"God Is Faithful and the Gates of Hell Will Not Prevail Against the Church" by Stephen Russell

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to Strength to Strength. We are excited to get together and talk about some more church history, and then this will be our final wrap-up talk on our Sacred Roots series. We had a little over a year of—yeah, I would say it was at least a year and a half. I should have looked it up, but—of talks to do with sacred roots and how we looked at church history from the beginning of the Apostolic era, beginning in Acts, and went our way through church history and studied things about the church, some of the good things it did and some of the mistakes it made. And probably this morning, that's what we'll be hearing again, an overview, and I'm looking forward to hearing from Mr.

Russell here, and we're glad to have him on. I appreciated being in Stephen's class at Faith Builders a little over a year ago, and that was in Faith Builders in Guys Mills there at Faith Builders. I took his first three weeks of an Anabaptist history class and really enjoyed that. He laid out the groundwork well. He gave context to building up to the Reformation, and it was very educational for me. So I always will hold a special place in my heart for Stephen as being a person who loves to teach history, and he loves to tell the stories that go with it. And his eyes just light up, and he really enjoys talking about this subject and how we can see God working through humanity and bringing them together in Christ and through people and doing His will on earth through our hands and feet.

So I'm looking forward to this. We're going to start with a word of prayer, and then I'm just going to hand it over to you, Stephen. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, this morning, we're grateful to gather and to worship You. We're thankful to be together and talk about Your story of working through humanity and building Your church, Your kingdom on earth, and help us, Lord, to be encouraged this morning and to also learn from things that we should watch for and try not to repeat mistakes of history, but to keep on moving forward and conquering for Your name and bringing other people into the kingdom of God, that they may know Your righteousness, that they may know Your peace and Your joy and Your healing that You bring to our broken lives. We pray for Stephen this morning. Just watch over him. Give him courage and wisdom as he shares with us.

And may Your will be done and Your name be honored and glorified. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. It's all yours, brother. Well, before I get into the actual talk, I wanted to just give a historical note that this Sunday and Monday of this week, May 17 and 18, 499 years ago, that would be in 1527, Michael Sattler was tried for heresy, he and a group of Anabaptist friends.

They were found guilty, and on May 20th, Sattler was executed by burning at the stake. And he had talked to his friends, and he said that he would give a special sign if it was bearable. And when the ropes around his arms were loose, he lifted—I think he lifted two fingers to indicate, "You can endure this for God." And then his wife was drowned on May 24, also for heresy.

Another thing that happened on May 24, but in the year 1569, now Sattler's trial was in southern Germany. In 1569, Dirk Willems was executed on May 24th also for heresy. And so anyway, I find it really encouraging to know a little bit about how people have served the Lord and also how they have stood fast for Him and even sometimes given their lives.

So this is—oh, and one more thing I just wanted to mention in case people might have an interest. Anabaptist Perspectives did a documentary on the beginning of Anabaptism 500 years ago, and that's coming out in June, or at least the first episode is coming out. There are 10 episodes. So I just would like to make you aware of that as well. But anyway, this is the 26th talk, and I was asked to wrap up the series called Sacred Roots. And it's really significant for us to look back over the 1600 years from the beginning of the church to the Reformation and including the Reformation and seeing how Jesus has been at work in this world, how we have been coworkers with Him.

Obviously, one of the key things is that we know that God is faithful.

Sometimes it doesn't feel that way in the moment. Sometimes we feel like has God abandoned us. And I think they must have felt that way sometimes, let's say, either in the early church when they were being persecuted by the Roman state or when our ancestors, the Anabaptists, were being persecuted during the Reformation. And of course, it's happening today in many parts of the world where Christians are being mistreated. Well, being a Christian, God is faithful, but being a Christian doesn't insulate us from the fallenness of the world and the hatred of the world. And becoming a Christian doesn't automatically or immediately make us into the person we're meant to be. It doesn't repair the damage in our lives that comes from sin, not instantaneously.

But instead, as we hear in 2 Corinthians 3, we're being changed from glory to glory, being made into the image of Christ. And it's a process, and it takes time. And even if we aren't under persecution, there is going to be suffering because of the change that's going to have to happen in us. Our God is faithful, and He has defeated Satan.

He has defeated Satan even though there's still a battle going on. I like this image that a historian and theologian back in the '50s, I think, gave for what's happening in the world as far as God is concerned. And he used the picture of World War II. And one of the points that he made was, as soon as the Allies had invaded Europe, as soon as they landed in Normandy, Hitler's generals knew that they had lost the war. Hitler didn't seem to know it, but they knew it. But there was still a battle that was going on. And sometimes there were reverses. Sometimes the Allies were pushed back. And he used this as an image for what we experience.

God has intervened in the world. Jesus has come, and He has defeated the devil and the kingdom of darkness. And He's working on establishing His kingdom. But the thing that I want us to think about here is, although we're in this period of struggle, of back and forth, that the gates of hell will not prevail against what God is doing.

Now, the imagery there is actually not defensive but offensive. The church is supposed to be going out there and fighting against Satan and his schemes. And we will not be defeated. It may feel like we sometimes experience losses, but God has won the victory through His Son, Jesus Christ.

And so as we think about as we think about church history, what are some of the significant things that we can learn from it? Sacred Roots broke the time from the beginning of the church to the Reformation into five sections. So I just want to think about each one of those sections.

The first one was the Apostolic period up to AD 100. So this is the foundational period for the church. And the key thing here, I think, is for us to recognize the unique glory that is Christianity that comes from the incarnation.

God became one of us. It's something we really can't wrap our minds around. It was predicted in the Old Testament. There's a beautiful passage in Isaiah 7 and 8 which talks about God as Immanuel, God with us. And that has been fulfilled in the coming of Jesus.

And we hear that story in the Gospels. Well, even though this is a remarkable. How else can we get to know someone? Or how else could we better get to know God than if He became one of us so that we could actually understand Him using human language and showing us through human means what He expects of us? But it's still not a simple experience. And it's interesting. I don't think we would have done any better, but His disciples misunderstood Him. They thought He was bringing a physical kingdom. And then when He died, they thought everything was over. And it was only after His resurrection that He started interacting with them for 40 days before He ascended into heaven that He began to open their eyes.

He began to open the scriptures to them. He began to open their understanding. And so He gave them a task, that is, to tell the good news throughout the whole world. But it's interesting to me that they didn't get it while they were actually with Him in His earthly ministry.

Then in this particular section, we looked at Acts and how God is making His glory known throughout the whole world and how the church is advancing, the kingdom of God is advancing throughout the world. And I especially appreciated making the emphasis that God is making His glory known throughout the world. The Old Testament has numerous passages where it talks about God's glory filling the earth. And I think that as Christians, we have a responsibility to start to see that. And I think we actually, because we're Christians and we're being renewed, I think we can see that more and more. And then part of our task is to help others see that and to call them into participation in helping people to know that God's glory does indeed fill the earth and that He is indeed redeeming the world.

One other thing from Acts was that God gave us His Spirit. And so the church has God's Spirit. Sometimes we make mistakes, but we also have His Spirit and can correct and learn from that. In that first century, there are at least four things that were important. God gave the written word, the New Testament, to His people during that time. Also, even before the New Testament was written, God gave His people an awareness of what was to be taught and preached throughout the world. And eventually, that got crystallized into what are called the Creeds, and especially into the Nicene Creed, which is a nice, concise statement of the basic ideas of our faith. But that started at this time, even before the New Testament was written.

The church knew what it was supposed to be preaching. And so that's an important aspect. God also gave us strong leaders at the beginning. And I think this was a necessary thing when the church was facing persecution from the Roman Empire. I think that the leadership of the bishops was helpful. But also, the bishops were a line of men who had mentored each other. And therefore, they knew what the message was that had been passed down. And this is before the New Testament was many parts of it were written or that it was collected. And so this leadership that had been mentored or discipled by the previous ones all the way back to the beginning of the church, that was an essential aspect to this first 100 years and even beyond.

And then lastly, a thing that developed during the first 100 years or maybe just right after the first 100 years was a school for new believers. It's often called the catechumenate. And the church began to realize that some of the people that were coming in did not fully understand the Gospel. And they began to instruct new believers before they baptized them. And so these were some of the main things that happened in the beginning of the church. And the church, even at the beginning, had some struggles. And we know what happened with the Corinthian church. We have letters about that. Interestingly, the Corinthians, even as late as maybe 990, were still having problems. And we have a letter from the Bishop of Rome, Clement, to the church in Corinth directing them to change their ways.

So we always have this we always have the good work of God, His word given to us, the incarnate word, the written word. We have men and women who know the message and present it to people and live a life that draws people. But we also have some struggles. We're not instantaneously changed when we come to the Lord. The second period was the Anti-Nicene period, which is roughly from 100 to 300. And during these 200 years, the church experienced several big challenges. The one was the Roman Empire persecuted the church during much of this time. There were periods when the empire did not persecute the Christians. But by and large, Christians knew that they were always under the possibility of being persecuted by the empire.

This is part of the story that's often not too well known. But the Jews were actively competing with the church to convert Gentiles. There were a lot of Gentiles, pagans, who knew that paganism wasn't really answering the desire of their hearts. And there was an active the Jews were actively seeking to convert people like this. And of course, that was a main task for the early Christians. So there was a lot of conflict there during this time. The Greek philosophers, who were the intellectual elite, saw Christianity as foolishness. And they actively taught against it. There were also some false religions like Manicheanism and Mithraism that were new religions and were vying for the loyalty of the people too.

At this point in time, many of the pagans were looking for something that really touched their hearts. The old pagan religion wasn't doing that. And Manicheanism and Mithraism were two non-Christian attempts at reaching that part of people. But inside the church, there was also some challenge. There were various heresies that arose, threatening the unity of the church and also threatening the message of the church. So the church was facing some real challenges during this time. I personally think the biggest one was Gnosticism.

Gnosticism was something happening inside the church. It's basically a mixture of pagan thought and the Gospel message of salvation. Some pagans heard this message of salvation, and they loved it. But they also still had their pagan mindset. And one of the key aspects of this was that the physical world was bad. And so when they heard things like resurrection, in their minds, they translated that into a spiritual resurrection. For them, they saw what Jesus did as getting them out of this world, getting them out of the physical so that they were only spiritual. Well, this isn't the Christian message. This isn't the Christian promise.

The Christian promise is that one day, we will be raised from the dead, and the world will be renewed. And some of the pagans found a hard time changing their mindset here, having a renewed mind. And so this was a real and a deep threat in the early days of the church. To think about it, it made leaving paganism and supposedly becoming Christian easier because you didn't have to change so much of your thinking.

So that was a huge threat to the early church. If Gnosticism had won the day within the church, things would I don't even think the church would have survived. I mean, this is hypothetical. But if it would have, things would have been totally different. The whole approach to life would have been different. You deny the physical completely. They would have been against marriage. And so anyway, this would have really damaged the church if it would have succumbed to Gnosticism.

One of the ways that the church opposed Gnosticism was by pointing to the scriptures and teaching what they said and also looking at I can't get into the details here, but looking at the truth that had been taught from the very beginning, even before the New Testament was written. The leadership of the bishops, they could point back and say, "We know that the early bishops taught what our present bishops are teaching because there's this line of men who discipled each other." And so the message was guaranteed by that. And then this is probably the reason that the catechumenate was formed, to make sure that people understood the Gospel and were truly given over to Jesus before they were baptized.

So those are all important things that happened during this time. There was a talk on the place of Africa during this time. And it's really intriguing. Some of the most important theologians in the early days, some of the most important church fathers came from Alexandria, Egypt, and from Carthage, which is in what we call Tunisia today.

And so I think this was really a significant thing for us to see that Africa played a really important role in the development of the church early on. And the faith was traveling south along the Nile and into Ethiopia during this time as well. So that was another aspect of these early days of the church. Then we looked at the third period, which was the early medieval period, roughly 300 to 800. And one of the important things that happened right at the beginning of this time was that the persecution by the Roman Empire was ended. Well, this is a blessing, obviously.

It makes the message into the world easier. So it's a blessing. Nobody wants to be persecuted. But there was also a huge challenge that came out of this.

Constantine is the emperor who first tolerated Christianity. And he even began to favor it. Sometimes our people say that he established Christianity as the state religion. That's not true. That happened about 60 years after his time with another emperor towards the end of the 300s. That's when Christianity became the state religion. However, already towards the beginning of the 300s, Constantine started to favor the church. And this becomes a deep root of problems for the church. The church was never meant to wield coercive power or even to be deeply involved with the state. But gradually, this starts to happen in the 300s. And I believe that it's pretty easy to show that God established the state with the goal in mind of using sinful men to control other sinful men.

During the Old Testament, God's people did participate in the state. But that is not what God was intending when He started the church at Pentecost. The church was meant to be a place of healing, of repentance. And coercion was completely rejected in the early days of the church. But now the church and state are starting to grow closer together. That corrupts both from their original purpose.

The state was not meant to Christianize the world. And the church was not meant to undergird the state. I do think that there's something in fallen man that wants the church to undergird the state. It's very interesting. All religions that I know of, they see part of their job as undergirding the state. And as far as I know, all governments have sought that from religion.

And maybe not in the communist countries. Maybe you could say, "Well, they're atheistic." But they seek a philosophical undergirding. And the way they look at their founders, like Lenin in Moscow and Mao in Beijing, in both cases, their bodies have been preserved and are on display. And if you ask me, that sounds pretty much like a religious act. And so even in communist countries, they look for they have a kind of a, if I can say it, an atheistic philosophical religion that undergirds the state. Christianity, as far as I know, is unique in that when it started, that was not a part of the intention. And so it's in the 300s that we start to get entangled with the government, with the state.

And that brings a lot of problems as times go on.

But I think that it's pretty easy to see that humans want something spiritual to undergird the state. I think that's the way it's meant to be, obviously. But they always tend to seek that. Well, if you're going to have the church and state coming together, another way that this union of church and state brought some corruption there's at least two other ways. One is eventually, infant baptism becomes a requirement. And so you want, if you're going to have the church and the state working together, you want to have membership in the church and membership of the state as something that works together. And so infant baptism gradually comes out of this period and becomes eventually the way that the whole church acted.

They brought newborn children into the church through baptism. And another thing was, if you're going to bring church and state together, you've got to justify war eventually. And this was a struggle at this period of time. A lot of Christians resisted this. But over time, the idea that war could be just and that Christians, although they may not want to go to war, might have to go to war, that became a part of the church's thinking during this time period. Eventually, the Christians were even influenced by Muslims towards holy war. The Muslims are encouraged to fight jihad or holy war against the infidel. And eventually, the First Crusade occurred in 1095. And the whole thrust of it is exactly like a jihad.

God's calling us to battle against the infidel. Let's go and help our Christian brothers and sisters in the East. And if you go and respond to this call, whether you die or not, you will be guaranteed a place in heaven.

This is exactly how Muslims looked at jihad. And that clearly influenced the church. I don't think they would have I don't think they consciously thought that. But they were fighting against Islam. And it was a much higher civilization than the Christian civilization at this time. And so they, I think, without consciously realizing it, absorbed certain ideas from the Muslims.

Well, even though this union between church and state was improper, some good things did happen during this time. And this is the time when the church had several worldwide councils to hammer out how to think about, how to talk about certain things that are obviously scriptural. But there was a lot of conflict in the church at this time. And the two things that are most important are the Trinity and the nature of Christ. And out of these meetings came what we call the Nicene Creed. And even today, this is seen as the touchstone of Orthodox belief. That God is Trinity. He's one and yet three persons. That God is Creator and Sustainer and Redeemer of all things.

That the incarnate Word has come as our Savior and the King of all things. And that the church right now is His body in the world, reaching out and telling others about the message. And it also mentions that eventually, there will be a resurrection and restoration of all things. So this is, I think, typical of what you're going to have when God comes to work in human beings. There's going to be a mixture of good and bad. And that doesn't justify or say that the bad is not significant. In fact, one of the key things that should happen as we learn church history is we should learn from these mistakes. And they can help us recognize when perhaps we're on a wrong road.

There were some schisms in the early church during this time. And the difference between a schism and a heresy is that the heresy is teaching something that's clearly false. There were a couple of times when the church had a split.

And sometimes it was over just how to talk about the mystery of God and who He is. And during this time, some groups arose that were not exact they weren't heretical. But for various reasons, they split from the main church in the Roman Empire. And one of these groups is the Nestorians, who went into Persia.

And they were one of the greatest mission churches ever. They sent missionaries into Arabia, into India, into what we call the stands, like Kazakhstan, and into even Mongolia and China. So they were a very missionary-minded church. One of the things that they never did was become a state church. And I think that helped them keep their focus on missions. There were a group called the Miaphasites. And there was another group called the Donatists that were not they didn't teach heresy. But they split with the church. So that is part of the heritage of the church that even back here in these early days, there were splits occurring.

And that's something that I think God doesn't I know God doesn't like it. I don't know how we totally avoid that. I don't know if it's a possibility. But anyway, the next period was the late medieval period. And we use roughly the time from 800 to 1400. And one of my talks came during this time. And it was about the Dark Ages.

Was this time the Dark Ages? Or was it something else? Well, there's some really important ways that perhaps it deserves the title Dark Ages.

Europe was experiencing wave after wave of invasions. And often, these invaders were hostile towards Christianity. The first set of invasions actually started in the previous period. That was the invasion of many German tribes into the Roman Empire. Also, the Huns came during this time. And towards the end of the previous period, the Arab Muslims broke out of Arabia. And they conquered half of the Roman Empire and all of the Persian Empire and became a really very successful civilization and really a challenge to the Christians.

Their learning and their science was way beyond what the European Christians experienced. During this time, a group of people a couple of other groups of people invaded. The Vikings came in the late 700s into the 800s. The Hungarians came in the 800s and 900s. And eventually, the Turkish Muslims invaded Europe, as well as the Mongols. So one of the things about this time period is that it was very disruptive.

All these invasions. And in the middle 1300s, the Black Death spread throughout Europe in just two or three years. And during that time, at least a quarter of the population, maybe a third of the population of Europe, was wiped out. And so all of these things happened and weighed on the people. So there were all these catastrophes. But one of the intriguing things is there was something that stood firm. And that was the church. The network of bishops and priests, regardless of the invasions that were occurring, maintained a kind of connection throughout Europe. They gave guidance. They gave sustenance. They gave courage in the face of terror and death and even in the face of just the hard life that the average medieval person would have lived.

So yes, there were many, many things that happened during this time period that were not so good. And yet, one of the things that kept on, that gave continuity and gave courage to the people was the church. There were things happening inside the church during this time that were not good as well. And most of those things, I would say, came out of the fact that church and state were united. Probably, the leadership of the church hit its deepest, lowest point during the 800s and 900s.

So those are all things to consider. There was a special institution of the church, which actually goes before this time period. It started actually during the time of the persecutions. And that is the monastery. And the monastery was a really important aspect of church life during the Middle Ages.

The population of Europe declined during these times of invasion and of the Black Death. And it was the monasteries that pushed back into what had become wilderness and established centers of civilization and farming. And they were also places that taught people how to farm. They were places of learning and scientific discovery. And the church actually began to use the monasteries as a missionary arm of the church. They would often send monks into areas that were still pagan. And they would establish monasteries and teach the people. And so this was a very important institution that brought continuity during this time of great, great turmoil.

And there's at least one more thing that I want to mention from this time period. And it's unfortunately a negative, at least as I would see it. In 756, the Bishop of Rome, whom we call the Pope, was given sovereign rule over a territory in the middle of Italy. This is called the Papal States. And so we actually have a major bishop in the church, not just being a spiritual leader. But now, he has a territory that he's ruling. And it wasn't just that. The monasteries and some other bishops in various areas also began to rule small states. So they weren't just spiritual leaders. They also were becoming temporal leaders.

There's a story in the 11th century about a bishop in central Germany that was also the leader of an independent city-state. And when his city-state was threatened by war or attacked, he would go out and fight the enemy. But he wouldn't use a sword.

He knew that it's wrong for a churchman to shed blood. And so instead, he would use a mace or a kind of a club. And this just shows you how this bringing together of church and state was corrupting, I would say, to both. And so the presentation of the Papal States to the Pope is, to me, one of the key moments that just shows where the integration of church and state is going in a very bad way.

There was a British historian named Lord Acton in the 1800s who wrote, "Power tends to corrupt. And absolute power corrupts absolutely." And this is what happens during this time. Church and state are drawing closer together. The church is becoming a temporal ruler. And actually, it's during this time and the next time period that we'll look at where the Pope became one of the most powerful men in Europe. And I don't mean spiritually. I mean temporally as well. And so as the church gained coercive power, I believe it corrupted the church. And it only became worse the more power the Popes were seen to have. So I would argue that the church lost its proper sense of purpose for the state and for the church.

And there were people who recognized that there's something not quite right. There were people in the church striving to imitate Christ. There were many who there were many as well who sought power and wealth. It had this very mixed situation. And at least a large part of it goes back to the integration of church and state that started to it began with or it began to the two began to join forces together under Constantine. And eventually, the church did become the state church. And we have that situation now. And it led to many, many problems. But there were people who began to see the need for change. And so during this period and then a little bit into the next period, there were some reformers from before the time of the Reformation itself.

The Waldensians arose. And they recognized that many people did not know the gospel or at least didn't know it well. And they wanted to go out and preach from the gospels. They were not allowed to. The Lollards up in England wanted to do the same thing. They wanted to spread the knowledge of the scriptures throughout the Christian world. And then much closer to the time of the Reformation itself, the Hussites arose in what was then called Bohemia. We would call it the Czech Republic today.

None of these groups was terribly strongly against Catholic teaching. Mostly, they wanted to reform they weren't seeking to start a new church. They mostly wanted to reform the church in the areas where it had strayed. But none of these movements was very successful. The reason was they couldn't broaden out beyond the area where they started.

And well, the Waldensians did. The Waldensians seemed to have been a little more successful. But there was something missing that was necessary to actually put some power behind these attempts at formation. And that's the printing press, which I'll talk about in just a little bit. But they did set the stage. There were people who were aware that the church needed something. It was in trouble. And that it needed some kind of reform. So that brings us to the last period that the Sacred Roots dealt with. And that's the Reformation, roughly 1400 to 1600. The 1400 is bringing in that time period when there were some reforms attempted before the actual Reformation. Some of those reforms were actually accepted by the Catholic Church.

The Franciscans started during this time as a reform movement that was accepted by the Catholics. Well, anyway, with all of these negative things that I had mentioned earlier, it was this sense that we needed Reformation was pretty widespread.

The fact that church interfered with state and state interfered with church, some people saw that as a real problem. The great wealth and the coercive power of the church was clearly seen as a problem.

Since the church and state were both very by the way, I should mention this. The nation-states were starting to arise in the last period. And they're very powerful at this point. So I'm talking about nation-states like England, France, Spain, Portugal.

They were the temporal rulers. The kings there were consolidating their power. And now, they were becoming at least capable of opposing the power of the church. And so during this time period, we have a competition for supremacy between the states, the local nation-states, and the church.

We also have things happening like the Crusades. And some of those were even against other Christians. And then the Black Death really made people aware of the need to be ready when you die. I mean, obviously, we all know we're going to die sometime. But that period of time, that short two or three years when so many people died, that focused the attention of Europeans on what happens after I pass from this life.

So one of the key things that made it hard for these reforms to actually succeed was that there was no way to spread the message. But in the middle 1400s, the printing press was invented. And with that, communication could be widespread. And it could be rapid. I sometimes say that this is the internet of their day. And so books and pamphlets became affordable. They could be printed and sped out quickly. And there could be a quick response.

And it's really interesting. Luther, of course, is the one who began the Reformation in Germany. And he would write either a book or a pamphlet, which would be quickly printed and dispersed throughout Europe. And there was also a new job that arose during this time. And that's an occupation called the Chapman. A Chapman was a person who would buy these pamphlets and books and then travel around selling them. And so Luther would write a pamphlet. The Chapman would get copies of it. He'd travel around and sell it. And then maybe a month or two later, a Catholic would respond to what Luther had written. And the Chapman would buy that pamphlet as well. He would go his route.

He would sell that. And even for the people who couldn't read, they were now able to get involved in this. Because let's say, in any little village, there was surely someone who could read, maybe the grocer or one of the tradesmen. And he would buy the pamphlet. And he would read it in the square where everyone could hear it. And then maybe a month or two later, the answer from a Catholic would come to that place. And it would be read out loud. And the people would get really engaged and debate these things. Sometimes, there were very lively discussions. And sometimes, it even eventually led to some violence.

But anyway, I think the two key things were the printing press. And then during this time, a scholar named Erasmus put together a Greek New Testament so that people could see what the original documents for the church, what they actually said. The church did have the Bible. And it was in Latin. But in some places, it varied a bit from the actual original manuscripts in Greek. And that became an important aspect in the Reformation when people started to see that the foundational document differs at least somewhat from what they were hearing in the Latin Bible. I have one really significant place that I wanted to mention. And that is in the three synoptic gospels, the first three gospels.

Jesus says in each one of them something like, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand." And that's clearly what the Greek says, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand." The Latin Bible that they had said, "Do penance, for the kingdom of God is at hand." And it's not hard to imagine the kind of discussions that would come out of discovering differences like this. And so we have access to the original documents that were foundational for the church. And we have the printing press, which gets those documents and the debate that starts to occur. It gets it out for everybody. Everybody can get involved.

The church and state, the union between the two was very, very close. And one of the big questions was, who's in charge, the church or the state? Anyway, all the Protestant reformers relied on a local government to support them. And so the Protestant Reformation maintained the system of state church.

Now, there's a new state church. There's a Protestant state church. And logically, also, they included infant baptism. A person is not just born into the state, but he's also born into the church, more or less. So the union of church and state meant that people were Christians, whether they had consciously chosen to become Christians or not. And it also meant that the Christians would fight wars, sometimes against other Christians, sometimes against pagans, or sometimes against Muslims.

So the Reformation started in 1517 in Germany, in 1519 in Switzerland. And as I've already mentioned, in significant places, the Protestant reforms did not change. Church and state remained united. And infant baptism was continued. And it was still seen as possible for Christians to fight in wars. But there were some people who were dissatisfied with where this was going. They felt like it wasn't far enough, it wasn't changing enough. And so eventually, the Anabaptist Reformation arose. I'm going to mention a few significant areas of disagreement. Obviously, I think the main one is, how do you form a church? The Protestant reformers were still using infant baptism. And they were still using the state as part of what forms the church.

The Anabaptists said that the way you form a church is by preaching the gospel. When people respond positively, you baptize them. And you maintain the state as its own thing and the church as its own thing. So out of that comes the belief of separation of church and state.

Out of that kind of a church that is formed by hearing the gospel, you also have a lifestyle that develops. And this lifestyle involved a lot of things. We usually talk about nonconformity and nonresistance. And these people came to the realization Christians were called to be healers and to bring people to reconciliation among themselves and with God through Jesus.

And so nonresistance became a part of their teaching. One other thing that was different, and this might surprise people, but all of the Protestants were what are called monergists, which is to say they believed in a strong sense of destination. A person was so corrupted by sin that he could not choose God. God instead chose some people for salvation. And others, he chose for damnation. The Anabaptists, on the other hand, were synergists. They believed that God through Jesus had done everything that people needed to be saved. But that you still have to come to know this and recognize your own sin and choose to accept what Jesus did for you and come into the church.

So monergism means that God does everything, including choosing who will be saved and who will not be saved. Synergism says God has done everything we need to become a believer and to be saved from our sin and to form the church.

But we still have to choose that. So there's a human aspect to that. And out of that kind of a church comes a certain kind of lifestyle, a separation from the sin of the world, not isolation. Sometimes, our people, I think, get a stake in there and try to be isolated from the world. We're supposed to be in the world, but not of it. We're supposed to be in the world, but separate from its doings. So what can we learn from this?

One of the things that I think is important is that God doesn't give up on his people. I don't think that there was a fall of the church like sometimes we hear about. I believe the church made some bad choices. And out of those mistakes, there was a lot of corruption that arose. But there were always people who fought against that, who saw, at least to some degree, the mistakes. Also, I think we should recognize that when a new thing happens, when the church and state started to come together, that was new. And Constantine had ended the persecutions. And a lot of the Christians were just so all of them, I think, were so thankful to God that he used Constantine to end the persecutions.

But then what do you do after that? And it's hard to see, at least for some of them, it was hard to see that starting to work together with the state is actually a mistake. Because at first, they weren't too closely intertwined. But over time, they became essentially integrated. And we have all that history to see. And the early Anabaptists could look back and see all that history as well. And so history can give us warnings, can show us where a mistake was made, and how we should try to repair that mistake.

Sometimes today, you hear people talk about orthodoxy or correct belief and orthopraxy or correct practice or lifestyle. And sometimes, we hear them almost set against each other. I think that where the church made the best decisions was when those two things were kept together. And I think we should look back and see that.

Also, sometimes people talk as though it's not that important whether the church looks like the early church or not. Now, it can't look exactly like the early church. And it probably shouldn't. But one of my big desires is that if somebody from the very earliest church would come to my congregation, that he could recognize that we're teaching the same thing, that we're trying to live the same way they did in a different setting. And different questions have arisen. So we've also worked hard at answering those questions that maybe the early church didn't have. But I would want to have confidence that that person could see that, yes, this is the same church as in the first century.

I mentioned some schisms that happened in the early days of the church. And a lot of times, it was over language. Now, language is important. And the church worked hard to refine how it talked about God and Jesus. But sometimes, maybe went a little too far. And I would hope that we could learn to hear what's in our brother's heart, even if the language is somewhat different. I'm not saying that language is not important. I'm saying it is. But sometimes, perhaps we miss where the heart is, despite where the language seems to be taking that person. So I think that's something for us that we can look back in history and see.

Oh, and what's so important is remember the different spheres of the church and the state. Today, a lot of Christians are fearful. And they want the church to deeply influence the state. That's what happened. That's what started with Constantine and went deeply wrong during the Middle Ages. And we see that it wasn't fully corrected in the Reformation.

Those two spheres have their own tasks. And they are totally different. The church maintains order and calls people to live good lives. The church is to heal people, is to bring them to Jesus. And it's a place of reconciliation, never a place of coercion.

And another thing we should learn from history, and that is that faithfulness, not success or numbers, is what God is concerned about. And in some ways, right now, one of the reasons some Christians are in fear is the church seems to be declining very rapidly in Europe and pretty rapidly here in the New World as well. And I see an advantage to that, where people are no longer saying, "I'm a Christian just because I was baptized as a child. And maybe I have no real commitment." So I think the church's message can be seen and heard more clearly as more and more people honestly say, "I'm not a Christian."