And then we will go back into our series on church history And if you'll turn to Matthew chapter 16 will reference a verse there in Matthew chapter number 16 And then we will do some quick review and then move into the next era of church history We are working our way through a series here on church history, and I really, again, don't want to just turn this into a boring history class. I really want this to be interesting and applicable for us as we are, in a sense, are we not making Baptist history right now? And I don't want that to sound trite or make it sound like we're You know, we're doing some fantastic deed, but in the Lord's work, and fulfilling the Lord's will, and being faithful, and proclaiming His truth, and living faithful lives, are we not part of God's redemption plan? Are we not part of church history, in a sense, and Baptist history? Yes, we are. And I don't say that in any kind of arrogant way, of course. But Matthew chapter number 16, In verse 18, who will read Matthew 16 in verse 18 for us as we get started this morning? Matthew 16 in verse 18, anybody? Ray, all right, if you'll read that verse for us. And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter, and from this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Amen, thank you. God is building his church, he continues to build his church. The gates of hell shall not prevail against it. We are seeing in this era of church history, we are seeing a move toward a what eventually will be the Roman Catholic Church and we'll touch on that just a little bit today and then we'll see hopefully as we have time today we'll see Constantine as emperor and with good intentions reducing or eliminating the persecution of the church but we'll see those roots of Roman Catholicism taking root or beginning to blossom and grow. So we'll get into that here in just a few moments. But for sake of review, we were in AD 90 to 250 for the majority of our time last week. And so I'm going to do just a quick review here on these events, these major events, these major dates. We have the Gnostic Controversy, the Second Jewish Rebellion, the Montanist Movement, we have the recognition of the books of the New Testament. Also during this era, we have several prominent names, Marcion, Montanus, Maximilla, Presa, Victor, Arrhenus, Felicity, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Origen. Now, I don't know if I got all their names correct. I don't know if I pronounced them all. I don't know. Do we know anybody? Once in a while, I see a Felicity. I don't know of anybody named Hippo, or once in a while I see something along the lines of Maximus or Maximilian, but those aren't names that we're used to today, but important names from this era. The Apostles' Creed, someone mentioned last week that you'll see in the Apostles' Creed, which was a summary statement to rebut the advance of Gnosticism. Somebody mentioned, and I'm in the wrong place, there it is, Catholic Church. We're in an era where the Catholic, as in the Roman Catholic Church, had not officially started. That word Catholic is just referring to universal, as in the church universal. We would even sometimes refer to it as invisible in the sense that some have gone on to glory. It has not met yet. Eventually, the Romans, you really think about it, Roman and Catholic are contradictory terms. Because Catholic is universal, and Roman would then bring that together. So that's part of their claim is that they are the true church. But that word Catholic in the Apostles' Creed is not referring to Roman Catholicism. All right. So those are the major terms, heresy, gnosticism, docetism, and rule of faith. So we can see a major controversy already, and of course, in the New Testament, Paul was already addressing a form of gnosticism, as well as other false teachings that were getting into and attacking the church, and Jude wrote, As a matter of fact, he said, I wanted to write of the common salvation, but I instead had to write that we earnestly contend for the faith because of the false teachers. Second Peter, Peter addresses very strongly apostates that were in the church already in the first century. So now we see Gnosticism and then the rule of faith. This was important for the church to understand the New Testament teachings, the faith once delivered unto the saints, and the Apostles' Creed was a way of helping summarize that. You can see a hymn there that was written to combat Gnosticism. God has used hymns throughout the church to help the church as they sing, to encapsulate and to summarize and to sing unto one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in our hearts to the Lord, how important congregational singing is, hymn singing is. So this question continues to come up in every age. How do we deal with present needs while being faithful to God's past works and his eternal truths? Gnosticism was also known as the secret knowledge movement. So Gnosticism was the idea that physical matter was bad, spiritual is good, and that the only way to really discover the spiritual goodness was through a secret knowledge. Christ had given to certain disciples a secret knowledge, and so Gnosticism was an attempt to try to tap into this secret knowledge movement, and certain disciples would have access to this secret knowledge and really know the truth, and physical matter was bad, spiritual was good. We see that in today's world. Much of the LGBTQ plus movement is a form of Gnosticism that we can take the body and mold it and shape it and make it do whatever we want it to do because the true you, the true me is the inner sense of identity. So then we can take our bodies and do whatever we want with it. Or we can sin with it because it doesn't matter because it's already bad. So we can turn it to whatever we want to do. The true self is what really matters. This is in the world today. We see it. And so this Gnosticism has never really completely gone away. It was maybe 15 years ago, Dan Brown, the Da Vinci Code, popularized a form of Gnosticism again. Dangerous, dangerous stuff. Marcion, pastor's kid, rejected the truth, disciplined from the church, fled to Rome. He did give the church a large sum of money. They eventually, the Church of Rome gave that back when they realized what Marcion was really all about. He rejected core doctrines of the Bible, taught Docetism, a form of Gnosticism, and formed his own congregations. Origen. Origen, he blended Greek philosophy with scripture, taught against the Gnostics, and renounced physical comforts. Now, Origen's a little bit hard to figure out, was he a true believer? Or was he not? I think you'll find people that are kind of on the fence with him, because of some of his teachings, because he tried to blend Greek philosophy with scripture. But he did teach against the Gnostics. I think there's evidence to believe he may have been a true Christian, but he had some weird, warped, unorthodox beliefs. But again, we see this. We are complex people. We get mixed up about things. Sometimes we hang our hats and we die on hills that we shouldn't even be dying on, much less climbing that hill. But I think sometimes we hold to with strict, hard, rigid conviction to things that the Bible is not speaking clearly with principle or command. I'm not saying compromise, I'm just saying sometimes people hold on to things that they hold with religious conviction that are either questionable morally, doctrinally, or they're just plain not clear in scripture. The scriptures don't even speak to them. There are obviously commands and principles and promises that we speak to, but Origen, he got a little carried away even with the interpretation of scripture, if it's Hard to understand, then we need to kind of infuse our own interpretation, make it allegorical. What does taking everything that's hard to understand in scripture, if we turn it to allegory, what's the danger in doing that? We become the interpreters of the scripture. We're not submitting ourselves to proper rules of interpretation, we're then becoming the one who is the authority on scripture, and then we begin to allegorize all kinds of passages that we don't like, that make us uncomfortable, so we can spiritualize and rationalize our disobedience and our sin. We see people doing that, right? Origen was getting himself in trouble for some of his allegorical interpretations of scripture. All right, New Testament canon, of course, with these attacks on the church, with heresy, Gnosticism, The New Prophecy Movement, there were questions about what is the Apostles' Doctrine? Well, the church had already been reading, distributing letters by Paul, the Gospels, Peter's letters. There were 27 books of the New Testament that the church was already understanding, and knowing, using, and teaching from, that they were sure were the Word of God. But it took some time for all of this to be put into a written canon list, though these 27 books always were the Word of God, and they were distributed among the church. Again, without belaboring this point, They did not have the printing press with all the bookstores and internet access that we have today. They would literally come to church, and for some of them, that was the only time that they had the word of God in their presence. They would go throughout the week, and they didn't own a copy. Some people owned manuscripts, scrolls, papyrus copies. But they did not have what we are so blessed to have. Multiple copies of the Bible, phone apps, all kinds of commentaries. To own a manuscript was almost unheard of. The church would bring them, and they would read them, and they would memorize them, and some would have, eventually, some scrolls and some papyrus. and some manuscripts, but typically it was only among the educated, among the scholarly, among the elite, or among the leadership of the Church. So these questions were coming. There was a popular book, The Shepherd, in the 2nd century. People understood that it was a good book, but it wasn't the Word of God. What were some of the ways in which they were confirming, verifying? that these 27 books of the New Testament were the inspired, infallible, authoritative word of God. Well, the book was written by an apostle or someone closely associated with an apostle. The book was widely accepted by the church. The writing agrees with the doctrine of the apostles. No spurious teachings or contradictions. And does it affect spiritual change, conversion, Christ-likeness in the lives of its readers? By the fourth century, God had led churches throughout the known world to recognize the canon of the New Testament. The rule of faith, or the Apostles' Creed, was developed to summarize foundational doctrinal beliefs, confirm one's faith, so that every authentic believer could accept, or every authentic believer could accept the rule of faith by the end of the fourth century. The list was clear and published and well recognized by the early church. Pastors were particularly charged with keeping the faith and protecting the body of truth, going all the way back to the apostles. Polycarp was big on this. Every believer needed to do his or her job, and they had their responsibility for keeping, protecting, preserving, proclaiming the truth, the word of God. But there was a push toward only church leadership, almost like in a military sense. Well, we hire generals, we hire soldiers, we hire military authorities to go out and fight our battles. And so we leave it up to them. And there was almost that mentality. And it was also a power trip. Because as Roman emperors would give more and more special favors to church leaders, there became more of a hierarchical power-centered system. And believers were saying, well, it's the church leader's responsibility to guard, protect, proclaim the truth. We just have to go about our daily lives, and then they'll tell us. what to do and what to know when we need to know it. We'll send out the military to go fight the battles. We'll just go about our regular daily business. See the danger in that? Polycarp said no. God has ordained the apostles, the evangelists, the pastor, teacher. Yes, they are leaders in the church, but it's every believer's responsibility to know the truth, to live the truth, to apply it, to live it out, to guard it, to protect it. So that's where Basically, we left off last week. So let's quickly go through these couple of slides, and we'll get into the next era. Believers in the Western Empire celebrated Easter the Sunday after the Jewish Passover. Believers in the Eastern Empire celebrated Easter during the Jewish Passover. So there was a controversy about that. We touched on that a little bit. The point is that true believers wanted to recognize a special day on the calendar to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Every Sunday is a resurrection Sunday, but early believers wanted to recognize a special day on the calendar. The controversy became when? During the Passover or after the Passover? So they wanted it tied to the Jewish Passover. And last week was the Jewish Passover, and Easter fell early, as in late March, which typically it's closer to the Jewish Passover. I don't know exactly why it was so far apart this year. But Polycarp led the Eastern group of believers, agreed to disagree with another church leader named Anicetus. So they agreed to disagree about when to celebrate. They didn't make it a major division or line of demarcation. They both were going to celebrate Easter just on different days. Thirty years after Polycarp and Anicetus met and peacefully disagreed, an influential church leader in Rome named Victor cut off fellowship with the Eastern churches. Victor became power hungry, cut off the Eastern churches, and made it a line of demarcation, fellowship, and used it for his advantage. On the right-hand side on the screen there, you see a symbol of a fish. I don't know if you've seen that on the back of cars or in different places. Where did that come from? Well, each letter of the Greek word for fish, ichthys, could be used to remember an aspect of Christ's life. And you see Jesus Christ, God, Son, Savior. And so that does have historical roots in true biblical Christianity. Now, not everybody that drives their car around with that symbol is a good Christian, right? Sometimes I think we get caught up in bumper stickers and symbols and t-shirts, and we think that that makes us spiritual. But it does have Christian roots. It does have biblical Christian roots. All right, another movement that became a controversial issue in the early church was the New Prophets or Montanists. Prissa, Maximilla, and Montanus were the early leaders of the movement. They taught a radical self-denial and emphasized the ministries of the Holy Spirit, including personal revelations. Isn't it interesting that this keeps coming up? You have the Gnostics, blatant doctrinal error, false teaching, and then you have not quite so blatant and in-your-face, but nevertheless subtle and Sensational, we can have new personal revelations, and you must live a life of strict self-denial, emphasizing the ministries of the Holy Spirit. What, who, who does the Holy Spirit magnify? Jesus Christ. What does the Holy Spirit guide us into? All truth. So we have to remember the ministry, is the Holy Spirit God? Yes. Is he a person? Yes. But we have to remember what the Bible teaches regarding the ministries of the Holy Spirit. And we see throughout the New Testament, the ministries of the Holy Spirit produce Christ-likeness. Yes, there were verification tools, if I can say it that way, verification signs with tongues. a temporary sign gift to verify the baptism of the Holy Spirit, to verify God's Word, but now we have the New Testament, we have the completed canon of Scripture, the Holy Spirit, who Jesus promised would come as a comforter who would reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and judgment, whose ministry would be to guide us into all truth and point people to Jesus Christ, conviction, filling as we as believers are controlled by the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit produces within us through the Word of God. And of course, through a relationship with Jesus Christ, and God the Father produces within us Christ likeness. But people won't want to ignore Galatians five, love, joy, Peace, long-suffering, goodness, gentleness. They don't want to emphasize good relationships with Ephesians 4, Colossians 3 and 4, Ephesians 5 and 6, because that's hard work. Wouldn't it be so much easier to say I'm spiritual because I had a vision? I would love to walk in here every Sunday morning and say, come listen to me because I had a vision last week. And my vision is better than your vision, and God speaks to me, but he doesn't speak to you because I am the pastor of this church. See where that goes? Kelly, what's that? You'd have an empty church, right, right. Yeah, so if Kelly and I had a disagreement and I say, well, I'm the pastor, I have a closer walk, I had a vision last night. What do you think Kelly's gonna say to me? Right? She'll say, I had a vision. I had a dream. It didn't involve you. Okay, no. You see how dangerous this is? But we want sensational, we want to be able to, we want to come to church and say we had an experience with God. We want that so badly. We want to say that we, what's in church for me? Whoa, wait a second here. Aren't we coming with the wrong attitude? That's the danger in this. This is in the third century. This is still in the world today. Takes on different forms. So the new prophets, two main errors, false predictions and stricter moral standards than the New Testament taught. They said Jesus was gonna come. Isn't that interesting? We still hear those today, don't we? Then we see people say, oh, he's coming on April 8th at about three o'clock in the afternoon, Eastern time. Now they're saying, oh, 40 days from that, or 41 days. How many different supposed prophets have said, was it 1988 Jesus was supposed to return? Okay, I mean, all these different predictions, right? False predictions, they said in the desert, Papusa in the desert. They came up with stricter moral standards than what the New Testament taught. They even forbid marriage. Frequent fasting, strict denial of nearly all personal pleasures, asceticism. By the mid-third century, there were some who saw the centralization of power in the hands of a hierarchy of pastors, priests, Pope, as the key to keeping the faith. Others saw the personalization of prophecy and overly strict moral standards as the way to keep the faith. See the dangers on both? And we see some of that same kind of thinking, same kind of errors and extremes in the world today. So a couple of verses, Jude verse three. in John 16 in verse 13 that I've made reference to already. And those are there. I forgot to click on the screen. So, as we move into the middle of the third century, we have five more important events or dates in the AD 247 to 420 era of church history. We have the era of martyrs, the Edict of Milan, The Aryan Controversy, the Council of Nicaea, and Athanasius' Easter Letter. Five key dates in this era. 10 important names. Oops. It's actually eight, sorry, I forgot to change it from 10 to eight, sorry about that. Cyprian, Helena, Eusebius, Pechomias, Basil, Gregory, Gregory, and Jerome. Now we're getting into some names that we can pronounce better, right? We see some names more familiar. I don't know anybody named Basil. We think of that maybe as an herb. But we do see a Helen. I don't know of any Ceprians or Eusebiuses or Pachymeas. But anyway, these are important names from this era. Four important terms. We have Eastern and Western empires. We have the schism. We have Eastern and Western empires and co-emperors. The great Cappadocians from what is modern day Turkey. Donatism that was controversial because of a time of persecution and how to accept people back into the church who compromised during persecution. Arianism, which still lives today in Jehovah's Witness and a form of it in Mormonism. Major controversy in early church history. And then the Latin Vulgate. All right, so we can move on to the slide More Persecution and Donatism. So early church, we see the common theme, don't we, in the early church? Persecution. We see that the church is continuing to grow, though. We see God is calling out a people to himself through persecution, at times very severe. But we see the gospel still going out. We still see people getting saved, churches being planted, though the church itself was wrestling with some various controversies and some issues, even Within the church, AD 247, Rome celebrated its 1,000th birthday. There was a pagan celebration, no surprise there. Christians refused to participate in it. What do you think Rome thought of that? How come you didn't come celebrate Rome? It's the greatest city in the world. We're going to be the empire that's going to be here forever, right? That whole attitude, what do you mean you're not going to come celebrate? Did we not see that today? You're not going to come celebrate with us? We wanna celebrate this sin this way, and you're not gonna come celebrate with us? It's the satanic attack, satanic ploy, his scheme, his tricks. He's still doing it today. A deadly plague broke out shortly afterward. There is reason to believe that the deadly plague was the direct result, not only of God's judgment upon the pagan celebrations, but because of the kinds of wicked, immoral, can I just say perverted sexual activity that went on during that celebration, and out of it, no surprise, comes what? So, yeah, comes disease, comes a plague. Do we not see risky sexual behavior resulting in Certain types of physical ailments and disease? What was it, monkeypox a couple years ago? Oh, don't talk about the bathhouses in Europe. We're unexplainable. We will not talk about what goes on at European bathhouses. Is there any surprise that there was monkeypox? Oh, you can't talk about it? Don't you dare. No, no, you're discriminatory. You're bigoted. Isn't there certain kinds of sinful activities that result in certain kinds of physical maladies? Some of that is a consequential sowing and reaping judgment. God says, live a holy and pure life and you're gonna avoid certain kinds of diseases, STDs, et cetera, right? So, anyway, won't go any further there. After Decius died and Christians were released from prison, a controversy arose about professing Christians who signed or lied on a certificate to escape persecution. Certificate? Well, this deadly plague broke out. Emperor Decius blamed the Christians. Decius began another wave of persecution and he was requiring certificates. Isn't that interesting? Sign here. to say that you have celebrated the pagan gods and worshiped them and are recanting your faith. And they would require witnesses, in some cases, that you signed, that they saw you worshiping the false god or giving obeisance or recanting. Again, I can't help but make the analogy, do we not see? in order to get your certificate, in order to get your license, in order to get your next promotion, to get your next whatever. Title IX, it's evil. We have an evil administration that's now trying to rewrite the definition of sex in Title IX. Who gives them the authority to redefine what God says? It's blasphemy. It's downright blasphemy. They have no authority to change, they can't, and they have no authority to try to change God's design. God's design for male and female and for personal moral ethics. But they are threatening, sign here. I'm not saying we're quite where this is going right here in this lesson, but we see the kind of tactics, don't we? Sign the certificate in order to get out of jail free. Okay, well, sadly, there were, do we not see Christians that compromise? So now, what's the controversy? Well, there were some who claimed Christ, who compromised. What are we gonna do with them? We're gonna bring them back into church? How are we gonna bring them back into the church? Well, what's the easy way through this? Ah, just let them all back in. Love is love, right? And again, I'm not trying to say that we don't forgive. Of course we do, but we forgive based on what? Repentance. Ceprian said that if you lied on a certificate, You could only be allowed back in the church if there was an outward display of sorrow, prayer and fasting. Well, then you had a group that was even stricter. You had groups that were saying, just come on in. You have Cyprian that said, okay, there had to be some display of sorrow or repentance. And then some who took an even stricter view that said if this compromiser was a leader, a pastor, a leader in the church, then all of his, pastoral duties were null and void. He had, in a sense, disqualified himself from the ministry. Can you see how the church would have a controversy here? Oh, just let him in. Oh, with repentance, we need to see a true sorrow. Or if you're in leadership, you've disqualified yourself. No more weddings, no more funerals, no more ordinations. I mean, basically, it's you are no longer able to. And if you compromise, then your previous ordinations, weddings, et cetera, your authority in those areas is now called into question. Controversial, right? We see controversies in the church today about how to apply commands and principles of scripture in certain practical areas of life. Do we not see that? We have a church membership packet. We explain our bylaws. We have a statement of faith. We meet with people. We do that for several different reasons, one of which is to protect the church. so that we are not covenanting with people who are unsaved or people who don't have the proper view of sanctification. It's not a covenant in the sense of a business contract where if you violate this, this, and this, that we are sending spies into your home, and we have hidden cameras, and we're looking for you to trip up so we can swat you. That's not the point. It's the covenant together saying, as a local assembly, this is how we are going to By God's help, by his grace, live out our faith. But first and foremost, we want a covenant with true believers. Now we got this controversy in the early church about how are we going to welcome these people back who compromised. So you can see how it gets complicated and it can get heated. So you have even some good people on different sides of the issue. Emperor Diocletian came to the throne in 284. He divided the empire into eastern and western and appointed a co-emperor and named assistants as successors. Diocletian knew he had a hard time ruling the entire empire, so he found somebody who he could trust, named them co-emperor, and said, we'll work together. It'll be much more manageable for the two of us. He appointed assistants as successors in order to help ease the succession of the leadership into whoever will be the next emperor. But Diocletian was a bad man. He persecuted Christians. His successor, Galerius, continued. And then Galerius also tried to rule both halves of the empire. And he abducted Constantine, the co-emperor's son. When Constantine came of age, Galerius died, Constantine's dad died, excuse me, Constantine's dad died, and so Constantine believed that he should be the co-emperor with Galerius. Galerius did not like that idea, but then Galerius got sick, and upon his deathbed, Galerius decreed an end to the persecution of Christians. So by God's grace and his providence, persecution of Christians came to a close, technically under Galerius' decree. But he saw Constantine, whose mom was a devout Christian, and the influence of Constantine in order, really for practical reasons, to try to unify the empire, he saw the relaxing of persecution of Christians to be a way to unify the empire. Did I see a hand? I thought maybe he had a hand. No. OK. So now we move into Gallarius is dead. Constantine's dad is dead. Constantine is now going to move into the co-emperor status with Maxentius. But what happened? You get two proud men. both of whom want power, and unfortunately Maxentius did not want to be co-emperor with Constantine. Constantine saw it as a threat now, so they go to war. Constantine marched toward Rome, and here we go. He prayed for victory. all throughout history. I've read it in history books. I sat in school. I know the story of Constantine, and some of it is embellished through history. Things happen, okay? Who did he pray to? More than likely, Constantine was not praying to the God of heaven. More than likely, he was praying to a sun god, a Roman god, okay? Did Constantine mean well? Did Constantine have some Christian influence? His mom apparently was a devout Christian. She had good influence. Was there a desire to bring some end to the persecution in hopes that it would solve some of this conflict and bring the empire together? Do we see politicians do this kind of stuff? I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I'm not trying to be overly critical of good politicians through the years and good pastors, but did the moral majority save America? But aren't there politicians who come along and say, oh yeah, you Christians, I like you guys, yeah. Throw a few bones our way, right? Vote for me is what they're saying, right? They get four years in or two years in and what do they do? Abandoned ship, right? We see it among athletes. We see it among politicians. Was Constantine, in the providence of God, used to end persecution? Galerius, having sent the decree, did Constantine thank God for a godly mom who had influence? But Constantine was a politician. He wanted an empire, and he saw an appeasement of the Christians. He saw an end to the persecution as a way to gain political clout. Well, then he had this vision. after praying to what was probably the sun god, and the vision was a cross in the sky with the words, by this sign, you will win. He also dreamed of a Christian symbol to be placed on his army's shields. I'm sorry, I have been, there, I went too far. Sorry about that, I hit the button. So this is the symbol. The sign is from the first two letters of the Greek name for Jesus, X and P, K and R, I should say, Christos. Now there's two good restaurants in the area here. I don't know who runs them or where they got their name. But I don't think that it's about proclaiming the name of Jesus. I could be wrong. They could be Christian owners. I don't know. Anybody know about Christos, the ownership? Not good Christian people? No. Oh, OK. OK. Had nothing to do with this then. OK. All right. So anyway, Christos, that's where he got this symbol. He put it on his army shields, and now what is Constantine doing? As an unsaved man, polytheistic, adding Jesus now to his pantheon of gods, what is Constantine doing? He's putting the authority of man with the authority of God, blending civil authority, military authority, church authority, dangerous stuff. So we move on to the Edict of Milan, or Milan, Milan, and we have a Milan here in Indiana, right? Won the 1954 state championship, the movie Hoosiers. Anyway, Edict of Milan, precursor to Catholicism. Constantine defeated Galerius, who had died trying to escape. Constantine and his co-emperor, Licinius, issued the Edict of Milan to allow Christians and all others to worship as they desire so that whatever divinity lives in the heavens will be kind to us. Okay, what's he doing? Okay, this split empire thing, it might work, but we gotta find a way to unify it. So I'm gonna be a good politician, I'm gonna use Christianity, I'm gonna end persecution, and I'm gonna use this to my advantage. And he says, do what? Let's just add Jesus to our pantheon of gods, right? Isn't that what he's saying? To allow Christians and all others to worship what they desire. Praise the Lord, yes, the persecution was going away. But whatever divinity lives in the heavens will be kind to us. Well, maybe this Christian God has more power and influence and authority than we thought. Maybe we should do obeisance or make acquiescence with him, right? Again, he's just, he's being a politician. Sorry, what's that? Yeah, it's superstition, but we see it all the time. It's all through, sadly, it's all through evangelicalism today. It's a lot of that same kind of mentality. Constantine seemed to have equated Jesus with the sun god, Though he did end the persecution of believers, he wanted Christianity to help unite his empire and began granting church leaders special favors, leading to greater power among certain priests, overseers, okay? All right. Let's think about this for a minute. If I, get enough influence, I can bring other churches under my authority, and I can become a bishop. I'm already a bishop, pastor, elder, same man, different functions of the office, okay? But that's what's happening here. A man comes along, he's got influence, he's got whatever, let's give him special political favors, let's raise him up, now he's got more authority over his region, his jurisdiction. Do we see how it's blending? It'd be like me trying to come into the city of Lafayette and I'm going to throw my weight around, I'm going to get some influence, I'm going to hobnob with the The aristocrats, I'm gonna hobnob with the politicians, I'm gonna get some other pastors, and pretty soon, I am the regional authority. I'm Bishop Floyd. See where this is going? The hierarchical system among many denominations, it's based on this. It goes all the way back to this kind of idea. So now we have a civil authority blending with a church authority, and we begin to see this Special favors and the rising up of certain church leaders with power and influence that is blended with civil authority. Do we not see the foundations, the roots of Catholicism, Roman Catholicism here? This is where it's going. The Donatist controversy got really strong. I remember the Donatists and the new prophets. And so that got really strong. And you have the controversy within the church of how to welcome back the people who compromised, all that's going on. So Constantine intervened, and he did what? He made an official decree that essentially led to a state church, Roman Catholicism. What's Constantine trying to do? He's trying to solve a religious church conflict to have political expediency and benefit for him and his empire, and he makes a strong decree, which essentially does what? Essentially takes political authority, Caesar, and makes him the authority over the household of God, the church. Where are we at today? Look at all the splinters of these various groups from the Roman Catholic Church, and now you have these different hierarchical-based denominations, and now look at where some of them are at. Some of them now have had major splits. Yes, Nat? In the Roman Catholic Church, you say they blended all the different religions and stuff. In the Roman Catholic Church, you have St. Christopher that you pray to for a certain thing, I don't know, but you pray to certain saints for certain, because you're involved in certain things. And they didn't understand separation of church and state like we do. Many of them, and remember, the church is learning, in a sense, its way. It's coming, and there's good Christians already who are seeing the errors here, but we live in a post-Reformation era. We look at separation of church and state. They didn't understand separation of church and state. What was the good intentions of many believers? What was it among the relationship with the government? What was the good intentions of many believers? Well, let's get the Roman Empire to be Christian, because we could use their power and authority to Christianize the world. What's the danger in that? I mean, we can see it, right? A false profession. I'll name the name of, you call me Christian, we'll give you this, that, or the other. Dangerous. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar, to God that which is God's, but who is the supreme authority? God is, his word. Constantine steps in and he is trying to solve a church disagreement with political edict. We are in a world of hurt today when we think that Caesar's household, that Caesar is going to be the authority of the church. And we saw in COVID, didn't we? Did we not see in COVID where Caesar thought he could run the church? Keep the liquor stores open, keep the bars open, the French restaurant open, keep all these other places open to murder the babies, but don't you dare come into church or you're gonna kill grandma. Right? We see how Caesar is constantly trying. Where are we at with the world and international relations? As America becomes weaker and weaker on the world front, we see Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. We see the Khomeini's in Iran. We see terrorist organizations. Now we have protests right here in America. And what is it ultimately about? We don't want God's authority. We're going to have our own. What is Iran? What is Iran saying? They want a Muslim authority over the world and instigate Sharia law. Do you think that Queers for Palestine is going to work in Iran? I mean, some of these people that are protesting right now, they go over to Iran. It's authority. Go ahead, Hank. There you go, okay? But what's Hamas, Hezbollah, what's the Khomeini, what's the Muslim ideology? What's it ultimately about? Their god, Allah, ruling the world. It's a direct attack upon the authority King of kings, the Lord of lords, the God of heaven, the creator God, the God of the Bible. I know I've gone on a rabbit trail and we're out of time here, but dangerous stuff. We see this in the early church. Constantine making a decree for solving a church controversy. We'll have to come back to this, Lord willing, next week, and we'll talk about the Aryan controversy, the Council of Nicaea. A lot of, lot of misinformation, to say it. A lot of lies, a lot of misunderstandings about the Council of Nicaea and what it really did. We'll talk about that, Lord willing, next week. Thanks for being here early. I hope that this has been a help. Hopefully tie some of this together to where we are at today, and it can be practical and relevant for us. Let's close in prayer. Lord, thank you for your word. Thank you, Lord, for the way in which you have providentially worked in history, fulfilling your redemption plan. Thank you for allowing us to be a small part of that. Help us to be faithful to your word. Pray you'll bless now the service to follow. And again, we thank you for our time together in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, we'll start the service in about 15, 16 minutes.