Latest / Reformed Thinking / Redemption on the March: From the Empty Tomb to the Rise of Antichrist | Jonathan Edwards

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Redemption on the March: From the Empty Tomb to the Rise of Antichrist | Jonathan Edwards · Reformed Thinking

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  Reformed thinking. Welcome to the deep dive.
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  Today we're going to get into a really fascinating and I think a
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  really critical period in history of the church.
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  We're focusing on that time right after the Roman Empire
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  became officially Christian under Constantine.
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  We're going to track how Christ's redemptive work was
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  carried on, but also the the incredible opposition it faced
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  right up to the point that Edwards sees as the rise of
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  Antichrist. Our source for this is Jonathan
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  Edwards, a history of the work of redemption.
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  And what's great about Edwards is he's not just giving you a
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  list of dates. He's he's analyzing it all
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  through this lens of God's Providence.
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  He's asking how did Christ's purposes move forward through
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  all this chaos? So our goal here is pretty
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  specific. We want to see the balance that
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  Edwards presents because he says you know, you can't understand
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  God's work unless you look at both the victories and the
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  opposition, then go hand in hand.
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  So by looking at these two. Forces you get a much.
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  Clearer picture. Of what was really at stake.
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  OK, let's unpack this. That's such a key point because
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  Edwards this whole method is built on that idea of conflict
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  and resolution. And this era, I mean, it's just
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  so compelling because the whole game changes.
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  For almost 300 years, the church was in what the Bible calls the
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  fiery trial. It was all external.
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  It was bloody physical persecution from the Pagan Roman
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  state. But then Constantine comes along
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  and you know you'd think great peace at last, but the
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  opposition doesn't stop it. Just changes form.
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  It changes form entirely. It moves from the outside, from
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  an attack on the body to the inside.
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  It becomes an attack on the mind, on the soul.
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  It's an internal, intellectual, doctrinal war.
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  And if you just look at Constantine's conversion, you
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  might think the battle was won. But Edwards says no, hold on.
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  You have to measure the success against the resistance.
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  It's the the sheer scale of the counter attacks that really
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  shows you the power of God's sovereignty in preserving the
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  gospel. We have to see what the enemy
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  tried to do next. Right, let's pick up on that
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  idea of the counter attack, because Edwards uses some really
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  powerful apocalyptic language from the Book of Revelation to
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  talk about this. He calls it the Rage of the
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  Dragon. He paints this picture of Satan,
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  the great red dragon being, and I'm quoting here, entirely
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  routed and vanquished. This is after that sore conflict
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  that lasted for nearly three centuries.
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  That's the period of Roman persecution.
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  So when the Pagan state falls as an anti Christian power, the
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  result is dramatic. The dragon is cast down, as it
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  were, from heaven to the earth. It's a huge political win for
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  the church. And that phrase cast down from
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  heaven to the earth, we need to be clear on what that means.
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  It doesn't mean he's lost all his power, right?
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  Not at all. It means he lost his seat of
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  worldly authority. He lost the ability to use the
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  Roman government, the world superpower, to just openly try
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  and kill the church. He was defeated in that specific
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  strategy. But as Edwards notes, the
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  serpent is still in a rage, and he immediately starts using new
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  devices against the church. And these new devices are much
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  more subtle. Exactly.
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  The whole war shifts from open battle to to deception.
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  It's a change from trying to kill Christians to trying to
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  corrupt Christianity itself. The goal isn't to empty the
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  churches through martyrdom, but to hollow out their doctrine
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  from the inside. And that's where that image from
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  Revelation 12 comes in. The serpent, now that he's been
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  thrown down, he casts out of his mouth water as a flood to cause
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  the woman to be carried away. The flood, this image of a
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  flood, a destructive spiritual flood, that's the central
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  metaphor for all the opposition during this period.
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  It's not the fire of Nero anymore.
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  It's a torrent of confusion and bad theology.
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  And that flood, as Edwards lays it out, it really has two main
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  currents. We can basically break down all
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  the opposition between Constantine and the rise of
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  Antichrist into these two streams.
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  The 1st, and honestly the most dangerous, was this internal
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  corruption of the church through heresies.
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  This was an attempt to change the very thing Christians
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  worship. And the second stream was a
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  renewed effort to just restore paganism, to bring the old Gods
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  back. And it's so important to
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  remember how short that period of peace really was.
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  I mean, Can you imagine the relief after centuries of
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  persecution when Constantine wins?
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  And yet Edwards says that peace was but very short.
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  He calls it a respite. He says it was like a silence in
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  heaven for, as it were, for half an hour.
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  And he connects that right back to Revelation, where the angels
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  hold back the winds of destruction, but only for a
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  moment, just long enough so that the servants of God should be
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  sealed in their foreheads. It suggests the peace was a
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  divine gift, but for preparation, not Forrest.
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  Time to get ready for the next battle.
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  Exactly. And that battle came fast.
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  The quiet time passed, and the visible church soon became, as
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  Edwards puts it, greatly infested with heresies.
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  OK, let's get into that first part of the flood, then the
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  internal strife. This is where the church, right
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  after his biggest political victory, faces what could have
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  been a total theological collapse.
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  And Edwards points to two major movements, Arianism and
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  Pelagianism. Let's start with Aryanism,
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  because it pops up almost immediately after Constantine is
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  in power. And this wasn't some small
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  disagreement. This was an attack on the very
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  person of Jesus Christ. The Aryans denied the Trinity.
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  They said that Christ to the Holy Spirit were not fully God,
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  that they were but mere creatures.
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  And we have to stop there for a second because from a Reformed
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  viewpoint, this is just catastrophic.
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  If Christ is a creature, no matter how high or glorious a
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  creature, if there was a time when he did not exist as Aries
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  taught, well, then redemption is impossible.
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  Only an infinite God can absorb the infinite wrath of God that's
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  due for sin. A creature can't save other
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  creatures. So this heresy wasn't a side
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  issue. It's struck at the absolute
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  heart of the gospel. And Edwards points out how this
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  thing just exploded. He says it threatened to
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  overthrow all. This was a battle for the very
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  identity of the Christian God. You had men like Athanasius
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  standing up against it, saying, no, Christ is homuusios of the
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  very same substance as the Father.
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  You know his famous stance, Athanasius contramundum
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  Athanasius against the world. That really gives you a sense of
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  the scale of this. And the scale is just, it's hard
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  to get your head around. Edwards says that before the end
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  of the 4th century, the greater part of the Christian Church
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  were become Aryans. Now that's a point we have to
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  wrestle with. If Edwards is saying the
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  majority of the visible church went over to this heresy, how
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  does that fit with the idea of Christ's Kingdom being
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  successful? Where was the true church?
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  And that's the paradox, isn't it?
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  Edward's whole history works on these two levels.
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  You have the visible, institutional church, and then
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  you have the invisible work of redemption being carried on in
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  the hearts of the elect. So yes, Arianism took over.
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  It captured bishops, councils, even some of the emperor's.
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  It captured all the high ground. But the work of redemption, the
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  truth of the Gospel itself, it survived.
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  It survived in people like Athanasius and his followers who
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  would not bend. So the woman, the true Church,
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  was threatened by the flood, but she wasn't carried away.
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  And the threat became intensely political because, as the source
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  says, some of the Empress who came after Constantine were
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  Aryans themselves. So they became the prevailing
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  party and they use their civil power, the very power the Church
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  had welcomed to start a huge persecution against the Orthodox
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  believers. So the persecution actually
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  never stopped, it just changed sides.
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  Instead of Pagan Rome coming after you, now you had an Aryan
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  Emperor using Christian language to enforce a heresy.
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  This is exactly why Edwards calls Arianism the flood out of
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  the mouth of the serpent. It was this theological wave,
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  but it had the full force of the government behind.
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  It the irony is just staggering. The church wanted peace from the
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  state but what it got was the state being Co opted by heresy
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  and when the emperor himself is a heretic the government becomes
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  an enemy of the truth. You could argue that's way more
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  dangerous than Pagan persecution.
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  How so? Well with Pagan persecution the
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  battle lines are clear, but with state backed heresy everything
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  gets confused. It divides the church from
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  within. It makes it almost impossible
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  for the average person to know who to believe.
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  It's a classic example of the enemy changing tactics.
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  If you can't kill the church with swords, you try to poison
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  it from the inside with bad ideas.
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  OK, so that's Arianism. Let's turn to the second major
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  internal heresy in this flood, Pelagianism.
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  This one comes up at the start of the next century from a
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  British monk named Pelagius or Morgan.
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  And if Arianism attacked the person of Christ, Pelagianism
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  really attacked the work of the Holy Spirit.
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  That's a great way to put it. The focus shifts from
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  Christology to to anthropology. The doctrine of man,
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  Pelagianism, started by denying original sin.
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  It denied the idea that we inherit Adam's guilt and corrupt
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  nature, which leaves us spiritually dead and unable to
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  choose God. And if you deny that, you then
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  have to deny the influence of the Spirit of God in conversion.
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  Instead, you start talking about the power of the will.
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  Basically, Pelagianism teaches that man on his own has the
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  natural ability to choose God and achieve his own salvation.
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  And for anyone coming at this from the perspective of the
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  Westminster Confession, this is just a complete rejection of
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  sovereign grace. If man isn't dead in sin, but
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  just, you know, wounded or sick, then salvation isn't a
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  resurrection, it's a partnership.
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  And God's grace isn't necessary. It's just helpful.
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  That's right. It puts some of the glory for
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  salvation back onto the Sinner. And Edward saw this as a very
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  specific spiritual attack. You see the pattern?
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  Arianism says the Savior isn't really God, so he's not enough
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  to save you. And Pelagianism says the Sinner
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  isn't really dead, so he doesn't need that much saving.
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  Both roads lead to the same place.
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  They both dethrone the God who saves all by himself, by his
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  grace alone. And the great defender against
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  Pelagianism was, of course, Saint Augustine.
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  Edwards points to him as the main opponent, the one who wrote
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  so powerfully in defense of Orthodox faith.
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  Augustine's whole argument was built on the absolute necessity
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  of grace. So to sum up that internal
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  threat for you, Arianism tries to destroy redemption by making
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  Christ a mere creature. Pelagianism tries to destroy by
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  saying man doesn't really need that kind of radical redemption
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  in the 1st place. So that's the internal attack.
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  A flood of confusion. But the dragon wasn't just
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  working from the inside. Let's move to Part 3.
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  Because the opposition shifts back to external threats.
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  The goal now is to just bring back old fashioned paganism.
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  It's A2 pronged attack, isn't it?
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  If you can't corrupt the church, try to kill it again.
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  And the first major attempt to do that politically came from
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  Julian the Apostate. Julian was Constantine's nephew.
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  He was raised as a Christian, but he rejected the faith.
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  He apostasized, and when he became emperor, he was a
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  committed Pagan. His story shows that the
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  Dragon's influence could reach right into the heart of the new
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  Christian Empire. And Julian was smart.
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  He knew that just rounding up Christians and throwing them to
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  the lions again wasn't going to work.
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  It hadn't worked before. So he used a more a more
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  strategic approach. He used the power of the state
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  to undermine the church. Can you walk us through some of
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  his methods? Because it was a really
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  sophisticated campaign. It was he knew the church's
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  power was now tied to its role in society and government.
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  So Edwards mentions 3 main strategies.
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  First, he kicked Christians out of positions of power.
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  He replaced Christian magistrates with pagans.
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  This basically cuts Christians off from civil authority and
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  makes life very difficult for them legally.
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  Second, he rebuilt all the old heathen temples and put
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  government money back into Pagan worship.
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  He gave Paganism an official public platform again.
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  And the third one was about education, right?
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  That's right, this was maybe his most clever move.
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  He banned Christians from teaching classical literature
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  and rhetoric. His argument was you Christians
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  say our gods are demons, so you shouldn't be allowed to teach
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  the great literature that honors them.
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  It was a direct attempt to make the next generation of Christian
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  leaders uneducated and unfit for public life.
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  So while Edwards calls him a most notorious persecutor, it
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  was more of a death by 1000 cuts kind of persecution.
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  In many ways, yes, though there were still martyrs under Julian.
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  But his main goal was to kill the influence of Christianity,
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  to make it culturally irrelevant.
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  And he had this famous contempt for Christ.
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  He never called him Christ. He always called him the
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  Galilean, you know, as a way to belittle him.
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  But the story of Julian's death is one of the most powerful
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  moments in Edward's narrative. It's this incredible example of
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  God's Providence just shutting the whole project down.
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  He's on campaign against the Persians and he gets hit with a
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  Lance, and the story goes that as he's dying, he takes a
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  handful of his own blood, throws it up into the air and shouts,
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  Thou hast overcome, O Galilean. It's such a powerful moment.
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  It's this involuntary confession of total defeat from the man who
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  tried to turn back the clock. It's an admission that the work
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  of Christ is unstoppable, even by the Roman Emperor himself.
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  And of course Julian's anti Christian policies died with
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  him. So Julian's failure proved that
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  you couldn't just use politics to restore paganism from the top
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  down. But the dragon had another plan,
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  a much more chaotic brute force plan, the barbarian invasions.
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  And this brings us to that second great external threat,
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  the massive movement to the Goths, the Vandals, all these
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  barbarous nations from the North as Edwards calls them.
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  These were mostly Pagan or Aryan tribes that just came pouring
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  into the Roman world, and they completely shattered the
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  political stability of the West. They overran the empire, they
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  sacked Rome itself in the 5th century, and they basically
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  carved up the whole W half of the empire for themselves.
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  And for Edwards, this isn't just a political event, it's a
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  prophetic 1. That connection to prophecy is
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  absolutely key to how Edwards sees history.
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  For him, history is just the Bible being unfolded in time.
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  So he looks at this event, the collapse of the Western Roman
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  Empire, and he sees it being divided into exactly 10
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  kingdoms. And he identifies this as the
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  beginning of the 10 horns of the beast from Daniel and
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  Revelation. Those 10 horns, in this
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  Protestant interpretation that Edwards is working with, are the
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  10 kings who should rise in the latter part of the Roman Empire.
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  They're the new nations that are built on the ruins of old Rome.
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  You know, the Franks, the Saxons, the Goths and so on.
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  And he connects this Nebuchadnezzar's dream in Daniel
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  too as well, right? The great statue with the head
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  of gold. And then silver, bronze, iron,
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  and then the feet and toes of mixed iron and clay.
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  Exactly. Those 10 toes represent these 10
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  fragmented kingdoms. They're the final form of
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  Gentile world power before Christ returns to smash the
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  whole stature. So it looks like a just a
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  military collapse is, for Edwards, a very precise
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  fulfillment of prophecy. And he also connects these
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  invasions to the sounding of the four first trumpets in
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  Revelation 8. The first trumpet is the Goths
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  under Alaric, the second is the Vandals, the third is Attila the
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  Hun, and the 4th is the final end of the Western Roman
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  Emperor. So these aren't random events,
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  they're divinely controlled judgments moving history toward
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  God's ultimate end. So you have this massive 2 front
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  war against the Church. Internally you have Arianism and
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  Pelagianism. Externally you have Julian and
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  then the Goths. It was designed to either
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  corrupt the church from within or just tear it apart from
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  without. And yet the main point of
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  Edward's story is that it all failed.
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  So this brings us to Part 4, the triumph of the Gospel.
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  In spite of everything, the dragon could not obtain his
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  design. The floods did not sweep the
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  woman away. And the first sign of that
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  success is that the heresies were defeated, Edward says.
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  They dwindled away and orthodoxy was again restored.
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  The Nicene faith and the full divinity of Christ eventually
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  won out over Arianism, and the Augustinian view of grace
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  defeated Pelagianism. It wasn't easy and it took
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  centuries, but the truth was preserved, and Edwards describes
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  this victory using that amazing image from Revelation 12.
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  Again the earth helped the woman and opened her mouth and
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  swallowed up the flight which the dragon cast out of his
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  mouth. Let's talk about that image.
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  The earth helped the woman. What does the earth represent
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  here? Seems to be God using natural or
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  historical events, secondary causes to protect the church.
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  That's how Edward sees it. The earth can be secular powers
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  or historical events that without intending to end up
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  helping the true church. For example, many of those
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  barbarian tribes that invaded the Goths and the Franks, they
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  eventually converted to orthodox Nicene Christianity.
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  So their new political kingdoms, the Earth, ended up absorbing
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  the flood of Arianism and became the new ground where the Gospel
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  could grow. God uses the chaos to achieve
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  his own ends. And this wasn't just about
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  survival, it was also about expansion.
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  The success was twofold. You have the survival of the
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  truth in the old Roman lands, but at the same time you have
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  this quiet, steady expansion of the gospel into new territories
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  completely outside the old empire.
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  Right, Let's focus on that expansion for a minute, because
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  it's such a paradox. While the big institutional
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  church is fighting these huge doctrinal wars, the Kingdom of
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  Christ is just quietly advancing somewhere else.
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  The source mentions that even back in Constantine's time,
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  there was considerable propagation of the Gospel in the
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  East Indies. This is far beyond the reach of
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  Rome, and it was mostly thanks to the work of one man for
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  Mencius. The story for Mencius is
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  incredible. He was shipwrecked or captured
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  as a boy, taken to what we'd now call Ethiopia, and he eventually
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  rose to a high position in the Royal Court there.
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  And he used that position to spread the faith.
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  He did. He got permission for churches
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  to be built, and later he traveled to Alexandria where he
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  was ordained as a Bishop by Athanasius himself, the great
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  champion of Orthodoxy. And then he went back to
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  establish the church in Ethiopia.
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  So at the same time Athanasius is fighting for the life of the
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  Gospel and the Mediterranean, he's also overseeing its
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  expansion to the edges of the known world.
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  And there's an equally powerful story about the conversion of
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  the Liberians. Edwards says that great numbers
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  of them were converted by a Christian woman of eminent
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  piety, whom they had taken captive.
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  And that one little detail says so much.
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  The gospel doesn't just spread through emperors and councils.
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  Sometimes it spreads through the faithful witness of a single,
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  anonymous, captive woman whose life was so compelling that she
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  converted her captors. Edwards puts that in there for a
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  reason. He wants to show you that God's
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  work is not dependent on our grand strategies or our
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  political power. And he confirms this was a
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  pattern. He says several other barbarous
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  nations receive the gospel in the same way through the
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  teaching. An example of Christian
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  captives. The word God is not chained even
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  when his people are. Then as you move into the later
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  4th century, around 372 AD, the gospel spreads among the people
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  of Arabia, so it's pushing South and east.
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  And it's also spreading among the northern nations, the very
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  people who are invading the empire.
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  We're told that a Prince of the Goths and many of his people
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  became Christians. This is just amazing.
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  The very people who are acting as God's judgement on the Roman
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  Empire are at the same time being brought into the Kingdom
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  of redemption. It shows you the complexity of
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  God's Providence. Then at the end of that century,
• 18:26
  the gospel spreads further among the Persians, Rome's great
• 18:29
  rival, and also among the Scythians.
• 18:32
  And the Scythians are important because Paul mentions them in
• 18:34
  Colossians 3. You know, barbarian Scythian
• 18:37
  bond nor free. They represent the ends of the
• 18:40
  earth, the people beyond the borders of civilization.
• 18:43
  The gospel reaching them proves that Christ's Kingdom is for
• 18:46
  everyone. And this continues right into
• 18:49
  the 5th century. Around 4:30 AD you get a
• 18:52
  remarkable conversion of the Burgundians, another of the big
• 18:55
  Germanic tribes that settled in what is now France.
• 18:59
  And then closer to home for Edward's original audience, the
• 19:02
  Gospel really starts to take root in Ireland.
• 19:04
  The people there who had been heathen until this point begin
• 19:08
  to receive the faith, and it also spreads further in
• 19:10
  Scotland. So the Gospel is building this
• 19:13
  new stronghold in the British Isles, even as Roman power there
• 19:17
  completely disappears. And just to round out the list,
• 19:19
  Edwards notes that in the 6th century, a king named Zapfis,
• 19:23
  who ruled the Kulkans near the Black Sea, converted from
• 19:26
  paganism to Christianity along with many of his people.
• 19:30
  So when you step back and look at the whole picture, you see
• 19:32
  this incredible sovereign plan. On the one hand you have the
• 19:35
  visible church almost being destroyed by the floods of
• 19:38
  Arianism and Pelagianism and the external attacks from Julian and
• 19:42
  the Goths, but at the exact same time, the work of redemption is
• 19:45
  quietly, relentlessly expanding into new territory through the
• 19:49
  most humble and unexpected means.
• 19:51
  It's the ultimate paradox. While the great theologians in
• 19:54
  Rome and Constantinople are debating whether Christ is a
• 19:57
  creature, the message of that same Christ is conquering the
• 20:00
  hearts of kings and captives 1000 miles away.
• 20:03
  The real growth was happening on the margins.
• 20:06
  So we have completed our deep dive into this incredibly
• 20:08
  volatile era, from Constantine's conversion right up to the
• 20:12
  doorstep of the Middle Ages. We saw the Serpent's two pronged
• 20:15
  attack, the internal flood of heresy with Arianism and
• 20:19
  Pelagianism, and the external flood of violence and political
• 20:22
  upheaval from Julian and the invading Goths.
• 20:25
  And yet through it all we saw the unstoppable expansion of
• 20:27
  Christ's Kingdom, reaching into the East Indies and Ireland
• 20:31
  among the Scythians and Burgundians.
• 20:32
  It shows that the work of redemption is not tied to the
• 20:34
  fate of any single empire or institution.
• 20:37
  Edward's whole point in structuring his history this way
• 20:39
  is to show you God's complete control over both the success
• 20:42
  and the opposition. The dragon unleashes a flood,
• 20:47
  but the earth swallows it. Heresies rise up, but God raises
• 20:50
  up men like Athanasius in Augustine to defend the truth.
• 20:54
  Empires fall, but the gospel just keeps spreading.
• 20:57
  And I think the lesson here for you, the listener, is that the
• 21:00
  real, lasting growth of the church doesn't always happen in
• 21:02
  times of peace and security. It often happens when the church
• 21:06
  is under the most pressure, when believers are forced to rely on
• 21:10
  nothing but the simple power of the gospel itself.
• 21:13
  And that leaves us with a pretty challenging thought.
• 21:16
  If Edwards shows us that the greatest threats to the church
• 21:18
  in that era came from doctrinal confusion, from these subtle
• 21:21
  errors that attack the person of Christ and the grace of God,
• 21:24
  well, it raises a question for us, doesn't it?
• 21:26
  What theological truths might we be taking for granted or
• 21:29
  allowing to be watered down today that could be preparing
• 21:31
  the ground for the next flood of opposition against the purity of
• 21:34
  the gospel? Something for you to think
• 21:36
  about.