Our Reformation Roots #2

Transcription of the second episode of the series Our Reformation Roots brought to you by Pastor Rusty Tardo.

You can listen here.

“I'd like you to turn with me to Hebrews chapter 2 and verse 1. I want to read one verse of scripture over here.

Hebrews 2.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, give me speech tonight. Father, help me. Let Your anointing Father fall upon me, my words, my tongue.

Let me just be a vessel tonight to minister Your Word, to encourage our hearts, to establish us further in the faith. Father, to cause us to hold fervently, to hold fast to all that we've received from You. Father, we give You the glory for it, in Jesus' name.

Amen. Hebrews 2.1, Therefore, we ought to do something. We ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip.

Or as it speaks in the original Greek, lest we should allow them to drift away. We just gradually, you know, sometimes that's the way it is. We don't have a radical departure from faith, but we just gradually let go of things, and slowly drift away from it.

And the picture is, in the Greek here, the picture is of a boat that has been untied from its moorings, and it's just gradually drifting off as the tide moves out and the waves splash against it and so forth. It just a little bit at a time drifts off. And that's the way it is with people so often.

You know, we receive profound insight, revelation, truths into the Word of God. We're established in biblical doctrine, and we hold on to it, we cherish it, we think it's the most wonderful thing we've ever heard and received, and it is. But if we don't hold fast to it, gradually, with the passage of time, we forget just how profound our spiritual experience was, how deeply it changed our lives, and slowly, gradually, we begin to drift from those moorings, and we begin to think that, well, maybe those things are just not all that important.

Now, what we're talking about this week is the same thing we mentioned last week. We're dealing with our reformation roots, our reformation heritage, as Christians. There is a vast gulf dividing Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

It's a doctrinal gulf. It's not because we're angry at one another, throw rocks at one another. But doctrinally, we are miles and miles and miles, and ages and ages and ages apart.

But we find that among Protestants, the truths that Protestantism is based upon are no longer considered that important. Now, the popular word is, doctrine is a bad thing. Doctrine is not important.

It's something we should be able to just forget, lay aside, and let's just get along with everybody and love everybody. We're all for loving everybody. Saved, unsaved, black, white, Catholic, Mormon, Mooney.

It's all right to love people, to want to share with people. But we are not in agreement with everybody, and we cannot shrug our shoulders at vast doctrinal differences, especially differences that actually, salvation itself hinges upon the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism. Salvation itself hinges upon these doctrinal truths.

But Protestants, evangelicals, charismatics, Pentecostals are dismissing the very foundations upon which the Reformation began, dismissing it with a shrug of the shoulders, saying doctrine is not important, these things are no longer vital. And this is extremely distressing. Last week, we looked in Revelation 17, and we showed from this passage where Protestantism and Roman Catholicism is going, where it's heading.

It's heading towards an amalgamation, a unification, a laying aside of doctrine, and a gigantic one world apostate church. Brothers, sisters, that's where it's going, where doctrine will no longer be considered important at all.

I find, in the things that I read, that Protestantism is in grave danger of abandoning its reformation roots.

I just read this very week where Bill Bright, the leader of Youth with a Mission, was Youth for Christ. YWAM, he's YWAM, isn't he? No, Youth for Christ?

Campus Crusade, I forget which one he's associated with. At any rate, his organization has been cooperating fully with Roman Catholicism. Now, this was something that would have never happened five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago.

It would have never have happened because we believe so differently. We believe a person is born again solely by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, not by works, not by meritorious acts. We believe in the Bible.

The Bible alone is our sole guide, our sole authority, not the Bible plus church tradition, but the Bible alone. We believe in an infallible Bible, but not an infallible pope. The differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, as I said, are vast, and they can't be dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders.

But when Bill Bright was asked, how can he justify hiring Roman Catholics in his evangelistic crusades? How can he justify cooperating with Roman Catholicism in evangelistic endeavors? And you know how churches or these crusades cooperate.

You know if a big crusade was going to be held in New Orleans, what would happen? Let's say Billy Graham was going to come. And by the way, he's supposed to come, I understand, in just a few years.

If Billy Graham was to come in New Orleans, they would have at least a year, maybe two years before he came, all the cooperating churches, they'd try and get as many churches to cooperate as possible. Now up until recently, only Protestant churches, evangelical churches, churches that believed in salvation by grace through faith, churches that believed in the inspiration of the Scriptures, just the Bible, solo Scripture, the great call of the reformers, only the Bible, this alone we stand for, this alone we follow, this alone is the basis of our faith and practice. But now, not only do they cooperate with Protestants, but now they fully cooperate with Roman Catholic churches as well.

And so priests and nuns and Catholic laypeople are involved in evangelistic crusades. If people do walk the altars, walk the aisles, whatever gets saved at Billy Graham Crusades or the Bill Bright Crusades or whatever they are, those people's names and so forth are distributed equally amongst the Catholics who participate, the Baptists, the Presbyterians, the Lutherans, whatever. Whoever participates, then fine, you get them.

You get these cars, these converts, you do the follow up on them and so forth. Well, when he was asked, how do you justify that, he said, we have laid our doctrinal differences aside, and we are cooperating fully with everybody who names Jesus as Lord. Now, brothers and sisters, that sounds good.

But the Mormons named Jesus as Lord. The Jehovah Witnesses will tell you, Jesus is Lord. Hello.

Just because somebody says, Jesus is Lord, I tell you, the devil would say that. But that doesn't mean we can cooperate with them in evangelization, especially when the differences in how a person gets saved, they're not even close.

Not even close.

We cannot fall into this snare, this trap of going along with this unification, laying all doctrinal differences aside. And this is where the charismatics are going, brothers and sisters. This is where Pentecostalism is going.

This is where Evangelism is going. They're all going along in this unity, ecumenism, these great, get along with everybody. Let's just, everybody who names Jesus as Lord, let's just go along with them.

It sounds wonderful, it sounds loving, but it's unbiblical.

It's not scriptural. It's not even close to being scriptural. And you know, when you say things like this, you have to watch it because people will think of you as just somebody who's out to divide, somebody who's being mean-spirited or unloving or whatever.

But I'm convinced that Revelation 17 is Roman Catholicism, but not just Roman Catholicism.

It is all apostate Christianity, creeds, religions, groups, unified, amalgamated, tossed together in a great big tossed salad.

And, headed by Rome, Revelation 17, the conclusion is unmistakable. You can't draw any other conclusion. And as we saw also last week in Revelation 17, the beast, who is Antichrist, was ridden by the woman.

The woman who, as we saw, represented the apostate church. All apostate religion tossed together. The only thing, they'll agree on everything except doctrine.

Doctrine's tossed aside, let's just get along and go along and hop along or whatever. Remember, the woman rode the beast, which means in their rise to power, Catholicism and the apostate system, as well as Antichrist, will forge an alliance, and they will use each other in their mutual rise to ascendancy and to power and to dominion. They will use one another.

A lot of people are saying Catholicism is in great trouble today, and in some regards it is. But let's not kid ourselves. It's been in trouble for hundreds and hundreds of years, but it survives, it rolls along, it gains momentum, it grows.

The Pope has declared that this last decade of the 20th century, the 1990s, he has declared this to be the decade of Roman Catholic evangelization. And their thrust in this decade is going to be on missionary activity, on bringing people back to Rome, back into Catholicism, because many have abandoned Catholicism. But in spite of the multitudes who have abandoned it, worldwide Catholicism still grows.

Today, it numbers almost 1 billion adherents, over 900 million Roman Catholics in the world. And that number steadily grows. In spite of the people who leave Catholicism and so forth, it still grows, it still gains momentum, and it will continue to do so.

John Wimba, the head of the Vineyards Ministries and one of the most prominent charismatic leaders in the United States and in England, this man has a following in England that's second to nobody, when John Wimba heard of the Pope's declaration about this being the decade of Roman Catholic evangelization. Can I read to you what he said? He said, listen, he said, this is one of the greatest things that has ever happened in the history of the Church.

I am thrilled with the Pope, and glad that he is calling the Church to this goal and to this work.

I don't think that the millions of martyrs who gave their blood because of doctrine, I don't think the millions of martyrs who died in the Reformation, since the Reformation, I don't believe they would be thrilled that now Protestantism is holding hands with Catholicism.

I mean, you know what that does?

It spits in the blood of the martyrs. It's saying, you died for nothing, because doctrine means nothing. These men chose death at the hands of the Roman Catholic Church, rather than believe in apostate religion, rather than believe in false doctrine.

They would stand up and say, no. No, I don't believe in the infallibility of the Pope. No, I don't believe prayers to the Virgin Mary is worth anything.

And they paid for it with their lives. Brothers and sisters. But now we're told doctrine is not important.

And here's something that may yet prove to be incredibly significant, whether it does or not, remains to be seen. Revelation 17, we read this last week, Revelation 17, 3, depicts the beast, ridden by the woman, as having seven heads.

You know what's happening this very night? It's been happening this very week. The leaders of the seven most powerful nations in the world are meeting in London.

The seven richest nations in the world, the seven economic powers in the world, the seven headed beasts. Oh, no, I can't say that it's the seven headed beasts, but I can tell you this, the seven, the men who literally run the world are meeting today. Seven of them in London and have been this week.

These seven men, of course, it's called an economic summit because that's what it's all about, the economics of the world. But President Bush has made it clear that the whole idea of this economic summit is to forge a new world order. You've heard him use that term?

Listen, this is it, brothers and sisters. It's happening right in front of our eyes. It's happening right under our noses.

We see it on the news. We read it in the newspapers. It's time.

Hey, let's wake up. What's going on in the world? I'll tell you what's going on.

God's about to bring this thing to a close. And while this is taking place in world government, a one world government is being established right in front of our eyes.

Right in front of us.

These powers of the world coming together in unity.

You know what they have found out? That we can have not just a United States, not just a United Europe, a United World. One world, one united.

That's what the United Nations is all about. But the United Nations was always hampered. It was hindered.

It was a crippled animal ever since it began. You know why? Because of communism.

The communist bloc, anything that the West wanted to do, the communists vetoed and vice versa. What the communists wanted to do, the West vetoed. There was never any progress.

The United Nations never accomplished anything until just now. We have seen things happen in the last couple of years, in fact, really just the last 18 months, that nobody would have dreamed could have ever happened in the last few years. First, the United Nations, along with the United States, found out that they can change governments of the world.

They can rule the world if they choose to. They told South Africa, dismantle apartheid. We won't bomb you if you don't.

We won't send soldiers in, but the whole world will put sanctions, economic sanctions against you, and will cripple your economy. And if you don't dismantle apartheid, you're a dead duck, you're dead in the water. And so they found out the United Nations can control the world.

And they found out just recently, they can control the world militarily if they need to. History was made recently in the United Nations. After Iraq invaded Kuwait and in the United Nations, the whole world stood together, and they said, Hussain, out of Kuwait, the whole world is against you.

And for the first time ever, Russia, the great bear of communism, the great red dragon, the great red threat, sided with the United States, sided with the West, and Hussain found himself virtually alone in the world. That was the United Nations Army over there in Kuwait. Of course, the United States took the bear by the horns.

I mean, they took the bull by the horns. They went in there and headed up the whole thing. But the point I'm making is this.

For the first time ever, a united world has clout. And you know what they're finding out? It's going to exercise more clout than ever before.

We're seeing it right before our eyes. The emerging of a new world order, a world government, eventually it will be presided over by the Antichrist. This is the monster that Antichrist will eventually rule over.

In his rise to power, there's going to be a spiritual simultaneously, as this is happening in the governmental realm, a unification of world governments and leaders and so forth, emerging new world order. There's something similar occurring in the spiritual sense, where churches, groups, religions, more than ever before, laying aside all their doctrinal differences with Rome and embracing one another, all in the name of love and unity and a great one world church is going to emerge from it all as well. We're seeing a brand new ecumenicalism at the same time, that this is going on governmentally.

Recently, and I say recently, I'm talking about just within the last couple of months, Paul Crouch on his TBN network said that his friend Benny Hinn was arranging a private meeting for him with the Pope. And Crouch said he would ask his holiness, the Pope, when the walls between Catholicism and Protestantism would come down.

I don't think I have to tell you who these men are. Benny Hinn is another of the shining stars in the charismatic world, as is Paul Crouch, the leader of the biggest Christian television network in the world. Both men are extremely ecumenical.

I don't know how any spirit-filled believer can call a man his holiness. That's a title reserved for God the Father alone. God the Father alone.

At any rate, we just see these things happening right before our very eyes. I'd like you to turn with me to another passage over in 2 Timothy. Let's read a verse over here.

Unfortunately, we find that Christians want us to be tolerant of error, of heretics. They want us to tolerate blasphemy, false teaching, false prophets. There's so many false things going on in the church today that it's quite frightening, actually, when you see so many people falling for the false, and so few standing up for the true.

They're ready to follow any new trend, religious trend or doctrine that comes down the road. But one thing they are intolerant of is sound teaching, sound doctrine, just the old past. They're not tolerant of that, and they're not tolerant of those who stand up for the old past.

2 Timothy 4, this is Paul's charge to young Timothy to preach the word. Verse 2 he says, but I want you to notice this, beginning in verse 3. This is the word of warning.

He says, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine. But after their own lusts, shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. They're always craving to hear something new, something different, something exciting, as Williams translates it, because their ears are itching to be tickled.

People want to be patted on the back. They want to be told something good is going to happen to you. They don't want to be confronted with sin.

They don't want to be confronted with the fact that they're sinners. They don't want to be challenged doctrineally. They don't want to hear black and white.

They just want to hear a muddled gray. That everything is all right, everybody is all right. Let's love everybody and get along with everybody.

He says, verse 4, And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. They'll listen to lies, they'll listen to stories, falsehoods, false testimonies, false experiences people have, and they'll turn away from the truth. These are those days.

Are you hearing me, brothers, sisters? These are those days that Paul prophesied right here when he wrote to young Timothy and said, The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine. This is the time.

This is it right now. Never before have so many people... I see people hate the word doctrine.

Doctrine just means teaching.

It's just teaching the word. But if you say the word, people will get mad at you, they'll scorn you.

I'm talking about Christian people, church people, charismatic Pentecostal, evangelical people. They hate the word doctrine.

They despise it and detest it, and anybody who stands for it, they have no toleration of you.

Now, if you preach error, if you preach heresy, if you are some kind of weird old false prophet that goes along prophesying all kinds of things that don't come to pass, you know what they'll do?

They'll tolerate you. They'll wink at you, say, he's a good old boy, and if anybody speaks bad about you, they'll get on to them. But if you stand up for the old paths, just the old doctrines of the faith, and say, brothers and sisters, this is the way, we've got to stay with this, then you'll be the one they won't tolerate.

And if you make the mistake of exposing anybody else's error, if you say, brothers and sisters, when Kenneth Copeland said, the blood of Jesus Christ does not atone for sin, that is error, that is heresy. Well, you're the one they'll come after. Not the man who preaches the error.

You're the one they'll come after. Give you an example, just a brief example of that.

Paul Crouch recently went on a tirade against people who were going around exposing error and heresy in the church. And listen to this, I'm going to read this. This is what he said on Nationwide TV.

That old rotten Sanhedrin crowd, twice dead, plucked up by the roots, they are damned and on their way to hell, and I don't think there's any redemption for them. The hypocrites, the heresy hunters, who want to find a little mode of illegal doctrine in some Christians' eyes when they've got a whole forest in their own lives. I say to hell with you.

Get out of my life, get out of the way, quit blocking God's bridges. I'm tired of this. This is in my spirit, oh, hallelujah.

Have you ever seen the old movie Patton? He's my hero, he's my hero. Old, nail-chewing, tobacco-chewing, cussing Patton.

But he read the Bible every day. I have a feeling we'll see old General Patton in heaven. There's a wonderful scene in Patton.

They're trying to get the third army across the bridge in France, and there's an old dumb jackass, donkey, right there on the bridge, and it's blocking the whole convoy of troops. General George rolls up, pulls that ivory-handled revolver out, and shoots the donkey. There's a spiritual application here.

I want to say to all you scribes, Pharisees, heresy hunters, all of you that are going around picking little bits of doctrinal error out of everybody's eyes and dividing the body of Christ, get out of God's way, stop blocking God's bridges, or God's going to shoot you if I don't. Let him sort out all of this doctrinal doodoo. I don't care about your doctrines as long as you name the name of Jesus.

Well, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does that. Hello. All the cults name the name of Jesus.

The Mormons name the name of Jesus. The Jehovah Witnesses will take upon themselves the name of Jesus. Christian scientists will take upon themselves the name of Jesus.

Well, let me finish reading. As long as you believe, he died dead and was buried, but came out of the tomb on Sunday morning and ascended to the Father, I don't care about anything else. Let's join hands to get this gospel preached in all the world.

The rest of this stuff is what Paul the apostle calls dung, human experiment. It's not worth anything. Get rid of it and get on with winning the lost.

I refuse to argue any longer with any of you out there. Don't even call me if you want to argue doctrine, if you want to straighten somebody out. Criticize others, get out of my life.

I don't even want to talk to you. I don't want to see your ugly face.

Well, you know what's the saddest thing of all when I read this? The intolerance that they manifest towards those who stand up for doctrine. No toleration whatsoever.

Now, tobacco-chewing, nail-chewing, cussing patent is going to go to heaven. But this is what he says about people who stand for doctrine. To hell with you, he said.

I don't think there's any redemption for them. Now, brothers and sisters, is this frightening or what?

But we refuse to look at things as they are.

People will refuse to see the plain facts in front of their eyes and just think, well, let's just pat one another on the back and let's go along with this kind of thing. I think it's time to wake up. I think it's time to realize where the church is going.

Ecumenism is rampant. It has infected 90% of the charismatic world. When we see passages like this, the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine.

That's what we just read. That's what we just, that's what we're talking about right now. That's where we are right here.

Those very times when sound doctrine will not be tolerated. Well, last week, I shared on where the church was going. This week, I would like to share on where it came from.

Why did the Protestant Reformation come to pass to begin with? What was happening in the world and in the church that caused it to break upon the scene in the explosive sense that it did? Well, it's just not within the scope of a study like this to do any kind of lengthy teaching on the history of the Reformation, because that kind of teaching fills volumes, and you could study that alone for weeks and weeks and weeks.

I don't think it would be quite fair to just jump into the doctrinal differences that separate Catholicism and Protestantism without giving you a little bit of a background of what was going on when the Protestant Reformation began. So since we looked at where it's going, let's look a little bit at where it came from. Here's an important date.

If you can mark it in your memory or write it down in your notes somewhere. October 31st, 1517, early 16th century. October 31st, Eve of All Souls.

Halloween Day. 1517 is the day that the Protestant Reformation actually began. It began in an obscure little German village when an obscure monk or priest by the name of Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg.

Now, the church door in these villages served sort of as a public bulletin board. Any notices of what was going on or taking place, whatever, it went on the church door. That was the bulletin board for the community.

Well, this priest on that day nailed his 95 theses on the church door. What it was, basically, was his invitation to debate on these 95 issues that he brought out in contending with the Roman Catholic doctrine of indulgences. Now, keep in mind, Martin Luther was a Roman Catholic priest.

His intention was not to go start a Protestant Reformation. His intention was not to go try and overthrow the papacy or to cause any major division in the church. His heartbeat was for a return to Bible Christianity.

Let's get away from all of this stuff.

We've drifted so far away from the Bible. Let's go back to the Bible.

Basically, the 95 theses were a disputation against the sale of indulgences. Almost all of the 95 arguments that he presented there dealt with indulgences. In some way, manner, shape, or form.

Although some of them did also call into question the authority of the Pope and so forth, it really was a slap or an attack at the very core, the very heart of Catholicism. If you ever get a chance to read those 95 theses translated into English, because they were written in German, but if you ever get a chance to read them, you'll find that they were moderate in term, they were not in tone, there was nothing inflammatory about them. He didn't go out blasting and accusing and so forth, very moderate and highly academic, very scholarly.

They don't make for the easiest reading in the world. But Martin Luther is credited with being pretty much the man who started the Protestant Reformation on October 31st, 1517. In all honesty, however, there were other men who actually were predecessors who went before Martin Luther and paved the way.

Men like John Wycliffe, who really believed that it was time to translate the Bible into English, that the Bible could not be the sole property of the clerics, the priesthood. You see, Catholicism believed that only the priest should read the Bible. The people should be kept in ignorance because they couldn't understand it anyway.

Let the priest read the Bible. They'll tell you what it means. The church will interpret it, and they'll tell you what it means.

And you just do what they tell you. Well, Wycliffe said the people need to have the Bible in their own language. And so he translated the Bible, and for his efforts was put to death.

Other men, Wycliffe, by the way, is referred to in church history as the morning star of the Reformation. He died almost a hundred years before Martin Luther was born. And there were other men that God used powerfully, men like John Huss, who likewise rejected many of the things that were going on in the Roman Catholicism and believed that the people should have the Bible in their own language.

They should be able to follow it and interpret it for themselves. And he rejected also the idea of indulgences and so on. He, too, was put to death for his faith and for his outspokenness against Roman Catholicism.

John Huss was burned alive, burned at the stake. But Martin Luther's work came along. His Ninety-Five Theses, I know that when he nailed those things to the door, he had no idea of the great fire, the Reformation fire that would begin.

You know, he lit a match.

That's what he did. And the whole forest caught on fire. And that's, he had no idea about what was going to take place.

But he lit the match. He nailed those Ninety-Five Theses on the door of the church. And those, that document was copied.

It was spread all over Europe. And not only Europe went into a reformation zeal, calling for reform and change within Catholicism and the priesthood and so forth. Not only Europe, but the world was affected.

This man lit a match that caught the whole world on fire. That's literally what took place. He ignited the fuse of what would become the great Protestant reformation that would shake not only all of Europe, but it shook the entire world, and it would give us some of the sharpest minds, some of the most brilliant thinkers, some of the greatest theologians that the world has ever seen.

They would come through this reformation. Let me give you a few of the things that were taking place in the world in Martin Luther's day. Here's what was happening.

This is the background of the reformation. I believe these things will be helpful, and I believe you'll also find them enlightening, because this is what was happening in the times that reformation fire erupted. First in Germany, but while Martin Luther was nailing his 95 PCs on the church door in Germany, there was another reformation beginning to take place in Switzerland.

And reform was in the winds, and the church would change and never be the same again as the reformers broke from Roman Catholicism. Keep in mind also that Roman Catholicism was not the only church in existence at the time. Many times you hear that the Roman Catholic Church was the only true church, it's the only one that existed, and so on and so forth, until the reformation.

Not true. The Greek Orthodox was never a part of Roman Catholicism. The Coptic Church was never a part of Roman Catholicism.

We're dealing here with what happened out of Catholicism, the great reformation began. First of all, here's what happened. In Martin Luther's day, death was on every doorstep.

Death had visited every doorstep in Europe, and that's for several reasons. One, warfare was continual. France and England, with their 100-year war, there was a war for the liberation of Wales there in Great Britain.

Eastern Europe had been ravaged by the Hussite War from 1419 to 1435. The Wars of the Roses had torn England apart for some 35 years. There were the Islamic invasions that they had to deal with and so forth.

Everybody lost somebody in the wars. It had claimed sons, it had claimed fathers. Multitudes and multitudes had been lost at war.

And with war, there's always two things that follow war. It's happening right now in Iraq because of the ravages that nation has gone through. What are they?

Number one, famine. Famine always follows war. Wherever a country has been ravaged by war, famine follows quickly on its footsteps.

Famine will kill the survivors, those who have survived the war. They're starved, they're emaciated, they're already weak in weakened conditions because of the war. Now, famine takes its toll, and following quickly on the heels of famine is plague, sickness, disease.

In 1347 and 48, just a two-year period, the Black Death killed two-fifths of all of Europe. Everybody lost somebody. So when we say death was on every doorstep, that's literally true.

All of Europe, two-fifths, in a two-year period alone, just through the Black Death alone, two-fifths of Europe died. Death visited every home. Death on every doorstep.

That's where you find people obsessed with the idea of death. You begin to understand why there was so much of an emphasis placed upon the dead, prayers for the dead, masses for the dead, and so forth, the indulgences.

The idea of the masses and prayers to get the dead out of purgatory and so on. So death was everywhere in Europe at the time that the Great Reformation took place. And you understand people's obsession with death when you understand what had taken place.

Secondly, the Roman Catholic papacy was in a state of confusion and corruption. In fact, at one point in the 14th century, there were two rival popes in Europe, two different colleges of cardinals, and two rival popes, both one claiming to be pope at the same time. So, these two colleges of cardinals got together and said, let's get rid of both of those popes and just elect another one.

So, they did. They elected a third one, but the other two refused to step down. So, you actually had a period of time where there were three popes.

So, when we say that confusion was right, that's an understatement. The papacy was also noted for its immorality. Church historians have well documented the immorality of the popes.

In fact, between 1447 and 1517, half of the popes fathered illegitimate children, a fact which is well documented in church history. That decadence spread throughout Roman Catholicism. It infected all of the clergy, from cardinals to priests.

It became so commonplace, immorality became so commonplace, that the church actually began to tax priests for their concubines. See, they had taken a vow of celibacy. They weren't supposed to get married, but they had concubines.

And so, since it was so widespread, they couldn't stop it. They just put a tax. If you have a concubine, you got to pay a tax for everyone you have, a concubinage tax.

They also had a cradle tax, because priests were having so many children that they began to tax their children each time they had a child. This was a punishment, you see, that the priest had to pay. In fact, in one diocese alone, in the late 15th century, 1,500 children were being born every year, fathered by Roman Catholic priests.

The point is, the clergy was so spiritually destitute at the time that people were turned off altogether. And you can imagine why. So that's the state, that's the condition of the church, it's religion, that the Reformation, you can see why people would be ready.

They'd be ripe for change, ripe for reform. I mean, the time was ripe. The church was totally corrupt.

Thirdly, the Roman Catholic Church was enriching itself through the sale of indulgences. You have to keep in mind, the Roman Catholic did not believe that he would go to hell when he died, as long as he was baptized, as long as he was sprinkled and so forth, and blessed by a priest and so forth. If he made his confession, she would not go to hell.

However, they all believed they would go to purgatory. And you would be subject, depending on how bad your mortal sin, you would be subjected to a longer or lesser period of time in purgatory. You would have to pay the temporal punishment for your sins in purgatory.

You wouldn't go to hell. You see, you didn't receive forgiveness in that regard. But you still had to pay the penalty for your sins by being punished in purgatory.

Roman Catholicism had managed to sell people indulgences, convincing them that they could purchase these indulgences and get time off in purgatory if you bought them. So, if you had a lot of money, you could buy a lot of indulgences, you could sin a lot. But you wouldn't have to pay for it, because, you know, you purchased these indulgences.

Well, Martin Luther, as well as many others, Martin Luther just happened to be the match that lit the candle. But there were many others who were enraged over the sale of indulgences and who saw it as a virtual license to sin. Let me tell you what happened with Martin Luther.

People would come to him because of the Roman Catholic doctrine of penance and so forth. You come to a priest, you confess your sins, the priest will tell you what to do, say so many prayers or hail Mary's. If you're really bad, you might have to make a pilgrimage or go visit a shrine or do some other kind of meritorious works or whatever.

You may have to pay so much or whatever. But here people were coming to Martin Luther and confessing their sins and manifested no repentance whatsoever. They weren't repentant.

They weren't broken up over their sins. They weren't weeping. They came, they confessed their sins.

It was something they had to do.

But they had an indulgence. You see, they bought it. Here it is.

And so to them, this indulgence meant, I can sin because I've got time. Look, I got time off, guys.

I bought a paper. Martin Luther was so enraged over these indulgences, he wouldn't give them absolution.

He said, they're not repenting.

God doesn't call people to penance, but to repentance, repentance. Sorrow, brokenness over sin. You can't pay so that you can sin with impunity.

Well, at any rate, the whole concept of buying forgiveness, of buying time off in purgatory and so forth, any clear thinker should be able to see through it. If this is true, then like Martin Luther also said, death was not gain for the everyday Christian. Death was not gain.

You know, Paul said, for me to die is gain. Because when I die, I'm going to be absent from the body, but present with the Lord. The Roman Catholic was not taught that.

You don't go to heaven, you don't go to hell, you go to purgatory. Because nobody, you know, maybe if you were a monk, or a priest, or a nun, or a cardinal, or a pope or something, you'd go to heaven. But otherwise, you know, you don't go to heaven, you go to purgatory.

And eventually, you'll get prayed out. But listen to this. That means, instead of death being gain, praise God, I can face death with peace.

I know I'm going to die, but bless God, I can face death with peace, knowing I'm going to be with my Savior, the one who died for me. The Roman Catholic could not face death with that certainty because he had to look forward to maybe even thousands of years of purgatory's punishment before he would eventually get prayed out. Maybe the relatives they left behind would be able to pay money to say prayers, say masses and so forth for them to get prayed out of purgatory.

That's the way the Roman Catholics were taught to believe. And not only that, but listen to this. If this is all true, if purgatory exists, then God is a respecter of persons.

The Bible tells us He's not a respecter of persons.

It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, black or white, male or female. If you come to Christ, the ground is level at the foot of the cross, Christ will accept you for who you are.

You have access to God, no matter what you are, no matter how poor or how rich you are. But listen, if purgatory is real, then God is a respecter of persons, and you know who He respects? He respects the rich, because the rich can afford to pay to have prayers said for them after they're dead and in purgatory.

They can leave behind their whole fortune to have priests and nuns and monks and everybody else praying for them. They can get out of purgatory faster than a poor person can.

The poor guy, he was not only cursed in this world, he's cursed in the next!

No matter how firm his faith is in God, purgatory is a devil's lie.

And it was because of the sale of indulgences that the great St. Peter's Basilica stands in Rome today, because that's where the money went. It went to build that gigantic cathedral. If purgatory is true, the poor are cursed in this world, and they're cursed in the next.

And God is a respecter of persons. Don't you see why there had to be a reformation? Because Catholicism had trapped Europe in its grips.

Fourthly.

The Roman Catholic Church had instilled in the hearts of the public that only monks and nuns and priests lived a life that was pleasing to God. They drew a strict line between the clergy and the laity. There was a religious life, and there was a secular life.

The religious could please God. A monk could please God. A priest could please God.

A nun could please God. A carpenter, a plumber, an electrician, no matter how nice a person he was, his life could not please God because it was a secular life. While the cleric, the priest, the nun, and so forth, their life could please God.

It could be totally pleasing to God because they were a clergyman, while everybody else was just a layman. So a barber, carpenter, plumber, mechanic, whatever, they lived an inferior life no matter how pious they were. And even family life was under a bit of a cloud because of Roman Catholic elevation, the Roman Catholic elevation of celibacy.

So even family life, marriage, childbearing, even that was under a cloud of doubt. Is this a good thing to be a mother? Is this a good thing to get married?

And you know it's a good thing. It was God's intention all along. He created one man, he created one woman.

He said, now, be fruitful and multiply. He sanctioned marriage personally.

Jesus sanctioned marriage when he attended the marriage in Cana of Galilee.

Worked his first miracle there. But marriage itself was under a cloud.

People didn't know what to think because the clerical life, supposedly celibate, was blessed while the secular life was not blessed. The Reformers, and this was one of the major doctrines of the Reformation, one of the major issues that they brought out. The Reformers taught that all occupations are pleasing to God.

And they're all necessary for the proper functioning of society. As long as whatever job you do is ethical, as long as it's honest, as long as it renders a genuine service to humanity, then you can serve God in it. Housewives, plumbers, carpenters, whatever it is you do, if it's honest, if it's building roads, if it's digging ditches, if it's honest, if it's pleasing to God, you can serve God in it.

And there is no such thing as this delineation that Catholicism fostered between clergymen and laity. There is no such thing. In fact, the Reformers taught, and I believe it's right, that God calls people to their various vocations.

Just like He called me to preach, He called you to be a plumber, Brother Jim, or He called you, Brother Frank, to be a longshoreman, or He called you, Brother Joe, to do what you do, and Brother Jeff, to do what he does.

He calls people to their occupations.

Just as He calls some to be a pastor or whatever, He calls others to do what they do. Office worker, factory worker, mother, housewife, Indian chief, candlestick maker, whatever. And that in those occupations, in those trades, in those vocations, you can serve God and please God if your job is ethical, and if it renders a service to your fellow man.

The Reformers believed that through our individual calling, we each serve God. We don't serve Him by running and hiding in a monastery somewhere. We don't live like hermits and recluses, but we live as lights in a sin-darkened world.

That's how the Christian is to live, as a light, right in your own sphere of influence. You just be a light in that factory. You be a light in that office, or on that dock, or on that shop, or whatever.

You just be a light right there. You be salt out there in a world that needs to hear the message of Christ. The Reformers taught that there was no distinction between clergy and laity.

And let me tell you, we'll get into this next week when we start dealing with the doctrinal differences between the Reformer faith, the faith of the Reformers, and the Roman Catholicism. We'll begin dealing with that next time. We're going to see that the priesthood of the believer is one of the foundations of Reformation Protestant faith.

Every believer has access to God. There is no need for you to go to a mediator to confess your sins to him. You don't have to go to a priest, you don't have to go to a preacher.

He can't forgive your sins. Jesus forgives sins and he'll do it for anyone who comes to him in repentance, in repentance and humility asking for forgiveness. They taught that there was not two levels of Christians, the secular and the religious.

The Reformers taught, rather, there is one Gospel, there is one common justification by faith, there is one common status before God that is, among the saved be you male, female, young, old, black, white, rich, poor, cleric or carpenter, we are all equal before the cross. You have the same access to God as the preacher, as the priest, as the pope. He's nothing but a man, nothing but a man who needs to be saved, born again just like any other man.

Every man must acknowledge their own guilt, their own sin, and must themselves embrace the saving blood of Calvary. No man is different from any other man. We're all equal before the cross.

We believe in the priesthood of the believer. We do not believe that the New Testament teaches any such thing as a priesthood. There is no such office in the New Testament.

We're all priests, every one of us, priest before God. That means you have access to God. Your prayers can be heard by God.

You don't have to have a preacher to pray for you in order for you to get saved, or for you to get healed, or for you to get answers to your prayer. You can pray, God will hear you. The priesthood of all believers, that's what Christianity teaches.

We'll deal with these things more next week, as we have more time. So you see where the church is going in the future. Revelation chapter 17, brothers and sisters, that's where it's going.

Today we gave you a very brief glimpse of where it came from. Next time, we want to show you what it is we've got to hold on to. Bow your heads with me.

Amen. Father, encourage our hearts, and I pray tonight, and bless the message to each of us. Help us, Father, to hold fast to our reformation heritage, and not to be seduced by a false ecumenical unity.

Father, help us to find true unity amongst the saints of Christ. This we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen.”