This year is the Reformation 500. 1517, October 31st, Dr. Martin Luther nailed the 95 Theses, the 95 Arguments Against Unbiblical Superstitions and Corrupt Practices of the Roman Catholic Church. And that launched the Bible-believing evangelical movement of churches. And so this year we're remembering the Reformation. In this session, I would like to look at how the Reformation changed the church and the world. In the book of Judges, we read about another generation which arose, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done. Imagine their parents, their grandparents had been brought out of Egypt, had seen the 10 plagues, had passed through the Red Sea, had been fed in the desert with manna and quails, who had seen water flow from the rock, who had experienced the real power and presence of God. But now their grandchildren and great-grandchildren didn't know the Lord personally, they didn't even know what the Lord had done. another generation arose. Today it appears that a generation has arisen which, like the Israel of the judges, knows little of either the Lord nor what he did during the time of the Protestant exodus from the Babylon of Rome and the struggles in the wilderness which followed in the 16th and 17th centuries. Now, sometimes this is from a cowardly dislike of controversy and confrontation. The Reformers were bold, brave people. They stood up against what was wrong and they said, this is wrong. My conscience is captive to the word of God. But today, many people prefer to be cowards. They prefer to avoid confrontation. They don't like controversy. But few people seem to understand either the evils from which the Reformers delivered us or the blessings which the Reformation won for all of us. The Reformation delivered the church from gross ignorance and spiritual darkness. Who can recognize this picture and who it is being depicted in it? Anyone know who this is from? Now Bloody Mary didn't get beheaded. She had people beheaded. So this is Bloody Mary was having her cousin beheaded. What's the name of her cousin who was 16 years old? She was a queen for only nine days in England. And then her cousin Bloody Mary took power and required her to either renounce her faith in Christ and become her own Catholic or she lost her head. At age 16, she was beheaded. Anyone know the name of this lady being depicted here? She's in Fox's Book of Martyrs. Anyone know the name? Lady Jane Grey, or Queen Jane, the queen for only nine days, the 16-year-old queen of England. There's several pages in Fox's Book of Martyrs of her brave, courageous testimony before the Inquisition, where she articulated her understanding of biblical doctrine so well that she left the bishops and cardinals of the church speechless. She knew her Bible better than they did. Lady Jane Grey. The church before the Reformation was a church without the Bible. And a church without the Bible is as useless as a lighthouse without a light, a candlestick without a candle, or a motor vehicle without an engine. I mean, what possible good is it? A church without the Bible is not a real church. The priests and the people knew scarcely anything about God's word or the way of salvation in Christ. Bishop Ryle wrote in the 19th century that the immense majority of the Catholic clergy did little more than say masses and offer pretended sacrifices. They repeated prayers in Latin. All the service were done in Latin. They sang Latin hymns. If they gave the script to talk, it was in Latin. The average people didn't know Latin. They heard confessions from the people. They granted absolutions. They gave extreme unction, or the last rites, and they took money to get dead people out of purgatory. How's that for a scam? Con artists. Bishop Latimer observed, when the devil gets influence in the church, up go the candles and down goes the preaching of God's word. Quarterly sermons, that means once every three months. was required of the clergy in the Catholic Church, but it wasn't insisted on. You could get away without even having a sermon even once in a year in these Catholic churches in the Middle Ages. Latimer noted that while the Mass was never left unsaid for a single Sunday, every week, sometimes every day, they practiced the Mass, but they didn't preach the Gospel maybe for 20 or anything, for maybe 20 Sundays in succession. Indeed, if you preached the Bible, this incurred the suspicion that you were a heretic. And what did they do with heretics? Burned them at the stake or chopped their heads off. Bishop Hooper, along with Bishop Latimer, were burned alive at the stake under Bloody Mary. He did a survey in 1551 and found that out of 311 priests or ministers in his diocese, 168 could not even repeat the Ten Commandments. 31 of those 168 couldn't even say in which part of the Scripture the Ten Commandments were to be found. And 40 of these ministers couldn't even tell where in the Bible the Lord's Prayer is written. 31 of the 40 didn't even know who the author of the Lord's Prayer was. You would have thought the name, the Lord's Prayer, would give you a hint as to who was the author. Bishop Ryle summarized the situation. Before the Reformation was a religion without knowledge. without faith, without lively hope, a religion without justification, without regeneration, being born again, without sanctification, they didn't know about holiness, a religion without any clear view of who Christ is or the Holy Spirit for that matter. Except in rare instances, Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages was little better than an organized system of Mary worship, saint worship, image worship. Relic worship, pilgrimages and almsgiving. You know what a relic is? They say This nail came from the cross. If you bow down and worship it, you'll get so many years of purgatory. This egg was laid by the Holy Spirit when he was a bird. This is some milk from the Virgin Mary. This is some wood from the cross. Here's a toenail of St. Thomas. This is a bone of St. Peter. You bow down before these relics, and you will get so many years of purgatory. And this is relics. These are the sort of things that the superstitious people were practicing, which is what Martin Luther spoke against in his 95 Theses. Formalism, ceremonialism, processions, smells and bells. waving incense, ringing bells, and absolutions, masses, blind obedience to the priests. That's what it was. It was a huge higgledy-piggledy of ignorance and idolatry, serving an unknown god by deputy. They'd get the priests to do masses and so on for them to this unknown god. The only practical result was the priests took the people's money and undertook to secure their salvation. And the people flattered themselves that the more money they gave to the priests, the more sure they were to go to heaven. That is what they had before the Reformation. The Reformation delivered the church from childish superstitions. The Roman Catholic Church before the Reformation taught its members to seek spiritual benefits from so-called relics of dead saints, bones, teeth, fingernails, some hair, clothes, whatever it may be, to treat these with divine honor, to literally bow down and pray to a skull of John the Baptist, they believed, a nail from the cross. Calvin's inventory of relics and Hobart Seymour's pilgrimage to Rome catalog some of the ludicrous swindles which were perpetrated by the Church of Rome. This included pieces of the wood of the true cross, enough to load a large ship. Thorns professing to be part of the Savior's crown of thorns, large enough to make a huge faggot, in other words, a massive bonfire. At least 40 nails said to have been used at the crucifixion, where only three were used. Four spearheads, each one purporting to be the one true spear that pierced Christ's side. At least three seamless coats of Christ for which the soldiers gambled at the foot of the cross. The hand of St. James, bones of Mary Magdalene, toenails from St. Edmund, some bread purported to have been used at the Lord's last supper. Bread that had lasted 15 centuries. a girdle of the Virgin Mary, and milk from the Virgin Mary. These were some of the relics that people were expected to worship. The royal commissioners of Henry VIII examined a vial in the Abbey of Gloucestershire, which is said to contain the blood of Christ. The commissioners found it contained the blood of a duck, which was changed every week. There were literally thousands of profane, vile, blasphemous inventions, fabrications, deceptions, which the Roman priests imposed on the people before the Reformation. They must have known they were deceiving the people, yet they persisted in propagating these lies and requiring that the ignorant laity believe them. Sometimes the priests induced dying sinners to give vast tracts of land of their estates and their castles to the monasteries in order to atone for their bad lives. That also meant that they weren't leaving up an inheritance for their children and grandchildren, which the Bible says a good man lays up an inheritance for his children and his children's children. But the church was acquiring more and more of the land in Europe. In some places, they owned a third of all the land and estates. In one way or another, the Catholic priests were continually separating sinners from their money and accumulating property and wealth in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church today is one of the richest institutions in the world, richer than any company, even though you've got some megacorporations that are phenomenally wealthy. The Roman Catholic Church, in terms of the art, the gold, the ornaments, the huge amounts of influence, buildings, irreplaceable works of art and so on, is the richest institution in the world, richer than virtually every government on the planet. The power of the priests was, in practice, despotic, meaning they were like dictators or tyrants. And it was used for every purpose except the advancement of the kingdom of Christ and of the Christian faith. It seemed their primary objective was power. Roman Catholic Church had armies, they waged wars. To them, confession had to be made. Without the absolution and extreme unction, which means last rites, as you're dying, they've got to give you the last rites or you're going to go to purgatory and so on. No professing Christian could be saved without the Church of Rome, they claimed. Without the masses, you couldn't be redeemed from purgatory. In short, for all intents and purposes, the Roman Catholic Church were the mediators between Christ and man. So what is on the flag of the pope? two crossed keys. He claims to have the keys of St. Peter, the keys of hell and death, the keys of heaven. But who has the keys of the kingdom? Christ alone. To please and honor the Roman Catholic Church was a devout Christian's first duty. To injure them was the greatest of sins. And as Fox's Book of Martyrs demonstrates, they stretched people on a rack, burned them at the stake, and a whole lot of other worse things. One of the indulgences of the church, issued in 1498, which you had to pay money to get, with the authority of the pope, claimed to absolve people from usury, that's effectively stealing through interest bearing, which is what every bank does these days. Theft, manslaughter, fornication, and all crimes whatsoever, except what these indulgences couldn't be used for was striking the clergy or conspiring against the Pope. So you could commit blasphemy, break the Ten Commands, murder people, not a problem, as long as you didn't do a crime against the Pope. A starving man and a famine may be reduced to eating rats and rubbish rather than dying of hunger. In this way, a conscience-stricken soul deprived of the Word of God should not be judged too harshly by us that they struggle to find comfort in the most debasing superstitions. You know, we've got the Word of God. We understand. But let's not act like we're much better than them because they didn't have the Bible. They didn't have the understanding of the Scripture. So they were seeking to satisfy their conscience in the best way they knew how according to the false teaching that was being given to them. However, we must never forget that it was from such superstitions that the Reformation delivered us. Before the Reformation, the lives of the clergy, or the ministers, the priests, were simply scandalous. They were brothels in the Vatican. The popes, the cardinals, the bishops, openly consorted with immoral people, harlots, prostitutes. They engaged in those debased practices. Local priests were notorious for gluttony, drunkenness, and gambling. In fact, you can see this in Robin Hood. Friar Tuck is effectively a drunkard and a, he's a criminal, actually. As Bishop Ryle points out, to expect the huge roots of ignorance and superstition which fill the land to bear anything but corrupt fruit would be unreasonable and absurd. Bitter root bears bitter fruit. Good roots bear good fruit. You know a tree bites fruit. When the roots are bad, don't expect anything good to come out of it. Contemporary art, that means art at the time, depicted the friars as foxes preaching with the neck of a golden, of some stolen goose, peeping out the hood behind, as wolves giving absolution with a sheep parsley concealed under cloaks, as apes sitting on a sick man's bed with a crucifix in one hand and other hand in the suffering man's pocket stealing his wallet. Such public contempt in art reflects the scorn with which the clergy were held at that time. Here is the Pope depicted as a goat playing a false tune. Bishop Ryle points out, but the blackest, darkest spot on the character of the pre-Reformation church in England is one of which it's painful to speak, the horrible contempt of the Seventh Commandment. The consequence of shutting up herds of men and women in the prime of life, in monasteries, in nunneries, convents, was such that I will not defile my paper by dwelling on them. If ever there was a plausible theory, weighed in the balance and found utterly wanting, it's the favorite theory of celibacy and monasticism promoting holiness. In other words, the Catholics said for centuries, and they're still saying it today, if you're really serious about God, if you really want to be right with God, you mustn't get married, you mustn't have children, you must become a priest, you must become a nun, you must be shut up in a convent. Is that true? Is that what God requires? Is this the principles that we are taught in scripture? Of course not. Monasteries and nunneries, he said, were frequently sinks of iniquity. And they have found massive graveyards of babies buried at convents, killed by the priests to cover up their sins. Literally, that's how bad it was. The report of the royal commissioners under Henry VIII declared, manifest sin, vicious, carnal, abominable living is daily used and committed in the abbeys, the priories, and other religious houses, monasteries, convents of the monks, the canons, and the nuns. And that albeit many continual visitations have been had within a space of 200 years or more for honest, charitable reformation of such unthrifty, carnal, and abominable living. Yet that nevertheless, little or none amendment, no improvements have been had, but that vicious living shamefully increased and augmented. In other words, I said, for centuries, we've been trying to reform the abbots, the convents, the monasteries, and we failed. These places are some of the worst, most immoral places in our communities. There is no surer recipe for promoting immorality than fullness of bread and abundance of idleness. If people have too much time, too much food, too much freedom, they will find evil work for idle hands. And that's what he's done with the convents. It is from such superstition, corruption, immorality, ignorance, and adultery that the Reformation freed the church. Most importantly, the Reformation gave back to the church the Bible in the common language. In 1519, six fathers and one mother were burned at Coventry for teaching their children the Ten Commands. Can you imagine a church would burn alive parents for teaching their children the Ten Commands in English? the Lord's Prayer in English, the Apostles' Creed in English. For this crime, seven parents were burned alive at Coventry in 1519. You read this in Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Nothing seems to have alarmed and enraged the Roman priesthood as much as the spread of Bibles in the local language. It was for the crime of translating the Bible into English that the reformer, William Tyndale, was burned at the stake. If you like the Bible in English, Remember the man who translated the Bible into English, 90% of which is in the King James Bible, Tyndale's work. He was burned at the stake for that crime. He couldn't get those Bibles printed in England. It was against the law to have the Bible translated into English or printed in English in England. He had to go to Germany. And the Bible in English was translated in Germany, smuggled from Holland into England, and almost every one of the first 6,000 New Testaments in English were gathered up by the Bishop of London and burned. Only two exist today. One of the original New Testaments in English printed, one of Tyndale's first edition New Testaments, was sold recently for something like five and a half million pounds, which is more than $5 million. the most valuable book in the world. There's only two of them in existence, and one was just sold for that. Of all the aspects which combined to make up the Reformation, no other aspect received such bitter opposition as the translation and the circulation of the Scriptures. The translation of the Bible struck a blow at the roots of the whole Roman Catholic system. The Bible as the only rule of faith and conduct, sola scriptura, freely available in the local languages, was a threat to all the superstitions and abuses of the medieval Roman papacy. How did the Pope get away with so much vile, superstitious corruption for centuries? Because the Bible was a forbidden book. It was banned from the 12th century. Bible translators were burned at the stake. Bibles were burned on bonfires. And that's the only way they could sustain the ignorance was keeping the people away from the Bible, keeping the Bible away from the church. With the Bible now in every parish church, every thoughtful man soon saw that the religion of the priests had no basis in Holy Scripture. I mean, where in the Bible, where in the Bible do you read about cardinals, popes, nuns, monks, friars, abbots, purgatory, transubstantiation. Where in the Bible do you read anything of the vast jungle of superstition that the Roman Catholic Church had built up? The Reformation opened the road to the throne of grace. The way of salvation had been blocked up, made impossible by huge heaps of superstitious rubble. He who desired to obtain forgiveness had to seek it through a jungle of priests, saints, Mary worship, masses, penances, confession, absolution, and the like, so that there might as well have been no throne of grace at all, because they couldn't get through it. The Reformation restored biblical simplicity to worship. I might add, if you've come across the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty, Do you know, sleeping beauty was inspired by the church having gone into a slumber, and the church was no longer conscious of its duty. And the prince had to hack his way through this huge jungle of thorns that was keeping the sleeping beauty who symbolized the church that was sleeping in slumber. and had to hack his way through this dense jungle. And Martin Luther was that man who hacked his way through the jungle of superstition to open the way again for the church to be awoken from its slumber and its slavery, its Babylonian captivity. There's sometimes hidden messages meant behind some of these different of the, like Cinderella, is in many ways a depiction of Esther. Queen Esther was the original Cinderella who rose up to being a queen. The Reformation restored biblical simplicity to worship. Before the Reformation, the laity, that's the non-ministers, non-priests and monks, were only present at church as passive, ignorant spectators. You didn't sing hymns. You didn't sit in pews. There were no pews before the Reformation. People came to church and stood. There were no seats. You stood for the whole service, no matter how many hours it was. The reformers brought in pews because they wanted people to read the Bibles, to take notes, to engage and concentrate on their mind being renewed. You didn't sing. There was no such thing as congregational singing before the Reformation. You listened to the choir singing in Latin, which most people didn't understand. The elaborate theatrical presentations were solemn farce, because the ceremonies and prayers were in Latin, which the average person did not know. The laity could bring their bodies to the service, but their minds, their reasoning, their understanding, and their spirit could take no part in the service. They were just there as dumb, ignorant, passive spectators. For this reason, the 24th article of the Church of England declares, it is a thing totally repugnant to the word of God. and the custom of the early church, the primitive church of the Book of Acts. To have public prayer in the church or to minister the sacraments in a tongue not understood by the local people. Somebody babbling in an unknown language is of no spiritual benefit. The Reformation gave a biblical understanding of the office of a minister. Before the Reformation, the concept of a Christian ministry was sacrodotal. In other words, the idea was that a minister or a priest was a sacrificing priest. The clergy were understood to hold the keys of the kingdom, the keys to heaven. And practically, they were the mediators between God and man. I come from Africa. I'm a missionary in Africa. I was born and brought up in Africa. And let me tell you, the concept of the Roman Catholic priest is like what we have as witch doctors. The people involved in witchcraft and voodooism, they've got a witch doctor who's got the magic incantations that he does for the people and sacrifices goats and so on. Very similar to what the Catholic priesthood. When Dr. David Livingston took some of his porters After crossing Africa and they got to Luanda, which was run by the Portuguese in Angola on the west coast of Africa, he wanted his people to see an impressive stone church and how the Westerners performed services. But the only thing available was a Roman Catholic church. There was no such thing as a Protestant church in Angola at that time. So he took them to the Catholic church thinking, well, I'll benefit something. And afterwards, his men said to him, we see that the white men also charm their demons like our witch doctors do. And he recognized that the Africans, ignorant as they were of so much, could immediately recognize that the Roman Catholic service was just like their witchcraft. Smells, bells, hocus pocus, ceremonies and so on, but no preaching and teaching of the word of God, no redeeming and renewing of people's minds. The Reformation brought the offices of the clergy down to its biblical, scriptural level. They stripped it of any sacrilegial or sacrificial character. Ministers are not priests any more than We are all priests in the sense of having access to God. The priesthood of all believers is a concept in the Protestant Reformation. You don't have the priests and the clergy and the laity separate. No, we're all priests in the sense that we can all pray to God directly. They cast out words like sacrifice and altar. They taught that clergy were pastors, ambassadors, messengers, witnesses, evangelists, teachers, ministers or servants of the word and sacraments, but we are not priests in a sense of needing to stand between God and man and be able to communicate to them like we've got to be the middlemen. No, every single born again believer whose name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life has the privilege of approaching the throne of grace, praying to God and receiving his word. The Reformers taught that the chief business of any Christian minister is to preach the word of God and to be diligent in prayer and reading of the scriptures. The Reformers taught the immense superiority of the pulpit to the confessional. You know what the confessional is? A little booth where Roman Catholics have to go and there's a little grid between them and a priest and they say, Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It is a week since my last confession, and he confessed his sin this week. I did this, this, and this, and then the priest will tell him, you must go and say a hundred Hail Marys, or go through the rosary, or walk up and down the stairs on your knees, or pay this amount of money, or go on a pilgrimage, or crusade, and there was all sorts of nonsense. Today, they still have the confessional. When I was young, at school, I went to Catholic school, and we were lined up every Friday to go through the confessional, so I know how that works. They said, forget the confessional. It's not in the Bible. We confess our sins to God. And the pulpit is more important to teach and preach the word of God. And so often, after they demolished the altar in the front of the church, they put a table, a simple wooden table, and an open Bible in its place, or the pulpit, showing the centrality of God's word in the worship of Protestant churches. So the Reformation restored a biblical understanding of holiness. The Reformation is the source of many blessings. And we should ask ourselves, are we on the side of the reformers? Or are we on the side of those who burned the reformers and their Bibles? Before the Reformation, it was believed that a monastic life, being a nun or a monk, and vows of celibacy, in other words, saying, I won't be a parent, I'm not gonna be married, I'm not gonna have children, that that's the only way to escape sin and to attain sanctification. Multitudes, hundreds of thousands of men and women poured into the monasteries and convents, refusing to get married, believing that's what God required of them. and therefore, of course, stilting the raising of the next generation. Over the centuries, they channeled many hundreds of thousands of people away from marriage and parenthood under the vain idea that this would please God. Well, I'm sure it pleased Satan. It certainly didn't please God. They thought this would ensure their eternal salvation. The Reformers struck at the root of this false doctrine by establishing the great scriptural principle that true religion is not found in retreating and retiring to convents and monasteries and trying to flee the difficulties of daily life, but in manfully facing up to our difficulties, doing our duty diligently in the position which God has called us. It's not by running away from the world that we fulfill God's call. It's by courageously resisting the devil. the flesh, the world, overcoming this in daily life. That's how true holiness is exhibited. For this reason, the reformers dissolved the monasteries and the convents in all the areas and they freed the inmates to be reintegrated into normal life. The reformers also ordered that the 10 commands be set up in every parish church and taught to every child and that it's our duty towards God and our neighbors be set forth in the catechism. They insisted you cannot become saints by shrinking from duties in society. You don't run away to a desert island. You don't go into a monastery. You don't go up into the hills and just have your little cave or hut where you have your devotions and you don't have any duties and responsibilities. That's not how you please God. It's by raising the next generation, by being involved in society. And so the Reformation was a heritage of faith and freedom. We must continually thank God for the Reformation. It lit the flames of knowledge and freedom, which we must ensure are never allowed to be extinguished or to grow dim. We need to continually remember the Reformation was won to us by the blood of many tens of thousands of martyrs who died that we could enjoy the faith and freedom that we enjoy today and probably take for granted. It is not only by their preaching, and praying, and their writing, and their legislation, but by their sacrifices that our religious liberty, freedom of conscience, and Christian heritage were won. Martin Luther stood up and said, my conscience is captive to the Word of God. It is unsafe and dangerous to do anything against one's conscience. Popes and councils have often erred and contradicted themselves. My conscience has captured the word of God. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. And that speech encapsulates in it freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, freedom of worship, freedom of association, freedom of the press, freedom of religion. Constitutionalism, it's not what the Pope or the Emperor says, it's what the Bible says, the written word. And so that's the foundation of Western civilization. The Reformation found church members steeped in ignorance and left them in possession of knowledge. It found them without Bibles and left them with a Bible in every parish in their own language. The Reformation found people in darkness and left them in light. It found them bowed in fear. and left them enjoying the liberty and the peace which only Christ can give. It found them strangers to the blood of Christ's atonement, strangers to faith, strangers to grace and holiness, and left them with a key of all those blessings in their hand, the key being the scriptures, taught and read. It found them blind and left them with spiritual eyes to see. It found them slaves to superstition and set them free to serve Christ. As Bishop Ryle declared, are we to return to a church that boasts that she's infallible and never changes? To a church which has never repented of her pre-Reformation superstitions and abominations? To a church that has never confessed and abjured her countless corruptions, burning at the stake the Waldensians, the Mennonites, Lutherans, Calvinists, Bible translators, Are we to go back to gross ignorance of true religion? Shame upon us. I say, if we attain the idea for a moment, let the Israelite return to Egypt, if he will. Let the prodigal go back to his husks among the swine and the pigsty. Let the dog return to his vomit. But let no Englishman with brains in his head ever listen to the idea of exchanging the Protestant faith for potpourri or return to bondage of the Church of Rome. No, indeed, God forbid, the man who counsels such base apostasy and suicidal folly must be judicially blind. The iron collar has been broken. That's the collar that symbolized slavery. Let it not be put back on again. The prison doors have been thrown open. Let us not resume the yoke and return to our chains. Let us not go back to ignorance, superstition, priestcraft, or immorality. If you have a Bible in your own language, if you enjoy to read and study God's word, never forget that you owe the Bible to the Reformation. Brave men and women died that you could have the freedom to delight in God's word. If you know the joy of your sins being forgiven and a new life in Christ, if you're walking by faith and enjoying peace with God, never forget that you owe this priceless privilege to the Reformation. If you enjoy church services, scripture and song, hymns in your own language, prayers and sermons in your own language, remember that for this, you're also indebted to the Reformation. If you appreciate the biblical and practical sermons of your pastor and his council, never forget that for this, you're indebted to the Reformation. Do you appreciate being able to sit during church service instead of stand for the whole time? Remember, for that you also owe it to the Reformation. The Reformation is a source of many great blessings. We need to ask, are we on the side of the reformers or are we on the side of those who burned them? And the Bible. Jude 3 says, contend earnestly for the faith which once and for all was delivered to the saints. This suggests a delivery. You've been given the faith. You have it encapsulated in the Bible. This has been delivered to us. We need to protect it. It's like if you're in a relay race and you've got to pass the baton. And in this case, it's a relay race through the generations. Each generation must pass the Word of God to the next generation, to pass the Word of God to the next generation, teaching, renewing minds, sanctifying hearts and lives and motives. And so that this is the faith, this is the faith entrusted to us. Let us pass it on to the next generation faithful.