{"id":18889,"date":"2017-08-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-13T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sugar-land-bible-church.local\/sermon\/protestant-reformation-009\/"},"modified":"2017-08-13T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-08-13T05:00:00","slug":"protestant-reformation-009","status":"publish","type":"sermon","link":"https:\/\/slbc.org\/es\/sermon\/protestant-reformation-009\/","title":{"rendered":"Protestant Reformation 009"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","book":[85],"series_event":[480],"sermon_service_type":[473],"speaker":[6],"class_list":["post-18889","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 009","sermon_date":"20170813","sermon_month":"8","sermon_year":"2017","sermon_notes":4840,"sermon_slides":4841,"sermon_mp3":4847,"sermon_id":"813171012480","series_or_event":480,"service_type":[473],"speaker":6,"books_of_the_bible":85,"chapter_and_verse":"16:20-23","sermon_transcript":"Andy Woods\n\nThe Protestant Reformation 009\n\n8-13-17\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Matthew 16:20-23\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lesson 30\n\nGood morning everybody; does anybody need a handout; just put your hand up and we\u2019ll give you a handout.\u00a0 I appreciate Jim McGowan filling in last week; I trust you guys enjoyed his teaching.\u00a0 I heard some yes\u2019s so that\u2019s\u2026 [someone says amen]\u00a0 Amen, good, good!\u00a0 I\u2019m back from the left coast, back from the people\u2019s republic of California, and it\u2019s still there, California is still there I can safely report.\n\nThe last time I was with you we were continuing on with our study on The Protestant Reformation since this October is the big 500 year anniversary and here\u2019s sort of the outline we\u2019ve been follow\u00ading as we\u2019re trying to grow in our appreciation for the Protestant Reformers.\u00a0 We started with the early church and basically the school of Antioch, as we\u2019ve talked about, the literal method of interpretation that they embraced for two centuries.\u00a0 And from there we went into what went wrong because if you don\u2019t understand what went wrong and what got lost you can\u2019t really understand why God raised up the Reformers.\n\nSo that took us into part 2, which I call the Alexandrian eclipse and the circle down in the south there, Alexandria, Egypt, moved away from literal interpretation.\u00a0 They began to wildly allegorize Bible prophecy but the Bible in general.\u00a0 And we\u2019ve gone into a lot of detail explaining why allegorization is not a proper method of interpretation.\u00a0 And we went through all of the different reasons why this became like the fad in Christendom.\u00a0 So following the influence of Alexandria, Egypt, the church becomes highly allegorical in its approach to the Bible.\u00a0 And this plummets Christendom for a thousand years into a period of time called the Middle Ages or the Dark Ages which we\u2019ve explained in depth.\u00a0 And the bottom line to the whole thing, if you want to just take a sentence away from it is the dark ages removed from the people, the ordinary people, the Bible and it put the priests in a position of authority over the sheep and they were basically manipulated.\u00a0 They became devices for moneymaking and that kind of thing and it\u2019s hard to combat that when you don\u2019t have a Bible to test all things by.\u00a0 Right?\n\nSo once you understand that background then you begin to understand what God is doing in the 16th<\/sup> century through His raising up of the Protestant Reformers.\u00a0 So the Protestant Reformers basically restored to the church the Bible in terms of accessibility, in terms of understandability through the literal method of interpretation.\u00a0 And we\u2019ve gone through this whole list but probably the main thing to know is that the Reformers restored to the church the five solas. Sola means what?\u00a0 Alone, so they restored to the church sola gratia<\/em>, grace alone; sola fide<\/em>, faith alone, sola Christus<\/em>, Christ alone, sola deo Gloria<\/em>, to the glory of God alone.\u00a0 And\u00a0 let me know if I\u2019ve repeated this; have I said sola Scriptura<\/em> yet?\u00a0 My brain is still on west coast time.\u00a0 Scripture alone.\u00a0 So they anchored their case in the restoration of the church in the Bible and the Bible alone.\u00a0 So they switched the authority.\u00a0 Prior to this point in time the Roman Catholic system was the authority.\u00a0 And the Reformers came along and some of them lost their lives, as we\u2019ve talked bout, in reclaiming this truth; they said the authority is not the Catholic Church, or the church, the authority is the Scripture.\u00a0 So we can look back at the Reformers and we can rejoice in what they accomplished.\n\nAnd as we get into October most people are going to give you that side of the story, what I just articulated in the last five minutes or so.\u00a0 And what I want to do is continue on with the story and I want to show you what the Reformers left incomplete.\u00a0 So that\u2019s why I\u2019ve entitled this whole teaching series The Protestant Reformation, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.\u00a0 And so many times we are so appreciative of what the Reformers have done that we have a tendency to sort of whitewash history and ignore or suppress some of the bad.\n\nAnd there is some bad that you need to be aware of and once you understand the bad you begin to understand why God in church history raised up other people, outside of the Reform tradition to restore truths to the church that Alexandria, Egypt\u2019s method of allegorization had also subverted.\u00a0 In other words, the only thing to be restored in the mind of God was not just the five solas; the five solas is a big deal, it\u2019s a key domino falling but once that domino falls other people start to get touched by the Holy Spirit and they begin to use the same method of interpretation that the Reformers\u00a0 used to restore the church in the area of the five solas, and they begin to apply it to other parts of the Bible that the Reformers left untouched.\n\nSo let\u2019s talk about what the Reformers did not do and let\u2019s move into Roman numeral V, The Reformers Incomplete Revolution.\u00a0 Here we are with Roman numeral V and here\u2019s the things we\u2019re going to walk through on our outline.\u00a0 The first area is Protology; ology means what?\u00a0 Study of, so Protology is the study of the beginnings.\u00a0 And this is actually one of the things I really appreciate about the Protestant Reformers; as far as I can tell they did not play games with early Genesis.\u00a0 They took early Genesis, Genesis 1-11, in its literal sense.\n\nNow this was before 1859. \u00a0What was published in 1959? Darwin\u2019s Origin of the Species<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 Once Darwin\u2019s Origin of the Species<\/em> is published the Christian church begins to take a, what I call a backward Christian soldier philosophy with early Genesis.\u00a0 And what I mean by that is they became intimidated by what the (quote) \u201cscientists\u201d were saying about the age of the earth, that beginning with\u2026 oh, I don\u2019t know, W. H. Greene, there\u2019s a number of people I could point to, they began to say well, you know what, we need to start rewriting Genesis 1-11 to keep ourselves relevant.\u00a0 So the post Darwin church came up with all kinds of beliefs about early Genesis that you don\u2019t find in the pages of God\u2019s Word: the day age theory, each of the creation days is an age, not a literal day even though it says evening and morning after every day.\n\nThey began to come up with theistic evolution which tries to mix Darwinism with Scripture.\u00a0 They began to come up with the local flood theory because they bought into what the scientists were saying related to the fossil record; they said the fossil record accumulated over billions of years.\u00a0 And our explanation to the fossil record is the fossil record is explainable basically through the global deluge.\u00a0 There\u2019s things in the fossil record I could show you that can\u2019t be explained unless you understand that a sudden judgment hit this earth.\u00a0 There\u2019s one fossil consuming another and while in the process of digestion they are fossilized in that condition.\u00a0 I mean, that doesn\u2019t lend itself to a billions of years mindset.\u00a0 But if\u00a0 you reject that you\u2019ve got to say well, the fossil record really came about because of billions of years.\u00a0 Well, what do you do with the flood then?\u00a0 You shrink it, you pretend like the flood didn\u2019t cover the whole earth; you pretend like the flood was a local event.\n\nSo these are all what I would call compromises that the evangelical church came up with post 1859.\u00a0 And the book that reversed, or gave the church another way out is the book, The Genesis Flood<\/em> by Whitcomb and Morris.\u00a0 Henry Morris, the scientist (now deceased),\u00a0 John Whitcomb, the Hebrew scholar who\u2019s still alive today but I think he has Parkinson\u2019s so his ministry appears to be coming to an end.\u00a0 But the two of them around 1960 got together and they said you know, enough with this nonsense about rewriting Genesis, let\u2019s go out and challenge what these scientists are saying.\u00a0 So they challenged evolution on the grounds that there is no such thing as the missing link, they challenged 14 carbon dating on the grounds that it really wasn\u2019t as accurate as everybody makes it out to be.\u00a0 They challenged the fossil record as interpreted, not through billions of years but a sudden deluge.\u00a0 So 1859 the church moves into a backward Christian soldier strategy, until the Genesis flood, 1960, which gave us a different way of interpreting these things, where we could maintain the integrity of the Book of Genesis, 1-11, and interpret so-called scientific findings in light of a literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11.\n\nSo having said all that, the Reformers are way back in the 16th<\/sup> century; Darwin doesn\u2019t come along until the 19th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 So the Reformers weren\u2019t under all of this pressure to rewrite the Book of Genesis. So what you find in the Reformers is they took their literal method of interpretation that they used to reclaim the five solas and they applied it, I think very well, to Protology, the doctrine of the beginnings.\u00a0 So you don\u2019t find in the Protestant Reformers the day age theory, progressive creation, theistic evolution, and these kinds of ideas.\n\nNotice what Martin Luther says, pre-Darwin.\u00a0 He says, \u201cWe know from Moses that the world was not in existence before 6,000 years ago\u2026He calls \u2018a spade a spade,\u2019 i.e., he employs the term \u2018day\u2019 and \u2018evening\u2019 without allegory, just as we customarily do\u2026 we assert that Moses spoke in the literal sense, not allegorically or figuratively, i.e., that the world, with all its creatures, was created within six days, as the words read. If we do not comprehend the reason for this, let us remain pupils and leave the job of the teacher to the Holy Spirit.\u201d\u00a0 [\u201cLectures on Genesis 1\u20135,\u201d in Luther's Works, ed. Jaroslav Peliken (St. Louis: Concordia, 1958), 3, 6.]\n\nSo there\u2019s Martin Luther saying I\u2019m standing on the literal interpretation of the Bible to reclaim the five solas, including Genesis 1-11.\u00a0 And as I\u2019ve said before he\u2019s in the 16th<\/sup> century, Darwin doesn\u2019t come along until the 19th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 So he\u2019s not under the pressure that evangelicals find themselves under today when they want to stand on a literal method of interpretation of Genesis 1-11.\u00a0 So I throw this in to show you this is one of the things I appreciate about the Protestant Reformers.\n\nJohn Calvin says basically the same thing. In his Institutes he says, \u201cAnd they will not refrain from guffaws when they are informed that but little more than five thousand years have passed since the creation of the universe\u2026Must we pass over in silence the creation of the universe? No! God\u2019s truth is so powerful, both in this respect and in every other, that it has nothing to fear from the evil speaking of wicked men.\u201d\u00a0 [Institutes of the Christian Religion, III, xxi, 4.]\n\nSo Luther, Calvin are literal, including Genesis 1-11.\u00a0 When you go to Genesis 7:19-23 this is a description of the flood.\u00a0 Now as you read this, tell me, do you think the flood covered the whole earth or not.\u00a0 It says in Genesis 7:19-23, \u201cThey\u201d that\u2019s the flood waters, \u201crose greatly on the earth, and all<\/u> the high mountains under the entire<\/u> heaven were covered\u2026Every living thing that moved on the earth perished\u2014birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything<\/u> on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only<\/u> Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.\u201d Now does that look like the flood covered the whole world?\n\nIn fact, if you look at verse 19 it says \u201call<\/u> the mountains under the entire<\/u> heaven were covered.\u201d\u00a0 In other words it\u2019s in Hebrew all, in Hebrew I think you pronounce it kol<\/em>, it kind of looks like k-o-l when you transliterate it into English and there\u2019s a double all there in Genesis\u00a0 7:19.\u00a0 So it\u2019s very clear, at least in my mind, that the flood waters covered the whole earth.\u00a0 But you see, post Darwin people said well, you know, gee, you can\u2019t explain the fossil record in terms of sudden catastrophe; you can only explain the fossil record in terms of billions and billions of years.\u00a0 So what did people do if they\u2019re evangelicals?\u00a0 They followed a backward Christian soldier strategy where they started to rewrite the Book of Genesis and one of the things they came up with to accommodate the Bible and so-called science, which I don\u2019t even think is science.\u00a0 1 Timothy 6:20 talks about people advocating so-called science.\u00a0 It\u2019s really a philosophy masquerading as a science, all of this evolutionary type stuff.\u00a0\u00a0 [1 Timothy 6:20, \u201cO Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called \u2018knowledge\u2019\u201d]\n\nBut they said gee whiz, the scientists are saying one thing, the Bible is saying something else, I know what I\u2019ll do, I\u2019ll mix the two and if the scientists are telling me that the fossil record is the result of billions of years then I\u2019ve got to do something with the flood so I\u2019ll just shrink it and make it local and that way I can hold onto the Bible and hold onto so-called science at the same time.\n\nAnd when I talk like this I\u2019m sort of speaking from personal experience because this is what I did for years as a new Christian.\u00a0 You know, having graduated from public high school, Jr. high, high school, elementary school, I was taught that evolution is a fact; you cannot challenge evolution.\u00a0 So then about the age of 16 I got saved so what then is my natural tendency.\u00a0 Well, I believe the Bible now but I\u2019ve been taught that evolution is a fact so my temptation was to mix evolution with the Bible.\u00a0 I tried to syncretize or synthesize the belief so I gravitated towards all of these theories as a young Christian, before the Whitcomb and Morris book kind of straightened me out, that showed me I didn\u2019t have to do this, I could hold to the integrity of the Bible and go out and challenge what the scientific world is saying.\n\nSo all of that to say a lot of people today will tell you the flood never covered the whole earth and my only point is that\u2019s not what the Reformers believed; these are pre-Darwin interpreters and here\u2019s John Calvin on the flood.\u00a0 He says, \u201c\u201cAnd the flood was forty days, etc. Moses conspicu\u00adously insists on this fact, in order to show that the whole world<\/u> was immersed in the waters.\u201d [John Calvin, Genesis<\/em>, 1554 (Edinburgh, UK: Banner of Truth, 1984), p. 272, emphasis mine]\n\nSo when you get into protology, the doctrine of the beginnings with the Protestant Reformers, pre Charles Darwin, what you\u2019re going to discover to a large extent is a belief in a literal interpretation of Genesis 1-11.\u00a0 The same literal grammatical historical method of interpretation that they used to restore the five solas to the church they applied very aggressively to Genesis 1-11.\u00a0 And so from my vantage point my hat is off to them in that respect.\u00a0 However, as you get into the Protestant Reformers what you start to find is a very selective literal interpretation.\u00a0 Yes, they\u2019re very good with the solas; yes, they\u2019re very good with Genesis 1-11.\u00a0 But what you start to discover is they carried allegorization with them into other areas of Bible interpretation, including ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church, and eschatology, the doctrine of the end time.\n\nSo Roy Zuck, who was my Sunday School teacher, and Anne\u2019s Sunday School teacher by the way, when we lived in Dallas and in his book, Basic Bible Interpretation<\/em>, writes this of Martin Luther.\u00a0 He says, \u201cThough Luther vehemently opposed the allegorizing of Scripture, he too occasionally allegorized. For instance, he stated that Noah\u2019s Ark is an allegory of the Church. For Luther, Bible interpretation is to be centered in Christ. Rather than allegorizing the Old Testament, he saw Christ frequently in the Old Testament, often beyond what is legitimately provided for in proper interpretation.\u201d\u00a0 [Roy B. Zuck, Basic Bible Interpretation: A Practical Guide to Discovering Biblical Truth<\/em> (Colorado Springs, CO: Victor, 1991), 45.]\n\nSo Luther had basically what\u2019s called a Christocentric hermeneutic, so he wanted to see Jesus everywhere and I can\u2019t really fault him for that, right?\u00a0 But the problem with that is you start to see Jesus, as you go through the Old Testament, under every rock and tree, everything\u2019s about Jesus.\u00a0 And the problem is when you actually look at the words of a lot of the text they use, in their literal sense they\u2019re not really talking about Jesus.\u00a0 So Zuck\u2019s point is Luther was aggressively against allegorization in certain areas but he opened the door to allegorization in other areas.\u00a0 So his literal interpretation is very selective.\n\nThat\u2019s why when Charles Ryrie articulates (and we\u2019ll be getting into this later in our study) what\u2019s called the sine qua non<\/em>\u00a0 of dispensationalism which means \u201cwithout which there is nothing.\u201d\u00a0 He says the first rule you have to hold to is not just literal interpretation but what kind of interpretation?\u00a0 Literal interpretation consistently applied.\u00a0 When you apply literal interpretation that the Reformers used to restore the solas and you start to apply it to the doctrine of the church and you start to apply it to the doctrine of the end times what you\u2019ll start to see is the eschatological end times system that we promote here.\u00a0 It\u2019s the product of a literal interpretation but you\u2019re not going to find our beliefs about eschatology or our beliefs about ecclesiology (the doctrine of the church), in the Protestant Reformers.\u00a0 Why is that?\u00a0 Because the Protestant Reformers didn\u2019t go far enough with literal interpretation.\u00a0 They used literal interpretation effectively to rescue the church in certain areas but they\u2019re very selective in their approach and that\u2019s what Roy Zuck here is pointing out.\n\nSo consequently the Protestant Reformers did not deal with eschatology.\u00a0\u00a0 You all know what eschatology is, right?\u00a0 The study of the end.\u00a0 They did not deal with eschatology in depth.\u00a0 In fact, they actually ignored the subject of eschatology. John Calvin wrote a commentary on every single New Testament book except he did not write a commentary on the Book of 2 John; he did not write a commentary on the Book of 3 John and he did not write a commentary on which other big eschatological book am I thinking of?\u00a0 The Book of Revelation.\n\nSo the fact that you have this voluminous writer, John Calvin, and this is one of the reasons people like John Calvin is he comments on basically every verse in the entire Bible.\u00a0 So he\u2019s a voluminous writer, he\u2019s a voluminous speaker, he\u2019s a voluminous preacher and yet when he gets into the Book of Revelation he basically doesn\u2019t write a commentary on it on the grounds that the Book of Revelation can\u2019t be understood.\u00a0 So what you have in the Protestant Reformers, although there\u2019s an aggressive stand on protology, you have this very selective literal interpretation; they apply it in some areas but not others and they really don\u2019t deal with eschatological issues.\n\nAnd continuing on with our list here, the Protestant Reformers retain Augustinian amillennialism.\u00a0 Now where did amillennialism start.\u00a0 What is amillennialism?\u00a0 \u201cA\u201d is a negation, millennium means what? thousand years, it\u2019s actually a Latin word.\u00a0 Amillennialism is not found in the Bible any more than premillennialism is or postmillennialism is.\u00a0 Millennium is a compound word coming from two different Latin words,\u00a0 milli <\/em>meaning a thousand and annum meaning years.\u00a0 So an amillennialist is someone who denies the literal thousand year reign of Christ on planet earth.\n\nI am not an amillennialist; Sugar Land Bible Church is not amillennial, we are premillennial meaning Jesus Christ comes back first, Revelation 19 and then what follows after his return?\u00a0 His thousand year kingdom.\u00a0 So we\u2019re premillennial, meaning Jesus Christ comes back before the millennium.\u00a0 In other words, we\u2019re not going to have the millennial kingdom until you have the King seated on David\u2019s throne on planet earth reigning from Jerusalem.\n\nYou say well who cares?\u00a0 Well, it\u2019s a big deal because if you don\u2019t believe that it confuses what you think you\u2019re doing in the present.\u00a0 Do you realize how many churches are out there today trying to set up a kingdom and how the word \u201ckingdom\u201d keeps showing up in their mission statements and visions statements?\u00a0 Do you realize across this country how many churches will not give the gospel today but instead will talk about social justice issues, the environment, racial issues, of course that\u2019s going to be a big topic today because of what just happened in the news.\u00a0 And you see that all is an outworking of an amillennial or a postmillennial mindset where they basically are trying to fix all of these problems in the world.\u00a0 I don\u2019t really waste my time with that stuff because of my eschatology.\u00a0 My eschatology is premillennial meaning you\u2019re not going to have kingdom conditions until who is present?\u00a0 The king!\n\nAnd so therefore I\u2019m a proponent of let\u2019s go out and vote, let\u2019s do this and that but I always promote in terms of holding back the tide of evil, slowing down the tide of evil maybe a millimeter is the best we can do because we\u2019re not going to set up a kingdom.\u00a0 I believe that because I\u2019m not amillennial or postmillennial, I\u2019m premillennial.\u00a0 So my time is spent trying to reach and teach, evangelize and disciple.\u00a0 You look at all these phrases, amillennial, postmillennial, premillennial, some people say I\u2019m pan-millennial, it\u2019s all going to pan out in the end, and they don\u2019t really care about it but the reason you should care is because it controls what you think the local church should be doing.\u00a0 It goes directly to your philosophy of the local church.\n\nSo what you find in the Protestant Reformers is they take amillennialism, which began where?\u00a0 Where did amillennialism begin (as we\u2019ve studied)?\u00a0 Alexandria, Egypt.\u00a0 Amillennialism dominates the church all the way through the Middle Ages.\u00a0 What do the Protestant Reformers do?\u00a0 They don\u2019t apply their literal method of interpretation to the issue of amillennialism, they just carry it over.\u00a0 And so they retain Augustinian amillennialism.\u00a0 Remember, it was Augustine by about the time of the fourth century his book, The City of God<\/em>, that he took the doctrine of amillennialism and he crystalized it into the form of an actual formal written treatise and this is what influences the church throughout the Middle Ages.\u00a0 And this doctrine is influencing certain sectors of Christianity today, Reformed churches.\u00a0 The very churches that Luther and Calvin started as a protest movement.\u00a0 Those churches remain amillennial even as I speak.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because the Reformers never took their literal method of interpretation and applied it consistently.\u00a0 They applied it selectively; they applied it piecemeal but they never applied it to everything.\n\nSo Augustine, back in the fourth century, in his book, The City of God<\/em>, is very clear; he says, \u201cTherefore the Church even now is the kingdom of Christ, and the kingdom of heaven.\u00a0 That\u2019s a watershed book, a watershed statement; it exerts great influence over the church throughout the Middle Ages.\u00a0 God raised up Luther, Calvin, and others to rescue the church in certain areas but they just kept hold on amillennialism and never applied their literal interpretation to amillennialism.\u00a0 So John Calvin says this:\u00a0 \u201cAugustine\u201d that\u2019s the guy I just quoted from all the way back in the fourth century, Calvin now, in the sixteenth century is saying \u201cAugustine is so wholly with me, that if I wished to write a confession of my faith, I could do so with all fullness and satisfaction to myself out of his writings.\u201d\u00a0 And you have to understand that here Calvin is acknowledging his dependence upon the theology of Augustine.\u00a0 He quotes Augustine in his writings over and\u00a0 over and over and over and over again.\n\nWhy am I bringing this up?\u00a0 I\u2019m bringing this up to show you that Calvin rejected Augustinianism in the area of the five solas, and praise God for that.\u00a0 These reformers rescue the church in the area of the five solas but they kept their Augustinian baggage with them, uncorrected, into the Protestant Reformation and into Reformed churches that were birthed out of the Protestant Reformation.\u00a0 So when you go into a Reformed church today it\u2019s sort of like what I would call a hybrid; it is Protestant in certain areas but it remains Romana Catholic in other areas.\u00a0 And as I\u2019ll be sharing with you the great weakness of Reformed tradition and Reformed theology, as much as I wake up every day and thank God for the Protestant Reformers.\u00a0 But the weakness of the Reformed tradition is they assume there was no more progress to be made.\u00a0 They assumed that they had conquered everything there was to conquer.\u00a0 And yet what did God say to Joshua?\u00a0 There is much land left to be conquered.\u00a0 [Joshua 13:1, \u201cNow Joshua was old and advanced in years when the LORD said to him, \u2018You are old and advanced in years, and very much of the land remains to be possessed.\u2019\u201d]\n\nThe Reformed tradition doesn\u2019t think that way; they think they\u2019ve conquered all that needs to be conquered so they have a Protestant doctrine in certain areas, the five solas, soteriology, but there is a ton of Roman Catholic baggage that they carried with them into the Reform tradition and they froze their progress in terms of creeds, like the Westminster Confession, they become the authority, not the Scripture, even though the Reformers were all about the Scripture, at least in reclaiming the five solas.\u00a0 And the creed assumes that there\u2019s no more progress to be made.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I call the Protestant Reformation an incomplete revolution.\u00a0 I mean, the Protestant Reformation was fantastic in the sense that it gave us the tools\u2026 the tools whereby doctrines could be reclaimed that were lost due to the influence of Alexandria, Egypt.\n\nBut what God has wanted is that tool to be applied consistently, from Genesis to Revelation, and what I\u2019m trying to show you is the Protestant Reformers didn\u2019t do that. \u00a0The Reformed tradition today doesn\u2019t do that.\u00a0 And this is why God began to raise up other people, that I\u2019ll be sharing with you in this series, that took the method of the Protestant Reformers and started applying it to the whole Bible.\u00a0 So here Calvin is admitting that he\u2019s still operating largely under the influence of Augustine.\n\nAnd here is John Calvin in his Institutes, Institutes of the Christian Religion<\/em>, which he wrote about the age of 27.\u00a0 And that sort of bothers me about taking the writings of John Calvin and elevating them to such a level.\u00a0 I mean, how many 27 year olds do you assign equal weight to the Scripture to?\u00a0 I mean, what did I know when I was 27?\u00a0 Basically nothing, and I feel that now at the age of 50 I still hardly know anything, but as little as I know now I knew a lot less at the age of 27.\u00a0 I mean, I would be scared to death if someone took something I wrote at the age of 27 and put it on equal level with the Bible.\n\nSo here is John Calvin trashing what I\u2019ve tried to describe as premillennialism.\u00a0 What do they call premillennialism back in Antioch?\u00a0 Remember the fancy word?\u00a0\u00a0 Chiliasm.\u00a0 So here is Calving trashing Chiliasm which we call premillennialism, which is a belief in a future reign of Christ.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve got the exact quote where you can look this up in his Institutes of the Christian Religion which he wrote at age 27, which are readily available.\n\nHe says, \u201c\u201cBut Satan has not only befuddled men\u2019s senses to make them bury with the corpses the memory of resurrection; he has also attempted to corrupt this part of the doctrine with various falsifications\u2026Now their fiction is too childish<\/u>\u201d what is he talking about here?\u00a0 He\u2019s talking about premillennialism, the belief in an earthly reign of Christ; he\u2019s saying that\u2019s a childish doctrine.\u00a0 \u201cNow their fiction\u201d\u00a0 and when you get into Reformed circles they largely think that way today.\u00a0 They think all this emphasis we place on a future kingdom, a future tribulation period, a rapture of the church, is just childhood games.\u00a0 And you see that pride or that mindset in John Calvin himself.\n\nHe says, \u201cNow their fiction is too childish<\/u> either to need or to be worth a refutation. And the Apocalypse, from which they undoubtedly drew a pretext for their error, does not support them. For the number \u2018one thousand\u2019 [Rev. 20:4] does not apply to the eternal blessedness of the church but only to the various disturbances that awaited the church, while still toiling on earth<\/u>\u2026 Those who assign the children of God a thousand years in which to enjoy the inheritance of the life to come do not realize how much reproach<\/u>\u201d that\u2019s pretty strong language, isn\u2019t it, \u201cthey are casting upon Christ and his Kingdom.\u201d\u00a0 [Institutes of the Christian Religion, III, xxv, 5.]\n\nWhat is he trying to say?\u00a0 We\u2019re in the kingdom now so don\u2019t come up with some interpretation from Revelation 20 about a future kingdom of a thousand years, we\u2019re in the kingdom now.\u00a0 So if you say the kingdom is future and not present you are engaging in a childish fantasy and you\u2019re actually casting reproach upon the real kingdom that exists now.\n\nNow where did Calvin get this idea?\u00a0 He got it from who?\u00a0 Augustine.\u00a0 Didn\u2019t he say that in his writings, \u201cAugustine is so wholly with me, that if I wished to write a confession of my faith, I could do so with all fullness and satisfaction to myself out of his writings.\u201d\u00a0 So who are these Protestant Reformers?\u00a0 How do you look at them?\u00a0 You look at them as people that God used in a certain area, the five solas.\u00a0 But you don\u2019t Carte Blanche surrender to everything they ever taught because as I\u2019m trying to document the Reformers themselves did not consistently apply their own method of interpretation.\u00a0 They remained amillennial.\n\nJohn Calvin goes on and here he is talking about the Jews.\u00a0 What was the attitude of the Protestant Reformers towards the Jews.\u00a0 Anti-Semitism dominated Middle Ages thinking.\u00a0 Anti-Semitism is this idea that the Jews are the cursed race, the Jews are the Christ-killers. Are the Jews the Christ-killers?\u00a0 Who did Jesus die for?\u00a0 \u201cFor God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son,\u201d last time I checked I\u2019m a Christ-killer and so are\u00a0 you.\u00a0 You can\u2019t blame the whole thing on the Jews because Jesus died for the sins of the whole world.\u00a0 Amen!\n\nNow it is true that the leadership of first century Israel was instrumental in breaking every rule of evidence that they had to rush Christ through the justice system to get him dead; I mean, they certainly are partial culprits but the Romans played a role in it too, didn\u2019t they?\u00a0 You know, Pilate remained willfully ignorant of what was happening and so we can blame the Romans.\u00a0\u00a0 We should also blame ourselves because the last time I checked Jesus died for the sins of the whole world.\n\nBut you see, Middle Ages thinking is you blame it all on the Jews.\u00a0 So the Jews are mischaracter\u00adized as Christ-killers all the way through the Middle Ages.\u00a0 They are looked at as the cursed race and what begins to develop out of that is replacement theology.\u00a0 What is replacement theology?\u00a0 It\u2019s this idea that the church, the kingdom of God so called, has permanently replaced Israel in the plan and program of God.\u00a0 Most of Christendom within the United States of America by denominational affiliation I\u2019m talking about, I don\u2019t know what every individual Christian believes within every single church, but by the articulation of major denominations within Christendom, within the United States, most of Christendom within the United States of America and worldwide for that matter is into replacement theology.\u00a0 They\u2019re basically\u2026 first of all, a lot of times they\u2019re not even taught on these subjects but when they\u2019re taught on these subjects the idea is Israel, they are the Christ-killers so therefore all of Israel\u2019s blessings have been transferred to who?\u00a0 To the church, that they call the new Israel, even though the word Israel is used 73 times in the New Testament and guess what it means every single time?\u00a0 Israel.\u00a0 It always refers to the physical descendants of\u00a0 Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.\n\nBut don\u2019t bother me with all that literal interpretation stuff, don\u2019t let your literal interpretation get in the way of my theology; the Jews are the cursed race, all of Israel\u2019s promises have been given to the church.\u00a0 Now they have to wildly spiritualize those promises because those promises are all earthly in nature.\u00a0 Then you ask them, well Mr. Replacement Theologian, what about the curses given to Israel?\u00a0 Do those apply to the church?\u00a0 Oh no, we\u2019ll leave those behind for the Jewish people, we\u2019ll take all the blessings.\u00a0 And basically this is what is called replacement theology.\n\nSo they have no belief in a future kingdom headquartered in Jerusalem because the church is spiritually fulfilling all of that today.\u00a0 This is what Augustine taught in The City of God<\/em>.\u00a0 This is what the church believed throughout the Middle Ages.\u00a0 Now the Reformers do their thing in the five solas but guess what they brought right in with them into Reformed theology?\u00a0 Replacement theology.\u00a0 They never used their literal method of interpretation to correct the church in the area of replacement theology.\n\nSo you see all kinds of statements in the writings of Calvin particularly, where the Jews have been cut off completely.\u00a0 There is no future for Israel.\u00a0 The best that can happen to a Jew is they can get saved and be part of the church.\u00a0 But when you start talking about a future role for Israel and a future kingdom headquartered in Jerusalem where the Jews will be made the head and not the tail as all of the Old Testament prophecies constantly tell us.\u00a0 You don\u2019t find a shred of that in Luther\u2019s doctrine, in Calvin\u2019s doctrine, and you don\u2019t find a shred of that even in Reformed Theology today.\u00a0 What I\u2019m trying to say is the Protestant Reformers remained Catholic\u2026 are you with me on this, in the area of ecclesiology and eschatology and as much as the Reformed tradition hates it when you say this, the Reformed tradition today is still Catholic in certain areas.\u00a0 Not in the solas, but in these areas of ecclesiology and eschatology.\n\nSo Calvin says this in his Institutes of Christian Religion<\/em>, which he wrote at which age?\u00a0 27, so he knew everything at the age of 27, right.\u00a0 I\u2019m not denying his brilliance, I mean this guy was brilliant.\u00a0 But the problem is people are putting Calvin\u2019s writings on equal par with this Book.\u00a0 And that\u2019s always dangerous, isn\u2019t it.\u00a0 That moves into idolatry.\u00a0 And Calvin said a lot of great things and he said a lot of things that were flatly wrong.\u00a0 Calvin writes, \u201cBut by this public call, the Gentiles were not only made equal to the Jews, but seemed to be\u201d what? \u201csubstituted into their place, as if the Jews had been dead.\u201d\u00a0 [Institutes of the Christian Religion, II, xi, 12.]\n\nNow what is that?\u00a0 That\u2019s replacement theology.\u00a0 Did he invent replacement theology?\u00a0 No he didn\u2019t but he sure carried it on into his new Reformed tradition, thanks to the influence of the man that he claimed total dependence on, a man named Augustine who developed this doctrine all the way back in the 4th<\/sup> century.\n\nHere is another statement from John Calvin, it his sermon on 2 Samuel 24:24, he declares: \u201cNow the Jews are cut off like broken limbs; we have taken their place.\u00a0 [John Calvin, Supplementa Calviniana<\/em>, I, 766, 12f; quoted in Selderhuis, Calvin Handbook<\/em>, 145.]\u00a0 Now you read something like that and you say well, hasn\u2019t first century Israel or Israel as a whole been broken off?\u00a0 Yes, but doesn\u2019t Paul very well explain in Romans 11 that the breaking off is but temporary?\u00a0 I mean, doesn\u2019t Paul in Romans 11 develop the whole metaphor of the olive tree?\u00a0 And he talks about natural branches that have been disconnected from the olive tree.\u00a0 Those would be the Jews.\u00a0 And he talks about wild unnatural branches that have been connected in their place.\u00a0 Who would those wild olive branches be?\u00a0 That would be us, Gentile Christians.\n\nBut doesn\u2019t Paul say in Romans 11:17, Romans 11:18 to the unnatural branches that have been grafted in, thank you.\u00a0 Doesn\u2019t he say do not be arrogant towards the natural branches?\u00a0 [Romans 11:17, \u201cBut if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree, [18] do not be arrogant toward the branches; but if you are arrogant, remember that it is not you who supports the root, but the root supports you.\u201d]\n\nI would say John Calvin became very arrogant towards the natural branches and Paul\u2019s whole point is if God can do the agricultural miracle of taking the unnatural branches and connecting them to a tree how hard do you think it is for God to reach out His hand and take the natural branches, that belong there in the first place, and reconnect them to their own tree.\u00a0 But you see, the doctrine of replacement theology is this idea that the unnatural branches, which would be us, are not just partakers, we are taker-overs of everything and we have inherited all of Israel\u2019s promises (thank you allegorical interpretation) and we\u2019ll leave the curses behind for the Jewish people.\n\nThat\u2019s what the church believed all the way through the Middle Ages, all the way back to the fourth century, and I see no change in this doctrine in the writings of John Calvin and others.\u00a0 Calvin also declares them [Israel] to be \u201ccut off from everything,\u201d adding haughtily, \u201cand we have succeeded them in their place.\u201d\u00a0 [John Calvin, Supplementa Calviniana<\/em>, II, 36, 28f; Sermon on Isa. 14:2; quoted in Selderhuis, Calvin Handbook<\/em>, 145.]\n\nThere\u2019s no room for arrogance on this subject; Paul is very clear about that in Romans 11:17-18. \u00a0And yet I\u2019m seeing arrogance in the writings of the Protestant Reformers on this subject.\u00a0 And we\u2019ve living in a day of Logos software where all of John Calvin\u2019s commentaries are on\u2026 as I mentioned before he wrote a commentary on virtually every book of the Bible except the Book of Revelation, all of his commentaries are available.\u00a0 And so you can go back in your Logos software program and get the John Calvin package and you\u2019ll have access to virtually everything the man said, wrote, commented on publicly.\n\nAnd notice his comments on Isaiah 35:1 which says, \u201cThe wilderness and the desert will be glad,\u201d it\u2019s speaking of the restoration of Israel in the end times, Calvin says, \u201cThis passage is explained in various ways. I pass by the dreams of the Jews,<\/u>\u201d do you want to take this literally and pretend it\u2019s speaking of some kind of fulfillment for Israel on the future.\u00a0 That\u2019s just a dream he says, that\u2019s just a fantasy.\u00a0 \u201cI pass by all the dreams of the Jews who apply all passages of this kind to the temporal reign of the Messiah,\u201d chiliasm \u201cwhich they have contrived by their own imagination.... I willingly view this passage as referring to Judea, and afterwards to other parts of the world....\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s not about a future kingdom, it\u2019s about the kingdom now.\n\nFunny, I read Isaiah 35 I don\u2019t see Europe in Isaiah 35, I see all Israel.\u00a0 \u201cLet us now see when this prophecy was fulfilled, or shall be fulfilled. The Lord began some kind of restoration when he brought his people out of Babylon: but that was only a foretaste, and, therefore, I have no hesitation in saying that this passage, as well as others of a similar kind, must refer to the kingdom of Christ<\/u>;\u201d now in his mind where is \u201cthe kingdom of Christ?\u00a0 We\u2019re in it now, this is the kingdom of Christ.\u00a0 This passage is not speaking of future Israel\u2019s restoration, this passage, thank you allegorical interpretation, which allows you to de-literalize words of a passage, applies to the kingdom of God now.\u00a0 \u201c\u2026 and in no other light could it be viewed,\u201d in other words it\u2019s so obvious anybody can see this.\n\nWell John, if I can call you John by your first name, it\u2019s obvious to you because you\u2019ve got the wrong lenses on; you\u2019re reading it through the Augustinian lens.\u00a0 Take your lens off and read it through literal interpretation which you\u00a0 yourself advocated for.\u00a0 And I thank God you advocated for it.\u00a0 Why don\u2019t you take\u00a0 your same literal method of interpretation and apply it to this passage; get rid of the Augustinian lenses and you\u2019ll see clearly, but you don\u2019t find that in the Protestant Reformers.\u00a0 \u201c\u2026 and in no other light could it be viewed, if we compare it with other prophecies,\u201d\u00a0 he says.\u00a0 [Commentary on Isaiah 35:1\u2014 \u201cThe wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad.\u201d<\/em>]\n\nAnd here he\u2019s commenting on Amos 9:13, which says, \u201cBehold the days come, saith the LORD, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed: and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0When you read that in Amos 9 it\u2019s Israel\u2019s restoration in her kingdom and she\u2019ll never be uprooted again; that\u2019s what it\u2019s talking about.\n\nSo how does Calvin handle that passage?\u00a0 \u201cHere the Prophet describes the felicity which shall be under the reign of Christ: and we know that whenever the Prophets set forth promises of a happy and prosperous state to God\u2019s people, they adopt\u201d what kind of expressions? \u201cmetaphorical expressions<\/u>.\u201d\u00a0 Well, wait a minute, what happened to the guy that stood on literal interpretation and challenged Rome and risked his own life in the process.\u00a0 What happened to that guy?\u00a0 He\u2019s gone now.\u00a0 And I read John Calvin and it\u2019s like \u201cwill the real John Calvin stand up.\u201d\u00a0 I don\u2019t want the allegorizer, I want the literalist.\u00a0 And yet you see here that he\u2019s obviously not applying literal interpretation to Amos 9:13, he says very clearly this is metaphorical.\u00a0 \u201c\u2026 and say, that abundance of all good things shall flow, that there shall be the most fruitful produce, that provisions shall be bountifully supplied; for they accommodated their mode of speaking to the notions of that ancient people;\u201d\u00a0 Now that word accommodated you should pay attention to.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fancy way for saying God is lying.\u00a0 When you see the word accommodate just substitute the word lie. Guess what folks?\u00a0 God can\u2019t what?\u00a0 Lie!\u00a0 Titus 1:2, Hebrews 6:18, Numbers 23:19.\n\n[Titus 1:2, \u201cin the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised long ages ago.\u201d\u00a0 Hebrews 6:18, \u201cso that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us.\u201d\u00a0 Numbers 23:19, \u201cGod is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?\u201d]\n\nAnd he\u2019s just sort of speaking in childish terms to childish people who are too childish to understand real interpretation.\u00a0 So basically he\u2019s speaking\u2026 I don\u2019t know, bedtime fantasies to people because they don\u2019t know any better.\u00a0 So that\u2019s what he means by \u201caccommodated.\u201d\u00a0 God is accommodating to the stupidity of people that actually believe in a literal kingdom.\u00a0 That\u2019s his view of eschatology.\u00a0 They (the prophets) \u201caccommodated their mode of speaking to the notions of that ancient people; it is therefore no wonder if they sometimes speak to them as to children<\/u>. At the same time, the Spirit under these figurative expressions<\/u>\u201d see he thinks this is all allegorical, \u201cdeclares, that the kingdom of Christ<\/u> shall in every way be happy and blessed, or that the\u201d what? \u201cChurch of God<\/u>, which means\u201d the what, \u201cthe same thing<\/u>, shall be blessed, when Christ shall begin to reign.\u201d\n\nWhat he\u2019s saying is this is not literal stuff here in the book of Amos, chapter 9.\u00a0 It looks literal to you because you\u2019re childish and God is speaking to you in childish terms but WE are graduates of the school of Alexandria Egypt, and WE know how to interpret the Bible.\u00a0 And that this is REALLY talking about, and if you had my intellect and intelligence you could understand what this is really talking about is a spiritual kingdom which is happening now.\u00a0 It\u2019s not talking about a future literal kingdom.\n\nOne more, Zechariah 14:4, which says, And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives\u2026and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west\u2026.\u201d \u00a0How do you interpret , Zechariah 14:4?\u00a0 What does that really mean?\u00a0 I think I know what it means: when Jesus comes back He\u2019s going to stand on the Mount of Olives and the Mount of Olives is going to what?\u00a0 Split in half.\u00a0 But you see, Calvin basically develops this whole soteriological meaning from this passage, Lorraine Boettner, who wrote a book defending Calvin and Calvinism says, \u201cThis is Jesus Christ coming into the human heart when a person trusts Christ as Savior.\u201d\u00a0 Their heart is wrent.\u00a0 Well, I give them an A for creativity; I five them an F for exegesis because that\u2019s not what the passage says. But you see, this is so common amongst the Reformed tradition they just rewrite these passages via the tool they\u2019ve been given from Alexandria, Egypt, called allegorization.\n\nSo Calvin, of this passage says, \u201cFor as we are dull and entangled in earthly thoughts our minds can hardly rise up to heaven through the Lord with a clear voice invites us to Himself.\u00a0 The Prophet then, in order to aid our weakness\u201d see God has to speak to us in childish ways because we\u2019re childish, that\u2019s why it looks literal, but that\u2019s not really what it means.\u00a0 \u201cThe prophet then in order to aid our weakness adds \u00a0a vivid representation, as though God stood before their eyes\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0And He says, \u201cshall His feet on the Mount of Olives.\u00a0 He does not here promise a miracle, such as even the ignorant might conceive to be litera<\/u>l;\u201d you see the attitude here?\u00a0 If you interpret this literal, number one, you\u2019re childish and number two, you\u2019re ignorant.\u00a0 \u201c\u2026nor does he do this in what follows, when he says, The mount shall be rent in half\u2026to the east and half to the west. This has never happened,\u201d well John, the reason this has never happened is because it\u2019s yet future, okay; you\u2019re not going to find this in history; this is something yet to happen at the end of the tribulation period.\n\n\u201c\u2026\u201c\u2026nor does he do this in what follows, when he says, The mount shall be rent in half\u2026to the east and half to the west. This has never happened, that mount has never been rent: but as the Prophet could not, under those grievous trials, which might have overwhelmed the minds of the godly a hundred times, have extolled the power of God\u2026without employing a highly<\/u>\u201d what? \u201c figurative language, he therefore\u201d <\/u>what? \u201caccommodates himself,<\/u>\u201d when you see the word \u201caccommodate\u201d substitute which word?\u00a0 Lie, God is lying to you in other words, \u201c as I have said, to the capacity of our flesh.<\/u>\u201d\n\nThe reason we think it\u2019s literal is because of the weakness of our flesh that forces us to interpret these things literally but we all know better, that these are basically allegorical.\n\nNow why is he thinking this way?\u00a0 Who did he say he was dependent upon?\u00a0 Augustine.\u00a0 So I\u2019d better stop talking at this point but what I want to show you is that these Reformers carried with them into the Reformed tradition, into their Reformed theology Augustinian amillennialism which was never corrected.\u00a0 God had to work outside their movement and I thank God for their movement because of what it gave\u00a0 us, but God had to raise up other people outside their movement to correct these problems.\n\nSo I\u2019ll continue on this same line, talking about all kinds of other things they dragged into their new Protestant Reformed faith, even things like infant baptism.\u00a0 Even things like if the church is the kingdom of God on the earth then we have a right to take over politically a whole city in Geneva, which John Calvin did, and put the people to death who disagreed with him.\u00a0 Now where did he get that que from?\u00a0 I\u2019ll show you the que comes directly from Augustine.\u00a0 Augustine said to do that. So these issues are a big deal.\u00a0 So I love the Reformers but on the other hand I\u2019m not idolizing them either; I want us to see the whole picture, the good, the bad and the ugly.\u00a0 Any questions?","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