Amen. Just to sum up also the councils, and I wanted to end up this sort of period that led to the end of early Christianity and brought in the advent of the Pilgrim Church concept. I was going to just touch on the council period. If you remember yesterday, I guess I could turn that off till a break, or does that not trouble anybody? I'm really taking a chance there that I'll never get it back going. Do you remember yesterday?
We talked about the concept that you do need to deal with things—we do need to deal with things in church life that are off, perhaps, center. But the difficulty we see in the councils is that the things that we began to need to deal with became the target. And I'm going to ask you in a little bit what some areas that perhaps we do that as well. But let's take a look at this.
I found this quote from Leo Tolstoy in Mere Discipleship that I think is a good quote, talking about the idea of, well, what did Constantine supposedly convert to Christianity? Well, what was it that he thought he was converting to? I mean, what was it? Remember when we read Justin Martyr, and he was explaining to the emperor, well, this is what Christianity is like. Do you think that emperor wanted to join Christianity? Not on your life.
Oh, so you live these simple lives, you have all this purity, you even give to the poor and all these types of things. Why would I want to be involved with that? But for some reason, when we get to Constantine, the Christianity that he was handed was something he said, "Hey, it sounds good." And here's Leo Tolstoy's—Tolstoy, I don't know what to do with him. I think he's a guy who really tried to enter the kingdom, whether he ever really did, I don't know.
Towards the end of his life, he did some interesting things. But anyway, here's a good quote nonetheless. Leo Tolstoy's comment about Constantine.
He said, speaking of what they gave him, "No one said to him, Constantine, 'The kings exercise authority among the nations, but among you it shall not be so.' Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not lay up riches, judge not, condemn not, resist not him that is evil." But they said to him, "You wish to be called a Christian and to continue to be a chieftain and a robber, and kill, burn, fight, lust, execute, and live in luxury.
That can all be arranged." And they arranged a Christianity for him and arranged it very smoothly, better even than could have been expected. They foresaw that reading the Gospels, it might occur to him that all this is demanded, all that stuff that Jesus talked about, and not the building of temples and worshiping in them. This they foresaw, and they carefully devised such a Christianity for him as would let him continue to live his old heathen life unembarrassed.
On the one hand, Christ, God's Son, only came to bring salvation to him and to everybody. Christ having died, Constantine could live as he likes. More even than that, one may repent and swallow a little bit of bread and some wine, and that will bring salvation, and all will be forgiven. Being sarcastic there, but the idea that Tolstoy is raising here is, was that Christianity? Was that Christianity? I asked the question, was it a few days ago, why was Arius not a Christian? Was Arius a Christian?
If somebody in your church had Arius's thoughts, would he be a Christian? And so I just want to beg the question, what does it really mean to be a Christian? To be someone who's born from God and not from man or from philosophy, but to be truly a follower of Christ? And that's the question I'm going to be posing during this changing of our focus. I need to bring up Athanasius of Alexandria. Athanasius is remembered for his role in the conflict with this Arian and Arianism.
In 325, at the age of 27, Athanasius had a leading role against the Arians at the first council of Nicaea. At the time, he was a deacon and personal secretary of the 19th bishop of Alexandria, Alexander. Nicaea was convoked by the emperor Constantine on May, August 325, May through August 325, to address the Arian heresy that Christ is a distinct substance from the Father. In June 328, at the age of 30, three years after Nicaea and upon the repose of Bishop Alexander, he became Archbishop of Alexandria.
That guy who had that big dispute, he became the next one. He continued to lead the conflict against the Arians for the rest of his life and was engaged in theological and political struggles against the emperor Constantine and Constantius and powerful against the struggles, yeah, even with Constantine when he changed his mind, and Constantius and powerful and influential Arian churchmen led by Arian Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, with others. I'm sure I'm slaughtered that.
Within a few years of his departure, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus called him the pillar of the church. His writings were well regarded by the church fathers who followed in both the West and the East. His writings show a rich devotion to the word, became man, great pastoral concerns, and profound interest in monasticism. He ended up being also attracted to the Desert Fathers, which we're going to talk just briefly about. So the question is this: Is it important that Jesus Christ came in the flesh? Do you think it is?
Yes. Why is it important? Because in the flesh, he lived out the life of the kingdom, the life that God wanted for us. He gave us a guarantee to be able to live that life. Amen. Amen. Very good. He showed us that that kingdom life could be lived out as one of us. Some other things. What are some reasons why he is very—you're exactly right. Other things? Any thoughts? I'll just pose this question. Okay. He validated scripture. He validated scriptures because the scripture spoke of that. Okay. Amen.
Was it important that he took Mary's flesh? We're going to talk about this a little later with Menno Simons. What do you mean? Well, was he made flesh like Adam, or did he actually take our flesh from Mary? Think about it. Here's some of the quotes Athanasius had. It comes up in a big debate, ended up the entire Dutch church excommunicating the Swiss brethren over that issue. And so it's a heated topic, but I'm bringing up Athanasius because I think the incarnation is important, and this comes up.
Athanasius is one of the most honored names in all Christian history, but in a particular moment, he was with the outs with Emperor Constantius. Now, interesting, Constantine, who was obviously the big man for this Nicene creed, actually towards the end of his life began to change his mind a little bit and go with Arius. As a matter of fact, the man who baptized Constantine on his deathbed was an Arian. The very people that he said was anathema was cursed because of the council that he led, interestingly.
So Athanasius would go into different things. He would then, when the Arians began to rise in power, they wanted him more than anyone else. And there's a scene I wrote here. I gave it here, the account in your writings there, that they one time surrounded an entire church. He was arrested and gotten back five or six times. And this time, one time he arrested a church, and this time it looked like for sure they were going to come and get him.
And all his other monks ran out, and he said, "No, I'm going to stay here until they come to defend the church or whatever." But fortunately, he fainted, and the monks dragged him out, and he lived. But it ended up with this famous slogan from early church, and it's an interesting one. Athanasius contra mundum, which rather translates to mean Athanasius against the world. He felt at a time that he was the sole person defending what's called orthodox understanding of Christology.
And when it seemed like everybody was turning back to the Arian heresies, so to speak, heresies, he then was a great defender of that. And he had some great things to say about the incarnation. I have number three there. Where did Athanasius believe that Jesus received his flesh? He says, "The word visits the earth where he has always been present and sees its evil condition. He takes a human body born of a pure virgin in whose womb he makes human flesh his own." Catch that.
"Born of a pure virgin in whose womb he makes human flesh his own, in which he revealed himself, conquered death, and restored life. For this purpose, to restore creation, to suffer for us, and to appeal on our behalf to the Father, the incorporal and incorruptible word of God comes to our realm." This is like what you were saying there, showing out that we can do this. "But he was never far from us because no part of creation has been emptied of his presence.
He fills all things everywhere while remaining present with the Father. But he humbled himself and came to show us his love for us and to visit us." Next quote, "He could simply have appeared to us, coming to us in some grander way, but this was not what he wanted. He took a body like ours. From a pure and spotless virgin who had never been with a man, being the powerful creator of everything, he prepared this body in a virgin as a temple to himself and appeared in it and lived in it." Simons could have taken that.
If there wasn't for the other quotes, could have taken that last quote. Well, he appeared in it, so do you mean? And here's the verse that comes up later in Anabaptist debates, and it's this word here. "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us." That's the main scripture for the incarnation. Simons argue is, well, it doesn't say he took flesh. He became flesh, and that's where he got himself into some trouble. But we'll talk about that in a few weeks to come.
"And the word became flesh and dwelt among us," and that was what was shared there. And that's the basis of this beautiful concept of the incarnation. And I agree, it's one of the most precious teachings is to think the idea of God, the word of God becoming flesh and dwelling among us, to show us an example, and to die for us. When he takes upon our human flesh and then he dies for us, the atoning sacrifice to God makes that salvation possible. And it's a beautiful, beautiful thing.
And I'm going to have to go on from that, but it's just a precious teaching of our scriptures. But somebody asked me yesterday, and I thought it would be appropriate, well, what were some of those creeds? So I gave them here to you. There's two famous ones, the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed. Neither of these would definitely be traced all through the Ante-Nicene Fathers. Yes, sir. Just as backing up, I'm going to bring this up. How did they embrace Constantine so quickly? Yeah.
Just a few years before that, just before AD 300, they were still pretty sound, if I'm understanding it. Yeah. You're right. Now, they were weakening tremendously. I mean, by Cyprian's time in 250s and such, they were the kind of councils and things that they were discussing shows a very weak church. By the Council of Elvira, they were talking about things that a deacon should do and shouldn't do that really is not even appropriate to talk about in this classroom.
And they had to have a standard that a deacon can't do those things. And so you can see by the time you got to Constantine, the church was already weak, at least the church that we're reading about in these texts. Again, I believe in a pilgrim church concept. And Jacob asked me after the class yesterday as well, well, what about the people who didn't go for this?
And I do believe some of the writings mention Constantine, some of his rules against those who didn't agree with him, and the punishment that they would receive shows that there was a remnant church that existed through this time period. The monks didn't translate their writings, and if they found them, they burned them so we don't have them. But God will always have his people on earth. So yeah, good question. I just wanted to say there was a time of relief near the end of the third century. Yeah.
I wonder if that ease from persecution, it's pretty hard to go back to it maybe. Yeah. You're right. When the ease of persecution began to happen, the church in a whole 40-year period grew very lax in an entire generation, got into debate, started baptizing babies by just have to, and it became a different church. Yes, sir. I don't know if this ties into your I like that symbolism where you get all these I guess that's military. Probably so.
But one thing that kind of comes out clear to me is it seems like every generation needs to have their doctrinal distraction to define their doctrinal superiority. Did you hear Lyndon? He said each generation needs to have their doctrinal distractions to define themselves. That's what was in their generation. What's that? It's pretty nominalized. Okay. In this generation's authority. Yeah. Yeah. They're struggling with this authority thing.
But it goes back to the point that we have to look at the holistic possible. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful point. So we try to create an identity for ourselves. And I think it's carnal. I think this is carnal. Who was that in that conference we just saw? They had this beautiful analogy. What was his name? That each generation must take the word of God. Mark Reed. Yeah. Mark Reed. Frank Reed. And create a community out of the word. Each generation must do that again and again.
We must come back to the word of God and allow it to create a people. It is a sure word of prophecy. And particularly at the very center must always be Christ. And we're going to see how that differs in these creeds here. Or not the creeds, but what in response to the people who did these types of creeds. We have the Apostles' Creed there. I gave it to you there.
We don't find that in those exact wordings in the early church, but writings like Tertullian and things did have a baptismal formula, and they come close to this creed. And so I gave a little footnote there when it was first discovered, or at least in the writings. But then I gave you the whole Nicene Creed. And if you would, you don't have to say this to God, but let's say it out loud because that's the way it's done in liturgical churches. I have it there for you. All right? Everybody. The Nicene Creed.
"I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible, and in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary.
He was made man and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the scriptures and ascended into heaven and said it on the right hand of the Father, and he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets. And I believe one holy Catholic, meaning universal and apostolic church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins, and I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen." And that's the Nicene Creed. Don't we need to almost define Catholic? We do.
That's why I stuck in there at meaning universal. I said that. Yeah, exactly. Now, it means different things to different people, but in its typical sense and its use in an academic setting, it just means the whole worldwide church. And I think that's what they intended here. Yeah, I do. You see how the and the Son was in brackets? I don't have time to get into that.
But if you ever want to know what's the difference between the East Orthodox and the Roman Catholics, if you ask any self-respecting East Orthodox person, they'll point to one thing: and the Son. I don't have time to go into the entire schism that led. There's, of course, a lot of different things. They would say the Pope having a pope and different councils that have come on without having an ecumenical council.
But if you had to say, "Give me one thing that divides you," this word, which in the Latin is the word filioque, which means and the Son, the Greek Orthodox believe that that was added later by the Roman Catholics. And they think it makes a big difference if the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son and from the Father. And they believe it makes a great confusion.
I had a man come to our church, Darren Tyler, who trained under Kallistos Ware in Oxford, and he came to, again, the same time that he came to convert us to Greek Orthodoxy. And in his opinion, everything, all problems of the world, communism, Marxism, postmodernism, everything came from the filioque. So that's the way he sees it. So I just throw that out. But the creed, it's good, isn't it? I mean, you see some of that Athanasius coming on, and that idea of the Son there, God of God.
So there's nothing lesser of what's coming out of the Father. God of God, light of light. There's that analogy there. Very God of very God, begotten, not made. It's a beautiful creed. And so it's just the spirit that went around and did this. So the problem is now we have that creed, and here's a huge difference. Is creedal Christianity, Christianity, is believing in a creed, whatever that creed may be, meaning you're a Christian. Somehow they got to this point that Constantine could say, "Yeah, all right.
Yeah." Even though you can still add your Sun gods and things like that. But the focus then, that although they needed to hammer these things out and make a creed, now the creed was the emphasis. So we got to make sure our creed is perfect. Back here was the Sermon on the Mount, crying out to be heard again. Back here were the teachings of Jesus saying, "This is what kingdom Christianity is all about." Back here was the target, but the target had moved.
After that, the councils, they went into centuries of debates, and only these seven that I mentioned here on your paper is what was received by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox as the ecumenical councils, meaning everybody. They certainly weren't ecumenical in trying to include everybody, but they used the term meaning supposedly the entire church. And these are the things they discussed. You can see the list through there.
But again, you can see from the spirit that were in the people that did those creeds was something that unfortunately was very scary. Let me give you one example. In 449, if you can see between the third and the fourth council, they wanted to talk about the idea, "Okay, we need to get this hammered out. Okay, Jesus is fully human and fully divine, right? Or is he half human and half divine? Oh, he must be fully human and fully divine. Okay. That we can agree with.
Okay, well, exactly how is that fully human and fully divine inside this person of Jesus? Is it all mixed together, or is it sitting side by side? We need to spell this out." Okay, well, yeah. And so they actually had a huge council to decide this, and a whole portion of the church was excommunicated because they didn't agree to exactly how that was spelled out. That was the priest that I said earlier who came and gave us the explanation of this, and he gave the exact Monophysite position.
But the councils leading into that, here's a little story. In 449, in the famous New Testament city of Ephesus, bishops from all over the world gathered to discuss what they saw as a life-and-death point of theology. The issue? They wanted to nail down just how the two natures of Christ coexisted in the person of Jesus. Fully divine and fully human, that they all agreed. But that wasn't enough. Precisely how those two natures existed in the person of Jesus was the debate.
At first glance, you might probably think this might only have been a fine point of theology reserved only for the elite theologians, but no, this got big. Just as always, the root of the issue wasn't theological. Personal differences, political agendas fanned the fires of dispute. I'm going on down. In the case at Ephesus, the dispute went public. Not just the theologians, not just the priests. This is what Christianity looked like at this time. Everybody started going here with their focus. Here.
Instead of Christ, here. It's all in our creed. It went public. The local Christians who probably, I wrote, never experienced an ounce of the engrafted nature of Christ were getting in on the debate everywhere. It was sort of like our presidential elections or sporting events. People taking sides. There's even reports that in the Hippodrome, which is where they'd have these big crusades and things, the Christians, the Orthodox, could be seen wearing colors on the sleeve to represent their theological side.
Seriously, the Orthodox, so to speak, wore blue ribbons, and the ones who were later called Monophysites wore green ones. So you can imagine the Hippodrome and, "Yeah, those are the Monophysite people in there." And it was like this huge political debate on, and you think any of these people understood how the two natures of Christ could be inside one person, but it became this huge theological and political debate. Well, it went on. It got bad.
Once the theological debate got underway, things went from bad to worse. When one side of the debate didn't feel that things were going their way, a group of monks, accompanied by a gang of militia, proceeded to take over the debate by force, threatening everyone with their life. They took a blank sheet of paper. So first they said, "All of you." Threatening with their life, they took a blank sheet of paper and made the bishops all sign it. So imagine, here's a blank sheet of paper. Just sign right here.
We'll fill in the details later. They planned to later simply put on what they wanted on the blank section. After they got the signatures, they turned to the leading opponent, Flavian, and cried out, "Slaughter him." Ouch. Immediately, a band of monks proceeded to beat the bishop so badly that he died a few days later. At last, when they felt the debate was settled, the synod proudly pronounced, "Here was the anathema. Would those who divide Christ be divided with a sword? May those be hewn in pieces.
May they be burned alive." Through the centuries, this little meeting has effectively been called the Robber Synod. Would you agree with me? Somewhere. We're off. Okay, settled the dispute. But for crying out loud, if you can cut people in half because they think you can divide the nature and you've missed Christ completely. You've missed Christ completely. These kinds of things went on with different debates. I asked the question, were there ever councils that met other than Christology?
Well, people would argue this was still concerning Christology. But another big debate was over whether or not you can have images in the church. This actually came up around in this time period of the Seventh Council. It came of asking, "Could we have images in the church?" Around 787 was the Seventh Council. And first, they had a council, and they got all these bishops together, over 300 bishops together, and they decided, "You can't have images. You can't worship images.
At least you can't bow down to them and venerate them." Well, that didn't go over very well because then the other part of the church said, "No, we want to be able to kiss and venerate and pray to images." And there was a man by the name of John of Damascus, excuse me, who wrote a book and tried to defend the idea of images. And then there was a lady. She was a queen, an empress, and her name was Irene of Athens. And she really liked images.
And so she really brought things together, and she called for another ecumenical council and to defend images. Later on, her son, who was named Constantine, interestingly, later he joined the iconoclast, and so she felt that was a rival, but he lived that for a while. But then finally, he changed his mind and said he came to live with his mother. But his mother was a little nervous about having a son who was so wishy-washy. So she ordered that some men seize him to kill him.
So they grabbed him while he was walking through the, I mean, so he was riding his horse through the city one day, and he said, "I want his eyes gouged out," since he doesn't like looking at images, I suppose. So they gouged his eyes out so brutally that he, I guess, bled to death. She's a saint now in the Greek Orthodox Church, and you can pray to her. She has a feast day on August 7th. Constantine's is May 21st. So somewhere, these people are getting off. And here's the curses.
Along these councils, they would have anathemas, or I could use the word curses. If you didn't agree with this, you were cursed. You were damned. This meant Christianity. And if you don't believe these things, you're cursed. Here's some of the curses, the anathemas from the Seventh Ecumenical Council. I wrote them on your page seven.
They say, "Anathema to them who presume to apply to the venerable image the things said in Holy Scripture about the veneration of idols." In other words, if you use Scripture to say it's wrong to venerate idols, curse you. Anathema to you. You're going to hell. "Anathema to those who refuse to venerate with proper reverence the holy images of the Lord and his blessed saints." If you don't do it with proper reverence, you're going to hell. "Anathema to those who call the sacred images idols.
Anathema to those who say that Christians resort to the sacred images as to God. Anathema to those who say that any other delivered us from the idols except Christ our God. Anathema to those who dare to say that at any time the holy church received and worshiped idols. Let them who do not venerate the holy and venerable images be anathema. If you don't do this, you're going to hell. Anathema to those who blaspheme against the horrible, excuse me, the honorable and venerable images.
To those who dare to attack and blaspheme the venerable images and call them idols. Anathema to the calumniators of Christianity, that is to say the iconoclasts. Anathema to those who do not diligently teach all the Christ-loving people to venerate and to salute the venerable and sacred and honorable teachings of the saints who please God and their several generations. Anathema if you don't teach people to do this.
Anathema to those who even, listen to this, have a doubtful mind and do not confess with their whole hearts that they venerate the sacred images. Anathema." Wow. Jesus once said, "Blessed is he who keeps and teaches these things, and he will be called great in the kingdom of heaven." These weren't the things that he said would be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus said that if you don't, those who build as rock upon the sand, one day when the rains come in, great would be the fall of that house.
And many will call me, "Lord, Lord," that day, and I'll say, "I never knew you." But somehow, step by step, now they're in the 700s, that thing had got, well, I don't know. I don't know where you put the target, but out here. Was there any good that came from these councils? I appreciate Broadbent. I almost had you get this, but since it was only one day of this lecture, this is a great book, The Pilgrim Church by E.H. Broadbent.
Also, like Mike Atnip's book, The Birth and Death of the Bohemian Revival, excellent book too about another period we usually don't know about. Broadbent said, "Although the decisions reached was right," not that one, but the Council of Nicaea he's talking about, "the way of reaching it by the combined efforts of the emperor and the bishops and enforcing it by the power of the state showed the departure of the Catholic Church from Scripture." So we study, sorry, we study church history.
One of the reasons to study church history is to take a look at ourself. The question I ask here now is, how do we as Anabaptists often allow the focus to get away from Christ? Can we fall into the same trap in our things? There's lots of church splits. There's lots of church splits. You're right, brother. So let's not just throw our accusations against these people. What about us? Remember, some things genuinely need to be dealt with.
Let's say, for instance, you're in your church and you really think that, let's think of something ridiculous so I don't offend anybody, that wearing white tennis shoes is wrong. And you have some good reasons why wearing white tennis shoes is wrong. So you get together the brothers and you say, "Okay, you know this " All right. All right. Well, let's say you come to your senses and you realize that white tennis shoes are wrong. All right. All right. And you get together and you say, "All right.
Okay, let's look at this." So you get together and say, "Okay, we're going to decide, in our church, this is a concern of ours that white tennis shoes are wrong." But then you see, and some things need to be dealt with. And I'm just throwing white tennis shoes as an example. Some genuine things. And even as communities have come together, I think I don't have a problem with brotherhoods coming together to work out the way they're going to live their lives together. I don't have a problem with that.
We can discuss that later in the weeks. But what can happen, though, is you begin to say, "Well, the only Christians are those who what?" Wear white tennis shoes. Wear black tennis shoes, brother. Come on. Wear black tennis shoes or non-white tennis shoes.
And then you say, "Well, okay, I noticed that some people have shoelaces that kind of hang out." And so you begin to get into discussion of your tennis shoes, and next thing you know it, you're over here and you're actually saying bad things about the other church that wears the white tennis shoes, and you're not greeting them anymore, and you're excommunicating them, and you're saying all manner of bad things from them. And again, I'm not against.
I'm not a person who is even against standards and things like that. You're going to hear me talk about that in weeks. When we can debate that, that's fine. But the point is that in every step of the way, we better do one major important thing. What? It's got to be coming back to Jesus. If what we're doing doesn't look like Jesus, we're losing it. And we're going to end up way over here, and it gets, and y'all know it more than I do, it gets ridiculous and it gets painful.
And I think in a lot of ways, maybe we don't actually cut people in half, but maybe spiritually or with our words, perhaps we do sometimes. All right? So to start to go down that path, it's really hard to stop. It is.
I almost think I would, if every beginning of every intense brother meeting, should we open up the Sermon on the Mount and say, "Let's hear what Jesus said the church looks like?" David Bercot in his book, The Theologian Please Sit Down, mentions, he said, "You know, no one's ever been thrown into jail and persecuted or burned at the stake for not helping the poor, not visiting the sick." We never had debates over those things.
It's the things that Jesus didn't talk about which got people thrown into jail and imprisoned things. So as long as we're maintaining our focus on Christ, I agree. Just like these debates on Christology need to be talked about, there's several lifestyle issues that I think need to be hammered out in the community. But wow, every time we do, we need to go back to Jesus. Yeah. Just a thought.
Do you think that's become so important to us because we start to get our identity, our worth, our belonging from the fact that we don't wear white tennis shoes? Yeah. Yeah. Just like the guys who were wearing the green ribbons and the blue ribbons, I'm with the Monophysites or I'm with the Orthodox. You're with the black shoe. You got white shoes, though. No. You're with that and that. And you're right. Pride in probably in all these situations is the underlying problem there. Yes, brother.
But I go back what you're saying there, I think too, and that is it never was about the white shoe. Yeah. Yeah. See, the white shoe is easier to talk about than that. Ooh. Good point. The white shoe is a lot easier to talk about than that. Good point. Remember the first kid? It requires a circumcised heart to talk about it. Yeah. Imagine if you're next brother's meeting and you have this big debate. We have brothers in our church who are no longer visiting the sick.
You mean your church doesn't have people visiting the sick? Yeah, that's the not visiting the sick people. It almost seems ridiculous. But like Lyndon said, that takes crucified life. That takes a heart that really looks at the words of Jesus and saying, "Are we really living out his dreams for humanity or are we not?" Sorry, this is a bad point to bring in there. But I've always wondered this. If something is important to us, we will review it regularly.
And I've always wondered if our disciplines would be as large as they are, if we would make a commitment that as brothers, we're going to review it and digest it every year. That's good, brother. What would happen, I think, would be it'd be a little shorter. We'd get back into old habits. But the interesting thing is, is the most important elements of that we would continue to fight for. Fine. The part, the white shoes may go away. That's good.
You hear what Brother Lyndon's saying, that we don't review these things. We just put them in our books or put them in our things and let them stack away. He said if really these things are important to us, the reviewing of those things year to year would be Sorry, I want to take one step, brother. Good thing. Okay, go. The point is, is our generation, in my culture, excuse me, in my culture, it was never reviewed, so I really never owned it. You never owned it. Yeah.
So the point is, is it's a responsibility for every generation to give their generation an opportunity to buy into it and speak into it and own it. Say that last part again. That's good. I said part of every generation for them to give their generation the opportunity to buy into it. Buy into it. Speak into it. Speak into it and to own it. Amen. Very well said. That's why there's no grandchildren in the kingdom of God that each generation, Lyndon's saying, has to buy into it and own it. And so it's a good point.
If we just stack these things up, it gets painfully out of focus. So we can laugh at the or cry over the council period, but if in our heart we're slicing people in half at our brothers' meetings, then we're in trouble. I guess I think we're finally understanding. I was actually getting a little frustrated with all this stuff. But I'm finally understanding that this was the frustration that our culture was birthed out of. So I guess that's now we're getting to it. Yeah. Amen. Amen. Amen. Yeah. It's good.
It's good for us to see because we can kind of look over there and blame them, but it's a good reflection. And that's why we look at church history. I think of it kind of like able to church history, I look at little experiments that you can say, "Okay, when you put this stuff together, it produces that." And of course, nothing without the Holy Spirit.
But nevertheless, you can look at some things that repeat itself and hear some examples that we can say, "Are we getting into some of these things ourselves?" And that's why we look at church history. So, okay. I'm going to start going through the Pilgrim Church now. All right. From this time, there's always people that have lived unto God, like I said at the beginning here. And sometimes they were still in the Catholic Church struggling to find a way to live out their love of Christ.
Some of them were outside of the church. Some of their writings were things that were now been translated by people or copied by people, and we only have their opponents, especially those who are outside of the church. But nevertheless, I see through the generations, even with the scraps of history that we had during these so-called dark ages, that there was always people who were trying to find God in a more powerful way than just the masses of Christianity. Excuse me. One of those was Antony.
Antony was a monk that went out into the desert.
I mean, as you can imagine, if Christianity had gotten to such a point that you had the Hippodrome and all this and everything was called Christianity, with some of their early kingdom understanding, even if it's in its partial understanding of that, but in their kingdom understanding, they said, "Okay, the kingdom of God has to exist somewhere in the world as a seed." So as the scriptures say, "When the enemy has come in like the flood, he will rise up a standard against it." Somewhere there has to be some true
Christianity.
Antony did some strange things, but people like him just said, "Okay, I'm going to go out here and I'm going to start living the Christian life because everywhere Christendom had gone into apostasy." And you get some people trying to do that. Antony had some pretty extreme things. But nevertheless, some of this started coming out of people trying to go further. Another one as we get is Benedict, who started the Benedictines and is still a monastic order today.
And again, there's many things we wouldn't agree with Benedict. But the fact is, I see in some of these early people attempts to say, "Okay, Jesus gave us this beautiful kingdom. How do we put this kingdom into practice in the midst of a total apostasy of a Christianity that's just totally debased?" And that was the world that they were living at their time. I wrote just a quick, who was Nestorius? Nestorius was a person that was excommunicated there in the, what was that, the third council?
And he didn't like the word Theotokos, which means the mother of God. They were calling Mary the mother of God. And he said, "That makes me nervous. She's a mother of Christ, but is she the mother of God?" Again, it goes to our debate of the incarnation. Well, he was banned to heretic and thrown out. But their church actually continued on in the Far East, and they were one of the very powerful first missionaries and went out and began to bring Christianity way far into Asia. Just a quick question.
How do you feel about them? Were they really heretics? Well, I think now in Nestorius themselves, there would be other things that I would think that he's departed far from the teachings of Christ over. When I read the arguments, I don't know, it's again, most of them are in the hands of the enemies, but the concept of being the mother of God, he was the Athanasius side, although Athanasius was, I don't think was there.
The Athanasius side was arguing that, well, the same he took from the flesh of Mary, and so that flesh was God, so that makes Mary God. He was saying, "No, she gave only the," and Nestorius was saying, "She gave only the human side of that, so she's not really the mother of God." I personally think that of any type of debates, this is one, you should definitely drop it, my personal feeling. And they didn't.
Interesting, just recently, Pope John Paul II ordered an apology to the Nestorians after all these years and saying that perhaps they were a little rash in their dealings with the Nestorians at the time. Same thing he did with the Monophysites, which is the Coptic churches, the Egyptian Catholics, and some of those who were the ones who didn't agree with how things were mixed together. They were the Monophysites.
I was curious because the Nestorians were some of the Christians who Muhammad would have had interaction with. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. And they survived in Iraq still to this day, and perhaps some of their lack of having, they also were very big in not having images and that type of thing until recently they started that again. I can tell you about some of my run-ins with the Nestorians, modern-day Nestorians at a different time, but yeah, they're an interesting group.
Preserved kind of in a way because they've always existed amongst the Muslim people in Iraq and so, but a lot of times they got better treatment, usually like the Anabaptists did several times, got better treatment from the Muslims than they did from the Orthodox Church and from the Reformers. Sad to say. Okay. And then another one was Saint Patrick, so-called, was another person who did some radical things. He was believed to have died on March 17th around 460 AD. What do we actually have about Patrick?
Two authentic letters from him survive from which came the only universally accepted details of his life. But there's lots of legends and stories about him. When he was about, when he was a young man, he was captured from Wales by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland, where he lived for six years before escaping and returning to his family. After entering the church, he returned to Ireland as an ordained bishop in the north and west of the island. But little is known about the places where he worked.
By the seventh century, he has come to be revered as a patron saint of Ireland and the Catholic Church, that is. He wasn't actually Catholic, though, was he? Well, it depends on who you would ask. Wasn't there another church? There was. Very well said. The church there in the British Isles and things had received Christianity earlier than when they sent up a big group of missionaries there.
Bede's ecclesiastical history of this area gives that account of when they "converted them." But this conversion, there were Christians there already. Yeah, you're right. And some of the powerful things were from some of the stuff like people like Patrick. But yeah. And obviously he was a Christian there even before, but spread that in a powerful way. He has a beautiful testimony of waiting with a burden to be a missionary, which is a good one for young men and young women who have a burden to do something.
He has an excellent example of asking the church, "Can I go be a missionary? Can I go be a missionary? Wait. Can I go be a missionary? Can I be a missionary? Wait." And he waited and waited and waited until the time was right. And when he did it, it was powerful. And he made a difference. And it's a beautiful example of submission to authority and God working through someone was the life of Patrick. Another person in that area was a powerful mission-minded was Columba of the Isle of Iona.
If you've ever seen those pictures you see I have there in the little Celtic cross, some people get nervous about some of the symbolism there, and I'm not trying to argue that one way or the other. But here we have a really powerful missionary group of people. And interestingly enough, what you see in these monastics from the Isle of Iona was a church-based mission, a community-based mission, more like the Moravians. It was a monastic-based mission.
And it was different than the way the Roman Catholics were putting out their missionaries than the way they did it. It was more of a kingdom type of focus, if you would. I wrote here, "The mission originated in 563 with the foundation of Iona by an Irish monk, Saint Columba." And he's an interesting story. He was a powerful man, a warrior man, became a so-called Christian, just a fake Christian. But then he got into a dispute over this fancy book of the Psalms, a Psalter.
And he wanted it, this other guy wanted it, and they got fighting, and next thing you know it, he ends up a whole bunch of people getting killed. And that smote his heart. And he said, "I really, what was I thinking? I've really gone too far here. I'm killing people over a Psalter." And so the story goes is that he then made a commitment that says, "I am going to make sure I save as many people as I killed in this dispute." And he did. Many more. He became a powerful missionary.
And the early missions is often associated with the Christian practice known as Celtic Christianity, I wrote on here, which was distinguished by its organizations around monasteries rather than dioceses and certain idiosyncratic traditions. But the later mission was more continental in character. In other words, they would go in, bring a monastery, and from there bring people in, disciple them, show them Christianity, and then break off to somewhere else.
It was very much, in some ways at least, like the Moravian model, the way they would come in and set up a place for discipleship. All right. Next is to the Albigenses, and I'm going to talk about them, and I'm going to take a break, and then I'm going to throw on our little five-minute video here.
After this, we get into a group of people called the Albigenses, the Cathari, the different Bogomils, and different people who a lot of them have kind of assorted history, and it's kind of hard to know what camp to put them into, particularly because the only thing we have are their writings were from people that hated their guts, the people who killed them and burned them. And so they often classify these people all in one heap. And the Albigenses, I have to wonder, was not one of them.
The accusations against them were that they were Gnostic, in true the sense of the word, believing in a good God and a bad God. The Christian History Institute argues that maybe this was the way they were understanding. They believed in a very clear separation from the world and that they didn't believe that all this luxury and pomp and things that the Catholic Church was into, they wanted to separate themselves from, and they became powerful preachers.
I wrote here, "They began in the 12th century and rejected the dominant Catholic Church for its moral laxity. Hence, Cathar, which means clean or it means pure. It's the same concept as the Puritans. Catholics destroyed virtually every scrap of the Cathars that they wrote. So we do not know their side of the story. But according to the Catholic sources, Cathars believed the whole material world to be evil. Salvation lay in becoming one of the perfect," and that Christian History Institute writes.
However, only the writings of the enemies remain. Christian History Institute says that we should remember that at the Reformation, for example, both Protestant and Catholics lumped together good and bad Anabaptist groups and persecuted all of them without distinction. There were the militant ones, the non-militant ones, some were strange spiritualists and such. And the historian can't help but wonder whether good and bad Cathars were not similarly lumped together or even confused with Gnostic movements.
They lived very holy lives. Many of them practiced public preaching. They did not swear oaths. They wanted to live by the Sermon on the Mount, and even many of them gathered into communities, again, like this Iona idea, and they tried to follow Jesus' teachings literally. Three-minute break. I'll set up the video that someone has talked about the Albigenses and the Waldensians that followed them, and be right back. That's right. Put it there. Wait. Get the lights there. Ten-minute video.
While some may attribute the beginning of the Dark Age to Constantine, the record of history shows that the name of this era was given because the Bible was forbidden. The Psalmist writes, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." But in the 13th century, Rome made a concerted effort to put out that light and to keep men from the knowledge of the scriptures. The conflict began with a Catholic priest named Dominic Guzman.
It could be said that Dominic, along with Pope Innocent III, were the two original founders of Rome's most and destruction, the Inquisition. That's good. The Inquisition itself began not because of witches or as a crusade against Muslims, but rather because of Bible-believing Christians. These particular believers were known as the Albigenses, so named because of the city of Albi in France.
The Albigenses often debated with the Catholic priests, most notably with Dominic Guzman, today known as Saint Dominic in the Catholic Church. Though Dominic accused the Albigenses of believing heretical doctrines, his famous testimony against them reveals important details about their true faith. He said, "It is not by the display of power and pomp or by gorgeous apparel that the heretics win proselytes.
It is by zealous preaching, by apostolic humility, by austerity, by seeming it is true, but by seeming holiness." Dominic argued that the holiness of the Albigenses was counterfeit and should be overcome by the allegedly true holiness of Catholicism. Initially, Dominic tried to oppose the Albigenses through preaching, but his efforts met with little success. The Albigenses were known for their extensive knowledge of the scriptures, and they refused what they saw as Dominic's apostate teachings from Rome.
In the year 1206, the Albigenses made a confession that the Church of Rome was not the spouse of Christ, but the Church of Confusion, drunk with the blood of the martyrs, that the Church of Rome was neither good nor holy, nor established by Jesus Christ. It was at the Colloquy of Montreal in 1207 AD where the final theological debate took place between the Catholic priesthood represented by Dominic Guzman and the Albigenses.
Historians relate what was clearly seen as a defeat for Dominic, who was said to be no match for the Albigensian leader, Benoit de Tremé. Researcher James McDonald writes that Guzman was humiliated by his failure. Speaking on behalf of Christ, Guzman promised slavery and death to his opponents. To carry out his threat, Dominic would eventually form the Order of the Dominicans, which became the chief instrument of Rome's Holy Inquisition.
Two years later, partly inspired by Dominic's fury, Pope Innocent III ordered the famous crusade against the Albigenses. The bloody effort was led by a close friend of Dominic's, the nefarious Simon de Montfort, remembered by Catholics as a brave crusader, yet by Protestants as a brutal mass murderer, who was determined to wipe out not only the Albigenses, but all traces of their teaching.
We read that the crusade of Simon de Montfort so utterly destroyed them that Simon stamped out not only a people, but a literature. By 1233 AD, Pope Gregory IX would establish the Inquisition as official church doctrine, and thus began some 600 years of bloodshed against Bible believers. As a direct result of the Albigensian crusade, the popes began to outlaw the translation, possession, or reading of the Bible. Historian David Cloud explains that the light brought by the scripture made Rome's heresies plain.
The persecutions which Rome poured out upon these peace-loving people were intended to destroy them as well as their scriptures. Beginning with the Albigenses, Rome's Inquisition continued its bloodthirsty cause for centuries.
Its estimated death toll was recorded by historian John Dowling in 1845, who wrote, "It is estimated by careful and credible historians that more than 50 million of the human family have been slaughtered for the crime of heresy by popish persecutors." In modern times, it is traditionally thought that Roman Catholicism was the only form of Christianity until the Protestant Reformation. But history shows that Bible believers have always existed outside the Roman Church and were hated by Rome because of it.
A history of these groups can be found in the book The Pilgrim Church by E.H. Broadbent. Broadbent shows that what these groups had in common was that they did not submit to the Roman papacy, and they sought to follow God's word as their final authority. The Albigenses were one of these ancient groups, and with them were the Waldenses. The Waldenses, as a Bible-believing people, actually go back, although this is disputed by some Bible critics, they nevertheless go back to the 2nd century.
And it appears that they had what was in effect an old Latin Bible called the Italic version as far back as the 2nd century. And they were known as the Vaudois, which means the people of the valleys. Rome persecuted the Waldenses again and again through the centuries for over 1,000 years and tried to wipe them out because by the grace of God, they were located in an area which was easily defended, the mountains of northern Italy. They were able at least to cling on to survival for centuries.
The Waldenses' commitment to the scriptures was legendary. Their early Bibles were in Latin, but in the 12th century, their most famous leader, Peter Waldo, would translate the Bible into what was called the Romantic language. Romantic was a combination of Middle English and Old French. Yet Waldo's translation was rejected by the Church of Rome. Pope Alexander III expelled him and his followers, while Pope Lucius III pronounced a papal curse on them. They were persecuted.
Their records were burned, destroyed, their names slandered. Our true church history, though, must ever seek to find this silver stream of believers that were never a part of Rome. They were in the valleys of the Piedmont between northern Italy and southern France. In the south of France, they went by different names: the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Cathars, the Donatus.
Yet in spite of Rome's efforts to destroy them, the ancient faith of the Pilgrim Church would prevail, and their example would influence the great men of faith that would follow. All right. You can get the lights there again. So interesting, huh? So again, he gave some very positive feelings in there and didn't give any cautions about some of their teachings as well.
But the point I think that you get across when you look at these people is, again, like I said, it was the first day, that when you get a bunch of people and they open the word of God and they come to that center of Christ and they try to put it to practice, again, you start ending up something that looks kind of the same through the ages.
And each generation, we need to do this over and over again of saying, like Lyndon said, "Let's go back and look at the things that are important." And if Jesus is our CEO, brother, right, I think his plan should be something that we hear a lot of. You know what I mean? I've seen in churches where they were just in the middle of dispute over some point, and from the pulpit, I've heard it calling people who want to give to the poor part of the emerging church or something, and calling titles like this.
And I think that just shows a problem here. Christ is the example. We don't need to label people, although the emerging church certainly has a lot of problems in many of those things as well. Okay. Let's go on your papers there. So any thoughts about those Albigenses or those people? I just have a question I was thinking about. Has it always been religion that has instigated persecution against the Christian movement? No.
No, there's been other things, scientific things and political things, certainly, that's added to it. It's usually about power. Even religion is an instrument of power, unfortunately, but it's about power and about pride, I think, most of the time. And whatever gives that sword to the power is what counts. As a matter of fact, if you flip the page there, I have there what was the relationship between the kings and the bishops.
To further understand the spiritual conditions, Mike Atnip writes in the Bohemian Revival book, "The spiritual conditions of 14th century Bohemia, we must need study the history of Roman Catholic Church. For centuries, the church and state had walked together in an unholy alliance.
There was the 'holy Roman emperor' who was supposed to be a secular king over the Corpus Christi, the kingdom of God, the body of Christ, or Christendom, and there was the pope who was supposed to be the spiritual leader." So they believed all this was part of this kingdom of God and that the holy Roman emperor would handle the temporal things and the pope would handle the spiritual things.
And that kind of power thing, and as Mike wrote in there, they both jockeyed for power and wanted to get more and more power, and that ended up with lots of problems. Yes, sir. But I would add to that thought. I think another thing is for our inability to recognize and treat power addiction. Power is an addiction. Because of our loyalty, sometimes we—yeah. Yeah, good. Well, Lyndon is saying is we don't even, we don't as a people deal with this power addiction when we see it amongst our leaders or amongst ourselves.
He's right. It is an addiction. There's a drug to the whole thing. It's hard for us to call people. Yeah. I've said before, there's two ways to rule the world. One is to be a tyrant like many of these people and to take over whole peoples with armies and to completely win the world. The other way is to create a world so small, to create a world so small that you remove all the competition. And unfortunately, both of these can be just as tyrannical, I believe, to the people that are around them. Okay.
I'd like to just come in a little bit on the Waldensians because, again, they were a group that I think just picked up the Bible and said, "Hey, let's do it." But the Waldensians, again, is a term that kind of gets a broad stroke. There's lots of different people who can you say they were "Waldensians" and that type of thing, and it's difficult to hammer them down.
There were Waldensians before Peter Waldo, it seems, at least people who fall into that category, but Peter Waldo seems to be the name that comes up when you officially talk about the Waldensians. So I'm going to talk about his conversion. It at least had a lot of force for them. We don't know much about Peter Waldo's first name was even Peter, but he was a rich merchant of Lyon, France.
Remember, that was where Irenaeus was from, who while listening to a troubadour—troubadour is one of those guys who would come into town playing the music and all that type of thing—he came under the deep conviction of—excuse me, a troubadour came under conviction for sin in the latter part of the 12th century. Troubadours who had been popular in the 11th century often sang ballads about saints. This particular troubadour recounted the story of Alexis.
This is a legend of a fifth-century mystic who abandoned his wealth to live by begging and returned home unrecognized. He was a rich man who gave everything, and when he got home, they didn't even recognize him. And I guess there was some little song about this. And Peter Waldo, being a rich merchant, listened to that and went, "Huh." Now, here's an account that was actually written way a long time ago at 1218, the year of his death, they believe it's attributed to.
And here's a guy's account of Peter Waldo's conversion. And during the same year, that is the 1173rd year since our Lord's incarnation, there lived in Lyon, in France, a certain citizen, Waldo by name, who had made much money by wickedly charging exorbitant interest rates. One Sunday, when he joined a crowd which had gathered around a troubadour, he was struck by the singer's words, and taking him into his house, he took care to listen to him at length.
The passage he was reciting occurred concerning the holy Alexis, who died a blessed death in his father's house. When morning came, the prudent citizen hurried to the school of theology to seek counsel for his soul. Let's go talk to theologians. But when he was shown many different ways of going to God, everybody told him a different thing.
He asked a master, "Which way was more certain and more perfect than all?" And the master quoted from Jesus and said, "If you would be perfect, go and sell all that you have and follow him." Then Waldo went to his wife and gave her the choice of keeping his personal items and funds or his real estate, which consisted of ponds and groves and fields and everything. And then he went and he gave all the money back to the people that he cheated. It's kind of like a Zacchaeus.
"Everyone that I've cheated, here's what I have," and he gave it to them. And finally, a little later, it says there—you can keep reading it—he got to the point where one day he was throwing money out of his house there, and people came up and thought he was crazy. And he said—that second dot you see on page 11—"Throwing some money among the villagers, they cried, 'No man'"—he cried to them—"'No man can serve two masters, God and Mammon.'" Then his fellow citizens ran up thinking that he'd lost his mind.
But going on to a higher place on that castle thing, he said, "My fellow citizens and friends, I am not insane as you think, but I am avenging myself on my enemies who made me a slave so that I was always more careful of money than of God and served the creature rather than the creator.
I know that many will blame me that I act thus openly, but I do it both for myself and for you, for myself so that anyone who sees me from now on having any money may say that I am mad and for you that you may learn to put your hope in God and not in riches." He then went on and gathered a large group of brothers around him who started to call the poor men of Lyon, and they decided to live this kind of life and became like a traveling missionary group, started gathering into little communities and things.
And again, the Moravian actually has its roots in some of this, started to live out the best they could this message that Peter Waldo wanted to hold. Later on, he tried to give this to the pope Alexander, and they, of course, said no. And then later on, we remember that we'll see that they were killed and persecuted. They were a very diverse group. Again, you see them coming up in lots of different ways.
But a radical group of people who you may not agree with all the things that the Waldensian did, and there's different doctrinal things that we could get into. This isn't a course on the Waldensians. But the interesting thing, again, is that a group of people, if you may call it naive, you may call it simplistic, just said, "Okay, how are we going to live out these things?" And they fall and they say they fall into—I mean, how are we going to live out these things?
And they just give themselves totally to trying to live that out. And it's an interesting thing we see in history time and time again. They ended up—they think that Peter Waldo died in Bohemia, which you see a map there since no one really knows where Bohemia is today. I said I have a map on page 12 there of the Czech Republic. The left side of the Czech Republic, the west side is Bohemia, and the right side is Moravia. We're going to see that with the Moravian Anabaptist and some of those things.
This is a strong area of radical Christianity there, tucked between Poland and Germany on top of Austria and Hungary, right there in the center of Europe. Powerful place. During the same time, John Wycliffe—or a little later—John Wycliffe now started to, in England, in Oxford, began to study the scriptures, get a hold of scriptures, and began to say, "People need the Bible." And he's considered the morning sun, the morning sun of the Reformation because he brought the Bible to the people.
And he had a group of followers that followed him called the Lollards, and they began to take these messages of following the Bible in lots of different places. England didn't like him. He was later banned as a heretic even after his death. They hated him so bad that they dug up his bones years after he was dead and took him and threw him into the river, his bones into the river. So they didn't like him very much at all.
There was a young man who heard the Wycliffe and the Lollards preaching and was excited about that. His name was Jerome, and he lived in Prague. If you see my map down here at the bottom corner, you see, again, Bohemia on the left, Moravia on the right, and you see Prague, the capital there. He lived there, and he gave this message and started preaching in a preacher by the name of John Huss. Heard that message, and it changed his life as well. He began to preach from the scriptures in his Catholic church.
It was immensely popular. People started to pour into his church, and people loved what he was saying because they were hearing the word of God preached for the first time instead of just nice little stories. Anytime the word of God is given, God promises that it will not return to him void until it accomplishes what it means to do. Unfortunately, people got excited, and this time there was all kinds of problems in the papacy. There were three people claiming to be pope at the time.
Things were getting crazy, but they still wanted to deal with Huss. Huss got dragged into Rome, and they promised him safe passage, but when he was there, they condemned him as a heretic and said, "Well, that doesn't count to heretics," and they burned him at the stake. Interesting, he said right before they were burning him, he said, "Today you roast a live goose." The name Huss means goose in Bohemian. That's roast—cook a goose. I think that's where you get the expression.
"But within a hundred years, there will arise a swan that you will not be able to catch nor harm." The flame was lit, and when it had done its duty, John's ashes were thrown into the nearby river. In place of his execution, they buried a dead mule so that it would stink even worse than his body. They wanted to make sure everybody knew that really stunk, and that's what they did. All right. I don't see a date there over that one. This is coming into the—I'll get an exact date.
I don't want to give you a—I'll give the exact date of that. 1416 by the picture. Okay. Okay. Thank you very much. 1416. And real quick, and also another question you asked, I did go look up the Epistle of Barnabas and the Gospel of Barnabas, very different. Yeah. And you're right. The Epistle of Barnabas was even quoted by Clement of Alexandria way back in the 150s and such. And the Gospel of Barnabas has seemed a pretty recent dream that the Islam used.
And the last people I wanted to bring in were the Moravians or what became known as the Moravians. After Huss, revolution started. People started coming against Rome. You can imagine they didn't like their John Huss being killed. People started to protest. They were a people—first of all, they had some issues like they believed in using both elements. In those days, you only got the wafer; you didn't get the wine. And so they made a point that you get both, and Rome didn't like that. They made some other changes.
And again, it ended up being this huge revolution, literally a revolution politically, of these awakened people, but then they weren't very trained with their scriptures on non-resistance. No faith builders back then? Yeah. There were no faith builders back then. They should have had that. Come on. So some of the Waldensians liked that. Some didn't. But as it grew and grew, they began to say—people started asking questions.
First, some of the old Waldensians started to be asked questions down there near the bottom of page 13. "Should they follow the teachings of Wycliffe and Huss, who in spite of some of the misgivings had determined that just war was not a sin for Christians? Even though Huss and Wycliffe believed in some incredible things that they brought out, they still weren't clear on non-resistance.
Or should they follow the non-resistant ideals based on the Sermon on the Mount?" And they had a meeting to talk about this, these Hussite believers. They met together, and there was Peter Chelčický. However you say his name, I looked it up from actually a Polish speaker, and it sounded like Cieszko. So I don't know how to say his name. Peter Chelčický was present at the debate, and he said, "What is war?" he asked. "It is a breach of the laws of God.
All soldiers are violent men, murderers, a godless mob." In 1420, Peter had traveled to Prague and listened to the men at the Bethlehem Chapel. What they did not—but they did not convince him.
He said, "You will not bring the kingdom of heaven to earth," he told him, "as long as the hell of hatred burns in your heart." He then began to, again, open up the scriptures and have a radical following of Christ, ended up having some strong teachings on non-resistance, and went against these people, and also had some strong words on economics, on swearing of oaths. They began to meet in little communities and began to be missionary in their output, and it was a beautiful concept.
And again, that eventually came together and started growing into the unity of the brethren, which later became known as the Moravian Church of today, claimed their existence through this. There was a big group and a little group that divided from since the time of Peter, but they anyway came out. So I'll end you with a Broadbent what he says about them, and then we'll close.
The Utraquist—that means the both elements—archbishop, Rokycana, preaching in the famous Teyn Church in Prague, eloquently commended Chelčický's teaching and denounced the evils of the Church of Rome.
He did not, however, act upon what he preached, but many of his hearers determined to carry out the principles they had learned and gathering around a man of good report, namely Gregory, known as a patriarch, withdrew from Rokycana and founded a community in northeast Bohemia in the village of Kunwald and the castle of Lititz, interestingly enough. And that's where we get our—Lititz was named after this castle.
Later on, he goes to say, "Many joined them there, some followers of Chelčický and other Waldensian churches. Also students from Prague came, and though maintaining a connection with the Utraquist church, they returned in many ways things to the teachings of scripture and they practiced of the early churches. They had a Utraquist priest as pastor but elected elders. There was also among them them who, after the old Waldensian custom, were called the perfect and gave up the whole of their property.
They were not long left in peace, and a few years the settlement of Kunwald was broken up. The Utraquist church persecuting them as bitterly as a Roman Catholic had done, and Gregory was imprisoned and tortured. One year later was burnt. One other leader was burnt, and the brethren hid themselves in the mountains and forests. Yet the numbers increased, and gradually the persecution died down." And that's it for today.
Let's remember any time, any place, in any generation, the scriptures cannot be taken down, and Christ will always have his church.