WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:05.680 Amen. The title of my sermon this morning is the new IFB is older than the Catholic Church. 00:06.040 --> 00:12.980 The new IFB is older than the Catholic Church. Now, what I mean by this specifically is not 00:12.980 --> 00:20.240 necessarily that our movement has a historical timeline of succeeding churches that somehow 00:20.240 --> 00:26.600 predate the Roman Catholic Church, but I have three ways in which the new IFB is older than 00:26.600 --> 00:32.620 the Roman Catholic Church. And that would be in our doctrine. Our doctrinal beliefs go back before 00:32.620 --> 00:40.080 the time of the Roman Catholic Church is origin. Not only that, our practices as a church go back 00:40.080 --> 00:46.420 before, and we can see precedent of the practices that we are doing right now are older than the 00:46.420 --> 00:51.860 formation of the Roman Catholic Church. And third, that the Bible that I hold in my hand, 00:51.860 --> 00:57.500 these scriptures all predate the formation of the Roman Catholic Church. So in many ways, 00:57.640 --> 01:05.640 the new IFB is older than the Roman Catholic Church. Now, we still use the word new, and what do we 01:05.640 --> 01:12.400 mean by new? Well, it's new from a contextual perspective. Yes, there is a sense of newness 01:12.400 --> 01:16.760 in the sense that, hey, we're doing things new right now in our generation that others were 01:16.760 --> 01:22.100 not really doing or other churches are not doing, but the practices by which we're doing are not 01:22.100 --> 01:27.300 technically new, they're actually old. Now, we see the Bible bring up this same phenomenon 01:28.040 --> 01:33.500 or this same type of idea where something is new and old at the same time. Look what it says in 01:33.500 --> 01:41.380 1 John 2 verse 7. Brethren, I write, no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment 01:41.380 --> 01:47.600 which he had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you have heard from the beginning. 01:48.100 --> 01:53.580 Again, a new commandment I write unto you. It's like, what the heck? He just said it's not a new 01:53.580 --> 01:59.080 commandment. Then he says it is a new commandment. What is he saying? He's saying, look, I am 01:59.080 --> 02:04.980 technically writing a new commandment. Yes, I'm technically delivering you new information or 02:04.980 --> 02:10.860 perhaps this is a practice that's fallen out of adherence. People are not really observing 02:10.860 --> 02:15.480 this the way they should be doing it. I'm trying to make it new, I'm trying to freshen it up, 02:15.580 --> 02:19.580 I'm trying to bring it to your attention, but the reality is we already had Scripture, 02:20.220 --> 02:24.800 we already had commandments in the Old Testament that told us to do what I'm about to say. 02:25.220 --> 02:28.300 I'm just basically bring it to your attention and we're going to implement it again. 02:28.720 --> 02:33.080 So yeah, it's new, but it's not really new, it's still old. It's always been a practice, 02:33.260 --> 02:37.680 it's always been something we should have been doing. So it's new and it's old at the 02:37.680 --> 02:42.340 same time, isn't it? He says, again, a new commandment, I write into you which thing is true 02:42.340 --> 02:46.980 in him and in you because the darkness is past, the true light now shineth. Now, when he gives this 02:46.980 --> 02:52.640 commandment, he's not necessarily being overtly direct. He's kind of just talking about this 02:53.760 --> 02:58.940 idea in a big picture, but the new commandment that's kind of being emphasized is loving your 02:58.940 --> 03:04.180 brother and loving your brother as you would love yourself and the way you love God is 03:04.180 --> 03:06.860 how you should love your brother. That's the idea that's being communicated here. 03:06.860 --> 03:11.680 He says in verse nine, he that saved these in the light and hated his brother is in darkness 03:11.680 --> 03:16.940 even until now. He that loveth his brother abided in the light and there's no occasion of stumbling 03:16.940 --> 03:21.000 in him, but he that hated his brother is in darkness and walketh in darkness and knoweth 03:21.000 --> 03:26.760 not whether he goeth because that darkness has blinded his eyes. So the concept that's being 03:26.760 --> 03:30.840 taught is the new commandment is we should love our brother and we shouldn't be hating our 03:30.840 --> 03:35.960 brother. And that's really emphasized in first John specifically is loving our brother and he's 03:35.960 --> 03:41.440 like, this is a new commandment, but it's not really new because we could have learned this 03:41.440 --> 03:46.760 principle in this concept from the Old Testament, from the Bible already. Look at second John. 03:46.860 --> 03:52.420 Just flip a page and look at second John verse four. Notice it says here, I rejoice greatly 03:52.420 --> 03:56.940 that I found of thy children walking in truth as we have received a commandment from the 03:56.940 --> 04:01.820 Father and now I beseech thee, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment under thee, 04:01.820 --> 04:06.200 but that which we had from the beginning, notice this, that we love one another. 04:06.740 --> 04:11.160 And he's saying, hey, yeah, I'm writing this to you and I don't want you to think like, 04:11.420 --> 04:17.520 this is a new idea. It might seem like it's a new idea. We might even say at times it's a 04:17.520 --> 04:22.600 new idea, but it's really not a new idea because it's actually something we had from 04:22.600 --> 04:25.640 the beginning. And what is that concept is that we should love one another. 04:26.700 --> 04:33.920 Go to John chapter 13, go to John chapter 13. So I'm just kind of proving this concept before 04:33.920 --> 04:39.200 really get into the details of my sermon this morning. What is the concept? That sometimes 04:39.200 --> 04:46.920 things are considered new, but they're really not new. Oh, you guys are an invention. You 04:46.920 --> 04:52.080 guys are novel. You guys just came around five minutes ago and so you can't be the true church. 04:52.080 --> 04:57.700 You can't be doing the true practices because you guys are a later development, 04:57.900 --> 05:03.460 but the problem is, even if we are new in that sense, if everything we're doing 05:04.340 --> 05:10.660 precedes us when it's really not new, you know, it's just true. Okay. Might as well just call 05:10.660 --> 05:16.660 us the true IFB. Okay. And instead of just the new IFB, because the reality is, hey, we're 05:16.660 --> 05:23.060 trying to do what the Bible says. We don't care about historical practices if they don't line up 05:23.060 --> 05:28.980 with scripture. Hey, we follow all kinds of traditions as Baptist and we find ourselves 05:28.980 --> 05:33.160 doing a lot of things that people have done before us. Hey, we're meeting on Sunday morning. 05:33.520 --> 05:38.820 Hey, we're meeting three times a week. Hey, we have a 400 plus year old Bible. Yeah, 05:38.840 --> 05:42.300 there's all kinds of stuff that we do. Hey, I'm wearing a suit and tie today. 05:42.300 --> 05:48.540 Not everybody's ever dressed exactly like this necessarily. Not everybody's always had, 05:48.680 --> 05:54.780 you know, buildings like this. Not everybody's had air conditioning. Okay, sure. Some things are 05:54.780 --> 06:01.460 just kind of a carryover from what other generations have done or other groups have done. But at 06:01.460 --> 06:06.220 the end of the day, you know, when we are trying to figure out if what we're doing is right, 06:06.520 --> 06:11.120 we should make sure it lines up with scripture areas where scripture is silent. Well, 06:11.120 --> 06:16.120 I think there's freedom there. Areas where the scripture is confirming, we ought to do it for 06:16.120 --> 06:21.680 sure. Areas where the scripture is condemning, we ought to abandon it. Yes. And so what is 06:21.680 --> 06:29.940 the new IFB? It's us trying to go back to what the Bible actually says. It's not that we're 06:29.940 --> 06:34.720 trying to invent something. It's not like we're trying to do something novel. We're actually 06:34.720 --> 06:40.020 just doing again what the Bible already said. And look what it says in John 13 verse 34, 06:40.020 --> 06:45.560 a new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, as I have loved you, 06:46.200 --> 06:50.020 that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that you're my disciples, 06:50.340 --> 06:55.960 if you have loved one to another. Now here's the thing. When we take this verse in context of 06:55.960 --> 07:01.820 other verses and other portions of scripture, is this technically new though? Because we already 07:01.820 --> 07:06.940 read in 2 John chapter one that we had that commandment from the beginning. He said 07:06.940 --> 07:11.300 that we love one another was from the beginning. Jesus is saying here the exact same commandment 07:11.300 --> 07:17.840 that you love one another. And he says it's new. So in a sense, we can say it's new, but it's not 07:17.840 --> 07:23.300 new in the sense that, hey, we didn't have this instruction or idea or concept already taught 07:23.300 --> 07:27.580 to us. It's just saying like, hey, I want to give you something else to emphasize, 07:27.860 --> 07:31.580 something else you've fallen out of practice of, something else you haven't been doing. 07:31.580 --> 07:37.280 Hey, I'm emphasizing something new here, but it's technically not new. It really is old. 07:37.980 --> 07:41.800 Govv would do Leviticus chapter 19. Where is this coming from? Well, 07:43.320 --> 07:47.420 number one, I would think he just implied, you know, that we should just love one another. 07:47.660 --> 07:53.080 But we give some pretty explicit commands in the Bible as well. In Levitical law, 07:53.500 --> 07:59.320 we are given instruction to love our neighbor. It says in Leviticus chapter 19 verse 18, 08:00.280 --> 08:07.000 thou shalt not avenge nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love 08:07.000 --> 08:13.520 thy neighbor as thyself. I am the Lord. So just as Jesus is saying love one another, 08:14.160 --> 08:19.200 second John is saying love one another, just as we had it in first John, that we should love 08:19.200 --> 08:24.880 our brother. We have, hey, Leviticus chapter 19 verse 18, that we should love our neighbor as 08:24.880 --> 08:28.740 ourself. So it's like, hey, I'm giving you this new commandment, but it's not really new. 08:29.180 --> 08:33.220 It's always been something we've had. We've always had it from the beginning. Obviously, 08:33.700 --> 08:40.340 Cain kills Abel is a concept that's illustrating something that's wicked and wrong. Cain should 08:40.340 --> 08:44.580 have loved his brother, but he didn't. And we should have learned from that. We learned 08:44.580 --> 08:48.300 from the Levitical law. We learned from all these examples. But sometimes things need 08:48.300 --> 08:55.020 to be emphasized. And think about it this way. What if in our church something happened? 08:56.340 --> 09:00.540 Somebody did something weird. Like someone gets up and just draws on the wall. 09:01.380 --> 09:06.080 Someone just gets up and just gets like a big red sharpie and just draws something on the wall. 09:06.560 --> 09:10.440 And then I get up and I say, all right, we have a new rule in the church, no drawing on the 09:10.440 --> 09:16.020 wall. But guess what? It's not new. It was always the case that you shouldn't draw on the wall. 09:16.580 --> 09:21.920 Okay. So it's not like, hey, we're now just coming up with this new idea, this new concept. 09:22.240 --> 09:26.940 It's just like, well, this should have always been the idea. And that's how the law itself 09:26.940 --> 09:32.360 was. It was added because of transgressions. God wasn't saying like, okay, now we're gonna 09:32.360 --> 09:36.340 love our brother. But before we weren't, it's just like, hey, I'm trying to remind you guys, 09:36.800 --> 09:39.760 we should have always been loving our brother. We had this from the beginning. 09:40.200 --> 09:44.660 This is always the concept, always the principle, always the idea, always what 09:44.660 --> 09:50.940 should have been done. But yet sometimes you have a new rule, but it wasn't like, oh, so now 09:50.940 --> 09:55.460 we don't draw on the walls. No, we should have never drawn on the walls. It's just now we're 09:55.460 --> 10:01.280 bringing it to your attention and we're making it clear that they new rule, don't do this. Okay. 10:02.320 --> 10:04.860 Go with the first Corinthians chapter 10. Go to first Corinthians chapter number 10. 10:05.420 --> 10:12.060 So you understand that the Bible, while it's given in time and while certain instructions 10:12.060 --> 10:17.500 maybe have a human origin or a point where we can look at it first being delivered, 10:17.720 --> 10:24.100 doesn't mean that that idea, concept, rule, or idea starts at that point. In some cases, 10:24.140 --> 10:28.640 it's always been the case. It's always been the rule. It's always been what should have been done. 10:29.160 --> 10:33.420 It's just being emphasized at a particular point in history. Okay. So it's like, hey, 10:33.700 --> 10:42.040 what should church look like? It should look like this. Not because we started it. It's 10:42.040 --> 10:46.960 these characteristics. We should always have, you know, a man getting up and preaching the Bible. 10:47.100 --> 10:52.140 That's not new. We should always be using these scriptures and these verses. It's not new. 10:52.760 --> 10:56.200 You know, we're not trying to get to the new King James. Okay. But it's like, 10:56.340 --> 11:00.980 hey, was there a point in time where we switched to English? Yeah, that was new, 11:01.000 --> 11:07.000 but we weren't really using a new scripture or new verses. We were still using the same 11:07.000 --> 11:10.460 Hebrew and we were still using the same Greek. We're still using the same words, 11:10.460 --> 11:14.900 the same concept, the same ideas, same principles, even though it may have been in English for the 11:14.900 --> 11:19.600 first time. There would have been a point in history where there was the first time ever 11:19.600 --> 11:23.560 that a church service was done in English and reading English scriptures. 11:24.040 --> 11:28.080 That obviously happened at some point in time, but were they preaching new commandments 11:28.080 --> 11:32.060 and new ideas? No, they're still preaching the same Bible, the same words, 11:32.420 --> 11:38.160 same concepts, same everything. And all the stories of the Old Testament, 11:38.680 --> 11:43.920 what the Bible says about them is they were supposed to teach us lessons. You know, 11:43.920 --> 11:48.360 people will say, oh, you have to understand the historical context or was that was for them back 11:48.360 --> 11:54.120 then, or, you know, that's instructions for the Old Testament. But what does the Bible actually 11:54.120 --> 11:57.960 say about the Old Testament? It says in verse number 11, now all these things happen under 11:57.960 --> 12:03.560 them for in samples and they are written for those people back then and not for us. 12:04.460 --> 12:10.360 No. What does it say? And they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world 12:10.360 --> 12:14.100 are come. Now in verse two, it brings up Moses. In verse five, it brings up the wilderness. 12:14.840 --> 12:22.280 And this is written to a first century Greek population. He's saying, hey, all that stuff 12:22.280 --> 12:28.820 that happened with Moses, that's for you as a Greek citizen of a Greek world with a Greek 12:28.820 --> 12:33.380 culture in the first century, thousands of years later, it was written for you. Why? Because 12:33.380 --> 12:38.700 there's no new thing under the sun. Because all the same life situations and all the same life 12:38.700 --> 12:45.040 circumstances and all the same chorus and day things and abirams and all the same errands 12:45.040 --> 12:50.140 and all the different golden calf ideas and all the same fairs, all the stories are going to 12:50.140 --> 12:56.760 be the same situations we find ourselves in today. And it's emphasizing, think about this, 12:56.760 --> 13:04.100 Exodus. It's like, how do I know in the first century how to handle myself? How do I know what to do? 13:05.160 --> 13:10.660 Well, we've got to figure out what the people believe right now. We need a magisterium. We need 13:10.660 --> 13:15.480 a group of people that have binding authority. We need some normative authority today to tell 13:15.480 --> 13:20.220 us what's right and wrong. No, he says, go back and look at Exodus. Go read the story 13:20.220 --> 13:25.080 about Moses and that's how you know what to do. Oh, well, how am I supposed to go back 13:25.080 --> 13:29.440 and interpret that and understand that? Guess what? You have the Holy Spirit, which will guide 13:29.440 --> 13:34.800 you into all truth. Hey, when you get saved, you have the Bible and the Bible should be telling you 13:34.800 --> 13:42.260 what to do, not historical precedent, not tradition, not what some current magisterium 13:42.260 --> 13:48.580 or council or some group of elders are going to tell you. No, no, no. Whatever the Bible says, 13:48.720 --> 13:52.720 that is always the right thing. Let's point back to that. That was written for them, 13:53.580 --> 13:58.060 not just for them. It was written for us. Okay. I want to go to Ecclesiastes and I'll read the 13:58.060 --> 14:02.020 verse. I know I just quoted it a little bit, but let's just read it too before we move on. But 14:02.020 --> 14:08.320 this is an important concept for you to realize that we follow what the Bible says over 14:09.560 --> 14:16.780 what any human authority says now, what any tradition has had, whatever any historical 14:16.780 --> 14:23.520 precedent it is, we elevate the scripture above that. And we believe that every single person 14:23.520 --> 14:30.900 that is saved has the ability to know everything. Every single person that is saved has the ability 14:30.900 --> 14:35.780 to know anything because the Holy Ghost is living inside of them and the Holy Ghost is 14:35.780 --> 14:39.640 capable of guiding them into all truth. And they need not that any man teach them. 14:40.240 --> 14:48.540 Now that being said, while you're capable doesn't mean you're always necessarily exercising that 14:48.540 --> 14:55.760 capability. So therefore coming to church and having pastors and teachers and evangelists 14:55.760 --> 15:01.880 and other brethren to help you and to guide you, you know, in addition to or help you 15:01.880 --> 15:09.900 is good. You don't need it, but it's helpful. It's like technically I could swim, but you know, 15:09.940 --> 15:14.020 if you're out on the sea, you're out in the ocean, a lot of times they want you to have a life jacket 15:14.020 --> 15:19.960 on just in case. It's like I don't technically need it, but boy, I'm not going to turn it down 15:19.960 --> 15:25.880 if I fell off the boat. It's like it's nice to have a life jacket. It's like sometimes 15:25.880 --> 15:32.260 there's things that aren't quote needful, but they're still helpful. It's like technically 15:32.960 --> 15:39.500 I don't need every single thing I eat and drink to survive, but boy, it's real helpful. Okay. 15:40.660 --> 15:46.480 It's like technically I don't even need necessarily all the clothes or all of the luxuries I have 15:46.480 --> 15:51.080 in my life. You know, I could, I could probably live in a shack and still survive, 15:51.080 --> 15:56.440 but you know what? It's real helpful having air conditioning. It's real helpful having 15:56.440 --> 16:01.520 other accommodations in my life. So we don't want to sit here and say, oh, well, you're saying we 16:01.520 --> 16:07.160 don't need church or we shouldn't have church or churches and helpful. No, no, church is a huge 16:07.160 --> 16:11.980 thing that we need and it's very helpful, but you don't technically need it to learn anything 16:11.980 --> 16:15.980 in the Bible. You could learn it all on your own. Isn't this true about even education 16:15.980 --> 16:20.880 itself? Let's just take all education. You could technically read any textbook. You could read 16:20.880 --> 16:25.300 any information. You could learn calculus on your own. You could learn physics on your own, 16:25.600 --> 16:29.380 but you know what? Going to a classroom, having a teacher break things down, 16:30.160 --> 16:35.080 explain why they understand information, showing you how to do calculations on the 16:35.080 --> 16:40.020 board is helpful. It'd be silly to sit here and say, well, I could technically learn this on 16:40.020 --> 16:45.260 my own. So I'm just never going to learn from anybody else rather than just fast forwarding 16:45.260 --> 16:50.340 your knowledge, fast forwarding your information cycle by having good teachers. That's the whole 16:50.340 --> 16:54.760 point of a teacher. The teachers are trying to help you get there quicker. It's not that you 16:54.760 --> 17:00.520 couldn't get there. It's like, technically I could walk from my house to church today. I could 17:00.520 --> 17:05.820 technically do it, but you know what? The car was real helpful. All right? It got me there 17:05.820 --> 17:10.920 a lot quicker, a lot quicker, okay? Because I drive that thing fast, okay? And here's the 17:10.920 --> 17:14.920 thing. It's just like technically you can do lots of things, but that doesn't mean you 17:14.920 --> 17:20.020 don't want to have helpful guides along the way. It's just like, oh, well, I don't need church, 17:20.620 --> 17:25.060 okay? Sure. You don't technically need it in the context of you could learn anything on your own 17:25.060 --> 17:28.860 with the Holy Ghost in your Bible, but let me tell you something. A lot of people 17:28.860 --> 17:34.560 are fast-tracking their information, their knowledge from church. Not only that, 17:35.040 --> 17:39.380 obviously the Bible commands us to not forsake this everything of ourselves together as the man 17:39.380 --> 17:44.100 of some is. The Bible obviously says that church was purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ 17:44.100 --> 17:51.040 and while you could technically do it, most people won't. Just like, hey, I could technically walk 17:51.040 --> 17:55.840 from my house to church, but if that was what I needed to do to get here, I probably wouldn't go. 17:56.720 --> 18:01.520 Most people just probably wouldn't go. And the thing is, most people, while they're capable 18:01.520 --> 18:05.100 of learning everything in the Bible, they're probably just not going to do it though. They're 18:05.100 --> 18:09.800 probably just not going to study every single section and every single thing. And we all have 18:09.800 --> 18:13.420 different perspectives. We all have different outlooks. We all have personal biases 18:13.420 --> 18:18.820 that sometimes hinder us from coming to that unity and coming to that knowledge. 18:19.260 --> 18:23.500 And so it's helpful to have those guides and those teachers and those pastors. 18:23.820 --> 18:28.120 So you know what? God wants us to constantly congregate together. He wants us to have 18:28.860 --> 18:32.400 people that have studied the Bible thoroughly, that are filled with the Spirit of God, 18:32.760 --> 18:37.080 that are following God closely to lead us and to guide us and to teach us the Bible. 18:37.080 --> 18:43.680 And I guarantee if you go to a church like ours three times a week, 52 weeks out of the year, 18:43.940 --> 18:48.220 you're going to learn something that you didn't already know. You're going to be reminded of 18:48.220 --> 18:52.340 something you forgot. There's going to be something added to. I don't think everyone 18:52.340 --> 18:58.740 that comes here is just like, already got it. Already knew everything. Already could, 18:58.900 --> 19:03.220 you know, teach the teacher. And if you're so great, then let's send you out and you 19:03.220 --> 19:08.580 can start teaching the world. Okay? If you've already got it all locked down, then okay, let's 19:08.580 --> 19:14.060 sign you up, right? Because that would be the goal. If we had young men that learned the 19:14.060 --> 19:18.280 whole Bible, know everything, it can quote the whole text and they're just, they're just on fire. 19:18.620 --> 19:22.880 Well, let's send you out, buddy. I don't want to hold you back. But you know, 19:22.940 --> 19:27.080 the reality is a lot of people aren't doing that, are they? So hey, let's have church. 19:27.540 --> 19:30.540 Please ask the chapter one, verse nine. The Bible says the thing that I've been, 19:30.540 --> 19:35.640 it is that which shall be, and that which is done, is that which shall be done, 19:35.820 --> 19:43.160 and there is no new thing under the sun. Now I want to make it clear what I believe about 19:43.160 --> 19:48.460 this particular verse. I don't think it's saying that there won't be technology. I don't think 19:48.460 --> 19:55.700 that it's saying that a certain practice idea or situation couldn't fall out of style or have 19:55.700 --> 20:01.120 long periods of time where it's not happening. But essentially what it's trying to communicate 20:01.120 --> 20:07.260 is that any situation, any circumstance, any kind of just event that we would see, 20:07.440 --> 20:13.940 there's probably been an exact replica of that at some point in the past. Maybe not in the 20:13.940 --> 20:18.540 recent past, but there's going to be somewhere you could point to and say, hey, technically 20:19.100 --> 20:23.860 this same situations happened before. Technically, there's been an example of this 20:23.860 --> 20:29.480 that we could point to and look at and draw parallels, draw inspiration, draw information 20:29.480 --> 20:35.000 about that people are finding themselves in the same situations. Go to second chronicles, 20:35.080 --> 20:40.360 chapter number 30. Go to second chronicles, chapter number 30. And I want to show you, 20:40.420 --> 20:45.820 this is an important verse from my perspective on understanding a lot of doctrines. One would 20:45.820 --> 20:51.280 be specifically church history itself. Now a lot of people will say, oh, I can't be a Baptist 20:52.040 --> 20:57.120 because their church history disappears after the Protestant Reformation. Who's ever heard 20:57.120 --> 21:01.200 arguments like this? Or they say, oh, your church didn't start until Martin Luther started it or 21:01.200 --> 21:06.360 something, or your church didn't start until John Smith, the first Baptist, or your church didn't 21:06.360 --> 21:10.920 start until Roger Williams, or your church didn't start until Jack Hiles, or your church didn't 21:10.920 --> 21:14.380 start until Pastor Stephanie Anderson. I mean, they'd pick all different timelines, right? 21:14.600 --> 21:21.160 They'd say, all right, your church didn't start until five seconds ago. You know, 21:21.160 --> 21:26.140 you don't have this historical precedent, and you don't have this authority structure, 21:26.360 --> 21:31.920 and you don't have this successionism. But just because someone might have been more 21:33.360 --> 21:36.640 historically having some kind of succession doesn't prove that they're right, 21:37.160 --> 21:43.980 doesn't prove that it's good, and sometimes you have to go back to a previous teaching, 21:44.240 --> 21:48.160 a previous understanding, and what do we appeal back to? Whatever is written. 21:49.100 --> 21:52.780 Now, just to give an example, this Second Chronicles chapter 30, lurk at verse five, 21:52.880 --> 21:57.700 this is Hezekiah. So they established a decree to make proclamation throughout all Israel from 21:57.700 --> 22:02.560 Bersheba even to Dan, that they should come to keep the Passover to the Lord God of Israel at 22:02.560 --> 22:10.740 Jerusalem, for they had not done it of a long time, and such sort, notice this, as it was 22:10.740 --> 22:14.620 written. So what is the Bible saying? They're going to perform the Passover, 22:15.460 --> 22:22.740 and their historical precedent, their tradition, has not been doing it for a long time 22:22.740 --> 22:28.820 as it was written. So then Hezekiah is like, okay, we're going to perform the Passover this year 22:29.420 --> 22:37.500 differently. It's going to be new, but it's not new because it's old. It's not new because 22:37.500 --> 22:42.040 it's what was written. It's not new because it was what we had from the beginning. So it's 22:42.040 --> 22:48.160 back and say, hey, we're going to do this new. So you could have a big stretch of time, a big 22:48.160 --> 22:53.600 period where they were not doing it right, and now we're going to do it right. So let's just, 22:54.000 --> 22:58.720 for sake of argument, let's just pretend that there was no one doing church right 22:59.500 --> 23:06.660 in the 14th century or for 500 years or 1,000 years. It doesn't even matter because at the 23:06.660 --> 23:09.980 end of the day, if you're not doing it as it's written, you need to go back to what the 23:09.980 --> 23:15.540 Bible says. Now, I don't personally think that there's just no Christians and no saved people 23:15.540 --> 23:21.940 and no churches from the first century until the 15th or 16th century. Okay, I don't believe that, 23:22.040 --> 23:28.640 but even if that was true, even if you just totally said, yep, didn't even exist for 1,000 23:28.640 --> 23:34.000 years, well, it's still the right thing to do is to go back to what was written. It doesn't 23:34.000 --> 23:37.820 even matter. It's an argument that doesn't technically matter by biblical principles. 23:37.820 --> 23:42.580 It does not matter even if there was a skip. I don't even believe in the skip necessarily, 23:42.940 --> 23:47.800 fully, but if you understand a lot about church history or you see it really ebbs and flows 23:47.800 --> 23:51.560 and there's a lot of different things going on, but Roman Catholics will try to pretend like 23:51.560 --> 23:56.760 we don't exist or we just came out of thin air. We're just like the Mormons or we're just like 23:56.760 --> 24:00.740 the Muslims, but here's the problem. The Mormons aren't going back to what was written. 24:02.460 --> 24:06.020 The Muslims aren't going back to what was written. They are novel. 24:06.680 --> 24:10.640 Okay, and the Roman Catholic Church doesn't go back to what was written. They go back 24:10.640 --> 24:18.080 only to like around the 300, 380, 80 period. Okay, so they might be older, but they're still 24:18.080 --> 24:22.280 novel because they're not going back to what was written. They're post what was written, 24:22.280 --> 24:26.580 and they are the ones that invented stuff, and they're the ones that are wrong. Now, 24:26.640 --> 24:33.180 let's talk about this, you know, from a doctrinal perspective. I believe that Christ 24:33.180 --> 24:40.520 rose again or was crucified, I guess, April 6 of 30 AD. Some people say 33 AD and some other 24:40.520 --> 24:45.400 timelines, but I think it was 30 AD. That's my timeline. So you could argue that at his resurrection 24:45.400 --> 24:50.380 and then presenting himself to the disciples, this is the formation of the New Testament church. 24:50.540 --> 24:56.980 You have basically a church in Jerusalem with Peter as their observable, visible leader 24:56.980 --> 25:02.460 of this group. The 120 disciples are meeting together. Peter there. Peter seems to be a 25:02.460 --> 25:08.380 leader, and so you have this church that's basically formed and started and continuing, 25:08.940 --> 25:13.260 and that's kind of like the first New Testament church we have in the world. Okay, around the 30 25:13.260 --> 25:18.860 AD, that is the timeline. Obviously, then you have more churches. You have the church in Antioch 25:18.860 --> 25:22.320 that kind of gets formed. That's where they're first called Christians. Then you have the 25:22.320 --> 25:27.400 Apostle Paul being sent out of the church Antioch, and he's going and getting people saved in 25:27.400 --> 25:33.340 areas, where it's basically 100% pagan, 100% heathen. You have kind of just a small synagogue 25:33.340 --> 25:37.380 group, and then virtually everybody else is just this pagan heathen, and it's going into the 25:37.380 --> 25:41.960 synagogues, getting people saved there, and mostly Gentiles, and that's forming churches. 25:42.160 --> 25:46.100 They start forming these churches in all kinds of different areas, like the church at Corinth, 25:46.540 --> 25:50.520 like the church at Ephesus, like the church in Galatia, and sometimes multiple churches. 25:51.100 --> 25:55.120 You have people like Achilla and Priscilla having churches in their home, as the Bible 25:55.120 --> 25:59.700 describes, and so you have all these churches being formed by the Apostle Paul in the first 25:59.700 --> 26:06.280 entry. These are great churches. They're apostolic churches or whatever you want to call them. 26:07.680 --> 26:13.460 But obviously, after Paul's ministry, you can see that some churches have already 26:13.460 --> 26:18.240 started to have serious problems. You have churches like the one that's mentioned in 26:18.880 --> 26:27.060 Second John, I'm sorry, Third John, where you have deotrophies hijacking the church. 26:27.840 --> 26:33.560 You have examples of the Galatian church having had infiltrators come in and Paul's afraid that 26:33.560 --> 26:38.120 no one's even saved there in this particular church, albeit we believe there are saved 26:38.120 --> 26:42.860 people. He's just kind of speaking in a very hyperbolic way. You have the churches in Asia, 26:42.940 --> 26:46.660 the seven churches in Asia, you have one that has a name that lives and is dead, 26:47.820 --> 26:54.180 Sardis. You have Ephesus, which is in risk of losing its candlestick and just basically 26:54.180 --> 27:00.100 being extinguished in a sense. The Apostle Paul's warning in the book of Acts, when he takes the 27:00.100 --> 27:03.720 elders to Ephesus and brings them together, he's like, hey, I've warned you night and day with 27:03.720 --> 27:08.940 tears for like three years about all of the false prophets and all the wolves are going to 27:08.940 --> 27:12.780 come in and there's going to be people drawing away disciples after themselves. 27:12.780 --> 27:18.980 So we see corruption already in that first century. So by the end of the first century, 27:19.120 --> 27:22.500 there would have been a mixed bag of churches. There would have been some that are still good, 27:22.560 --> 27:27.260 hanging on the church at Philadelphia. Then you got churches like Sardis that are already dead. 27:27.960 --> 27:32.540 You have possible churches that have been hijacked by bad actors like deotrophies. 27:32.840 --> 27:36.400 You have so you can kind of have this mixed bag even in the first century. 27:36.970 --> 27:43.660 But also at the same time, the Roman Empire started really putting a lot of persecution on 27:43.660 --> 27:49.320 churches in the end of the first century and into the second century and even the beginning 27:49.320 --> 27:54.220 part of the third century. Okay. So for a couple hundred years, the Roman Catholics were, 27:55.040 --> 27:59.380 I'm sorry, not the Roman Catholics, the Roman Empire was heavily persecuting the church, 27:59.700 --> 28:04.860 heavily attacking churches and you already had a mixed bag. So what would I believe? 28:04.860 --> 28:09.020 I would believe that you have similar things that we have today in the sense that you have 28:09.020 --> 28:12.860 some good churches, some bad churches and all kinds of mixes in between. 28:13.940 --> 28:21.560 Well, eventually Emperor Constantine and 313 AD legalized Christianity because it was so 28:21.560 --> 28:26.420 persecuted for such a long time, but he eventually claims he saw vision and 28:26.420 --> 28:32.720 he legalizes Christianity. Okay. This is where you kind of see maybe the beginning 28:32.720 --> 28:36.660 of the formation of what we call the Roman Catholic Church, because before all the churches 28:36.660 --> 28:40.460 are kind of disconnected. They're all just independent churches. They're all doing their own 28:40.460 --> 28:44.480 things. Some are good, some are bad. Isn't that similar? We have independent Baptist churches 28:44.480 --> 28:49.440 today. They're all independent. We don't have a domination. Now, albeit it was more even 28:49.440 --> 28:52.600 underground at that time just because of the persecution. It finally became legalized. 28:52.840 --> 28:59.500 So they finally have a meeting in 325 AD. So they realize, hey, we've been fragmented. 28:59.500 --> 29:06.120 It's been illegal. We can't meet and the open is easily. So now that it's legal, we can finally 29:06.120 --> 29:09.060 have a meeting. So they have the Council of Nicaea and this is what a lot of people point 29:09.060 --> 29:13.860 to is like, oh, the first ecumenical council and the drawing church leaders from everywhere. 29:14.320 --> 29:21.080 Now imagine if we got today a group of every church leader today. We got somebody from 29:21.080 --> 29:28.200 the Episcopal Church and the Roman Catholic Church. We got someone from a Presbyterian 29:28.200 --> 29:32.640 Church and a Lesbaterian Church and United Methodist Church. And we got us all together 29:32.640 --> 29:37.740 and we said, all right, we have to write a document that we all agree on. How good of 29:37.740 --> 29:41.840 a document do you think that's going to be? Basically, it's going to have to be so basic 29:42.300 --> 29:47.440 that we can all agree to it. And it's like, that's basically what they produce for the most 29:47.440 --> 29:51.080 part at the Council of Nicaea is they produce like the most basic document you 29:51.080 --> 29:57.180 could possibly think of. It's just like, hey, God exists and Jesus exists. Now, again, 29:57.180 --> 30:03.280 most of the controversy was because some people in Egypt, some people in Africa were teaching 30:03.280 --> 30:07.600 that Jesus was a created being. And so they're basically like, well, we can't go that far, 30:07.900 --> 30:11.820 you know, like they weren't United Methodist that bad yet. Okay. They're just like, well, 30:11.900 --> 30:17.440 we have to at least admit that Jesus is God. Okay. So again, at the Council of Nicaea, 30:17.560 --> 30:21.680 they all affirm that Jesus is God and they're kind of condemning the idea that Jesus 30:21.680 --> 30:29.420 is a created being. And today we still have cult groups like the Mormons and other groups 30:29.420 --> 30:36.180 that will deny Jesus Christ's divinity. The Unitarians of today will still deny that Jesus 30:36.180 --> 30:41.580 Christ is God. They would say he's a created being in a weird, awkward way. So 30:43.040 --> 30:46.940 this is again, this idea of like, oh, we're getting all together. We're creating this 30:46.940 --> 30:53.660 denominational idea by 380 AD. So within about a 70 year period of time and one generation, 30:54.700 --> 30:59.020 they finally make Christianity the official state religion of the Roman Catholic Church. 30:59.580 --> 31:03.720 So think about it from this perspective, we get every single Christian together in America and 31:03.720 --> 31:07.260 all of the world and they all come together and make a doctrinal statement. And then 31:07.840 --> 31:11.920 several decades pass and we decide we're just going to make Christianity the official 31:11.920 --> 31:16.140 religion of America again or whatever. What kind of Christianity do you think they would 31:16.140 --> 31:22.600 create? You think it'd be like our version or our style? No, of course not. So again, 31:22.660 --> 31:27.980 this is like basically when the Roman Catholic Church is formed and in order to have the entire 31:27.980 --> 31:32.340 nation, I mean, think about it. We had to get every single person in America on board with 31:32.340 --> 31:38.120 Christianity right now. What do you think is going to sell? Do you think our brand, 31:38.280 --> 31:42.600 our version is going to sell? Or do you think a more like culturally mixed in 31:42.600 --> 31:47.580 version is going to sell? And of course, that's what's going to sell, which is bringing along 31:47.580 --> 31:54.900 with it all kinds of baggage like graven images, like idolatry, like a lot of pagan weird practices 31:54.900 --> 32:00.200 and stuff. So again, that's what's being formed here at this point in time is this 32:00.200 --> 32:08.640 very ecumenical, very worldly, very pagan state run church that is kind of being formed at 32:08.640 --> 32:16.120 300 in AD. This is not a movement of the spirit of God. This is not, you know, Christ doesn't 32:16.120 --> 32:20.720 work this way of just forcing the government, force everyone to be Catholic or whatever. 32:20.820 --> 32:24.900 And again, Catholic means the universal church. So they're just like everybody's coming together. 32:25.280 --> 32:29.240 So I'm just trying to give you a little bit of church history, some idea of how these things 32:29.240 --> 32:33.780 form. But I want you to go to Romans chapter four, if you would go to Romans chapter 32:33.780 --> 32:41.600 four, so let's say, oh, well, the new IV is a later development than this formation of this 32:41.600 --> 32:44.460 Roman Catholic Church. But here's the thing, the Roman Catholic Church doesn't form, 32:44.980 --> 32:51.740 but for like 300 years after the New Testament churches have been formed and you have the 32:51.740 --> 32:58.700 Apostle Paul giving doctrine, you don't think in 300 years doctrines could have gone astray or 32:58.700 --> 33:04.620 like weird practices could have crept in or that there's issues or problems. Of course, 33:04.720 --> 33:09.860 there's going to be. Okay. But when it comes to our doctrine as a church, you know, we're not 33:09.860 --> 33:15.840 looking back to, well, what did they teach in 300 in AD when we have a state run religion? 33:16.020 --> 33:20.660 You know, we're looking at, we're looking at first century. We're not looking at the 33:20.660 --> 33:24.900 third or fourth century. We're looking at, hey, what did they teach in the first century? 33:25.560 --> 33:29.340 Why? Because things can go corrupt, things can go bad. We want to do things as they were written. 33:29.920 --> 33:32.420 Romans chapter number four, look at what it says in verse 23. 33:33.480 --> 33:38.120 Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but for us also to whom it 33:38.120 --> 33:41.860 shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, 33:42.220 --> 33:46.160 who is delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification. So here's the thing, 33:46.260 --> 33:50.040 if I want to learn, how do I get saved? What do we believe as a church? What should our 33:50.040 --> 33:56.200 church have as its doctrine? Do I go back to 300 in AD and figure out what the ecumenical councils 33:56.200 --> 34:00.460 believe or what the Nicene Creed is or anything? No. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go 34:00.460 --> 34:06.400 back to what the scripture says and say, hey, this is what I should believe. And think about 34:06.400 --> 34:10.300 the context of Romans chapter number four. What was written? Well, look at verse one. 34:10.600 --> 34:15.080 What shall we say then that Abraham our father? So what's the timeline here? We're going all 34:15.080 --> 34:21.760 the way back to Abraham and saying what was written about Abraham was written for us right now in the 34:21.760 --> 34:30.280 first century. Why would I then say that us living in the 21st century, why wouldn't we go back to 34:30.280 --> 34:36.140 Abraham? Not only that, in verse six, even as David also described the blessings of the man 34:36.140 --> 34:39.860 and Jim God imputed the righteous without works. So it's like, oh, you guys believe 34:39.860 --> 34:44.620 salvation is by faith, but the Roman Catholic church has never taught that. That's fine 34:44.620 --> 34:51.340 because y'all started teaching this in 380 AD. I'm going back to the first century. 34:52.000 --> 34:58.260 I'm going back to the time of David. I'm going back to the time of Abraham. And guess what? We're 34:58.260 --> 35:05.480 older than you. Our theology, our doctrine on salvation by faith is older than you. Oh, well, 35:05.620 --> 35:10.520 it's new. It's novel. I don't believe that because here's the thing. Salvation is by faith 35:10.520 --> 35:15.440 to faith. So there's always been saved people getting people saved throughout every generation, 35:15.760 --> 35:19.480 throughout every area. Now, did they always have a great church to go to? 35:20.000 --> 35:23.520 Well, let's just answer that question right now. Is everywhere in the world have a great 35:23.520 --> 35:29.580 church to go to? So then why would I think that it was different in the past? That's never 35:29.580 --> 35:32.900 been the case. We go to all kinds of parts of the world where they're like, all right, 35:32.960 --> 35:38.060 what church should I go to? And you're like, I don't know, man. I have people contact 35:38.060 --> 35:43.140 to me all the time reaching out to me, emailing me. I'm talking to people on podcasts. I'm talking 35:43.140 --> 35:47.020 to people on the radio shows, on, you know, internet podcasts. They're just like, what church 35:47.020 --> 35:50.880 are good to? And I'm like, I don't know, man, godresearch.com slash churches. That's that's 35:50.880 --> 35:55.460 all I can point you to. In fact, many times they're just like, I just, I don't want to go 35:55.460 --> 35:59.320 to a Zionist church. And I'm just like, well, then you're really doomed. You know, like, 35:59.340 --> 36:04.100 if you're not willing to hold your nose at that, you really don't have much of an option in many 36:04.100 --> 36:09.340 places of this world. You know, a lot of people that live in foreign countries and foreign areas, 36:09.840 --> 36:15.340 I mean, think about it. You live in a Muslim area. If you live in China, if you live in North Korea, 36:15.980 --> 36:21.280 I mean, there's some dark places in this world where there may not be a great church option 36:22.000 --> 36:26.020 or it may be an underground church option. You know, I know that there are churches that 36:26.020 --> 36:30.240 are underground in China. I know there are churches that are underground in Muslim areas. 36:31.100 --> 36:35.440 And, you know, it's not much different than a lot of people probably in the second and the 36:35.440 --> 36:39.520 third century. They, their best church option might have been underground. And you know, 36:39.580 --> 36:43.720 throughout the campaign of the Roman Catholic Church, there was probably a lot of underground 36:43.720 --> 36:48.700 churches. You're like, how come we never heard about it? It's called it's underground. It's 36:48.700 --> 36:52.800 like that meme. I love this meme template. It's like the black guy is like turning back 36:52.800 --> 36:56.360 and he's like shooting someone. And then he turns around and looks at the mic and they're 36:56.360 --> 37:00.160 like, hey, it's like the Roman Catholic is turning back and shooting all the Christians. 37:00.560 --> 37:06.440 And then he's like, where were y'all? He's just like, yeah, I wonder where they were, 37:07.020 --> 37:12.160 you know, when you're killing us. Okay. And he's like, where are we being killed? 37:13.360 --> 37:17.360 It's so funny that we're like, you guys didn't exist. And it's like, what about all the people 37:17.360 --> 37:22.280 that you killed for believing like we did? Right, you didn't exist. No, you killed us. 37:23.220 --> 37:28.180 It's like, where were you? The guy on the stake, the guy being burned, the guy being, 37:28.280 --> 37:33.080 you know, martyred, this group being slaughtered. It's like, where were you being killed? 37:33.860 --> 37:37.580 It's not that we didn't exist. It's just you keep pointing to all these examples, 37:37.860 --> 37:40.100 all these heretics, you know, all these heretics that we had to kill. 37:41.120 --> 37:45.800 It's just like, well, you know, actually, maybe they weren't a heretic. Maybe you're 37:45.800 --> 37:50.540 the heretic. It's like, oh, we already conquered this heresy. This is what Roman 37:50.540 --> 37:54.560 and Catholics will say. All these people are bringing up these ancient heresies. And it's like, 37:55.180 --> 37:58.960 five seconds ago, you said we didn't believe this. No one's believed this. And then it's like, 37:59.000 --> 38:03.340 oh, you're digging up ancient heresies. Which one is it? Are we going back to things that people 38:03.340 --> 38:07.400 believe in the past? Are we not? Did we exist? Did we not exist? Did you kill us? Did you 38:07.400 --> 38:11.060 not kill us? You know, and again, they don't want to really talk about that too much because 38:11.460 --> 38:16.320 the facts are they've killed a lot of Christians throughout history. You want to know who's 38:16.320 --> 38:20.040 been one of the biggest forces against Christians? It's called the Roman Catholic Church. 38:21.400 --> 38:26.160 You know, we always want to talk about how Muslims are so scary. We always want to talk about 38:26.160 --> 38:32.480 how Jews are so scary. But I wonder what the death toll is if we compared Muslims, Jews, 38:32.820 --> 38:37.520 and then we had Catholics on another side. Like, who's killed more Christians? And there's all 38:37.520 --> 38:41.460 these people like, oh, we need, we need white people to rescue us. Well, you know what, 38:41.480 --> 38:45.020 there's a lot of white people in Europe called Roman Catholics that were slaughtering 38:45.020 --> 38:48.780 Christians throughout history. So it's like, oh, let's give back our nation, 38:48.780 --> 38:52.060 our country to Catholics. You may be signing your own death warrant, buddy. 38:52.900 --> 38:59.940 And not even realizing it. I got a little bit of attention this last week for smashing some, 39:00.060 --> 39:04.740 I didn't even do it. I let the kids do it. Okay. Smash a bunch of idols. And it seems 39:04.740 --> 39:09.580 really fitting that our first person up here was Roman to destroy the Roman Catholic Church. 39:09.720 --> 39:16.460 You know what I mean? Like, that can't be a coincidence. Okay. But in the wake of all this, 39:16.460 --> 39:21.700 you know, I've had so many just emails and just so many voicemails and just all people saying this 39:21.700 --> 39:26.500 online. And I mean, some of them there's like, I can't wait to kill you. I can't wait to curbstomp 39:26.500 --> 39:30.340 you. We need to kill all the people that believe like you. And I'm just thinking like, 39:30.700 --> 39:35.820 you sound just like the Roman Catholic Church. Historically. I mean, there's openly admitting 39:35.820 --> 39:43.400 it. That's how they feel. You, you destroy a ceramic structure that they claim is Mary 39:43.400 --> 39:48.800 and they want to murder you. Think about it. I'm offensive for destroying a ceramic 39:51.340 --> 39:55.780 structure. And they want to kill me. Like it's unacceptable to destroy a graven image, 39:56.000 --> 40:00.180 but it's acceptable to just kill someone. Right. Think about that logic. Think about it. And 40:00.180 --> 40:08.540 they're like, you guys are so violent. Okay. So I'm breaking stone. I'm breaking glass or 40:08.540 --> 40:13.360 ceramic and you're going to kill people and I'm violent, right? That's their logic. They're 40:13.360 --> 40:17.360 like, Oh, you're so unloving. You're not peaceful. I'm like, bro, you're the one trying to curbstomp 40:17.360 --> 40:22.400 me. You're the one wanting to kill us all. It's just like they don't even understand their own 40:22.400 --> 40:27.780 logic. Okay. Cause they're Catholic, of course. It's like, Hey, what should we do? We should 40:27.780 --> 40:31.600 believe whatever the Bible said and look salvation by faith is even if it was a new 40:31.600 --> 40:35.760 doctrine in the Protestant Reformation, it's not new. It's an old doctrine. It's an old 40:35.760 --> 40:39.480 belief. And of course it's not new because there's always people believing it every century, 40:39.880 --> 40:44.240 every year. It's like, where were they being killed? I mean, William Tyndale is being killed 40:44.240 --> 40:52.120 at the stake and one of his first crimes associated to him or within the sentencing, 40:52.660 --> 40:54.820 they're like, what they're saying, why they're killing them. They're saying, 40:55.040 --> 41:00.620 first, he maintained that faith alone justifies. It's like, Amen. Sounds great. 41:01.320 --> 41:04.880 And of course, some people say like, Oh, well, he's a Calvinist. I don't really care, 41:04.880 --> 41:10.460 because if he believes in faith alone, he saved. And look, faith alone didn't come out of a vacuum. 41:10.900 --> 41:14.720 It's been passed on from generation, from faith to faith, from faith to faith. 41:14.960 --> 41:22.060 It went from Abraham to David to the apostle Paul to us. It's always gone throughout history. 41:22.480 --> 41:27.420 We have it. And oh, well, they weren't doing things exactly right in the 16th century, 41:27.540 --> 41:30.580 just like you. Okay. Well, we're doing things as they're written. 41:31.520 --> 41:34.760 You know, you can keep getting better. You can keep improving. You can keep improving. 41:35.040 --> 41:40.180 You can keep revising. You know, if we believe, you know, if the Reformation idea is right, 41:40.420 --> 41:46.000 then why would you stop performing after one iteration? Wouldn't the idea be like, 41:46.180 --> 41:49.080 Hey, if we're going to reform, let's just keep performing and reforming and reforming 41:49.080 --> 41:52.020 and reforming until we get it right. Not just like, Hey, one iteration. 41:52.500 --> 41:57.440 I don't want to be the Anglican church where we're just like one slight dial to the right 41:57.440 --> 42:00.720 of the Catholic church. I don't want to be just slightly not Catholic. 42:01.340 --> 42:03.920 It's like, Oh, the Anglican church, we just don't accept the Pope. 42:04.640 --> 42:08.900 It's like, I wanted a few more notches turned. Okay. There's a lot more that we could have been 42:08.900 --> 42:13.240 like, let's change. Let's get right on this particular issue. That's why a lot of Protestants 42:13.240 --> 42:16.820 are just Catholic light because they just kind of like, ah, we're going to change this 42:16.820 --> 42:20.920 to hair. It's just like, no, we need to change a lot. Okay. We need to get things right 42:20.920 --> 42:27.900 and dialed in. Now I have a lot more verses that we could go to Acts chapter 19 if you would, 42:28.780 --> 42:33.020 you know, in Jeremiah 6, 16, the Bible says, 42:33.140 --> 42:36.320 Thus say the Lord standing in the ways and see and ask for the old paths, 42:36.740 --> 42:40.040 wearing is the good way and walk there and you shall find rest your souls. 42:40.600 --> 42:43.720 So in a sense, we should be constantly asking like, okay, well, what was 42:43.720 --> 42:46.600 the Bible saying? What is the old path in that sense? 42:47.290 --> 42:55.020 And so we want to be newly doing the old stuff. We want to be newly believing the old stuff. 42:55.400 --> 42:59.900 We want to be newly practicing the old stuff. And look, our practices as Baptist 43:00.700 --> 43:05.440 all predate that 380 idea because they're right here in the text. Salvation by faith was taught 43:05.440 --> 43:10.960 in the first century and baptism by immersion was taught in the first century. We can see in 43:10.960 --> 43:17.460 Matthew 3, 16, Jesus coming up out straight way out of the water. We can see in Acts 8, 37, 43:17.660 --> 43:22.020 that they went down both into the water. Why are you going into the water if you just need to 43:22.020 --> 43:28.400 sprinkle? And of course, then a lot of Bibles will take that verse out. The Roman Catholics don't 43:28.400 --> 43:32.680 like that verse. They want to de-emphasize those kinds of verses because it's also a 43:32.680 --> 43:36.000 prerequisite to getting baptized. It's if they'll believe this with all thine heart 43:36.000 --> 43:42.140 thumbiest. And so we believe that baptism is after salvation and that you must have faith 43:42.140 --> 43:47.620 so we don't baptize babies. We don't baptize infants. We don't sprinkle. All of our practices 43:47.620 --> 43:53.380 are based on Acts, which is before your stupid pagan cult of 380 AD. 43:56.200 --> 43:59.180 Not only that, our practices, like I said, baptism by immersion 43:59.840 --> 44:03.880 is taught in the Scripture preaching out of the Old and New Testament. We can see that 44:03.880 --> 44:08.480 as precedent in the Bible. Going out by twos is taught by Jesus Christ in Luke 10, verse 1. 44:08.860 --> 44:11.940 Meeting on the first day of the week is Acts chapter 20, verse 7. 44:12.340 --> 44:17.020 Singing hymns, Colossians 3, verse 16. You look at our churches like, what are we doing 44:18.080 --> 44:22.340 that is not somewhere in this text? Right? We're meeting on the first day of the week. 44:22.640 --> 44:27.480 We're singing hymns. I'm preaching long like Paul out of the Old and New Testament. 44:29.580 --> 44:37.340 I'm reasoning out of the Scriptures as the Apostle Paul did. Later, we're going to go out two by two, 44:38.020 --> 44:44.500 preaching the gospel. If some will want to be baptized, we would ask, hey, do you believe in 44:44.500 --> 44:49.220 Jesus Christ? And then we're going to fully submers them and then we're going to bring 44:49.220 --> 44:57.460 them back out. Like what are we magically doing that's not found in the text? They want to 44:57.460 --> 45:01.380 do something I'm doing. Show me something that we're practicing that is new. 45:02.680 --> 45:05.040 Well, you're smashing idols. Not new. 45:07.160 --> 45:09.380 Acts chapter 19, look at verse 17. First, 45:10.980 --> 45:15.780 and this is known to all the Jews and Greeks also dwelling in Ephesus and fear fell on them all. 45:16.340 --> 45:19.380 And the name of the Lord Jesus is magnified and many that believe came and confessed and 45:19.380 --> 45:23.240 showed their deeds. Many of them also which use curious arts brought their books together 45:23.240 --> 45:29.060 and burned them before all the men, or before all men. And they counted the price of them and 45:29.060 --> 45:34.540 found it 50,000 pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed. Hey, in the 45:34.540 --> 45:41.460 first century, they're burning books. Oh, you burn false Bibles. Yeah, I do. Guilty as charged. 45:42.220 --> 45:46.160 But you know what? Let's go back to Leviticus chapter 26. Let's go even older. 45:47.320 --> 45:50.500 Not only do we have a practice of them burning books in the New Testament, 45:50.500 --> 45:53.780 you know, we have we have practices of them not only burning books, but also 45:54.700 --> 46:00.860 smashing graven images based on what the Bible says. Now it used to be, it used to be that if 46:00.860 --> 46:06.140 you wanted to get a graven image, you had to go to a Catholic bookstore. Who remembers Catholic 46:06.140 --> 46:11.860 bookstores? Yeah, when I was younger, you know, you went to the Christian bookstore. You know, 46:11.880 --> 46:17.240 it was not in there a bunch of graven images. And you went into the Catholic bookstore. 46:17.720 --> 46:23.040 It was like no books in all graven images. I mean, I remember there was a Catholic bookstore 46:23.040 --> 46:28.640 by the mall where I went when I was in high school in junior high that you could see. And 46:28.640 --> 46:33.220 then basically all the Catholic bookstores went out of out of business because the 46:33.220 --> 46:36.800 Mardels and all the different Christian bookstores just started bringing all the 46:36.800 --> 46:40.140 Catholic stuff into their stores. They started having a Catholic section. 46:40.840 --> 46:44.660 It used to be there was not the Catholic stuff in the Christian bookstores. 46:45.240 --> 46:50.440 Then all of a sudden it was a Catholic section. Now it's just all mixed in. You can't even tell 46:50.440 --> 46:55.700 what's what anymore. And it's just been totally just compromised. Why? Because of the love of money. 46:56.820 --> 47:00.920 Why? Because they just want to maximize their revenue and maximize the revenue and just 47:01.380 --> 47:06.280 make it seem like we're all non-denominational now or whatever. The non-denominational era 47:06.280 --> 47:09.960 that we live in today. But let me tell you something that has not always been the case 47:09.960 --> 47:14.200 and Christians have not always accepted graven images. Leviticus chapter 26, look at verse 47:14.200 --> 47:22.160 one. You should make you know idols, nor graven image. Go to Deuteronomy 4. We're going to go 47:22.160 --> 47:25.180 kind of quickly through some of these but go to Deuteronomy chapter 4. Now this is 47:25.180 --> 47:29.980 some of the argument you'll hear and I've heard this week is they'll say things like, 47:30.520 --> 47:32.060 oh well you don't even know what a graven image is. 47:35.440 --> 47:40.900 And then they proceed to not tell you what it is. Okay? It's like it seems pretty self 47:40.900 --> 47:49.700 explanatory. Someone graved it and it's an image? Like is that you know it's usually out of wood or 47:49.700 --> 47:55.000 stone? You know that's pretty much what the Bible says. I don't think it takes a rocket science 47:55.000 --> 47:59.760 to figure out what a graven image is. Okay? And obviously the idea of an idol is just 47:59.760 --> 48:03.120 something that we're worshiping, have some kind of a religious connotation. 48:03.620 --> 48:09.300 You know I've consistently taught and this is just my practical interpretation of this 48:09.300 --> 48:14.620 is that if something doesn't have a utility, okay, it doesn't have some kind of utility, 48:15.440 --> 48:22.920 then it would be in my view in danger of being a graven image. Okay? So a toy, I don't believe 48:22.920 --> 48:26.960 is a graven image because there's the utility it's being used. You know if it's an airplane 48:27.400 --> 48:31.820 and they paint it like a bird that's not a graven image because it has utility. 48:32.180 --> 48:36.400 You weren't using it to fly around. Okay? But if the only thing you're doing is just 48:36.400 --> 48:41.380 putting on a shelf and kneeling before it or you're putting it in church to kneel before it or 48:41.380 --> 48:47.400 whatever, that's not utility. That's not being used. It's just used to be observed, adored, 48:47.740 --> 48:52.020 looked at. Okay? Well now it's in danger of being a graven image that's in violation of the 48:52.020 --> 48:58.700 Bible. So I've always said, hey, if it's not graven, if it's not a grape, like it's not 48:58.700 --> 49:03.680 something that's been literally graved, it's not some kind of a 3D carved structure that's 49:03.680 --> 49:08.060 out of wood or stone, you know, and we can say plastics and ceramics, but I'm just saying 49:08.060 --> 49:15.200 it's not some kind of a graven image. And if it has no utility, okay, you know, these are 49:15.200 --> 49:21.860 kind of my litmus tests. Obviously a doll is not a graven image. It's a doll. Okay? And it's used 49:21.860 --> 49:27.760 as a toy. I don't think pictures are necessarily a graven image. Okay? There's nothing wrong 49:27.760 --> 49:31.440 with a picture. But wait a minute. What if we all start bowing down to the picture? 49:31.900 --> 49:37.840 Now it's turned into an idol. Okay? So we shouldn't have idols or graven images. Okay? So anything 49:37.840 --> 49:42.400 that we venerate, even if it wasn't technically a graven image, but we're all bowing down to it, 49:42.660 --> 49:47.140 what if it's just a rock? But we all start bowing down to the rock. Okay? Now it's become an idol 49:47.560 --> 49:51.160 and we're going to, we're going to toss that aside. Okay? If it's a voodoo doll, 49:51.340 --> 49:54.080 well, we're going to get rid of that. Okay? We're going to get rid of something that 49:54.080 --> 49:57.460 you're venerating, that you're venerating. That's what that, we're not, we're not 49:57.460 --> 50:03.120 worshiping it. We're venerating it. Dude, the word worship means kneel. They are kneeling before 50:03.120 --> 50:11.060 Mary's and they are giving a place in their heart to idolatry for this. Okay? Which the 50:11.060 --> 50:17.560 Bible doesn't do. It's like, oh, well, you don't respect Mary. You don't respect the mother of God 50:17.560 --> 50:21.980 or something. It's like, okay, let's just think about interactions Jesus had with Mary. 50:22.520 --> 50:32.080 All right? Woman, what have I to do with thee? Is that, was that respectful? Okay? Hey, your mother 50:32.080 --> 50:37.840 and your brother in desire to see thee. And he says, what does he say? Oh, well, whoever does the 50:37.840 --> 50:41.660 word of God, that's my mother, my brother. My mother, my brother, are they which hear the 50:41.660 --> 50:46.880 word of God and do it? Luke chapter number eight. Hey, this is your mom. Nope, these are my mom. 50:48.320 --> 50:52.240 Oh, you disrespect the mother of God. You know what? To disrespect the mother of God, 50:52.320 --> 50:59.340 we disrespect any saved lady. Okay? And look, Mary is not a statue. She's a person. 51:01.060 --> 51:05.360 I could smash every single graven image of Mary and it has nothing to do with Mary. 51:06.780 --> 51:12.040 You can call up Mary all day long, but it's not Mary. She's not there. It's not her. And 51:12.040 --> 51:16.100 actually you're doing her some service because if any of you make a graven image of me and 51:16.100 --> 51:20.400 start worshiping it, I want you to smash it. I want to smash it. They're like, 51:20.620 --> 51:26.700 eh, do you smash images of your mom? And I'm like, well, first of all, I don't have any. 51:28.300 --> 51:34.380 Secondly, no one's like bowing down to them. But yeah, if someone made a carved image of my mother 51:35.100 --> 51:39.660 and it looked exactly like her and then people start bowing down and worshiping it, 51:39.700 --> 51:42.740 I will smash it. They're like, oh, you wouldn't do this if it was a Jesus. 51:43.080 --> 51:48.660 Yes, I would because it's not Jesus. They're like, oh, what would you do if someone gave you a Jesus? 51:48.840 --> 51:54.320 I'm like, I'll smash it right now. Give me one. I was like, what kind of a, oh, what about these 51:54.320 --> 52:01.260 big giant statues in South America? Burn them. Crush them. I don't want anything to do with them. 52:02.300 --> 52:05.360 Yeah, but they're of God. You know, we can have graven images of the good guys. 52:06.140 --> 52:09.100 Not the bad guys. Well, let's read what the Bible actually says. Okay. 52:09.100 --> 52:12.680 Do it on me, chapter four, and let's look at verse number 14. 52:12.800 --> 52:17.160 And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statues and judgments that you might do them 52:17.160 --> 52:22.060 in the land, whether you go over to possess it. Take heed therefore, good heed under yourselves 52:22.060 --> 52:28.680 for you saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in 52:28.680 --> 52:34.060 horror out of the midst of the fire. So what did they not see? They did not see God. 52:34.900 --> 52:39.680 He's like, Hey, you didn't see any similitude. You didn't get to see me. Okay. He was covered. 52:39.780 --> 52:44.560 There was a cloud covering. They didn't get to see God. They didn't get to see the similitude. 52:44.900 --> 52:51.360 Why? Verse 16, lest you corrupt yourselves and make you a graven image. He said, Hey, 52:51.860 --> 52:58.620 even if you made an image of me, it's wrong. Oh, this is an image of God. So therefore it's 52:58.620 --> 53:03.040 okay. The image represents God. No, God saying, I made sure you didn't see me so that you 53:03.040 --> 53:07.640 wouldn't do it because you're not allowed to do it. You shouldn't be making graven images of God. 53:08.020 --> 53:13.920 Because they'll say, Oh, to disrespect the image is to disrespect the person. False. That is not true. 53:14.660 --> 53:18.880 I mean, again, and let's just be honest, these images are not doing them service anyways. 53:19.500 --> 53:26.140 I mean, what if someone drew some cross-eyed weirdo freak and said, This is you because 53:26.140 --> 53:30.860 that's what the Orthodox do with Jesus. Look at their image of Jesus and it's some cross-eyed 53:30.860 --> 53:37.440 weirdo freak. He's like, Look, it's Jesus. It's like, No, that's not Jesus. That's not what he looks 53:37.440 --> 53:42.440 like. It's just some weird cross-eyed freak that we should just burn every image of. 53:43.580 --> 53:47.660 Oh, you don't, you don't want to have this cross-eyed Jesus. No, because he's not cross-eyed. 53:48.720 --> 53:54.380 Okay. He's got some obvious eye blemish with their stupid drawing of him and it's false. 53:54.760 --> 53:56.900 And guess what? The person that draw didn't ever see Jesus. 53:58.800 --> 54:03.880 It's, it's stupid. It's false. You know, the Bible, go to second chronicles chapter 34. There's too 54:03.880 --> 54:09.220 many verses on this. There's so many examples. God said, You shall destroy their altars and 54:09.220 --> 54:14.500 break down their images and cut down their groves and burn their graven images with fire. 54:14.960 --> 54:18.800 The Bible says in Jun 12, You shall hew down the graven images. 54:19.380 --> 54:23.200 Oh, what Pastor Shelley did was new. It's not new. It's old. 54:23.200 --> 54:26.860 Yeah. Amen. That's right. And you know who did it? Josiah did it. 54:27.580 --> 54:32.920 Second chronicles chapter number 34. We have an example of someone doing this. Josiah. 54:34.020 --> 54:38.660 Why? Because, because of what was written. Oh, Josiah is new. He's doing something new. No, 54:38.680 --> 54:42.480 he's doing what God said for them to do at the time when they entered the land of Canaan. 54:42.600 --> 54:44.980 And of course, I believe they did it in the land of Canaan. I believe they did 54:44.980 --> 54:48.240 burn a lot of their graven images and crush them and destroy them. 54:49.100 --> 54:52.780 Oh, those are the bad guys. It doesn't matter who the guy is. God said not to make it. 54:52.780 --> 54:58.340 Oh, what about the cherrybim? Okay. But number one, they're not worshiping the jaribim. 54:58.720 --> 55:02.120 Okay. And it was usually hidden away and the temple and the things of God. 55:02.460 --> 55:07.320 But frankly speaking, God can say, don't make any graven image, but make this one. 55:07.860 --> 55:11.960 He can say that. He can say whatever he wants. Just like, what, what have your parents said? 55:12.040 --> 55:15.780 Hey, don't eat anything in the pantry, but get this one thing out of there. 55:16.140 --> 55:20.880 That's not a contradiction. If God says, Hey, I don't want anybody to make any of these 55:20.880 --> 55:25.400 graven images. But you know what? A couple of special people that got to see what was in heaven, 55:25.640 --> 55:30.320 I want you to make these specific things that have in my temple. Well, then, okay, he can do that. 55:31.640 --> 55:35.980 That's not a contradiction. That's just an exception that God's making up for himself. 55:36.220 --> 55:38.820 But you know what he didn't tell us to do? Make statues of Mary. 55:40.160 --> 55:43.840 And he's think when they did make the brazen serpent on the stick, once they 55:43.840 --> 55:47.140 started to whoring themselves after that, they immediately destroyed it. 55:47.980 --> 55:50.520 So even if you believe that you're supposed to make a Mary, 55:50.740 --> 55:56.120 the Catholics have whored themselves out to Mary, destroy it. Burn it with fire. 55:58.100 --> 56:01.740 Oh, wow. That's just mean to Catholics. We should be nice to Catholics. 56:02.080 --> 56:04.740 Well, you know what? Let all the other lame Christians be nice to them then. 56:05.720 --> 56:08.200 Seems like they're reaching none. It's like, oh, you're not going to reach Catholics 56:08.200 --> 56:12.700 with this message. Well, then let the lame people reach them. But isn't that not working 56:12.700 --> 56:16.700 as well? It's funny that when it criticized me for not reaching them, it's like, 56:16.700 --> 56:20.400 are you reaching them? Are they actually getting saved through what you're doing? 56:21.280 --> 56:24.600 It's silly to think like you're going to reach Catholics by lying to them, 56:26.220 --> 56:31.480 by pandering to their sin. Did the Apostle Paul pander to the Pagans and their idolatry 56:31.480 --> 56:37.640 or did he tell them to abandon it and they were worshiping idols of devils? They were 56:37.640 --> 56:40.900 sacrificing unto devils and they were having fellowship with devils and he's telling them 56:40.900 --> 56:44.800 have nothing to do with them and to totally abandon them. They're burning their books 56:44.800 --> 56:50.120 in the New Testament. Plus, I'm just following the president of Josiah. He was eight years old 56:50.120 --> 56:55.280 then when he was like basically 16, 17, 18 in that timeframe. He realizes we need to 56:55.280 --> 56:59.860 cleanse the land verse four and they break down the altars of Balaam in his presence and the 56:59.860 --> 57:05.020 images that were on eye above them. He cut down and the groves and the carved images 57:05.020 --> 57:10.180 and the molten images. He break in pieces. Oh, this one's not raven. It's molten. 57:10.180 --> 57:15.160 Okay. Break it too. Notice how it is. It's just like, hey, whether it was carved, 57:15.400 --> 57:19.880 whether it was molten, break them in pieces, make dust of them and strode it upon the graves of 57:19.880 --> 57:25.300 them that had sacrificed to them. Wow. That's intense. Not only, oh, this is disrespectful. 57:25.740 --> 57:31.340 Okay. Do you want me to then take the Mary trash and go sprinkle it in some Catholic graveyard? 57:34.720 --> 57:42.140 That's biblical. Okay. Sorry. Talk about disrespect. And he burnt the bones of the priests upon 57:42.140 --> 57:46.880 their altars and cleansed Judah and Jerusalem. Not only that, he's digging up this false prophets 57:46.880 --> 57:51.880 and just, just burning their bones or any bones that have been out, I guess, maybe they were 57:51.880 --> 57:58.940 honoring them. Oh, wait, that's the Orthodox church. Where you go to what, Athos or something? 57:58.940 --> 58:02.620 You go to St. Athos or something and they have like this skull collection, 58:03.100 --> 58:08.600 like a literal just shelves of skulls. And they're like, this was a saint. Burn it. 58:10.580 --> 58:16.880 I mean, here's a dead foot of John Chrysostom. Look, I did a debate with an Orthodox guy 58:16.880 --> 58:21.640 and I said, I had like this dead foot. Okay. And it wasn't real. It's just, you know, a prop. 58:22.040 --> 58:26.140 But I said, if this is John Chrysostom's foot and your church set it out, would you kiss it? 58:28.080 --> 58:34.100 And he's like, yes. So you go to the, yeah, we have the, we have, we have a cult, 58:34.420 --> 58:38.940 but they'll kiss dead feet. But it's covered in plastic. Okay. 58:40.220 --> 58:44.180 You're not going to kiss the bone directly. But would you? Yeah, that should be the real 58:44.180 --> 58:50.520 question. What about before plastics? What did they do? I mean, they say it's a schism. 58:50.900 --> 58:54.060 They're like, they're not real Orthodox, but there's groups of Orthodox that will 58:54.060 --> 59:01.040 pour water on the dead foot and then people come by, take water out of the fountain that's 59:01.040 --> 59:07.520 just been blessed by the dead foot and then drink it. And they're like, we don't do that, 59:07.540 --> 59:13.160 we just kiss it. Oh, okay. Wow. You're so much better. You know, and I'm crazy for 59:13.160 --> 59:19.320 destroying graven images. They're drinking dead foot water. They're kissing dead feet. 59:19.860 --> 59:23.660 And look, you know, in the Bible, there's, there's mentions of like the false prophets 59:24.200 --> 59:29.360 dirtying up water with their feet and then making people drink it. This is like, you're just like 59:29.360 --> 59:33.940 them because there's no new thing under the sun. I mean, think about the craziness of false prophets 59:33.940 --> 59:39.220 like, hey, let's put our dirty feet in water and make people drink it. Like, what in the world? 59:39.540 --> 59:46.120 This is the true religion. This is the real religion. Well, look, I, I'm not, I'm not 59:46.120 --> 59:49.280 novel and not wanting graven images. I'll give you a couple of quotes, 59:49.720 --> 59:57.840 Clement of Alexandria and about 150 to 250 AD. So this is like the second and third century here. 59:58.560 --> 01:00:03.340 He is quoted as saying, we express, we are expressly forbidden to practice a deceitful art 01:00:03.340 --> 01:00:07.800 for the prophet says thou shalt not make a likeness of anything that is in heaven above 01:00:07.800 --> 01:00:12.560 or in the earth beneath. The prophetic word refutes the custom of idolatry when it says, 01:00:12.560 --> 01:00:17.060 all the gods of the nations are images of demons, but God made the heavens. 01:00:17.640 --> 01:00:22.200 Tertullian, same timeline. He said, quote, the images of those things are idols. The 01:00:22.200 --> 01:00:26.580 consecration of the images is idolatry. God prohibits an idol as much 01:00:26.580 --> 01:00:31.540 to be made as to be worshiped. He's saying, oh, it's not just the worship, it's even just 01:00:31.540 --> 01:00:37.560 making it. Tertullian, that's before your 380 timeline. Yisubius of Caesarea, 01:00:37.560 --> 01:00:45.040 also before this timeline said, can it be that you have forgotten that passage in which God lays 01:00:45.040 --> 01:00:50.140 down the law that no likeness should be made, either of what is in heaven or what is in the 01:00:50.140 --> 01:00:56.460 earth beneath? Have you ever heard anything of the kind either yourself in church or from 01:00:56.460 --> 01:01:00.860 another person are not such things banished and excluded from churches all over the world? 01:01:01.480 --> 01:01:06.580 And it is not common knowledge that such practices are not permitted to us alone. 01:01:06.580 --> 01:01:12.580 Now here's the thing, in this quote from Yisubius, there was someone that was asking him, hey, 01:01:12.780 --> 01:01:18.360 make me an image of Christ, make me a graven image. And then he writes a letter back. 01:01:18.940 --> 01:01:25.740 And what he says is that are not such things banished and excluded from churches all over 01:01:25.740 --> 01:01:34.380 the world? He said, hey, this is from 260 to 340 AD that this guy lived, okay? I don't know 01:01:34.380 --> 01:01:37.760 exactly when this specific passage was written, but you would assume not when he was a baby, 01:01:37.960 --> 01:01:44.500 right? So it's very likely this was written at the timeline that this Roman Catholic Church 01:01:44.500 --> 01:01:49.780 is even having its prototype creation. This is when it's legalized. And he's saying, hey, 01:01:50.120 --> 01:01:54.340 no, we're not going to have carved images. Now who would want that? How about the Roman 01:01:54.340 --> 01:01:59.280 pagans that have had to convert to Christianity now? And they had all these graven images 01:01:59.280 --> 01:02:03.340 before and they want images again. And he said, no, churches don't have graven images. 01:02:03.340 --> 01:02:07.240 Have you forgotten the commandments? Have you forgotten what was written? Have you forgotten 01:02:07.240 --> 01:02:11.720 what God said? And now it's forbidden in churches all over the world? This is not something that 01:02:11.720 --> 01:02:19.800 we practice. You guys are new. No, we're going back to what was old. It is new. Well, you're 01:02:19.800 --> 01:02:24.500 breaking stuff. Well, that's not new. People have been breaking stuff all the time. And the 01:02:25.940 --> 01:02:31.020 eighth century, okay, I'll just give you a quick timeline. And I know I'm getting close 01:02:31.020 --> 01:02:36.080 to time on my sermon, but I'm not going to read all the quotes, but essentially for the first 01:02:36.080 --> 01:02:40.740 300 years, you don't have graven images because they're all right on this doctrine. So we don't 01:02:40.740 --> 01:02:46.460 have to worry. Like no one's smashing them because they don't exist. Then buy about the 01:02:46.460 --> 01:02:50.060 force. And once you finally get the Roman Catholic Church as the official state church, 01:02:50.280 --> 01:02:54.240 now the sudden idolatry is popping up. And then by the sixth and seventh century, 01:02:54.360 --> 01:02:58.800 it's flourishing. It's just everywhere. It's just part and parcel. So you have people 01:02:58.800 --> 01:03:07.060 that freak out about this. They get mad about this. Emperor Leo III, he sees some like natural, 01:03:09.560 --> 01:03:14.060 I want to say it differently. He sees some kind of just natural disaster or something 01:03:14.800 --> 01:03:19.440 that he attributes to God being mad about idolatry. Basically, there's something crazy 01:03:19.440 --> 01:03:23.580 happens and he's like, wow, God must be mad at us for all this idolatry. So he decides we 01:03:23.580 --> 01:03:32.380 need to clean up our Christianity from all this idolatry. So he banished icons and started 01:03:32.380 --> 01:03:38.440 destroying all the graven images throughout his empire and through the Byzantine empire. 01:03:38.900 --> 01:03:44.280 And this is called an iconoclasm period. Who's ever heard this term iconoclasm? That just means 01:03:44.280 --> 01:03:47.520 that it's like a period of time where they were destroying. And someone that destroys graven 01:03:47.520 --> 01:03:55.400 images is called an iconoclast. So I would be your iconoclast. Now people that love these 01:03:55.400 --> 01:04:02.440 things are called iconophiles. You know, like you have a pedophile. You have an iconophile. 01:04:02.580 --> 01:04:08.400 Because file, if you think about it, like Filayo Philadelphia means love. So whatever they say 01:04:08.400 --> 01:04:14.860 at the first is what they're loving. So pedo is child. That's why that's disgusting. 01:04:15.740 --> 01:04:22.520 Icon is the image. So it's an iconophile is someone who loves the iconoclast is someone that 01:04:22.520 --> 01:04:27.740 breaks someone that destroys. So it's just like, Hey, Pastor Shelley is an iconoclast because he 01:04:27.740 --> 01:04:32.540 destroys Roman is an iconoclast because he's destroying the images. Okay. So there's 01:04:32.540 --> 01:04:40.340 an a period of iconoclasm where you have people breaking graven images and Leo is doing this 01:04:40.340 --> 01:04:46.980 Emperor Leo the third. There was even a second wave. Now what was interesting is when he did this 01:04:48.200 --> 01:04:52.740 all the Catholics are freaking out and they call him a heretic. And then this is what they would 01:04:52.740 --> 01:04:59.040 call him a Muslim. They started calling him a Muslim and a Jew. It's funny because then, 01:04:59.120 --> 01:05:03.240 you know, I go on shows debating these people and you know what they call me a Muslim and a Jew. 01:05:04.380 --> 01:05:09.360 It's no new thing out of the sun. But he was of course a Christian. He never adhered to 01:05:09.360 --> 01:05:13.000 these false religions. He wanted to clean these things up based on the Old Testament, 01:05:13.440 --> 01:05:19.160 not based on Islam and not based on Judaism or anything like that. Okay. These are just 01:05:19.160 --> 01:05:23.940 false accusations. It's surprising. The same guy breaking images called a Muslim. And look, 01:05:24.800 --> 01:05:29.640 you look at my ex feed, you look at my post, it is just, you're a Muslim. You're a Muslim. 01:05:29.920 --> 01:05:33.580 You're just like Islam. You're just like Sharia. You're just like, no, I'm like the Old 01:05:33.580 --> 01:05:38.500 Testament. I'm like Josiah. Yeah, I'm doing that, which was written. 01:05:38.500 --> 01:05:46.840 There was a second wave under Emperor Leo the fifth and Zurich in the 1520s. Zwigli also images 01:05:46.840 --> 01:05:53.040 were removed and destroyed in the 15, in the 1500s. England under Edward the sixth also had 01:05:53.040 --> 01:05:59.500 orders to destroy images and 1566 there was widespread popular iconoclasm. In France and 01:05:59.500 --> 01:06:04.240 in Geneva, there are as many places where people were destroying images in the English 01:06:04.240 --> 01:06:12.140 Parliament in 1641. This is what they passed legislation in the English Parliament in 1641. 01:06:12.780 --> 01:06:18.460 All crucifixes, scandalous pictures of any one or more persons of the Trinity, 01:06:18.980 --> 01:06:24.240 and all images of the Virgin Mary shall be taken away and abolished and that all tapers, 01:06:24.460 --> 01:06:28.910 candlesticks and basins be removed from the communion table. Oh, you're just, you're 01:06:28.910 --> 01:06:35.590 going back to something that was old, destroy all those Virgin Mary statues. In 1643, 01:06:36.090 --> 01:06:40.710 they passed even more legislation about crucifixes, crosses, images and pictures of any more 01:06:40.710 --> 01:06:45.110 persons of the Trinity or the Virgin Mary that they were superstitious inscriptions 01:06:45.630 --> 01:06:50.750 and they should be taken away and defaced and no one should be permitted to do such a thing. 01:06:51.870 --> 01:06:55.510 It's just, oh, you're doing something new. I'm not doing anything new. 01:06:56.170 --> 01:07:02.010 Good act 17, good act 17. I'm going to finish. Look, destroying graven images didn't start with me 01:07:02.550 --> 01:07:06.070 and it's not going to be finished with me. And even if you go in the modern era, 01:07:06.370 --> 01:07:11.850 there are other people who could point to, you know, I've seen a video of a guy in Mexico City, 01:07:12.130 --> 01:07:19.790 Pastor Kevin Nguyen destroying Mary statues in Mexico City. Now look, what we did pales 01:07:19.790 --> 01:07:24.830 in comparison to the bravery of destroying a graven image. It is meaningless that we destroyed 01:07:24.830 --> 01:07:30.170 something. To destroy graven images in Mexico City is about as bold as you can get. Okay. 01:07:31.770 --> 01:07:38.770 That guy's a man. I'm just telling you. I mean, we got emails of death threats. This guy's getting 01:07:38.770 --> 01:07:42.390 like real death threats. Okay. In fact, there's even testimonies of people coming to the service 01:07:42.390 --> 01:07:48.150 trying to kill him potentially. So, you know, oh, Pastor Shelley, you know, came up with this 01:07:48.150 --> 01:07:51.850 idea. I didn't come up with this idea. Anybody that reads the Bible comes up with this 01:07:51.850 --> 01:07:56.450 idea. Anybody that believes the Bible would think, you know what? This is how we should 01:07:56.450 --> 01:07:59.990 behave ourselves. And you know what? In America, we need to get rid of these graven images. 01:08:02.270 --> 01:08:06.330 And you say, well, how do I know it's right or wrong? Do the councils told me it's okay? 01:08:06.710 --> 01:08:09.430 Well, I don't care what the council said. You know, we're supposed to, we're supposed to 01:08:09.430 --> 01:08:13.390 check everything. And you know, if you don't like something I do, look and check and see if 01:08:13.390 --> 01:08:18.790 it's in the Bible and then decide if you like it or don't like it. Look at Acts chapter 17 01:08:18.790 --> 01:08:22.810 verse 11. These were more noble than those in Thessalonica and that they received the word 01:08:22.810 --> 01:08:26.710 with all readiness of mind and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things or so. 01:08:27.190 --> 01:08:31.890 Here's the thing. We believe in the idea, a principle of Sola scripture, that scripture is 01:08:31.890 --> 01:08:36.390 the highest authority. That we don't put any man on that same level. Yes, the pastor has 01:08:36.390 --> 01:08:41.310 authority, but his authority is not above the Bible. Apostles authority is not above the 01:08:41.310 --> 01:08:46.490 Bible. Apostles are verified by the Bible and we should always be checked by the Bible. 01:08:46.870 --> 01:08:51.130 If it doesn't match the Bible, then we don't do it. And you know what? That gives us some safety. 01:08:51.750 --> 01:08:54.670 Oh, it's a cult. Well, wait a minute. We're saying this is what, this is right. 01:08:55.290 --> 01:08:58.390 And this is through the test of time. This goes back to David. This goes back to Abraham. 01:08:59.010 --> 01:09:01.710 This goes back to the Genesis. This goes back all the way from the beginning. 01:09:02.490 --> 01:09:06.630 And anything I say, even if it seems new, hopefully it's from the beginning, it's old. 01:09:07.470 --> 01:09:10.770 Oh, y'all are the new IFP. Y'all are so new. We're not really new. 01:09:11.650 --> 01:09:17.390 And people get mad. Oh, you're doing something new. You're having kids and not doing birth control. 01:09:17.610 --> 01:09:21.830 Well, let me tell you something. Birth control is new. Having kids is not new. 01:09:22.650 --> 01:09:25.690 Oh, all your women are wearing dresses and skirts. That's new. Nope. 01:09:26.590 --> 01:09:32.210 What's new is women pants. Okay. Hey, a lot of things you all are doing is new. No, no, 01:09:32.250 --> 01:09:37.390 it's not new. It's just what was already done before. We're going back to the old ways, 01:09:37.390 --> 01:09:41.590 to the old path. And even if it is new, oh, it's new that churches are doing these things. 01:09:42.090 --> 01:09:47.550 Well, it's because culture sucked for a long time. Because they were doing it wrong for a long time. 01:09:47.930 --> 01:09:52.290 And we're going back to that, which was written. And, you know, hey, we check everything with 01:09:52.290 --> 01:09:57.470 the Bible. The Bible is our final authority. Oh, you wouldn't have a Bible if it wasn't for 01:09:57.470 --> 01:10:03.790 our church. Look, the Bible predates your church. Everything in this book was written 01:10:03.790 --> 01:10:07.590 by the first entry. I mean, everybody pretty much agrees. Everything in this book was written 01:10:07.590 --> 01:10:14.390 in the first entry. And what's silly is like, oh, we gave you the Bible. We created the Bible. 01:10:14.490 --> 01:10:18.590 This is what Catholics would say. They created the Bible. Okay. That would be the same as 01:10:18.590 --> 01:10:24.410 someone taking credit for creating gold. Okay. You didn't create gold. You might have found 01:10:24.410 --> 01:10:28.510 gold. You might have discovered some gold somewhere. But you know what makes gold, 01:10:28.510 --> 01:10:34.330 gold, gold. You don't make gold, gold. Gold just is gold. It's like, oh, how do you know gold is 01:10:34.330 --> 01:10:37.570 valuable because of its intrinsic qualities? How do you know the Bible is the Bible because 01:10:37.570 --> 01:10:43.030 of its intrinsic qualities? And we elevate this book above everything else. And just because 01:10:43.790 --> 01:10:48.330 somebody can identify what gold is, doesn't make them right. Everybody can identify what 01:10:48.330 --> 01:10:54.130 gold is. And look, everyone that even gives a rip about Christianity all agree that the 66 books 01:10:54.130 --> 01:10:58.450 I hold in my hand are the Word of God. Whether you're a Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, 01:10:58.730 --> 01:11:03.610 they all believe this is the Word of God. What they do is they add a bunch of fool's gold in with it. 01:11:04.350 --> 01:11:07.050 And they're like, well, why don't you accept this fool's gold? Because it's trash. 01:11:07.950 --> 01:11:12.650 When I test it, when I inspect it, it doesn't have the same internal qualities as the actual 01:11:12.650 --> 01:11:17.730 gold. The real gold is very clearly different than your fool's gold that you're bringing 01:11:17.730 --> 01:11:24.710 with you. And no, you didn't create it. You tried to add crap to it. And we said, 01:11:24.810 --> 01:11:29.390 we don't like your crap. And we don't like your crappy traditions. And we don't like your crappy 01:11:29.390 --> 01:11:33.430 practices. And you know what? Your doctrine is dung. And you know what? Using the word 01:11:33.430 --> 01:11:36.790 crap didn't start with me because, you know, in the Old Testament, they were saying things 01:11:36.790 --> 01:11:42.850 are dung. And God said, I'll rub the dung in your face. I don't like that word. Well, 01:11:42.870 --> 01:11:47.370 you don't like the Bible. Everything that we should do should be based on the Bible. 01:11:47.370 --> 01:11:51.890 And you know what? Don't get intimidated when people are like, oh, no, that sounds scary. 01:11:52.690 --> 01:12:02.670 Oh, new IFB. We're old IFB. You're crusty and stale, okay? Got some old heresies or something. 01:12:03.430 --> 01:12:12.150 Yeah. But who's really new here? Is Zionism actually a historical practice? 01:12:12.970 --> 01:12:17.030 Is that a historical belief? Is that a historical doctrine? Or is that new? 01:12:18.150 --> 01:12:22.510 And we're going back to the old way. Well, we have to go back to the church fathers 01:12:22.510 --> 01:12:25.490 in their view of the Trinity. Well, you know what? I want to go back to the first century 01:12:25.490 --> 01:12:34.130 understanding of the Trinity, not your fourth century, not what St. Augustine decided. I 01:12:34.130 --> 01:12:39.090 don't follow St. Augustine. I follow Paul. I follow Jesus Christ. I follow whatever this 01:12:39.090 --> 01:12:43.250 book said. And you know, we should always, you know, test everything with the Scripture. 01:12:43.550 --> 01:12:49.050 Even if it's new, though, it doesn't mean it's bad. New IFB is good because it's that which we had 01:12:49.050 --> 01:12:53.890 from the beginning. That's why it's good. That's why we should follow it. And you know, I don't 01:12:53.890 --> 01:12:58.590 mind that title. It can be new and yet old at the same time. Don't get intimidated by the 01:12:58.590 --> 01:13:03.790 Catholics. They're a bunch of lying, pagan, cult-falling weirdos. And you know what? 01:13:03.870 --> 01:13:07.430 If you give me a Jesus statue, I'll destroy it right now. Let's go somewhere. 01:13:07.430 --> 01:13:10.810 Thank you, Heavenly Father, so much for your word. Thank you so much for these instructions. 01:13:11.030 --> 01:13:16.030 Thank you for having so much consistency in Scripture so we could know that even if people 01:13:16.030 --> 01:13:19.690 haven't been doing something for a while, we can bring it back. It's always in style. 01:13:21.010 --> 01:13:25.370 The Bible never goes out of style. And we can always bring it back. And even if it seems new, 01:13:25.910 --> 01:13:29.550 we realize that it's the true doctrine that's always existed. I pray that you would help 01:13:29.550 --> 01:13:33.610 people to be inspired to read their Bible more and study it more and make sure that 01:13:33.610 --> 01:13:37.470 everything we're doing lines up with the Bible and with what you would have us do, 01:13:37.570 --> 01:13:40.010 rather than what culture tells us. And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.