{"id":18893,"date":"2017-10-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-08T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sugar-land-bible-church.local\/sermon\/protestant-reformation-014\/"},"modified":"2017-10-08T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-10-08T05:00:00","slug":"protestant-reformation-014","status":"publish","type":"sermon","link":"https:\/\/slbc.org\/es\/sermon\/protestant-reformation-014\/","title":{"rendered":"Protestant Reformation 014"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","book":[85],"series_event":[480],"sermon_service_type":[473],"speaker":[6],"class_list":["post-18893","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 014","sermon_date":"20171008","sermon_month":"10","sermon_year":"2017","sermon_notes":"","sermon_slides":5017,"sermon_mp3":5027,"sermon_id":"10817958321","series_or_event":480,"service_type":[473],"speaker":6,"books_of_the_bible":85,"chapter_and_verse":"16:18","sermon_transcript":"Andy Woods\n\nThe Protestant Reformation\n\n10-8-17\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Matthew 16:18\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lesson 14\n\nFather, we thank You for this morning and thank You for Your grace.\u00a0 Thank You that we live in a time where we can hear the gospel\u00a0 through so many available means.\u00a0 And we just pray, Father, that You will be with us today as we try to interact a little bit more about history.\u00a0 And I pray You\u2019ll be with our worship service that follows and I pray that in all things You would be glorified. We lift all these things up in Jesus\u2019 name, and God\u2019s people said\u2026 Amen.\n\nWhat I had planned to do today was to do a question and answer on what we\u2019ve covered and before we do that let me just do a quick review.\u00a0 I\u2019m planning on talking maybe five minutes, believe it or not, in monologue form anyway.\u00a0 So we started this study because just in a few weeks now the 500th<\/sup> year anniversary of Martin Luther nailing the 95 thesis to the cathedral door in Wittenberg, Germany, will be here.\u00a0 And we\u2019re trying to get a glimpse of history and try to get some perspective on the significance of that event.\u00a0 A lot of people understate it and a lot of people overstate it.\u00a0 So we\u2019re trying to not do either.\n\nAnd this study has gone on 13 weeks and we\u2019ve covered a lot of ground.\u00a0 But we started with the early church, as you\u2019ll remember, and the baton of truth that they passed off to the first generation of believers after the apostles, and they developed a school in Antioch up north, that northern circle, where they held to literal interpretation.\u00a0 And we could look back at some of the things they taught during that era and quibble with this or that but by and large their goal was to interpret the Bible, especially Bible prophecy in a literal sense.\n\nSo from that school of thought develops chiliasm, which is another name for premillennialism and they believed very strongly for the first few centuries of the church in a future kingdom.\u00a0 And what happened after the first two centuries of the church age is that school was eclipsed by the circle down south in Alexandria, Egypt, that developed the allegorical method of interpretation.\u00a0 And so we\u2019ve explained what that is, we\u2019ve explained why we don\u2019t think that\u2019s a correct understanding of the Scripture.\u00a0 We\u2019ve explained the historical forces that made allegorism so popular.\n\nBut the sad reality is Alexandria, Egypt, what was bad eclipsed what was good in Antioch.\u00a0 And so this plummeted Christianity into a period of time called the Middle Ages or I call it the Dark Ages, and the Dark Ages went on for over a millennium.\u00a0 That\u2019s what we as Americans in the year 2017, with all of our blessings, lose sight of.\u00a0 And this is basically a time period where the Bible is removed from the people and it\u2019s largely related to the fact that under allegorization only the priests were given authority to interpret the Bible.\u00a0 The average person was told they couldn\u2019t read it for themselves and during this time period illiteracy was so dominant that your average person couldn\u2019t read it even if they wanted to.\n\nSo that takes\u00a0 you from the fourth century right up until the sixteenth century where you have this movement taking place called The Protestant Reformation, and that\u2019s what everybody is celebrating beginning October 31st<\/sup> and these were men that the Lord raised up to restore biblical authority to the church in some areas.\u00a0 And their most prominent contribution was the five solas, which we\u2019ve gone through: sola fide, faith alone; sola gratia, grace along, sola Christus, Christ alone.\u00a0 Probably the most important is sola Scriptura, Scripture alone.\u00a0 And then there\u2019s Sola Deo Gloria, all Latin words, to the glory of God alone.\u00a0 And so they rejected the Dark Ages allegorization and they brought back to the church an Antioch mindset, a Bible only literal mindset in the area of the solas.\u00a0 So they contributed massively to regaining what was lost.\n\nBut as we have studied it\u2019s sort of na\u00efve to look at the Protestant Reformation as a complete return to truth and we\u2019ve labored to explain why that was not so.\u00a0 The Reformers, for a variety of reasons took their literal interpretation to some areas but not others.\u00a0 And the theological system that they were the progenitors of, called Reformed theology, did the exact same thing.\u00a0 And even today Reformed theology does this; literal in some areas but it retains Roman Catholicism in other areas, like in the area of infant baptism, kingdom now theology, and things to that extent.\u00a0 So Alexandria, Egypt reigns supreme in much of Christendom even today.\n\nSo this begins to explain why the Lord raised up, I believe around the 19th<\/sup> century, what is called the dispensational movement, which is part of the heritage of Moody Bible Institute, Dallas Seminary, what used to be called Philadelphia College of the Bible, Sugar Land Bible Church.\u00a0 And the Bible church movement would be part of this spiritual heritage. It basically raised up people at different times to take the Reformation hermeneutic, which is really the Antiochian hermeneutic, and apply it to the whole Bible, not just parts of it.\n\nSo dispensationalism is a 19th<\/sup> century movement; it involves taking the Reformers hermeneutic and applying it to the whole Bible, and using that method of interpretation.\u00a0 And just as the Reformers retrieved the solas the dispensational movement retrieved a lot of other things, such as chiliasm, which we call today premillennialism, the Israel\/church distinction, and pretribulationalism.\u00a0 And once you go that direction it\u2019s a natural curb, if you will, on anti-Semitism, which is always alive and well in the world.\u00a0 And if you want to understand where anti-Semitism comes from just read Revelation 12 where the dragon is trying to devour the woman (or Israel) and Satan has always worked in history to blot out the Jewish people because Satan understands that the kingdom program is going to be fulfilled through the nation of Israel.\n\nSo what better way to stop that from happening than to become anti-Semitic, and so anti-Semitism has always been there.\u00a0 Anti-Semitism, because of biblical illiteracy, was dominant in the Middle Ages.\u00a0 And sadly, the same anti-Semitic trends, and we\u2019ve tried to document this with various quotes, continued into the Protestant Reformation, into the Reformer\u2019s thinking and even reigns in some of their progenitors, spiritual progenitors today.\n\nBut if you take the whole Bible literally you start saying oh my goodness, God has a plan for Israel yet future.\u00a0 And you begin to see passages come into focus, like Romans 11 where Paul of Israel says they are enemies now but they are beloved on behalf of the patriarchs.\u00a0 [Romans 11:28, \u201cFrom the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God\u2019s<\/em> choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers;\u201d]\u00a0 So even though Israel is not a believing nation or people yet we can read the Word of God literally and understand that God is not through with Israel and that gives you a love for Israel, not a hatred.\n\nAnd once the Israel\/church distinction starts to come back then\u00a0 you stop taking the Law of Moses like John Calvin did, and others, and try to legislate it on people, and you get away from these social experiments, like in Geneva that went awry.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve given you, real fast last time, some of the key dispensational leaders that did this and if you look at these names through the lens of Reformed theology they\u2019re always demonized; hardly anything good is said about them.\u00a0 But to my mind these people are all heroes and all they did was take the Reformer\u2019s hermeneutic and apply it to prophetic sections of Scripture; names like John Nelson Darby, Sir Robert Anderson, who said that the first sixty-nine weeks of Daniel\u2019s prophecy was fulfilled literally then maybe the seventieth week would be fulfilled literally as well.\n\nSir Robert Anderson says, \u201cThere is not a single prophecy, of which the fulfillment is recorded in Scripture, that was not realized with absolute accuracy, and in every detail; and it is wholly unjustifiable to assume that a new system of fulfillment was inaugurated after the sacred canon closed\u2026Literalness of fulfillment may therefore be accepted as an axiom to guide us in the study of prophecy.\u201d\u00a0 [The Coming Prince<\/em>, p.147-148]\n\nNo Protestant Reformer ever said; Luther never said that, Calvin never said that, in fact Luther and Calvin are saying the opposite.\u00a0 But Anderson is coming along and taking the Reformers hermeneutic, which was used to successfully retrieve the five solas and they\u2019re applying it to prophecy.\u00a0 Other folks that did this would be C. I. Scofield, W. E. Blackstone, Henry Allen Ironside, Lewis Sperry Chafer, and I could give you other names but that just gives you a sampling.\n\nAnd so we come to Roman numeral VIII, looking back 500 years later, how do we properly look at the Protestant Reformation, particularly as we\u2019re coming up on the 500th<\/sup> year anniversary.\u00a0 Well, we rejoice over the Reformers.\u00a0 We\u2019re grateful for what they accomplished and the price they paid, some of them paying with their own lives to do what they did.\u00a0 But at the same time we don\u2019t put them on a pedestal or idolize them, any more than you would put any human being on a pedestal.\u00a0 And we understand that the restoration that they led was very partial; it was important but it wasn\u2019t complete.\u00a0 What they gave us was a tool; now the tool wasn\u2019t new to them, you can trace it back to Antioch, they just got it out of the tool box and dusted it off and used it.\u00a0 But the tool was literal interpretation; we\u2019ve talked about what that means, and they went into the Scripture and retrieved certain doctrines, but they only applied it so far.\u00a0 They applied it selectively.\u00a0 They gave us the right seed or the right method, it just wasn\u2019t consistently used.\u00a0 And so God had to raise up others outside of their movement, down the line, to apply it consistently.\n\nAnd so that basically is the story of the whole Protestant Reformation as I understand it, looking at those eight major areas:\u00a0 The early church, The Alexandrian eclipse, The Dark Ages,, The Contribution of the Protestant Reformers, The Reformers\u2019 Incomplete Revolution, Reformed Theology Today, DISPENSATIONALISM & THE COMPLETED REVOLUTION.\u00a0 And so we can look back 500 years later with gratitude but not over stating what they accomplished.\n\nSo anyway, that\u2019s the end of the Reformation study.\u00a0 I thought I\u2019d talk five minutes and I actually talked fifteen.\u00a0 So I got allegorical there a little bit.\u00a0 But there\u2019s no doubt people, we have 45 minutes for questions so if you have a question just make sure you say it loud and we have a viewing audience out there so I\u2019m going, to the best of my ability rephrase or rephrase the question not to insult you but just so people out there who haven\u2019t heard the question can hear it.\u00a0 And if I don\u2019t know the answer I\u2019m just going to say I don\u2019t know; how does that sound.\u00a0 And we also have potential Facebook questions that might come in so if you\u2019re a Facebook viewer just put your question\u2026now we\u2019re looking for questions, not sermons, put your question in the comment box and we\u2019ll try to get to it if there\u2019s a lull in the action here.\u00a0 All right, how does that sound?\n\nWayne had his hand up first.\u00a0 [can\u2019t hear]\u00a0 You mean how accessible was the Scripture during the Dark Ages?\u00a0 [can\u2019t hear] Before the Dark Ages.\u00a0 Okay, so how accessible was the Scripture in the Antiochian area, I guess is what you\u2019re asking.\u00a0 And my understanding is they had a completed Canon, the Canon was looked at as closed, and they looked at it with great reverence.\u00a0 And to my mind the early church, I\u2019m not talking about in the Book of Acts, I\u2019m talking about after the apostles left the scene, had everything they needed and were pretty faithful.\u00a0 They weren\u2019t perfect but they were pretty faithful with what God had given them for the first two centuries.\u00a0 But the problem comes along in the Middle Ages or the Dark Ages when people are told they can\u2019t understand what they\u2019re reading.\u00a0 And it also becomes a problem when illiteracy begins to take over and people can\u2019t read.\u00a0 So I think prior to that point in time, prior to Alexandria\u2019s influence there was an accessibility and a general understanding that the Scriptures were available and understand\u00ad\u00adable.\u00a0 That\u2019s my understanding.\n\n[Same person says more]\u00a0 Exactly.\u00a0 Well that was a key plank in the movement into an Alexandrian mindset is\u2026 you know, it\u2019s easy to believe that God has a future for Israel when you can look over in the Middle East and see them there with a functioning temple, but that all changed in A.D. 70 with the Romans driving Israel out, and then Bar Cochba\u2019s\u00a0 Revolt, which happened in A.D. 135, exasperated that and then when Hadrian came to power and called the name of that land Palestine, which is a mocking of the Jewish people, it comes from the derivative Philistine, pretending like the Jews were never there, then all of a sudden Christendom has a hard time believing these prophecies about a literal Israel.\n\nNow in our day it\u2019s much easier to believe in a literal Israel, isn\u2019t it, because we pick up our newspaper and Israel is everywhere in terms of the news.\u00a0 But you\u2019re dealing with people living in a time period where Israel had been kicked out of that land a long time ago so it\u2019s easy to start to allegorize those passages.\u00a0 And as David Regan says that was D Day for the replacement theology view is the restoration of Israel.\u00a0 I mean, that is an event that totally upset them because now you can look at the Middle East and say wow, these prophecies could very well be happening literally.\n\nDarrell [can\u2019t hear] Well, you asked me about that last week and told me to be ready for that question and I didn\u2019t do any research on it because I was in Minnesota all week and I haven\u2019t really done any research on the Anabaptists.\u00a0 I just have a hard time believing any Christian group that claims some kind of direct lineage to the apostles.\u00a0 I think all of us are standing on the shoulders of the Reformers, one way or the other.\u00a0 Now I realize God always has a remnant and everybody claims that their particular denomination (or whatever) is part of that remnant.\u00a0 But to me it\u2019s just very difficult to believe that given all the historical forces that were at work in the Dark Ages.\u00a0 So I think the Anabaptists and Sugar Land Bible Church and all of us are standing on the shoulders of the Reformers, building on what they did.\u00a0 That\u2019s my unresearched answer, if that helps.\n\nTina T has a question:\u00a0 [can\u2019t hear] \u00a0The Crusades go back to what, the 1100\u2019s, something like that.\u00a0 Have I got the date right on that?\u00a0 So they would precede the Protestant Reformation of the 16th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 And I\u2019m not denying the fact that good things were accomplished in the Crusades but when you get into this mindset that we\u2019re going to go to Jerusalem and liberate Jerusalem and bring in the kingdom and fulfill all these prophecies, which was part of the mindset of the Crusaders as I understand it, that is an outworking of not understanding the Israel\/church distinction, in the same way John Calvin didn\u2019t understand it.\n\nCalvin was taking the Mosaic Law and legally imposing it and trying to create a new Israel and that also is like politically a new Israel and that\u2019s also a lack of understanding of the Israel\/church distinction.\u00a0 So I\u2019m not denying that some good things were accomplished in the Crusades but to me a lot of that relates to a theological confusion that people had at that time, that Israel is Israel and the church is the church.\u00a0 So if we see Israel as Israel and the church is the church then our primary mission on this earth is not political.\u00a0 Now I preach we ought to be involved in politics; I think we ought to be involved politics to restrain evil, to slow it down some but we don\u2019t do it because we\u2019re trying to bring in the kingdom.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if that helps at all.\n\nSame person says you\u2019re suggesting that the Crusades were for that purpose [can\u2019t hear rest]?\u00a0 Andy:\u00a0 I think it was mixed, a mixed thing.\u00a0 It\u2019s not one or the other it\u2019s both and.\u00a0 So what I\u2019m saying is that there could have been that good motive and good things accomplished but intermixed with this is a confusion about how we\u2019re going to restore Jerusalem, restore the temple, and those kinds of things.\u00a0 I hope that helps.\n\n[can\u2019t hear, something about Face Book], something about Dallas Seminary and progressive dispensationalism? [can't hear]\u00a0 Andy: \u00a0That\u2019s really not within the orbit of our study; if I go on record with that I\u2019ll never live it down so I\u2019ll answer that another time.\n\n[Andre: can\u2019t hear]\u00a0 Okay, let me restate the question.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if I restated Tina\u2019s question either but this is hard for me to remember to restate questions so if I start talking without restating the question you guys interrupt me, okay.\u00a0 So you\u2019re asking is the thousand year millennial doctrine, is that found in other places besides Revelation 20.\u00a0 [Person says yes]\u00a0 Okay, I would say the answer to that is the millennial doctrine is basically all over the Old Testament.\u00a0 I mean, it\u2019s in the Old Testament primarily that you get the glimpse of an earthly kingdom, in the covenants, in the prophets and so forth.\u00a0 The only contribution that Revelation 20:1-10 adds is it tells you the duration of a thousand years.\u00a0 And this is what people get confused about with the Book of Revelation.\u00a0 The Book of Revelation, as I understand it, is not adding new information.\u00a0 Most of the information in the Book of Revelation is scattered throughout the Bible.\u00a0 The contribution of the Book of Revelation is it takes all of these scattered prophecies and puts them in a chronological order.\n\nMaybe this analogy will work.\u00a0 Do you all do jigsaw puzzles, thank God for the box top that tells you what the picture is supposed to look like.\u00a0 So the scattered pieces is the millennial doctrine all over the Old Testament.\u00a0 The box top tells you how the pieces fit together.\u00a0 So the millennium is\u2026 and people misunderstand this, they think well, the millennium is just a doctrine found in one chapter of the Bible and that\u2019s not true.\u00a0 The millennial doctrine is all over the Old Testament.\u00a0 Revelation comes along and just gives you the time of the millennium.\u00a0 So it\u2019s true, you only find the duration of the millennium in Revelation 20 but the concept is voluminous all over the Old Testament.\u00a0 Does that help at all?\u00a0 [Person says thank you]\n\nLet\u2019s see, I told Bob he could go first and the elders are supposed to go first, right?\u00a0 [Bob: can\u2019t hear] He\u2019s asking about the distinction in Reformed theology between Lutheran Reformed theology and Calvinist Reformed theology.\u00a0 And the answer is that\u2019s a distinction I wasn\u2019t really aware of and so if that\u2019s true I\u2019m happy about that.\u00a0 [same person says more] He\u2019s asking about John MacArthur and where he fits into this whole thing of Reformed theology and I would call John MacArthur somebody who\u2019s really not a Reformed theologian because Reformed theology involves the covenant of grace, even though his church is called Grace Community Church, and that is\u00a0 used to\u2026 it superimposed over the Bible and it\u2019s used to allegorize vast sections of Scripture.\u00a0 That\u2019s how I\u2019m using Reformed theology.\n\nJohn MacArthur is definitely not in that category; he\u2019s written entire books promoting dispensationalism and a future for Israel.\u00a0 He actually blurbed Barry Horner\u2019s excellent book; he may have written the forward for it actually, on future Israel.\u00a0 And we have a lot of John MacArthur people and students at his school and members of his church that come to our Pre-trib study group.\u00a0 So he may be Reformed in the soteriological sense but he\u2019s definitely not Reformed in the sense I\u2019ve been using it here in terms of writing Israel out of the picture.\u00a0 Does that help at all.\u00a0 You\u2019re right, we should be careful about how we use the word \u201cReformed\u201d and define it because we don\u2019t want to misrepresent people as being in a certain camp when they\u2019re not.\n\nIf you want an example of a Reformed theologian all the way you would look at a guy like R. C. Sproul, who\u2019s not only Reformed with the soteriological Calvinism but he\u2019s eschatologically Reformed.\u00a0 [same person said something]\u00a0 Yeah, replacement theology, preterism.\u00a0 So MacArthur is maybe Reformed soteriologically but he\u2019s definitely not reformed ecclesiologically and eschatologically, if that helps at all.\u00a0 Good thoughts.\n\n[can\u2019t hear]\u00a0 That\u2019s a great question she\u2019s asking\u2014can you elaborate on the Reformed theologian\u2019s understanding of the Mosaic Law.\u00a0 As you all know we have the Mosaic Law given at Sinai and\u00a0 you find it in the Book of Exodus and Leviticus and it\u2019s restated for the second generation in the Book of Deuteronomy.\u00a0\u00a0 And basically what Reformed theology does and what John Calvin did is he divided the Law into three parts: the first part he called the moral law and he believed, as does Reformed theology today believes, that we (as the church) are under the moral law. So the moral law would be don\u2019t commit adultery, don\u2019t use the Lord\u2019s name in vain, those types of commands.\u00a0 So that\u2019s part 1 of the law.\n\nThe second part of the law would be the sacrificial part of it, with animal sacrifices, or ceremonial \u00a0is what they call it.\u00a0 And then the third part would be the civil part of it where you\u2019re actually supposed to stone to death witches, and homosexuals and Sabbath breakers and things like that.\u00a0 So they\u00a0 have this nice neat threefold division and so they say well, we\u2019re under the moral part of it but we\u2019re not under the civil part of it and we\u2019re not under the ceremonial part of it.\u00a0 And people that don\u2019t believe like that, they have a little name that they call us; they call us antinomian which means you\u2019re against the law.\u00a0 I mean, I can\u2019t tell you how many times I\u2019ve had people throw that at me.\u00a0 The reality of the situation is number 1, the Law itself, you can study the Book of Exodus and Leviticus and Deuteronomy all you want, it never divides itself up like that.\u00a0 Moses never says hey, here\u2019s the moral parts over here; hey, here\u2019s the ceremonial parts over here; hey, here\u2019s the civil parts over here.\u00a0 So it\u2019s a completely manmade thing that they\u2019ve come up with.\n\nAnd the second problem is if you put one pinky under the Law, I don\u2019t care what you call it, moral or whatever,\u00a0 you\u2019re under the whole thing.\u00a0 And that\u2019s why the Book of James, chapter 2 and verse 10, written to a Jewish audience, says if we stumble at one point of the Law we\u2019re guilty of the whole thing.\u00a0 [James 2:10, \u201cFor whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.\u201d]\u00a0 So you cannot\u2026 the moment you say we\u2019re under the Law at all is the moment we go under everything.\n\nSo are we antinomian then, if we don\u2019t believe we\u2019re under the Law of Moses?\u00a0 No, because Galatians 6:2 says that we\u2019re under the Law of what?\u00a0 We\u2019re under the law of Christ.\u00a0 [Galatians 6:2, \u201cBear one another's burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.\u201d]\u00a0 So we are under a completely different system than the Law of Moses.\u00a0 And you might want to jot down Psalm 147:19-20, it says very clearly there that the Mosaic Law was given only to the nation of Israel, nobody else. [Psalm 147:19-20, \u201cHe declares His words to Jacob, His statutes and His ordinances to Israel.\u00a0 [20] He has not dealt thus with any nation; and as for His ordinances, they have not known them.\u00a0 Praise the LORD!\u201d]\n\nSo what are we under?\u00a0 We are under a totally different system that looks like the Mosaic Law, at some points, because nine of the ten commandments are repeated in the New Testament, but it\u2019s different.\u00a0 I mean, are we to stone to death Sabbath breakers?\u00a0 NO!\u00a0 Are we to stone to death witches?\u00a0 NO!\u00a0 Are we to stone to death homosexuals? NO!\u00a0 It would be like this: I\u2019m from California and I currently live in Texas; the laws of Texas look a lot like the laws of California; I mean, murder is wrong in both states, right?\u00a0 It\u2019s just in Texas they actually enforce the law\u2026 but I won\u2019t go into that!\u00a0 So if I coming a crime in Texas, even though it would still be a crime in California where am I going to be tried?\u00a0 In Texas, because I am under Texas law even though Texas law looks very similar to California law\n\nSo what are we under as New Testament believers?\u00a0 We are under the law of Christ, which looks very similar to the Mosaic Law at certain points.\u00a0 But you\u2019ll notice that the punitive and the ceremonial and the civil stuff isn\u2019t there.\u00a0 So we\u2019re under the law of Christ, sometimes Romans 8 called the law of the Spirit, which looks very similar to the Mosaic Law but it is not the Mosaic Law.\u00a0\u00a0 [Romans 8:2, \u201cFor the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.\u201d]\u00a0 Once you go under any element of the Mosaic Law you\u2019re under the whole thing.\u00a0 And the Reformed system doesn\u2019t really understand it that way and they don\u2019t understand that if you\u2019re under part of it you\u2019re under all of it.\u00a0 And they\u2019re hurling this name \u201cantinomian\u201d around without really understanding what we\u2019re saying.\u00a0 The sad thing about Reformed theologians is we read them but they don\u2019t really read us very well, so they have all these false caricatures of what they think we believe.\u00a0 And beyond that they\u2019re making a three-fold division of the Mosaic Law that just doesn\u2019t exist.\u00a0 It\u2019s totally manmade.\u00a0 Does that help at all?\u00a0 [someone replies]\u00a0 Good!\n\n[Question asked]\u00a0 He\u2019s asking why did the Protestant Reformers not complete the hermeneutical revolution and I think there\u2019s a lot of reasons for that.\u00a0 I think they were tired and they got old and they already accomplished a lot and what they accomplished was super human so to expect them to do more would have been, I think, unrealistic. \u00a0And beyond that they were not, what you call tabula rasa<\/em>, blank slates.\u00a0 They had baggage just like anybody else and they were basically Catholics and they actually wanted to stay Catholic and Luther was as shocked as anybody else when he posted this thing in Wittenberg and everybody in the church started calling him a heretic and kicking him out.\u00a0 He just wanted to start a conversation. He was trying to reform the church from within.\n\nSo because they were Catholics and they still wanted to be Catholics they brought a lot of Roman Catholicism with them.\u00a0 They brought a lot of the bad stuff from the Dark Ages with them into the Reformed movement.\u00a0 So they didn\u2019t complete the whole thing because they were just people that God used in an area.\u00a0 But I love how God is so good and loves His church so much that He raised up other people to do what they couldn\u2019t do.\u00a0 Does that help at all?\n\nSomeone asks question, can\u2019t hear:\u00a0 \u2026 it was kind of long, that\u2019s just fine, my sermons are longer than your questions\u2026 but he\u2019s basically saying the concept of progressive illumination versus progressive revelation helps us understand better the past.\u00a0 Right?\u00a0 So real quickly, some of you may have caught this during the lectures, some of you may not, but I tried to draw a distinction between progressive revelation and progressive illumination.\u00a0 Revelation basically means God is revealing truth.\n\nAnd you see, the Holy Spirit basically has at least two ministries of communication; the first is revelation where He\u2019s revealing books of the Bible to biblical writers, that\u2019s ministry A, and that ministry is over because the canon of Scripture is shut.\u00a0 Jude 3 talks about truth once and for all delivered to the saints.\u00a0 [Jude 3, \u201cBeloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.\u201d]\n\nAnd Revelation 22 says don\u2019t add or subtract or the curses will be added to you and your place in the tree of life will be subtracted from. [Revelation 22:18-19, \u201cI testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book; [19] and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book.\u201d]\u00a0 So it\u2019s very clear that God is not saying anything new or not revealing new books today.\n\nBut there is a very active ministry called illumination where the Holy Spirit helps us understand what God has written.\u00a0 And people get the vocabulary confused all the time; in fact, sometimes the Holy Spirit is so real in terms of what He\u2019s showing us that we think it\u2019s revelation but it really isn\u2019t revelation, it\u2019s illumination.\u00a0 So you can study the doctrine of illumination in passages like 1 Corinthians 2:14-15 and other passages.\u00a0 [1 Corinthians 2:14-15, \u201cBut a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.\u00a0 [15] But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.\u201d]\n\nBasically Revelation is done, illumination continues.\u00a0 And I do believe in, not progressive revelation, I don\u2019t believe new books of the Bible are written today, the canon is shut, but I do believe very strongly in progressive illumination where the Holy Spirit allows subsequent generations to see things that early generations didn\u2019t see.\n\nSo the truth has always been there; it\u2019s not a new truth, it\u2019s just the illuminating ministry of the Holy Spirit has allowed subsequent generations to see something that other generations couldn\u2019t.\u00a0 So I believe we\u2026 and if you want Scripture on it I\u2019m basically getting a lot of it from Daniel 12:4 and verse 9 which says in the last days people will go to and fro which is not air travel, it\u2019s reading, when you cross reference it with Amos 8:12, and knowledge will increase; knowledge is not nuclear bomb type knowledge.\u00a0 Knowledge is the Word of God knowledge.\u00a0 [Daniel 12:4, \u201cBut thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even<\/em> to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.\u201d KJV.\u00a0\u00a0 Daniel 12:9, \u201cHe said, \u2018Go your way, Daniel, for these words are concealed and sealed up until the end time.\u2019\u201d Amos 8:12 \u201c\"People will stagger from sea to sea And from the north even to the east; They will go to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, But they will not find it.\u201d]\n\nSo I believe that when you get closer and closer and closer to the end the Holy Spirit starts to peel back truth.\u00a0 And you brought it up earlier with the restoration of Israel; I mean, it\u2019s easy for us to believe those promises because we see an Israel in the land.\u00a0 Now prior generations didn\u2019t see it that way, but the truth has always been there for everybody.\u00a0\u00a0 So it is a fact that the field of eschatology, the study of the end times, was the last major area of systematic theology to be systematized.\u00a0 I mean, we had already systematized Christology, and atonement controversies and the doctrines of grace, going back to the Protestant Reformation, atonement going back to the 1100\u2019s. And then you go back into the debates about the Nicaean Creed and all of these things that\u2019s dealing with the person of Christ so Christology is systematized and then atonement is systematized and then you move into the 16th<\/sup> century and salvation starts to get systematized.\n\nAnd it really is not until the 1800\u2019s that we started to systematize eschatology.\u00a0 So what do you attribute that to?\u00a0 I attribute it to progressive illumination.\u00a0 And we\u2019re sitting here today in the year 2017 on top of all of these wonderful doctrines that we just take for granted and we don\u2019t really understand that it took the church centuries to formally systematize these areas.\u00a0 And one of the tools that the Lord used to get the church to start to systematize truth was heretics, because once a heretic shows up, like you have Arius, back in the Nicea days, Arius shows up and says you know Jesus was a created being; this is what the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses teach.\u00a0 Arius actually had a song, I won\u2019t sing it because I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s a recording of it but supposedly it was a song he would say or sing \u201cthere was a time in which He was not.\u201d\u00a0 So he was challenging the idea of the eternal existence of Jesus Christ.\n\nSo what does the church do?\u00a0 Oh my gosh, this guy sang this, the Bible seems to be saying something different, we\u2019d better formalize the doctrine of Christology.\u00a0 And you go right on through church history it\u2019s the same way.\u00a0 Another heretic arises and challenges something and the church says oh my gosh, we\u2019d better systematize this doctrine, and this doctrine, and this doctrine.\u00a0 And we think heretics are always a bad thing but they actually forced the church to do some hard thinking.\u00a0 And eschatology is the last area systematized, largely because of what I believe is progressive illumination.\u00a0 Does that help at all.\u00a0 Most people, I talk so long they can\u2019t remember the question.\u00a0 [Laughter]\n\n[can\u2019t hear question]\u00a0 This question is about what\u2019s called the emergent church or the emerging church and how the emerging church is basically trying to leapfrog the Protestant Reformation and go back to the Dark Ages. \u00a0And that literally is what the emergent church is trying to do.\u00a0\u00a0 And we have primarily in this room an older group so you may not even know about it but if\u00a0 you have children or grandchildren they know all about the emerging church.\u00a0 And the emerging church is targeting the youth and if you go to Barnes and Noble and you go to the religious section you\u2019ll see Brian McLaren everywhere, and these are sort of popular level books he and others have written.\u00a0 And the whole idea of the emergent church is there\u2019s all this truth in the pre Reformation Dark Ages (they don\u2019t call them the Dark Ages), that got lost.\u00a0 And so what we need to do to really practice Christianity today is we need to go back and retrieve all that stuff.\n\nSo what you see coming back in the emergent church is monasticism, the darkening of the sanctuary, a lot of the practices in Episcopalianism (that I escaped from) they want to go back to, Ash Wednesday, putting the ash, a cross, on people\u2019s heads.\u00a0 They want to go back to holy water. They want to go back to the stations of the cross. I grew up as an unsaved person with the stations of the cross as an acolyte in the Episcopalian church. They want to go back to something called the labyrinth.\u00a0 Have you heard of this?\u00a0 It\u2019s like a maze you walk through, and as you walk through this maze you get this sort of spiritual experience.\u00a0 And I can\u2019t tell you how many Bible churches, particularly in the Dallas area, that my wife and I investigated because at that time when we lived there we were looking for a church and we just saw one Bible church, historic Bible church pastored by greats of the past move in this emergent church direction.\u00a0 And it\u2019s moving towards holy water, Ash Wednesday, stations of the cross, advent, and all of these kinds of things.\n\nAnd the problem is, you say well, where do you find biblical support for that stuff?\u00a0 Well, there isn\u2019t any, the Bible never tells us to promote those things, support those things, get enmeshed in those things.\u00a0 And you say well then, what\u2019s your authority for bringing all of this back.\u00a0 And it\u2019s a scripture plus history mentality.\u00a0 So their view is there\u2019s all this wonderful truth that somehow got lost subsequent to the Reformation that we want to go back to and retrieve.\u00a0 And once we do that then we\u2019ll REALLY be able to experience Christianity. So there\u2019s all these things about diet; there\u2019s all these things about the desert fathers and some of the other things that I\u2019ve mentioned.\u00a0 And the emergent church people just go on and on and on and on about all this stuff.\u00a0 And really all they\u2019re doing is they\u2019re leapfrogging the Reformation and going back to these ancient liturgical practices.\n\nAnd one of the things that really has bothered me about the emergent church as I\u2019ve tried to read some of their literature is they\u2019re all about trashing Bible teaching, which bothers me because that\u2019s my primary ministry as a Bible teacher.\u00a0 In the emergent churches primarily of young people you don\u2019t have Bible teaching; what you have is a discussion mentality, kind of like Phil Donahue used to walk around the audience with a microphone and put the microphone in people\u2019s face and say \u201cwhat do you think about this passage?\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Well, I think such and such.\u00a0 Well what do you think?\u00a0 Well, I think such and such.\u00a0 And so you don\u2019t have even teachers; you usually have a guy in a Hawaiian church that has a year round tan and he\u2019s real hip and cool and he\u2019s not teaching authoritatively.\u00a0 Like in a Bible church the way it\u2019s supposed to work is you have somebody trained in the Bible that studies the Bible all week to authoritatively give to God\u2019s people truth.\u00a0 And that whole practice is lost in the emergent church. It\u2019s all about experiences, and they\u2019re really big on this issue of conversation.\n\nDoes that help at all?\u00a0 It\u2019s a leapfrogging of the Protestant Reformation, going back to the very things that the Reformers helped us escape from.\u00a0 And you may have never heard of it but if you\u2019ve got children or grandchildren I can almost guarantee, if you talk to them about it, they know something about it.\u00a0 It\u2019s a reversal of Sola Scriptura is what it is.\u00a0 It\u2019s Scripture plus tradition is what it is.\u00a0 And it\u2019s the very thing that Luther reacted against.\u00a0 Does that help.\u00a0 You can\u2019t remember the question I talked so long.\n\n[Someone asks question, can\u2019t hear.]\u00a0 He\u2019s recommending Lewis Sperry Chafer\u2019s Systematic Theology to help people grow in eschatology.\u00a0 Thank you for that because I\u2019m the President of Chafer Seminary.\u00a0 By the way, do you want a job?\u00a0 [Laughter]\u00a0 Richard\u2019s read those volumes several times.\n\nAnybody else?\u00a0 Judy, in the very back: [can\u2019t hear]\u00a0 Where does the Eastern Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, fit into all of this?\u00a0 I would say, and I don\u2019t want to misrepresent them, I\u2019ve never been a practitioner of theirs, but I would say they would represent a lot of pre-Reformation ideas, so they would be very big in liturgy.\u00a0 If I\u2019m not mistaken they would be very big into the Bible plus the church fathers.\u00a0\u00a0 And one of the things that\u2019s interesting is to watch people.\u00a0 And to me it\u2019s sad to watch, people that are Protestant Reformation Bible Church type people rejecting it and going back to those kind of traditions, which is my opposite trajectory.\u00a0 I grew up with all that kind of stuff and I went the opposite direction and I\u2019m seeing more and more people go the other way.\u00a0 And one of the names that you might want to know is Hank Hanegraaff, who calls THE Bible answer man.\u00a0 He basically was a long-standing defender of Protestantism and countercult ministries and things like that. \u00a0But he basically recently joined the Greek Orthodox Church.\n\nAnother name you might want to know is Frances Beckwith, who was in 2006 the President of the Evangelical Theological Society, so he was, in 2006, the highest ranking evangelical academically in the world.\u00a0 And in 2006 in the midst of his presidency he just decided he was going back to Roman Catholicism, right in the middle of his presidency.\u00a0 And the Evangelical Theological Society didn\u2019t know what to do.\u00a0 And it\u2019s interesting when people make this leap and they start to give\u00a0 you the reasons why they\u2019re going into these traditions, here\u2019s something they never say; they never say \u201cI was reading my Bible and I decided to make this move.\u201d\u00a0 What it always is, with the case of Beckwith is I was reading the church fathers.\u00a0 So they\u2019re going to an authority base outside the Scripture.\u00a0 And when you listen to Hank Hanegraaff\u2019s testimony it\u2019s basically the same thing. It\u2019s wanting more of an experiential approach to Christianity.\u00a0 So I wouldn\u2019t put Greek Orthodox in the Protestant camp (so to speak).\u00a0 I would put him in sort of a pre-Reformation camp. Does that help?\n\nThey may have fast forwarded the clock up there, let\u2019s get this guy off the stage as fast as we can.\u00a0 [Laughter]\u00a0\u00a0 According to that clock we have three minutes left so any other thoughts.\u00a0 Anybody from Facebook?\u00a0 All right.\u00a0 I appreciate your patience and I hope you enjoyed this series.\u00a0 It may have taught you some things you may not have known before and we\u2019re going to be starting a new class, most likely on the doctrine of the church, ecclesiology, so that will be coming up.\n\nAnd we\u2019re going back now to two Sunday School classes, Bob is going to be teaching a class also in the fellowship hall on (if I understood it right) the letters to the churches in the Book of Revelation.\u00a0 So I want to ask Bob some questions about that, like who are\u2026\u00a0 I want to know who the overcomers are is what I want to know, because that\u2019s a controversial issue.\u00a0 Anyway, that\u2019s the future, Bob\u2019s class starts next week and so you\u2019ll have two classes to choose from: Revelation 2 and 3 and The Doctrine of Ecclesiology.\n\nAny other thoughts or questions?\u00a0 Someone says: when you go to the Dark Ages or the period when people didn\u2019t have the Bible [can't hear rest].\u00a0 \u00a0I don\u2019t know if have an exact answer on that other than Paul said it would happen, because in Acts 20 where he\u2019s speaking to the elders at Ephesus, at the port city of Miletus on missionary journey 3 that\u2019s about to end, so he\u2019s an apostle talking to elders or pastors, he says be on the guard for all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood, \u201cfor I know\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 So he sounds like the guy is pretty dogmatic about this, [Acts 20:29] \u201cI know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you and not spare the flock, [30] and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.\u00a0 [31] Therefore be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I did not cease to admonish each one with tears.\u201d\n\nSo this is the whole problem of going back to church tradition as some kind of authority for what we ought to be doing in the church, because Paul says that once the apostles leave the scene the church will be hijacked by wolves. So in Sola Scriptura we don\u2019t determine what should be normative in the church based on church tradition or church history because Paul specifically said that church history would be dominated by wolves.\u00a0 And so I think it\u2019s just a matter of what Paul predicted would come to pass and spiritual leaders just didn\u2019t take it seriously.\u00a0 And the reason this historical survey is so valuable to us is the same thing could happen in our generation; we could lose everything.\u00a0 There\u2019s no guarantee that what we understand is Christianity will be faithfully passed off to the next generation unless we\u2019re vigilant to defend the truth.\n\nAnd Ed brought up the emergent church mindset, that whole discussion doesn\u2019t make any sense unless you understand history.\u00a0 You don\u2019t even understand why it\u2019s wrong unless you understand history.\u00a0 So what was lost was predicted and those the only lesson we learn from history is that we don\u2019t learn anything from history.\u00a0 So that\u2019s why studying church history helps us, so we don\u2019t make the same errors.\u00a0 The emergent church is making the exact same errors that the Dark Ages made.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know if I have an answer other than Paul warned about it and said it would happen and lo and behold it happened.\u00a0 And if it happened then it could happen again.\u00a0 So that\u2019s the exhortation to us.\n\nLet me close us in a word of prayer.\u00a0 Father, we\u2019re grateful for these folks that want to go deeper into truth and learn history.\u00a0 I pray, Father, that You would make us\u2026 not just fill our heads with knowledge but You\u2019d makes us better stewards as a result of the things that we know now.\u00a0 I ask that You will be with us during the worship service, we\u2019ll be careful to give you all the praise and the glory.\u00a0 We lift these things up in Jesus\u2019 name, and God\u2019s people said\u2026 Amen.","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