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Why Church History Still Matters: The Stories That Shape Your Faith. – Highlight Episode 365 · The Living Waters Podcast

• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's also important to recognize the Reformation wasn't bringing new ideas to the table.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: It was restorative in nature.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: If you think about like an old classic car, it comes off, it comes off the factory line, brand spanking new, no missing bolts and no rust.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: And over the course of uh, you know, the course of of years and years and years, 1500 years, um the the Catholic Church collected rust.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: They lost their bolts.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: And what Luther and other reformers wanted to do is restore it back to its original form.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: And so one of the big arguments, you know, that I'll hear often is like, oh, is this new, these new ideas that they were bringing in with their with their views of law, because they were they were studied as theologians and lawyers.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: But they were quoting, they were quote quoting, you know, constant, I'm sorry, they they were quoting old church fathers like Augustine and uh and Polycarp and uh Ignatius.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: They the the reason like that they were looking back on church history and trying to bring forward the originality, the purest form of what was originally understood as grace.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: So when we talk about the Reformation, it might be good if we give a little synopsis of what it was because a lot of people listening, like me, uh, don't really know what, or didn't really know what a ref the Reformation was.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it really was birthed in the confessional where Luther saw his sin and couldn't get rid of it.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And and he read the Just Shall Live by Faith, and it just exploded in his heart and realized salvation's a free gift of God.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly that burden rolled off his back, and that was his motivation to nothing.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_03: I would say uh the Reformation was a culmination.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it was it was the the the climax of what had been brewing.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: You know, often we and and this is the big error that that a lot of well-meaning Catholics or or even Orthodox would make.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's as if though, like all of a sudden there were these new believers who had different views, but you trace church history all throughout, and there were those who were who were rebelling against the the what became the norms of quote unquote the church.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and the Catholics teach they they act as if we believe that Christianity began in the 16th century.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Come on.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, ridiculous.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: No, God always had his remnant, that there were always those.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we can trace them back to the Waldensians and even before way before that.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there were there were strands of people that stood up.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_03: But again, the Catholics also pretend like the church sprung up, like the Catholic Church in its current form sprung up in the first century of the church.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_03: Of course not.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_03: You can you can trace back and look at the different things that were not there and then and then and then got there.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_03: And like I said earlier, they trace back to, I believe, the connections with the pagan cultures around them.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: And that in the West, it was the the pagan Roman culture, in the East, it was the the pagan Greek culture.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: So, Oscar?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I I love that you meant the culmination.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: You said the culmination of something because something that stood out to me in um, I think it was Bruce Shelley's book that he talks about history, and he says more often than not, we want to talk about history as like this one hero, this one moment.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: And that's because it's easy for us to wrap our head around a moment, but history often works more like um more like the rising of a sun, in that at some point it's just up, and it kind of was just coming along the way.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: And the reformation is very similar.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, we we often go to the 95 thesis, but uh others would say actually it was the invention of the printing press that democratized the Bible and made literacy possible, made all these guys finally be able to read and study and develop their doctrine and their theology, and that led to Luther's 95 thesis.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: And the one other thing that I want to mention about Luther is that Luther did not seek to be a rebel.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: He he was not He tried to work things out.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: He was trying, it's called the Reformation because he was trying to reform the reason why the stapling the 95 thesis on the wall, it was not a weird thing.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: He didn't invent that.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: Theologians and and communicate uh people who worked at the church, these doctors, these uh these teachers would often staple a thesis to the wall to start a conversation, not always a debate, but always a conversation.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so that, like we often think, whoa, crazy, where did he get the idea of no?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: That was a very common practice.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: And the goal of Luther was to reform the church.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: The church, the Catholic Church, made him a rebel because they refused to reform.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, we look at these different characters in church history and not just church history, I'd say biblical history, going even back to guys like Nebuchadnezzar, like Cyrus, that God uses instruments in his hands, and you'll see glimmers of them, you know, giving glory to the God of Israel.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: Were they really converted, were they not?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: We don't know.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: So, but but again, it's credited to Constantine because whether it, whether it was something that he called or not, it's his authorization of it made it possible.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_03: Had he not done that, it couldn't have happened.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: So what do the Council of Nicaea establish?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: So there there were a number of things that established, but but one of the biggest things was affirming the the deity of Christ and and the the triune nature of God.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_03: And so um, you know, especially especially that Christ was divine in nature.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um, you know, and again, Athanasius was he was a deacon back then at the council, he became a key defender uh of orthodoxy in that time.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: But you know, Arius, that guy was a big troublemaker.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_03: This this could have split the church.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_03: And it was it was massive.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I often say when I'm out sharing and somebody says, Well, Christianity borrowed from other pagan religions, you know, with without even going into uh great detail concerning that, I will respond back and I'll say, just because uh something is old doesn't mean something is true.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: We we have to remember that, right?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Antiquity does not validate truth, truth is truth.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh man has been swallowing nonsense since the dawn of time, and that does not mean that truth does not exist.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: And just because there's alternate views and thoughts and different worldviews that exist doesn't mean that uh one of them is wrong or that uh they're all right, right?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, antiquity doesn't necessarily mean something is true.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus said, sanctify them by your truth, your word is truth.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so if we want to know what truth is, uh we we have to open up the word of God.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: And when we start talking about uh Eastern Orthodoxy, Russian Orthodoxy, Greek Orthodoxy, uh there's a schism even within themselves, right?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's no agreement uh amongst themselves.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when you enter into uh maybe uh that sort of worldview, that denomination, and they begin to say, Welcome home, you know, uh we alone had have uh uh the laurels of history.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we're able to trace back all the way to uh uh Peter.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody else can do that, but we've done that.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then we have uh the Greek church or the Russian church or the Roman Catholic Church that'll say the same exact thing.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we we need to be careful with that, right?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because none of that holds any weight to what scripture has to say, right?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're not meditating on truth, you're gonna believe lies are true.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so the only way we can know what truth is is by opening up God's word, and there we get the very heartbeat of God.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Ray, I'm glad earlier you went back to Acts and you mentioned Acts.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um the the significance uh of that book is just so powerful because it shows us, I think more than anything, dependence on the Holy Spirit.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_03: You think of Paul citing, you know, but you know, that setting them apart and waiting on the Lord, and the Holy Spirit said, Send send Paul and Barnabas, or the Spirit forbade us to go into Asia.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, do you see almost um a forgetfulness of the spirit in the church today, like a lack of dependence on the spirit?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: I I think we've forgotten the book of the book of Acts is the blueprint for the church.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: It tells us exactly it's not it's not received by a lot of stuff we're talking about, it's just got to be received by faith.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: We we've got it written in God's word, God breathed.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is what the early church did.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I've often said when the Holy Spirit was given, the disciples did not stay in the upper room and carpet it out and put a little sign outside saying tonight, seven o'clock, all welcome.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: They went open air, they began to preach, and that was their that was their mission.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they said we cannot but speak that which was seen and heard and in jeopardy their lives.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: They stayed with that agenda to preach the gospel.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And when they got kind of lazy, uh, it took Saul of Tarsus to create havoc within the church.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, they were spread everywhere preaching the word.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what the modern church needs to go back to, the book of Acts.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: So many people are raising their hands and worship to God and failing to reach out their hands in evangelism for God, and that becomes nothing but an empty hypocrisy, drawing near to God with our lips but our hearts being far from him.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd love the church to get back to the blueprint of the book of Acts so we would have the same power that they had in the book of Acts.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for tuning in to this week's highlights from the Living Waters podcast, friends.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: We value your time.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: So we've created a bite sized version of our podcast for listeners who want to get equipped without the jokes and fellowship.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_03: Be sure to check out the full episode every Thursday where we dive deeper into the topic.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_03: Until then, you can watch the full podcast episode available now on livingwaters.tv.