Amen! Amen. I know, I'm giving you all a hard time. Grab your Bibles and stand, please, in honor of the Word of God. And I'm going to tell you ahead of time, don't get distracted by my water, alright? I'm going to have to drink a lot of water tonight for whatever reason. I'm very thirsty. I don't get it. I've already drank half of this. Alright. Oh, that's probably why. Yikes. Ah, at church. Amen. You didn't know that? Well, amen. Now you know. Alright, 1 Corinthians chapter 2. 1 Corinthians chapter 2. I know what you meant. I'm just picking on you, brother. So we're in the Landmarks of the Baptist Doctrine and we are looking at the Kingdom of God. Rather, we're actually looking at the doctrine of the church. So it's ecclesiology is the official term for the doctrine of the Kingdom of God. Or rather, the doctrine of the church, I'm sorry. And we're looking at how the kingdom of God and the church relate to one another, right? Well, kind of, sort of, let me read you the actual title here. The Church and the Kingdom of God, okay? And it's part four. And maybe hopefully the last part in this lecture, maybe possibly, maybe not, we'll see. But tonight's message begins with a necessity of discernment. And so I wanted to start with a verse that I believe is appropriate when it comes to discernment. There are lots and lots and lots of verses in the Bible that refer to judgment and discernment and the necessity of those things. Verse number 14, verse number, I'm sorry, 15. Verse number 15 of 1 Corinthians chapter two. We're on page 583 if you're looking for it. 583, verse number, not of your Bible, 583 of the study book, all right. Chapter two of 1 Corinthians, verse number 15. 1 Corinthians 2, 15, all right. He that is spiritual, judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. Read that again. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. Let's pray. Lord, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You, Lord, for the truth of Your Word over the philosophies and traditions of this world. Lord, help us to be discerning and help this lady to stop responding when I don't want her to. And help us, Lord, to understand discerning the kingdom of God, discerning the difference between the kingdom of God and the church of God. And Lord, help us tonight to focus on what you have for us, Lord, and though it is mainly instruction, I pray, Father, that we would still take away some application from it. And we look forward to all that you're gonna do in Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. So we're on part number six of this, and I'll just do a real super fast recap here of what we've dealt with in this lecture so far. Just so that you know what we're doing here, this is church, okay? And our church has the chief responsibility of accomplishing the Great Commission, okay? It is our responsibility to accomplish the Great Commission, which includes preaching the gospel, Joining people to the church, baptism. And then the third thing, discipleship. And so what we do for discipleship is our Thursday night service is our church Bible Institute. You are here because you're either a member of this church or interested in possible membership someday. or you're a prisoner. No, but you're here because as a Christian, you have a chief responsibility of accomplishing the Great Commission through your local church, and you do so by ensuring that first, you got saved, right? Amen, if you're saved, you got saved. Second, you need to be disciplined yourself know the things of the Word of God and know how to answer questions and know what the Bible teaches about this thing and that thing and the other thing. What other people teach to a certain degree so that you can deal with their error with the Bible. And that's why we have our Bible Institute. It is not for super Christians. It's for every Christian. Okay, so we're looking at this doctrine of ecclesiology, which means study of the church. Ecclesiology is church, yes. And so we're on the second lecture. The way that this Bible Institute package is put together, you have lectures. Now we take, because we don't spend four to five hours on one lecture in one night, because that would be the normal plan for like a Bible Institute, you would have like a night set aside and you'd have four hours or so, three to four hours on a night of the week. You'd come in and you'd have, y'all remember when we did the the dispensations class, yeah. It was a while back and I forgot what the word was. And we were here for what, three hours? And it was a three credit hour class. Three hours a week, you come together and you take a break every hour or so for five to 10 minutes and you come back together and you keep on going, right? And so we don't do that for our church services because people just can't handle it for whatever reason. But anyhow. So we spread them out. So one lecture that should take, you know, three to four to five hours, we get them done in three to four to five weeks. And so that's why when we say this, part this, part that, part this, just understand that it's because I'm splitting it up over multiple weeks so that you don't have to consume it all at once. Are we good? Everybody okay? Amen. All right. So, the second lecture, the first one was defining the church. The second one is the church and the kingdom of God. It's important to understand that there's a difference between the church and the kingdom of God. A major, major difference. And so we talked about what the kingdom of God is. We talked about who makes up the kingdom of God. We talked about where the kingdom of God is. And we talked about how the kingdom of God relates to the church of God, and now we're looking at the kingdom of God discerned. It is absolutely, absolutely necessary to make discernments in your life. The Bible word, there are a few Bible words for discernment. Can you all give me some? Judge, to judge, to discern is to judge. Now, judging, see, the Bible uses the word judgment in like four different ways. And actually only one of those four different ways is wrong. The other three are right. And so the Bible uses the word judge in 1 Corinthians chapter number 2 and verse number 15, and I chose that verse, it's not in our study, I chose that verse because of the shock that some people experience when they read that verse and they say, oh, he's a spiritual judge of all things. Wait a minute, what about Matthew 7, 1, it says judge not. And then that's all that Matthew chapter seven says, right? Judge not, right there, that's it. No, it's not all it says. It then goes on to tell you how you ought to judge, but anyhow. The point is that we as believers need to have some discernment. We need to think about what we believe. We need to think about why we believe what we believe. We need to understand the difference between certain things. And so the kingdom of God must be discerned. So if you're going to take something away from this, the first thing you can take away, and it's not just a free one here, first thing you take away is that you need to have some discernment, especially about doctrinal things. There should be discernment. We should have discernment on doctrinal things, on things that we do in our lives, how the things that we do in our lives affect other people. We have to have some discernment, right? And real simple, here's how discernment works. If I Man, I don't know, every time I say that, I think of the scene in the old 1930s movie where the guy dressed up like a lion. He's got this like robe on and he goes and he says, if I were king of the, nevermind. Okay, so. Anyhow, if I do something without thinking about how it affects other people, most of the time, What kind of effect do other people have? A negative effect, right? If all I think about is how I feel about something or what I want about something, and I don't think about how it affects other people, that is a lack of discernment. And we have to think about that, right? We have to think about, we're gonna talk about Catholicism and stuff maybe if we get to it. No, we're not? Okay. we have to discern the kingdom of God. There has to be some discernment, okay? And I know I've left the script, okay, but sometimes you gotta do that so that we get it, right? We have to have some discernment on, and that doesn't mean that we over-evaluate ourselves and everything. I know some people go way off the deep end, over the other extreme, and they're always thinking, what's so-and-so gonna think about this? Oh man, I can't do that because this guy over here, he's gonna think that this, you know, and that's a little too far on the discerning thing. That's actually just more trying to be a people pleaser. So there's a difference between people pleasing and discerning, right? No? Yes, amen. All right, so. Let's talk about this, all right? It becomes plain to see that those who hold to the universal invisible church body of Christ theory are failing to distinguish the obvious differences between the ekklesia and the basilia. Those are Greek words, okay? Ekklesia is the word for church. Basilia is the word for kingdom. Isn't it interesting that there's a building somewhere, happens to be in a big city that is very well known for religion, and there's this big building that is called St. Peter's. Oh yeah, okay. Is there anything to do with that? You can look it up and figure it out. Don't do it right now, you can look it up later. As mentioned previously, that's not an endorsement, okay? You'll find that out in a minute. As mentioned previously, this conclusion has historical roots. People don't learn these things just by reading the Bible alone. There are historical roots. And it lies at the heart of the development of the first universal or Catholic church concept. All right, so, We're gonna look at the early development. I know this is, this is like, that's why I had to get you right at the beginning, because this is like, heavy. So don't, don't buckle your safety belts, okay? And don't turn that dial. All right? I don't know why they say that. There's no dial anywhere to turn. But anyhow. Tune in. Pay attention. The early development of the Catholic Church. or Catholic concept, sorry. Early development of the Catholic concept. Now, understand that the term Catholic is not necessarily referring to, not necessarily, referring to what is currently called the Catholic Church, okay? Catholic is, it means universal, embracing, and mother. You know, like a mama embraces her babies, right? So, in fact, it was changed, but there used to be, in some Bibles, in the title of certain letters, there would be, for example, in 1 Peter, or actually in James, the general epistle of James. I have seen in some Bibles it says the Catholic epistle of James. Why? Because it's a universal epistle meant for anybody, right? That's not a bad word necessarily. It has become a bad word. Okay, so the development of the Catholic concept. The change from simple New Testament pattern of a church into the complex hierarchical Catholic system stemming from medieval times was often indiscernible and very subtle. That's just kind of a big old mouthful. Did you get it? No? Yes? All right. In other words, this change took place, it duped lots of people into it. No one person ever came along and announced a new doctrine of the church. The changes took place imperceivably over several generations. It wasn't in the Bible. It was something that was slowly introduced. Many factors influenced the development of this, quote, universal church concept, and the most important of which were, and I'm just gonna name them for you and then we'll go over them, okay? So there's four here. You have the sacralist nature of the Roman world, the Old Testament pattern, the conversion of Constantine, and then the influence of Augustine, or of Augustine. So This is, those are the four things. So the first one here, the sacralist nature of the Roman world. Christianity was born into a world dominated by Rome. Everybody get this? We're gonna do some history. Y'all up for some history for a minute? I'm sorry, on Thursday night at 7.55 p.m., we're gonna do some, man, 7.55? We're gonna do some history. I'm sorry, it's gonna be about 8.15 by the time we're done with this, at least. All right, so, some history real quick. The world was dominated by Rome, which was a sacralist, and I'm probably mispronouncing that, S-A-C-R-A-L-I-S-T. Sacralist? Sacralist? Sound about right? All right, we're gonna talk about that. It means this, meaning that its government and its religion were inseparably intertwined. That was already happening. That was already a thing in the Roman world. One could not exist without the other. Its citizens were subject to Roman government and were expected to adhere to acceptable Roman polytheism. We got it? So the Roman polytheism was the common thing, right? So during that day, during that time, you had, if you're a Roman, then you just accept a polytheistic or a, what do they call it, interfaith or a wide view, you know, of anything goes when it comes to those things, right? Shotgun, there you go. An inevitable conflict arose when Christians asserted the principles of separation of church and state in Luke chapter number 20, verse number 25. However, there was also a strong influence upon many Christians to move toward the Roman model. This found its... Yeah. What's that? Denialment, yeah. This found its denouement after the ascension of the Emperor Constantine. Let's see here, let me use a different word that may or may not mean the same thing. It found basically its culmination with the ascension or the, he uses some big words here to sound really smart. Basically, it came to its peak, or came to its conclusion, so to speak, for officially making it happen when Emperor Constantine became the emperor. All right, so, what's that? Stamp of approval, there you go. So this was around 288 to 337 AD. So number two here, the Old Testament pattern. The national style of religion given in the Old Testament, along with its priesthood, sacrifices, and ritual, was very attractive to those who sought change. The Old Testament provided scriptural grounds for, or quote unquote scriptural grounds, for modifying the New Testament doctrine of the church. Clement of Rome, who lived around, or died in 110 AD, was probably the first to use the term layman when he paralleled the New Testament church and the Levitical priesthood. Cyprian, who lived from 200 to 258 AD, who was the, quote, father of the universal church sacerdotal ministry. Big old title there. Yeah, he was the quote unquote father of that concept. He applied all the privileges, duties and responsibilities of Levitical priesthood to the officers of the church. Let me just real side note. Actually, let me read his note, and then I'll give you another side note. It says, any teaching applied directly to the nature, work, worship, ordinances, discipline, and offices of the New Testament church that appeals to the Old Testament for support is wrong. I would say that that is essentially true. Now let me give a little side note of my own here. there are some aspects of Old Testament concepts, some aspects of principles that you can tie in from the Old Testament. The same person who will say that will say that some of the principles of the priesthood related to All right, I'll just out and say it, okay. Same people that'll say that will say that you're disqualified from pastoring if you don't qualify to be a priest in the Old Testament. For example, if you marry a woman who's divorced, nowhere in the New Testament does it say anything at all about a man who marries a divorced woman being qualified or disqualified from pastoring. However, priests could not be priests if they married a divorced woman. They were not to marry a divorced woman. It was against the law. Old Testament priests, not Catholic priests. Old Testament priests, they could not, they were not legally allowed to marry a divorced woman. So, New Testament, pastor is not the same thing as priest. It's not. In fact, in order to be a priest, you must be a Levite. And not only do you have to be a Levite, but you have to be of the lineage of Aaron. You can't just be any Levite. You have to be a specific line of Levites. And so, that doesn't apply. I'm saying it doesn't directly apply. Is it a good idea? Yeah. But is it an absolute? No. There are lots of other, and by the way, I'm talking about Baptist people that believe that. I'm not talking about Catholic. I'm talking about, you know, we will take things from the Old Testament. Now, are there good things? Do we talk about tithes that much in the New Testament? No. But we continue the principle of giving, and we utilize tithes as the standard based on the Old Testament, what the law told us, however, it's actually based on earlier on. Before the law, there was Jacob who promised to tithe to God, and then there was Abraham who did tithe. And so, anyhow, so those are, there's, it's not a carte blanche thing where you say, well, you know, we apply the nature and work and worship and ordinances and discipline and offices of the New Testament church, appealing to the Old Testament for support. He just makes kind of a carte blanche statement. Any teaching about this is wrong, is what he says. I would say it's not wrong, it just needs to be properly checked. Does that make sense? You can't just say, well, because the priest's this, then the pastor's this. It's not a direct thing. Now you can say the priest's this, the pastor's maybe should this, fine. Okay, but it's not a law for us, right? And so just the same as Israel did this, we should do this. You know, we should be like them and we should also stone those who disobey. You know, no, no, no, no, no. They've got people back here doing this. No, no, you don't execute people. We do not have authority to do that. And this is where the discernment got mixed up. Much of Cyprian's doctrine developed as a result of his conflict with the Novatians, who were ancient Baptists, the Novatians. By the way, I was asked about Catholicism in a new Bible study yesterday at the mission. And I talked a little bit about those things and mentioned some of the old, what we would call, Baptistic faiths, you know, that had different names. And I know when some people try to prove you wrong on that, they'll say, well, you know, the Waldensys didn't even believe in this or that or whatever. And it's like, well, yeah, every single sect of biblical Christianity at some point left. the doctrine of the Bible at some point. Every single one. Even Baptists today are leaving the doctrine of the Bible. And someday, they're going to start calling us something different. And then that will be what we're called. That's the way it goes, right? We usually don't name ourselves, but in America, for whatever reason, we decide to name ourselves. We're independent, fundamental, Bible-believing, King James, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, we're blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Baptists. Yeah, there you go. And so, and I've got some friends who are like, unaffiliated, historic, you know, Baptist Supreme, you know, or whatever, Baptist Deluxe, or whatever. It's like, yeah. Yeah, man. So. So he devised, this Cyprian feller, he devised a quote, unquote, one true universal church idea. And by devising this, he effectively outmaneuvered and shut out his opponents who zealously opposed the developing hierarchy. And this hierarchy, remember, this guy lived before Rome took over the church, the church. And so, there were things in the works to develop a hierarchical system. And the whole concept is to start controlling. By the way, we're starting churches here in Indianapolis. We need to be careful that when those churches are established, they're autonomous. Yes, we want them to help us start more churches, but if they decide no thanks, then that's up to them to do. That's fine. But just the same, we have friends in the ministry, right? We love our friends in the ministry, and we're not trying to separate from our friends in the ministry. If they decide for whatever reason they disagree with something, and they decide that they want to separate or not do this or not participate in that, or we decide we don't want to participate or whatever, that's perfectly fine. See, what people will do, though, is they'll say, you know, we can get a lot more done, and they're right to a certain extent, but they say, we can get a lot more done if we can set aside our differences and we can work together to do things. I agree. Let's do that. Let's just not set aside the differences that are important. And they say, well, the only thing that's important is the Great Commission. Wrong. Doctrine's important. That's what the whole Bible is about. It's teaching you how to live as a Christian and how to accomplish the Great Commission. And there are certain things that you have to know on how things work. You might say, why do we have to learn about the church? Because it's important. It's important. And what you believe about this does make a difference practically. Brother Travis, you had something to say? I did, by the way. I forgot the point, but I think I remember the point. He said something about how we can all come together and involve Christians in the same way. I actually had a training at a cafeteria, and he was talking about this function that he was going to, and he was representing all of them, and they had Buddhists, and they had all these other things where people can come and they actually take out these other religions. That's the point. They want to have the one world church. Catholicism wants to be the head of that. And that's what they were working toward there. Now, even with, and by the way, I'm not for churches partnering up when they're not even the same kind of church. I am against that, 100%. So, we're even careful. I've got, there's I think five different independent Baptist fellowships. in Central Indiana, at least five. And then within those fellowships and without of those fellowships, there's probably half a dozen more circles, as we would call them, of different Baptist churches that hang out with each other and do different things. And sometimes they produce or create a fellowship, or sometimes they don't. Well, I've got the opportunity to go to at least five different preacher's meetings every single month if I wanted to. Except two of them are on the same day. So they've got to pick one or the other. But I was talking to my wife yesterday about this. This afternoon? Man, it's been a long day. Anyhow, I was like, you know, I don't want to go to this one. Why not? Because if I go to this one, they'll criticize me because I go to that one too. And they believe the same! And if I go to that one, they're like, hey, we love you, we want you to come to all of our things. We're better than them. So we're not officially part of any... I'll just name it. We're not part of the GIBF as a church. Now, do we like some of the people that are there? Fellowship with some of those pastors, sure. We're not a part of the IFDF. We're not a part of the BBFI. We're not a part of the fellowship. We're not a part of the Unassociated Association of Unassociated Associates either. And so... Yes. So we're not a part of any of those things. Now, There are certain things that I will say. You know what? That church does a good job of putting on a conference. Most of you know who I'm talking about. I don't have to mention it. But I'm like, they're doing a conference on this? I'm going. They do a good job. I know where it's at. It's not six hours away. Every year for like a hundred years, Pastor Adam's been trying to get me to go to this certain conference so far away that they don't even use money there. But anyhow, he calls it Me No Money. I'd go to ones that make sense, that seem to work. Matter of fact, there's a particular conference in March that I was like, hey, I think that could be useful if we could get people to take a few days off and go to it. Man, that would be really useful, not talking about the one in Florida. I don't know if that's in March. I don't remember. I don't know who they are. all these different things, right? You get invites. There's a thing in January up in Muncie that's like a Bob Jones connected kind of thing. But then you get all these conferences or all of these fellowships that center around a parachurch organization like an independent school, Bible college. that is a parachurch organization that needs everybody to believe in universal church in order for their existence to be validated. And so, again, this concept, it developed. It developed over time. And so as it was developing, It developed because preachers often get too big for their riches. Not because they eat too much because they're Baptists, but they get too big. And preachers, in their minds, somewhere along the line think that there's something bigger than the local church. And they think, we need something bigger. Listen, if your local church can reach the world with the gospel, by maybe partnering with other churches in some cases, like we partner with churches to send missionaries, right? In some cases through our missions thing. But we make that decision which missionaries we're going to decide on assisting. Or whether we send our own. There's nothing bigger than the local church. Bible Institute, I believe, is a responsibility. Bible College Institute, university, degrees, approval, etc., authority for any ministry anywhere in the world has to come from a local church. There is no authority whatsoever. Somebody's listening to me. I know you all are listening. What's that? That's right. you're going to Nigeria. See, she's not listening now. Anyhow, so here's the thing. Preachers feel like they graduate from... Listen, I'm not a thousand percent opposed to Bible colleges, okay? I just think that they ought to be ministries of a local church. And there's an aspect to that that they ought to answer. their authority, they ought to be answering to a local church. And then if you decide to send someone from your local church to another church's Bible college, there has to be an understanding either that they're going to temporarily join that church so that they've answered to that authority, or they're going to come home every Sunday and midweek service. And that can be difficult logistically if it's out of state. And so, There's all these factors, but the thing is what happens is these preachers get, and I'm talking about preachers back in the 1st and 2nd century, they get to the point where they feel like they can't really do a whole lot until they've graduated from the pastorate into something higher where they're teaching pastors. Brothers and sisters, that's what the pastorate is. if pastors aren't teaching pastors and producing pastors, they're failing in their ministry. Whether it's bringing people in who are just about qualified and training them and getting them out, or bringing them in and qualifying them and keeping them and having them pastor there, or whether it's bringing them up from getting saved all the way up to pastoring a church. That is the job of a pastor is to produce mature believers who can serve God in the ministry. includes whatever position is available to serve God in. And whatever position you're qualified to serve God in. That's how it works. You don't have to go to a Bible college and get a degree somewhere. I've got a bunch of degrees on my wall in there. It's a local church Bible college. Not our local church, but they went through our local church for me to do this schooling. You don't have to do that in order to be qualified for ministry. You have to be qualified by your church. That's how it works. By the way, being called and being qualified aren't the same thing. When you're called, you're called to become qualified. If you're called to preach, Well, all you've got to do to qualify to preach is be a man, have a mouth that can speak, and be able to read the Word of God. understand it, and explain it to others. There's your qualifications to preach. Now, you want to go into a position preaching, there are some other considerations to take into consideration. Some other things that need to be taken into consideration. So number three here, man, I'm sorry, we're way late. We're just gonna have to do a real fast prayer time afterwards. Number three, the conversion, quote unquote, conversion of Constantine I. Constantine's contribution to Christendom is well known. His so-called Christendom is a very, very broad word to mean things that call themselves Christian, okay, or stuff that calls itself Christian. His so-called conversion signaled the end of the terrible persecutions against Christians and the sudden elevation of Christianity to imperial favor. Man, wow. In 313 A.D., his edict of toleration paved the way for the unholy wedlock between church and state. Big old, big old thing. And for many Christians, they were like, Woo! Praise God! We're not being killed anymore. We're OK. We're not going to have to run and hide anymore. And that didn't last very long, by the way. So man, man, man, man. Yeah, we're gonna do that. We're just gonna, we're gonna do that, and we'll do prayer time here in a few. Just a fast kind of thing. And those that have to go, tell us your prayer request first and run away. But we're gonna finish this. All right, so, number four, the influence of Augustine. Augustine lived from 354 to 430 AD. He was the chief polymysist against the African Donatists who were vigorously withstanding the establishment church on a number of issues, particularly over the purity of membership. Augustine's book, City of God, was instrumental in the cementing of Catholic or universal church theory into fact on a world scale. on the opinion of the world scale. For therein, he actually made the grave error of equating church, ecclesia, with kingdom, bacillia. This is where it got solidified and cemented into place. And then there was a development during the medieval period That's your second point here. The scholastic theologians built upon Augustine's concept of the church as supplanting the kingdom of God. This had three consequences. These are important. These are important. Y'all pay attention now. Take notes if you need to. These are important. Three consequences to equating the church with the kingdom. Number one, No salvation except in the church. No salvation except in the church. And by the way, this has so ingrained itself into the thought process of every religious gathering, other than Bible-believing Baptists, and many Baptists who say they're Bible-believing, it's ingrained itself into them so much that they cannot see the possibility that someone who is saved is not a part of the church. Because they've made it, they have equated salvation with church. You do not have to be... Let me say this a couple of ways. You are not in the church because you're saved. You are not in the church because you're saved. You're in the church because you're baptized. You are not going to heaven because you join a church. Or because you get baptized. Salvation is in Jesus Christ who died for the church, established the church, and implores you to join the church and serve as the church. to accomplish the Great Commission. The church was seen as the dispenser of God's grace through the sacraments. Therefore, the threat of excommunication became a fearful and effective weapon because they could say, because their doctrine, now we don't hold to this today. Those who protested the Catholic institution and left, in the 1500s or so, the Reformation period. They said, well, no, they're right about the universal church, but it's invisible. So the thing is, if the Bible says you can be disciplined out of the church, and your membership in the church determines your salvation according to their doctrine, if you're disciplined out of the church, you don't go to heaven. according to their doctrine. Yeah. Now listen, we've got what, 36 members, 35 members, something like that? Some of y'all are here tonight, some of you aren't. I'm talking to the ones that might watch it later. You are not going to heaven because you're a member of this church. If you fooled us into making us think you're saved and then got dunked and joined the church, you're technically not a member of this church even if you're not saved. You're on the roll, but you're not really on the roll in heaven as a member of this church. And by the way, you can go to heaven without being a member of a church. But you can't serve God effectively. because the institution that he has given the responsibility of service is the church. Number two, though, it says here, no service except to the church. Notice it says to, not by and through and so on. It says here, they say, God's work could only be done in the manner prescribed by the church. This work would later include killing heretics. You could become a servant of the church by being a crusader and killing heretics. That's what later became a thing. You would be, in some cases later when it became more northern European, you could be knighted as a knight that was given a commission for killing those who oppose the church. That was a common thing for 1,200 years. And this is why much of the world hates Christianity because in the name of Christianity, that's what was happening. Number three, no subjection except by the church. If the church was indeed a kingdom, and a superior one at that, then it could exercise control over all kingdoms. For example, popes such as Gregory VII, who lived from 1021-1083 AD, Innocent III, lived from 1160 to 1216, and Boniface, did I say that wrong? Boniface, there we go, I like that better. Boniface, yes. The 8th, who lived from 1235 to 1303, they took on the kings and rulers of the world, declaring papal supremacy over them. over all of them. In fact, that's how the Episcopal Church or the Church of England came to be. Was the king was like, don't tell me what to do. Establish my own church. And he became and so even now today, the crown is also the head of the Church of England. So all the Episcopalian and Anglican churches all over the world answer to King, what's his name now? Charles, King Charles. The queen was the queen for like a thousand years or something. Or was it 70-something? Anyhow, long time. But that became a big thing. By the way, if they could have it back, they'd take it back. And they had it, they had it as recent as like 250, 300 years ago. That's really recent. Now, for us, I mean, how about you kids? Can you remember 10 years ago? Some of us can. You're nine, so you can't remember 10 years ago. That's right. Most of us can't remember 50 years ago. Who can actually remember, remember what was 50 years ago? 1972? Is that 50 years ago? 1972? Who remembers 1972? Anybody here? Like, you can tell me something that happened. I don't want to hear something that happened, but you could tell me if I asked you something that happened in 1972 that you were there for. Anybody? Brother Wilhelm, he's at home right now. You don't have to tell me what happened. How old were you in 1972? Five or six years old? And they went to the moon in 1972? Oh, Apollo 13, 1972, there you go. Anybody else remember 1972? See what I mean? What's that? No, I'm, for example, for example, I don't remember 1972. I was born in 83, come on. That was 11 years before I was born. Anyhow, black and white TVs, we still had those in the 80s for the poor ones around. So anyhow, the, The fact is, I mean, we think that 50 years is a long time, but it's really not very long at all, at all. And 60 years is not a long time. 100 years isn't a long time. We won't live that long, but 100 years isn't a long time. 200 years really isn't that long. 300 years really isn't that long. So in a very recent past, they had control over kingdoms, over countries. And her daughter, Anglicanism, was taking over the world at that time. And we here in America decided, not no mo', and we declared independence. And so we have a whole different, in fact, they call America the Great Experiment because we have such a different scenario than any other nation has ever had before us. Well, not ever, but... for hundreds of years, like almost 1,500 plus years. No nation has actually more than that, 2,000 some odd years. Anyhow, letter C here, the formation. or rather the Reformation development of the Catholic concept. And I've already mentioned this, so I'll just real quick run through. So the Reformers resisted all the doctrines of an infallible church, a mystical priesthood, and salvation through the church by works. Consequently, the Roman concept of the church was rejected. Martin Luther, sickened by the overt wickedness, lack of spirituality, and the worldliness of the Roman quote unquote church, was at first agreeable to consider a true church to be a company of faithful, a company of the faithful, a truly spiritual communion. However, when he was abducted by the friendly ruler Frederick the wise, and held secretly for 10 months at Warburg Castle, all for his own safety, he began to realize his need for the support and goodwill of the state. Thus, for opportunistic reasons, Luther rejected his earlier, more scriptural views, opting for a church-state religious system. Luther was the first to put forward the idea of an invisible Catholic universal church, to which he coupled a visible manifestation. There you go. Didn't come from the Bible, came from Luther. You know, a mighty fortress is our God. That's why we don't sing that song, by the way. I like the song. It sounds good, but I don't think it's correct doctrinally. I'm going to read this here, and we'll be moving on. Since the kingdom of God is the sphere of salvation, those who consciously or unconsciously confuse the kingdom with the church also tend to confuse salvation and church membership teaching, that salvation places one in the church. Roman Catholicism does this consciously. Thus, for those ensnared by Catholicism, I'm sorry, those ensnared by its teaching, excommunication is tantamount to losing one's salvation. This same line of reasoning leads many to assume that Bible-believing Baptists believe that only Baptists will be saved. And what do they call us? Baptist Briders. Or Landmarkers, which is kind of funny because the title of this study is Landmark. But anyhow, I'll just say this for the record. We do not believe that only Baptists go to heaven. We believe only saved people go to heaven. All right, now, this will be maybe a more inflammatory statement. We believe that only Baptists are part of the church, though. But that's where people say, you believe only Baptists go to heaven because only people part of the church go to heaven? No. No, saved people go to heaven. Church people are part of church. Do church people go to heaven? If they're actually part of the church, then they're actually saved. Yeah, they do. Now, what if you get church-disciplined out of the church? You still go to heaven. It's not in the church anymore. That's how that works. Simple. Okay? It's not all that complicated. The problem is we throw all these other hundreds of years of complication that religion has put into... They haven't put it into the Bible, but they've put it into the interpretation of the Bible. This is why the expression the rapture of the church is very misleading and unscriptural and should be strenuously avoided. That's why we say the rapture of the saints, not the rapture of the church. The rapture of the saints. Those of us who reject any notion of a universal invisible church on the basis of the word of God are not being unloving. nor do we believe Baptists are the only ones who are saved. The truth is that everyone who by faith trusts Jesus Christ as their Savior is immediately, completely, and eternally saved, and in the kingdom of God, also in the family of God. Furthermore, everyone who trusts Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and is subsequently baptized scripturally into a New Testament Baptist church is a true Baptist. Here's the distinction. Every true Baptist is in the kingdom of God. Not everyone who is in the kingdom of God is a true Baptist or is a Baptist. All right. I know for some of you, I just made a couple statements that have your head spinning. You need to talk afterwards. We can do that. If I hurt your feelings, the complaint department is Pastor Adams. Next week, we're gonna look at the First New Testament Baptist Church. I added the word Baptist just for fun. We're gonna look at the First New Testament Church.