Well, we are thankful that we can gather again this morning. I’d like for us to turn to the Gospel of Matthew, what we’re calling kind of our theme verse for this series on the testimony of Jesus throughout church history: Matthew 16.
This is the precious promise we have from the Lord, and the great word of I will. Matthew 16:17-18:
And Jesus answered and said to him,
“Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father, Who is in heaven.
And I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it.”
You know, we’re thankful for that precious and magnificent promise, because it would appear to the natural eye at times like the church is a failure. But we’re thankful that, when we see from God’s perspective, when we see from a heavenly view, we see God doing a great work. We see that He is doing this in spite of all of the opposition and hindrance that the enemy is trying to bring upon Him.
So, we’re thankful that this is the foundation we have as we move forward, looking to the Lord completing His great work. And we’re hoping it gets completed sooner than later.
We’ve shared, too, throughout this series that what the real battle is over—the battle—is the testimony of Jesus. Let’s look again at Revelation 1, where the Lord testifies of Himself. It is a testimony of Jesus, so we’ll see what He says of Himself in Revelation 1:17-18.
When John saw Him, he said he fell down at His feet as a dead man. And the Lord laid His right hand upon John, saying:
“Do not be afraid.
I am the First and the Last,
the living One;
I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore,
and I have the keys of death and Hades.”
Now, we don’t have time to go back over all the fullness of what the testimony of Jesus is. We did that in the introductory time. But, in a summary way, we see that the testimony of Jesus—really, these verses show that He is the all-inclusive One. He is everything. He’s the Alpha; He’s the Omega; He’s the First, the Last. He’s our very life.
It is the character and nature of Christ that God is looking for within His people. That’s what He’s interested in: Him being our all in all, Him being our total life, and then also the display that He is the all-victorious One. And we’re thankful that we gather today in the victory that we have in Him.
One final verse as we start today: we have seen it from the very beginning, and we see it becoming more and more clear, this battle. There is a great call that the Lord has upon us. Paul wrote to the Corinthians these verses in 2 Corinthians 11, and these verses rang true during the time of Corinth. They ring true today and throughout history.
Second Corinthians 11:2-3:
“I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin.
But I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.”
You know, this is what the battle is over, as we’ve said. It is staying in that place of simplicity and purity of our devotion to Him. Many, we will see throughout history, have allowed little things to start to erode that. We get distracted from the purity of it. Stuff is either taken away or added to something.
When something is pure, you know, the two ways that you make it impure are: you take something out of it, or you add something to it. Either way, it is not as pure as it was.
Also, we see that there is a simplicity that we have in Christ, and it is Christ alone—Christ alone. He is our all in all. If we try to add something to that, or take away something from that, it gets very complicated, and we’re led astray from it. It is a great battle that we’re in, to stay in that simplicity and purity of our devotion to Him.
So, as we continue this morning, as always, we’re not looking so much at the history, but we want to see the ways of God and see the faithfulness of ones in the midst of great conflict and opposition that came upon them. So, let’s have another word of prayer.
Lord, we are thankful, Lord, for the provision we’ve had in You. Lord, we remembered You this morning, and we were just ever grateful for that, Lord—the precious table. There again, that simplicity: “I was lost, but now I am found. I was blind, but now I see.” Praise God.
Well, we want to stay in that place, down at Your feet, looking at You and beholding You. As we come to Your Word this morning, Lord, we have that open-heart attitude that You would speak to us and show us Your ways. Show us the path of life that You have for us in the days that we’re living in, that we can be encouraged, helped, exhorted, and warned by the ones that have gone before us. In Thy name we pray. Amen.
So, as we’re starting Part 3 today, as usual, we’re just looking at a bird’s-eye view. We can’t look at the details of a lot of these things, and quite often, as we get to something, as I do the bird’s-eye view, there are a lot of resources out there. If you want to follow up on something specific, it’d be good to go ahead and do that. But we’re just looking at the overall view.
From a point of review, we saw how the church was in God’s heart from eternity past. It has always been there, and praise God, that church had a good and healthy beginning. The birth of the church in the Book of Acts was glorious, and it was so healthy. There was no lack, and the need was being met.
As we’ve said, the testimony of Jesus is the key to everything that God is doing. As we follow that testimony of Jesus, as we keep our eyes upon that, that is the very key and essence to what the Lord is doing.
We see, even at the end of the New Testament, how the church was starting to enter into a time of declension. Certain men were taking the place of the headship of Christ at times. Error was coming in. Things were becoming lukewarm. There was an element of declension and weakness starting to come about even then.
We looked last time at how, through the persecution by the Roman Empire, how severe it was. But praise God, there were those faithful witnesses that endured whatever persecution came upon them. They maintained that simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ and loved not their lives unto death.
We also saw how they encountered many internal problems, and we actually see this throughout history, even today. There is always a battle from without and a battle within. We’re having to keep our eyes on Him, because He is the answer to both of them.
We left off last time where Christianity was legalized by that unholy alliance with Constantine. Today, what we’d like to consider is the impact of that unholy alliance; the relationship between the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church; Islam; the canonization of the Bible; faithful witnesses; and then the continued battle within.
But praise God, in the midst of that, there is always that silver thread in dark times. There is that precious testimony of Jesus that continues on.
Now, as you consider the impact of Constantine—and we touched a little bit on this last time—we see that when he became emperor, Christianity became the state religion. There was this alliance between church and state, and there was a great corruption done there.
Constantine made himself the head of the visible church. Of course, at the same time, he was also the Pontifex Maximus. What a name—Pontifex Maximus. That’s not like he pulled a muscle or something. I mean, he was the high priest of the Roman pagan religion, or something. But it just shows the corruption and the folly of it.
Then the church became open to all. It was popular and accepted, and so many unbelievers came within the so-called church. Sadly, what the enemy couldn’t do through persecution, he did by corruption within.
So, as we continue on, at this point we kind of have what I call a great divide in the way that I’ll be sharing. Up to this point, I’ve been able to kind of interchangeably use the words church, testimony, and Christian altogether. But after this point, those words—particularly the word church in a broad, general sense—become difficult to use.
Even if you look around today, I hate actually using the word church because it is so misunderstood. It has been profaned, it has been desecrated, and it is just misapplied in every which way. I had some help with what words to use, because the first word that came to my mind I couldn’t use here. It was not a proper word to use, and I didn’t want to offend anybody.
So, as we’re going ahead, what we’re going to be looking at is really the distinction between the testimony of Jesus—that which is born of God, Christ-centered, eternal. It is the life of Christ. That is what we’re following.
That will be compared with Christendom, which is man-made, man-centered, and earthbound. Now, Christendom can do many good works. They can do many works in the name of the Lord. But the difference in both of these is simply the origin. The origin of one is Christ, and the origin of the other is man. That is what makes the eternal difference.
You know, I’m thankful that in the days we’re living in, with all the tragedies all over the world, there are a lot of good people doing a lot of good works. They might not be of eternal value, but people need help, and they’re taking care of ones. But we’re focusing during this series particularly on the eternal things—the testimony of Jesus.
As we look upon this, particularly with Constantine, as we start off with the impact of that unholy alliance, several factors occurred. The political capital moved from Rome to Constantinople. The Roman Catholic Church then assumed power in the Western world.
To show in brief form what happened: the emperor before Constantine, Diocletian, in order to manage the Roman Empire, divided it between East and West. There was a headquarters in Constantinople, and there was a headquarters in Rome. The Roman ruler was mainly the predominant one, and the Constantinople ruler was number two—a close number one.
But they controlled the Roman Empire, and the Roman Empire went all through what we call modern-day France and Spain, all through North Africa, and all the way up into Britain. The eastern part was all over through Turkey, Asia Minor, Greece, and all of that.
So, what happened when Constantine took over? He liked Constantinople, so he moved the capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople. What that did was leave a vacuum of power in Rome itself.
Whereas the person in Rome had been the powerful one, he left and moved to Constantinople, and there was a vacuum left. Who was there ready to fill in that vacuum other than the Roman Catholic Church—the pope at that time?
So, by Constantine moving the capital out, it left a way for that Roman Catholic Church and the pope to start to gain more and more power, not only in the church, but in the world. There was a great increase in power that the pope and the Roman Catholic Church had over the whole world at this time. This was where it was starting.
Gregory I was the first one to claim the name of pope. But then this little guy, Pepin the Short—okay?—helped the pope conquer Italy. He was from France, and through him he was made the first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
It was called the Holy Roman Empire because it was endorsed by the church. There were always two entities: you had the Holy Roman Empire, and you had the Roman Catholic Church. But really, the power was mainly in the Roman Catholic Church.
Probably one of the most famous emperors was Charlemagne. At different points in time, depending upon the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire or the pope within the church, there was often a great power struggle over who was going to be in charge.
Literally, for many centuries, the pope would be appointing who was in charge of France, Spain, or Germany—all within that umbrella of that empire. The pope had great influence and great power. But there was always this tension and struggle.
Sometimes the pope was totally dominant over everything. Other times, the pope would be a weaker one, and maybe the emperor would be strong and gain power. So, it was always this tension. It was funny: it was a tension, but they actually needed each other. Both of them needed each other to succeed.
That really continued on pretty close to the Reformation, before all of that ended and came to an end. I know we’re getting a little bit on history here, but this is the Holy Roman Empire, how large it was. The Catholic Church still had influence over France, Spain, and parts of Britain.
I’m presenting the negative first, okay? Because in the midst of all of this stuff, there were faithful believers. So, I wanted us to see how bad it was, to see what these believers were up against.
If we look at just a few significant dates with the Roman Catholic Church at this point in time, one of the big things that they held over people was that there was no salvation outside of the Roman Catholic Church. This gave them great power.
You have to understand, most of the people at this time were very uneducated. They were very superstitious, and whatever the church told them, they believed. They couldn’t read the Bible. They didn’t have Bibles, and they couldn’t read them. So, it was whatever they were saying.
They kept introducing more and more things to draw the people into coming under more and more control of the church. You see how they go to worship Mary, the bishop, and purgatory. Then, in 600, even the worship service gets converted to Latin. That was solely a power move.
The people were dependent upon the priest to worship for them. The worship was only now in Latin. Most people didn’t know Latin; only the priests knew Latin. So they were now in a place where they could say, “I can do worship for you.” It’s just a power struggle. It is a thing about man.
So much of this is really sad—the degradation and the way you can see it going down, and how long it has been going on.
Then, in 1054, there was a great schism between the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Western Church, which is the Roman Catholic Church. This was the Western, Latin-speaking area, and there were Greek Orthodox believers in the East.
Now, if you read articles and look at this in history, they will try to identify doctrinal and theological differences. But what it boiled down to—why they split—was a power struggle between the head guy in the East and the head guy in the West in the church: the pope in Rome versus the head guy in Constantinople.
It gets back to the Scripture: “Who is the greatest?” Neither of them wanted to give up being the greatest. So, they had this split, and it is still split today. They have kind of made friends outwardly over the last years, but we see the Greek Orthodox Church and its influence all through Russia and elsewhere. This was a great divide that occurred.
Another thing that the dear brethren were up against during this day and time was the rise of Islam. We have the birth of Muhammad, then the Hijra, which is the migration from Mecca to Medina, and then we see how Islam continued to spread.
It spread all throughout the East into India and Central Asia, down through Arabia, all across North Africa, and into Spain. Then it was stopped in Spain at what is called the Battle of Tours. That was in 732.
Literally, Islam would have swept on into Europe, but it was actually a miraculous battle that stopped them there. They started right around Syria, and eventually, beyond the time we’re looking at, they ended up moving over into Constantinople and into the Balkan area also.
But we see that it had a great influence. You talk about a simple gospel—theirs was, “Believe in Muhammad or die.” They just went through the lands and said, “You believe or you’re going to die.” So, a lot of people just said yes. Obviously, faithful ones who said no were put to death. It was pretty simple.
So, between Islam, the power of the Roman Catholic Church, and the Holy Roman Empire, all of these dynamics were going on. This is what believers during this period of time—about 300 to 1000—were having to live under. I mean, it was very oppressive, hard times.
One of the first steps that they took was actually the canonization of the Bible. Now, obviously, I’m not going to go through all of how the Bible came about, but there are books on that if you want to read it. It is very interesting.
We know that a little before the Lord was born, the Old Testament was translated into Greek, so people could read that. We know that from about 45 to 95, the books in the New Testament that we’re familiar with were written.
What really precipitated what is called the canonization of Scripture was Marcion, around 140 to 150. He was a heretic, and he established his own New Testament. He edited writings he did not like, including much of Paul’s letters, and added some of his own writings. He published this as the official New Testament.
That really prompted the believers to say, “Wait a minute. We need to come together and establish what the valid books are. What Scriptures should be in the New Testament?” So they went through this process.
Finally, in 397, it was established at the council there, among various ones, the 27 books. There were various discussions that went on during this period of time about which books should be included and which ones should not be included. If you’re a historian, it is an interesting read.
One of the things during the persecution of Diocletian was that the New Testament Scriptures themselves were confiscated and destroyed. The enemy has always hated the Scripture. All throughout history, we will see one of the ways that the enemy tries to defeat the people of God is by taking away the Word of God and making it illegal.
We are even starting to see sniffs of that within this country today—how the Word of God is being turned and almost projected to be a hate book. So, we need to learn the Word very well within our own hearts while it is still called today.
Because you’ll see all throughout history that there is a great battle over the Word of God. We’re thankful that we have the freedom to get it in our hearts today.
But in the midst of all this, too, we’re thankful there were these faithful witnesses. You have ones all throughout northern Europe—Ulfilas, Priscillian, Ninian, and various others. We’re thankful how the Lord touched these individual hearts.
The Roman Empire was large, and people were free to move throughout that empire. So, when believers were scattered, some of them made it all the way up into Britain, throughout Germany, France, and different places. There were individual believers scattered in different places, and they had an impact on various hearts and lives. We’re thankful for that.
Ulfilas was among the Goths in Northern Europe. He invented an alphabet there and translated the Scripture into Gothic so that ones could actually have the Word of God. Imagine inventing an alphabet. It is kind of like what Wycliffe does today throughout the nations. They invent an alphabet and teach it to the people.
He used the Word of God as the great teaching instrument for the people. In his earnest faith in the Word of God, his very life was a life that won people to Christ.
Then, also in southern France, you have Priscillian. Priscillian was a young aristocrat, and he was actually a Roman priest, but he got saved. As he read the Word, the Word of God converted him.
Then he started sharing the truth—the real Word of God—with others around him, and many were getting saved. Because he was sharing the truth in the Word of God, he was the first Christian to be martyred by the Roman Catholic Church, in 385.
All of his writings and teaching—everything—was burned, and they destroyed him. One of the characteristics you see throughout this age is that, as you’re trying to find out things about these people, it is really difficult because the Roman Catholic Church destroyed all of their documents.
So much of what we know about these people is actually what the Roman Catholic Church charged them with. They would say, “This person was a heretic. They didn’t believe that Mary is the mother of God. This person didn’t believe in transubstantiation. This person didn’t believe in all of these sacraments.” So they made them heretics.
You don’t have a lot of their own writings at first, but you have the writings of what people wrote against them to see what they believed.
Then we see Ninian. He was in Scotland, and he was actually educated in Rome. Then he was converted also, and he really preached the Word of God. It is an amazing testimony, if you ever want to Google and read about him.
He ministered among the Druids, and many of them came to know the Lord. There was a darkness associated with the Druids, but the power of the Word of God set many of them free so that they could come to know the Lord God.
When you look at these situations, these various ones, the darkness that they were ministering in, and the impact of one person, it encourages us for today. We see the darkness growing. We see the darkness getting darker and darker, and you can feel there is a hopelessness: “What can we do?”
But praise God, when ones were given to Him and simply followed Him, He made a way for them to have an impact. We are thankful that the same Lord we’re serving today can have that same impact today.
Now, the next person that we can see is Patrick. First of all, you know, Patrick was neither Irish nor Catholic. Okay? Let’s just be clear. There are more legends about Patrick than anybody in history. He was neither Irish nor Catholic. He was a good Scotsman.
He was actually born in a Christian family, but he rejected the Lord at an early age. One day, he was out working, and some slave traders came from Ireland—of all places, those wicked Ireland people—and they captured him. He was 15 years old.
There was human trafficking back in those days. That is what it was. They took him to Ireland, and he was a slave working on a farm there. But praise God, in the midst of that, he found the Lord. While he was a slave, he found the Lord in Ireland.
Six years later, he was able to escape, and he went back to Scotland. After he had been there for a while, the Lord really spoke to him. It was almost like Paul when Paul had that Macedonian vision to go over to Macedonia.
In a similar way, Patrick had a vision, and it was like the Lord was calling him to return to Ireland. He returned back to Ireland and lived there the rest of his life. Over 100,000 people came to know the Lord through him. Tremendous impact by this one dear one.
Many were influenced, and not only did they live in Ireland, but they would spread out and go to other places to share the gospel.
Another one who was really influential in those days was Columba. He was from Ireland. Some people try to draw a connection as to whether he was influenced by Patrick, but you cannot say with absolute certainty. We don’t know.
He went to a little island off Scotland called the Hebrides, and he founded a community called Iona. It was a community of believers, and they had a plurality of leadership. They had a simplicity in their worship.
They had a Lord’s Table that was very similar to ours. They had a table that just had a cup and a loaf on it. That was encouraging for me. The ministry of the Word was through all the brethren, as the Lord would speak, and there was a great encouragement.
They saw the beauty of life together. It wasn’t just individual. They were starting to see something of what they called a community together—this assembly life together.
Because of that, brethren went out by twelves all throughout Britain and Europe. They settled in many colonies. Today you would call that church planting. I’m not sure they were really into church planting. They were just there to spread the gospel and testify of Christ.
They were not trying to build an empire or anything for themselves. They were captured by the Lord in such a way. You have to remember, back in the days they were living in, when ones were going to move from one area to another country, they were literally leaving everything behind and going to some strange place that they did not know a lot about.
They went just to be there amongst them, to share and testify of the gospel. It was a glorious work that Columba did with all the dear ones there.
The last one we’re going to touch on is Nestorius. Nestorius and the Nestorians are probably the name that has been more greatly misrepresented by the Roman Catholic Church than anything.
If you look through much of official history, many of these people are called heretics because official history has them as heretics. But Nestorius was from Syria, and he emphasized the humanity of Christ.
In that era, the region they were in and the influence that the church was having, there was a focus on the deity of Christ, but there wasn’t anything being shared or promoted on the humanity of Christ. So he was talking about how Christ, yes, was deity, but also that there was a humanity to Him.
We need to see that—how Christ can be that One. The reason He had that humanity was so that He could sympathize with us in all of our weaknesses.
Because of that, they thought he was denying the deity of Christ, which he was not, if you fully read his writings. The main thing against him was that he was very vocal that Mary was not the mother of God.
He was kicked out of his area, and he and his followers went to Persia, India, and China. Actually, in certain parts of China, you can go back and find historical documents and stones that are still there to this day, testifying of how the gospel first went there back in this early time.
It is amazing how, through persecution, this gospel is being spread through ones who literally stay in a place of simplicity with Christ. They are not caring about themselves. Through this, God found ones who had a heart for Himself and was able to use them.
Would that we have a heart available to Him in the days that we’re living in.
But not only were there battles from without—we mentioned earlier battles from within. It is interesting: as you start to look at some of the battles from within, they are still going on today.
This first one, Arianism, says that Jesus was the firstborn of all created beings. He was above everybody, but technically not equal with the Father. They said Christ was a created being.
We know there are certain teachings today—certain ones—that deny either the deity or humanity of Christ. But we know the truth: Jesus was not created. He was eternal, and He is equal with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. There is an equality there.
But we see how just these subtle things can come in.
The second one, Pelagianism, was a denial of original sin and taught that man is born in innocence. What this teaching said was that Adam would have died anyway. Adam died not because of his sin, but he would have died anyway.
Adam was only responsible, they said, and we are only responsible and accountable for our own sins. Most of these heresies take different Scriptures from different places, bring them out of context, and say, “See, you can look at the law. Anybody is only responsible for their own sin. Therefore, Adam was only responsible for his sin.”
It kind of tweaks it a little bit and gets it wrong. They taught that everybody is born in a place of innocence like Adam. Therefore, salvation is based on man’s own will to choose right, or self-help. You can improve yourself if you do better.
I think we’re hearing that today. We hear that gospel of self-help quite often. But we know that all are born in sin because of the Fall, and salvation is only by the grace of God.
Then you get to Manichaeism. This one drew from Gnosticism, Zoroastrianism, and Buddhism, and tried to establish a universal religion based on “truth” from all of them. Basically, it was the first ecumenical movement.
Ecumenicalism is not something of the twenty-first century. It has been going on a long time. You see these things we talked about the first time, about how there is nothing new under the sun.
You can see how these things have been going on for centuries and centuries and centuries, and we’re just seeing the continued fruit of these errors manifest. That is why it is so vital that we need to know the truth and be established in the Word of God.
We can think something is a new teaching—“Oh, this is something profound”—but it is not.
Finally, sacerdotalism taught that salvation can only be found in the church by sacraments administered by the priest. This is basically salvation by works. You have to be in the right place at the right time in the right church.
Sadly, we know that even outside the Catholic Church today, there are certain so-called Protestant churches that say if you’re not part of them, you’re not a believer. That continues throughout this day and time.
We’re thankful that salvation is by faith in Christ, His atoning death, and resurrection. So, these are some of the things they were having to battle. In the midst of having to battle things from without—like Islam and everything else in the Holy Roman Empire—there was turmoil going on within.
We’re thankful for these faithful ones that were clear on knowing the Lord and the simplicity of that. That is why there was this silver thread in the dark times.
The reason I call it a silver thread is that if you looked at the big picture, you could not see the testimony of Jesus with your natural eye. But, in reality, all throughout history there is this silver thread.
Silver means the redemptive work of Christ: the forgiveness of our sins through His death and resurrection. There is that thread all throughout history of the testimony of Jesus. It might be sometimes just a sliver, a flickering wick, a flickering candle, a smoldering wick—but it is always there.
That is so encouraging. In spite of the dark times, there was always that testimony. They were suffering great persecution and martyrdom. As I mentioned, the Roman Church always called them heretics. If you weren’t within the Roman Church, if you were opposing them, you were considered a heretic.
But these ones believed the Bible was the only authority, not the pope; that the true church is from God, not man; and they basically lived simple lives free from the world.
Many were called by various names, but the names were put on them by other people. They simply called themselves Christians. We are just going to look at a few of them today: the Paulicians, the Bogomils, and the Cathars or Puritans.
The Paulicians were through Armenia and Asia Minor. Then you get into the Balkans, and really, they moved from place to place because of persecution. The Paulicians started in Asia Minor, then, because of persecution, had to move into the Balkans, where the Bogomils were.
Then, under persecution, they had to move into France, Spain, southern France, and northern Italy, where you have the Cathars. Next time we’ll look at the Waldensians. They are a little bit later as far as the time period.
One thing to point out is that in the region of Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, and Kosovo, these believers moved into that area. So, you had a large number of believers there.
At this point in time, Islam was centered around Asia Minor. Finally, it broke through Constantinople, and Islam started coming into this area and having a great influence. There were great battles.
The battle between believers and the natives there, and the Islam that came in, is actually the origin of what has been going on till our day and time with the ethnic cleansing between Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia. Again, that is not something new. It traces its way all the way back to this point in time.
We’re thankful that, in spite of all that persecution, there were faithful ones there that held to the testimony of Jesus. Praise God for that.
Now, the Paulicians were, as we said, mainly in Armenia, Asia Minor, and Mesopotamia. Their key writing was called The Key of Truth.
What is the key of truth? What’s your Sunday school answer to every question? Jesus. Okay, the key of truth was Christ. That was the simplicity of that teaching: the key of truth was Christ.
It talked about salvation through faith, the baptism of believers, and the Lord’s Table being for believers. It got into family life, how to raise a child according to the Scripture, and serving in humility.
They found their spiritual unity in Christ, not in a teaching or belonging to a certain system. They were in Christ. Even as we have the book over here, The Believer Brought into Him, that was a living thing to them. They saw that as their way of life.
It was very precious, but under great persecution many of them fled to the Balkans. Others who stayed behind ended up allying themselves with the Muslims and were defeated.
They thought that they could make peace with them: “We can try to be good neighbors. We’ll live in peaceful coexistence.” It didn’t work. They were defeated. But thankfully, many of them fled to the Balkans and were safe.
Then you have the Bogomils, which means “friends of God”—all these funny names here. As we mentioned, they were in the Balkans, throughout Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia, driven there by persecution.
Again, it is very repetitive: the priesthood of all believers. When they came together, it was practiced in life. They practiced the Lord’s Table. They had plurality of leadership. The true church is the body of Christ, and they were edified by the teaching of ministering brothers.
As various brothers had something, they would share, and they would encourage one another in that.
Now, the Bogomils got caught from both sides. Islam was coming from one direction, and then the pope, through the Holy Roman Empire under his influence, sent crusades against them. So, they were being attacked by the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church from one side, and Islam from the other. They were getting wedged in.
Finally, many of them fled. That is where they fled up into other parts of Europe—northern Italy and southern France.
But others had to make a choice. The ones who were going to stay there said, “Okay, we’ve got the pope coming this way, the crusades of the Roman army coming this way, and we’ve got the Muslims coming this way.” It was like, who was the lesser of two evils?
To tell you the testimony, they chose the Turks, the Muslims, as the lesser of two evils. Some converted. It is sad how some of them did, and some did not end that well. But there were just the pressures they were under. It was either flee or make a choice.
Sadly, they chose to be identified with the Muslims there.
But the ones that fled became the group called the Cathars—Cathars or Puritans. This was mainly in northern Italy and southern France. One of the key brethren there was Peter de Bruys, and Henry. Peter was burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Church. It was very sad.
Again, they were teaching believer’s baptism instead of infant baptism, the priesthood of all believers, and the simple reality of the Lord’s Table. There was a simplicity to these ones as they gathered.
Many times they had to gather in hiding places. They could not have large gatherings. We will touch a little more on that next time.
The person who persecuted them greatly was Bernard of Clairvaux. He was Roman Catholic, an abbot in France, and probably the most powerful man in France at that point in time. He greatly persecuted these dear ones.
There is a great lesson here, because, you know, Bernard of Clairvaux—how many of you have heard of him? We have five of his hymns in our Christ in Song.
We have “Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee,” “O Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts,” and “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded.” He wrote beautiful hymns.
Yet, at the same time, he was persecuting what we would call true believers because they were not part of the Roman Catholic Church. You can draw a similarity to Saul of Tarsus—how he was so zealous for the Jewish religion and thought he was serving God, that he ended up persecuting the very believers.
Bernard—you can’t deny, based on his life, that he knew the Lord within the Catholic system. But you had to be within the Catholic Church, and these people were outside. It is perplexing, but it is also a warning.
He was so blind in his loyalty, yet he knew the Lord. You can tell from his hymns and his writings that he knew the Lord. But one aspect of him was so blind and loyal to a certain system that he missed Christ and the other believers—the true believers—and ended up persecuting them.
His persecution was very effective. Next time we’ll see that he was very involved in one of the Crusades, another tragic thing of Christendom in that day and time.
It is sad because if you read about him, you see many good things and the very precious hymns that he wrote. Yet, at the same time, he was a persecutor of true believers. When I was reading about him, that was very sobering.
Oftentimes, one of the things you start to see throughout history is that the persecuted ones can then become the persecutors. The Roman Catholic Church persecuted the Protestants, and then the Protestants ended up persecuting the Anabaptists. The persecuted ones become the persecutors.
I think from Bernard there is a great lesson for us to learn. That is why I appreciate David’s psalm where he says:
“Search me, O Lord, and try me,
and see if there is any wicked way within me.”
I don’t want to be governed by blind spots or blind loyalty, but by really allowing the Lord to show us how we are to be living in this day and time.
We’ll go ahead and finish up this for today, but next time we’ll move a little more throughout these Dark Ages. We’ll look at some glorious things like the Inquisition, the Crusades, and getting up to the pre-Reformation.
In many ways, I don’t like talking about the negative stuff, but you have to see the picture and the environment that ones were living in. It encourages us for the days that we’re living in, because, as we said, the intensity of evil is growing, the darkness is growing, and the corruption of everything is growing.
Even the question is asked today: “What is truth?” If we don’t know what the truth is, we can be led astray, we can come under things, and we can faint in the day of adversity.
So, the desire is that, as we see faithful ones—this silver thread throughout history—ones are able to remain loyal and faithful to the Lord, faithful to the testimony of Jesus, and maintaining that simplicity and purity to Him.
May that keep us pressing on. Where we have things in our lives that are distracting us from that, may the Holy Spirit be convicting us and setting us free, that we could be that bright light in the midst of a dark time. So, let’s pray.
Lord, we’re very grateful for the testimony of Your life and the very goodness of it. Lord, You are just so faithful, and we worship You for that, Lord.
Lord, we see these ones from so long ago. It is hard to relate, but we can also see that there are things that we can relate to. So, we pray, Lord, that we could be learning these lessons.
May we be open, Lord, to Your Spirit working in us, that we would stay in that place of simplicity and purity of devotion to You, and stay in that place of following the Lamb wherever He goes.
May the testimony of Jesus be a very clear testimony within our lives, together and individually. In Thy name we pray. Amen.