Latest / Reformed Thinking / Grace on the Move: How Christ Has Advanced His Kingdom Since the Reformation | Jonathan Edwards

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Grace on the Move: How Christ Has Advanced His Kingdom Since the Reformation | Jonathan Edwards · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to the Dee dive brought to you by Reformed Thinking.
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  Today we're getting into a custom deep dive on a really
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  monumental work of theological history, Jonathan Inverse's A
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  History of the Work of Redemption.
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  It's a huge one, and it's not just a history book, you know,
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  it's Edwards charting all of history from the perspective of
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  God's absolute sovereignty. Right.
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  So we're looking at his framework specifically from the
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  Reformation up to his own time in the 1700s.
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  That's it. Our mission here is to see how
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  He accounts for the success Christ purchased.
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  He's showing God's hand moving through time even when there's
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  this tremendous spiritual and physical conflict going on.
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  OK, so we have 4 main parts to this, yeah.
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  The Reformation itself, then the really intense opposition it
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  faced, some surprising successes of the gospel, and then finally
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  he does this kind of report card on the state of the church in
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  his day. OK, let's unpack this.
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  We're diving into the moment, Edwards says.
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  The forces of Antichrist fell halfway toward utter ruin.
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  A very dramatic starting point. It is.
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  So let's start with the Reformation itself.
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  He calls it the pouring of the 5th vial.
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  Right. So the historical period we're
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  talking about starts right after what he calls the dark time of
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  the Church. We're looking at around 1515 in
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  Germany. And the main figures obviously
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  Martin Luther of. Course.
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  But Edwards doesn't frame him as just a political figure.
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  He says Luther was stirred to action by two things.
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  First, the horrid practices of the Popish clergy.
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  Things people can see with their own eyes.
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  Exactly corruption that shocked the conscience.
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  And second, his really diligent, long study of the Holy
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  Scriptures. That was the foundation for
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  everything. And those horrid practices,
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  that's key, isn't it? It wasn't just some academic
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  disagreement. It was visible corruption.
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  Oh, absolutely. The sale of indulgences, the
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  immorality, the the usurpation of authority, that's what drove
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  Luther to so openly and, you know, boldly criticize the whole
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  system. And the success at the start was
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  pretty remarkable. It was incredibly fast.
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  He immediately got powerful allies like the Elector of
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  Saxony, who gave him political cover.
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  And it wasn't just him. Edwards is careful to credit the
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  others. He is.
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  He points to the wide-ranging efforts of the other key
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  reformers. You have Melancathon who sort of
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  systematize the theology. You have Zwingli in Switzerland
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  and then of course, John Calvin. Who Edward sees as one of the
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  most eminent reformers of the whole era.
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  That's right. He sees it as this combined work
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  of, of men who were both, you know, spiritually gifted and
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  just incredibly sharp intellectually.
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  And the geographic spread just shows how fast this thing.
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  Moved. It really does.
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  It wasn't contained in Wittenberg.
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  I mean it just swept across the main states of Europe.
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  You're talking about German Princess England, Scotland,
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  Sweden, Denmark. France, Poland, the Low
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  Countries. The list goes on.
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  When you look at the initial scope, it's just staggering.
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  At one point, historians think about half of what was known as
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  Christendom, if you don't count the Greek church, was
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  Protestant. That is a massive shift in
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  allegiance, a very short time. It is.
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  Edwards does make a sobering point, though.
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  He notes that by his own time, the tide had pulled back a bit.
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  He saw that the Papist had regained some ground, so that
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  initial proportion didn't completely hold.
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  But that initial shockwave, that's what he's focused on.
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  That's the key. And because the event was so
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  overwhelming, he has to give it a theological interpretation.
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  This is where he moves from just history to prophecy.
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  So. This wasn't just a political
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  revolt for him. Not at all.
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  He saw it as God gloriously reviving his church after this
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  long, dark night of spiritual oppression.
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  For Edwards, this is the moment where Antichrist, who had been
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  gaining power for centuries, was swiftly and suddenly brought
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  down. And he anchors this in the Book
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  of Revelation. He does.
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  He links it directly to the pouring of the 5th vial.
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  Revelation 16.10. The Angel pours out his vial on
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  the seat of the beast. And the seat of the beast for
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  Edwards, that's the throne of the Pope.
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  Right. His actual authority, his
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  dominion over the kingdoms of Europe, not just his spiritual
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  claims, but his political power. So the effect was immediate.
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  Instantaneous and debilitating to Rome's standing, the Pope's
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  authority was just terribly shaken.
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  He lost about half his dominions, but maybe even more
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  critically, his influence was weakened even in the countries
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  that stayed officially Catholic. This is where he uses that image
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  of the lion. Yes, that's striking image.
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  He is as a lion that has lost his teeth.
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  He might still have the shape and roar of a lion, you know,
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  but the power to enforce his will was largely gone.
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  Even in Catholic countries like France and Spain.
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  Especially there, they realized they didn't have to
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  automatically bow to the Pope's political will anymore.
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  They could negotiate. Sometimes they can just openly
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  defy him. A huge shift in the balance of
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  power. A massive 1.
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  And this leads to how the opposition responded.
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  When the Pope and the clergy saw how much they lost, they were
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  enraged. So they tried to crush the
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  Reformation immediately. With every policy and strategy
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  you can imagine. And yet they're very complex
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  strategies failed spectacularly. Edward sees this prophetically,
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  he says. Their Kingdom became full of
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  darkness. And darkness here isn't just
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  ignorance, is it? No, it's a divinely imposed
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  confusion, an inability to make their plans work.
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  It's like the Egyptians and the plagues who couldn't rise from
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  their seats. He connects it to the Book of
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  Job. He does job Chapter 5.
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  He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, he says.
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  The enemies of God's people were so thwarted that they were made
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  to gnaw their tongues for pain. Which is just a physical picture
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  of pure rage and disappointment. Exactly so.
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  The Reformation for Edwards was this sudden, glorious, divinely
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  sanctioned blow right to the heart of anti Christian rule, a
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  huge turning point. That sets the stage powerfully.
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  The beast is wounded, but it's not dead, and a wounded beast is
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  still dangerous. Indeed, and Despite that massive
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  blow to Rome's authority, the work of redemption is never
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  unopposed. The second the Gospel gains
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  ground, Satan mounts a resistance.
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  Organized multi front resistance.
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  That's right. So we need to look at the five
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  main kinds of opposition that the Reformed Church faced.
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  The first line of defense Rome tried was structural.
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  They tried to stabilize the system by calling a general
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  counsel. The famous Council of Trent.
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  Right called shortly after Luther started, and it was an
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  attempt to stabilize Catholic doctrine and polity against the
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  Reformers. And this was no small meeting.
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  Not at all. The Council of Trent, with all
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  its intermissions, went on for 25 years.
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  It was an epic attempt to redefine and solidify their
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  position. You had Cardinals, archbishops,
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  bishops, innumerable clergy. And their one goal was to crush
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  the Reformation by theological condemnation.
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  That was the plan, but Edward sees the outcome as a
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  catastrophic spiritual failure for them.
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  The Council didn't stop the Reformation, it just solidified
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  the split. Instead of moderating, they
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  doubled down. They did, he says.
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  The council was carried headlong.
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  They confirmed the very doctrines the reformers
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  condemned, and in some cases they made the corruptions even
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  worse than they had been before. So what's the theological
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  insight there? Edwards argues that by
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  persisting in their wickedness, even when the Reformers offered
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  this clear light from Scripture, they fulfilled the prophecy that
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  they would blasphemy God. They responded to clarity with
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  more obstinacy, Yes. And Edwards thinks this was God
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  hardening their hearts or leaving them to harden their own
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  hearts so their later destruction would be entirely
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  justified in trying to save itself.
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  The Council of Trent just confirmed its own guilt.
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  OK, so after the Public Council, the opposition moved to more
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  clandestine action, secret plots and conspiracy.
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  Exactly. There were numerous plots
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  against Luther's life, but Edwards notes he was divinely
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  preserved and died peacefully in his bed.
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  But he details a much bigger conspiracy.
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  A much bigger one. A vast, complex scheme during
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  the time of King James the Second of England.
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  This wasn't local, this was a grand strategic alliance.
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  Aiming to destroy Protestantism across Europe.
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  That was the goal. It involved King James the
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  Second, who was a Papist, and the incredibly powerful King
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  Louis the 14th of France, also a Papist.
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  Therein was simple to extirpate the Northern Heresy.
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  And they saw Britain and the Netherlands as the main
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  defenders of the Protestant 'cause.
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  Right. If they could bring those
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  regions back under Catholic control, they figured the rest
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  of Protestant Europe would just collapse.
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  And this plot was very close to succeeding.
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  It was was, Edwin says. The scheme seemed fully ripe for
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  execution. But then Divine Providence, as
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  he puts it, suddenly dashed all their schemes in pieces through
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  the glorious. Revolution of 1688.
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  That's it. Bringing the Protestant monarchs
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  William and Mary to the throne. That one move secured the
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  Protestant interest in Britain and eventually led to the
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  Protestant House of Hanover. It put a legal lock on the
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  system, ensuring no papist could ever wear the English crown
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  again. So the enemies were groping at
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  noonday again, and this pattern continued.
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  It did. Edwards points to a later,
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  equally deep plot to bring in the Popish Pretender during
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  Queen Anne's reign. The son of King James the
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  Second. Right James Francis Edward
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  Stewart. The plan was to override the Act
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  of Settlement when Anne died and restore the Catholic Stewart
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  line. It was a massive political
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  undertaking that almost worked. But it was suddenly and totally
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  baffled. Just like the others, a shift in
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  political power at the moment of Anne's death secured the
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  Hanoverian succession in 1714. Edwards sees all these political
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  near misses as direct evidence of a sovereign hand at work.
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  OK, the third form of opposition open warfare.
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  This started almost right away. The Emperor of Germany declared
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  war on the Princess who favored Luther, aiming to crush the
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  movement militarily. That failed.
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  Then came the long war between Spain and the Low Countries.
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  An incredibly cruel war, and it's one of the clearest
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  examples of the opposition just completely backfiring.
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  How so? Well, those terrible wars waged
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  to kept Catholic control ended up being a huge disadvantage for
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  the Romish Church. The final outcome was the
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  creation of one of the most powerful Protestant states in
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  Europe, the Dutch Republic. Which then became a major
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  defender of the Protestant cause for.
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  Centuries. It was God turning the enemy's
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  own weapons against them. And nothing shows the failure of
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  force quite like the Spanish Armada in 1588.
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  The intent of that invincible Armada was horrific.
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  It was designed to completely root out the reformed religion
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  from England. They even brought instruments of
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  torture with them for Protestants who wouldn't
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  convert. But their design was totally
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  baffled. Completely.
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  The mighty fleet was ruined mostly by storms and the
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  smaller, faster English ships, a very visible providential
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  intervention that confirmed England's place as a theological
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  anchor for European Protestantism.
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  OK, that brings us to the 4th category, which is maybe the
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  hardest to hear about cruel oppression and persecution.
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  Edwards does not hold back here. He says unequivocally that
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  Antichrist proved to be the greatest and most cruel enemy
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  the Church ever had, even worse than the ancient Pagan
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  persecutions. And he's not just using
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  hyperbole. No, he's talking about the
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  systematization of cruelty. He points to Revelation 17, the
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  woman drunken with the blood of the Saints and.
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  The key shift he highlights is that persecution became a
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  science. Right.
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  It was improved, studied, and cultivated as an art or science.
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  This led to the Courts of Inquisition, which were designed
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  specifically to perfect the methods of persecution to find
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  new ways of torment. And the violence escalated as
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  soon as the Reformation began. Immediately the Waldensies were
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  targeted again, with multitudes, tortured and killed.
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  The suffering was immense and it was everywhere.
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  Germany, Bohemia. Terrible persecutions in Bohemia
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  for 30 years, Edwards says. The bloodshed was compared to
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  the great rivers of Germany. The Protestant religion was
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  almost entirely suppressed there and in the Palatinate and
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  Hungary. And France was even worse.
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  Perhaps the most systematic slaughter, the Saint
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  Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1571, saw 70,000 Protestants
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  killed in just a few days. And Edwards lists the numbers.
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  He does, and it's chilling. Over a 30 year period in France,
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  he records the martyrdoms of Princess Counts, Barons,
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  gentlemen, common people. The numbers are just staggering.
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  He lists them by social class to show it wasn't just the poor who
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  were targeted. It was a systematic attempt to
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  eliminate the entire reformed structure of society.
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  So how does he process that level of slaughter?
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  Does he see it as a failure of Christ's promise?
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  Not at all. He sees the sheer scale of the
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  bloodshed as a confirmation of the prophecies about the beast's
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  nature. But he stresses that even with
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  all this, the devil could not ultimately prevail.
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  The gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church.
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  That's the promise. Even when the Church seemed
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  crushed, like in Holland, the result was the exact opposite of
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  what the persecutors wanted. We also have to remember the
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  persecutions in England under Queen Mary.
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  Yes, and the later persecutions by High Church men against the
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  Puritans, which is what led many of our own forefathers to New
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  England and the terrible bloodshed in Scotland and
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  Ireland. In Ireland, over 200,000
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  Protestants were murdered in a few days.
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  Secret agreement among the Papists.
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  The conclusion Edwards draws from all this horror is that
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  while the church was certainly diminished in size, its faith
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  was refined and preserved. And we get to the fifth kind of
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  opposition, which is maybe the most insidious.
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  Because it attacks the doctrine itself, the enemy from within.
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  Corrupt opinions inside the Reformed faith.
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  And this started early. The Anabaptist appeared just a
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  few years after Luther. The early German movement was
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  wild, denying civil authority, advocating rebellion.
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  They caused so much chaos, it discredited the whole
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  reformation in the eyes of many leaders.
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  It did. Then you had the enthusiasts,
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  those who claimed direct inspiration from the Holy Ghost,
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  which led to some very wild behavior.
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  They eventually became the early Quakers in.
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  England. But then the real theological
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  danger arrived. The Sicilians.
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  This was a radical rejection of the core of the gospel.
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  They deny the most fundamental doctrines.
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  They said Christ was just a man, and they completely rejected his
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  substitutionary atonement for sin.
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  This wasn't a minor disagreement.
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  No, this was redefining who Christ is and how salvation
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  works. Edwards saw this as the enemy
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  attacking the very foundation of the faith.
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  Then came the Armenians. Whose views spread incredibly
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  fast. It was an attack on the doctrine
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  of sovereign grace, and even though their views were
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  condemned at the Synod of Dort, they just kept spreading.
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  Especially in the Church of England.
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  Massively, the divines there had been almost all Calvinists, but
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  by the reign of Charles the Serst, Arminianism had taken
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  over. Edward saw this as a
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  catastrophic shift, undermining God's absolute sovereignty and
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  redemption. And the slide just continued
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  from there. It did you see a revival of
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  Arianism, the idea that Christ is a creature, not God.
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  This started to prevail in England.
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  And finally, what Edward saw as the biggest challenge to all
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  revealed religion deism. Which just casts off
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  Christianity entirely. Deists believe in a God, some
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  distinct creator, but they rely only on human reason, and they
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  reject the Bible. And Edwards laments that this
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  was overrunning England. The principal nation of the
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  Reformation. So you see this progression of
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  doctrinal error from denying civil authority to denying
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  Christ's divinity, to finally denying revelation itself a
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  spiritual war fought with intellectual corruption.
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  So after all that opposition, the failed council, the baffled
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  plots, the ruinous wars, the cruel persecutions and this
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  internal corrosion of error, how could Edwards possibly find
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  hope? Because the work of redemption
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  never stops. Even while the Reformed Church
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  was under siege and losing ground, the gospel was advancing
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  in completely new areas. He categorizes this success into
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  three types. Right.
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  First is reformation in countries that were already
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  Christian but, you know, deeply superstitious.
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  The biggest example for him is the Empire of Muscovy or Russia.
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  Which was part of the Greek church, but he describes it as
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  barbarously ignorant. Exactly.
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  The big change came with Czar Peter the Great, who started
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  this sweeping reform across his whole territory.
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  And these were specifically spiritual reforms.
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  Very intentional He set up schools, he ordered the Bible to
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  be printed in the common language, and he made a law that
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  every family had to have one. He even.
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  Made a law about marriage. He did, prohibiting marriage.
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  Marriage until a person could prove they could read the
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  scriptures. I mean, it's a strategic effort
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  to create a literate, biblically formed population.
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  That was the result. The religion practiced in
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  Muscovy moved much closer to the Protestant model, and the
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  country became a land of light, as Edwards puts it, compared to
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  how it had been just 50 years before.
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  OK, the second area of success is maybe the most expansive,
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  spreading the gospel among the heathen, starting with the
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  Americas. Right.
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  This whole continent was unknown to Christians, and this leads
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  Edwards to one of his most fascinating, if speculative,
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  theories. This is the one about the devil.
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  Yes, he suggests that when the devil saw the success of the
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  Gospel in Constantine's time, he got alarmed.
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  So he led a population of people from the Old World into America
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  to hide them from the light of the gospel.
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  Wait, he thought the devil physically LED people across the
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  world to hide them? It's an audacious idea, isn't
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  it? But it shows how seriously he
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  took the spiritual warfare behind these big geographical
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  events. He believed the devil had quiet
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  dominion over the Indian nations here for ages.
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  But by Edward's time, God had intervened in that hidden
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  Kingdom. Right.
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  The Christian Church was set up in New England and other parts
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  of America. The land was becoming full of
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  Bibles. And even though the initial
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  success among the native tribes was small.
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  And he's honest about that difficulty.
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  He still saw the discovery of America as this massive
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  providential preparation for the future glorious times of the
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  Church. He connected it to technology
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  too. The Mariners Compass.
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  He did. He saw the compass as a critical
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  invention provided by Providence to enable men to sail the oceans
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  and find new continents, all in preparation for sending the
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  gospel to every corner of the globe.
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  So God equips the church with the means to fulfill the Great
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  Commission. That's his view.
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  And beyond America, the gospel was also gaining ground in
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  Muscovy's dominions in Great Tartary.
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  A huge heathen country. And because of the political
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  changes in Russia, great numbers there were renouncing heathenism
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  and embracing Christianity. And he also points to success in
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  the East Indies. In Malabar specifically, largely
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  due to Danish missionaries and crucially, they set up a
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  printing press to produce bibles and books in the native
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  language. Which again shows Edwards
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  emphasis on learning and scripture as the foundation of
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  any real revival. Exactly The third type of
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  success he talks about is the revival of religion in its power
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  and practice. He focuses on 2 recent events.
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  The first one is in Germany. Around a man named Augustus
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  Herman Frank, a professor at Halley.
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  And the revival started with something very small, a
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  charitable design. He put an ALMS box at his study
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  door to buy books for poor children.
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  A very humble beginning for a massive spiritual movement.
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  It was, but God, as Edward says, wonderfully smiled upon this
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  small design. A spirit of charity was poured
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  out. Frank was able to build public
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  schools and a massive orphan house for nearly 500 children.
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  And that charitable work fueled a spiritual awakening.
• 19:21
  Yes, it was accompanied by a wonderful reformation and
• 19:25
  revival of religion in Halle and its influence spread all over
• 19:29
  Germany. It shows that revival often
• 19:31
  starts with practical, organized Christian action.
• 19:34
  And finally, he points directly to his own audiences experience.
• 19:38
  Right. The remarkable outpouring of the
• 19:40
  Spirit of God they had just witnessed in New England what we
• 19:43
  call the Great Awakening, he says.
• 19:45
  They'd be ungrateful not to notice it.
• 19:47
  He don't need to describe it to them because they lived through
• 19:49
  it. They were eyewitnesses.
• 19:50
  So despite all the wars and doctrinal decay, the Kingdom of
• 19:54
  Christ was still advancing in these very distinct global ways.
• 19:58
  Which brings us to his critical comparison.
• 20:00
  He looks at his own time, the mid 1700s, and holds it up
• 20:04
  against. The first days of the
• 20:06
  Reformation. And he looks honestly at how
• 20:08
  things were altered, both for the worse and for the better.
• 20:11
  Let's start with the bad news, the ways things got worse.
• 20:15
  He identifies 3 primary declines.
• 20:17
  The first is just the diminished physical size of the Protestant
• 20:20
  church. That initial half of Christendom
• 20:23
  was now much smaller. The territorial losses were
• 20:25
  severe. They.
• 20:26
  Were France, which he called a great part of the glory of the
• 20:29
  Reformation, saw its Church utterly broken and scattered.
• 20:33
  In Germany, several Protestant Princess had successors who
• 20:37
  became Papists, so their lands reverted.
• 20:39
  In places like Bohemia and Hungary.
• 20:41
  Formerly Protestant strongholds now firmly back in the hands of
• 20:45
  Papists. Geographically, the Protestant
• 20:48
  cause was not gaining ground against Rome in his day.
• 20:51
  OK, the second decline is maybe more alarming, the breakdown of
• 20:55
  orthodoxy. He calls it the prevailing of
• 20:57
  licentiousness in principles, a great decay in orthodoxy, and a
• 21:01
  lack of zeal for the mysterious and spiritual doctrines of
• 21:05
  Christianity. The very doctrines that define
• 21:07
  the Reformed faith. Precisely justification by faith
• 21:10
  alone, the sovereign work of the Spirit.
• 21:12
  These were increasingly held in contempt, especially in England.
• 21:15
  So those internal errors we talked about, we're now a full
• 21:18
  blown trend. They were, he says.
• 21:20
  Aryanism, Sicilianism, Arminianism and Deism were
• 21:23
  carrying almost all before them. He says history has no record of
• 21:27
  any age with such a great infidel apostasy among people
• 21:30
  raised under the Gospel. And the result was just
• 21:33
  widespread scoffing at the gospel.
• 21:35
  Unprecedented ridicule, especially among the educated,
• 21:38
  which leads to the third decline, the decay of vital
• 21:42
  piety or godliness. The First Reformation had this
• 21:46
  glorious outpouring of the Spirit.
• 21:47
  Converting multitudes to genuine piety.
• 21:51
  But by Edwards this time there was an exceeding great decay of
• 21:54
  that lived out religion. If you showed any spiritual
• 21:57
  fervor, you were dismissed as an enthusiast or a fanatic.
• 22:01
  A blink picture. He says vice and profaneness
• 22:03
  were like a flood which threatens to bear down all
• 22:06
  before. It.
• 22:07
  But Edwards isn't just a pessimist.
• 22:09
  The picture isn't entirely dark. He saw ways things were altered
• 22:12
  for the better. Right, and this suggests God was
• 22:15
  setting the stage for something new.
• 22:16
  The first betterment is the diminished political power of
• 22:19
  the. Pope, this is a critical point.
• 22:21
  It is even though the Pope had regained some territory, he had
• 22:25
  lost a huge amount of influence over the remaining Catholic
• 22:28
  powers. The vial poured out on the
• 22:30
  beast's throne was still running, still draining his
• 22:33
  political authority. Even Popish Princess weren't
• 22:35
  just bowing to Rome anymore. Not at all, They regarded him
• 22:39
  only as far as it served their own designs.
• 22:41
  This is a massive downgrade in respect compared to the Dark
• 22:44
  Ages. The political structure
• 22:46
  supporting Antichrist was weaker at its foundation.
• 22:49
  The second betterment is less persecution.
• 22:52
  It was still happening in some places, but he observed it was
• 22:56
  in no measure as it was heretofore.
• 22:58
  The sheer systematic violence was diminishing, he said.
• 23:02
  The spirit of persecution was becoming more out of fashion.
• 23:05
  That's a fascinating way to put it.
• 23:07
  The wickedness shifted channels. It did.
• 23:10
  The opposition now ran in a different channel, a spirit of
• 23:12
  indifferency and ridicule towards all religion rather than
• 23:16
  fire and sword. So the church suffered from
• 23:18
  coldness instead of constant physical torture.
• 23:20
  Which Edward saw as a relative betterment, though he cautions
• 23:23
  the spirit of Antichrist was just lying dormant.
• 23:26
  OK. And the final and maybe most
• 23:29
  important improvement is the great increase of learning.
• 23:32
  Learning had decayed so much during the dark times of Popery
• 23:37
  that the Reformation and the arc of printing that came before it
• 23:40
  revived intellectual life, and by Edward's time it had reached
• 23:44
  a height beyond any previous age.
• 23:47
  But wait, he just said this learning was being misused by
• 23:50
  infidels and deists. Why does he count it as a
• 23:53
  betterment? Because he sees the increase of
• 23:56
  learning itself as a good thing, he calls it an excellent
• 23:59
  handmade to divinity. He even connects it to prophecy.
• 24:02
  Daniel 12.4 Knowledge shall be increased.
• 24:06
  So he's hopeful that God is preparing to use this
• 24:08
  intellectual resource for his own Kingdom.
• 24:10
  That's his profound conclusion. He sees God repeating a pattern
• 24:14
  from history, from. Before Christ's first coming.
• 24:16
  Exactly, back then Greco Roman learning and philosophy reached
• 24:19
  a great height, but the world by wisdom knew not God.
• 24:23
  Human learning had to reach its peak to show its own utter
• 24:25
  insufficiency without the gospel.
• 24:27
  And now, in the 1700s, the same thing is happening again.
• 24:30
  Yes, learning men trust their own reason.
• 24:33
  They scorn revelation. They fall into error.
• 24:36
  They grope in the daytime as in the night.
• 24:39
  Edwards argues that God is intentionally letting human
• 24:42
  wisdom run its full course to demonstrate its limits once
• 24:45
  again. So the flood of error in his day
• 24:48
  was actually a necessary prerequisite for the next great
• 24:51
  revival. That's his argument.
• 24:53
  God is letting men prove that even with all their books and
• 24:56
  knowledge, human reason, when it's elevated above revelation
• 25:00
  just leads to error and confusion.
• 25:02
  But the purpose is hopeful. Very hopeful.
• 25:05
  When God has sufficiently shown the insufficiency of human
• 25:08
  wisdom, and when the appointed time comes for the glorious
• 25:11
  pouring out of the Spirit, then God will harness this massive
• 25:15
  increase of learning. The intellectual resources will
• 25:17
  be reclaimed. They'll be made subservient to
• 25:20
  religion. All that knowledge will be used
• 25:22
  for a clear understanding of the Scriptures, for precise
• 25:25
  theology, and for a glorious defense of the very doctrines
• 25:29
  that the previous generation had scoffed at.
• 25:32
  So printing and learning were God's preparation for the
• 25:34
  church's future prosperity. That's how he sees it.
• 25:38
  This is how the wealth of the wicked is laid up for the just
• 25:41
  reclaiming intellectual resources from a generation that
• 25:44
  misused them for the great work of redemption.
• 25:46
  That is a complex and, you know, often terrifying view of
• 25:49
  history, but it's all unified by this absolute belief in
• 25:53
  Providence. He's balancing this terrible
• 25:56
  loss of territory and piety against the weakening of the
• 25:59
  papal structure in this advent of global knowledge.
• 26:02
  What Edwards gives you is a view that historical decline is often
• 26:06
  just God setting a stage. He puts the decline of piety and
• 26:10
  the rise of infidelity right alongside the explosion of
• 26:13
  learning. He doesn't see them as separate
• 26:14
  problems. What's the divine sequence?
• 26:16
  It is God allows human reason to run to its limits and fail,
• 26:20
  which creates a spiritual vacuum.
• 26:22
  But the result of that failure is this vast store of
• 26:25
  intellectual resources, learning, printing, global
• 26:28
  connection, which is then perfectly positioned once the
• 26:31
  Spirit is poured out to advance Christ's Kingdom, not hinder it.
• 26:35
  The failure of human reason sets the stage for God's success.
• 26:39
  That's the heart of it. So if Edwards premise holds that
• 26:43
  human wisdom has to be shown to be insufficient before the
• 26:46
  Spirit works, we have to look at our own time with its
• 26:49
  information saturation. What does the failure of our
• 26:53
  modern systems to generate true understanding and the widespread
• 26:56
  confusion we see everywhere tell us about the proximity of the
• 26:59
  next great work of redemption? Thank you for sharing your
• 27:02
  sources for this deep dive. And thank you for joining us.
• 27:05
  We will talk to you next time.