Well, like I said, tonight we're going to be looking at the forerunners to the Reformation. And that's, we're gonna focus on really three individuals tonight. And I'm gonna do a little introduction, and then Africana is actually gonna come and talk about someone who's very special to her, and she'll explain why, right? It'll be wonderful. So we're looking forward to it. But I did want us to go ahead and start by looking at this timeline. We've looked at this a few times, and I just want to show us kind of where we are. So you remember, the whole point of this study is to really elevate the foundation, which is the Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles' witness to him. That's really what forms the entire foundation of church history. And if you wanna think about this foundation and being built on this foundation, we're gonna look at the three pillars, and that's what we've been looking at every lesson. We're kinda coming back to these three pillars that are holding up this building. The word of God, the work of God, and the worship of God. And really, so many of the controversies, so many of the discussions about how to do church throughout 2,000 years of church history, they really have centered on various disagreements about those three things, okay? And so obviously we, oh yeah, I'm sorry, there you go. So that's that, and then if you start looking at the building, as we've talked before, think about the first floor, the second floor, the third floor, and the fourth floor. The first floor is the patristic age, that's gonna go from really the first to the fifth century. Figures like Ignatius, Polycarp, Origen, the different councils that we studied together, the Nicaean Council, the Chalcedonian Council, Chrysostom, Augustine, right? And then we move up to the second floor, which is gonna be the Low Middle Ages, okay? And that's where we talked about Charlemagne, and some more councils that came in, the Second Council of Nicaea. And then we're starting to see some towards the end of, and this is really where Jake spent a lot of his time last week, starting to see what this calls papal corruption. That's a nice way to put it, papal corruption. And we'll spend a little time thinking about that even tonight. Jake also spent some time, if you go to the third floor, the High Middle Ages. We talked about the Crusades quite a bit, mentioned Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, and really talked about the rise of what he called scholasticism. And that's an interesting concept that we're gonna talk about again today because it really does have a significant influence on the church through this particular stage. So if you notice the high middle ages, the pre-reformers. So really that's what we're talking about today, the forerunners to the Reformation. And in particular, the three people we're gonna talk about, Peter Waldo is the first one. He's in the 13th century room right there. The 14th century room is gonna be John Wycliffe. Wycliffe, I should say. And then the 15th century is Jean Rousse. Jean Rousse. And I'm gonna do a little intro. And then Miss Africana is gonna actually come and she's prepared some comments about which I think will be very interesting and helpful from her perspective. So she'll come up first. We're gonna do those in a little bit out of order. He'll be first, even though he comes last in the timeline. So just keep that in mind as she talks about this terrific leader within the church. Okay, does everybody kind of have a sense of what we're gonna do over the next 45, 50 hour long session? Y'all be thinking about questions you might have, comments you might wanna share, but we do have, as always, a tremendous amount of ground to cover, so we really wanna go ahead and jump right in. So the issue of corruption within what was then really the Western church was really on display for pretty much everyone to see. So we're really talking about the high Middle Ages, And it is really becoming evident, and this is something that I hope challenges the way that you think about church history a little bit. Because church history, and we talked about this at the very beginning, we tend to think that there was, you know, the book of Revelation was written by John the apostle, and then we enter into 1500 years of the Catholic church where there's like nothing worth thinking about for that long. And then a lightning bolt from heaven comes and Martin Luther shows up on the scene and saves the day. Okay, of course that's an overgeneralization, but there's a kind of way that us as loud and proud heirs of the Reformation, okay, who love Protestantism, who are thoroughly Protestant, we love to think about the Reformation. And it's gonna be really fun to study it. But to think of it the way that I described it would be an incorrect way to think about how to do history. That's just not how it worked. And so one thing I want you to think about was that really by the time of the high Middle Ages, which is gonna be from around the 1100s, really all the way up until about 1415, there's a lot of problems that are just becoming more and more evident. Corruption, there's a practice called simony. Do you all know what simony is? Okay, simony is the, it's sinful, of course, but essentially it's picking church leaders for political or familial reasons. So I'm gonna appoint a bishop over this area, not because he's qualified, but because I need a political favor from this guy or he owes me something or something like that. So you have this practice very, very pervasive within the Western church at this point. It's called simony. Another big problem was absenteeism. People would be appointed over a parish or over a city to be essentially a priest, and they just wouldn't be there. So they're getting paid, they were doing all these things, they just were completely not there. So those are just two examples of some of the things that were going on, and we'll talk about a few more in just a second. But I want you to get the sense that during this time, the Western church in particular had gotten to a point to where it was no longer tenable for things to continue on status quo. The wheels, so to speak, were about to come off. And everybody kind of knew it. Okay, so that's some of the tension, some of the energy that was really going on the three, the 400 years prior to the date 1517, when Martin Luther hung the 95 Theses on the Wittenberg door. Really the four or 500 years before that, there was this building sense that it was time to reform the church. And that wasn't just by people who would be Protestants. There were many who would be Roman Catholics who saw the need for reformation. Okay, so that's something that is really important to think about. So papal power, so let's talk about the papacy, what was going on in the high and the late Middle Ages. Papal power reached its zenith. under a Pope by the name of Pope Innocent III. He was Pope, I'm sorry, he was alive from 1160 to 1216. And during his tenure, the Fourth Council of the Laterian, which is in 1215, dogmatized the doctrine of transubstantiation. Do you remember what that is? Yep, so when you take the Lord's Supper, as it's commanded in scripture, It is transformed by this process where it actually becomes the substance of Christ's body and his blood. And through that, grace is essentially infused to you. Okay, so that's how you are sanctified, that's how you grow in holiness is by partaking in the mass, but in this case, in the Lord's Supper. Okay, so for a priest to withhold Lord's Supper from somebody, guess what? That really was a big deal to them because in their mind, they were being withheld from the grace of salvation. Okay, so this was something that happened and was codified at the fourth Lateran council in 1215. Another issue, we talked about indulgences. If you came to that, the video we watched, the church, they talked a lot about indulgences, but this was something around 1230. the church adopted the idea called the Treasure House of Merit in Heaven, okay? And which essentially the Pope could dispense indulgences which would reduce the amount of punishment that someone might would receive for their sin. Okay, it's obviously not biblical, but it really becomes a dominating practice within the Middle Ages that is, it's very wicked. I mean, there's no other way to describe it, it's just wicked. And a lot of people know it, okay? Because what happens, it becomes abused, And you start to see the Roman Catholic Church starting to raise a tremendous amount of money. A lot of the cathedrals that we love to look at, because they're just so beautiful, guess what? They were funded from money from this kind of thing. So, not to say don't enjoy them, don't admire them, don't see the beauty in them and all the rest, but just know, just like everything, has a tainted history. It just does, okay? Don't be ashamed. It's just how it is. So you see that the Pope's, the church becoming very, very, very rich by these practices. Now, I mentioned earlier that everyone's kind of had this sense that reformation was needed. because they saw these things, they just knew. Something's just not right. There's major issues. A lot of people, not everybody, I mean, there are obviously those in power who really wanted to maintain that power, and they were absolutely against reforming anything. But I think that it's safe to say that a good portion of the Western church felt a need. felt that it was time to do something. And the way that the Catholic Church tried to reform itself, because they tried multiple times, and really a lot of their councils that came, these were, in a sense, them trying to reform some of these things. But there's something we've talked about before, but it comes up again here, called the conciliar movement. Okay, the conciliar movement. This is not in your notes, but I'm gonna tell you what it is anyway, because I think it's important. And essentially a conciliar movement is the idea that really the only thing that could maybe rival the Pope's authority was a church-wide movement. where Christians and bishops and cardinals and everybody is invited from every corner of the church and they can come together. And if they can make policies, if they can do things, then whatever they hand down in that council, it will be authoritatively binding, even on the Pope. Okay, so this is a little bit before the Pope had kind of like absolute power, and we'll see why it came that the Pope became to have absolute power. It's because the conciliar movement, which really did serve the church well, multiple times throughout church history, okay, the Nicene Council, the Chalcedonian definition, all of these things, the church was solving problems. by calling these councils, people prayerfully getting together, and in good faith, trying to solve them. And they really did solve a lot of problems. It really was a good strategy for many of the controversies that the church would face. Now, the problem happened, so the conciliar movement really was a vehicle that the Roman Catholic Church looked to to help facilitate the Reformation, that it really felt like it probably knew it needed. Now, I share that because in the 1300s, due to political infighting in Europe, the papacy relocated from Rome to France, a city called Avignon. Can anyone say that? Okay, something like that. Avignon in France. And it remained there for about 70 years. Pope Gregory XI, he finally returned the papacy in Rome. And when his successor, Urban VI, insisted on staying in Rome, the French cardinals, what'd they do? They elected a rival pope, okay, by the name of Clement VII of this French place of Avignon, where the papacy had been. Okay, so. This is an interesting moment in history for us, too, because we also just, I'm not saying we as in us, but we also just had a period of time where there were technically two popes, right? Pope Benedict, who just passed away, he was Pope Emeritus. That was the first time that that's ever happened, that a pope retired. He still maintained the title of pope, while Pope Francis was the one who was essentially ruling, right? That's interesting. That's an interesting tidbit in church history. It hasn't happened before in that way, that a pope retired, and then there's technically two popes. But at this time, in the 1300s, there were two popes, Clement VII and also Pope Gregory XI. So this is a problem, because in what was becoming the Roman Catholic mindset towards this, the highest authority in the church was the pope who sat on the throne of who in their mind? Peter. Set on the throne of Peter. Okay, Peter is one person, not two, so you can't have two people sitting on the same throne. Okay, so it's a big problem. So in 1419, the Council of Pisa, so Pisa's in Italy, think of the, you know, leaning tower thing. They attempted to solve this schism. How'd they do it? They called a council. You see, they went to what they knew, they called a council. And this only resulted in, what do y'all think? What happened at this council? What do y'all think happened? What was the big outcome? Nope, that actually already happened just barely, but that's a really good guess. Well, sure. They just installed a third pope. So now there's three popes, okay? So their effort to use the conciliar movement to solve a dispute that was much needed in the Catholic Church, it didn't work. And it actually resulted now in there being a third pope. Okay, so there's three popes, and if you talk to a Catholic today about this, they're gonna, in a sense, deny it. They're gonna pick one of them, I don't know which one, but one of them is the true pope and the others are false popes, anti-popes or whatever. And this really wasn't resolved until 1417 at the Council of Constance. So eventually a council did happen, but that was actually called the Papal Schism, not the East-West Schism of the church, but the Papal Schism, also called the Western Schism, because this happened in the West. The Eastern Church doesn't have popes. So, interesting thing for you to think about. Okay, so again, everyone, including the Catholics, were really feeling the need to reform the church. But how to reform the church would be a very, very, very challenging question to answer. You can imagine how difficult it would be to try to answer these questions. And it really got to the point that there was no easy, there was no, easy answer. I mean, it really got to that point, and we'll see kind of why that were to happen. So by the late 1400s, the Roman Catholic Church in Europe was in desperate need of reformation. The wheels were really coming off. The corruption of the papacy was evident from the sale of indulgences to the papal schism, where there's now three popes. in which three rival popes each claim to be the true leader of the church. So in the midst of all of this, God is raising up voices of protest, okay, who are willing to confront this papal corruption and even defy papal authority when it conflicted with the clear teaching of scripture. These men are going to be called forerunners of the Reformation, and their bold convictions really anticipated the stand that the Protestant Reformers would take in the 16th century. So what I want you to really remember from all of that, before we have Africana come up and talk to us about Jeanne Huss, is that the Reformation even though we date it to 1517, and that's fine. It's good to do that. But it really didn't begin with Martin Luther hanging the 95 theses on the door at Wittenberg in 1517. Really, there have always been those who sought to reform the church. They've always been there. Think about some of the monastic movements that happened even before what we've been talking about. There's always been this dialogue of trying to, I think, in many cases, lead the church in a way that would be faithful. Now we know that that wasn't just, obviously there was a remnant, I guess you could say, of people who were really always trying to do that. Even as the church as an institution, the Roman Catholic Church, what it would become was moving in this way, which was further and further away from the clear teaching of scripture. There were those who were always advocating for, to purify, to reform, and to correct some of the erroneous things that had really developed. I think what we see in the high Middle Ages is that the arguments that were being had became so stark and so incompatible that Rome, Right? To Rome, those seeking reformation, they were no longer just a nuisance for them to manage, okay? But they really were becoming a serious threat, and they really needed to be extinguished. in order to protect those who had come to be in power, political power, power within the church. So I think that's what we're seeing. We're seeing this flashpoint. We're seeing the wheels coming off, and there's this deep hunger within, I think, the souls of legitimate believers for something to be done. And it's to that, so I'm gonna go ahead and have Africana come up. And she's gonna, remember we're doing this out of order, so John Huss first, and then we'll do Peter Waldo and John White with you. So Africana. I guess these are the pictures and checkbooks. I don't know if you can read Czech, but just pray, please. Lord God, we come to you. We know you are holy, holy, holy. We are sinners. We confess all our sins, shortcomings, blind spots, iniquity, transgressions. Please wash us clean and let us concentrate on the martyr who was burned at stake and that everything will be for your glory. In the name of Lord Jesus Christ, amen. Thank you. So first of all, thank you, our teachers, Logan and Jake, for this opportunity that I can share about our national hero, Martyr. Before I start, Jan Hus always was presented to us as a speaker of Jews. Well, one wrong picture was that it was under Marxist-Leninism, and so everyone who spoke truth of gospel was underground, tortured, killed or in exile. So it was completely warped as I grew. And really into this picture I became as a question only in the US 19 years ago. So let's start on Jan Hus. He goes from Wycliffe and you will see, I'm sorry I jumped in the middle, but Wycliffe but not Has. Hus is the bridge to Luther. He was born around circa 369 to 370 in Husinec, which is a village of geese. He is of peasant stock, average education in Catholic Church. Of course, there was no other. 1390, 20-year-old, in University of Prague. Prague was and is located in the middle of Europe, heart of Europe. He was copying by hand. Wycliffe's writings, amazing isn't it, which he copied, Salvation by Grace Alone through Faith Alone in Christ Alone, Ephesians 2.8.9. Jan wasn't converted yet though. He was professor of theology by 1398. and in 1401, dean of the theological university. And why he was doing this was for prestige, money, and acceptance to academic community, as all university students can understand. By 30 years old, Finally, Jan comes to saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, and we can presume that it was through Wycliffe's writings. 1402, Jan nails the difference between believers and unbelievers, possessors, professors, and importance of sovereign elections, which is sovereignty of God as a cornerstone. He also has bold accusation against clerical corruption, which Logan already touched that, money, greed, hypocrisy, immoral life, and political struggle of Catholic Church. He openly was against, openly against the sale of indulgences, which is, indulgences are sale and purchase of forgiveness of sin for money. Jan Fuli stands behind John Wycliffe's writings, and I quote, and that's all Wycliffe's writings, Pope is among non-elect, clergy are false shepherds of the flock, blind leading blind. Jan is powerful preacher, brilliant, teaching young college students, master in the pulpit of Bethlehem Chapel, you will see on that picture, you have outside and inside of the Bethlehem. Chapel was a specific place where 3,000 people can be, and acoustic was just excellent there. His preaching was simple, fervent, biblical, and in Czech language. No, absolutely unheard of. Don't know if they had Czech Bible. I don't think so at that time. Wycliffe, yeah, Wycliffe did translate. from Vulgate to English. Fully opposing clergy, nobility, Pope, his court so conflict escalate. between Rome, Prague, Pope, Huss. Gospel truth is everything for Jan Huss. Galatians 1.10, for am I now seeking the favor of man or of God? Or am I striving to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be slave of Christ. And gospel message was spreading like wildfire around. From 1408, he receives four papal balls which he never We know what Martin Luther did with them. He is summoned to Rome, all is refused by him. By 1409, Pope got him because he issued interdict over Prague. It means no sacraments, no marrying, no baptizing, no Lord's table, no funerals. So corpse were literally rotting on the streets. So Jan Wallach-Tierlingli goes to exile from 1410, 1412. because he doesn't want revolution, but reformation. He doesn't want social reaction, he wants gospel reaction. His theological writings on the sovereignty of God, and I know Logan will probably touch it there, God is always in work, exposition of faith, commentary on Ten Commandments and Lord Prayer, treatise on... treatise on the church. The church is comprised from the elect. Pope and cardinals have no evidence of saving grace in their lives. Jan wrote about facing his own death because his death was literally in the air. To face death itself, God sovereignly rules and reigns. God preserves his faithful ones in peril and grant them eternal life with joy unspeakable. John is bold as a lion. Quote, Jesus Christ is head of church, not Pope. Christ alone is head of universal church. Total depravity of human nature ensnared by world, flesh, and devil. We are in, or all in radical corruption. All men are subject to judgment. We are forgiven only by God's grace, Romans 9. The unity of universal church consists of unity of predestination. Quote, many in church are not his select. They are not true sons of God. They lack the marriage garment, which is predestinating love of God. Now we are in Ecumenical Council, you know the councils, 1414, which was called to Constance and for reform to Catholic Church. There was many good, meaning Catholics, which they wanted to reform the hypocrisy of Catholic Church. He was 44 year old at the time. Jan Hus is promised safety by Holy Roman Emperor Zygmunt in Czech. in English, who is brother of Bohemian King Václav. So very close. He is almost immediately imprisoned. Come to Constance a few days later and imprisoned and he's above sewer and become very, very ill. Those are the lists from Kostnice, which is the yellow book, writing from prison. Jan writes, quote, he writes letters to Czech believers, and not only Czech believers, but all future believers, true believers. Quote, please, pray for fearless heart while I am facing cruel death with patience and joy. I will die, but from Lord God, I deserve nothing. If he will welcome me to himself, it is only by his grace. So 1415, heresy trial is here. He is named Wycliffeite to condemn Wycliffe's teaching on sola scriptura. We will know more after we will study Wycliffe. And Jan says, I refuse to be enemy of Jews. I refuse all agreement with falsehood. Better to die well than to live badly. Which is to deny truth. July 4th, 1415, his day of burn, they condemned him to death, put on him paper hat with black devils as heretic, and burned him at stake at the devil's place behind the city. He says to executors, today you burn me. I am burned goose, but in 100 years there will be singing swan which you will not be able extinguish. Do you know who it is? I'm sure yes very good last recount or die quote in the truth of gospel which I preach all my life I want to die today with joy God is my witness while fire is engulfing him he sings Jesus son of living God have mercy on us Martin Luther, quote, we are all Hussites, Charles Spurgeon, he whose lives and will live wherever the truth is taught. He continues through that, he speaks, for us take out, will we stand for the truth of gospel in these perilous times? There is always price to pay for truth, conflict, controversy, suffering, for the Lord himself says, I did not bring peace, but? So Matthew 1034, Stephen Lawson ended his presentation, but God is all sufficient and he gives greater grace when we face trials. Amen. Thank you for your attention. Very well done, Africana, thank you for sharing that. So Africana, for those who don't know, is from Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic, and Jan Hus was Bohemian, which would then become the Czech Republic, so that's the connection there. So thank you very much for sharing that. So yeah, Africana mentioned many things that we will also kind of talk about a little bit, so a very helpful introduction to even what I wanna share with you about the other individuals. The first one's gonna be Peter Waldo. So remember, this is really about 300 years before Jean-Louis, 1140 to 1210. This man, we don't know a whole lot about him, but he was a merchant from Lyon, which is in France, modern day France. Very wealthy man. After being influenced by the story of a fourth century Christian by the name of Alexis, this man sold all that he had to be in devotion to Christ. He sold everything, he began a life of preaching in service to the Lord. So he is truly a pre-runner of the Reformation. Okay, so initially Waldo and his followers were known as the Poor of Lyon, L-Y-O-N on that, the Poor of Lyon. And they would later become known as the Waldensians. Okay, and where is Waldo? I don't know. Do y'all know where Waldo is? Sorry. They wore these red striped shirts and this little hat. That's not true. They were called Waldensians. I don't know if there's any connection there might be, but probably not. So he loved the word of God and he commissioned to translate a portion of the scriptures from the Latin Vulgate into the local dialect. Okay, so his reading of scripture inspired and informed his preaching ministry. So the Roman Catholic Church denounced the Waldensian movement at the Third Laterian Council in 1179. And though he did not receive authorization from the Pope, Waldo determined to do what? To continue preaching anyways. And he boldly insisted, as it says in Acts 5.29, that it is better to obey God rather than men. So Waldo and his followers were subsequently persecuted by the Roman Catholic authorities as heretics, and the movement really did survive that. The Waldensians were often forced into hiding up into the French Alps, where they really would remain for hundreds of years. And they really shared several important convictions with later reformers. The first one, the authority of scripture. over the authority of the Pope. That's the authority of Scripture over the authority of the Pope. Okay, that's a huge tenant of the soul of Scripture, all right? Okay, another one, the need to translate Scripture into the common language. And then thirdly, the ability of lay people to understand and to preach God's word. Okay, these ideas seem so obvious to us, but it's hard to underestimate how revolutionary they really were at the time in many sectors of the Western church. In the 16th century, the Waldensians would join the Reformed branch of the Protestant Reformation. This was fitting since their movement really was a precursor to the Reformation. Okay, so Peter Waldo, if ever you come across his name, read more about him. He really is one of these figures that, maybe we don't know a lot about him, but the work that he did, the movement that he is attributed to have begun, really did give birth to kind of like that snowball rolling down the hill kind of thing, okay? He's one of those very, very early on individuals. The second person, and will also be the last person we really talk about tonight, is John Wycliffe, 1324 through 1384. The Waldensian movement was primarily a movement of the laity. Okay, so these are normal people, probably farmers in the French countryside. Probably farming grapes or whatever people do there, I don't know. But that's what they were probably doing. They're non-clergy types. They're probably not very educated. They can read. Some of them can, at least, to be able to preach, but it was a laity movement. Wycliffe was an English priest, and he was also a professor at Oxford and Balliol College. I'm sure that's actually still one of the colleges of Oxford even today. But he was a professor there. And we have the beginnings of the scholarly movement of resistance against the corruptions to the papacy. Now, I thought that was interesting, because if you remember last week when Jake talked about the rise of scholasticism, that what happened with this movement was people began to think differently. They started to ask questions and really challenge different presuppositions that they had. And there was just this energy of trying to to understand how logic and reason and how things worked, all this was starting to kind of boil under the surface. And obviously that was happening in large part at the universities. So it's interesting that much of the energy for the Reformation really did come from the universities in many cases. Guess who else was a university professor? Luther was. There was a lot of energy that came from these things. Wycliffe, who was obviously influenced largely by his connection from the university there, where he was a student, where he was introduced to a lot of Wycliffe's ideas. So it really was an interesting platform for these early reformers to really magnify their arguments to the broader population. Okay. Wycliffe is known as the morning star of the Reformation. Okay, and that's again, because he's one of the earliest ones of it. And he didn't shy away from pointing out the corruption that he observed within the priesthood and the leadership of the church. His criticism of the papacy was especially pointed. Okay, Wycliffe, he's known for what? What do y'all think Wycliffe's primarily known for? translating the Bible into English. That's exactly right. He advocated the translation of the Bible into the common language. Along with some of his colleagues at Oxford, he was involved in translating the scripture from the Latin Vulgate into English. It's very likely that he himself translated much of the Gospels, probably a little bit more, but he had a lot of associates who were helping him to translate much of the Old Testament as well. He thundered against the Roman Catholic abuses that we've already talked about. He rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation and he disapproved both of the sale of indulgences and also mandatory celibacy among the priesthood. He saw no biblical basis for that. And furthermore, he insisted that the church should give up its property and that clergy should really embrace a life of poverty and simple devotion to Christ. Okay, remember, the church had become very, very, very fat, decadent, wealthy off of the sale of indulgences by this point. Okay, these were like the Hollywood types of the Middle Ages in many corners of what was seen. Wycliffe taught at the church, and this is such a huge thing, like it's hard, if he made any doctrinal contribution, this is probably, it's hard to imagine anything bigger than this. But Wycliffe also taught that the church, and this was picked up by Hus later as well, that the church is made up of the souls of the elect. And this is not new to him. Augustine did the same kind of thing. But at this time, this was a huge contribution. The invisible church was different from the visible church. The difference between the invisible and the visible church is the visible church obviously is what you can see. I can see all of you here today. I can see the people who are going in and out of the church building. I can see the cardinals. I can see the popes. I can see the priests. I can see any number of the physical things. He is saying that that is not visible. The church, yeah, that's the visible church, what you can see, but the church is made up of the souls of the elect, which equates the invisible church, that which only God can see, which is made up of his elect. So this distinction between the visible and the invisible church really is very huge, and it's a point of emphasis that will come up again during the Protestant Reformation with Luther in a few hundred years. He and his followers were known as Lollards. And that term seems to mean like a mumbler. And there's different reasons why, but it was a pejorative term. It was a term that was given to kind of criticize and make fun of this group of people who were Wycliffean in their thinking. And it could be because they just wanted to have the language translated into the mumbling languages of all the masses. or it could be that they were frequently walking around campus or wherever they were, mumbling prayers to the Lord, who knows what it was, but they became known as the Lawlords. Wycliffe did die of natural causes in 1384, one of the few who was not burned at the stake. He had a stroke, but he was, in his views, really did become very influential in England and beyond. The Council of Constance in 1415, so I guess about 30 years after he died, they did declare him to be a heretic. Okay, and what'd they do? They dug up his body and had to burn it. Because every heretic needs to be burned. So, it doesn't matter. And they scattered his ashes. In the river, you're right. I do remember reading that. They did that, okay? Is it in the Times? Probably. Amen, that's a great insight. So thank you for reminding me of that. That's exactly right. They dug him up, they burned him, and then they threw him in the river. So, crazy. Unlike the Waldensians, Wycliffe and his followers advocated doctrines that would, again, later really form the foundation for the Protestant Reformation. Commitment to authority of scripture over that of the Pope, desire to see the word of God translated into the vernacular, and the conviction that scripture should be understood by those who do not have formal clerical training. Okay, these are three very core ideas that came to us from these men. I do have a number of quotes from Wycliffe, just so you can get a sense of what he liked to say about the Bible. Really, the authority of scripture would become such a central argument that was gonna be had over the next few hundred years. Really, the whole Reformation really could kind of boil down to this idea of what authority is. Who has authority? How is it adjudicated within the structures of the church? It was a huge, huge issue. And he affirmed that the authority of scripture is over and above any other religious authority. Very simple, right? And really this is what is summarized by the statement sola scriptura. Okay, scripture alone. So here's one of the things that Wycliffe said. Wycliffe insisted that God's word was a better source of truth than any collection of popes or priests. Okay, here's Wycliffe. I believe that a Christian man, well understanding it, may gather sufficient knowledge during his pilgrimage on earth, and that all truth is contained in scripture, that we should admit of no conclusion not approved there, that there is no court beside the court of heaven, and that though men were a hundred popes, and all the friars in the world were turned into cardinals, yet should we learn more from the gospel than we should from all that multitude. And that true son will in no wise go about to infringe the will and testament of their heavenly father. So because people are accountable to the word of God, all people, Wycliffe would say, should be exposed to the truth of scripture. Here's Wycliffe again. Holy scripture, is the faultless, most true, most perfect, and most holy law of God, which it is the duty of all men to learn and know, to defend and to observe, inasmuch as they are bound to serve the Lord in accordance with it." Okay, he argued, as I've mentioned, that it ought to be translated from Latin into the common language of the people. Okay, Wycliffe. Believers should ascertain for themselves the matters of their faith by having the scriptures in a language which they can fully understand. Christ and his apostles evangelized the greater portion of the world by making known the scriptures in a language which was familiar to the people. So getting God's words into people's hands and into their hearts would be such an important work for Wycliffe that those who would prevent such a work. He would be guilty in his mind of a great crime against his fellow men. Now this is interesting, because if you think about the term antichrist, this starts to show up during this time, and it's gonna show up quite a bit in the 17th century. If you read some of the 17th century confessions, the Westminster, the Second London, these types of confessions, they refer to the Pope as antichrist. And I think that probably they're borrowing from some language that came obviously from scripture talking about that. But Wycliffe's application of this term to them shows up here in about 400 years from some of those documents that were written. Certainly, it were less cruelty to keep men from bodily meat and drink and to make them die bodily than to keep them from hearing the gospel and God's commands, which are life to the soul. What accursed antichrists are these worldly prelates and curates who curse men for preaching and hearing of holy scriptures? who curse men from preaching and hearing of holy scriptures. Okay. Wycliffe called the Pope Antichrist because the Pope stood at the head of a movement which had placed itself above the word of God. And it suppressed the translation of God's word into the common language of the people. again. As our Lord Jesus Christ ordained by the writing of the four evangelists to make his gospel surely known and maintained against heretics and men out of the faith, so the devil, even Satan, devises by Antichrist and his worldly false clerks to destroy holy writ and Christian men's belief by claiming that the church is of more authority and more to be believed than any gospel. So you get a sense of the kind of thing that Wycliffe was, that motivated him. And that was the absolute highest authority of the word of God, which he wanted to have in the hands of the people. So for Wycliffe to suppress people's access to the word of God was to defy the authority and honor of God himself. So Wycliffe's emphasis on the authority of God over his church would be embraced and espoused by a generation later by the Bohemian preacher named Jan Hus. Okay, we've already talked about him. So that's good. But he was a huge influence on Hus. And then a century and a half after Wycliffe, another man by the name of William Tyndale, probably heard of Tyndale, 1494 to 1536, would continue Wycliffe's legacy with regard to Bible translation. What's the big difference between Wycliffe and Tyndale though? He was killed in the end. Yes, he was killed in the end. Anything else? Tyndale finished. Tyndale finished, good. And the Mount of Texts. Mount of Texts. The big difference was that Tyndale was able to translate from the Hebrew and the Greek, whereas Wycliffe was operating from the Latin Vulgate. So most English-speaking Christians, us included, we really take it for granted that we have the word of God in our own language in every possible way you can consume it. I mean, it's crazy. The amount of translations we have, the amount of different leathers on your Bible. I mean, it's just like, it's crazy. I have like 50 translations on my phone. Like, that's crazy. It's amazing. It's wonderful. But don't take it for granted. People worked really hard for this to be the world we live in. So that ends our section on Wycliffe, but again, I'm gonna kind of wrap this up. I do have a few comments I wanted just to share with you about Huss. One thing that I thought was really interesting, here's a quote of his that, and Africana really covered all of this extremely well, so I don't really have a whole lot to add, but this was a great quote by Huss that I thought was just worth saying, just so you can see the flavor of what these guys were really peddling in. So this is to us, therefore the Pope is not the head, nor are the cardinal the whole body of the holy catholic and universal church. Only Christ is the head, and his predestined are the body. and each is a member of that body, okay? I mean, there's nothing to disagree about in that sentence from Huss, so really a great word. One thing I thought was interesting about him as well, and I found this in one of those articles I sent out, if you read those, was that on December 17th of 1999, okay, Pope John Paul II went to the Czech Republic, and did you watch this Afrikaner when he did this? Oh, it's okay. And in 99 when he did this, and he did stand up before a crowd of Czech people, and he did express deep regret at this crowd for the cruel death that his church inflicted upon one of their national heroes. So I thought that was just an interesting thing to see those little, I mean, it's not reconciliation in any sense of the word, but just to see, that's a positive thing for us to think about. Way to go Pope John Paul on doing that, I guess. That's right, so those are our three figures for tonight, pre-runners of the Reformation. Next week, we are absolutely gonna be digging into some of the more familiar territory that we've probably been in, Martin Luther and others. So I wanna finish up just by making a few more comments of summary that really the foundation, as I already mentioned, the foundational issue that really sparked the Reformation was the issue of authority in the church. There's just, there's a lot of ways you can look at it, but I think it really does boil down to this idea of authority. And it's a relevant issue for today as well. So it's definitely worth exercising our minds to think about that. And from a Roman Catholic perspective, the Pope was regarded as the head of the church, and the church held authority over the Bible and its interpretation. Okay, Pope tends to think about that there's really two sources of authority, and they exist alongside each other. Okay, Holy Scripture and, ex-cathedra from the seat of the Pope, that these are the two sources of authority. But what ends up happening is, essentially, the Pope, the chair of the Pope, really gets to determine what the Scripture even says. So really, within the Roman Catholic system, this thing has become such that the authority structure is backwards. The Pope is over Scripture. I mean, that's just functionally how it works. Even though they might try to say, no, we don't believe that, that's functionally how it's gonna work. And the forerunners of the Reformation, the pre-reformers, they really challenged this notion. They viewed Christ alone as the rightful head of the church, and consequently, that his word was to be revered as the highest authority for the church. And they believed that the word of Christ should be accessible to all people, so Bible translation matters, not just to the clergy. Consequently, they advocated that the translation of the scriptures in the common languages of Europe They wanted to see that happen, and they also preached and taught in the vernacular. They weren't reciting a mass in a language that no one understood. They were trying to explain. what the doctrine of the Bible was in ways that they could understand that they were preaching, okay? That's what they were doing, okay? And in response, guess what? The Roman Catholic authorities branded these pre-reformers as heretics and they outlawed, in many cases, the translation of scripture completely. But as you can imagine, the word of God is not suppressed so easily. And in the same way that rediscovery of God's law sparked a reformation in the days of King Josiah in 2 Chronicles 34 and 35, so the recovery of scripture in the Middle Ages would soon erupt. and widespread revival and reform. So really the reform, the reformation that I think everybody was kind of aching for, it finally would break on the scenes. And I don't think anyone probably anticipated it being as traumatic as it ended up being. in terms of reorienting world history. There's just so much to think about, the kind of shock waves that would just ripple through time because of the way that the Reformation finally came to be. Okay. So that's where we're gonna go next week. One kind of housekeeping item. We did finish our book, so everyone in here who read this, well done. I know that all of you read it with bated breath, I'm sure. So well done on that.