How has the history of the Christian Church solidifies the call to finish the work.

Hartland Fall Conference 2017: The Divine Right to Rule

<p>How has the history of the Christian Church solidifies the call to finish the work.</p>

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Hartland Institute of Health and Education

Fred Dana

Historical Responsibility

At Sac Central for the month of October, we've been doing a series on the Reformation and Pastor Buttery spoke on the first Sabbath of October on John Wycliffe and then our youth pastor, Michael Butler spoke on Martin Luther and I spoke last week and yesterday, Mike Thompson did John Huss.

But mine was quite a bit different than theirs because I didn't just stay on 1 person.

When you're a pastor of a church, and most churches have a wide array of backgrounds, and so some of the things in my sermon are going to be stuff you already know, and then there's going to be some stuff you've never heard before.

So hopefully, there'll be something you'll be able to enjoy.

When you think about the Protestant Reformation, and I've thought about it a lot.

By the way, My favorite topics to speak on are church history.

So this is the stuff I like talking about better than what I talked about before, but I find that not everybody cares about history that much, but it's a passion of mine and I've done some of my own studying.

And when I was working on my master's degree with a seminary, my favorite part of every course was when I got to write my own paper and figure out what I wanted to learn.

And so I'm going to share a little bit from 1 of my researches with you today.

And the Protestant Reformation in the early 1500s was unique in history.

It was a revival that had some things about it that were totally different than any other revival before or since.

You see, throughout Bible history, revival and reformation was always connected to the work of a prophet.

Someone who had a message, a revelation from God.

Moses had direct communication from God to lead Israel out of Egypt and instruct them.

And then in King Hezekiah's revival, there were 2 prophets that were instrumental in that.

Micah was the street preacher, and Isaiah was the more quiet influence within the confines of the, well, the administration.

And then in King Josiah's revival there were 2 that were instrumental there as well.

And of course the revival of the New Testament church was a response to the work of Jesus who was not only a prophet, he was God in the flesh.

But the apostles that were part of that revival also had the gift of prophecy, and then followed the gradual decline into apostasy of the medieval church.

So when we come to the Protestant Reformation, we find that it wasn't led or supported by anyone that truly had the gift of prophecy in the biblical sense of receiving visions or definite revelations from God.

Now the Millerite movement almost qualifies, but the 1 difference in Millerite movement is you have a prophecy in the Bible of what was gonna happen.

You don't have a clear prophecy in the Bible defining and predicting the Reformation.

And of course, the Millerite movement concludes with the great disappointment, and then the gift of prophecy becomes instrumental in leading things from there to where we get to where we are today.

So Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, those are the big 3.

None of the major leaders of the Reformation claimed to be prophets.

Now, there were a few lesser knowns that claimed to be prophets, but time and events proved their claims to be unfounded, that they were deluded false prophets.

And a lot of people don't even know who they are.

There was a few in the Reformation that had a following and then it kind of like came to nothing.

In spite of the fact that no prophet of God guided or led the Reformation, we still have absolute confidence, we still believe that the hand of God guided the development of conditions so that it happened.

The medieval church had become so corrupt and the feudal system that it controlled so oppressive that people naturally were beginning to find it difficult to believe that it was good and that it was God's way.

Open immorality of clergy and even some of the popes, buying and selling church positions, oppressive taxation, the luxurious living of monks and abbots and priests, and almost 0 educational requirements for clergy.

These couldn't be missed by thinking people.

And long before Luther came, thinking people saw problems everywhere that didn't make sense to them.

And there were thinking people to be sure, you know, we know about John Wycliffe, John Huss and Jerome, but then there was someone named John Collette.

John Collette probably doesn't qualify as a reformer the way we know the reformers, because John Collette was an intellectual.

And he grew up with the benefit of the movable type printing press, which was beginning to change the world for the people who had the opportunity to read.

For the intellectuals, for the educated people, the movable type printing press had already changed the world, but it was limited to those people.

And John Collette was an influential person and an instrumental part in encouraging others to grow.

Basically, many fields of knowledge were becoming common property to the people who had the opportunity to learn.

And learning and knowledge were becoming more accessible.

More people were interested in gaining something.

Printing fostered an upsurge in intellectual pursuits.

Men were becoming much more interested in following reason than the supposed authority of clergy.

In fact, in secular history books, what I'm actually describing, they sometimes call the Northern Renaissance.

It was an intellectual age of advancement.

The primary interest was in literature because the old Greek classics could now be printed and they were reading them.

And in fact, learning Greek was real important because they wanted to read the Greek classics themselves.

And so everywhere, every university was teaching Greek.

So John Collette was an outspoken advocate for reform at Oxford.

And before 1500, a student came there by the name of Erasmus, and John Collette and Erasmus became, you know, the mentor and the student.

And in fact, when John Collette died, Erasmus was in distress and said, that was my favorite teacher of my whole life.

Well, Erasmus, you know, John Collette saw Erasmus was brilliant, and so he took him under his wing.

And they would go for walks together and discuss stuff.

And they didn't always agree, but they enjoyed that saying from the Bible, iron sharpens iron, and basically that's what true friends are for each other.

So but Erasmus, we've all heard of Erasmus, but not John Collette.

And he taught, when he had classes, he taught different than anybody of his time did.

And I won't go into the difference, but the scholastics, or the school men as they called it, could take 1 verse of the Bible and spend 9 classes on it.

And that was the common way the intellects did stuff.

John Collette used to just take, you know, like Romans and just start reading through it as a letter and making it and it came alive to people.

It was more of a conversation from someone who cared about somebody rather than a super analysis that, you know, where you get so into you don't see the big picture anymore.

Anyway, Erasmus developed a network of correspondents with scholars and noblemen and intellectually minded royalty and some educated priests.

And what was going on with Erasmus, I mentioned historians today call it Northern Renaissance, but Erasmus was viewed as a reformer before the word reformer took on the meaning we understand it as.

He wanted to reform society, he wanted to reform the church, but he didn't want to change everything.

He just wanted it to not be so stupid, so superstitious.

And so this network of supporters with Erasmus, this was thoroughly developed before Martin Luther came on the scene that these people wanted some change and they felt like the world was ready to change the way they had it in mind but it would be a subtle change that wouldn't it wouldn't be a revolution it was just something that would happen naturally.

They maintained that the veneration of saints was useless, pilgrimages they derided, relics were just stupid, and the idea of temporal power for the church they pointed out as being totally foreign to the Apostles, to apostolic Christianity of the New Testament.

These thinkers, Historians today call them humanists, different than what we mean when we say a humanist today.

But these thinkers, or humanists as they are called, believed that the study of the Bible would help people experience reform and improvement and help them rise above the corruption.

So their interest in the Bible was a little different, but still, can you see the hand of God in it?

They were scholars, and they saw a sharp contrast between what was in Scripture and what was going on in the church.

It would be good if people were reading the Bible.

So because of this, Erasmus prepared a Greek manuscript of the New Testament to be printed.

Now his purpose in preparing it wasn't to have the Reformation happen the way we know it happened.

Because Erasmus just wanted the Greek manuscript of the New Testament to be available to the intellectuals so they could read it and they could continue their influence in their sphere of influence.

But we know that his work was used by Luther to translate a German New Testament, by Lefebvre to translate a French New Testament, by Tyndale to do the English New Testament.

And Erasmus' Greek manuscript was used to translate an Italian Bible, a Spanish Bible, and a Swedish Bible, and many others.

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Historical Responsibility

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