Last week we had been discussing the Reformation, pre-Reformation, if you will, and I had talked to you just briefly about some of what they call the proto-Reformers. And in order for you to really understand the Protestant Reformation, you have to understand the backdrop to the Protestant Reformation. Have you ever wondered why it is that Martin Luther was able to nail 95 theses upon Bentonburg Castle and he was not crucified, he was not condemned, he was not burnt at the stake? Have you ever wondered why? I've got an answer for you. You see, what I want to talk to you about is what we briefly spoke of with Don Wickliffe and Jan Hus. I want to talk to you about those things today. And as we discussed, this is going to be part one of the Reformers' persecution. I entitled it this way because the Reformers were persecuted, but they also did some persecuting of their own. And so we want to talk about both aspects of that, because in church history, it's not always just the straight black and white. You have to understand all aspects of the history of the church. And in order to do that, we have to remember that Christ promised us that the harlot of religion, the false church, would be the predominant religion. And it would look like the real thing to the world who did not know the truth. It would build itself up. And as a result, it would persecute the true Christians. It would persecute those who truly held on to the faith. And as we have studied, we have seen many incidences of persecution of the baptizers, of those who held to Confessional baptism based upon repentance towards God in faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. We've seen the issues of those that that stood against the doctrines of grace, that as we saw with Pelagius, who taught that grace was just what man was able to do out of his natural ability, that grace was no actual work of God, but it was just what man could do on his own. We saw that many people throughout history have been martyred for the faith. And sent out to the world to proclaim that faith. We've looked at the Albigensians, we've looked at the Waldensians, we've looked at the Paulicians, we've looked at the Bogomils, we've looked at so many different people of the Val-d'Ois, the valley people, who ran into the valleys and hid from the Roman persecutions under Nero and Trajan and Domitian, and then to continue on from the Roman Catholic Church itself. And so what we have to understand is the Protestant Reformation was not the only reformation, but the Protestant Reformation would never have happened if the proto-reformers had not stood there proclaiming truth the entire time. even up to their deaths. So I want to talk to you today a little bit about that. The title, The Reformers Before the Reformation, has aptly been given to a group of men of the 14th and 15th centuries, and I'm reading from Philip Schaff, but I'm going to contend with him that the title, Reformers Before the Reformation, is clearly seen throughout history. See, to be a reformer is one that stands upon the Word of God, defending the Word of God, and trying to teach the church what it means to be a Christian by the Word of God. To be a Reformer says, you guys have erred and went the wrong way and we want you to know the truth and to go the right direction. And only Christ is the right way through His Gospel, His Word. Anyway, he goes on to continue, he says, a group of men of the 14th and 15th centuries who anticipated many of the teachings of their and the Protestant Reformers. They stand each by himself in solitary prominence, Wycliffe of England, Jan Hus, another Way to pronounce his name, by the way, is Jan Hus. If you look at the old teachings, it was J-A-N, not John or Jan, of Bohemia. Savonrola of Florence, Wessel, Gauch, and Wessel in northern Germany. These men were the sculptors, have placed them on the pedestal of a famous group of famous men in Worms, and I'm going to show you some pictures right now. Let's see if they show up. Start the big one. I want to I want to show you this because I think you'll find this to be interesting What I'll show you this is the Reformers Monument. How many guys never heard of the Reformers Monument? this I Mentioned to you last week. This is in Germany These this is Martin Luther and each one of these Reformers if you go to the internet site, it will it will give you the Get click on that each one of this Martin Luther here and each one of these Reformers is Proto-reformers are here, before the Reformation. Reformers, you have kings and whatnot, princes that would actually stand up. Scroll up a little bit, scroll down. Stop right there. Yeah, this is in Germany. This gives you the outline. You guys have heard of Philip of Hesse, maybe? Okay, have you ever heard of Melanchthon? Okay, well he was one of the men that helped Luther greatly, one of his closest friends. Wycliffe and Waldo. What's Peter Waldo's name doing in there? Huh, did anybody ever realize that one of those Baptists, Peter Waldo, was a great reformer? You didn't know that? Oh, yes, ma'am. Oh, yes, ma'am. Luther, Savonroah, and Huss. And then we talk about Osberg, which is a district, and Reikland, and Speyer, and then Magdenburg, Philip of Hesse, and Friedrich. If you guys have ever seen the movie Luther, you know Friedrich, who helped to defend Luther, and Philip of Hesse. These two were princes that helped the Protestant Reformation become what it is and what it has become. What I want to explain to you, my wife asked the question one time, If the Roman Catholic Church and so many of even the Reformers, the Protestant Reformers, persecuted the Baptists throughout the histories, why do we call ourselves part of Protestantism? And there's a very good reason, because we're Baptists. We don't make ourselves enemies of the world and other people. We stand for truth. And as Baptists, we stand on truth. And when truth came through Luther, Peter Waldo, brought that truth through Wycliffe and through Tyndale and through Huss and not just Peter Waldo, but the Valois, the Albigensies. Many people brought these truths to these men and laid it at their feet and said, this is the word of God. We stand on the truth of God. We proclaim the majesty of God. It is by the power of the gospel that every man and any man is saved. And only people that are soundly saved are deserving to be called the people of God. I want to show you some stuff here later on about the predestined people of God. And these men like Luther and Hus and Wycliffe, you have Tyndale, all these men look back through their history, through the history of the church, and they saw solid men of God who would stand up and defend the word even to the point of their death, their family's death, their entire people's deaths. I've told you about these things. And each one of these men, we owe a debt of gratitude. And each one of these men, most likely you've never heard of. Because these men have been maligned Because they believed in the absolute, glorious sovereignty of a holy God and His power alone to save. And that was one thing that the Roman Catholic Church would not stand for. The reason we stand with the Protestants, the reason we stand with so many of them, is because on so many issues they had a lot of things right. They had a lot of things right. While they may have done many things wrong, we as Christians stand with that which is right. Amen? Go ahead and go back to the other pictures I want to show you real quick. to the next one. As I was trying to show you, here's a close-up of these pictures. And you see Peter Waldo is here and he's proclaiming the gospel. You see Wycliffe who is sitting here and he's writing. But as you see, there's little symbols all over the place. You see, there wasn't just four or five reformers. There were literally hundreds of men and women who stood on the Word of God, who defied the popes, who even defied bishops and cardinals, men and women who defied kings and said, we will have no God but Christ. We will have no word standing over the gospel and we will be free and proclaim the gospel to everyone. You see, that's what's at stake if you deny the word of God. That's what's at stake if you deny the history that these men fought for. When you close your eyes to history, you can sign yourself to running back to Rome. I want to start talking to you about John Wycliffe, and that's going to take a little while. We're going to talk about two men today. Next week, we'll talk about a few more of the Reformers. We're going to talk about John Wycliffe and Jan Hus. Today, let me introduce you to a man called the Morning Star of the Reformation. Every one of you have heard something of John Wycliffe, and you've heard some truths and probably some errors. But I want to explain to you the life of Wycliffe from the time that he was a young man until the time of his death. He's called the Morning Star of the Reformation, and at the time of his death in England, in Bohemia, He was called the evangelical doctor. He was born in 1324 in the village of Wycliffe, Yorkshire. Many of these men, Jan Hus included, are named from their community, are named from around their community. Jan Wycliffe was Wycliffe of Yorkshire. He translated the Bible into English and he gave that to the people and he held to Baptist doctrines after he had become a man on the run. He held to Baptist doctrine. I'm not saying to you that he was a Baptist. I'm saying to you that he held to Baptist doctrine. John Wycliffe taught of the nature of the church. And in 1374, he was ordered by King John of France to travel to Brugis and negotiate peace between France and the Pope's agents. You see, what was going on at the time is the kings were all ordered to submit to the Pope because the Pope was the vicar of God, the vicar of Christ. And because the Pope stood in the place of God, He owned all of God's property. And you see the problem for a king is when you're the king of a land and the pope as God incarnate owns that land. That pope now tells you what to do. The popes were the ones that gave the crown to the king and could take the crown away from the king. They were the sole authority over the king. The kings had to, by law, obey the popes. They did all their bidding and they paid all their taxes to the popes. The Popes made themselves rich. The Cardinals became filthy rich. If you will look today even, Germany even today pays 10% of its gross national product to Rome. Did you know that? Yes, even today. Wycliffe taught. that no king should be submitted to any pope because the pope had no control over the nations. As I told you last week, the kings tried to set up a theocracy of sorts. And such is the case with every group that tries to become a theonomist or a theocracy. They want their interpretation and their leadership to be the only interpretation and the only leadership that is accepted in the world. And they try to rule by force of law. That becomes a recipe for corruption. It becomes a recipe for false power. Well, the king was tired of this authoritarian pope, or pope, shall I say, and they did not like the popes demanding that they would bow down and kiss the toe of the popes. That is humiliating to any degree. And for a king who is supposed to be the sovereign of a land to bow down to the pope is the indication of who the king is indebted to. The popes declared that they stood in the place of God and so that they owned all the land, and because of that, the kings must submit to them. Wycliffe returned to England of onstanding against the popes at the behest of the king. And he did a very valiant, very good job of bringing out the scriptures and showing all of the council that the pope was wrong. Upon his return to England, he began to speak as a reformer because the most amazing thing about the word of God is if you tell me the Bible says something, I can go to it and I can study it. And if you're wrong, I'm going to stand against you. Wycliffe did just that. He listened to all the things the popes had said, all their decretals. And he said, no, no, no. As he studied more and more, he began to realize that the pope was the Antichrist and he began to call him, he actually says, the Antichrist, the proud worldly priest of Rome and the most cursed of clippers and cut purses. He has no more power and binding and losing than any priest and that the temporal lords may seize the possession of the clergy if pressed by necessity. That's a pretty huge statement. when you consider the Pope says he has the power of life and death, and can at will, with impunity, take your life and your possession because he owns you and your land. In 1377 he was ordered to stand before a tribunal, before the bishop of the land, and the biggest reason that he was ordered to stand before that tribunal was not because of his questioning of the Pope's ability to have the land, but his questioning of transubstantiation. Transubstantiation, if you don't know, is the literal, real presence of Christ being brought down. I didn't write this down. But there was one of the teachings says that the priest and the bishops, they have more power than than anyone else in the world, any king or even the pope himself, because the priest can come into the pulpit and reach up into heaven and literally pull Christ down, who must submit to the priest. He must bow his knee to the priest and he can bring him down, lay him on the altar and re-sacrifice him a thousand times. That's transubstantiation. That's the mass that you guys hear about. That he's re-sacrificing the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ. And that is what the popes were preaching and teaching. And that is what Wycliffe says, no. And he shows by true reason, by true doctrine, by true scripture, that he is a liar, a heretic, and wrong in every degree. In 1377, he's ordered to stand before a tribunal before the Bishop of London, in which he was forced to recant And he would most certainly have been killed even if he had, if it had not been for the fact that the Bishop and the Duke of Oxford had gotten into a fight because they could not agree at the council if Wycliffe was supposed to stand or sit during the proceedings. But their fight was over who had the authority to demand what Wycliffe was supposed to do. chap wrote this. The question was as to whether Wycliffe should take a seat or continue to standing in front of the court. Percy, Lord Marshal of England, ordered him to sit down, a proposal the bishop pronounced as unheard of in dignity to the court. At this, Lancaster, who was present, swore that he would bring down Courtney's pride and the pride of all the prelates in England. This man was a cardinal or a bishop, if you will, and he says, I'm going to bring your pride down, talking to the leadership, the lords and the rulers of the land. And here's the answer. Now, remember, I told you that the kings and all the people were getting tired of being forced to submit and bow down to the popes. Here's the answer. Do your best, sir, was the spirited retort that came from them. Now, you think about this. During what should have been an ecumenical council or at least a local council against Wycliffe, the people finally started having enough and they started standing up and they made the issue what it should have been about, the false teaching of Rome. And they defended Wycliffe even though they didn't mean to. Wycliffe was protected by Lancaster. Pope Gregory XI, himself now took notice of the offender Wycliffe and a document condemning 19 sentences from his writings as erroneous and dangerous to the church and state." See, what you have to understand is the Waldensians and the great teachers throughout the history of the Pholicians and the Bogomils and all these different people were teaching that there is a separation of church and state, that the church should never dominate over the state in a theocracy. Because the only theocracy that will ever stand is when Christ returns and He rules and He reigns. The church says, no, we will not have this. The state is never to rule over the church and become the authority over the church. Well, in Rome, you had a mixture of both. And what was happening here is there was a war within itself about who would have the power. And Wycliffe was trying to bring out the truth because he had been ordered to. Pope Gregory demanded that Wycliffe be placed in prison until he was tried as a heretic. Now Schaff says this, Pope Gregory alleged that Wycliffe was vomiting out of the filthy dungeon of his heart most wickedly and damnable heresies whereby he hoped to pollute the faithful and bring them to the precipice of perdition to overthrow the church and to subvert the secular estate. You catch what's going on here? A king has asked this man of God to stand and show what is right and the Roman Catholic Church Just like any dog, when you throw a rock at them, they begin to bark. At the hearing before the Archbishop, Wycliffe replied, I am ready to defend my convictions even unto death. I have followed the sacred scripture and the holy doctors. He went on to say that the popes and the church were second in authority to the scripture. He defended the old Waldensian view of sola scriptura. This did not sit well with Rome, but because of Wycliffe's popularity in England and the subsequent split in the papacy, There was a great schism in 1378 when rival popes were elected. Well, because of that, Wycliffe was put under house arrest and left to pastor his Lutterworth parish. He was eventually released from his house arrest, and from then on, he was a staunch reformer that taught against the errors of Rome. In 1381, he issued 12 theses in which he declared that the Roman Church had misled and unscripturally taught false doctrine. Wycliffe destroyed the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the reaction of the Catholic Church was to be expected. Oxford authorities, at the insistence of the Archbishop and Bishop, instituted a trial. The court consisted of the Chancellor Burton and 12 different doctors, as they were called. Without mentioning Wycliffe by name, the judges condemned him as a pesterer. I don't know how to pronounce the word, so I'm going to say pesterer, if you will, of assertions that the bread and wine remain after consecration and that the body of Christ is present only figuratively or topically in the Eucharist. So what he was saying is, and I want to jump off just real quick, Ann Boskamp, you've heard of her maybe? She's been in the 10,000 Gifts book. She teaches what she calls Eucharist Deo, the Holy Eucharist. And she's teaching a Roman Catholic doctrine. And she's mystifying sensuality, let's say sensuality for the sake of the little ears, sensuality with God in such a way. That it's not talking about loving God and praising Him and giving Him glory. It's talking about being intimately one with God the way a husband and wife are to be. And she is teaching this paganism and so many people are running in the church, running towards her. And I want everybody to know what she's talking about in the Holy Eucharist is bringing Christ down. And instead of giving communion, she's doing other wicked things that I and Boz camp stay away from her and her teaching. S-A-T-A-N. That's how I would spell it. V-O-S-K-A-M-P. Did everybody catch that? I'm glad you did because it comes straight from the pit of hell. But I want to tell you something. When these men condemned Wycliffe, they condemned him because he refused to say that the church, in the giving of the bread and the wine, could rip Christ down from heaven. They denied the once for all sacrifice of Christ. They denied the actual atonement for sin. They denied the fact that Christ substituted on your behalf and on my behalf and took that sin to the cross. They rejected that and said they can take Christ down from heaven and they can actually crucify him again in an unbloody sacrifice. And when you say that, you blaspheme the work of the holy God. And I'm not going to have it and Wycliffe's not going to have it. And they teach that today, this very day. Somewhere in this country, in this world, someone is blaspheming God and crying out the words to bring Christ down. Without mentioning Wycliffe by name, the judges condemned him because he denied the actual presence of Christ, because he said it's a figurative speech. When Christ said, this is my body and this is my blood, Wycliffe says this is a figure of speech similar to I am the door. I am the good shepherd. Similar to those. But a major problem arose in respect to the king of France who had protected Wycliffe. That major problem was the Duke of Lancaster took sides against Wycliffe in favor of transubstantiation. Now listen, why? Because the Roman Catholic Church rises and falls upon its own interpretation of the mass and the power of every priest to force Christ down from heaven and to force him to bow his head and to submit to being actually re-sacrificed on the altar, on the table. The Roman Catholic Church was teaching heresy. And if they did not defend transubstantiation, Rome ended that day. They teach it today. If you take that away, Rome is over with. Because if they don't have the power to bring Christ down, then they have been liars and heretics from the moment they began. Wycliffe was confined to Lutterworth when he preached and taught the people, and he studied the Bible. He began his most important work of translating the Bible. He translated Jerome's Latin Vulgate into the language of the people. Now, some will say, but it wasn't a perfect translation because it wasn't Greek, and that is true. However, years later when William Tyndale, when others had taken the scriptures to be translated, guess what they went back to? Not the Latin Vulgate, but to Wycliffe. who had translated the Vulgate. They said his was the most accurate and the most precise translations available. They could not believe. You know why? Because he was a learned scholar in Latin and he knew the word and he studied to show himself approved. And because of that, he was condemned. As he studied and he saw the difference between the biblical teaching and that of the Roman Catholic Church and he determined they were not mere differences of opinion. Rather, it was completely a different dogma, a different gospel, a different Christ. a different Mary, a different God. It was teaching and proclaiming error. You see, Wycliffe realized that the doctrine of grace was the most important thing to every life. He realized that salvation was by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. We've been saying that for weeks now, haven't we? As we've studied throughout the history of the church, of the true church, we've realized that that history hinges upon the grace of Almighty God. The doctrine of justification. How are you justified? Is it through some work? Through pulling Christ down? Through repeating a prayer or saying a mass? Is it through some work that you've done? Or is it the sovereign work of a holy God who promised in the Old Testament that He would give you a new heart with a new desire and a new spirit so that you can believe and obey? That's what Wycliffe saw. He saw, should I say, that Rome was the mother of harlots and the false teacher that Christ warned of in Scripture. and he made no bones about it. He screamed it from the rooftops. He preached it in his sermons. He warned everyone that the harlot church is the church that the Waldensians and the Bogomils and the Paulicians and so many other biblical Christians who had been persecuted and maligned, they were all telling the truth. He realized that these people that had been persecuted were telling the truth about what this false teaching church was. This was a place, this all took place in the backdrop of the Great Schism in the Roman Catholic Church. Have you guys ever heard of the Great Schism? in the Roman Catholic Church? Well, I want to give you this. I find this to be amazing. Talk about faithful infallibility for a moment. Talk about the fact that the Vicar of Christ, the Pope, makes no mistakes when he speaks ex cathedra, out of the seat of Rome. Okay? So the Vicar of Christ, who is the Pope, cannot speak in error because he is the very mouth of God itself, the very presence of God. That's what they teach. Well, there's a problem in church history. The great schism of the Roman Catholic Church was from 1374 to 1409. when rival popes were elected. See, what had happened is you had one pope that had taught the Athanasian Creed from many years back, from Athanasius in the 200s, who had taught that the Athanasian Creed should have one little sentence added to it. You see, we believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from God the Father. And he, all by himself, added one sentence, and of the Son. He added, from God the Father and of the Son. So the Holy Spirit proceeds from God the Father and of the Son. Which is true, but he had no right to do that. Arbitrarily changing all of church history, arbitrarily changing foundational doctrinal truth, and he says, I have the right to do it. It was a doctrinal issue that created such a schism that the church split to the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. And because you had that split, you had two popes. And these two popes went around anathematizing each other. And by the way, if you didn't believe me and you believe that pope, then you're going to hell. If you didn't believe that pope and you believe me, you're going to hell. See the problem? No matter what you did, you're going to hell. You were anathematized. You were all condemned. You were accursed. And these popes fought with each other in the midst of Wycliffe and Huss, Jerome of Prague. In that time period, they were fighting out. Two years before the death of Wycliffe, he had a stroke which left him slow but still strong. He called it his thorn in his flesh. He was ordered to stand before the Pope, but Wycliffe refused and said the Pope should renounce all worldly authority and cause his subjects to do the same. While preaching in the pulpit, he suffered his last stroke and died two days later, December 29th, 1384. I don't know any pastor, true pastor, whose greatest desire, if I'm going to die, let me die preaching. And he got through, pretty much died preaching. 1384. He lit a fire which became the flame that has never gone out. But the embers and the sparks of that fire came throughout church history of men and women of God who died and were murdered because they would not submit to Rome. He was given a Christian burial and pronounced by the church to truly be a Christian, a brother in Christ. Even though he'd been condemned and people had railed against him, he was still buried as a Christian burial. Seventy years later, the Roman Catholic Church decreed at the Council of Constance that ordered his body to be exhumed, his writings suppressed, he was defrocked, and his remains were burned to ashes. This was carried out in 1429. Now listen to this statement. They burned his bones to ashes and cast him into the swift, the river Swift, a neighboring brook running hard by. Thus this brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, or Avion, Avion into the Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main oceans. And thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine which now is dispersed the world over." They poured his ashes out and they said effectively that Christ, that God when he returns would never be able to find all of his pieces to bring his body back together because he poured them out into the world. And the people of the world saw this as the gospel going forth into the nations. And they stood and said, what this false church has done. we will do with this doctrine. We'll spread it throughout the world. I love the fact that God's given us men and women that we can stand up and be proud of. Jan Hus is another one I want to talk to you about. Close communication between England and Bogomil had been established with the marriage of the Bohemian king, Winslas. You ever heard that song, Good King Winslas? That's the man. Every time I hear that, I start to tear up. I think about what that man did. further the cause of Christ. So I want you to understand something. The people that we're talking about in church history, if they did not stand against the world, you wouldn't know the scriptures the way you know it today. There may be a chance you may not even be saved, but we believe in God's providence and the fact that he is the one that sovereignly saves whom he will, and he doesn't need any man. Close communication between England and Bohemia had been established with the marriage of the Bohemian king Winslow's sister, Anne of Luxembourg. to Richard II in 1382. So we're kind of going back. She was princess of cultivated taste and had in her possession copies of the scripture in Latin, in Czech, and in German. Now what does that tell you immediately? She was an enemy of Rome. Rome decreed no one's to have the scripture except for the priest and those that they determined are allowed to have the scriptures, right? She was an enemy of Rome because she had the scriptures in her hand. She was princess with a cultivated taste, but before this nuptial event, the philosophical faculties of the University of Prague in 1367 ordered its bachelors to add to the instruction of its own professors the notebooks of Paris and the Oxford doctors." Now, you might be thinking, what's this have to do with anything? She had all the writings of Wycliffe, and she gave them to as many professors and teachers of the Word of God, Oxford men, as she could. Because of King Winslow's sister and her affinity for the truth of Scripture, Jerome of Prague and Jan Hus, in fact, all of Bohemia had the word of Wycliffe in their hands and were well versed in the Holy Scriptures. I want to add something because of men and women who had the Scriptures from of old. Because they were willing to die to give you a gospel, because they would stand willing to be burnt for the sake of the cause of the gospel and the furtherance of the kingdom, the word of God. Many people had the scriptures in their hands who were not allowed to, who were not supposed to. Jan Hus was born of Czech parents in 1369 at Husnik in southern Bohemia. The word Hus means goose, and its distinguished bearer often applied it literally, meaning for himself. For example, he wrote, Philip Schaaf said this, he wrote from Constance expressing the hope that the goose might be delivered from prison. And he bade the Bohemians, if they love the goose to secure the king, king's aide and having him released. So he kind of liked to play games with his name. But before he died, when he walked up, he says, the goose is cooked. I mean, he was a comedian, but he was a very serious, stern man, too. Hus was at the university in 1402 and was known as the chief defender of the Wycliffe doctrines, which were the Waldensians, the Albigensians, the Pauletians, the Bogomilian, the Valois doctrine. which were the Lawler's doctrines. We'll talk about the Lawler's next week a little bit. In short, it was the biblical doctrine of the faith. It was the Word of God itself. And these men held to it. While the Roman Catholic Church hated the Wycliffe's heretical works and they demanded that they did not spread, they wanted it stopped, the Lawler's and the Hussites and all of the kings and queens that could were spreading the gospel as far and wide as they could. They were proclaiming Christ even to death. The apostate church had decreed that all 24 articles of Wycliffe were banned and anyone owning them would be anathematized if they did not turn them over. Owning a Wycliffe Bible would cause you to be burned as a heretic immediately without question. Remember that all this happened 100 to 150 years before Luther. Okay? And this is why Huss is so important. Wycliffe is so important. Schast says, so extensive was the spread of the Wycliffism that Innocent VII In 1405, remember we talked about the Pope Innocents? We've talked about those guys. They were nothing like innocent people. They called upon Binko to employ severe measures to stamp out and to seize the Wycliffe Doctrine. What was said by the Pope was that he was to do everything he could to purge out that old Wycliffe Doctrine, including burning them into purgatory. The same year, A frog synod forbade the propaganda of Wycliffe's views and renewed its condemnation of the 45 articles. Three years later, Huss, whose activity in denouncing clerical abuses and advocating Wycliffe's theology knew no abatement, was deposed from the university, deposed as a synod preacher. He wasn't allowed to go around preaching anymore for the church. The same university authorities, at the archbishop's insistence, ordered that no public lectures should be delivered by Wycliffe on Trilogorius and Dialogorius and his doctrines of the supper, talking about the transubstantiation of the Lord's Supper, and no public disputations should concern itself with any of the condemned articles of Wycliffe." So, in order to stop him from preaching and teaching the Word of God and showing them that Wycliffe was right and that all these preachers throughout history were right, in order to stop Huss, they stopped him from preaching, they said he wasn't allowed to preach anywhere, and demanded all the kings and all the prelates and all those governors and leaders demanded that they could not allow him to even speak. Took all of his teachings, every bit of it, and condemned it all. And you know, that works really well, doesn't it? Not for Christians, it doesn't. School of Prague was demoted to a provincial school, and Hus became a more ardent proclaimer and a more thought preacher of righteousness. He openly condemned the Pope and the Mass and indulgences. You see, in the indulgences, it taught that if you could pay your way out of sin, if you sinned, all you had to do was pay a little bit more. But here's the problem. You could also pay for your family to get out of purgatory. You just never knew when you paid enough. You never knew when you had paid enough, and there was a major problem there. Of course, the major problem was the fact that you thought you could pay them out to begin with. As a result, the Roman Catholic Church ordered a burning of all books of psychology, logic, and any non-theological work, including anything of the Reformers' writings. All biblical thought, all Bibles that were being produced were to be destroyed. Huss was excommunicated two days later, and yet Huss continued to preach the gospel of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone. Hus had no desire to submit to Rome when he had found that old doctrine so sweet, when he tasted the bitterness of his own sin and felt the humiliation of repentance, when he had been raised to the side of the Savior through grace, which led to his repentance and faith, not in man, but in Christ who paid all his debt. Hus could not think of turning away from the flames that were set the day he was born again. He would not turn away from persecution. He told his persecutor to look him in the eye because he knew what he was going to do. In spite of the appeals of Wendlass and many Bohemian nobles who pledged their honor, that he was no heretic, John XXIII, the Pope, put the case in the hands of Cardinal Colonna. Afterwards, Martin V, who launched a ban against us for his refusal to comply with the canonical citations. Pope John XXIII. Pope John XXIII is one of three popes that were active at the time. And so you know who Pope John XXIII is. About the 70s there was another Pope John XXIII. Anybody remember that? Remember that? Okay. And roughly in the 70s there was a Pope John XXIII. If you go look, if you go look in the Catholic diocese, Catholic teachings, if you go look at the Vatican, you'll find no mention, because his name was scrubbed, of this pope, John XXIII, the first one. The reason was, is because he bought his way into the popery, by paying a certain amount of money to be the Pope. He was a homosexual, a sodomite. He was a wicked, vile man who brought in every form of debauchery possible and brought in what some called the sodomite's court. He brought in homosexuality into the Roman Catholic Church and it's still there today. He brought that in. He was a wicked, wicked, vile man. Sexually immoral and immoral in every way. But he began to come against Jan Hus. The same year, 1411, Pope John XXIII called Europe to a crusade against Ladless of Naples, the defender of Gregory XII, and he promised indulgences to all the participants, whether they were personally enlisted in the Pope's armies or gave gifts in support of the war. So, in order to proclaim lands and to defend his friends, he started another crusade. I told you there were seven. John 23 sent T.M. de Passant to preach of the indulgences offered him to support the war. And when he made his way to Prague, Huss stood there in the church and condemned the mass indulgences, the remission of sin through the works of piety, and that the Pope was no secular authority and he could not wage war. Huss preached from the articles of Wycliffe and those words stood true. As a result of Huss's preaching, three men by the name of Martin, John, and Stenalus were captured by John 23 and were executed for standing against the Roman Pope. Pope John 23 placed Prague under what was called the interdict. The interdict means that no ordinance of the church is allowed to be exercised. You're not allowed to be born. You're not allowed to die. You're not allowed to be married. You're not allowed to give tithes. You're not allowed to do anything. You cannot go into purgatory. You cannot come out of purgatory. You can do nothing while you're under the interdict. And that was because John Huss was there preaching. And in order for the interdict to be released by the Vicar of God, the Pope, he must go and recant and repent against all his offenses against the one true God, the Vicar of Christ, the Pope. You see, he had to go and kiss the toe of the Pope, and he would not do that. The people of Prague supported Huss and would have gladly been anathematized by Rome if they could support the furtherance of the Gospel. In 1412, King Wenceslas, looking at the plight of his people, asked Hus to leave the city and thus ending the interdict, and he did. Hus became an even bolder preacher in the valleys and the fields, and every stump was his pulpit, and every church building he could be at was his home. He preached in the marketplaces, and the people heard him proclaim the gospel in the open air. Jan Hus preached as an open-air preacher. The Wycliffeites, the Hussites, all were preachers of righteousness. in the open air. You see, what you're going to find throughout church history is open air preaching wasn't just an abnormality, it was the norm. People went and proclaimed the Word of God. He said that to obey the Pope or any man who had commanded him to stop preaching in the open air would be to disobey God who commanded every man to proclaim the gospel to every creature. Hus wrote many books, but his chief work was a book called De Ecclesia. where he explains the true church is the born-again elect believers of God and not the pope and the bishops and the cardinals. Huss said that the church body had the keys to the kingdom and not the pope. Huss affirmed that the rock is Christ and defeated the notion of apostolic succession. He stood clearly in defense of the baptizers, of the old and true virtue of the predestined, of the saints alone. He defined predestination as for the elect to the glory of God alone and the blessing of the body of Christ. defining particular redemption itself. He made it clear that Constantine had erred greatly when he made a man the Pope, and through ignorance and love of money that Pope erred and rebelled against God and became a depraved heretic. As a result of the papal schism, The Pope, John 23, says that the heretic Wycliffe and the wolf Huss were heretics and that he was going to settle the issue and he ordered Constance Sigismund, the king, to settle the issue. The delegates of the council said that all the heresies that had beset the people and joined Huss to Wycliffe were passed down to Huss. Apparently desiring a peaceful solution, King Sigismund promised King Wenzel and his wife, and Jan Hus safe passage to and from the council if they would come and give a sound defense. With the blessing of good King Wenzel, I love to say that, Hus wrote to Constance that he was willing to come. Now Schaff wrote this. On September 1st, 1414, Hus wrote to Sigismund that he was ready to go to Constance under safe conduct of your protection and the Lord most high, my defender. King Sigismund had promised him that he would come to the place protected and that he would go home protected and that anyone that came against him he would utterly destroy. He promised him safe passage. Now if you know anything about church history you know that that did not happen. A week later the king replied expressing confidence that by his appearance all imputation of heresy would be removed from the kingdom of Bohemia. So in other words, you come here, we're going to settle things out, you can go home and all the misunderstandings will be taken care of There's not going to be any destruction, no problems, there's not going to be any issues. Huss reached Constance on November the 3rd. On his way, he preached in every village, in every town, in every place that he could. Every marketplace, he preached all over the place the gospel of Christ to the glory of God. He was accompanied by Bohemian nobles of John of Chalem, Wenzel of Dubai, Henry Lackenbach. With John of Chalem was Bob, I don't know how to say his name, Bob. who did an important service by preventing Huss's letters and afterward editing them, preserving Huss's letters and preserving them. Schaff says this, the day after John of Chalim and Baron Lachenbach called upon Pope John XXIII who promised no violence should be done to their friend. Now this is John XXIII the pervert, the wicked man who was not anywhere close to a Christian. No violence should be done to their friend. Nay, even though he had killed the Pope's own brother, he granted him leave to go about the city and forbade him only from going to high mass." Which he didn't have a problem with anyway. The bishops, however, were outraged at his excommunicated heretic, was allowed to go unprisoned, and on November 28th, two bishops requested that Hus meet privately with the Cardinal at his home. And when he went, the Cardinal imprisoned him. He was told that if he went to the home, he could have a private meeting and they would settle the issue and he could go on home. But instead he was in prison. The house was surrounded and Huss knew that he could not refuse. Huss gave an audience to the cardinal and was placed in prison beside the latrines. He was fastened to the wall for three months. When he became sick and began vomiting, the Pope actually sent doctors, but they were not much help to him. He was allowed no books, no Bible, no visitors, and he lived out that time in dark black sewage filled dungeon. He was afforded no care, but the man still wrote to his friends truth from the gospel. Remember that King Sigismund had promised safe passage to us and King Wenzel. And because of that, there was almost a war started between the two kings. But he backed down. when the cardinal demanded that the heretic Huss would pay for offending the church. The cardinal said that all good churchmen paid his majesty. I'm sorry. The cardinal said all good churchmen prayed his majesty might not give way to the lies of the subtleties of the Wycliffeites. The king of Aragon wrote that Huss should be killed at once without having any formal hearing. By March the 24th, Pope John XXIII had been deposed and was in flight as a monstrous heretic. The cardinal feared the people would attack the monastery and free Huss, so he gave Huss to Sigismund, who took him to a castle in Glottenbin. The cardinal feared that the people were going to attack them and take Huss, so he gave Huss to Sigismund. By March the 24th, Pope John XXIII had been deposed and the wicked pontiff, now listen to this, had been captured and became Hus' fellow prisoner at the castle for a brief time. And then he was released and allowed to retire. So for some small period of time, Hus was roommates with the man that was condemning him and going to have him killed. I don't know, he probably shared the gospel with him. Huss's friends had not forgotten him, Schaff says. 250 Moravian and Bohemian nobles signed a remonstrance at Prague. This is not the later one, this is this one. May 13th, which they sent to Sigismund protesting against the treatment the beloved master and Christian preacher was receiving and asked that he might be granted a public hearing. So now let's get back on track. Sigismund came in and grabbed a hold of him and took him and was supposed to be his protector. And the people said, let's have a public hearing. Now, this is where it gets fun. Sigismund agreed. Upon the hearing, Hus staked everything, and with such a hearing in view, he had gone to Constance. Because the Pope was in exile and the leadership of the church was fractured, Cardinal Delaley, D-slash-A-I-L-L-Y, was left alone to preside over the hearings against Hus and Wycliffe. On May 24th, he condemned 260 errors of Wycliffe's and thus of Hus as well, and charges came against Hus for denying the real presence of Christ, Salvation apart from the Pope and in Christ alone. Excommunication. He actually said the Pope had no power to excommunicate anyone who was a sound, solid Christian. And he's right. The church can't excommunicate anyone who's truly a Christian, who is living in Christ and in no way condemned. He expressed the hope that Hus' soul be with Wycliffe in eternal hell. King Sigismund advised Hus to submit to the Cardinal and to Rome. The man who promised to be his protector did not do so. He advised him to submit because he would not defend anyone that the church deemed to be a heretic. He also declared that so long as a single heretic remained, he was ready to light the fire himself with his own hand and burn him. He, however, promised that Huss would have a written list of charges the following day. The cardinal had convinced the king that he did not have to keep his word to any condemned man. Seven months After the council began, Huss was brought to the cathedral on Saturday, July 6th at 6 a.m. He was placed standing on a stool in front of all the community and forbidden to give any answer to the charges against him. Instead, the bishop of Lodi preached from Romans 6-6. It was the custom that they had to preach against everyone they condemned as heretics. He twisted the scripture, of course, and he was placed standing in the stool and the bishop explained that it was an act of faith to destroy the heretics and it pleases God to burn them alive. The act of faith is called the autografe, the act of faith. In other words, the Roman Catholic Church is acting in faith to God that God, upon their destruction of this person's body, God will render them to Christ. Hus was condemned and committed to Satan, in which he said, I commit myself to the most gracious Jesus. With the condemnation in place, the cardinal turned Hus over to King Sigismund, who had promised him safe passage originally, Hus stared at the king as the sentence of death was given, and the king was so convicted that it was reported that he turned away and began to cry. The king then said out loud, Go, take him, and do with him as a heretic. And with that, Hus was marched down the streets in public to be executed. The streets were filled, and the crowds was great, and Hus was marched to the devil's place. And he knelt down and prayed with tears, and he stood back up and continued his march. At midday, May 30th, 1416, his hands were tied behind his back. His neck was bound to the stake by a chain. The wood and straw were stacked to his neck. He was offered another chance to recant and a priest to hear his confession. And Jan Hus said this, There is no need of one. I have no mortal sin. And at the call of the bystanders, they turned his face away from the east. And as the flames arose, he sang twice. Christ, thou son of the living God, have mercy upon me." The wind blew the flame into the martyr's face and his voice was hushed. He died praying and singing to remove, if possible, all chance of preserving relics from the scene. Hus' clothes and shoes were thrown into the fire and the ashes were scattered into the Rhine River. Because of this incident, the king was distraught for his wickedness and the people over the next 100 years came to the conviction that the treatment of Huss and the cowardice of the king were inexcusable. So when Martin Luther was promised safe passage and went to Worms to defend himself and the cardinal wanted him executed, the princes and leaders refused to allow anyone to touch Luther for fear that the people would rise and go to war against them. Now you see the connection. If it had not been for the flames of Huss, Martin Luther would not be the great reformer that he was. You see, we stand on the shoulders of giants. Our lives are not for ourselves, but they're to live for Christ. Men and women throughout all history have died for your faith, Anna, have been martyred, Kristen, so that you can have a Bible, so that you can know the truth. so that you can proclaim that truth to your children, but not just to your children, to everyone alive. It is said that the Christian is the only wise man in a worldwide insane asylum. The most insane thing alive is to deny Christ, to turn your back on the one living God that only has the power to save. And this world is running away from it, and the professing Christians refuse to stand up while the pagans run marching around the world murdering and murdering for the cause of Islam and whatever other cause they want to murder somebody for. The Christians sit by and won't open their Bible up and live and preach and proclaim the gospel of Christ to the world. Next week we're going to continue, I want to talk to you about a few more of these proto-reformers before we get to Luther. You see, at the podium there are literally hundreds of men and women who stood and defended our faith, who stood and brought to us the Word of God at the cost of their very lives. Can't we do any better? Can't we do the same? Should we not, as the church, as the body of Christ, stop playing shallow, silly games with shallow, silly people and demand truth, preach truth, live truth? You know my heart. I want to welcome you guys. Thank you for being here. I hope you've learned something. At our church, we will teach the truth of the Word of God. We will not play games, and we will prepare men, women, and children to be glory of God focused and Bible saturated. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, I come before you and I magnify your name. Lord, I thank you so much that I have a faith that's historical, that's true, that's biblical, that men and women died so that I might have a gospel to preach, that I might be able to stand on the shoulders of giants, that go back to the apostles. That stood in defiance of dictators and demons and monsters and marauders. So that I might be able to have a Bible in my hands and to know my God. I might be able to worship you rightly. If there's anybody in this room, Lord, we know there are, that don't know you as Savior and Lord, that never have come to you and been willing to die for the cause of Christ, been willing to live to the glory of God. people that don't truly know you, Lord. God, I pray that they'll come to repentance and faith, that they'll come to you, Lord. We believe that you are mighty to save. Fill our church with people that want to stand on the truth of the Word of God. Protect us and defend us in this hour, Lord, and help us to stand for righteousness. In Christ's name, amen.