So we're continuing our study in the church history and we're trying to follow down the history of the centuries from the time Jesus began his church until the present hour. Now it is interesting that if you read church history and And by the way, Carol, downstairs we've got like a big seven or eight volume set by Philip Schaaf, which is considered like the best encyclopedia on church history. But if you read through it, most church history is predominantly Catholic. and a little bit of Protestant. And what you find out is there was a couple of researchers that went back and they looked and they observed that the real history of believers is one of blood and being martyred. It seemed like the prevailing governments, and even worse, the prevailing religious authorities, which are mostly Catholic for about a thousand plus years, would take the real believers, the real preachers, put them in prison, and put a number of them to death. And there's a book out there, that if you want to try and get it someday, called The Trail of Blood. The Trail of Blood. And it kind of follows the history of the church, and somewhere in here he's got a real good, interesting map going all the way back. It goes by century by century all the way through and you can follow the believers with the red line of blood versus the fakes in the gray line of Catholics and Greek Church and Roman Catholic and and then a lot of the mainline Protestant ones. So that's an interesting book if you ever want to pick this up. The Trail of Blood. J.M. Carroll, C-A-R-R-O-L-L, J.M. Carroll, The Trail of Blood, J.M. Carroll. I mentioned you could probably get it at CBD or if you look at Amazon, you probably get it as a little paperback book. Shouldn't be more than about five or $10. And it's very interesting. And he goes through and he takes a look at this history. It's interesting, Sir Isaac Newton said, the only body of known Christians that have never identified with or symbolized with Rome were the Baptists. And along through the history of the people that were usually killed, they were people that held to kind of a Baptist thinking, where that they understood that salvation was by grace through faith, and you only were baptized if you were an adult confessing believer. And so the thing with the Baptists in Europe, they often called them the Anabaptists. I don't know if you ever saw that word. Anabaptists. Anabaptists, and today they just call them Baptists, and this means to re-baptize. And the doctrine these people held to was that if you hadn't heard the Word of God and you hadn't put your faith in Jesus Christ, like it said in, remember, Acts chapter 8, what doth hinder me from being baptized? If thou believest with all thine heart and can confess that Jesus is the Christ, then you can be baptized. Of course, an infant can't do that. And so Anabaptists would always re-baptize people that had been sprinkled as infants because they knew that's not a real baptism, and these people were always hated. And so through the centuries, these people, the Anabaptists, and now today the Baptists, are the ones that even Isaac Newton said, looking back, they're the only people that never really symbolized with Rome. As a matter of fact one of the Catholics writing in 1500 Cardinal Hosius who was the president of the Council of Trent in the 1500s says If it wasn't for the fact that the Baptists were grievously tormented and cut off with the knife during the past 1,200 years Okay, so someone was a Council of Trentus of 1524, so going back to the year 324, that's the founding of the Catholic Church. There would be a swarming greater number than all the Reformers. In other words, we've been killing Baptists for 13 centuries, and we would continue to do it, and believe me, they would do it today if they could get away with it, but they can't, but they will in the future when the Antichrist takes over the Catholic Church. They'll go back to killing. But anyways, Dr. Carroll in his book here, he goes back and he shows that the true churches that Jesus founded, I will build my church, can be found in every century. And the hallmarks, and today we'll look at the hallmarks of what is a true New Testament church. Okay, so if you're looking through church history and you're reading about a church, I don't care which one it is. You test that church against these distinctive teachings as to whether or not it's really one of the true churches. Now, the first hallmark, number one, would be the founder. Who is the founder of whatever church you're studying? Well, according to the Bible, the founder is Jesus Christ. He said, I will build my church. Right answer, Christ. That would be Jesus Christ, yes. And that would be Matthew chapter 16, 18. I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." And the other one would be Colossians 1, verse 18. So whenever you're going through church history and you're reading about a church, who do they say their founder is? If they say their rock is someone other than Jesus Christ, okay, the church I used to go to, the rock was Peter, well, then that is not a New Testament church. Colossians 1 and verse 18 says, he is the head of the body, the church. He's the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have the preeminence. So you know you have the true church when you have the right founder. The second distinctive is, what is the authority of the church? the authority or the rule for the practice and the faith in a particular church, and it must be the Word of God. That would be 2 Timothy. So that must be the Bible. We'll just put Bible. And of course, that would be 2 Timothy 3, going verses of 15 through, is it 17 or 18? I think 17 is where it ends. Yeah, 17. And in there, of course, Paul told Timothy that he said, From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. So again, the Scriptures will take you back to the Founder. That's the point of the Scriptures. the writings will not take you back to someone else. If you're reading a catechism and it takes you back to Mary, or it takes you back to Peter, or it takes you back to someone else, we're no longer looking at the marks of the true church, we're looking at a false church. And the battle that's going to go down through the ages is the battle between the true church and the imitation counterfeit false church. God will have His church, and the devil, who will appear as an angel of light, will have his own ministers ministering through a false church. Because he knows, for the most part, most people on planet Earth are Too smart to believe there is no God. I mean, only a fool is an atheist. But there's only 5 or 10 percent fools on the planet. Most people believe in God. And so he knows, I can't tell them there is no God. They know there's a God. Okay, so if they know there's a God, they probably think he's got a religion and he's got a church. So my job is to set up a counterfeit and a false church, because they believe there's a God, so I got to catch him with something, you know, and so I'm going to catch him with this. So we need, he'll set up another authority. So, for example, okay, we're reading here, the Holy Scriptures, take you to Christ Jesus, verse 16, 2 Timothy 3, 16, all scripture is given by inspiration of God. So in the true church, the belief of the folks in their churches, the book that I'm following was written by God. Okay? This isn't the writing of church fathers. This isn't the writing of the best holy men. This isn't the writing of our best priests or our best scholars. This is the writing of God Almighty. Okay? That's the way they see it. As the Scripture is given by the inspiration of God, it's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works, and in a true church, All questions are run through the Bible, not through a committee, not through a council, not through a meeting of elders. It's run through the Bible. So that's a true church. It's got the right founder. It's got the right authority. Again, where I grew up, our founder was Peter. and our authority was the catechism, and the canons of the Roman Catholic Church, and the magisterium, and the pope, okay? These kinds of things are going on. So we've got the right head, we've got the right rule of faith and practice, the right authority. The next thing is, it'll have the right name. And Jesus Christ said, Church. And that's the name it will have. It will be called a church. And both Matthew 16, 18 and another one will be Revelation chapter 22 and verse 16, where the Lord Jesus Christ says, and I'll just get it for you real quick, Revelation 22, 16, I have sent mine angel, I, Jesus, to testify unto you these things in the churches. It's going to be church, and churches. That's the proper name. It's not a temple. It's not a synagogue. It's not a chapel. It's not a worship assembly. It's not a worship center. It's not a miracle center. It's churches and churches. And this is something for modern Americans. I don't know how big a problem it was going down the ages, but in modern America, it's a big problem. Now, here I am, the Lord allowed me to get on my knees and get off my knees and get to work and start building a local church. Well, I wanted to think about, Lord, You want me to build a local church. Well, I want to do it according to Your Word, and I want to give it a name that You'd give me in Your Word. The name of a church is not an accident. It's something that somebody, supposedly an under-shepherd, underneath Christ, working with a Bible, came up with a name, and there'll be some forethought in it. And when you walk by something and it has a name different than a church, whoever that guy is, isn't too close to Christ or paying attention to the Bible. Okay, so the right name, that's another thing. Through the ages it'll have the right name church. The polity, the setup. if there is going to be any politics in that thing. The way it's going to be set up is it's going to be congregational. And we'll see this. We were taking a look at the first letter that Jesus wrote to the very first church, and He said, You guys hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which I hate. I hate the Nicolaitan doctrine. The Nicolaitan doctrine is the concept, it comes from a compound word, Nike, sneakers, victory. You wear Nikes if you want to win the basketball game. Nike means victory. Nico, Nike, laitin, laity, people. Victory over the people. The concept that in God's church there's one group more equal than another group. There's one group that's better than another group. There's a priestly class and there's the laity class. The priestly class are special and the rest of them. The polity in God's church is congregational. They're all equal. All the members are equal. They're in Christ. There's no different. There's no Jew. There's no Gentile. There's no Scythian. There's no barbarian. There's no this. There's no that. We're all in Christ. The souls are equal to God. The gifting may be different, but in terms of how we are before God, we are equal before God. It's a congregational equality. Go, for example, to Matthew chapter 20. In a false church, you'll have this big established hierarchy. And there will often be one place where the hierarchy is centrally located in a certain city somewhere, where the bigwigs are, and everyone else are just the little peons running around. That's not the way the Lord set up His church. Matthew 20, and looking, let's say, at verse 24. And when the ten heard it, that two wanted to be above the other ten, they were moved with indignation against the two brethren. But Jesus called them, all twelve, unto Him and said, You know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, that be other Gentiles, and they that are great exercise authority upon them, that be the lower people, but it shall not be so among you. We're not going to have this one class higher than another class inside my church. Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister. Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant. Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many. We're not going to have somebody who's up there in a position where he's surrounded by a temple guard that takes care of him, and when he goes out he's in a special mobile, and then he's taken around in airplanes, and he's above everyone else, and people come kiss his ring and kiss his feet. That's not how it's set up. It's a congregational setup. And so through the ages, you'll see the difference. In the false churches, there's always some bigwig somewhere, someplace that's calling the shots in the orders, and the other people are scurrying around to take care of them and to follow those orders, but not in the true church. The next thing is in the true church. Membership. Membership in the true church. Only the saved. It's just that simple. Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 21. Now this is Ephesians 2, verse 21. Back there, that was Matthew 20. I'll write those down in case someone's trying to take those notes. In Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 21, Verse 20, he says, we are built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets. Jesus Christ himself is the chief cornerstone in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord. You have to be in Jesus Christ to be part of the church which the Holy Spirit inhabits. Another verse that you could use would be 1 Peter 2, verse 5. And in this, Peter had been talking about the new birth in 1 Peter 2, verse 2, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the Word. He said in the last chapter, you're born again by the Word of God. And he says in verse 5, then we are lively stones, We are a spiritual house. We are an holy priesthood every single member a saved member These are the only members in the true church So membership is not based on your ethnic origin. It's not based on your governmental position I I know in many you'll see across Europe, they will ordain a particular church by the state or the government, whether it be Rome, whether it be Germany, whether it be England, and your membership is based upon the fact that you're a citizen of that particular nation, and you've put your names on the membership rolls through your children, having them sprinkled. Membership in the Church of Jesus Christ is based on salvation. Now, I've never ever attempted to take membership here. People ask me, how many members? I have no idea. God knows who the members are. We have people attend and God bless them because they're attending and they're hearing the Word because that's about all I do is teach the Word. I don't know what else to teach you. I teach the Word of God. So I figure people that come must enjoy the Word of God. And the people that don't come back, I guess they don't like the Word of God. And my thought would be, if you like the Word of God, you're probably a child of God. And if you don't like the Word of God, you may not be a child of God. And I know it's possible to leave here and not like me, and that's understandable, and I have no problem with the rest of you that did that. That's me. But the Bible, I'm teaching the Bible, and if you enjoy the Bible, you're saved. Saved people like the Bible. And so I let God know, God knows the membership, and He knows the saved people in here, and that's the important thing. and assemblies that built around salvation, that were built around salvation based on the Bible, that Bible telling them about Jesus Christ, where the members were equal and they called themselves a church. Those were the true churches through the centuries. The other thing that a church would have, true churches, would have what's called ordinances from the word ordained, something that was ordained by God himself. Now, in the New Testament church, I know the main thing God wants to do is to help us to grow by the ministry of the word. But with that word contained in the New Testament are two ordinances that the Lord has given. The one is believers baptism. I was doing it red, so I'll keep it red. You've got a believer's baptism. You've got to be able to believe or you can't have it. Babies don't believe. And the Lord's Supper. Those are two physical ordinances that God ordained for the church. You'll know the difference going through the centuries between those that have those two ordinances and those that have many others that they've made up out of their own imagination. Again, the church I went to had at least seven of those things, and they didn't call them ordinances. They called them by a name that's not even found in the Bible. They called them sacraments. And as you go down through the history of churches, you'll find the false churches have other things that they bring in there. They might call it confirmation. They might call it confession. I don't know what they'll have, different things that they call. But all God ordained was a believer's baptism and the Lord's Supper, 1 Corinthians 11. And that's all He did. And those are the two things. The the other thing that they're going to have if they are going to have officers and they're going to have leaders seven leaders Or Officers that held hold an office in the church the only ones that were ordained by God are Pastors and Deacons And he gives you that in Ephesians 4. He talks about the fact that there are pastors. And in 1 Timothy 3, he talks about the deacons. And in that passage in 1 Timothy 3, he also talks about the pastor as a bishop being an overseer of a local assembly. And he gives some of the requirements for that. And those are the only offices that he gave. He didn't give other ones for us. A local assembly will have a pastor or a couple of pastors that teach, and some deacons, some men in the church who are given to prayer and given to ministry and helping out the body, and that's all it is. And those are the leaders and officers. It doesn't have a group of people named after birds. It doesn't have a group of all these different hierarchies that have been thought up that's not anywhere in the Scriptures. And so, as you go down through the centuries, every time they would find a particular church, they would find these characteristic distinctives of that church to know, this is the local church that Jesus set up. Another thing that it had was, number eight. Okay, so what's the work of the church? And again, it's a dual thing. The work of the church is teaching Bible and preaching Bible. So it would teach Bible to its members, and it would preach to the lost. Someone would call this evangelism. And all through the centuries, you'll find these little congregations in Netherlands, and in northern Italy, and in France, and in all these places, these little groups of people that have their head as Christ, and they're holding on to the Bible they have, and they're called a local church, and it's a congregation of people getting together that are only saved, and they're going through the ordinances of believers' baptism in the Lord's Supper. They have some pastors and deacons, and they're teaching the Bible, and they're going out and they're evangelizing to lost people and making everyone upset in the local area, that the local religious authority doesn't like them because every time they come by and they teach someone the Bible and talk to a lost man, and the lost man figures out, oh my goodness, I was in a false congregation here that God's got nothing to do with. This is the work of the devil. And they would leave the work of the devil to go into the real church, and it would make the devil and his church real angry. And that's why they would kill these believers, and take the Bible from them, and kill the pastors, and you'd have a trail of blood going on. And this is the type of stuff that was going on. Of course, of course we know about the importance of But the teaching the Bible we saw that before we know the importance about evangelism Jesus the Great Commission at the end of Matthew chapter 28 and verses 19 and 20 you know go out into all the world and Preach the gospel every creature and baptize him in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Ghost and teach all nations that God wants his message spread The next thing they had that you would find about a true church The true church had finances, and the finances of God's church were very simple, tithes and offerings. No compulsory giving. No taxes. No tribute. No connection to a local government strong-arming people to make sure the church got its money. The money and the finances were always voluntary through tithes and offerings. They were motivated through the work of the teaching and the preaching that worked the Bible into the spirit of those people who were in Christ, and they were saved, and they wanted to give because they had learned from the Bible it's more blessed to give than receive. And that was the method of financing those churches. So when you go through history, you'll see the difference. And you'll see churches that were literally connected to the government, and the government would take tribute for them, maybe keep a pocket for themselves, and then give the rest to that church. And the entire people in a region were funding a church that they had no part of, but not God's church. God's church is voluntarily funded from the heart from his own children who recognize that he's their father and he's given all to them and he wants them to give back 10% and tithes and offering is the way that the financing was The next thing you'll find about the true church Through the ages its weapons and Now you'll read the history of mankind and you're going to read about the inventions of all kinds of weapons, from the catapult, to the musket, to the bomb, to the airplane, but the weapons of the true church are spiritual. They were never carnal. There was never the rack. There was never the twisting of the arm. There was none of that stuff. The weapons of God's church were spiritual. 2 Corinthians 10, verse 4, you know, our weapons are not carnal. They're not fleshy. They're not earthly. They're not something that can be seen or felt. They are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God and bringing every captivity unto the thought of the obedience of Christ. It's a spiritual battle that the church was in. The church was never in a physical battle, the true church of Jesus Christ. It never fought in a crusade. Do you understand that? The Crusades had nothing to do with the Church of Jesus Christ. Nothing. Well, you know, the Christians fought. There wasn't a born-again Christian that fought in the Crusade, because those were not the weapons that were given to the true Church in the history of mankind. And look, look. As a human being, I'm fed up with the Muslims, too. I'm fed up with the murderous ragheads going around killing people left and right. And as a human being, I might want to take up a rifle and fight them, as a human being. But as a born-again Christian, no way. And if they legalized the killing of Muslims in the United States of America, and even legalize us going to war with them on the other parts of the world, I wouldn't enter into the conflict, because as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ, my citizenship is in heaven above America. So I'm taken out of that battle. And if I'm going to take a weapon over there, it's going to be the sword of the Spirit and the Word of God, because what we can do is we can change a Muslim into a born-again Christian. And that's God's desire. He's not willing that person would perish. He wants him to have a chance at eternal life, which will change his heart, which will change the way he believes and the way he behaves. And that's the victory God wants to get. And the church of Jesus Christ understood that all through the centuries. The weapons were spiritual. They were never physical. They were never carnal. That's why when you read history, there's so much confusion, but you ought to know the truth. First, you ought to know the truth for your own comfort and assurance in your heart that your Savior never worked that way. You want to live by the sword, you die by the sword. You don't take up the sword, he said. Sword of the Spirit, fine, but never a physical sword, never a gun, never a rifle to go out to win a battle. That's not how you win battles. The weapons are spiritual and all through the century, and the true churches, these little tiny assemblies, Boy, they were taken in battles, and people would take them, and put them on the rack, and hang them, and burn them at the stake, and they never fought back, except through prayer and preaching. And those were the only battles. Because why? They understood, this life is short, and the worst you're going to do is you're going to take me from this life, and to be absent and to be present with the Lord is far better To live is Christ, to die is gain, because now I'm with Him. And they never had that fear of death, they never sunk down into the muck and mire of the battles that lost people fought. And then the last thing that it had, that the true Church had, and we talk about the Declaration of Independence, independence. And the last church, the true church, always had its declaration of independence. It had an independence in that the true church always believed in a separation of church and state. That was its independence. The true church of Jesus Christ never wanted the sanction of a government saying, you're ours. The true church of Jesus Christ never wanted the government in bed with it. It understood that it was the chaste virgin bride of Christ, and Christ was the bridegroom and not some human government. that would make it a harlot. And so it had a Declaration of Independence of separation of church and state. And all through the ages, you'll find these little assemblies, and when they were enticed to come and be a part, particularly, we're going to see this in the 300s, when Constantine began to entice these congregations to come in and be part of the big, sanctioned, official Roman church, which became the Roman Catholic Church, the little congregation said, no, no, we don't want a part of it. And of course, the ones that were unsaved and the harlots all joined up and made a big monster that eventually went after those little congregations and chased them and persecuted them. So these are the eleven characteristics and marks of the true church down through the ages. And if you don't see those characteristics, you're dealing with a false church. And by the way, those are good things for you if you're looking for a local church. This is something you should be looking for. At this particular congregation I go to, who is your founder? Well, our founder is Dr. So-and-so. Well, then you got the wrong founder. Your founder should be Jesus Christ. And your church, what do you do when you have a problem? Well, you know, we get the deacons together and we all vote. No, the Bible's our final authority and rule in all matters of faith and practice. What's the name? Well, we're the worship center. We're the miracle working center. No, we're a church. That's what Christ called it. Why are you embarrassed with the term He used? Well, people don't like churches. Well, God likes His church. So if it's good enough for Him, it's good enough for us. That's the name we're putting on out there. Church. And we're a congregation where the members are equal. and we fellowship side-by-side one with another. We don't look down on one another. And the people we want here are saved people. We're not trying to be community-friendly or seeker-friendly because most of those people out there in the community are lost and they really don't have an interest in the Word of God. Our interest is bringing saved people in here. This is a place, it's a sanctuary for the children of God to come and get away from the influence of the world and hear the preaching and the teaching of the Word of God. I mean, we teach Bible here. That's what we do. That's our work inside this church. And outside this church, we save people, go out and preach to lost people. And we have the ordinances. If somebody becomes a follower of Jesus Christ and desires to make a public profession of faith and believer's baptism, we'd be happy to do that with them. And if someone wants the Lord's Supper, we'll do it once a year or every other year, but mostly we're going to dine on the Word of God. But yes, it is an ordinance, and we have it here. And if we have any leaders here, we have pastors and deacons. And some of us are older and some are younger, but Timothy was young, Paul was older, Peter was older, but that's all we have here. We don't have anything else. Okay, there's no Monsignors here, there's no Cardinals here, there's nobody I'm calling. I remember when we were starting the church, I had a guy, He said, you're going to start a church. And I said, yeah, yeah, the Lord's working with me, and perhaps I'll start a church. He says, well, who's going to be your covering? And I said, well, Jesus Christ is going to be my covering. Yeah, but I mean, what's going to be your denominational covering? You know, like they have the Missouri Synod over there in the state of Missouri for the Lutherans in America, and they've got the Vatican over in Rome. And who's going to be your covering to make sure things go right? And I said, well, I'm going to use the Bible, and I'm the under-shepherd going to the true shepherd, Jesus Christ. And he just couldn't understand the concept that a little assembly of believers could gather around the Word of God. That they needed a covering somewhere, a human covering. The bigger the government, the better, in other words, as far as you can see. Is that how that works? Is it working here in America? The bigger the government, the better? People understand, that's the way it is. And we know what our work is. And people ask me, what do we do? We teach Bible. We pray, and then we take the message out there. That's the major work of the church. And our finances are voluntary. When they were asking us recently, when the girl was here from M&T and wanted to know about the giving, we don't pass a basket or pass a plate. What? You don't pass a plate? No, there's a box in the back. People give voluntarily. That's how it was when we started that thing on Maple Drive. It was a shoebox, I think I had, with a little hole cut in the top, and I put it on a table over there. And I never asked. You want to give, give. You don't want to give. That's between you and God. I'm not judging you. The Lord will take care of it. It's His business. If He hasn't moved your heart, I'm certainly not going to waste my time, and I won't be the one talking to you one day at the judgment seat of Christ. He'll talk to you. And so, no, it's voluntary. Finances are voluntary. And the weapons, you know what they are. It's spiritual weapons. We pray. We use gospel tracts. We use the Bible. We use the words of our mouth as we reason with people. And independence, I want nothing to do with the town of Amherst, except for people in the town of Amherst to get saved. But I certainly don't want any sanction from them. I don't want to be any part of some ecclesiastical joint work with the town of Amherst. I'm not looking to get together to bless the property over there and the town parks. We're independent. We have our work. You have yours. And I certainly hope that you get saved, because one day your work's going to end when the Lord comes back. Believe me, the town of Amherst won't exist 20 years from now. So we understand so those are the marks of the true church down through the ages and the false church Well, it's pretty easy to identify All right, so So basically what we're going to see as we work our way through here, we're going to have this true church, this assembly that God has called out of the world. He's come to call lost people, to seek and save and call them out and bring them into a little assembly that's self-governing. that has pastors and deacons, that immerses itself in the Word of God, that tries to strengthen its converts, that sends out evangelists and missionaries to work both in the local area and around the world, fulfilling the Great Commission. That's the work of the Church. And all through Church history, we're going to see that the true Church will be persecuted. It will be persecuted by the lost for not conforming to whatever society says it should conform to. And the issues will change as the times change. Today, I guess the greatest thing to conform to would be we, as a church, should conform to the fact that if a guy wants to come in in you, the ladies' room, we should let him do it. that if two girls want to come in here and get married, that we as the church should perform their wedding ceremony. This is the thing we're supposed to conform to. Now, we believe in independence from what the state believes in. We believe that this will be a battle, and this battle is going to be spiritual on our part. They may take it to physical on their part. They may want to burn our building down. They may want to do that. That's between them and the Lord. Our job is just to stay on the spiritual plane, on the high plane with them at all times. But all through history, you're going to see the churches being persecuted for not conforming to whatever the political establishment or the main religious establishment founded by Satan was pushing at that time. And they would burn the churches, and they would burn the Bibles, and they would even burn the people if they could get a hand on them. And this is what's been going on for a long time. We're blessed, folks. We lived in America. We've never faced religious persecution. I promise you it's coming. It will come to America. Now likely, most likely, we will be raptured out of here by the time it comes. I have a feeling we're going to escape before the persecution comes. But after we do escape, anyone who still stands for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, They won't have been left behind. They'll have been getting saved those first couple of years. The main world religious church of the Antichrist runs will be chasing them and persecuting them and beheading them. And the blood of the saints and the martyrs will still continue to flow. And the trail of blood will not be broken. And in other countries right now, today, it goes on, as you know. So let's continue and see. Now, we were studying any questions on these things we looked at here. Yes, brother. Oh, OK. Well, may the Lord bring it to your remembrance and when you remember it, we'll discuss it. Yes. Well, I would say this, the question is, is the believer's baptism required? I would say not required in the sense of the salvation of the soul. Where you find the requirement is God is doing more than just saving the soul. Remember, God is saving the soul and then changing the spirit, regenerating the spirit, and then taking that body and now using that body as his vessel down here. And that's understanding that And it doesn't take long for you to figure out, gee, we really are small and despised in this world. I mean, of the great population of the world, what do we make up, 2%, 3%, 4%? I mean, 90% are contrary to us. And we understand that We're now soldiers in Christ, and we're entering a spiritual battlefield. And that's probably the first battle, is believers' baptism, actually coming out and publicly proclaiming for everyone to know, hey, I've identified with the Lord Jesus Christ now. I have now determined that in the way where two roads part and one goes this way and one goes that way, I've chosen the straight and the narrow way. I'm no longer on that broad road. And I understand those people are going to be mad at me, but I want to make a public profession of my faith in Jesus Christ. And so in terms of really discipleship, I would say it is essential. But in terms of salvation, you can get saved without ever getting water baptized. But for discipleship, it's a big thing, it really is. And I know some people that, we know a person that didn't get baptized for what, 15, 20 years before they finally submitted to the baptism? They just weren't gonna go down that discipleship pathway. Yes. Yes. And I agree, and that's a good point. The brother makes this good point, and I'm just putting that for the listeners, that what happened is when he got saved, within a short period thereafter, he wanted to do the Believer's Baptism, and he did it, and he did it at a church that he wouldn't exactly endorse today. Same thing for me. I mean, I got saved in one of those Rick Warren, mega-NIV-type churches, but the salvation was very important to me. and I was excited about it, and I wanted to serve God, and I made that baptism, and I went out and served with my NIV the best way I could. Now, God then led me to a church that was really grounded on the King James Bible, which is His Word for English-speaking people. But I didn't feel a need to get re-baptized, if you will, because at that point, there was something inside of me I wanted to do right, even though I hadn't been instructed in the right way to go. But I did the best with what I could. And God understands that if you're faithful with little, He'll give you more to be faithful with. And I was faithful with the little I had, and God endorsed that. And so I think that's perfectly fine. Amen. And that's right and so you did the right thing and God endorsed that and then he gave you more and more and you've grown into it and that's the way Yes Yes Okay, the question is, after the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, until the actual founding, if you will, of Roman Catholicism in probably 325 AD, what were the Romans practicing? The Romans were not much different than America. Religion wasn't a big deal to them. They were poly-religious. They had the Pantheon of the Roman gods, and some people were big on those. They also had conquered Greece, and there were the Greek gods over there, and some people could have those. They had, like you said, conquered Israel, and Israel had its Jehovah God, which they paid no attention to. And they had parts of North Africa, which had some of their Egyptian gods. They weren't really that big on religion. They were like most lost people. They were big on power and governmental structure. And so, therefore, they were, if you will, tolerant of many different things. Yes, go ahead. Yes, yes. And he says, is that why then they worship Caesar? Yeah, in the sense that he was the emperor and you were to give a political allegiance. I don't even know if they have enough brains for a spiritual allegiance. But you were to say with your mouth, I'm, you know, Caesar is my king. That's what they wanted to hear out of the people. And most people were happy to say that because they were afforded the luxury of being part of the Roman Empire, which was at that time the best nation on earth, the richest nation on earth. You know, what do you want to be in Ethiopian when you could be a Roman citizen? And it makes sense to me. And so people did it. But you have to understand lost people, like Jesus says, they think with their wallet. They think if God's not their God, money's their God. And whoever's going to give me the best, I'm fine with. Americans are no different today. I mean the major voting habits of the average American are economy, pocketbook issues. That's the major thing, even to the point where the political guys will say, it's the economy stupid, it's the economy stupid. Yeah, the economy is for the spiritually stupid, and so, okay, to them it's the number one thing. To us, the big thing is the heart. Okay, I wish I could erase that, because I'd like to show you something that God showed me at four o'clock in the morning a few days ago, and maybe this question leads into it. Pardon me. Okay, you get a question while she erases and then I'm going to put this up there. I'm going to church. I'm going to church. That's what I say. I'm going to church because that's what I'm going to. I'm going to church. And then if they ask, well, what do you do at church? Then I tell them we open the word of God and we study about the God of the word, about his son. And we allow that book to transform our mind and renew us. That's that's the purpose. For the most part, yeah. For the most part, they did. And you're right, that was a good point. The Roman Empire, the main thing they wanted was your taxes. Yes, it's just like the American IRS. They want your taxes. And then you can worship whatever you want. Yes. Now, here is what happened in the Roman Empire. Okay. From the Roman Empire standpoint, they wanted the money. They wanted the power. That's all they wanted. But within the Roman Empire, there were some religious leaders. The religious leaders, because religion is mainly of the devil, he's a religious creature, right? He said, I will be like God. I will be like the Most High. I will be worshipped. The devil's desire is to be worshipped. Yes, he likes human government and he has fun there, but what he really is into is worship. He wants to steal God's glory. And you steal God's glory in a worship service and in a church more than you do in a government. And so what happened is whatever the prevailing biggest religion was in any country, the political leaders, who are always looking for fellowship, if you will, with the biggest religion in the area, gets along with the leaders, and the leaders then say to the government people, You know, that little band of people running around there with that book are causing all kinds of trouble in the land. We need to do something about that. Are your armies going to help us out?" And then eventually they would bend the ear of their rulers to get those rulers to use some of their governmental power to put pressure on the true believers, and that's gone down through the ages. And then eventually, as we'll see in our studies, when the Roman Empire, the governmental Roman Empire fell in the 5th century, it was replaced by the Holy Roman Empire, and the Pope essentially took the place of the Emperor. And from that point, he had the army in his control, and you had a thousand years of outright persecution. All right, so we were taking a look at The thing, the issue is, the problem is the heart. That's the problem. All through the ages, whenever God would start any work at all, the first work he started was in the government. I mean, excuse me, in the garden. And he started with the family. And go, for example, to Genesis chapter 1. And when God said in verse 26, let us make man in our image. So he's gonna make a male and a female, verse 27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God, created him male and female, created he them. And then he blessed them, verse 28, and said to them, be fruitful and multiply. In everything that God starts, he has a purpose, if you will, A purpose, or maybe the purpose is the mission. And the purpose of the mission, he tells the man and the woman, is be fruitful and multiply. Be fruitful, multiply. God made a man, a male, is it that bad? Is my writing that bad? God made a man and a woman for the express purpose that they would be able to bear children, which would be in their likeness, which would be in His likeness. His desire was to populate planet Earth with creatures made in His image. That was the purpose and the mission given to them. Now, the co-mission is the next part. Replenish the earth and subdue it. This isn't the primary mission, but this is the second mission. This is the co-mission. Replenish and subdue. All right, so what's he saying? Okay, he's got them in a garden, right? And in that particular garden, he knows that they're going to have a place to live. He also, if they do what he said with the primary mission, if they have more children, those children are going to grow up and they're going to need a place where they can live. And so he said, I want you to, and I know what you're going to do. You're going to go out there and you're going to find some wheat that I put there, and you're going to eat that wheat. Now, when you eat that wheat, I don't want you just to scavenge the wheat and then move on to another area. I want you to replenish that field. And when you've used that wheat up, you will replant. I want you to tend the area. If you eat some corn over here, you just don't move on to a new field of corn. I want you to replenish. I want you to subdue an area. If your kids have kids who have kids, and they're looking for new land, and they move out to an area there, and there's an area that's got too many trees, they need to clear the area and subdue that area so they can have a place to live. So they're going to subdue and make a habitable place for themselves, and they're going to replenish anything they use. But the primary mission is be fruitful and multiply. Now, how am I going to do this? I've given you a mission, I've given you a commission, I have to give you some power to be able to do what I said, and the power is in the next couple verses. Verse 29, and God said, Behold, I've given you every herb-bearing seed which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree which is the fruit of a tree-yielding seed, it shall be your meat. And so the power was the food that he gave, the meat, and he describes meat as fruit and vegetables and grains. Because if they don't eat, they're not going to be able to be fruitful or multiply or replenish or subdue. And you're going to find every time God moves down along the line, He's going to have a purpose or a primary mission, a co-mission, and He's going to give some power along the way. For the church, let's take a look many centuries later, when Jesus finally founds His church. The purpose or the mission of the church is to make people conformed to the image of God's Son. Because what's going to happen is, once they're properly conformed, they're going to… My Father is a Spirit. He seeketh people who can worship Him in spirit and truth. And one day, you read Revelation 4, Revelation 5, Revelation 21, Revelation 21 and 22, and you go out into eternity and we're worshiping God. That's the primary purpose and mission of the church, to get us conformed to the image of God's Son who knows how to worship perfectly so we can learn to worship. Now the co-mission of the church is evangelism. Because this helps us to get more people that one day they can worship. And the power that he gives us to do it is the Spirit and the Scriptures. All right, when God gave human government The purpose of the human government. Probably Paul explains it best, although God touches on it briefly in Genesis 9, but Paul expands on it in Romans 14. So go there real quick. Romans 13, excuse me. So let's take a look at government. Here's God going to do the same thing. You've got government. He's going to have a purpose, a mission for government. He's going to have a co-mission for government. And then He's going to have power for it to fulfill its mission and its co-mission. Because God's got to give us a power source for it to do what it's told to do, or it can't do what it's told to do. It's like giving you a toy without putting a battery in it. And so the Lord does this all along the line. Now, here he says in Romans 13, verse 1, let every soul be subject to the higher powers. There's no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God. God is ordained for human government. We need human government. Otherwise the wrath of man would be running around killing everybody And and the human government is needed. I'll just stop briefly just stop briefly God has ordained human government Okay, there are a bunch of crazy people running around who think it's their job to blow people up and to shoot people and cut their heads off you know what the government's job is to to restrain them and Stop them Not the individual's job, that's the government's job. God ordained it. A good government would go out and fight those individuals. Why? So that God's families could be fruitful and multiply and not be worried about having their head cut off and having their kids taken from them. So God gave the government, so notice what he said, verse 2, whosoever therefore resisteth the power, that's the power of government, resisteth the ordinance of God, and they'll receive to themselves damnation. Now here it is, for the rulers, government leaders, are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Okay, wilt thou not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good and thou shalt have praise of the same for he that's a government leader is a minister of God because God ordained it to thee for good But if thou do that which is evil be afraid for he beareth not the sword in vain He is a minister of God a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil the the purpose of government is to exercise wrath on evil and Exercise wrath on evil. That's why God gave it. That's what government's there for. Government is not there to make sure you have adequate housing. Government is not there to make sure you have health insurance. Not according to God. It's there for one purpose, to exercise wrath on evil people. Go ahead. Well, of course not. That's why God ordained government. You have no right to individually exercise wrath. You're to forsake wrath and cease from wrath as an individual. But God gave this responsibility to the government, and it's their job to do it, exercising on behalf of God. That's how God wants it. So that's why he gave it, to exercise wrath on evil. Now, the commission of the government is to publish its laws. And we could read that back in the book of Esther and the book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. In other words, people need to know what are the laws that this local government has established, where God's ordained it. And the power that God gave them to do their job is, He just said in that verse, they bear not the sword in vain, They're given power of the sword. Today, the rifle. Today, an F-22 Raptor. Today, you know, a nuclear bomb. Whatever it is, they're given that, plus the one other thing he said here is, verse 6, for this cause pay ye tribute also. They're given the sword, plus they're given taxes or tribute. so that they can stay in the men that God has ordained and chose for that position, can keep that job, they can have enough money to publish the laws and distribute them, they can have enough money to buy the swords that they need to do the job that God gave them. So this is the way the Lord works all the way through here. The key to the whole thing is the human heart. Who are the people? Okay, let's look at the church. If I have saved members in a church who are born again and their heart is now humble and submissive to God, then He can conform them to the image of His Son. He can then teach them how to evangelize, which is contrary to their own nature, but something that God's heart wants to do. And He can work in that heart with the Spirit and the Scriptures. What if I take a church and I put people without a transformed heart in it? It's not going to work. It's not going to work. And so in the history of mankind, in these false religious setups, no matter what they called themselves, when you have people with unregenerated hearts and unredeemed souls, you're not going to get any of this. And by the way, the same thing in government. The issue is not the economy. The issue is the heart. If I don't have someone whose heart is in tune to God and to His Scriptures, I don't even know what the purpose of government is. I have no idea how to write and publish the right laws because I don't go by this book. I now go by the wishes of the people. Let's take a poll. What do they want? I go by the thoughts of my own heart, which is deceitful above all things. I go by the writings of other lost people, and the whole thing is a mess, and the government isn't doing what it's supposed to do. is the individual heart. God works with individuals. And then when he gets people with transformed hearts, no matter where he puts them, they'll do what they're supposed to do. You put a guy with a lost heart in a family, what kind of a father is he going to be? What kind of a husband is he going to be? What kind of children is he going to turn out? What's he going to feed them? Is he going to feed them the right food or bad food? Drugs. Pornography, who knows? I mean, so the whole key comes down to it, and every single thing that God has instituted and ordained, the key is individually changing the heart. If the heart's not changed, that's what I tell you, it's not gonna work, folks. It's over, it's over. America is not going to work. Of all the guys running for president, I think only two of them are born again. Three of them were, and the one born again guy dropped out. I mean, and they don't want born again guys. So what are we going to get? I don't know what you're going to get. You're going to get somebody with a filthy heart. Some hearts are dirtier than others. Some hearts lean in one way versus others. But there's the issue. So, you know, we'll continue looking at church history. We're going to see all the way through those hallmarks of the key church. The key is that the heart's been transformed and they can follow those 11 trademarks and hallmarks and identifying characteristics of the true church. Otherwise, you're going to have something that calls itself a church that isn't a church. Unfortunately, that's what we're going to see most of in church history because most of the world is lost and most of the things called itself churches are run by lost people. So we'll look next week as we begin to press on and we'll see how things start to veer off very early on. Any other questions before we close? Oh, I got a question. Come back. Hold on. Yeah. Yes. What did Christians use? The question is what, of course we're gonna cover it, but what did Christians use from the resurrection of Jesus Christ until God ordained the writing of the King James Bible? Well, what they used was the New Testament. They used the epistles of the New Testament, whichever ones they could get their hands on. Now, you and I both understand, you don't need all 66 books of the Bible to get saved. You know that a gospel tract can be sufficient to get someone saved. And that's just a collection of a few verses. So in terms of the work of salvation, God doesn't need a full 19-course meal to feed someone. All He needs is just a couple of the true kernels of truth in there to plant that seed in a heart and get it changed. Now, to grow it up, He may have to give more but to get it safe. So early on, all they had, they had whatever copy of whatever epistle they could have, and they just went out and proclaimed truth and tried to get people saved. And at the time when they lived, and it's hard for us to relate to, because we're Americans, we got so much spare time to fritter away on our hands, we don't know what it's like. But back then, People lived in abject hard lives of poverty what was tough enough just to get a few basic articles of clothing and a few basic pieces of food and the simplest place and they labored all day long and just learning that God is real and his son came to save them was enough They didn't have a lot of spare time to do Bible study and study Dispensations and write questionnaires and take quizzes and stuff like that So it didn't take a lot to reach a human heart and change its eternity back then. It was mostly individual Christians, not evangelists and preachers and pastors. It was individual believers that went out and led other people to the Lord. That's how God would like it to be, one by one, not professional preachers and evangelists. No, individuals. Now, I know a preacher and an evangelist has a particular office and a different set of characteristic duties. But according to Ephesians chapter 4, he's perfecting us in the work, the saints, that the saints can do the work of the ministry. And the work of the ministry is letting other people know that God is real so that you can reach people that evangelist or that preacher may never touch. Someone at your workplace, someone in your family. That's how he does it. Yes. Absolutely. That was one of the first places an individual would start was with his own family. Just like... Yes. That's right. Yes, brother. Okay. Now, if the government orders us to go to war, first off, our job is to be subject to the higher power. Now, we are really blessed. We live in one of the better governments in the history of mankind. The United States government is not cavalier about going to war, despite the lies that liberal communists tell you. They're very cautious about the wars that they enter into. I would have no problem battling on behalf of the United States government. My difficulty would be in the actual killing. In the United States Army, in true logistics, less than 1 out of 10 or 1 out of 20 is actually involved in firepower. The other 19 out of 20 are involved behind the line in helping that guy up front, whether it be on a secretary, whether it be in a supply line with food and cooking, whether it be in the medical, whether, and I would be more than happy to be part of something like that without actually taking a bullet and shooting on the other, you know, someone on the other side. But, and I'm sure there'd be plenty, there's plenty of space for that. And plus, they themselves want to put their best fighters in the front line. I'm not particularly a good fighter. No one in this congregation would be a good fighter. And the second thing you do is just make sure, with a little bit of prayer, when you're doing your rifle testing, make sure you miss the target a lot. And they'll say, this guy wouldn't be good with a rifle. There's something else you can do. Yeah, you work with a computer. And they wouldn't put you up there. And you could easily be in the army without ever being involved in actively killing. And the second thing you can do in an army is practically 95% of your compatriots are lost and you'd be able to witness to them as well as you could witness to anyone else. Of course not. He told you to be obedient to it. He will, everyone who's been put in any position someday will stand before God. So if a governmental, let's take a look at leaders like Stalin, or Mao Tse-Tung, or Saddam Hussein, and they led millions of people into war and put them in positions they should never be in, of course they're going to stand before God for that judgment. Of course they'll receive the greater damnation. Fine. No, he's under authority of the government. He's not going to be held accountable for that. He's doing what the government power told him to do. I mean, now if he went out and he shot at a little baby, he probably wouldn't do that, and they probably wouldn't tell him to. And if they did at that point, then his conscience, like it says in Acts 4 and 5, has to take a stand. And then at that point, let's say I was there, let's say they said, Mike, you can't work a computer, you gotta work a rifle. You gotta go out there and shoot. Every day I'd prayerfully go out and say, Lord, the guy I'm shooting today, I certainly hope this is someone that you desire for him to be taken home early. And that's what I, but in terms of women and children, I'm not shooting them. Mike, we told you, Sergeant Mike, you're to shoot them. Well, then at that point, you're gonna have to stand me for the court martial because I'm not shooting women and children like that. don't mind shooting males of an adult age who have white weapons but I'm not going to shoot defenseless women and children and then I have to take a stand for my conscience now that and that well that's kind of a loaded question we can turn off the tape now we've gone far enough we'll answer this