Another word of prayer.
Lord, we do continue in the spirit of worship and adoration unto You. Lord, we do lift Your name on high over this time as we gather around Your Word.
Lord, we declare that in You are the words of life. And we look unto You, Lord, to breathe afresh upon us through Thy Spirit today—words of life, words of revelation that can really capture our hearts.
Lord, as we do consider and continue on this matter of church history, we at times look at many dates, many names. Lord, would You cause these to be very living unto us, not just a pure lesson from a book?
But Lord, would we know the lesson from the Spirit of God on high, to take this forth, that we would know how to live in these end days. In Jesus’ name, amen.
We can look at Revelation 2, starting in verse 18.
And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write:
The Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet are like burnished bronze, says this:
I know your deeds, and your love, and faith, and service, and perseverance, and that your deeds of late are greater than at first.
But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray, so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.
And I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her immorality.
Behold, I will cast her upon a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds.
And I will kill her children with pestilence; and all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts; and I will give to each one of you according to your deeds.
But I say to you, the rest who are in Thyatira, who do not hold this teaching, who have not known the deep things of Satan, as they call them—I place no other burden on you.
Nevertheless what you have, hold fast until I come.
And he who overcomes, and he who keeps My deeds until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations;
And he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are broken to pieces, as I also have received authority from My Father;
And I will give him the morning star.
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.
And then a couple of verses out of 1 Corinthians 10. Paul, writing to the Corinthians here, is speaking somewhat of the history of the nation of Israel. It talks about how the Lord led them out through the Red Sea. Then, in verse 5, he says:
Nevertheless, with most of them God was not well pleased; for they were laid low in the wilderness.
Now these things happened as examples for us, that we should not crave evil things as they also craved.
As we look at this letter to the church of Thyatira, it is really broken, in an overall way, into two categories, two divisions. First, it speaks of those who are following the teaching of Jezebel; and then it speaks to those who are not. There are kind of two categories here.
As we approach this letter today, we are going to look at what we might call the negative aspect of the letter. Next week, Lord willing, we will consider what we could call the positive aspect of the letter.
I just read that verse out of Corinthians because sometimes, in our positive-thinking mentality and this culture we live in, we have problems at times dwelling upon the negative. But we have set before us an example so that we can learn and not repeat those mistakes.
You know, the beautiful thing about our Lord is that all throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament, we see the failures of man. It is there that we can learn from their lessons, so that we do not repeat them.
So while today we will be looking maybe a little more on the negative side, we want to really ask the Spirit to teach us more of the Lord, and see the contrast, that we can be strengthened and really grow together in Him.
As we said last week in the review and overview going into this letter, looking at these letters from the perspective of prophecy related to church history, this letter to the church of Thyatira is representative of the Roman Catholic system.
Now again, we use this word system. We are not talking about individuals within this; we are speaking of the overall system. It is generally conceded that this started around AD 590, when Pope Gregory took over and assumed authority.
Also, we know during general history that from about the seventh century up to about the sixteenth century is generally regarded as the Dark Ages. There was a lot of superstition within those times. There was darkness in the sense that there was a cloud over man.
Actually, at that time, a lot of education was diminished and relegated to a few, so that education decreased and superstition increased. Within the church, it was a period of dark ages also.
Where in the past there had been a life of faith, now we will see how many within the church were being led by a life of superstition also—a transition from faith to superstition during this time.
We will see how the Word of God was closed. The actual Bible was closed to man. Many could not read it even if they had one, but many did not even have one to read. So what they were instructed was just whatever the church, the Catholic Church at that time, taught them; and much of that was superstition, where they had gotten away from the Scripture.
As we look at this letter to the church in Thyatira, starting off with it, I think verse 18 really captures our heart as far as the description of the Lord in this verse.
If we put in our minds all the descriptions of the Lord, we remember the Lord this morning, and we like to remember Him as the Lamb of God, Father of all mercies, God of all comfort and peace, the Faithful One. We have the ways we like to remember Him.
But how does He describe Himself to this church in Thyatira? He says, “The Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and His feet are like burnished bronze.”
To us, that is not our most popular description of Him. Why is it? That is speaking of judgment. There is something within this church where we are seeing that the Lord is judging this church. There is an aspect here.
And that is because He is not seeing His life reflected. He needs those penetrating eyes. He needs that fire, that cleansing fire, to come in, to purify and to clean. That is how He is presenting Himself as He starts this letter.
It is interesting, too, that He describes Himself as the Son of God.
Now, as we will look a little more today, there is another person who claims that she is the mother of God. He is clarifying that from the very beginning. He says, “I am the Son of God. I do not have a mother.”
He is eternal. Mary is not My mother in relation to the Godhead. Sure, she is My earthly mother. In relation to the Godhead, Mary was not My mother. From the very first, He is setting clear who He is and where He is going with this.
Now, as we look at this letter, we see the one thing in verse 20 where He says, “I have this against you.” It says, “You tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and teaches and leads My bond-servants astray.”
Who is Jezebel? When we go back in the Old Testament and look upon the time of Jezebel, we see that Israel had reached one of its lowest, if not the lowest, points of declension as far as the condition of Israel.
The sad thing about the timing of Jezebel is that she came on the scene less than sixty years after the reign of Solomon. Solomon, in all his glory, the glory of the Lord coming down, dwelling in this beautiful temple—and in less than sixty years Israel had divided, had reached its lowest point, and Jezebel had come in.
She was a Gentile queen. Do you know how bad it was for a Jew to marry a Gentile? In the eyes of God, it was not even recognized. It was called fornication under the Jewish law.
But it had gotten to such a low point that Ahab had married this Gentile queen and set her up over the nation of Israel.
What did she do? In the previous letter, we read about Balaam. Now there was just a teaching there. But Jezebel has come in. During the reign of Jezebel, who was the god of Israel? Baal.
Now, in reality, keep this clear: we know that the Lord was always God. But in the people’s hearts, who was the god of Israel? In their hearts, the God of Israel had been replaced—from the Lord to Baal—and Jezebel had brought this in.
She had brought in the worship of this sun god. There is quite a contrast between the god Baal and the God who is our Lord. Our Lord is full of mercy. Baal is a vicious god. He demands the sacrifice of children and various other things.
He is sitting up there. I know Ernie at times describes some of our concepts of God the Father as God being the mean old man sitting up there with a big sledgehammer, just waiting to kill us when we mess up—hit us upside the head.
Well, actually, that is how Baal is: very unmerciful, just waiting to beat us all the time, beat us down. Jezebel had brought this in.
The thing about Jezebel is that she was not only the queen of the land, a prophetess in the church, but we have to remember, too, that Jezebel was a mother.
If we look at the history of her offspring, her offspring brought great turmoil both to Israel and Judah through various marriages. This influence that she had continued after her death.
She killed the prophets. She had her own teaching. It was called the teaching of the nation of Israel, but it was really another teaching. It was not the teaching of the Lord.
So when this church in Thyatira gets compared to tolerating this woman Jezebel, that is a pretty strong accusation.
We see that in the sixth century, the history of the church had reached a low point. It had reached a point where, as we mentioned earlier in the letter to Pergamum, it had merged with the state. This spirit comes into the church, and the world has taken over the church in such a way.
We know that in truth, the church is betrothed to Christ. When we are speaking of the church in Scripture, the church is always represented as a woman.
When we think of the first picture of Christ and the church with Adam and Eve, Eve is a picture of the church. However, when the church goes astray and develops its own teaching, when the church is no longer allowing the life of Christ to come forth, then Eve has become a Jezebel.
She has her own teaching, still reflected as a woman; but instead of the Eve after the Lord’s heart, it is the Jezebel. It is such a corrupt state that has come in.
That is how the Lord is describing the corruption of this church. This church, at this point in time—we see in the letter to Pergamum, when we were talking about Constantine, that there had been this marriage between church and state.
We will see during the history of Thyatira that now the church is ruling the nations. Actually, the pope is there appointing kings. The pope is ruling over all. A papal state ends up being created that has authority over all the earth.
Do you know of any other church, such as the Roman Catholic system, that sends ambassadors to other countries, that sends emissaries, that has its embassies in other countries? I mean, it is a separate entity.
Just for information, in 1926 Mussolini declared that the papal state was a separate entity from Italy. It is not part of that country. It has its own country, its own government, and its own police force.
Quite frankly, in that small little place there in Rome, if you look at it on a per-capita basis, it is probably the richest country in the world, too.
But we see how it has changed so much from the Lord’s original heart. That is how the Lord describes Himself in such an intense way, starting off this letter with judgment.
Now, as we go through this, we want to look at some of the significant dates in the history of this Roman Catholic Church. This is on page two of your handouts.
We cannot obviously cover all of these dates and all of the things. You can read about these later, but we did want to touch on a few.
Now, let us remind ourselves, just like we did last week: when we look at some of these things, we might say, “Well, first of all, I am not Catholic, so therefore I am not guilty.” It is our hearts that the Lord is after. Let us have the Lord check our hearts.
Like, we might say, “Let us look at 500: the priests began dressing differently from the laymen.” We say, “Well now, we do not have any priests, so nobody dresses differently.” But do we dress differently at times, in other times, when in a religious setting?
Now, do not get me wrong: there is a place where we need to honor and be respectful, and we have to be careful in this twentieth century about that. But do we adapt ourselves to different situations? What is our heart attitude? Why are we doing things?
A couple of significant ones: look at 590. This is when Gregory I canonized the Mass. Basically, the Mass has not changed from that period of time.
Actually, it is a very detailed list of thousands of instructions that you have to go through and follow very precisely.
Now, I was raised Presbyterian, and I was pretty much isolated from the Catholic Church when I grew up. Up until five or six years ago, I have to confess, I just thought it was another denomination. I thought you had Baptists, Methodists, and Catholics, and we were just all—
When I started looking into this a little more, I found it was not just another denomination. I was surprised. So if some of my surprise comes out today, you just have to forgive me. Some of the things really were surprising. I guess that is a nice way to say it.
As we look at some of these dates, we see things getting further and further away from the simplicity and purity of the Lord, and all of these teachings being developed by the church.
We are going to cover some of these more specifically later on. But we have such things as AD 800, when Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the pope. In that and other situations, the pope was assuming the role of anointing and confirming emperors.
An interesting time during all this was right around AD 1000. I think it is interesting as we approach 2000. Because of superstition, around the year 1000 there was tremendous thinking that the world was going to end.
So many rumors spread. On December 31, 999, people were flocking to cathedrals. They were doing all of their penance. They were sleeping in the cathedrals on New Year’s Eve that night. All the cathedrals were full.
People were terrified that the world was going to end. There was not hope there. It was not hope in the Lord; there was fear. It was tragedy.
When we look at this, it is not another gospel. Gospel is good news. This was tragedy, because the moral condition of the people and the moral condition of the church had declined in such a way that all of a sudden they realized the end could draw near. Where were they going to be? What hope did they have?
They were trying, through their works and all, to really get ready for this return. We know that January 1, 1000 came, and January 2 came, and there was a great relief.
Actually, through that fear, there was somewhat of an awakening to the fact that they needed to live more of a moral life. I would not call it a spiritual awakening; it could have been a moral awakening. There were both reforms within the church and reforms without that continued on.
A significant date, too, is 1229. The Bible was forbidden to the lay people. The Bible was shut. You could have a Latin psalter; you could have some of the Psalms. But the Bible was shut.
Actually, we will talk more about that next week, because the Bible was shut because of a group called the Waldensians. We spoke of them a few months ago. They were following the Word of God so much, and it was becoming so powerful, that the church said, “No, we are going to shut it down.” We will look at that more next week.
One of the interesting periods during this history of Catholicism started in 1309 and continued until about 1377. It was called the Babylonian Captivity at Avignon. That was when there was a battle over who was the pope.
One group, supported by the king of France, said, “No, we are going to move the pope. We are going to put him here in Avignon.” The other side left a pope in Rome. Actually, for a short period of time, there were three popes; they put another one in Pisa for a while. They were battling over who was the pope.
When you read some of the history of the church, where it talks about its infallibility and the infallibility of the pope, it is a little comic when at times you have two popes or three popes, one pope different from another. If you read the histories of the popes, it is very tragic. Some murdered their predecessors so that they could take over. There was actually a woman pope at one time. It is not a glorious history there.
We come on down and see how, in 1870, the infallibility of the pope was declared. It even gets into a greater thing in 1950, when they speak of the assumption of the Virgin Mary—that she ascended to heaven just like our Lord. That became affirmed. I mean, the teachings of this church.
It is interesting that this church gets compared to Jezebel. If you go back and look at the name, do you know what Jezebel means? One of the definitions is “chaste.”
When you think of Jezebel, the word chaste does not come to mind. You say, “Wait a minute. I do not correlate.” I asked why; it never made any sense.
But actually, when you look at it in contact with the history of the Roman Catholic system, and she is called Jezebel and chaste, that system is sitting there saying, “We are chaste. We are without spot or wrinkle. We are infallible. We are clean. We are pure. We are the church.”
It is presenting itself outwardly as very chaste; however, inwardly it is very corrupt.
As I was looking at this matter of the Roman Catholic system, I bought a catechism—the Roman Catholic catechism. There are different ones. Some dioceses have their own and some countries have their own. So I got the one the Vatican put out.
It refers to some of the other ones, but I said, “Well, this one was put out by the Vatican, and the pope signed it. It has his signature in there. This must be about official. I will take this one.”
I just wanted to read the teaching here. One of the dates, in 1545, tradition was granted equal authority with the Bible.
This is what the catechism teaches. The catechism is the teaching of the church. This is what you believe. This is what they teach:
Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture are bound closely together and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine wellspring, come together in some fashion to form one thing and move towards the same goal, the mystery of Christ.
As a result, the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of revelation is entrusted, does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the Holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.
“The church does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the Holy Scriptures alone.” I would not think many of us would want to put that on a little plaque on our wall.
But that is the tradition of the fathers. We earlier studied about the church fathers—Augustine, Chrysostom, and the different writers. All of their sayings that are liked get rolled into the tradition, and that becomes the authority.
Only the church—it is a key statement here, too—it says, “As the church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of revelation is entrusted.” No such thing as the priesthood of all believers, not you and I being able, through the enabling of the Holy Spirit, to look and search the Scriptures. No, it is entrusted to the church.
This teaching on Mary also—I never could understand it. I was looking into it, and you see how it is so predominant throughout Catholic culture.
I think most of us know Notre Dame, both the university and the cathedrals. What does Notre Dame mean? What does it translate to? “Our Lady.” That is what it is: “Our Lady.”
Let us read about Mary. One of the things they speak of is that Mary is eternally an ever-virgin.
They say, “Against this doctrine, the objection is sometimes raised that the Bible mentions brothers and sisters of Jesus. But in fact, James and Joseph, brothers of Jesus, are the sons of another Mary, the disciple whom St. Matthew calls ‘the other Mary’ in his gospel. They are close relations and relatives of Jesus, but not His brothers.” She was ever the virgin.
Now recently, too, as we have talked about how Mary was also the mother of God, in 1965 it was declared Mary was the mother of the church. Let us read about this:
The Virgin Mary is acknowledged and honored as being truly the mother of God and of the Redeemer. She is clearly the mother of the members of Christ, since she has by her charity joined with her Son in bringing about the birth of believers in the church, who are members of its head. Mary, the mother of Christ, and the mother of the church.
This union of the mother with the Son in the work of salvation is made manifest from the time of Christ’s virginal conception until His death. At the cross, there she stood, in keeping with the divine plan, enduring with her only begotten Son the intensity of His suffering and joining herself with His sacrifice.
Finally, the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory and exalted by the Lord as queen over all things.
We know that also within our lives grace is a major factor. We know our Lord is full of grace and truth. But also Mary—she is our mother in the order of grace.
I am not commenting on a lot of these things because I think to us a lot of them are self-evident. It says, “Mary, she is our mother in the order of grace. She conceived the living God, and by her prayers will deliver our souls from death.”
Taken up to heaven, she did not lay aside her saving office, but by her manifold intercession continues to bring us the gift of eternal salvation.
That is a different teaching. It is not an Eve; it is a Jezebel.
We also see how the pope, in 1870, was declared infallible. They are just saying that in the lineage of Peter he was declared infallible.
It is interesting, too, some of the relationships. When you talk about ecumenical movements, you see some of the Catholic leaders involved at all times. It is interesting in particular how they talk about relationships with other non-church religions.
This will be the last quote, and we will move on. I just found this fascinating, as far as I never could see how they could work on ecumenical things with Muslims and everything else. But the teaching is such that they can.
This is the church’s relationship with Muslims:
The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims. They profess to hold to the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.
I think many who are familiar with Islam would question that statement. But this is some of the teaching of that path. I just found it very eye-opening.
Brothers and sisters, our safeguards are the Word of God and the leadings of the Holy Spirit. Once we get away from the Word of God and allow others to tell us what it means, once we get away from that direct fellowship and communion with our Lord through that precious Holy Spirit, once we determine that we have our own teaching, an extra revelation, we are setting off on a dangerous course.
In these days, the lesson we learn from these teachings is that we need to know the Word of God in a greater and greater measure. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to work within us to reveal His Son unto us in a greater measure also.
Now, as we continue looking at the history of Thyatira, the next page on your handout is an overhead. It is kind of a snapshot of this period in time.
What we see during here, particularly during this section, is the conflict between the church and the various states.
If we start in France with Philip Augustus and Innocent III, let me just say that Innocent III is generally considered the one during whom the papacy reached its zenith. He had the most power of any of them. From his time afterward, it is generally agreed that it declined.
It was through him, though, that it reached its greatest power. He actually ended up bringing France, England, and the Holy Roman Empire to their feet. He had control over all of them.
How did he do this? In France, Philip Augustus married somebody from Denmark. After he got her home, he found out he did not like her. They told the local cardinal to give him a divorce so he could marry someone else whom he liked. That is the Reader’s Fabulous Version, okay?
Well, the pope heard about this. The pope said, “Uh-huh, I can exert my authority over this.” He called Philip up and said, “You have to take back your first wife. The church authority has not granted that annulment.”
There was this tremendous battle back and forth. The weapon that the pope had to get the king’s attention was that he said, “I excommunicate. I place an interdict under all France.”
In the age of superstition, that brought fear to the people. They could not go to church. They could not go to Mass. It was great fear, because they felt that as long as they were excommunicated, outside of fear, they were all going to go to hell. Their superstition played upon the sentiments.
So finally the king gave in. He took back the one he did not like and sent away the one he liked. But in that, the pope gained authority.
You come over to England—the same thing. The question here was that a vacancy came about over the Archbishop of Canterbury. Who was going to appoint the archbishop? The ones in England wanted to appoint him. John wanted to appoint him. The pope said, “No. All authority is from me.”
Innocent III believed, taught, and published that all authority had been granted under him from Peter. So he had authority over all kings and everybody upon the earth, and he appointed.
Through the battle over the archbishopric of Canterbury, England was brought under Innocent III’s authority. He did the same thing: he went through the excommunication route. They finally gave in.
If you think about it, he did not have an army. It was a battle of superstition, and it won.
Now, as we look at the battle over the Holy Roman Empire, there are two significant ones. Gregory VII, in his battle with Henry IV, had a controversy over who was going to appoint the Bishop of Milan.
Obviously, Gregory wanted his person there, and Henry wanted his person there. Gregory won out.
In one of the most humiliating stories you ever hear about in history, Henry IV went to the mountains of Italy, where the pope at that time was staying. It was snowing and all.
There is the story of how Henry IV went to those mountains, and Gregory made the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire stand outside the castle the pope was in for three days in the snow, barefoot, before the pope would see him.
Now, sometimes we cannot grasp how big this person was. But that was a big guy. He had all the power. The pope had him come and brought him into total humiliation.
In that, he went in and was absolved; he was un-excommunicated. Actually, he ended up going back to Germany, regaining his power, coming back with a huge army, and driving the pope out of Rome. He did not forget. He had a good memory.
That was over the battle and appointment of bishops. You come down to Innocent III. His battle with Otto was over who was going to appoint the Holy Roman Emperor.
Innocent won out. Otto was being put out by the people or tradition, and Innocent wanted Frederick to come in and take over.
What you see here is how far away from the Lord’s heart and the Lord’s intention for the church operating this had fallen.
Do we have those on earth today who say that the church should rule the earth? You ever hear of something called dominion theology? We see it a lot in the United States: Christians trying to take over and rule.
I am not saying Christians should not be in politics. If they want to be in politics, they can. But we have got to learn some lessons here.
The Lord is not trying to set up a governmental entity upon this earth. He is interested in one thing, and that is the life of His Son being formed within His people and allowing that to be a testimony.
Now, as we continue on, one of the major movements that came out of the Roman Catholic Church is the whole monastic movement.
You have handouts four and five that speak of the different orders. We are not going to go through the details, because you can look at those, but it is interesting to see the significance of these movements.
There were a couple of stages. Back in the third through the fifth centuries, you see a lot of individual people going out as hermits into the desert. It is generally conceded that the founder of monasticism was a man named Anthony.
He lived from 251 to 356. At the age of twenty, he sold all that he had and moved out into a cave to live in that cave for the last eighty-five years of his life and to meditate.
Another, to me the most famous—or infamous—one of these was a man named Simeon. Simeon, to achieve holiness, sat on top of a sixty-five-foot pillar out in the middle of the desert for thirty-five years. He is called Simeon the Stylite.
He sat out in the desert on top of a pillar. I could never find out how they took him food. But for thirty-five years he was sitting up there to achieve holiness.
Early in the latter part of the fourth and fifth centuries, you did start finding some communal living. We can laugh, but why was this? There was such a decline in the spirituality of the church that there were those who really had a heart to seek after the Lord.
They saw the toleration of sin. They saw the growing worldliness, and they saw this subjection to this human system. They just wanted to escape, to get away. In that escape, they would find their own holiness.
It is a good intention, but it is not the Lord’s way. He is not calling us to escape into the life of being a hermit. He is calling us to hang in there and be built together.
We can say that the second stage of this monastic movement is when all these orders start getting created. Really, the originator of them was an individual named Benedict. He established his monasteries and his rule of life, and it had great influence.
The monks went in and occupied themselves with all their personal religious activities and ceremonies. Each monastery was self-sufficient and self-supporting. They were communities set apart unto themselves.
One significant thing about each of these orders, and all the property they owned and everything, is that all of these orders, in the chain of command, reported directly to the pope. They did not go through the locals. They were all under the pope’s authority.
That ends up being a major thing in history, as we will see in a little while.
Now, there were some good things that came out of these systems. One practical thing was that some of the agricultural techniques they developed helped to save many of the countries during times of famine.
In the past there had not been many gains in the whole system of agriculture, but as they developed these monasteries, they tried different techniques and developed different agricultural plans. You have to search when you are looking for the positives.
But actually, too, we have to thank them because they spent a lot of their time copying documents. They copied the Bible by hand for years, and passed down manuscripts and transcripts.
These were copied and kept. It was because of these monasteries that many of the writings and things we have today related to that pre-medieval period are around. We would not have that resource unless they had done that.
But as you look at this monastic life, they were escaping to this form of monastic life to achieve godliness. As we look back at the New Testament pattern, we see the Lord is calling us. He wants our escape to be into Himself and into the church.
He wants us to escape into one another, as we allow the Lord to blend us and build us together. Not separated—in the world, but not of it. We see His grace abounding.
It is sad as you look at the various monastic orders that there was a cycle almost every one of them went through. They were all started by very godly men—except, well, you can debate that over the Jesuits. We will talk about the Jesuits in just a minute.
They all started on the principles of poverty, self-denial, and really trying to be set apart to live as the Lord would have them. But soon they grew into power. They relaxed their discipline, became very self-indulgent and worldly, and became great power centers where they could have great influence over kings and countries.
Actually, through the workings of some of the orders, the line of succession of certain kings would be determined. What they were actually started for, they ended up not even allowing toward the end.
If you look over on the second page, page five, Francis of Assisi obviously started the Franciscans.
Toward the end of his life, and right after his death, you see that he took many of his original rules right from Scripture. But toward the end of his life and in passing on, he was almost pushed out of the order himself.
They had become so slack. They did not want the old rule; they wanted a new way of doing things. They did not like the traditions that he had set up. Even though they were started by godly men, they could end up being taken over by others.
The Dominicans, as we look at them, were used—and we will see this more next week—by the pope to root out heresy. They were the ones who conducted the Inquisition.
The Inquisition was authorized by the Catholic Church to root out heresy. When you read the history of the Inquisition, it is hard to believe that these things were being done in the name of the Lord.
One of the motivating factors in the Inquisition was this: the inquisitor would go into a town and set up trials. Whoever was accused of something had to prove that he did not do it. He did not have a chance to face his accuser, and he did not know what he was being accused of.
So you walked in, and they said, “We have certain accusations against you. Confess or prove you did not do them.” You were sitting there saying, “Now, what could I have done?” Then you would start confessing: “Well, I did do this. I talked to this one Protestant.” They would say, “No, that is not it.”
They would keep going, and if you confessed to doing something, they would try to get other people’s names, too.
The conviction rate in these inquisitions was over 95 percent. Very few people ever got out. Why was that? One of the motivating reasons is always, as they say, “Follow the money. It will lead to the truth.”
If somebody was convicted, they had to give up all their property and all their money. One third went to the inquisitors, one third went to the church, and one third went to the local government.
So you had your local government, the church, and the inquisitors all in cahoots. They were going to get their share, so they would go in and any false accusation could be made.
How do you prove a false accusation? How do you prove you did not do something? It is hard proving the negative. They might say, “We understand that you own a copy of the Scriptures.” You say, “I do not own one.” They say, “Prove it.”
“Well, I do not have it in my house.” “You got rid of it.” How do you prove that? It is hard proving that you did not do something.
So they would end up being convicted and tortured. In the end, the more severe ones—the ones who were really heretics, or who believed in the Lord Jesus and were called heretics—were taken out and publicly burned.
When those heretics were publicly burned, there would be a huge ceremony in town. They would have them every few months, perhaps twice a year. They would parade all of the condemned ones in.
Those condemned to spend their life in jail would wear one type of dress, and those condemned to die would have another type of dress on.
As they were burned, do you know what the title for the burning was called? It was called the act of faith. It was not called execution. It was called an act of faith.
What it was, it was the church saving these people through fire. So they burned the heretics and hoped that they would be saved through fire. It was declared the act of faith. We see how far we had come.
Another order that ends up being infamous throughout history is the Jesuits. The thing where they get used the most is that they are committed to the absolute authority of the pope. Whatever the pope said, they did. The Jesuits were called the pope’s army.
Now, it is very difficult today to find an objective history of the Jesuits, because of their history. People either love them or hate them.
The haters say they are straight from hell, they are the enemies, the pawns of Satan. The others say, “No, they are the army of the pope, and they are preserving truth.” So you almost have to read both sides and figure somewhere in the middle is somewhat of the truth.
But it is sad to see some of the things that they went through.
One of the other events that went on during this time was the infamous Crusades. During this time, much of the Holy Land was under the control of Islam, the Muslims. So they were sending out these crusades to retake the Holy Land.
This is one of the saddest notes of church history: the church itself arming itself and sending out warriors to retake the land.
One of the most infamous ones is the First Crusade. As this crusade was leaving Europe, they murdered thousands and thousands of Jews. As they would pass through the countryside, they would kill the Jews on their way to the Holy Land. They plundered all of Turkey and Greece until they finally got to the Holy Land.
They did capture Jerusalem. But the Muslims who were in the city surrendered. The Crusaders, armed with their sword and their cross, went in, and all of them who had surrendered, they slaughtered. They put them all to death.
If you look at the history of the Crusades, you have two parties: the Crusaders and the Muslims. The Muslims acted a lot better than the Crusaders.
If you want to understand today why Christianity is not very popular in the Middle East, you can go back and read the story of the Crusades. The Crusades did more to damage the testimony of Jesus in the Middle East than probably anything else.
There were just thousands and thousands murdered. One of the Muslims who was a great warrior and leader during that time was Saladin.
Whenever he would capture Christians—or the Crusaders, I should not use the term Christians too much—he would take them as prisoners of war, negotiate their release, take money for them, and they would be returned. Very few slaughters. The slaughter was done by the Crusaders upon the locals.
They also slaughtered the Jews, whoever they could find.
There is a story that Saladin was fighting Richard the Lionheart. Richard the Lionheart got sick. In those days the battles were a little different. Richard got sick and got a fever, so they did not fight that day.
Saladin heard about it. He knew Richard was a great warrior and wanted to fight this great warrior, so he wanted to make him well. He sent up to Mount Hermon, got some peaches and other fruits, and took fresh fruit to Richard.
Richard recuperated and was able to go back into battle. He eventually surrendered, negotiated a release, and went back home. Saladin proved to be the more heroic, the more noble warrior.
One of the saddest crusades is called the Children’s Crusade. The children took out on their own to go free the Holy Land. As you can imagine, most of the children were drowned, sold into slavery, or slaughtered.
You say, “How could people get caught up in this?” Let me just read one quote. Some of you might have heard of Bernard of Clairvaux. He is actually most noted for his essays on the love of God. His famous one is On Loving God.
He writes on why you should crusade, and this was given to the people to stimulate them:
The earth has been shaken and has trembled because the Lord has lost His territory. And our King Jesus is being accused of treachery. It is said of Him by the Muslims that He is not God, but He falsely pretended to be something He was not.
Any man among you who is a vassal ought to rise up and defend his lord from this infamous treachery. He should go to the sure fight, where to win will be glorious, where to die will be gain.
Why are you delaying, you servants of the cross? Why are you deceiving yourselves, you who have great physical strength and many worldly goods? Take the sign of the cross, and the supreme pontiff, the vicar of him to whom it was said, “Whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven,” offers to you his full indulgence of all crimes you confess with a contrite heart.
What they were saying to the Crusaders was that they were being offered full pardon for all their sins—not only for the sins they had committed, but for the sins they were going to commit.
So when the Crusaders went out and pillaged villages, raped, slaughtered, and murdered everybody, they were forgiven. They had the pope’s indulgence. There was no accountability.
In that day, with the turmoil that was in the world, the Crusades were driven by superstition. They took up the sword to defend the name of the Lord. They hoped to liberate the Holy Land over there.
But the only thing they did was drive a wedge in a greater way between those who lived in that area and the testimony of Jesus.
You can talk with those who try to share the gospel in the Middle East today, and they are surprised how often this whole issue of the Crusades is brought back up in their face.
It is something they need to overcome. We need to pray that the Lord would bring a tremendous light, because it was terrible what occurred. But that was not the Lord Jesus that we know going out and doing that. That was something else.
Where there is that damage to the testimony of the Lord, we need to pray that a spirit of clarity could come in and really allow people to be set free.
I did want to touch just a minute on this whole issue of Islam. Islam, we know, was started by Muhammad. He was born in Mecca in 571.
He received his divine revelation—not him being the true prophet of God—but they did not receive it in Mecca. He had to flee to Medina around 622. But in 630 he came back, took Mecca, and established it as his capital.
In 632, Muhammad died. We can see how, during just a short period of time, Islam spread all the way to India and all the way into Spain. It was coming up into Europe.
Except in the year 732, Charles Martel won a great battle that stopped the influx of the Muslims into Europe. This battle, whether you are looking at church history or any history, is one of the most significant battles in the history of the world, because this stopped the spread of Islam.
It ended up retreating. It stayed in Spain for many years and eventually was driven back out of Spain, but it remained mainly within the Far East.
There are different ways you can look at Islam. What really repulsed Muhammad, when he was born, was the idolatry that he saw within his city—not only pagan idolatry, but also Christian idolatry.
Because of the idolatry, the mixture of superstition and everything, he rejected this teaching of Christianity and went out and received his own revelation.
Now, if you look at what went on during this time, through all of this spread, what was mainly impacted was not the true spiritual movement of the church. The true spiritual movement of the church continued.
But Christian idolatry and pagan idolatry were dealt a terrible blow throughout this region.
Some writers say that Islam was really God’s judgment on a degenerate church. We know from the Old Testament that many times the Lord would use pagan lands to bring judgment upon the people of Israel.
Some would say that Islam was just God’s judgment on a church that had gotten so far away from His original heart.
But throughout all of this spread, those places where there was a true spiritual movement of God—and we will see some of these movements next week—they were not suffering. They may have been delayed.
What was really put to rest in many of these areas was proud ecclesiastical systems and the idolatry that accompanied them. It was put down once and for all.
It is interesting, just the impact that Islam would have. We see it today still coming forth. We see it growing in a greater measure.
It is sad, in this day and time, that you can almost trace the growth of Islam. As the spiritual condition of the church increased, the influence of Islam throughout the centuries would decrease.
As the church’s influence and the true testimony of the Lord would decrease, the influence of Islam would increase.
Does that call us to pray? As we see Islam moving in this day and time, does that call us to pray for the Lord to have a people who really stand for His interests and for His heart in this day and time?
The last thing I wanted to touch on this morning was another major event that occurred in 1054. There was a great break right along this line between the East and the West.
Over here you have the Roman Catholic Church, and over on this side is the Greek Orthodox Church. We have talked about some of the differences between East and West before, so we are not going to go into that.
But what we see in this division between East and West is that it set up two power bases officially throughout the world.
Actually, it was through the Eastern, or Greek Orthodox Church, that the gospel initially went into Russia.
Around 955, one of the princesses of Russia was in Constantinople—Princess Olga. She went there and, most people feel, was genuinely saved. She went back and started pressing her son and her family to consider this new religion.
As they did, they saw what was going on in the rest of the world. Right around AD 1000, the Greek Orthodox relationship became the national religion. Back then it was called Rus; it was not Russia. It was just Rus, in Kiev.
It was set up and actually continued on from 988 up to 1917, when they had the revolution. It spread all throughout Russia.
Basically, it was an outgrowth of the Eastern Orthodox Church. At the beginning, like many things, there were those who really knew the Lord. But as it grew on, it became that national religion and departed in a great way.
You remember the story of how Constantine would pay his soldiers to get baptized? Well, in Russia, citizens who wanted to own property had to be baptized. If you wanted to buy a house, first you went down and got baptized, and then you bought the house.
It takes away a little of the true spiritual motivation for all this. But you see that it was in that time that the gospel first went forth into Russia and spread throughout that land for a good time.
Now, as we come to the close of this negative aspect of the church in Thyatira, what are the lessons that we need to learn?
To me, it always comes back to those words of simplicity and purity. I like what it says in Revelation 3 to the church in Philadelphia—their commendation: “You have kept My word and have not denied My name.”
My Word and My name. We see so often how, when we get away from His Word, it becomes our word. When we get away from His church, it becomes our church.
What did the Lord say in the Gospels? He started off, He called it “My house.” In the end, it was “your house.” They had taken it away. Whose house is it today?
The Lord wants it to be known by His name. In His name there is all authority and power. It is not an authority and power of this world, but it is an authority and a power and a way to go through, even in the midst of dark ages.
There is no covering up the fact that this was a tough time to live in. It was very difficult.
Yes, as we will see next week, there were those in the same situations and circumstances—and actually harder circumstances—who held to His Word. They did not deny His name, and they received the crown of life.
That is the desire of our heart in the times that we are living in. Shall we pray?
Lord, we do just thank You that, Lord, You present before us so much of Yourself. We see at times how hard we are to learn lessons.
Lord, we do just pray that You continue to search our hearts. You would lead us, Lord, in Your path of life. You would lead us, Lord, in a way that would really show us a greater measure of Yourself.
You would help us, Lord, to learn lessons, to not be doomed to repeat them, and that we would be those who would be known by Your name, Lord.
Lord, help us to really walk in ways that would show forth the simplicity and purity of Yourself, that we not yield to an influence of a Jezebel, but we would be under Thy headship and Thy lordship. In Jesus’ name, amen.