Elijah\u2019s day there were how many that hadn\u2019t bowed the knee to Baal?\u00a0 If I remember right there was like 7,000.\n\nAnd so you can look throughout the Middle Ages and you can see kind of some shining lights but they are really far and few between.\u00a0 One of the shining lights is a guy named Pseudo Ephraim, and Pseudo means false so it\u2019s generally believed that this guy who wrote this sermon was not the actual famous Ephraim, the Syriac, but he was sort of using Ephraim\u2019s penname and this shows up around the fourth to the sixth century.\n\nPseudo Ephraim says, \u201cWhy therefore do we reject every care of earthly actions and prepare ourselves for the meeting of the Lord Christ so that He may draw us from the confusion which overwhelms the world, for all the saints and the elect of God are gathered prior to\u201d what? \u201cthe great tribulation.\u201d\u00a0 Oh my goodness, here\u2019s a guy that believed in a future tribulation period.\u00a0 It looks to me like he\u2019s a pretribulational rapturist.\u00a0 If you were to cover up the title you would think Charles Ryrie or somebody said that but this is actually all the way back to the Middle Ages, the fourth to the sixth century.\u00a0 \u201c\u2026the tribulation that is to come and are taken to the Lord lest they see the confusion that is to overwhelm the world because of our sins.\u201d\n\nSo yes, amillennialism takes off, replacement theology takes off, people believe that the church has permanently replaced Israel, they believed they were in the kingdom of God now.\u00a0 But not everybody believed that; as you can see there\u2019s a few dissenters like Pseudo Ephraim, but what Pseudo Ephraim represented here really was a minority position and it really was not well-known during the period of time called The Dark Ages.\u00a0 And what you have to understand is during this time period you only have one church and that church would be what?\u00a0 The Roman Catholic Church.\u00a0 So you don\u2019t have anything like what we have today.\u00a0 You know, in Houston somebody told me that there\u2019s somewhere between 3000 to 4000 churches to pick from.\u00a0 You have one church, the official church, the Roman Catholic Church, of course they have different parishes spread throughout Europe and other places but it\u2019s a virtual monopoly.\u00a0 And it\u2019s under this Roman Catholic influence that these doctrines of allegorical interpretation, amillennialism, and all of these kinds of things really take off relying very heavily on what Augustine wrote in his book The City of God<\/em>.\n\nAnd the key thing I want\u00a0 you to understand about this time period is the Bible is removed from the people.\u00a0 That\u2019s the key thing to understand.\u00a0 There are probably about three reasons that I have there as to why the Bible became removed from the people.\u00a0 The first reason has to do with allegorization; if you move into allegorization the only person that knows the meaning of the allegory is the allegorist himself.\u00a0 So your average person is looked at as sort of a fundamentalist or backwards and they\u2019re just taking the Bible literally and they don\u2019t understand what the Bible means, they haven\u2019t been trained in this allegorical method of interpretation. Well then who is the interpreter?\u00a0 It\u2019s the priest.\u00a0 The priest basically tells you what the Bible means through allegori\u00adzation even though you look at the text of the Bible and it\u2019s not saying, using a literal method of interpretation what the priest is saying.\u00a0 So there is virtually no way to test the allegorist because the allegory is really coming out of the priest\u2019s mind.\n\nAnd what develops during this time period is a huge distinction between the laity, lay people, and the clergy.\u00a0 The laity are way down here and the clergy is way up here.\u00a0 And the clergy are special because they have some kind of special insight (they think), and the people falsely think that the laity do not have.\u00a0 And this is why the priest start to get dressed up in these really fancy robes and all these sort of colors.\u00a0 You get into the New Testament and you don\u2019t find leadership to be dressed up in a way different than the average layman.\u00a0 And so they\u2019re not getting their beliefs from the New Testament, they\u2019re getting their beliefs from the Aaronic priesthood because when you study the Book of Exodus you\u2019ll see Aaron was dressed up (as the high priest of the nation) in a fancy robe and all of these kind of things.\u00a0 And if you believe that the church has\u2026 I would say you can\u2019t use that passage today directly to argue what leadership, the clergy, are supposed to wear because those passages concern who?\u00a0 The nation of Israel.\n\nBut if you believe in replacement theology, that the church is the new Israel, you can just willy-nilly go back into the Old Testament, anything you want\u00a0 you just grab and apply.\u00a0 So the priest is dressed up, he\u2019s sort of different than the laity, he\u2019s looked at as sort of a higher level because he\u2019s the only one who understands the Scripture and the allegories that it supposedly represents.\u00a0 And this is why, when you get to the Protestant Reformation\u00a0 you have the Reformers emphasizing the priesthood of who?\u00a0 What\u2019s the expression? Priesthood of all believers.\u00a0 Did you know you\u2019re a priest, by the way?\u00a0 You say well I don\u2019t feel like a priest and you don\u2019t look like a priest either, neither do I for that matter.\u00a0 But the fact of the matter is Revelation 1:6 tells you very clearly that you are a priest.\u00a0 [Revelation 1:6, \u201cand He has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father-- to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.\u201d]\n\nSo the Reformers are emphasizing the priesthood of all believers to react against this clergy\/laity distinction where only the priest, who\u2019s on some pedestal can interpret the Bible for you.\u00a0 So the Protestant Reformation is basically a back to the Bible movement and it really is what I would call a pro-rank and file movement.\u00a0 And that\u2019s why the middle class and the lower class love Luther, because his teachings were empowering them.\u00a0 During the Dark Ages or the Middle Ages the laity weren\u2019t empowered at all; the priests and the Ecclesiastical hierarchy had all the power so it was very much a top-down structure.\u00a0 \u00a0And Luther comes along and he starts emphasizing the priesthood of all believers and he starts emphasizing the fact that everybody can read the Bible and understand it, and that\u2019s reversing what was happening throughout the Middle Ages.\u00a0 In fact, many historians will tell you that throughout the Middle Ages or the Dark Ages this Bible that we take for granted\u2026 we take this book for granted, don\u2019t we?\n\nWe\u2019ve got Bibles in every translation you could ever want, we\u2019ve got Bibles in all kinds of shapes and sizes.\u00a0 I even have seen Bibles, I saw the environmentalist bible the other day, where they put\u2026 honestly, the Christian bookstore, they put in Green anything that related to the environment.\u00a0 There\u2019s a Weight Watcher\u2019s Bible and on and on we could go.\u00a0 And we have all these cool little explanatory comments here at the bottom of each page and what I\u2019m trying to get us to understand is you don\u2019t have that during the Middle Ages.\u00a0 The Bible, I\u2019m speaking literally here, is chained down to the pulpits. \u00a0Why?\u00a0 Because of allegorical interpretation and the empowerment of the priests.\u00a0 And the average person was basically told you can\u2019t understand the Bible.\n\nAnd something else that\u2019s happening during the Middle Ages is rampant illiteracy.\u00a0 Your average person probably, even if they had a chance couldn\u2019t read the Bible because they are basically illiterate.\u00a0 There\u2019s no emphasis on public education that we have today, and these kind of things, and this is why the Reformers, when their movement begins, one of their key agendas is to raise the literacy standards.\u00a0 And I\u2019m going to be showing you that public education in America, and really around the world, wouldn\u2019t be what it is today if had not been for the Protestant Reformation.\u00a0 And they reason they want literacy standards raised is so people could read the what?\u00a0 The Wall Street Journal?\u00a0 No!\u00a0 The Bible.\n\nNow why would they want to raise literacy standards?\u00a0 So people could read the Bible because of the priesthood of all believers.\u00a0 So they\u2019re trying to reverse essentially what is happening during the Middle Ages and Martin Luther, one of the things he was big into, and I\u2019m going to be, when I get to my pictures of the Protestant Reformation, of course I wasn\u2019t there when the Reformation happened, I\u2019m not that old, but I\u2019ve visited Wittenberg, Germany recently, I\u2019ll show you the actual table where Luther was translating the Scripture.\u00a0 One of Luther\u2019s big agenda items that he was trying to get done is he was trying to take the Scripture and translate it into the vernacular or the language of the common man.\n\nIf I understood our tour guide correctly it took Luther eleven months to translate the New Testament from Greek into German and then it took him eleven years to translate the Old Testament from Hebrew into German.\u00a0 And I asked our tour guide, well why does the New Testament get eleven months and the Old Testament eleven years, Luther was a brilliant guy who could understand Greek and Hebrew, and she basically explained that by the time the New Testament had been translated and all these attacks were coming against Luther.\u00a0 Luther got really sidetracked and he couldn\u2019t work on it single-mindedly the way he had the New Testament so it took him longer to do the Old Testament. But he got the job done.\n\nNow why would a man like Luther spend so much time translating the Bible into the vernacular of the common man?\u00a0 Because of his belief in the priesthood of what?\u00a0 Of all believers.\u00a0 So literacy becomes a big deal for the Protestant Reformers.\u00a0 So do Bible translations.\u00a0 And I get a chuckle out of people who say well your views of prophecy haven\u2019t been taught in the church for 1800 years and I think to myself well yeah, that\u2019s because people were illiterate during that time period. Yeah, that\u2019s because they didn\u2019t have a Bible to read so are you using the dark ages as\u00a0 your example of what correct doctrine should be?\u00a0 So the whole sort of accusation against our camp that we believe things for the last couple hundred years that were never taught for\u2026 from the fourth century to the sixteenth century and they try to disparage our views.\u00a0 You have to understand that they\u2019re using as evidence the Dark Ages when there was illiteracy and the Bible wasn\u2019t even accessible for the common person.\n\nSo allegorization removed the Bible from the laity and empowered the priests; illiteracy removed the Bible from the laity and empowered the priests, and the third thing that removed the Bible from the people and empowered the priests was the idea that the Mass, the Catholic Mass, remember the Catholic Church is the only Church functioning at this time, the Catholic Mass is read in Latin right up to the eve of the Protestant Reformation.\n\nNow there was a guy named Jerome in the fourth century who set out to translate the Bible from the Greek into Latin, which was the lingua franca basically of the Roman Empire.\u00a0 The problem is Latin became a dead language.\u00a0 So what did the church do?\u00a0 They didn\u2019t care about the people, they only cared about their own empowerment so they just kept Latin translations around and they kept reciting the mass over and over and over again in Latin so the average person that wanted to be spiritual would go to a church and they wouldn\u2019t even understand what was being said.\u00a0 You can see Paul reacting against that kind of thing with the issue of tongues.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know how much I want to get into that today.\n\n1 Corinthians 14 there was a gift of tongues happening and Paul is very clear that when the gift of tongues is exercised there must be an interpreter because if someone is up there babbling in some kind of tongue that has no edificational value.\u00a0 So if a church service is being conducted in Latin or a Mass is being conducted in Latin and you don\u2019t have the ability to understand Latin all you can really do is come to a church and maybe look around and see the stained glass windows or whatever, and get kind of a liver-quiver of the day but the church service has no ability to edify you or build you up.\u00a0 So you take these three things, allegorization, illiteracy, the Mass read in Latin and you can begin to understand how the Bible became chained to the pulpit and disempowered the laity and empowered the clergy.\n\nSo if the laity are in that position think you can be manipulated.\u00a0 This leads to what I would call the sale of the indulgences.\u00a0 If the laity or the lay people are in that position of vulnerability then anybody can come along and sell you on any spiritual idea they want to sell you on.\u00a0 So one of the things the church began to do is they began to sell indulgences and basically the idea is, you know, I\u2019m the priest, know that from the Bible (which you don\u2019t have) that there\u2019s a place called purgatory and you know what, your aunt Mary or uncle Joe or grandpa Fred whoever is in purgatory and what you need to do is you need to get them out of purgatory. Well, Mr. Priest, how do I get them out of purgatory?\u00a0 Well, the saying that they came up is when the coin in the coffer rings the soul from purgatory what?\u00a0 Springs.\u00a0 So what happened is this sale of indulgences became a money-making operation.\n\nNow here is Tetzel, Johann Tetzel was active doing this thing right up to the time of Martin Luther.\u00a0 And this is the thing that really upset Luther, is the manipulation of the people.\u00a0 It\u2019s sort of the feeling that you get when you\u2019re channel surfing and you come across so-called Christian television and you see them completely prostituting everything that you believe in, to make money, telling people you\u2019ve got to sow your seed to our station and then God is promising to bless you.\u00a0 You feel a sense of righteous indignation, do you not, when you see that.\u00a0 Think of that emotion multiplied by a hundred or a thousand and that\u2019s what Luther is seeing when he\u2019s watching all of these people that he loves be manipulated by these priests.\u00a0 So Tetzel couched the saying as follows, he says:\u00a0 As the gold in the casket ring the rescued soul to heaven springs.\n\nAnd here is an actual copy of some of the language from one of Tetzel\u2019s sermons.\u00a0 Of course, when he gave a sermon nobody had their Bible out to validate what if what he was saying is true, because of illiteracy and other things, allegorization (as we\u2019ve talked about) so you come into a mass and he would say something like this.\u00a0 This is an actual teaching that he gave:\n\n\u201cBehold, you are on the raging sea of this world in storm and danger, not knowing if you will safely reach the harbor of your salvation\u2026.\u00a0 You should know that all who confess and in penance put alms into the coffer according to the counsel of the confessor, will obtain complete remission of all their sins\u2026.\u00a0 Why are you then standing there?\u00a0 Run for the salvation of your souls!...\u201d\u00a0 And then he really starts to play on people\u2019s heartstrings when he brings deceased relatives into the issue.\n\nHe says, \u201cDon\u2019t you hear the voices of your wailing dead parents\u201d I mean wow, my parents are wailing dead somewhere?\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t you hear the voices of your wailing dead parents and others who say, \u2018Have mercy upon me, have mercy upon me, have mercy upon me, because we are in severe punishment and pain.\u00a0 From this you could redeem us with a small alms and yet\u00a0 you do not want to do so.\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Close quote.\u00a0 \u201cOpen your ears as the father says to the son and the mother to the daughter\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 Quote, \u201cWe have created you,\u201d this is the parent supposedly speaking, \u201cWe have created you fed you, cared for you, and left you our temporal goods.\u00a0 Why then are you so cruel and harsh that you do not want to save us, though it only takes so litter?\u00a0 You let us lie in flames so that we only slowly come to the promised glory.\u2019\u201d Close quote.\u00a0 And then Tetzel concludes by saying, \u201cYou may have letters which let you have, once in life and in the hour of death \u2026full remission of the punishment which belongs to sin\u2026.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 [Tetzel\u201d\u00a0 A Sample Sermon, Hillenbrand 1964:41-3]\n\nCan\u00a0 you see how this would terrorize people?\u00a0 Oh my gosh, the priesthood that\u2019s been empowered for the last thousand years is telling me that my deceased relatives are in purgatory; here it makes it sound like they\u2019re in hell, and the priest who\u2019s the authority is telling me I can get them out for just a little small alm here and there, just a little offering here and there.\u00a0\u00a0 And the people, what I\u2019m trying to say is the people are essentially set up for total manipulation.\u00a0 And so they had turned the mass into a money-making operation.\n\nAnd you know how God feels about that because Jesus, I believe twice, when into the temple, once at the beginning of His ministry, once at the end of the ministry, and remember His reaction?\u00a0 He got so angry over it that He began to overturn tables because they had turned the Father\u2019s house into a marketplace, and the nation of Israel had a come and see strategy.\u00a0 This is why the Queen of Sheba traveled one thousand and two hundred miles to sit at Solomon\u2019s feet.\u00a0 They were going to build this beautiful structure and the nations would come see it and they would see in it a glimpse and the glory of God and learn about God by coming to the land of Israel and studying the Solomonic temple.\n\nAnd by the time of Christ that temple, which by the way had been destroyed by the Babylonians and then rebuilt, became nothing more than a money-making operation.\u00a0 And Jesus is incensed at this because they took something that God had given, which was to attract the nation to God and they turned it into something that repulsed the nations or repelled the nations.\u00a0 And this is the type of emotion that I believe Christ experienced when He saw this; it\u2019s the type of thing that the Holy Spirit is bringing to the mind of a very young Martin Luther.\u00a0 And as this sale of indulgences was happening the political authorities and the ecclesiastical authorities just looked the other way.\u00a0 Why did they look the other way?\u00a0 Because it was a gravy train, it was money coming in.\n\nNow this is St Peter\u2019s Basilica<\/em> in Rome, which today we know is a very beautiful piece of architecture, externally and internally.\u00a0 Here\u2019s just a few pictures of it that I got off the internet, but what you have to understand is during the time of Luther and just prior to the time of Luther this piece of architecture was still being constructed.\u00a0 It was still being built.\u00a0 So what do you need when you build something like that?\u00a0 You need money!\u00a0 And so this sale of indulgences, the Roman Catholic hierarchy was very happy with it because it was bringing in money to build St. Peter\u2019s Basilica in Rome and part of the kick-back went to the governments of the day, so the governments of the day completely gave approval of what the church was doing with the sale of indulgences and this is the mess that the church is in right up to the eve of the Protestant Reformation.\n\nNow why don\u2019t these people just pull out their Bibles and say wait a minute Mr. Priest, I have a question, I don\u2019t see the doctrine of purgatory in here, can you show it to me?\u00a0 Wait a minute, Mr. Priest, I have a question, you\u2019re claiming you can pray people out of hell, pray people out of purgatory, can you give me some biblical references for that?\u00a0 Well, of course, as I\u2019ve explained before they have no ability to do that because they don\u2019t have what?\u00a0 A Bible, it\u2019s not in their language.\u00a0 Besides, even if they could read it the hierarchy was telling them they couldn\u2019t understand it because of the allegorical interpretation borrowed from Alexandria, Egypt.\u00a0 So you have no ability to \u201ctest all things and hold fast to that which is good.\u201d\u00a0 [1 Thessalonians 5:21]\n\nWe underestimate what a gift this Book is to us, that we can understand it and access it and hear things and from hearing things we can discern truth from error.\u00a0 That\u2019s why this Book is called part of our defensive armor in the armor of God.\u00a0 This is why Jesus responded to every satanic lie that came against Him in the wilderness of Judea with a citation from the what?\u00a0 The Scripture.\u00a0 Well, if you don\u2019t have the Scripture, for reasons I\u2019ve explained, then you have no ability to test what\u2019s coming out of the mouths of the authorities.\u00a0 And the capacity to be a Berean was lost during the Dark Ages.\u00a0 You know who the Bereans are?\u00a0 You might want to follow me around to some of these verses.\n\nActs 17:10-11, this is on Paul\u2019s, I think his second missionary journey, \u201cThe brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. [11] Now these\u201d that\u2019s the Bereans, \u201cwere more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica,\u201d so the Bereans, Luke tells us in the Book of Acts, were more noble than the Christians in Thessalonica.\u00a0 Why is that, \u201cfor they\u201d that\u2019s the Bereans, \u201creceived the word with great eagerness,\u201d as Paul explained it, in other words, they were teachable, they weren\u2019t a bunch of you know,\u00a0 pugnacious fighting fundies in that sense, they were teachable but they didn\u2019t receive teaching uncritically, \u201cfor they received the Word of God with great eagerness, \u00a0examining the Scriptures\u201d monthly\u2026 oh, it doesn\u2019t say that does it, \u201cexamining the Scriptures once a week, it doesn\u2019t say that, \u201cexamining the Scriptures\u201d what? \u201cdaily to see<\/em> whether these things were so.\u201d\n\nSo they had a completed canon called the Old Testament and they knew that God couldn\u2019t lie.\u00a0 So therefore everything that Paul taught couldn\u2019t contradict what God had already said in the Old Testament. So unlike the Thessalonians the Bereans sat there with their Bible at the time open and they screened everything the Apostle Paul said on a daily basis through the written Word of God.\n\nNow keep in mind they did this with Paul\u2019s\u2026 with God\u2019s chief apostle, Paul.\u00a0 If that\u2019s true how much more should you be doing that, daily, with anything you hear from this pulpit or anywhere else.\u00a0 And you\u00a0 have the ability to do that because you have a completed canon of God\u2019s Word.\u00a0 You take this away from people they don\u2019t have the ability to do that.\u00a0 They don\u2019t have the ability to do that, they become manipulated for typically power and commercial reasons.\u00a0 That\u2019s the Dark Ages.\n\n1 Thessalonians 5:20-21, says this, \u201cdo not despise prophetic utterances\u201d you see this was written during the time before the canon was closed and there were actual prophets in the church giving the revealed will of God.\u00a0 This is very early on in church history.\u00a0 \u201cso not despise prophetic utterances,\u201d in other words be teachable, don\u2019t just argue with someone for the sake of arguing. \u00a0[21] \u201cBut examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good;\u201d so test all things, \u201chold fast to that which is good.\u201d\u00a0 Well, how in the world could they test all things?\u00a0 Through the Scripture, what they had at the time, because God can\u2019t say one thing on Monday and something different on Tuesday.\n\nSo the Thessalonians are doing this with prophecies that they heard; the Bereans are doing this even with the teachings of the Apostle Paul.\u00a0 Even in Corinth, 1 Corinthians 14:29, where there were active prophets, it says this: \u201cLet two or three prophets speak\u2026,\u201d and this is where Paul explains that the spirit of the prophets are subject to the prophets, so there is no such thing as some kind of extemporaneous spirit empowerment that comes over me and I can\u2019t control my speech.\u00a0 That\u2019s what many charismatic Christians, our brothers and sisters in Christ believe, some kind of gift comes over them and they have to get up and talk.\u00a0 And I like what Thomas Edgar said in response to that; he goes how come that never works with the gift of giving?\u00a0 I\u2019ve got a hundred bucks in my wallet, I\u2019ve got to use my spiritual gift of giving right now.\u00a0 It never works that way; it works amongst these so-called prophets that want to get up and speak.\u00a0 So Paul is laying down rules for prophets.\u00a0 This is the close of the first century where all those gifts were in full operation.\u00a0 And Paul says, \u201cLet two or three prophets speak, and let the others\u201d do what? just sit there and absorb everything that\u2019s said.\u00a0 No, \u201clet the others pass judgment.\u201d\n\nWell how do you \u201cpass judgment?\u201d\u00a0 You pass judgment through a record of God\u2019s revealed truth because the devil can give you all kinds of experiences.\u00a0 Did you know that?\u00a0 And signs and wonders.\u00a0 I can think of two major religions, false religions that were started one of them is Mormonism and the other one is Islam because somebody, whether it be Joseph Smith or Mohammed had some kind of contact with an angel of life and if you were to interview Joseph Smith and interview Mohammed there\u2019s no doubt in my mind that to them that angel of light looked very real and I think it probably was real but they assumed it was God. Well, it can\u2019t be God because the doctrines of Islam and the doctrines of Mormonism contradict the Bible.\u00a0 So if it\u2019s not from God what\u2019s the only other source of energy or power out there?\u00a0 The devil.\u00a0 He has a lot of power; not as much as God but he can give you visions, he can give you signs and wonders, he can give you the liver quiver, he can do all kinds of things.\u00a0 And if you\u2019re not actively testing what you hear by what God has said you\u2019re going to fall into false teaching.\n\nAnd this is very important today because people, by and large, assign truth to something based on an experience.\u00a0 I personally am not anti-experience; I believe God gives experiences but experience is not the test of truth.\u00a0 Are\u00a0 you with me?\u00a0 The test of truth is does the doctrine line up with prior revelation. So Paul says, Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others pass judgment.\u201d\n\nOne more, this is in the Book of Revelation, chapter 2 and verse 2, this is Jesus speaking to the church at Ephesus that lost its first love and before He rebukes them for that and calls them to repentance He articulates a lot of the good things that were happening at Ephesus.\u00a0 He says, \u201cI know your deeds and your toil and perseverance,\u201d now look at this, \u201cand that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the\u201d what does it says, \u201ctest those who call themselves\u201d what? \u201capostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false;\u201d so there were people coming into Ephesus the same way the Apostle Paul came into Berea and they said we\u2019re apostles too.\n\nAnd you\u2019ll notice what the church at Ephesus did?\u00a0 They, I believe, were teachable but they always screened everything they heard through the written Word of God.\u00a0 And they actually found some of these apostles to be pseudo apostles or false apostles.\u00a0 And when Jesus talks to the church at Ephesus here at the closing of the first century He doesn\u2019t condemn them for that practice; He commends them for that practice.\u00a0 What He condemns them for is moving away from intimacy with Christ, which He does I think down in verse 4-5.\u00a0 [Revelation 2: 4, \u201cBut I have this against you, that you have left your first love.\u00a0 [5] \u2018Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first; or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place-- unless you repent.\u201d\u2019]\n\nBut in so doing He commends for what they\u2019re doing right and these are people that basically are put to the test, those who want to teach them spiritual truth.\u00a0 And so this is a practice that in the 21st<\/sup> century is starting to get lost, which is shame on us because we have the tools to do it.\u00a0 I\u2019ve used this analogy before, maybe it will work with you, maybe it won\u2019t, but in the banking industry I\u2019m told that the way they train bankers, tellers, and these kinds of people to recognize counterfeit money, \u201cfunny money,\u201d is they make them familiar with what?\u00a0 The real money.\u00a0 So here\u2019s real money in your hand, you become familiar with its color, its texture, the way it looks, the way it feels, and the more familiar you are with it if something false comes across your hand and suddenly you\u2019re saying something\u2019s not right here, because you have a standard to compare it to.\n\nAnd there is literally an explosion of false teaching to the point where there\u2019s no possible way you can keep up with all of it.\u00a0 Just to study one area of false teaching to become an expert in it would require your whole life to understand it.\u00a0 And God is not calling us all to understand every area of false teaching.\u00a0 What He\u2019s calling us to understand is this Book which is a finite revelation, 66 books, and the better you understand these 66 books when falsity comes across your path you can say wait a minute, that doesn\u2019t sound right, that doesn\u2019t meet the smell test.\u00a0 So that\u2019s what a gift this Book is to us.\u00a0 Without this revealed will of God we would have no capacity to discern truth from error, particularly spiritual things.\n\nNow think of the Middle Ages when you don\u2019t have a Scripture for the reasons I\u2019ve explained.\u00a0 Think of that being lost and \u00a0you have no ability to test truth from error; someone tells you you\u2019ve got to pay money to get your relatives,\u00a0 your deceased relatives out of hell or purgatory, tugs on your heartstrings, you\u2019re going to fall prey to that.\u00a0 So throughout the Middle Ages you have the sale of indulgences.\u00a0 You also have rampant Jew hatred, or anti-Semitism.\u00a0 Anti-Semitism started in the first century, it really started long before that but we have a record of it in the Book of Acts.\u00a0 In Acts 18:1-2 it says Claudius hat commanded all the Jews to leave Rome.\u00a0 [Acts 18:1-2, \u201cAfter these things he left Athens and went to Corinth. [2] And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, having recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome.\u201d]\u00a0 That\u2019s antisemitism, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that discrimination against somebody based on their race and religion?\u00a0 And where did this happen?\u00a0 In Rome.\n\nThis is why Paul, writing to the\u2026 what\u2019s his most famous book?\u00a0 The Romans, where this anti-Semitism was happening, develops the metaphor or the analogy of the tree and he talks specifically about natural branches cut out of the tree, that would be the Jews because of unbelief.\u00a0 And then he talks about unnatural branches because of faith being brought into the tree; who would those unnatural wild branches be?\u00a0 The Gentile Christians.\u00a0 And in the process he describes an attitude that the Gentile Christians, the unnatural branches, should not have towards the Jews, or the natural branches.\u00a0 He specifically says to the Gentiles, Romans 11:18, \u201cdo not be arrogant toward the\u201d who? the natural branches that have been broken off.\n\nSo anti-Semitism was already happening in Rome and this is why Paul was trying to, in Romans 11, prevent anti-Semitism from coming into the church through his metaphor of the olive tree.\u00a0 And what happens if you don\u2019t have a Bible for all those years?\u00a0 If you don\u2019t have Romans 11 to refer to?\u00a0 You don\u2019t have the covenants that God has made to the nation of Israel to refer to?\u00a0 So what do you do when you\u2019re overwhelmed with feelings of antisemitism and Jew hatred if you don\u2019t have a buffer against it?\u00a0 You just sort of capitulate to it and this is how anti-Semitism, which was going on all over the world actually worked its way into Christendom, or Christianity.\u00a0 And one of the black eyes of the church is how Christians have looked at historically, and treated the Jewish people.\u00a0 If you want documentation on it I recommend the book, Our Hands Are Stained With Blood<\/em> by Michael Brown.\u00a0 And so throughout the Middle Ages anti-Semitism comes into the church.\n\nSo you put all these things together, the length of the Dark Ages, the obsolescence of prophetic studies, the domination of Augustinian amillennialism, the fact that you only have one church, the fact that the Bible is\u00a0 removed from the laity, the manipulation of the laity through the sale of indulgences, and then the church with no Scripture to refer to becoming just like the world in terms of blaming the Jews for all the world\u2019s problems, you put all of that together and would you not say that the church is in need of rescue?\u00a0 Does Jesus want to rescue the church from this parade of horribles?\u00a0 Sure He does!\u00a0 What did He say?\u00a0 \u201cI say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.\u201d [Matthew 16:;19]\n\nSo what is God doing now in the 16th<\/sup> century?\u00a0 Is He starting to raise up the Protestant Reformation or Reformers to correct these problems that I\u2019ve been talking about for the last 45 minutes to an hour?\u00a0 And you see, you can\u2019t really understand what God did through the Protestant Reformers until you understand all of this background that I\u2019ve given you.\n\nSo the next time we\u2019re together, the next time we reconvene, now that this foundation has been laid and it took me about four lessons to get there, we\u2019re now in a position to talk about who these Protestant Reformers are, what they did, what they represented, and we\u2019ll also be getting into what they left undone.\u00a0 They left things undone for future generations to correct.\u00a0 So the Protestant Reformation is a rescue operation, as I understand it.\u00a0 God is rescuing His church, who He died for and who He loves, through these Reformers.\u00a0 And I think stop, I was going to get into are we seeing the Dark Ages re-emerge today, which I\u2019ll postpone for next week because I\u2019ve been promising people I\u2019d pause early for questions.\u00a0 So we\u2019ll stop talking at this point.","series_sermon_number":""},"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t