I appreciate the good job that Mr. Kess did, standing in for Dr. Gingery. I know you'll laugh when you hear it, he's in Las Vegas. That's for some musical thing. You really must add that when somebody's gone to Las Vegas, I'm sure, why they're there. Obviously hotels in Las Vegas can be very cheap. Because they know that most of the mugs when they get there will spend a whole lot more than they would spend in a hotel doing all sorts of daft things. But he's gone for a little while and I appreciate the good job that Charlie has done keeping us right. Just a word about Mike's address. What a lazy fellow he is. He doesn't do anything about his house anyway. Sandra does it all. Just in case you think that my wife is not doing her work when we have a work day at the manse, which is of course Hammett Road and not that slum that they live on. Everybody in Greenville knows that Edwards Road is slumming it, you know? The aristocracy live there and they don't need your help, let me tell you. But anyway, just in case you think she's not doing her work or we have suddenly been very destructful of the property or whatever. We have had builders there fixing the porch of the house. Johnny Gresham noticed one day that, well I'd noticed this crack in the thing but I wasn't going to sing about it, in case it was blamed on me and my overweight, but we suddenly discovered the whole thing was moving in a direction it ought not to move. It was built on no foundation. Now there's a sermon outline for you and an illustration if you want one. And it turned out to be quite a job. But when you get great trucks, cement trucks and whatnot, driving over the lawn, Charlie or Johnny's work of many years has been completely upset. And now that the builders have all got out of the way, Johnny's trying to use the muscles. He'll provide muscle and brain, but he's trying to use the muscles of all you who need a good workout to come and help him to do what he needs to do on Saturday. We don't call him Pharaoh around here for nothing. He's a taskmaster, but he leads from the front. So he'll not only tell you what to do, he'll show you it. And if you turn up at Mike Barrett's house, You'd better be careful, because you'll really be in trouble. If he's not out in the fields hunting, he's likely to be practicing, and your life could be in deadly danger. So just be careful. We're going to read tonight in the 80th Psalm, Psalm number 80. If you're wondering where Mr. Bream is today, he has had knee surgery. Once again, he will play basketball. He will forget that he's an old man. He had knee surgery. I think he's tried to walk on it before he shoot and he's quite a bit of pain with it, but he hopes to be back in circulation this week. but he's after Sunday school this morning that was I think as much as he could take so he's resting up and as I say hopes to be back in harness this incoming week. Psalm number 80 in some ways one of the most beautiful and certainly one of the deepest Psalms as far as its descriptions and statements of the Lord are concerned One of the most wonderful psalms for prayer, the cry to the Lord from the psalmist here, his constant cry, turn us again, is one that ought to be echoed in every heart. And yet, it's one of the saddest psalms. When you get into the middle of it, you'll see exactly why. Verse 1, Give ear, O shepherd of Israel, Thou that leadest Joseph like a flock, Thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth. Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up Thy strength and come and save us. Turn us again, O God, and cause Thy face to shine, and we shall be saved. O Lord God of hosts, How long wilt thou be angry against the prayer of thy people? Thou feedest them with the bread of tears, and givest them tears to drink in great measure. Thou makest us a strife unto our neighbors, and our enemies laugh among themselves. Turn us again, O God of hosts, and cause thy face to shine and we shall be saved. Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt. Thou hast cast out the heathen and planted it. Thou preparedst room before it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the land. The hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars. she sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the river. Why hast thou then broken down her hedges, so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her? The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it. Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts. Look down from heaven, and behold and visit this vine, and the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted, and the branch that thou madest strong for thyself. It is burned with fire, it's cut down. They perish at the rebuke of thy countenance. Let Thy hand be upon the man of Thy right hand, upon the Son of Man, whom Thou madest strong for Thyself. So will not we go back from Thee? Quicken us, and we will call upon Thy name. Turn us again, O Lord God of hosts, cause Thy face to shine and we shall be saved. Amen. The Lord will add His blessing to the reading of His precious Word for His namesake. While these words that I will now direct your attention to are not a text in the sense that they become the basis of any attempt at exposition, I think that Verses 12 and 13 should haunt us, not only as we look back to Reformation times, but as we look around us today. Having described the prosperity of the work of God and the great advances made on every hand, the psalmist cries, Why hast thou then broken down her edges? so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her. The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it." Tonight in our studies in the Protestant Reformation, having spoken on the faith of the Reformation, and the fruit of the Reformation. I want tonight to speak to you for a little time upon the failures of the Protestant Reformation. Last Sabbath evening I described the Reformation as a work of God, a mighty work of God. But nevertheless, a work of God wrought by and through men. And that means that, therefore, the work was not perfect, nor were the men who labored in it perfect men. I believe that the evidence is that they were mighty men of God, despite the vicious attacks of often deliberately ignorant and certainly ill-informed detractors who enjoy most of the liberties that they today take for granted to the labors of these men and yet who venomously attack them, I still hold that these Reformers were men raised of God and blessed of God to do a mighty work for Him. It's very easy to sit as a modern critic on the great figures of church history. It's certainly very easy for our modern critics of the Reformers to cast their slings at these men. But never forget that the critics are people who have never had to face anything more testing in their lives than a term paper. if indeed they have progressed that far. And yet they can sit in judgment on people whose lives were lived on the front line of some of the greatest spiritual battles and sometimes on the front line of the greatest literal battles in history. Men who carried the burden of an entire continent upon their shoulders. and who day after day had to deal with matters of life and death. Now, I must confess that I expect Jesuits to write against the Reformers. I expect the Roman Catholic Church, which has never given up its movement of the Counter-Reformation. It has never got away from or beyond the Counter-Reformation. I expect that it will churn out its diatribes and its lies and its half-truths, its perversions of history. I can expect nothing more from a system that has spent almost 1,500 years now perverting the truth of Scripture I can expect nothing more than it will pervert the message of history. I can expect rationalists and liberals to do the same. Men who have no great love for truth, the truth of Scripture. Again, I can expect that people who can make the God of the Bible a liar, and turn the Scriptures of truth into what they will really make nothing more than man-made fables. I can expect nothing more from them than that they would attack the Reformers who, if they were anything, were men of one book. But what I must confess I find regrettable and grieving is the twisted rhetoric and the sectarian spirit of many evangelicals and many fundamentalists who write, as I've said, largely out of ignorance and certainly out of a great deal of ill information. These writers usually charge that the Reformers feel to have a complete Reformation because they carried so much of Rome over with them. Mainly they mean by that that they held on to the Romish doctrine of infant baptism. Then they charge that they did not have a complete reformation or a biblical reformation or do a real work for God because they did not hold to the doctrine of the separation of church and state, at least as we understand that concept today. And then they charge, thirdly, that the Reformers believed in making such things as blasphemy, heresy, for example, Unitarianism, mocking the deity of Jesus Christ, or the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. They believed in making such things as blasphemy, Matters not only for spiritual law and the government of the church, but also for the civil law and the sanction of the civil courts. Then, of course, we're told that they were as bad as Rome in persecuting the Anabaptists and the Unitarians, which, of course, is a travesty of history They were certainly not in the same league. There's never been anything in church history remotely in the same league as the Church of Rome for persecution of its enemies. Now, these are the charges. These are the so-called failures. The trouble is that the critics fall into a couple of traps. Number one, they refuse to see that the reformers must be judged in their own historical context. These critics hold them guilty simply because they don't measure up to the standards that many people in this 21st century presume to be sacrosanct. Now, you would have to see that there's something perverted about looking at a person who lived hundreds of years ago and yet judging him by the state of affairs that we take for granted centuries later, when that state of affairs did not obtain in the day in which he lived. That is hardly a historical perspective. And then the critics blindly jump to the conclusion that... I will give you a couple of examples of this as we go on. But they jump to the conclusion that where the Reformers differ from them on their doctrinal beliefs, that therefore the Reformers must be wrong and open to the criticism of failure and worse. Now I am not going tonight to list among the failures of the Reformers any of these four things that I have mentioned are usually brought against them. And since I'm not identifying these as their failures, I think I'll have to clear the decks a little and make it clear why I refuse to go along with these criticisms of the Reformers. First of all, let me make it clear. This is true not only when you're dealing with the Reformers, it's true when you're dealing with anybody. It's true even when you're dealing with the Church of Rome. We cannot label the work of the Reformers as failure because their theological positions disagree with ours. In other words, because they disagree with us, they are not necessarily to be put down as some sort of fools or failures. Let me take the example of infant baptism. Now, let me make it clear from the beginning. that I do not, even as a Presbyterian, accept the conclusion of the Reformers in infant baptism. Dr. Barrett and I have had many a debate about this. He's an apostate Baptist. He has, you didn't know this, he was ordained as a Baptist minister and now he's an infant Baptist. I have had many a debate with him on this. I do not believe in infant baptism. However hard I have tried, and I tried mighty hard to come to that conclusion, I studied it, I wanted to believe it, but I can't believe it. So I'm not speaking now from the perspective of someone who has an axe to grind in favor of the pedobaptist views of most of the Reformers. But it would be crazy, it would be untruthful, it would be downright wrong for me, or for anybody else, simply to say, ah, the reformers simply took this over from Rome. That's the way the criticism is usually put, in the baldest possible terms. But you know, this subject of baptism is not just as easy as many people would make out. There was a wit some years ago who wrote a book And he was copied in this by many others writing on other subjects. He wrote a book and chapter 1 was what the Bible teaches regarding the any moment rapture of the church. It was a blank page and the next page was chapter 2. Somebody took that over and they had chapter 1, what does the Bible teach about infant baptism? Blank page, page 2, chapter 2. Well, you know, that's all very witty, and it may score a cheap point in debate. But it doesn't face the issue. You see, this is part of a much larger debate. In fact, this is the fundamental debate in most of exegetical theology. That is the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament. The relationship of Israel to the Church. Anybody who doesn't get a grasp of that is going to go wrong on the gospel, not just on baptism, whichever way you take it, but you'll go wrong on the whole gospel. And so this is part of this much wider debate in the relationship between old and new. Is the New Testament a continuation of what God was doing in the Old Testament? Is it a fulfillment is the kind of statement that Augustine made popular, that the New Testament is concealed in the Old, and the Old is revealed in the New. Is that the proper understanding? Or is it, as modern dispensationalists believe, is it one not of conjunction but of disjunction, that there is such a separation between them? That really, the church age is just a parenthesis in the greater plan that God has for Israel. Now, the Reformers were very clear in their answer that the New Testament is the fulfillment of the old. That this is not a New Testament in the sense of being something completely different. In other words, it's nonsense to talk about people being saved by law-keeping in the Old Testament, but saved by grace in the New Testament. It's nonsense to talk about the God of the Old Testament as if He were a different God to the God of the New Testament. Many writers, not only dispensationalists, but many writers write along that line, as if the fatherhood of God and the love of God were unknown in the Old Testament. The Reformers certainly taught that the New Testament is the fulfillment of the old. And that formed the basis for their views on baptism. It wasn't their love for the Pope. But believe me, they really didn't have much love for the Pope. That was the basis for their view on baptism. The notion that is inherent, and I say this as a person who believes in believers' baptism, the notion that God cannot in a covenant deal with children overturns the whole Old Testament. God can deal with children and the children of believers in a covenantal relationship if He so desires. I believe in the New Testament He does deal with the children of His people in a covenantal relationship. The promise is to you and to your children. Now in the Old Testament the Reformers believed The entrance into the public grouping of God's covenant people was by circumcision, administered in the first generation to an adult, and administered thereafter to eight-day-old children. They say Paul tells us in Colossians chapter 2 that the New Testament counterpart to baptism or to circumcision is baptism. A very interesting point was made by a Baptist pastor in London who set out to study this subject and became an infant Baptist as the result of his studies. His name was Peter Edwards. Peter Edwards and Baptism is one of the great classic works from the infant Baptist side. Peter Edwards took the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. Suffer little children, not half-grown children, but little children, infants. Suffer them to come unto me. Why? Because of such is the kingdom of heaven. And Edwards argued now, according to the Savior, they are subjects of the kingdom of heaven. Either they come in to the kingdom with the sign or without it. But the whole Old Testament teaches they come in with the sign. Now, you'll see I'm bending over backwards to be fair to the other side. When I was preaching in Romans 4, I hope I did enough, and I know for many of you I did do enough, to blow apart a lot of these arguments. But I'm simply saying this is not brought over from Rome. Just because the Reformers come to a different view on baptism is not a fair basis upon which to say they were unfaithful and they sealed to do the work of a complete reformation. Let me give you another example, the example of the matter of church and state. Now, it's true that Lutheranism and Anglicanism may be charged or criticized with opening the door to what is called Erastianism. That is the belief that in a professedly Christian country the government, the state, has the right to govern the church as well as every other part of its dominion. But the reformed churches certainly didn't take that view, but they don't take the view that most Americans take of the separation of church and state either. Now, I realize when you talk about separation of church and state in the 21st century, you're talking about the sacred cow, the most sacred of all cows. In fact, Americans are more in love with this sacred cow than the Hindus are with theirs. And I'm not saying that critically, I'm saying just as a matter of fact. But with this separation of church and state, let me just back off here for a moment, see where most Christians live. Most Christians live in a little world of conspiracies. It's only recently, remember, it's only recently since I came to live in this city, and I had nothing to do with this, by the way, it's just coincidental, that fundamentalists actually moved by the writings of a very strict Calvinist, with whom they don't agree in many, many things. began to get themselves involved in the political process of the nation at all. There have been studies done, and I think well documented, that there was due directly to the view that most Baptists and most Fundamentalists held of the state. There was such a decline of Christian influence in the affairs of the nation that Christians were just standing back waiting for the rapture and bemoaning the decline of their nation while they did nothing about it. Christians wrapped up in their little groups, looking on the state as the great enemy. Not because of what it's doing necessarily, though it may do some very evil things, but simply because it is the state, and by force of necessity. The state and the church must be at enmity. The Reformers did not take that view. The Reformers believed that God ordained both the state, the magistrate as they would call them, and the church for the proper government of the people. Now, they were very strong. that the state should not overrun the church. And as our Confession of Faith puts it, when the church has anything to say to the state, it is not to run political power groups, but it is by way of humble petition, or by way of instruction from the Word of God. The Reformers looked in these two divinely ordained instruments of divine government in the earth, and it was Paul, not John Calvin or Martin Luther, it was Paul who said, the powers that be are ordained of God. It was Paul who called the magistrate the minister of God. It was not Calvin or Luther. That's the Word of God. The reformers looked at each to govern in its proper sphere. But this is where they depart from what we take to be normal. They believed that the state should honor God and His law and His gospel. They believed, and though Calvin has been criticized by the late Russ's J. Rush Dooney, For saying this, they believed that the state did not need to take on board all the civil laws of Israel, but nonetheless that the laws of the nation should be scriptural laws. In other words, the Reformers believed that the state in a professedly Christian country should not be neutral to God. They took seriously the teaching of the Lord Jesus that he that is not for me is against me. The state cannot be neutral. Either it's going to be for Christ or against Christ. And they believe that the state should be in favor of the gospel. It should have its laws based on the Word of God. In other words, what they're saying is, the Reformers believed that the gospel not only should have an effect upon individual lives, the gospel should have an effect upon nations. But did they invent that? Did not the Lord Jesus Christ, in His great commission, say to His disciples, go and teach, and the word teach there simply means make disciples of, go and make disciples of whom? All nations! Now we may argue That that means go into every nation and see how far you can get with the gospel, and let's see people saved out of every nation. And I'm happy to see us do that. But can we blame the Reformers for taking the Savior literally? Can we say we are Bible believers, and yet we are castigating men because they believe the Bible, they believe the Word of the Lord Jesus, when He said, go and make disciples of the nations? Because that raises a big question. If nations are to be disciples, How can they then fail to reflect the Word of God in their moral, social and legal standards? That's why to the Reformers there was nothing strange about making blasphemy and adultery and other such things not only a sin against God, but a crime to be answered for at the state's bar of justice. Now, nowadays it's quite usual to dismiss them as religious cranks. Okay? Before you jump to that conclusion, however, and remember what I'm trying to do is simply explain them in their own historical context. Before you dismiss them as cranks, just let me ask you one or two questions. I'm talking now to you who are Bible-believing Christians. Okay. Are you in favor of a law against abortion on demand? Are you? Are you in favor of the state passing a law to outlaw homosexual marriage? You know, here we're in common ground. Because I really don't know any Christian, any Bible-believing Christian, that says the state should allow the murder of a million children a year to continue. I don't know any Bible-believing Christian who believes that it is perfectly okay to open up the doors of the church or whatever, to marry sodomites and perverts, male or female. I don't believe that. Neither do you. But here comes the question, why? Why do you want a law against abortion on demand? Why do you want the protection of marriage as you understand it and I understand it? And I tell you that when you answer that question, you'll say, because, if you're honest, I know it's sin. How do you know it's sin? Because the Bible says it's sin. Because the law of God says it's sin. That's precisely the standard that the reformers were going by. when they said, blaspheming the name of our triune God is as much against the law of God as killing an infant in the womb. Were they such pranks after all? Now, admittedly, this is a dangerous area. If you omit the Word of God from the legal process of a nation, you're left with rationalistic humanism. That's exactly where we are in the Western world today. We have a country adrift, doesn't know where it's going. We are in the hands of a bunch of crazy social engineers who will damn and wreck and ruin this country if they get their way. And the only thing that's right is what? The people with influence say it's right. The only thing that's wrong is what the people with influence say is wrong. There is no basis for law left. You've reached the stage in America where the vision of your founding fathers has been so perverted that now, The God of the Bible is banned from as many places as His name can be obliterated from. And Satan worship stands on an equal footing with the worship of Christ. Omit the Word of God, and that's where you'll end up. But I have to confess, you admit the word of God and the basic standards of God's law and you can face the danger of sectarianism. The reform position was that the state whose citizens were professedly Christian should be a Christian state. And then so far as it doesn't jeopardize state security, the reformers believed in freedom of conscience and what they called matters of indifference, matters that were not fundamental to the revelation of scripture. Now, I have to confess, I think there were times when the reformers didn't really live up to their own vision. They couldn't bring their views to full fruition. They made a start. I have never had to live through days like theirs. And we take information and the movement of information so much for granted that it's difficult for us to conceive of a time when information moved so very slowly And yet events could be moving so very quickly, and your decision was demanded on the spot. So, without blame, I have to confess, I think that they were not able to bring their views on freedom of conscience to full fruition. But here's an interesting thing. When you get over here to America, Some of the people who paid the biggest price and made the strongest arguments for freedom of conscience were people who were called the separate Baptists. And some of the most powerful pleas ever written on that subject were written by a separate Baptist by the name of Isaac Bacchus. And Isaac Bacchus wrote from the basis of a convinced Calvinistic persuasion, down the line a Baptist Calvinist. Because you see, Isaac Bacchus realized what I wish that most fundamental Baptist brethren today would realize, that your Baptist heritage does not come from Anabaptism. It is the stepchild of the mainstream Reformation. So the first thing then I make clear is they weren't wrong simply because we disagree with them. Second thing I say in clearing myself from refusing to call these failures that I have mentioned and others have made is that in dealing with things like judging blasphemers, the Anabaptists and the anti-trinitarians etc. You've got to remember the reformers of the 16th century inherited a social and political and legal system within which they were constrained to work. Had they come to overthrow the entire social system and legal system and political system as well as seeking to overthrow the religious tyranny that dominated the souls of men, they would have been immediately condemned to total failure. I want you to understand that. The Anabaptists, if they had ever come to exist, which I very much doubt, for they came out of the Protestant Reformation, they would have remained, had they come to exist, a little underground movement of no significance. The Reformers, and in this they were in many ways like the Apostle Paul, Paul came to serve Christ in a heathen situation. Slavery was the accepted order of the day. Now, when you look at what Paul teaches, his teachings ultimately overthrew slavery. But Paul did not set out to overthrow the political and social and legal entities that ruled the world in his day. He worked within that entity. That's what the Reformers did. The difference was that they were working within a professedly Christian state, where the Bible was professedly accepted, Jesus Christ was professedly preached and worshipped. They didn't invent the laws against heresy. They didn't come up with the belief, first and foremost, that these heretics or blasphemers should be brought before the civil courts. The body of civil law, made up mostly of what was called the Code of Justinian, was the legal standard, and it had been in practice from the 6th century. The apostles worked, or the reformers worked within that system. And we've got to keep that in mind. And especially as we come to think of their treatment of the Anabaptists. Usually when you read any diatribe against the reformers, they were monsters. John Calvin particularly was the monster of all monsters. He was not saved. I have read people who say they are brilliant historians and researchers. He was not saved. He was a monster. He controlled everything in Geneva and everything that ever happened there was his immediate personal responsibility. He was everything vile and bad that you could think that can be said about a man. The trouble is, you see, that it's mostly mis- or disinformation. When you think of the Anabaptists, the Anabaptists term covers a wide variety. Let me tell you, among the people who were called Anabaptists, you had some who were raging revolutionaries. They believed in civil war. They believed in setting up their own kingdom here on earth at the edge of the sword. They believed in stirring up rebellion and overthrowing the whole political status quo. On the other hand, you had Anabaptists who were pacifists, who didn't believe even in taking an oath in the state, who didn't believe in taking any position in the state. So here are two great extremes, revolutionaries and pacifists, both called Anabaptists. You had some who were rigorously ascetic. They lived lives of extreme self-denial. But you had others, and they were licentious libertines. There was the famous occasion when some of the Anabaptists got to set up their own new Zion. And they predated Joseph Smith and the Mormons. And they instituted polygamy. And there was licentious living of the wildest sort. Rigorous ascetics. Libertines, all under the same banner. You had some sober scholars, and then on the other hand you had some absolute raving lunatics, who were getting messages straight from God. One fellow got a message from God to murder his father and his brother, and he did it. Others got a message from God that they should literally obey the Bible and become as little children. And so they were playing with dolls, clucking through the streets of the city as if they were little hens, raving lunatics. But on the other hand, you had sober scholars. Now listen. It took about 300 years or more for historical researchers to be able to work through the tangled skein of Anabaptist sects and to work out all the different things and see them in a much better light than earlier historians had painted them. And the point I'm making is this, if it took 300 years of historical research to begin to get some perspective on the complexity of the Anabaptist movement, how can any honest man blame the Reformers for not seeing all those complexities? And simply when they saw the name Anabaptist, lumped them all together. The notion, you know, that the Anabaptists were just a simple people, sincere, pacifist believers who threatened nobody and only wanted to worship God according to their conscience is hardly accurate. When Martin Luther was absent from Wittenberg, there came in these Wiccau prophets, madmen and badmen. You have Thomas Muntzer. He wasn't the cause of the peasant revolt in Germany, but he certainly added fuel to the fire. And he called out thousands of people to the battlefield. He was a revolutionary down the line, so much for the idea of separation of church and state. He wanted at the edge of the sword to impose his Anabaptist state. Then you had John of Leyden. who actually did become king of the New Jerusalem, a 27-year-old lunatic, but yet a very brave man in many ways, died bravely. What lunacy! Now, here's the trouble, that when you read If my memory's right, Conrad Grebel, who was one of the finest of the Anabaptist leaders, when you read his statement about Thomas Munzer, who was a raging, murderous revolutionary, he called him a preacher of the pure gospel. You can see how the lines are getting crossed. And you get even in among the Swiss brethren who were in many ways the best of the Anabaptists, followed then later by the Dutch. When you get in among them, even there you find all these strange lunatic views. And just in passing, I don't have time to get into this tonight, the trouble with the Anabaptists was that on the gospel they were wrong. The Anabaptist movements generally were more Roman Catholic on the doctrine of justification by faith than they were Reformed or Protestant. And running through the best of them, there was a constant heresy on the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. So this notion, you know, that all good Baptists in America are just the offspring of the Anabaptist movement simply because they baptized adults is altogether wrong. But in their own context, the greatest problem with the Anabaptists was that they posed a threat to the security of the state, some of them by revolution and others by complete withdrawal and pacifism. You take a land like Switzerland. There was no standing army. Every canton was responsible for its own defense. That meant that every able-bodied man had to be ready at a moment's notice to drop everything and go to war and defend his canton. Now, in a day when the church of Rome was marshalling its forces and was going to battle to overcome places that had embraced the gospel, when somebody came along preaching not only the baptism of adults, but as they did in Switzerland, preaching pacifism, preaching that it is your duty to withdraw from the state, it is your duty not to support the state, it is your duty not to respond to the call to arms, You can see that this is something more than a theological difference. This is something that threatens the very existence of that state. Let me give you the modern example. Say I were to go among, let me back off, say we were in a position, now President Bush says this is not going to happen, that I am not getting into politics, and I am not suggesting this is going to happen. This is simply a supposition for the sake of illustration. Okay. Say that things in the world developed to such a stage that the United States government reinstated the draft. And I go among young men And I have a host of others going among young men, and I'm preaching that you should be baptized as an adult. Right? But I'm also preaching, burn your draft card. Do not go to war. Do not stand for the defence of the state. Do you see then that no matter what my theological position in baptism is, I have now transgressed into an area that is altogether different and if I'm thrown in jail, and in those days that would have not been a jailing offence, merely that would have been a capital offence, If I'm thrown in jail or if I'm put to death, it's not simply, it may be partially, but it is not simply because I believe in baptism in a certain way, it's because with that belief I am bringing other things to the table that undermine the very foundations of the state. I have to confess, none of that makes the drowning of a man like Felix Manz in Zwingli Zurich. Right. The council in Zurich outlawed anabaptism. They told them either to get out or put up and shut up. And then they passed the death sentence on those who would continue. The tragedy is like that a man like Felix Mintz was, with Conrad Grebel, a good and a godly man. And I think there was a bitter irony in the decision of the city council that they'd be put to death by drowning. That wasn't right. And what it shows us is that in the turbulence and the upheaval of a thing like the 16th century, sincere and biblical beliefs can get mixed up with social and political issues and come under the harsh censure of the state. that feels threatened. But I have to say, the reformers believed that they were justified in allowing the state to deal with such things. They couldn't allow the gospel liberty to become an excuse for anarchy. If they had done so, the Church of Rome would have come rolling back in and would have prevailed. The most celebrated case is in Geneva, the case of Michael Servetus. Servetus was A mad genius. You've only got to read the way he acted. He was a mad man. But he was a genius. A man of letters, a man of learning. You can make a very good case that it was Michael Servetus who discovered the pulmonary circulation of the blood. A man ahead of his times. A medical man, a genius in many, many ways. He became a Unitarian. He did the gospel, especially in its reformed expression, with a passion, and despised Calvin with, well, he was in good company with many others later, despised him, cursed him, you name it, he did it. It's interesting that when they were both young men in Paris, they agreed to meet and Calvin went to meet with him in debate in the hope of winning him for the truth of the gospel, and whether for fear of his life or what, Servetus didn't turn up. After many years, he came under the death sentence by the Roman Catholics in Lyon because of his blasphemy. He escaped, and for some reason or other, he went to Geneva. Why Geneva? It's hard to work that one out. I think, though some historians deny this, personally I think that the evidence points to the fact that he had political support there, There was an anti-reformed, anti-gospel movement, it was called the Party of the Libertines, and he, I think, probably had support among those people who kept telling him that they would look after him. That's the only way you can make any sense of the behavior of the man right up to the end. But be that as it may, he went to Geneva, he was recognized, he was arrested, he was tried, and he was condemned to death. Now Calvin gets the blame for this. I know that he agreed with it. I have explained why. But what nobody ever seems to take time, or very few take time to point out, that the prosecutor was a libertine. He was a member of the anti-Calvin party. And it's obvious, therefore, that he was pursuing not the religious agenda of John Calvin, but he was pursuing the political agenda of Geneva. To cut a long story short, he was put to death. Now, to ask the death penalty for heresy and for blasphemy sounds strange. But you've got to again realize, if John Calvin or Martin Luther were here tonight, they would look at us as a bunch of lunatics. Our positions would be to them utterly confusing. We are soon in the United States, mark my words, we are soon to follow Canada in its hate laws. And you'll discover that you'll get into big trouble if you curse Allah, or Muhammad, or even some sodomite. But you can curse Christ to your heart's content. You can blaspheme God, you can mock Him, His Word, His Gospel, everything, totally without legal sanction or fear of punishment. The reformers would come and they would look at you and say, you blame us? You blame us? And you have taken a heritage of gospel life and light and liberty that we gave you at the cost of our own blood? And this is what you've done with it? And you have the audacity to blame us and call our work a failure? No, sir. I may and respectfully do disagree with positions taken by the Reformers in many of these areas, but I do not count these the failures of the Reformation. Now, having taken all my time telling you what the failures aren't, I'm in a big bind as to tell you what they are. You know, you could speak of some unwise liaisons with some princes. They did some unwise things. You could speak of the halfway settlement of the Reformed faith in England. You could speak of the failure to get a foothold in Spain and Italy. But let me give you what I think are the outstanding failures of the Protestant Reformation and let us learn from them. First, they failed to consolidate wonderful gains that they saw initially in France. You must understand, I know there's a great anti-French sentiment in America today and rightly so. Leadership of that country has been so despicable that I can understand Americans feeling harshly against it. But France is one of the great nations of Europe. It's a nation with a long and treasured history and as you see the Muslim hordes now threatening the West again, remember it was France that stood between the West and total Muslim domination. You go to Spain to this day and you find how far it had advanced, Muslim religion had advanced in Spain and it was France who finally on the battlefield turned them back. So, it has a long and treasured history. It also had a history of seeking to get some liberty from the fatal clutch of the papacy. And when the Reformation came, you know, there was a time when it appeared that France would become at least half Protestant. Reform spread like a mighty light through the nation. Men of eminence and genius were converted to the cause of Jesus Christ and embraced the gospel. All the fulminations of the Rome and of the leaders of the Sorbonne and Paris couldn't stop that progress. Violent and vicious persecution couldn't stop it. So that by the end of the 16th century, the adherents to the gospel in France were so numerous that according to which expert you apply to, anywhere from 7 to 25 percent, indeed some have gone so far as to claim 40 percent of the nation was already Protestant. That's how much of an impact. The tragedy is that the price of gospel reform was too great for the French nation. because that was a profligate as well as a proud nation. It was a nation as immoral as it was independent. And so the cost of the gospel was just too much for it. It choked its way to hell on its own pleasures and in its own sins, and in that it stands as a fairly modern warning. to this nation and every other pleasure-mad Western nation today. France felt the power of the Reformation, it fought against it, it reluctantly entered into a truce with it, it tolerated it to a limited degree only to revoke that toleration and drive the best of its citizens forever into exile. The rest of Europe and America benefited from those Huguenots who had to flee France. and France never got over the loss. But here, I don't know if it's fair to call it the Reformers' failure, but it's a failure of the Reformation. It had a tremendous start, accomplished great things, and yet it didn't take root. I can't give you details as to why. I can surmise that some of the initial men in the Reform Movement were weak men. It's why you should take very, very seriously, both in church and in state, to pray that God will raise up strong men of Christian conviction who are willing to live and die for and by the gospel. There were weak men. Jacques Lefebvre, Brissonnet, the Bishop of Meaux, men who were used greatly. It was through Lefebvre, for example, that William Farrell was converted to Christ. It was through Farrell that Calvin was introduced to the revival that he had seen started in Geneva. And it was through Calvin that most of Europe was introduced to the Reformed faith. You see, these men did a work, but ultimately they were weak and they were compromisers. We may also suggest that the reformers made the mistake, not for the first time, of rushing to forge, forcing the issue. I think there was a time in France when there were people who were determined to go too far too fast. Always beware of people who say it's all or nothing at every stage. I'm not preaching that we compromise the gospel, but I am saying that there was a time when the work was progressing and people decided, we must have everything now, and they ended up with nothing. That's always a danger. I think we may also suggest that they made the mistake of failing to cover the land with evangelizing preaching to the common people. Naturally, they paid attention to people in authority, given the state of society in those days, if they didn't win them over, they would get short shrift, for they had none of the liberties we have today. They had to work at that level, but at the same time, no religious reformation is ever possible unless it gets to the grassroots. In other words, there has to be a work of soul saving. In the end, of course, it was the French decision, and they didn't want the Gospel, and they've paid for it ever since. But there's a warning to you and me. We live in a country that has also been greatly blessed by the Gospel for a much longer period. But take nothing for granted. Take nothing for granted, because the gains that we have had, we can lose. Keep evangelizing and keep faithful, for I'll tell you this, There is an enemy at work constantly. There are evil powers at work constantly to overthrow the gospel in every expression of it. Men and women, when you think of France, you know the history of the world would have been forever changed. At that time, half of Germany was Protestant. Sweden and Denmark were Protestant. England, by 1534, was well on its way to being Protestant. The Romish church had lost in these major areas, and if it had finally lost even the half of France, the history of the world would have been radically different. There's a lot hanging on what happens to the cause of the gospel in America today. A lot hanging on it. Don't take for granted what we have seen. We can lose it all under the judgment of God. A second failure would be a similar one, and I was very interested I got a list from some historians as to their ideas of the failures of the Reformation. Some would have believed that the things that I have said I will not list as failures were failures. But I was very interested that Dr. Sidwell gave a list and it was just with one tiny detail exactly the list that I had made for myself. So I'm glad that I'm in good company here. The idea was not only in France, but you get a country that's been much in the news in recent decades, and that's Poland. The Reformation failed to overcome its own internal divisions and disputes, and it turned victory into defeat in the land of Poland. You should read sometime the history of the Reformation in Poland. Poland had long felt the witness of the Hussites, the Bohemian Brethren, Two years before Luther ever posted his thesis, 1515, there was a book published in Krakow that asserted, we must believe the scriptures alone and reject human ordinances. Then came Luther. Polish youth in their droves went to Wittenberg. They were taught the gospel. They came back to preach. As early as 1520, the Lutheran worship began to be established in Poland. By 1524, in the city of Danzig, There were five churches given over to the preaching of the gospel. The opposition of Rome was intense, but the cause of Christ flourished. Polish cities, by law, had more liberty than most cities in Europe. Even the king in Poland was subject to the law. The great nobles used their estates and their abilities and their riches to introduce the gospel to their lands. God raised up some good and great men at crucial times. John Alasco, a nobleman and a priest earmarked to be Rome's top prelate in Poland, gave it all up to stand for the gospel. Another one of the royal blood, Prince Nicholas Radziwill, was converted to Christ, led the Reform Movement after Alasco's death, and saw it grow mightily, especially among the nobility. But it all came to nothing in the long run. After a long run, it came to nothing. Why? There's one basic reason. And that is there were three groups in the Protestant camp. There were the Bohemians, there were the Lutherans, and there were the Calvinists. And there was, mostly because of Lutheran bigotry, The same bigotry that Martin Luther himself displayed when he met, in 1529, he met Zwingli at Marburg to talk about the Lord's Supper. And Luther was so incensed and so bigoted that he would not even at the end shake hands with his fellow reformer. Now, here are men who were preaching the gospel. They were preaching justification by faith. They were seeing great things done. God was blessing their ministry. And yet, because Luther disagreed with Zwingli's interpretation of the words, this is my body, this is my blood, he wouldn't even shake hands. And that bigotry was found in Poland. And it wrecked the work. Oh, they came to an agreement of unity in 1570, and while it lasted, brought really great benefits. So much power was there in the gospel that for 50 years Poland had a golden age. But that sectarian spirit remained, and the Protestants became weak just when they needed strength the most. When the conciliatory king Sigismund Augustus died in 1572, the Protestants made the mistake of allowing the election of a French king and later of accepting two other kings who sold out to the Jesuits and it was the Jesuits who sealed the doom of the Reformation in Poland. In fact, it ended up with a Jesuit on the throne. Poland's golden days died with the Protestant Reformation. I think we can learn that this was their ultimate failure. And I hope that we will learn this. That the Reformers or their followers failed to maintain essential unity and to evangelize the common people to win them for Christ in great, great numbers. They did a lot of that, but their disunity led to weakness. I was reading just a little bit of the history of a great military historian, an English military historian, history of the Second World War. He was commenting on that critical time in the deserts of North Africa when General Ritchie and the British forces had Field Marshal Rommel apparently hemmed in in a disastrous situation. Military historians have ever since wondered what went wrong, what went wrong that that victory was turned into defeat and that Rommel came blazing out and took over most of North Africa and it was only at a much later time at great cost he was driven back and had he succeeded there the Second World War would never have been won by the Allies. This military historian pointed out that the secret lies in Rommel's own papers and when you read those papers Rommel said though things appear to be so bleak I am full of hope And he said of his opposing commander, he was foolish to allow himself to be duped into dividing his forces. I'm not getting into the military aspects of that war. But I am saying on a spiritual front, we are fools when we mistake our friends for enemies and don't go after the real enemy. I have disagreements with fundamentalist Brethren on various little points here and there, but they are not my enemies. We are preaching the same Christ. We're standing for the same Bible. We are soldiers in the same army. We are pursuing the same cause. I have had people come to me and say that they will have nothing to do with me because I am not fundamental enough. By that they mean I am Calvinistic and Reformed. I have had other people come to me and say they will have nothing to do with me because I am too fundamental. I have had people come to me and cut me off. I had, I mentioned this some time ago, an email from a great admirer. Someone who listened in to my tapes over the internet. Or, how would you listen to tapes over the internet? My messages over the internet. Someone who was greatly blessed and greatly moved and wanted me to... across the world to go and preach out there where he is, and all the rest of it. And then he wrote blasting that I was now a compromiser, and I was this and I was that, for the great crime that I was not willing to brand Bob Jones University and its leaders as anti-Christian. This is crazy! Absolutely crackpot crazy! When you fight your friends and make them enemies, you are standing not with Christ, but with the devil. There's plenty of enemies out there for us to fight. Let us not fall into the trap of dividing our forces. I'm not saying there's not room for discussion among Bible believers on all the issues I have mentioned tonight. Surely let us do that. But men and women, and especially you young people, because it is in your shoulders, the responsibility is going to rest. Have the wit. Have the maturity to be able to recognize the real enemies of the cause of Jesus Christ and go after them. And also, remember, no matter how much you fight the battles of the faith, The cause of Christ will never be served unless it is served evangelistically and unless we are seeing people swept into the kingdom of our God and of His Christ. You will notice that I haven't even got to mention the 80th Psalm tonight, so it's time for the sermon now. And if I do that, it will be time for breakfast for you. What do we need to be praying? Listen, Lord, you've done a great work. He did do a great work. Protestant Reformation was a mighty work of God, but to a large extent it has been lead waste. The boar out of the woods has come in. The wild beast of the forest has been causing destruction. What are we to do? Well, we can start with praying what the psalmist prayed. Turn us, O God! Turn us, O God! Turn us! And then he prayed, Turn thou to us. That's what we need. That's the urgent need of the hour. The Reformation failed in some of its objectives. But can I say this? I would rather have a great objective and set out to attain it and feel to do it all than to sit back like some of the critics who have done nothing, have vision for nothing, have power for nothing. They don't feel because they've never tried anything. As Mr. Spurgeon once told one of his students who was griping that He hadn't seen people saved. When he preached in Spurgeon, he said to him, he said, you don't expect to see people saved every time you preach, do you? And it alarmed the young fellow. He said, no sir, no sir, I don't. He said, well then, you can't be disappointed. You're getting what you expected. Again, you young people, especially the young people, there's a great burden. It devolves upon Christian youth today. What will you do for Christ? Will you set out to do something great? You may not see all that you want to see. And later critics may come along and say, there was this failure and that failure and the other failure. So be it. I have come up as from an 11-year-old boy in the Free Presbyterian Church. I was privileged to be a very young minister in the golden days when God was moving in a great way in Northern Ireland. According to our critics, we did a lot of things wrong. And I look back and I say, yeah, I feel there and there and there. And we could have done this and we could have done that. We weren't perfect. But I want to tell you, we tried to do something great for God. And with all our heart and with all our soul, no matter what it cost, and in the 1950s and the 1960s, let me tell you, it cost everything. Financially, it cost everything. Socially, you were a leopard. To be a free Presbyterian was to be the off-scouring of all flesh and the enemy of every man. as far as they were concerned. But no matter what the cost, we tried to do something. And God honored the effort despite our failures. That's how I see the Protestant Reformation, and that's its message for you and me tonight. Rise up, O men of God, have done with lesser things. That's the message. And let the critics say, you failed. It's better to fail in the effort than to fail to make the effort at all. May God stir us to be faithful to Christ and the gospel of His sovereign grace. For there never was a time in the history of the world when the nations needed it more than they do today. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Let's all pray. Our gracious God, and our Father in Heaven, we do thank Thee and praise Thee for the great work that Thou didst accomplish through our forefathers. We acknowledge their failures and their shortcomings. We would learn from their mistakes as well as from their successes. But, O God our Father, we confess to Thee that we are in a poor position to criticize any who have done a great work for God. For, O Lord, we confess that we have taken the heritage of truth and grace and blessing and liberty and gospel power and fullness, and we have allowed it to become the anarchy that we see around us today. Our Father and our God We cry to Thee, give us a passion to see a great work done for Christ. We do not ask for a replication of the Protestant Reformation. For, O Lord, we're in a different world with different needs, different circumstances. We're not asking Thee to give us a reproduction Reformation. We're asking Thee, O God, to give us the natural fruit of that great work. We're asking Thee for an up-to-date movement of the Holy Spirit of God according to the Scriptures that will sweep America and indeed the Western world and then the whole world with the power of the Gospel. We believe that Jesus is mighty to save. We believe, O God, that even in the very last days, in the darkest days of Antichrist's reign, that even then, Thy Word tells us that Christ will be saving an innumerable company of people out of every tribe and tongue and nation. Lord, we pray that Thou will graciously give us a vision to do something great for God. Speak to every heart here. If there are those here who are without Christ, can't understand why anybody would want to have a passion to serve Christ in the gospel because it means so little to them. Lord, convict them of their need of Christ and bring them to the Savior. Speak to every believer here. Lord, especially deal with all the young people. Thou hast brought them into this world at this particular time. and the burden upon them is great. O Lord, we realize the temptations for Christian young people are great. We realize the opposition is immense. But O Lord, we're praying in Jesus' precious name that Thou wilt arm these young men and women with the very mind of Christ. Give them a great vision, a love for the Savior because of His love for them, a burning desire to go and stand for Him. We pray, Lord, that Thou wilt raise voices right across this nation. We ask Thee, O Lord, in this political season, that Thou wilt move across America We pray that Thou wilt raise men of God into official positions. We pray, our God, that Thou wilt turn back the tide and grant that there will be men of principle, men whose morals and whose ethics are informed by the Word of God. Give us men who can take their stand, men who can lead the nation. But, O Lord, most of all, Give us preachers, men of spiritual power, men who can go to the highest courts of the country, right all the way down to the meanest little home in the country, and bring Christ to the people. Lord, give us a race of preachers who are not bothered about the strife of words, but who are given to the preaching of the gospel. And, O Lord, we pray across this vast nation, raise such a standard for truth as will have an effect from coast to coast. So hear our cry, O God our Father, do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or even think. And to Thee we shall give the praise and the honor and all the glory. We pray, giving Thee our thanks, in Jesus' precious name.