{"id":18890,"date":"2017-08-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-20T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sugar-land-bible-church.local\/sermon\/protestant-reformation-010\/"},"modified":"2017-08-20T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-08-20T05:00:00","slug":"protestant-reformation-010","status":"publish","type":"sermon","link":"https:\/\/slbc.org\/es\/sermon\/protestant-reformation-010\/","title":{"rendered":"Protestant Reformation 010"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","book":[89],"series_event":[480],"sermon_service_type":[473],"speaker":[6],"class_list":["post-18890","sermon","type-sermon","status-publish","hentry","book-acts","series_event-protestant-reformation","sermon_service_type-sunday-school","speaker-dr-andy-woods","no-post-thumbnail"],"acf":{"sermon_title":"Protestant Reformation 010","sermon_date":"20170820","sermon_month":"8","sermon_year":"2017","sermon_notes":4855,"sermon_slides":4861,"sermon_mp3":4862,"sermon_id":"820171016222","series_or_event":480,"service_type":[473],"speaker":6,"books_of_the_bible":89,"chapter_and_verse":"8:35-39","sermon_transcript":"Andy Woods\n\nThe Protestant Reformation 10\n\n8-20-17\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Acts 8:35-39\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lesson 10\n\nLet me open with a word of prayer and we\u2019ll get started.\u00a0 Father, we\u2019re grateful for today and grateful for what You did for us in terms of God the Son\u2019s death on the cross for our sins and His resurrection from the dead.\u00a0 I pray for the illuminating ministry of the Holy Spirit, that He would be with us as we seek to understand church history better in this session and understand the Book of Daniel a little better in the worship service that follows.\u00a0 We\u2019ll be careful to give you all the praise and the glory.\u00a0 We ask these things in Jesus\u2019 name, and God\u2019s people said\u2026. Amen.\n\nYou might want to open your Bible, if you have one with you, to Acts 8 and verse 35 and we\u2019ll be going to that verse shortly, I think.\u00a0 Here we are in lesson 10 of The Protestant Reformation.\u00a0 And we\u2019re looking at this, as you know, because we\u2019re coming up on the 500 year anniversary of the Reformation, October 31, 1517 is when Martin Luther started probably something he never intended to start but it\u2019s what we know now as the Protestant Reformation when he nailed the\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 95 Theses to the cathedral door in Wittenberg, Germany.\n\nSo we\u2019re kind of looking at this event and trying to figure out what\u2019s the big deal about it, what\u2019s the significance of it, what\u2019s good about it, what\u2019s bad about it.\u00a0 So here\u2019s the outline that we\u2019ve been following.\u00a0 We started with the early church and the baton of truth that was handed off to the early church.\u00a0 And it became encapsulated in the circle up north, if you can see that red circle, the school of Antioch, which took prophetic material literally and that mindset reigned in the church for its first two centuries.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve shown you a lot of writings from church fathers that established that.\u00a0 And sadly that mindset was eclipsed by the circle down south, in a place called Alexandria, Egypt.\n\nAlexandria Egypt taught, as we have said, an allegorical approach, not just to Bible prophecy but ultimately the whole Bible.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve showed you what they\u2019ve done with the rivers in Eden and the gates around the wall of Jerusalem and other things, and we do not believe that allegorization is a right way to understand the Bible for the simple reason that you\u2019re not interpreting the Bible; you\u2019re reading into the Bible a bunch of things that aren\u2019t found in the Bible so the authority transfers from the text to the mind of the interpreter.\u00a0 And we\u2019ve carefully explained all of that.\u00a0 But at the same time the Alexandria Egypt method of interpretation became extremely popular, we\u2019ve gone through the six reasons why it became popular and eventually it won the day.\u00a0 Eventually the church arrived at a point where Antioch and its mindset was no longer reigning but the mindset of Alexandria, Egypt was reigning.\n\nSo this plummeted the church into Roman numeral III, a period of time called The Dark Ages.\u00a0 And The Dark Ages is a period of time basically for a lot of reasons, including allegorization, the Bible is removed from the people.\u00a0 So the people, during this time period which lasted over a thousand\u00a0 years are basically at the whim of the ecclesiastical hierarchy or authorities, teaching them things like if you want to get Uncle Joe out of purgatory you need to pay the church or the priest the right price.\u00a0\u00a0 And if you don\u2019t have a Bible to challenge that you\u2019re basically at the whim of an abusive shepherd.\u00a0 And this is what really riled up Martin Luther.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t the only one but there were others that were very, very bothered by this.\n\nAnd so this takes us to Roman numeral IV, now we\u2019re in the 16th<\/sup> century, the contribution of the Protestant Reformers.\u00a0 The Protestant Reformers are so critical because they restore to the church, in certain areas, a literal method of interpretation like that which had been taught in Antioch in its first two centuries of the church.\u00a0 And they restored to the church the five solas, which we\u2019ve talked about, Sola Scriptura, Scripture alone, Sola Gratia which means grace alone, Sola Christus which means Christ alone, Sola Deo Gloria, to the glory of God alone, Sola Fide, faith alone.\u00a0 And a lot of the paid the ultimate price with their lives for doing this.\u00a0 So praise the Lord for the Protestant Reformers.\n\nAnd most of your presentations that are going to be forthcoming in evangelical Christianity will stop probably at that point.\u00a0 In fact, they might not even cover one, two and three, they\u2019re certainly not going to cover five through eight; they\u2019re going to focus on four and look at the Protestant Reformers, look at how great they are and look at all the wonderful things that they have done, of which there are many.\n\nBut what I want to show you is the Reformers were flawed people, just like the rest of us and they brought with them into the Protestant movement a lot of baggage, a lot of Roman Catholic baggage that even to this day hasn\u2019t been worked out of some of their circles.\u00a0 So we find ourselves in Roman numeral V which I\u2019ve entitled The Reformers Incomplete Revolution.\u00a0 I mean, it was a revolution that they introduced but it was far from complete.\u00a0 So to kind of help us understand that we\u2019re working through various parts here in Roman numeral V, I\u2019ve made a few comments about the Reformers protology, doctrine of the beginnings, which has a tendency to be very good.\u00a0 They took the global flood literally, this was pre-Darwin so they weren\u2019t under pressure from the (quote) \u201cscientific\u201d (close quote) world to rewrite the Bible the way Christians were in the 19th<\/sup> and 20th<\/sup> and even now in the 21st<\/sup> century.\u00a0\u00a0 So when you look at some of the writings of the Reformers on the flood, the twenty-four hour creation days, the young earth, and I have to give them a thumbs up.\n\nHowever, they were very selective in what they took literally and what they didn\u2019t take literally.\u00a0 The solas\u2014literally.\u00a0 Genesis 1-11\u2014literally.\u00a0 However, you get into other subjects and they started to maintain the allegorical method of interpretation.\u00a0 So consequently they did not deal in depth with eschatology.\u00a0 Eschatology, as you know, is the study of the end, what the Bible reveals about the end.\u00a0 So they just kind of kept in place an allegorical hermeneutic and the allegorical hermeneutic in eschatology continues to reign in Reformed churches today.\u00a0 Reformed theologians think we\u2019re almost out of our minds by taking eschatology literally.\u00a0 But once you begin to take eschatology literally methods influence outcomes.\u00a0 Are you with me on that?\n\nShow me your method and I\u2019ll show you your outcome.\u00a0 If you move into a consistent literal approach to the whole Bible I can pretty much tell you where you\u2019re going to land on the map.\u00a0 You\u2019re probably going to land in the young earth creationist\u2019s camp somewhere.\u00a0 And you\u2019re probably going to land in pretribulationalism, premillennialism, which is the doctrine statement of our church and other churches.\u00a0 But you see the Reformers just didn\u2019t apply the literal method of interpretation to eschatology so they retained amillennialism which is this idea that Jesus is reigning as King now; there is no future kingdom because we\u2019re in the kingdom now, at which point I say if this is the kingdom I\u2019m sort of sorry I signed up for this deal because when the Bible reveals the kingdom I think it\u2019s much brighter than what\u2019s going on right now.\u00a0 Amen.\u00a0 I mean, I don\u2019t know if in the kingdom people are going to go around tearing down statues and things of their history and their country\u2026 I don\u2019t want to get into all that stuff.\n\nBut you\u2019re not going to see racial hatred and all of these sorts of things that we see today in the kingdom.\u00a0 But amillennialists will tell you that we\u2019re in the millennial kingdom now.\u00a0 So the guy that really got amillennialism off the ground was someone (as we\u2019ve talked about) that was influenced by Alexandria, Egypt; \u00a0Augustine, I used to call him Saint Augustine but I stopped calling him that after figuring out some of the things the guy taught.\u00a0 And one of the things that he taught in the 4th century, through a book, The City of God<\/em>, is that the church, I have the relevant part underlined, even now is the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of heaven.\u00a0 That\u2019s amillennialism.\n\nAugustine is probably the most influential theologian in church history in terms of influencing how other people think.\u00a0 And here I\u2019m\u00a0 using \u201cinfluence\u201d not necessarily in the good sense but I think he had a lot of negative influence as well.\u00a0 And you see, John Calvin carried Augustinianism with him into Reformed Theology in the 16th<\/sup> century.\n\nSo I think I\u2019ve given you this quote from Calvin.\u00a0 Calvin says \u201cAugustine is 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.\u00a0 You go through Calvin\u2019s Institutes and he\u2019s quoting Augustine over and over and over and over again.\u00a0 So he\u2019s admitting his literary dependence on Augustine.\u00a0 So he changes Augustinian theology in the area of the solas; he leaves it alone in this area of prophecy, eschatology, amillennialism.\u00a0 In fact, he called the premillennialism (which is our view), the school of Antioch called premillennialism chiliasm.\u00a0 He called it childish, and he actually said that if you believe that you\u2019re bringing reproach upon the church.\u00a0 And that\u2019s right out of Calvin\u2019s Institutes.\n\nSo clearly Calvin did some great things but there are a few things he did, in fact many things he did that we would not jump on board with.\u00a0 One of these things is the refusal to apply his literal method, which God\u00a0 used to rescue the church in certain areas, he refused to apply it to eschatology.\u00a0 So he taught a doctrine basically called replacement theology which is not invented by Calvin, you can trace this back to Augustine and even earlier, that the nation of Israel has been cut off from God and all of the spiritual blessings of Israel have been transferred to the church.\u00a0 They never transfer the curses, I might add, they leave those behind with the Jewish people, those Christ-killers.\u00a0 But we have basically taken Israel\u2019s place in the plan and program of God.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve given you quote after quote where Calvin taught this doctrine.\n\nWe\u2019ve even looked at some of Calvin\u2019s commentaries.\u00a0 Calvin commented probably on every single verse in the Bible, with the exception of those books like Revelation that he didn\u2019t write commen\u00adtaries on.\u00a0 So you can look at what Calvin says about Old Testament prophecies related to Israel, whether it\u2019s Isaiah 35:1, Amos 9:13, Zechariah 14:4, and he basically rewrote those passage.\u00a0 And he wrote Israel, like Augustine, his mentor, had done\u2014completely out of the equation.\u00a0 [Isaiah 35:1, \u201cThe wilderness and the desert will be glad, And the Arabah will rejoice and blossom; Like the crocus.\u201d\u00a0 Amos 9:13, \u201c\"Behold, days are coming,\" declares the LORD, \"When the plowman will overtake the reaper And the treader of grapes him who sows seed; When the mountains will drip sweet wine And all the hills will be dissolved.\u00a0 Zechariah 14:4, \u201cIn that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle from east to west by a very large valley, so that half of the mountain will move toward the north and the other half toward the south.\u201d]\n\nThe D- Day for replacement theology was May 14, 1948.\u00a0 Anybody know what happened on May 14, 1948?\u00a0 Israel came back to life as a country.\u00a0 Now you see that happened in the news and all of \u00a0a sudden you say wait a minute here, these prophecies look kind of literal and God seems to be moving his hand in history to restore the Jewish people to their land.\u00a0 And that\u2019s why they go out of their way, these replacement theologians, to explain away the rebirth of the State of Israel.\u00a0 They\u2019ll say God is not involved in it.\u00a0 There are two Protestant Reform denominations that actually as I speak are engaging in formal boycotts against Israel because the reality of the reborn State of Israel is contradicting everything that they taught, everything that they believed, going back to Calvin and going back much earlier to the 4th century to Augustine.\n\nSo Renald Showers, who is a very good premillennial scholar says this: \u201cThe Lutheran and Reformed and Anglican Reformers rejected premillennialism as being Jewish opinions.\u00a0 They maintain the amillennial view which the Roman Catholic Church had adopted from Augustine.\u201d\u00a0 So a lot of people look at the Protestant Reformers as if they made a clean break with Roman Catholicism and that just isn\u2019t the case.\u00a0 They did not make a clean break with Roman Catholicism in the area of eschatology.\u00a0 In fact, amillennialism reigns supreme in the churches influenced or started by the Protestant Reformers directly as I speak.\n\nBarry Horner, if you don\u2019t have this book I recommend it to you, it\u2019s called Future Israel<\/em>: Why Christian Anti-Judaism Must Be Challenged<\/em>.\u00a0 It\u2019s an in depth scholarly book and I just give you this quote from him.\u00a0 He says, \u201cThe inheritance from my Augustinian tradition that modern Europe received, notwithstanding the opposition of Melanchthon,\u201d that was Luther\u2019s assistant or helper, a very skilled man in original languages, \u201cnotwithstanding the opposition of Melanchthon and others to Luther\u2019s excesses resulted in a continuance of an eschatology that upheld the essentially anti-Judaist Theses, namely the transference of the blessings formerly promised to Israel now given to the Christian church for its fulfillment.\u00a0 On a much larger scale the Reformed movement maintained its allegiance to Augustinian eschatology which essentially found authoritative expressions in the writings of\u00a0 Frances Turretin, 17th<\/sup> century, who studied at Calvin\u2019s academy in Geneva and later taught there for\u00a0 thirty years.\u00a0 His monumental Institutes of Elenctic Theology<\/em> became the of reformed doctrine.\u00a0 Not surprisingly his,\u201d that\u2019s the theologians following Calvin, \u201cnot surprisingly his quotations of Augustine are copious, even far exceeding references to Calvin.\u201d\n\nThat\u2019s what\u00a0 you have to understand about Reformed Theology today; they continue to hold Augustine in this huge favorable light and he continues to live in Reformed Theology.\u00a0 Consequently Turretin\u2019s eschatology is almost predictable.\u00a0 Of course such a mass incorporation into church is to the exclusion of any perpetuation of the Jewish identity.\u00a0 In classic Augustinian fashion there is token recognition of Jewish individuality for a time,\u201d that\u2019s what they all say, they say well, we\u2019re pro Israel and you say well why are you pro Israel?\u00a0 Well, we believe Jews can get saved.\u00a0 Okay, I believe that too, wonderful, but do you believe in a plan for the future nation?\u00a0 Do you believe in her wide scale conversion in the tribulation period?\u00a0 And do you believe in God literally fulfilling His covenants through that nation?\u00a0 Do you believe a time in history is coming where Israel will be the head and not the tail.\u00a0 Now you start talking like that and they part company with you real fast. But they\u2019ll give lip service to Israel and basically what they mean is Jews can get converted but they\u2019ve cut off what God has revealed concerning the future, nationally, of that nation.\u00a0 And that\u2019s what Horner is explaining here. \u201cThough any form of Jewish restoration was considered to be a gross form of chiliasm.\u201d\u00a0 See, they mock chiliasm the same way Calvin mocked it and the same way Augustine mocked it.\n\n\u201cTurretin\u2019s Institutes\u201d that\u2019s the theologian influenced by Calvin, \u201cTurretin\u2019s Institutes became the central textbook for Systematic Theology\u201d oh-oh, \u201cin American Ivy League colleges during the last half of the 18th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 It\u2019s not surprising that the early theologians of Princeton\u201d oh my goodness, \u201ctheological seminary highly esteemed, this most influential legacy and of course its eschatology.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [Future Israel: Why Christian Anti-Judaism Must Be Challenged<\/em>, ed. E. Ray Clendenen, NAC Studies in Bible & Theology (Nashville, TN: Baker, 2007), 155-60]\n\nNow Horner, if you want all the documentation in this he writes this book, it goes like 300 or 400 pages documenting it but what he is basically saying is replacement theology went from Alexandria, Egypt to Augustine, from Augustine to John Calvin, and from John Calvin into the theologians that John Calvin mentored and eventually made its way to the United States of America in the Reformed Institutions that the Reformed movement established subsequent to the Protestant Reformation.\n\nWe all know this, right, that Harvard, Princeton, Yale, those are like secular schools today that are hostile to Christianity but those schools were set up essentially to teach ministers how to be ministers, aspiring ministers how to be ministers.\u00a0 And what Horner is saying is the replacement theologists live and breathe\u2026 it was just as much alive in those institutions as it was in the writings of Calvin or Augustine because of this direct lineage that they trace back to John Calvin.\u00a0 So the Reform movement never corrected this problem.\u00a0 The Reform movement never took the literal method that they used to rescue the church is some areas and they never applied it to eschatological issues.\u00a0 And that\u2019s how their churches are\u2026 with very few exceptions that\u2019s how their churches are set up even today.\u00a0 So that, I think, is a weakness of Reformation theology\u00a0 and that\u2019s why I call this the Reformer\u2019s incomplete revolution.\n\nNow something else to criticize and I think I\u2019m okay criticizing the Reformers because we\u2019ve said a lot of really nice things about them, haven\u2019t we.\u00a0 Maybe not today but in prior lessons, I mean, I\u2019ve talked about their contributions, I\u2019ve talked about what they accomplished, I\u2019ve talked about how many of them lost their lives, but if you\u2019re going to be an honest student of history you have to look at everything.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I\u2019ve entitled this The\u00a0 Protestant Reformation, the good, the what? the bad and the ugly.\u00a0 We\u2019re looking at some ugly things here that a lot of people kind of cringe and don\u2019t want to see.\n\nOne of the things you find in the Protestant Reformers is this idea that the Roman Catholic Church, \u00a0or the Pope, is the antichrist.\u00a0 Luther discovered that if you tell people, who didn\u2019t like the Roman Catholic system to begin with, if you told people that the Pope was the antichrist that would preach.\u00a0 I mean, people liked hearing that.\u00a0 The issue is, is that what the Bible is actually saying.\u00a0 I mean is the Bible actually saying that the papacy and the Babylonian city and system connected with the beast, is that really Roman Catholicism.\u00a0 And I think, personally, there\u2019s enough bad things in Roman Catholicism without having to make them the antichrist.\u00a0 Are you with me on that?\u00a0 In other words I\u2019m not giving a hat tip or some kind of acquiescence to Roman Catholic theology, as you know I\u2019m very much against Roman Catholic theology.\u00a0 But that did not give Luther and Calvin the freedom to just willy-nilly take prophecies about the beast and apply it to the Pope.\n\nAnd even today there is a widespread view in Bible believing circles that the Babylonian city and system is somehow Rome or Rome-ish, and when people talk about the antichrist they talk a lot about the Pope and things of that nature.\u00a0 Well, my conclusion is that is not borne out by a careful study of eschatological passages.\u00a0 In other words, the care that Luther and Calvin used in the Book of Romans, for example, or the Book of Galatians, they did not exercise that same care and precision in eschatology.\u00a0 When it came to eschatology it was kind of like a newspaper form of exegesis; they just took prophecies and they didn\u2019t use their careful method and they just applied it against the Pope.\n\nSo in their thinking Babylon\u2026 now who is \u201cBabylon\u201d in Revelation 17 and 18?\u00a0 I mean, I think Babylon means Babylon and I did my doctoral dissertation on this so I\u2019m going to try very hard here not to babble on about Babylon but if you take that literally, and I don\u2019t see why you can\u2019t, Babylon is not in Rome, Rome is in the west, right.\u00a0 We need a geography lesson, don\u2019t we!\u00a0 Babylon is in the east, it\u2019s in Mesopotamia between the two rivers, it\u2019s the exact place where Nimrod sought to build the tower of Babel and it\u2019s the exact same place where the children of Israel were taken into captivity in which book that we\u2019re reading about on Sunday morning?\u00a0 The Book of Daniel, all of these things are written in Shinar, that\u2019s Hebrew, or Mesopotamia which means the two rivers or Babylonia or Babylon or modern day Iraq.\u00a0 That\u2019s my understanding of Revelation 17 and 18.\n\nBut Luther came along and he said you know, those seven hills\u2026 by the way, let\u2019s look at this for a minute; Revelation 17:9-10, this is where they get a lot of this.\u00a0 \u201cHere is the mind which has wisdom.\u201d This is describing Babylon.\u00a0 \u201cThe seven heads are seven\u201d what?\u00a0 seven hills, does it say seven hills?\u00a0 It says seven mountains so just factor that in\u00a0 your mind,\u00a0 \u201cseven mountains on which the woman sits, [10] and they are seven kings;\u201d so they\u2019re not hills, number one, and number two we\u2019re told, now I\u2019m a literal interpreter except when the text tells me that the hills mean something else, then I don\u2019t take them literally, so I have a textual clue here telling me that the hills\u2026 well, it doesn\u2019t even say hills, does it, it says \u201cmountains\u201d represent something, they represent seven kings, but what people will do is they\u2019ll say look right there, seven mountains, what that really means is the seven hills, the seven hills of the ancient city of Rome and so that sort of factored in and Luther, you could see how he could easily take that and aim it right at his adversary, the Roman Catholic Church.\u00a0 And you can see how tempting that would be.\u00a0 But when you look at this carefully it never says seven hills, it says seven mountains and verse 10 says the mountains represent \u201cseven kings.\u201d\n\nAs you know from the Book of Daniel \u201cking\u201d and \u201ckingdom\u201d are\u00a0 used as synonyms; it would be like saying today the President did such and such; well, \u201cPresident\u201d would represent not just a person, right, but it would represent the entire executive branch of government.\u00a0 So I take these seven mountains are seven kingdoms that have in the past persecuted the nation of Israel.\u00a0 They are Egypt, you can study all of these in the Bible and you can see how they always persecuted Israel: Egypt, then Assyria, and then as you know from Daniel\u2019s statue that he saw, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, that takes us to six, and then there\u2019s going to be some kind of revived antichrist system in the last days, that will take you to number 7.\n\nSo what I\u2019m trying to get at is the seven hills have nothing to do with the seven hills of Rome when you actually study this out with careful precision.\u00a0 If Luther and Calvin had done that with the same care that they used in Galatians and Romans they would understand that but they were really willy-nilly with eschatology.\u00a0 They just said we don\u2019t like the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church doesn\u2019t like us, look, here\u2019s some prophecy in Revelation 17, we can make that look like seven hills and we\u2019ll make it look like the Pope is the antichrist.\n\nAnd by the way, in Revelation 17 the \u201cwoman\u201d (Babylon) rides the what?\u00a0 The beast.\u00a0\u00a0 You don\u2019t have one image in Revelation 17, you have two, the woman rides the beast, Revelation 17:3 says that.\u00a0 [Revelation 17:3, \u201cAnd he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness; and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns.\u201d]\n\nNow when you study this very carefully who do the seven mountains, they\u2019re also called seven kings, who do those belong to?\u00a0 They don\u2019t belong to the woman named Babylon; they belong to the beast or the antichrist system.\u00a0 So if you\u2019re going to make the seven hills somehow connected with this woman named Babylon you have another major problem\u2014the seven hills don\u2019t even belong to her, they belong to the antichrist system that Babylon is dominating.\n\nAnd I\u2019m not trying to lose you in a bunch of myopic detail, I\u2019m just trying to show you that when you carefully analyze this passage using the literal, grammatical, historical method of interpretation this passage is not saying that the Roman Catholic Church is the antichrist.\u00a0 But you see, that didn\u2019t stop the Protestant Reformers.\n\nRevelation 17:3 says, \u201c\u2026and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast,\u201d so it\u2019s a woman rides the beast, the woman is Babylon, she\u2019s a prostitute, she has a\u2026 it\u2019s written on her forehead the name \u201cBabylon the great, mother of harlots,\u201d and so forth.\u00a0 And you\u2019ll notice that the seven hills, which aren\u2019t even called seven hills, seven mountains, later called seven kings or seven heads, are not even connected to Babylon.\u00a0 They\u2019re connected to the antichrist system that the woman is riding on.\n\nAnd a lot of people say well, let\u2019s make both of these images, the woman and the beast she\u2019s riding, let\u2019s just make them Rome.\u00a0 Well, you have a big problem there because the beast destroys the woman in that chapter.\u00a0 So if they\u2019re both Rome is Rome destroying Rome?\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t make any sense at all, does it?\u00a0 So exegetically I think it\u2019s almost impossible to say that the Roman Catholic system, based on Revelation 17, is the antichrist and the city of Babylon in the last days.\n\nBut notice what Luther says here, and by the way, look at the title of this book, Against the Roman Papacy, an Institution of the Devil.\u00a0 <\/em>That\u2019s one of the things I like about these Protestant Reformers, they have these direct statements and direct titles of books.\u00a0 And he writes in here: \u201cNo man can believe what an abomination the papacy<\/u> is.\u00a0 A Christian does not have to be of low intelligence either to recognize it.\u201d If you don\u2019t think my way, he\u2019s saying, you\u2019re not that smart.\u00a0 \u201cGod Himself must deride him in the hellish fire and our Lord Jesus Christ, Spiritual gift. Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 2:8, \u201cwill slay with the breath of His mouth and destroy\u00a0 him by His glorious coming.\u201d Close quote. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI only deride, with my own weak derision, so that those who now live and those who will come after us should know what I have thought of the Pope, the damned antichrist\u201d see that, \u201cand so that whoever wishes to be a Christian may be warned against such abominations.\u201d\u00a0 [Against the Roman Papacy, an Institution of the Devil,\" in Luther's Works<\/em>, ed. Eric. W. Gritsch (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1966), 273-74.]\n\nSo you see what Luther is doing here?\u00a0 He\u2019s taking texts without really being careful with them, without literally construing them and just redirecting them against his opponents, the Roman Catholic Church.\u00a0 Now Luther would have never done something like that in Galatians or Romans or the careful method he used to restore the five solas to the church.\n\nJohn Calvin, in his Institutes, basically does the same thing, follows exactly what Luther does.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if I need to read this whole quote to you, you have it there if you want to read it, but he talks about that papists, and then he goes into some prophecies here about the antichrist.\u00a0 Daniel 9:27 and Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:4 foretold that the antichrist would come and sit in the temple of God with\u00a0 us.\u00a0 It is the Roman pontiff, we make the leader and standard bearer of that wicked and abominable kingdom.\u00a0 So it\u2019s the Pope that\u2019s the fulfillment of these antichrist prophecies. And then he says at the end of this paragraph, \u201cthere we see the face of Babylon rather than that of the Holy City of God.\u201d\u00a0 [Calvin, Institutes<\/em>, IV, ii, 12.]\n\nSo let\u2019s just take all of these eschatological passages about the antichrist and Babylon and the last days and let\u2019s just redirect them without using careful Bible study methodology.\u00a0 That\u2019s always tempting, isn\u2019t it; if you don\u2019t like somebody, you disagree with somebody, well let\u2019s just make them the antichrist.\u00a0 And that\u2019s basically what Luther and Calvin did and that was wildly popular with the people.\u00a0 But it kind of demonstrates the lack of care and precision that the Reformers used in the subject of Bible prophecy or eschatology.\n\nAnd this view that the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope is the antichrist, this view is alive today.\u00a0 In fact, Dave Hunt, who is now with the Lord (so he knows better now, right, he\u2019s with the Lord, the Lord is straightening out his theology) Dave Hunt who I like, who Anne and I met personally and had meals with and so forth, Dave Hunt wrote a whole book called A Woman Rides the Beast<\/em>, and it\u2019s a book about the Catholic Church and it\u2019s a wonderful book if you want to learn about the problems with the Roman Catholic Church theologically I recommend it.\u00a0 However, it\u2019s a terrible book to teach you how to interpret the Book of Revelation.\u00a0 So Dave Hunt followed exactly what Calvin did; he followed exactly what Luther did, he just took prophecies related to people that he was in opposition to and directed them against his opponents, I think in sort of a sloppy cavalier kind of way.\u00a0 And even today if you go around and interview people who do you think Babylon is they\u2019ll start talking about these seven hills and the Roman Catholic papacy and system and Roman Catholic Church.\n\nI think this is a problem that the Reformers have handed us.\u00a0 We have a lot of corrections we have to make in eschatology because of the Reformers not following their careful method of precision in eschatology.\u00a0 AND going beyond that, the Protestant Reformers dragged vestiges of Roman Catholicism with them into their new Protestant and Reformed churches.\u00a0 It is\u2026 and people think this way because of the way this subject has been taught, they think the Reformers made a clean break with Roman Catholicism.\u00a0 That is na\u00efve to think that way.\u00a0 They did NOT make a clean break with Roman Catholicism.\u00a0 They dragged a lot of inerrant baggage with them which we do also, don\u2019t we?\u00a0 Do you think that when\u00a0 you get saved your mind is completely purified?\u00a0 I mean, you\u2019re a new creature in Christ but you\u2019ve had a lifetime of thinking wrongly.\u00a0 Right?\n\nAnd that\u2019s why there\u2019s the biblical command in Romans 12:2 to do what with our minds?\u00a0 Renew them.\u00a0 [Romans 12:2, \u201cAnd do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.\u201d]\u00a0 And see, a lot of Christians, they don\u2019t go through that renewal process because they have never submitted to discipleship or they\u2019re in churches that really don\u2019t teach the whole counsel of God\u2019s Word and so they start carrying a lot of junk with them.\n\nAnd I know several ministries that are ministries that are set up by former Catholics and by former Muslims to expose the false teaching of Roman Catholicism and to expose the false teaching of Islam because people that started those ministries came from those bad theologies so they have set up whole ministries to expose those false doctrines.\u00a0 If you start listening to what they\u2019re saying and they kind of sound Roman Catholic themselves, and they kind of sound works oriented themselves, just like Islam that they supposedly left.\u00a0 So they made a break in an area or two but the mind has never been fully renewed; a lot of them don\u2019t really understand the principles of grace and they start quoting passages out of context that preach a works oriented gospel and they start sounding a lot like the false teachings that they\u2019ve left behind and are trying to expose.\n\nAnd that\u2019s the significance of Romans 12:2, how we need to submit to the process of mental renewal through a perpetual intake of God\u2019s Word because unless you do that your mind is not just going to stop thinking the way it used to think; you\u2019re dragging a bunch of stuff with you into Christianity.\u00a0 And that\u2019s basically what you have with these Protestant Reformers; they did some wonderful things and made some wonderful contributions and I praise the Lord for that but the fact of the matter is they brought in a lot of junk that had to be corrected by subsequent generations and I\u2019ll make you aware of some of those subsequent generations in a later study.\n\nAnd the verse I like to use to illustrate this, I just use this for illustrative purposes, is Daniel 7:12. It says, \u201cAs for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but an extension of life was granted to them for an appointed period of time.\u201d\u00a0 And you might remember we commented on this when we were in Daniel 7.\u00a0 It\u2019s talking about how Persia overthrew Babylon but did the Babylonian system just die?\u00a0 No it didn\u2019t, it continued to live in the new political Persian empire.\u00a0 It just lived spiritually.\u00a0 Then Greece comes along and Greece conquers Persia; now did the Persian and Babylonian systems just die?\u00a0 No they didn\u2019t, they continued to live in the Grecian system.\u00a0 And then Rome comes along and overthrows Greece but did the systems of Greece, Persia and Babylon just die because Rome overthrew Greece?\u00a0 No, those systems continued to live in Rome. Do you see that?\n\nSo historians will tell you this: Rome conquered Greece politically but Greece conquered Rome culturally.\u00a0 The language stayed, the deity stayed and that\u2019s what Daniel 7:12 is talking about.\u00a0 And I\u2019m just using this as an illustration of what the Protestant Reformation accomplished.\u00a0 It accomplished some great things but Roman Catholicism continued in many, many, many, MANY ways to live strongly in the mind of Luther and Calvin and the Reformed churches that they started.\u00a0 In fact, some of them I would argue are even Quasi \u00a0Roman Catholic today, as I speak.\u00a0 And one of the things to understand about Luther and Calvin is they never wanted to leave Rome.\u00a0 If God had given Luther some kind of vision and says one of these days\u00a0 you\u2019re going to start a Protestant movement and you\u2019re going to be cut off from the Roman Catholic Church I think Luther himself would have been astonished by that prophecy because that was never Luther\u2019s intention.\u00a0 Luther wanted to stay Catholic, they didn\u2019t even know what Protestantism was, it hadn\u2019t been started\u00a0 yet, it was sort of an unintended consequence, I would call it the work of the Holy Spirit, but Luther never wanted to be Protestant, neither did Calvin.\u00a0 I mean, Luther and Calvin had trained in the ministry to be priests and monks; they had no intention of leaving that system.\u00a0 The reason they left is they were given, what I like to call the right foot of fellowship.\u00a0 In other words, they were kicked out.\u00a0 Well, if you\u2019re kicked out you\u2019ve got to start a new church right?\n\nBut Luther never wanted to get kicked out; in fact, when he nailed his 95 Theses to the cathedral door in Wittenberg, Germany, he was shocked more than anybody else when people started calling him a heretic. All he wanted to do is sort of like your Facebook page, you\u2019ve got something on your mind so you post something.\u00a0 And you\u2019re sort of looking\u2026 you know, you want to push the envelope a little bit about something and in the comment box someone else will come in and write something else, someone else will write something else and before you know it you\u2019ve got this red hot discussion going and you\u2019re just trying to discuss something.\u00a0 That was sort of what Luther was doing with the 95 Theses; all he was trying to do was start a conversation about certain points that bothered him, particularly the manipulation of the sheep by the priesthood.\u00a0 That really got under his skin and he was trying to start a discussion about this.\n\nBut this idea about being branded as a heretic and eventually kicked out was never something Luther wanted nor was it really something that Calvin wanted.\u00a0 And so these guys initially desired to remain Catholics.\u00a0 So is it much of a shock that they dragged a lot of Catholicism with them into Protestant\u00adism?\u00a0 It shouldn\u2019t be shocking at all.\u00a0 And one of the things that they dragged with them into Protestantism is the practice of infant baptism.\u00a0 And that\u2019s why I had you open to Acts 8.\u00a0 We\u2019re about ready to close and I\u2019m just getting to the passage now.\u00a0 That was just introduction.\n\nActs 8, how does baptism work in the Bible.\u00a0 Acts 8:35 says, \u201cThen Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture he preached Jesus to him.\u00a0 [36] As they went along the road they came to some water; and the eunuch said, \u2018Look! Water! What prevents me from being baptized?\u2019\u00a0 [37] And Philip said, \u2018If you believe with all your heart, you may. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.\u201d\u00a0 This is the NASB.\u00a0 [38] \u201cAnd he ordered the chariot to stop; and they both went down into the water, Philip as well as the eunuch; and he baptized him. [39] When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; and the eunuch no longer saw him, but went on his way rejoicing.\u201d\n\nSo you see the pattern here?\u00a0 The pattern is the gospel is introduced to somebody, in this case the evangelist was Philip, one of the original deacons of the church at Jerusalem, he introduced the gospel to the Ethiopian eunuch, if the Ethiopian eunuch believes the gospel the Ethiopian eunuch gets saved and then the next logical step after that is water baptism (which saves nobody) but water baptism is an outward confession of an inward reality.\u00a0 And so this little story here in Acts, you\u2019re going to see it repeated over and over and over and over and over again.\n\nFirst comes a conversion through faith alone, and then comes water baptism.\u00a0 So in no sense does the Bible ever teach you should baptize an infant for the simple reason, how do you know if an infant has ever believed?\u00a0 How would you validate that?\u00a0 I mean, I will baptize any infant that can come forward in front of the church with the microphone and give us their testimony about how they believed in Christ.\u00a0 An infant can\u2019t do that; an infant can\u2019t even talk so how do you validate whether that infant is saved?\u00a0 You have to wait until they come of proper maturity and proper age where you can ask some questions and explain the gospel to them, then they trust Christ and then baptism follows.\u00a0 See?\n\nAnd that\u2019s the standard practice that you\u2019re going to find over and over again in the Scripture.\u00a0 But you see, the church at Rome, going all the way back in time was in this business of baptizing infants.\u00a0 So what does Luther do? He corrects the church in some areas but he drags right with him into Protestantism infant baptism.\u00a0 In fact, I was raised in a Protestant church where I was water baptized as an infant.\u00a0 Well, the problem is I got saved when I was 16 and I told my dad I want to get baptized and he said what are you talking about, you want to get baptized, you were already baptized as an infant, and he started pulling out all the family pictures and sure enough, there I was screaming at the top of my lungs as they were pouring water on me there in that particular church.\u00a0 And you see, I was following the biblical method; the church I grew up in was following a tradition which you don\u2019t find in the Scripture.\u00a0 And that tradition goes\u00a0 way back into Roman Catholicism and here Luther is carrying it with him into the Protestant movement.\n\nSo this writer, Alister McGrath of Luther, said \u201cHe believed that \u2018such sacraments could generate faith; and hence baptism could generate faith of an infant.\u201d\u2019\u00a0 Now where in the world is Luther getting this idea?\u00a0 He\u2019s not getting it from the Bible, I\u2019ll tell you that much.\u00a0 He\u2019s getting it from the long line of tradition that he had been handed down, training for service in the Roman Catholic system.\u00a0 In fact, in my\u2026 our recent trip to German there is the church of the Protestant Reformation; we were given a tour of it, one of the first churches that began in the Protestant movement.\u00a0 Luther himself was the preacher for some time in that church.\n\nYou might see over to the left there the pulpit which it\u2019s not a very good picture of it, but I did get a picture of the baptismal font; now that baptismal font doesn\u2019t look very big, does it; I men how would we ever fit out baptismal candidates into that font.\u00a0 Well, we don\u2019t have one of these, do we Wayne, we have a Jacuzzi at your house that we use which is a little bigger.\u00a0 But we can\u2019t fit our baptismal candidates into that font because only an infant would fit into that font.\u00a0 See that, because Luther himself, this is the church of the Protestant Reformation that started almost everything is in this business of baptizing infants.\u00a0 And our guide told us a really funny story about how he always wanted cold water to be used on these kids; you can imagine the shrieking and screaming, except when it came to his own kids then he said well, we need to raise the temperature of the water a little bit.\u00a0 Maybe you find that funny, maybe not, I hear a lot of silence out there so I guess you didn\u2019t find it funny.\u00a0 But it\u2019s just one of those interesting things of history.\n\nOne of the other things that the Protestant Reformers dragged with them from Roman Catholicism into the Protestant movement is something called consubstantiation.\u00a0 What Rome though up to this point in time was transubstantiation.\u00a0 What is transubstantiation?\u00a0 Transubstantiation is the idea that when\u00a0 you participate at the Eucharist, or what we call the communion table, you are literally eating the physical body of Jesus Christ, and drinking His blood, which means that at every single mass Christ is being what?\u00a0 Recrucified.\u00a0 Now immediately that runs afoul of the Book of Hebrews which says that the crucifixion of Jesus is a singular event, one time.\u00a0 But in Roman Catholicism not only is it a practice of what I would call cannibalism, it sounds a lot like cannibalism to me, but Jesus is being recrucified over and over and over again because of transubstantiation.\n\nNow what does Luther do?\u00a0 Luther takes that doctrine, which is unbiblical, and he just puts sort of a lighter spin on it.\u00a0 It\u2019s sort of like, if I can get political just for a minute, it\u2019s sort of like this whole debate about Obamacare, all these politicians run on we\u2019re going to repeal Obamacare, then they get into office and say well, we\u2019re going to repeal and replace Obama care.\u00a0 Well, what is the replace\u00ad\u00adment?\u00a0 Well, the replacement sounds a lot like Obamacare, you just tweaked it in a few places.\u00a0 Do you see that?\n\nAnd that\u2019s what Luther is doing with consubstantiation; he\u2019s dragging transubstantiation into the Reform movement but he\u2019s just giving a light touch on it, a lighter spin on it and the lighter spin is something called consubstantiation.\u00a0 So this writer of Luther said, \u201cLuther denied the doctrine of Transubstantiation, rejecting any molecular change of the elements. Consubstantiation, a term never employed by Luther, is used to explain his view that the body and blood are present \u2018in, with, and under\u2019 the bread and wine.\u201d\u00a0 [Emir Caner, \"Balthsar Hubmaier and His Theological Participation in the Reformation: Ecclesiology and Soteriology,\" Faith and Mission <\/em>21, no. 1 (2003): 42.]\n\nSo another way of saying this is the real present view, it\u2019s not transubstantiation, it\u2019s not we\u2019re eating the physical body and blood of Jesus Christ, but what they believe is that Jesus, when the communion elements are served is there in a special way; in fact, His presence\u00a0 is so unique in that time of the worship service that He\u2019s not there at other times.\u00a0 Now a lot of people believe in real presence because it is true that\u00a0 you sort of get a liver quiver, don\u2019t you, when the communion elements are served, you know, it\u2019s a special time, it\u2019s a holy time, it\u2019s a time of reflecting on what Jesus did and so a lot of people are of this opinion that well, Jesus is present during that time in a way He\u2019s not present during other times.\u00a0 So that\u2019s sort of a lighter spin, that\u2019s kind of a gentler, kinder, softer presentation of transubstantiation that Luther didn\u2019t believe in.\n\nSo he took a doctrine and just kind of touched it up a little bit without making it a molecular change in the elements.\u00a0 You see that?\u00a0 The problem is there is no verse that teaches this, real presence.\u00a0 There\u2019s no verse that teaches that Jesus is present during the communion part of the service that He\u2019s not present in during other times of the service.\u00a0 And people always like to quote well, \u201cwhere two or three are gathered\u201d pastor, brother, there I am in the midst of you.\u00a0 [Matthew 18:20, \u201cFor where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.\u201d]\u00a0 Do you know what that\u2019s talking about in Matthew 18?\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t have anything to do with communion, it\u2019s talking about church discipline.\u00a0 So there is no singular verse that teaches, first of all transubstantiation, or consubstantiation, and yet that continues to breathe in Reformed circles.\n\nWhat we believe is the memorial view; Jesus said, \u201cDo this in\u201d what\u2019s the next word, \u201cremembrance of Me.\u201d\u00a0 When Jesus says \u201cDo this in remembrance of Me\u201d he\u2019s not saying you\u2019re actually eating My body and drinking My blood, transubstantiation, He\u2019s not even saying I\u2019m there in some kind of mystical sense.\u00a0 By the way, the emergent church is really big into this real presence view.\u00a0 They believe Jesus is present in some kind of mystical way that He\u2019s not present otherwise.\u00a0 That\u2019s basically Lutheran theology.\u00a0 The Bible never teaches that.\u00a0 What it teaches is we do this in remembrance <\/u>of what Jesus did.\u00a0\u00a0 And I try to explain this verse every time we take communion, it is a memory device that is to be triggered by the bread and the cup; the bread would not be Christ\u2019s physical body but it would represent His body.\u00a0 Since God works through symbols, what\u2019s the symbol of the Noahic Covenant?\u00a0 A rainbow.\u00a0 He uses symbols to remind people of what He did.\n\nWhen you look at the rainbow you\u2019re reminded of His promise that He\u2019ll never flood the earth again.\u00a0 When you take communion, when you take the bread you\u2019re reminded of His body which was\u2026 now don\u2019t say His body was broken for you, His body was not broken for you because the Psalms say not one of His bones will be broken. [Psalm 34:20, \u201cHe keeps all his bones, Not one of them is broken.\u201d]\u00a0 If you start saying His body was broken for me you\u2019re kind of demonstrating that you don\u2019t know what that Psalm says.\u00a0 His body was sacrificed on my behalf, not broken, sacrificed on my behalf!\n\nSo you take the bread and that\u2019s what you\u2019re reminded of; you take the cup and you\u2019re reminded of what?\u00a0 His blood that was spilled in our behalf.\u00a0 So we are reminded <\/u>of the fact that salvation isn\u2019t free.\u00a0 So we\u2019re not partaking in His body, drinking His blood, we\u2019re not even saying He\u2019s present in some kind of mystical way that He\u2019s not present in other times.\u00a0 But it is a remembrance through a symbol, a reminder.\u00a0 That, I believe, is the proper understanding of the Lord\u2019s Table.\n\nSo we do not teach transubstantiation, we do not teach consubstantiation, we teach the memorial view.\u00a0 Yet Luther, for whatever reason probably didn\u2019t have time to correct all these problems so he dragged Obamacare light, if I can put it that way, into the Protestant movement.\u00a0 And this is what you find the Reformers doing over and over again.\u00a0 And the problem with the Protestant movement is it never corrected some of these problems and God had to raise up others to correct some of these problems.\n\nI think I need to stop talking.\u00a0 Next week we\u2019ll talk about the ramifications of teaching that the church is the kingdom of God on the earth, which Augustine taught, and the Reform movement continued and if you think that, that has political implications because I\u2019ll be showing you that Calvin took over a city politically in Geneva, Switzerland and put to death\u2026put to death\u2026\u00a0 \u00a0PUT TO DEATH theological opponents.\u00a0 And we all look at that and say that\u2019s horrible.\u00a0 Well, that is a logical outworking of kingdom now theology.\u00a0 And Augustine taught, and I\u2019ll be showing you the exact quote, taught the same kind of thing.\u00a0 So there\u2019s a lot of people in Christendom, left and right, that are trying to take over that city.\u00a0 I\u2019m not of that camp; I\u2019m not trying to take over anything; this is the devil\u2019s world.\u00a0 The best I can do is slow down the progress of evil but take over\u2026 that\u2019s different, that\u2019s something Jesus is going to do when He sets up His kingdom.\n\nAll right, that\u2019s next week. Sorry I talked so long.","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