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We're gonna talk a little bit
about church history today because that's the subject. The parable
that we have before us, John the 15th chapter. That's talking
about church history. So many people take parables
and try to make it somebody else. It's not talking about falling
from salvation, falling from grace. Okay, that's a lot of
people look at John 15th chapter and they think about falling
from grace. You know, you can be saved and then you get lost.
Let's look and see about John the 15th chapter now. I am the true vine. My father
is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does
not bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit,
he prunes it, that it may be bear more fruit. You're already
clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in
me, and I in you, as a branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless
it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me.
I am the vine, ye are the branches. He who abides in me, and I am
him, he bears much fruit, and apart from me you cannot do anything. If anyone does not abide me,
he is thrown away as a branch, and dries up, and they gather
him, and they cast him into the fire, and they are burned. Now
that sounds just like somebody getting saved, doesn't it? And
then falling away from grace, and then he gets to go to hell,
doesn't it? Isn't that what it sounds like? That's not what it's all
about. It's all about church history, okay? Let's go back
to Matthew 16 and 18 real quick. Matthew 16, 18. You've heard
me say this a thousand times, but this is absolutely, extremely
important. If you don't understand this,
you don't understand anything. Matthew 16 and 18. Now, Peter
is here, the church is here, and starting with verse 16, and
Simon Peter answered and said, Start back up with verse 13 so
we can get the whole thing. Now when Jesus came into the
district of Caesarea Philippi, he began, or kept on questioning
his disciples, saying, who do the people say the Son of Man
is? And they said, some say John the Baptist, other Elijah, and
others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. And he said to them,
but who do you say that I am? And Simon Peter answered. He
said, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. Verse
number 17. And Jesus answered and said unto
him, Blessed are you, Simon, son of John, because flesh and
blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in
heaven. And then verse number 18 is very,
very important. This is the one where the Catholicism
and the Protestant world gets all confused. The Protestant
world gets all confused because most of the Protestant world
came out of Catholicism. Calvin, Luther, all of them,
they were Catholic priests, so they carry this idea with them
because this is what the Catholic Church preaches. And also I'll
say to you that you are Peter. Over there, you're Peter. Okay? Now I'm gonna translate this
from Greek so you can understand it very well. You are Peter,
and then it has Anne there, doesn't it? Brother Roger, how should
that be translated? Not Anne, but what? You remember? Strong adversity of conjunction
means what, Christine? But. Thank you. That guy over there thinks he
doesn't know any Greek or anything. But. Strong adversity of conjunction
is but. But upon this rock, this rock
right here. And he used a play on words. If you don't know the Greek,
you've lost the whole story. If you don't translate this from
Greek, you can't possibly get the idea of what's happening
here. First of all, he calls him Peter, Petros. What does
Peter mean, brother David? Peter, Petros. A small rock. A small rock, Petros. OK. Petros
is a small rock. Now Petra is different. We go
from the masculine gender, which means a small rock, but we go
to Petra, which is a whole different story. We're talking about a
different entity altogether. A Petra is a large foundation
stone. Mount Moriah over there. That whole mountain, that whole
top of that mountain is a rock. Okay? How many of you have seen
the Rock of Gibraltar? Anybody? You've seen the Rock
of Gibraltar. Have you seen that, Christine? Not the Rock of Gibraltar?
Who else has seen the Rock of Gibraltar around here? Rock of
Gibraltar is great big. Okay, let's make it easier. Who
has seen Morro Rock? That's Petra. Morro Rock is Petra. That's a different entity, it's
a whole different thing. Petros is talking about a little stone.
Cephas is the Aramaic equivalent of it. Cephas, okay. Well, he
says, you're a little stone, but upon this great foundational
rock, I shall be building my ecclesia. Now the church was
already being built, wasn't it? Did the church already have apostles
in it? Yep. Was the church already baptizing? Yep. Was the church already taking
up collections? Yep. Was the church already assembling? Yes. And the gates of Hades shall
not be able to wrestle her down. That's what it literally says.
Now, if you don't know the Petros and the Petra, you've missed
the whole boat, haven't you? You can't look at it. Now the Bible
is inspired in Greek and in Hebrew, isn't it? It's very important
to learn those languages when you're looking at this. You'd
have to read a commentary on this to understand what it's
talking about. And then he goes on saying, I
will give you, who's he talking to here? I will give you the
keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatever you shall bind on
earth shall already have been bound In heaven Whatever you shall
loose on earth shall already be loosed in heaven He's talking
to the church not to Peter Peter does not have the keys the church
has the key Peter is not the Petra Peter is Petro's Petra
there is Jesus all right Matthew 28 18 through 20 let's
look at that real quick same book Perfume is getting me. Matthew 28. 28, the 18th chapter. We'll start
in verse number 16. 28, 16. But the eleven disciples proceeded
to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated. And when
he saw them, they worshipped him, but some were doubtful.
The eleven disciples were who? Huh? Who were these eleven disciples?
Who were they? This is the... These are the
apostles. Okay. And the apostles was what?
The first gift placed in the church was apostles. So they're
part of the church, okay? He told them to go to the mountain
which Jesus had designated. When they saw him, they worshipped
him, but some were doubtful. And Jesus came up and spoke to
them, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and
upon earth. And then we have here, we have
another mistranslation. But that's the way King James
is, you know. King James translated something so nobody else wants
to go contrary to it, even though they know what it means now. What is the commission? What
is the imperative? What is the command in this verse?
Who knows? What is the command? Is it go?
No. What is the command, Roger? Make
disciples. Make disciples. That's the command.
That's the imperative mode in here, is make disciples. It says, after you've been kicked
out. Now that's prophecy, after you've been kicked out. The prophecy
says that this church was going to be scattered all over, wasn't
it? Because of persecution. After you've been kicked out,
make disciples of all nations, baptizing them. The disciples
you baptize. Now how do you make disciples? You teach them the word of God
and the doctrines that Jesus had given to them, okay? Baptizing
them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. And
by the way, some people only baptize in the name of Jesus,
you know that? Well, the name of Jesus is the name of the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, period. Jesus gives us a real good example
right here. This is the command to the church.
teaching them to guard with their lives. That word there, to observe,
means to guard with their lives. All I commanded you and lo, I'm
with you even unto the end of the age, to the completion of
the church age. Right here it is. Here we come
all the way to the end of the age. He said, I'm going to be
with you there if you abide in me. Now let's go back to John
the 15th chapter and let's see what it's talking about. John
15. Let's read it. Every branch in
me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch
that bears fruit he prunes. And it may bring more fruit. The churches, the early churches,
many of them would be persecuted. What did the persecution do? How many of you took church history
with you? What did the persecution do to the church? It made it
stronger. Made it stronger. But some people
left, didn't they? Abide in me, and I in you, as
a branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the
vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine,
and you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in
him, he bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me,
he is thrown away as a branch, and it dries up, and they gather
them together and cast them in the fire, and they are burned. Here we have false religion starting. False religion starts. What kinds
of things happened during the church age? What happened in
about 300 A.D.? How about 325 A.D. in church
history? What happened there? You remember
what happened in 325 A.D.? Anybody? Brother Mike, what happened
in 325? Catholicism began to stick its
head up. We have Constantine. Constantine
is going to go have a war with his brother. And they meet on
this bridge. And he sees a sign across in
the sky, and he thinks that, you know, I'm a pagan, but I
see this sign in the heavens. And, you know, people looking
in the clouds, and they're looking in And all kinds of stuff, leaves,
tea leaves, all kinds of stuff, tarot cards, any way to tell
the future or whatever. Well, here we have this. We have
this man looking in the sky and he sees something. How I'm going
to... He's praying and he's going to all these gods and all of
a sudden he sees something in the sky and it looks like a cross. He said, I'll tell you what,
my mother likes Christ. Maybe that's what he's talking
about, the cross of Christ. So he goes and he makes a pact
with God. And he said, well, Lord, now
if you're really the Lord, and I make it through this battle,
and you make it known to me that I have conquered in your name,
I'm going to make your religion the religion of my nation. So
he goes out there and he kills his brother. They have this great
big fight. He kills him. And then he said, well, then
God must have given him the battle. So God grants his prayer. Now
we have the origin of the state church. The church and the state
have become one. And then it sounds real good
because now Christianity was no longer persecuted by the state,
the Roman Empire. There was 10 periods of tremendous
persecution in the Roman Empire against the churches. We go all
the way down through there. We find out Paul was killed,
wasn't he? Who was the one that had Paul
killed? Who was the Roman emperor that had Paul killed? Anybody
know? Come on, you students of history. Somebody's got to know.
Marilyn, you know who it was? I'm busy. Oh, you're busy. All right. How
about you, David? He fiddled while Rome burned.
Nero. All right. Nero had Paul killed. All of these histories of persecution
starts. Well, now we have a religion
started in the name of Christ, but what else would have happened
in church history? What happened around 180, 200
A.D.? What happened? We had Zoroastrianism
out there in the Arabian desert. We had also, we had people in
Alexandria, Egypt. Alexandria, Egypt. That was a
school where they all the time were arguing about what the Bible
says and everything else. And we have some people there.
We have Arius of Alexandria that didn't believe in the divinity
of Christ anymore. So he takes off in Arabia, and
they're down in Arabia and hiding out because they're outcasts,
because they're heretics, so to speak. So we have all kinds
of different flavors of Christendom now. But what happens when they go
out? If you don't believe in Jesus Christ as the God's son,
what happens to you? You don't get to go to heaven,
do you? Are there going to be the branches that are thrown
into the fire? When they come and they say, well, we're religious.
God, we're religious. Yeah, but you didn't abide in
me. You didn't abide in me. You did not abide. Zoroastrianism. You know, Mohammed was really
affected by the Aryans. the Aryan heresy. He was very
affected by Zoroastrianism. And I want to tell you two things
that false religion will do. It'll change the person of God,
number one. Make him inaccessible somehow,
and it'll change the doctrine of hell. Two things that false
religion will do with hell. It'll make it more terrible,
or it'll do away with it altogether and call it annihilation, okay?
One or the other. It's either gonna do away with
hell or gonna make hell more worse than you could possibly
ever imagine. If you ever wanna read a story
about the most fantastic story in the world of brutality and
murder, it's all about Muhammad by F.W. Burleigh. It's got all the Qur'an
in it, all the Qur'an verses, I believe. And on page 447, it
starts out talking about, he used to, when his disciples were
not following him, he would get them in the mosque and he'd rant
and rave at them for 12, 15, 20 hours sometimes at a time,
threatening them with hell. and hellfire. He didn't believe
in the divinity of Jesus Christ because he was affected by the
Aryan heresy and he was affected by Zoroastrianism and he had
a lot, he would take people and have them, the rabbis, all of
them, he'd ask them to come and talk to him and they would sit
and talk in the early part of his career, so to speak. Now, one time, he was sitting
with his disciples, and of course, to them, Muhammad had all the
answers. He was God's revelation on Earth
to them. And they had a minor earthquake,
and it shook the place. And it all shook up and everything
else, and they said, Oh, Apostle of God, what just happened? What happened? And of course
now when they read Muhammad or anything, they say peace be upon
him. You know why they say peace be upon him? Anybody know that?
If you're praying that Allah will make him the intercessor
for you. Okay. That's to make him the intercessor.
Each time you say that little word, it said, Oh, remember,
Muhammad's gonna be my intercessor. He's gonna be the intercessor.
He's gonna be the intercessor. Well, they had this little earthquake,
and it shook things up, and they were afraid. And so they said,
Mohammed, what happened? What happened? What's going on?
Why, what did the earth shake? Oh, he said, that's nothing.
Somebody dropped a boulder in hell 700 years ago, and it just
hit bottom. That's truth. He told us this
truth. Hell was so deep that it took
700 years for that boulder to hit bottom. Hell will either become more
vicious than what God says, or it will be annihilated. Those
that don't remain in the bind. Why do people in false religious
systems don't have security of the believer? Why do they have
all these weird ideas sometimes? The only way a Muslim can get
to heaven, the only way a Muslim can go right into paradise from
this life, he has to die with jihad. He has to die fighting. He has to be killed fighting
and killing Christians or Jews. He has to be killed fighting
a Christian or a Jew or some polytheist of some sort. Then
he can go immediately, the first drop of his blood, he gets to
go to heaven, paradise. Now, Muhammad was always building
himself above all the other prophets, by the way. He gave a rundown
on how the superiority will acknowledge on the day of resurrection. By
the way, Muhammad will be the first one to be resurrected,
according to Muhammad. Everybody else is going to be
resurrected naked, except for Muhammad. Muhammad is going to
have a green gown on with a green turban.
And he's going to lead out. He's the very first one that's
going to be resurrected according to Mohammed. Now he's talking about the resurrection
here. And he said when the people are
resurrected, all of a sudden God is going to cause the sun
to come really close to the earth. And the people are going to be
just sweating out in the resurrection. Now, you have to realize that
almost everybody has been in hell. Just almost everybody has
been in hell. Then they get resurrected and
they put back in their bodies on the earth, and now God brings
the sun real close to them, and they're just pouring out sweat
all over them. Their tongues are swelling up and everything
else, and they're scared. Now they got to go before Allah,
okay? Now here are all the major prophets
are, major prophets. And he gave a rundown on how
his superiority will be acknowledged on the day of the resurrection.
God will delay the great injunction, and he will do it to cause confusion
among the multitudes and generations of people going back to time
of Adam, who will be waiting in anguish from this heat, the
sun heat. to learn of their fate. God will
cause the sun to come close, making the people sweat as they
had never sweated before, and we become nervous, thinking that
the delay meant God was angry with them, and this will move
them to petition various prophets to intercede with God for them,
starting with Adam. By the way, what does the Bible
talk? How many intercessors do we have? How many? One. Who is that? Jesus. There's only one intercessor,
one goal between God and man, that's Jesus Christ. Muhammad
loved to tell these stories to his people. He would just scare
the daylights out of them. They would be begging, crying,
just rolling on the floor, screaming for mercy when he got through
telling them how bad. And they would come to Adam,
and they said, well, Adam, thou art father of mankind. By the
way, when Muhammad says that when God created Adam, He was
standing on earth, but he was so tall that his head went all
the way into the seventh heaven. That's how tall he was. Do you
know how ridiculous that is? Now, we only believe in three
heavens. That's what the Bible teaches. And we have the first
heaven, which is the atmosphere, and we have the second heaven,
where's the stars. Now, if this was true, Now this just makes
the third heaven the seventh heaven, okay? Here, when God
created Adam, according to Muhammad, he was standing on this little
bitty earth, which would be less than a pebble under his feet,
and his head was reaching all the way into the heavens. And
he was looking up there and listening to all the angels and everything
was going on, the angels got mad, and they told God, I don't
want him, he's into our business. So he shrunk him down to the
size that he is now, okay? Oh Adam, thou art father of mankind.
God created thee by his own hand and breathed in thee his spirit
and ordered the angels to prostrate before thee to intercede for
us with the Lord. Don't you see in what trouble
we're in? But Adam declines. He has his
own problems of the Lord having eaten from the tree of the forbidden
tree and he tells them, go to Noah. Noah begs off as well, as do
Abraham and Moses. Moses claims he has issues because
he accidentally killed someone that God didn't order him to
kill. Alright? He refers the desperate masses
to Jesus, but Jesus tells them to go to someone better. Go to
Mohammed. Muhammad Khadijah's story, once
the other prophets have acknowledged his superiority, he will make
his entry wearing green garments, green turban, carrying the banner
of praise and glory. And then he will arrive either
on a horse or will appear top of a hill or like the hill of
Arafat. And he will assume the leadership
over all the children around him and lead the naked hordes
across Sarat, a narrow bridge, over hell. Now, Zoroastrianism
talked about when you leave this life, you have to go across this
bridge between life and death. And he talked about this. Now,
remember, in Roman philosophy and what we call mythology, what
happened? When you died, what happened
to you? What happened when you died? People used to put coins
on people's eyes. This was a long time ago. They
still do this in many parts of the world. Put coins on the eyes.
Why were the coins put on their eyes? Pay for the boatman. First of all, when you died,
you had to go across the River Styx. And you had to have the
coins to pay for the boatman. So they put the coins on their
eyes. So they went across the River Styx. This is mythology.
This isn't the Bible. But this is the kind of stuff
we're talking about here. And then you had to swim one
more river. And what was that river called? The river what? Styx. No, we went across the
Styx already. What's the other river? What is it, Brother Mike? No. What's the other? Kathy, what's
that other river? What's the other river? Come
on, you guys. The river lethargic. The river
lathe. And then when they drank of the
waters of the river lathe, what happened to them, Brother Bill?
They forgot. They forgot everything that happened
to them before, and they went on. All right. Now they go over there. This bridge can be called the
Bridge of Triage. Though there will occur a separation
of the good people from the half good and not even half good,
and all the all bad, and Mohammed will cross as swiftly as a bolt
of lightning. As will those earmarked for paradise. But the bridge will be, those
are the ones earmarked for paradise. Which ones? The martyrs. Only the martyrs. The bridge will be treacherous
for everyone else, full of booby traps for sinners. He tells his
audience, sharp hooks will latch out onto the people and chop
them up before throwing them in a pit of fire below. People
will try to crawl on all fours to get across, hoping to slip
underneath the hooks. But it will be to no avail. They
will be grabbed and thrown down. Idolaters, in particular, would
be snagged and sliced up before being thrown into the furnace.
And they will be roast. And there they will roast for
eternity. but others will be cast into hell pending rescue
from Muhammad's intercession with God. That's why they say, peace be
upon him, every time they say his name, so he can be their
intercessor. This is when the first phase
of intercession will begin. Muhammad affirms on the day of
judgment, he will first pray for the blanket forgiveness of
all of his followers, his nation. He said, my umah. What is the
word for nation or people in Hebrew, brother? Im, im, im. The Arabic is really close. They're
sister languages. My umah, meaning his nation. His super tribe of believers.
He will pray for God to spare them from the torments of fire,
even if they deserve it. God will accept his initial request,
but only for several, 70,000. How many people get to go to
heaven, according to Jehovah's Witnesses? 144,000. Always numbers. They like numbers, don't they? 70,000. And He will give permission
to them to enter Paradise through the gates specially built for
them, and there were the ones who made it across the bridge
over hell, the bridge over hell. They were allowed to cross because
God in his foreknowledge knew that they, who they, whose they
were and whom they should immediately forgive because of Muhammad's
supplications. The 70, therefore, 70,000, therefore,
will go through the gate of paradise without having to give God an
account of their actions in life. Then comes the main event. Muhammad
will rescue many of the sinners who were pushed off the bridge
These are people who had at least a grain or an atom of faith in
them and his messengers, but whose deeds in life merited punishment. They were not eternal damnation.
They will be made to suffer for torments. Now here's another
thing. Mohammed's making all these inventions. He's really
a good inventor. It will turn out not to be a
short term. One day in this life, is equivalent to 50,000 years
in hell. If you are only in hell one day
in this life, you'd be there in 50,000 years, okay? So even
only condemned to death, to a day in hell, they will suffer excruciating
tortures for a thousand times the length of time they spent
on earth doing the things they merited such punishment Their
bodies will be roasted to the point of charcoal only to be
regenerated and they can be roasted again. Every part of the body
will be consumed by flames. The only exception is, now we
are talking about these Muslims here. These are the ones, these are
Muhammad's people, his ummah. The only exception being prayer
marks on their forehead. The foreheads of those touched
their heads to the ground in prayer ritual will be spared,
but not all the forehead, only the part which actually touched
the ground and that roundish portion about the size of a large
coin." What an invention here, isn't it? Those prostration marks will
mark them easy to recognize and salvageable sinners. Muhammad used to tell his audience
that when the time for intercession comes, he will throw himself
in prostration before the throne of God and pray for the release
of these sinners. And God will say, rise your head,
speak, and you will be heard, for your intercession will be
accepted. In some versions, Mohammed is seated next to the throne
of God, the station of praise and glory. Despite the honor
shown him, Mohammed's intercession will still not be guaranteed
rescue. God will show his mercy to whomever
he pleases, and at his command, the angel will pluck the people
out of hell. Quite a story, isn't it? Luke
the 16th chapter tells you the real story of hell. Remember
what I told you about false religion, about the vine? When you go off
of the vine, you're liable to end up with anything. And this
is anything right here. This is the anything. Either
do away with hell like your Jehovah's Witnesses do, your Seventh-day
Adventists, Unitarian Universalists, all
of these people, just do away with hell altogether. One thing
about hell is real, but it's not this place. Go on. People out there, whoever he
pleases to pluck out. Whenever their shape or condition
at the moment, charred, boiled, or burnt down to a skeleton,
the angel will bring them to the river of life, whose waters
will cause them to be regenerated in human form from there where
they will be allowed into paradise. But being rescued sinners, they
will have to enter paradise from the lowest gate, and they will
reside in the lowest parts of the celestial realm. You interested in this? Pretty
neat stuff in it, even its imagination. This is what you call fairy tales,
fairy tales. Muhammad always got a kick out
of watching his people squirm as he told these stories. Then
there was the last man out of hell story, the last man out
of hell. He talked about this. the tale of the last mortar rescued
from the fire. He will crawl out of the pit
and God will have some fun with him, asking if he will be satisfied
merely by getting his body back to being spared any further torment.
And he replies, yes. And then later on, God will ask
him again, are you sure this is all you want? He said, yeah,
I'm glad, I'm out of here. And then God will tease him after
allowing him to go to the gate of paradise, but not to enter. This will make the man's heart
ache, because through the pearly gates, he will get a glimpse
of the life, charm, and the pleasures of paradise, and he will be so
torn by what he is denied, he will cry out, Oh, Lord, let me
enter into paradise. And God will say, Oh, son of
Adam, how treacherous you are. Haven't you made contracts and
given pledges to me that you didn't want anything else, and
now you want more? You said you'd ask for nothing more. And the
last man of hell will go back and forth. The man keeps asking
for more. By the end of it, the man is
finally allowed to enter paradise and God tells him that he can
have ten times more than he wanted as a way of showing the extent
of the mercy towards even the lowliest creature. This lowly
creature evidently has a big appetite for real estate. And
he tells Allah that he wants a lot of space for himself as
big as the earth. And God cheerfully gives him
10 times the size of earth. So what Muhammad says here, look
how enormous the lowest part of paradise will be for the last
man out of hell. 10 times the space of the earth.
With that, Muhammad again throws his head back and roars with
laughter. That's fairy tales. Hell is real. It is real. It's an eternal place.
When you go to hell, do you get out of there? No. You're not ever going to get
out of there. There's no more second chances. How many intercessors
are there for people? One. And what you do in this
life right now forever seals your eternal destiny. Right now. And what you think about Jesus
Christ is extremely important. Now let's go back to John the
15th chapter. If you abide in me and my words
abide in you, ask whatsoever you wish and it shall be done
for you. By this my father glorified that you bear fruit and so prove
to be my disciples. My church! There are a lot of
churches down through the dark ages, aren't there? I told you
about those Churches of the Valleys of Piedmont. Marilyn, one time,
she did her DNA and she found out that somebody in her family
lived in the Piedmont, was actually part of those Churches of the
Valleys of Piedmont. If you get Samuel Moreland's book on the
history, the ecclesiastical history of the Churches of the Valleys
of Piedmont, you'll find out that the Catholic Church went
in there, and these people were called Paulicians originally.
And they came out of Turkey. Where are the seven, if you go
and visit the seven churches of Asia, where do you go? Turkey. That was a stronghold of Christianity
one time. Right now it's a stronghold of
what? Muslim. Muslim world. Took over. Muslims only have one goal. That's
to take over the whole world. The whole world. Nothing less
than that. The seven churches of Asia. The
Lord's people have been all over this earth. All over the earth. They've been all over it. Prove
to me my disciples, as just as the Father loved me, I also loved
you, and abide in my love. And if you keep my commandments,
you will abide in my love. Where is the Lord's love? Who
is the Lord's bride? His church. just as I have kept
my father's commandments and abide in his love. Can you ever
lose your salvation? That's not possible. Can you
ever lose your standing in God's churches? Yep. You can do that. We see people read the letters
of the New Testament. When we finish the Gospel, John,
we're going to talk about New Testament survey, and we're going
to go through all the letters in the book of Acts. The book of Acts
is the Acts of the churches. Talks about what happened. You
find all the heresies that came out. The Galatians, the Judaizers,
Ephesians. For you're saved by grace through
faith and not out of yourself. We're talking about people who
thought they could lose their salvation. We have the book of Hebrews written
by whoever, maybe Apollos, written to Jewish people that were scattered
abroad all over the place. that were trying to go back to
Judaism. He said there's nothing there.
There is no more sacrifice in Judaism. We have the book of
James. Who's James written to? The book of James written to
the scattered tribes. What does he tell them? Faith, faith, faith, faith, faith. Faith in who? In Jesus Christ. These things I have spoken to
you, that my joy may be abide in you, and that your joy may
be made full. You know something? Unless you
know that you're saved, you'll never have real joy, will you?
You'll always have the fear of hell looming over you. unless you really trust in God
and ask the Lord to save your soul and forgive your sins. And
if you've done that, there is nothing going to release you,
nothing going to carry you. You don't have to walk that bridge.
You don't have to walk that bridge. You don't have to go through
purgatory. You don't have to roast in hell for a thousand
years or five thousand years or any time. It's over with. Salvation by grace. Verse number
12. This is my candle, that ye love
one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man
that he lay down his life for his friends." And during this
church history, these people would have to lay down their
lives for their friends many times, wouldn't they? In 251 AD, the church of Rome
had a controversy between Cornelius and Novatian. Some of the church
members in Rome had been forced to recant their belief. And they
got to live. But then they questioned them
and found out who the other church members were and what happened
to the church members that they arrested. They threw them in
the lion's den. Do you know the Apostle Paul
might have been thrown into the lion's den at one time? Did you
know that? How many knew that? Read about
it. It says he wrestled with lions. Paul the Apostle finally was
what? He was beheaded. He died. Some of those people
there in 251 A.D., with Novation and Cornelius, Cornelius said,
well, if they come back in the church, they don't have to be
publicly baptized again or anything. We'll just accept them in and
forgive them. Novation says, no. They publicly put off Christ,
they're publicly going to put him back on because when they're
publicly baptized, they're under the same sentence we are. Well,
guess what? Cornelius took that group, and
you know what that church became later on? That became the nucleus
of the Catholic Church. Because they went into one error,
and then one error requires another error, another error, another
error, another error. Ben Bogard once said one time,
he said, if I err, let me err on the safe side. I would like
to err on the safe side. You are my friends if you do
what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves,
for the slave does not know what the master is doing. But I have
called you friends for all the things that I've heard from my
father I have made known to you. You do not choose me, I chose
you. and appointed you that you should
go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever
you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you." Matthew
16, 18, remember? Whatever you loose on earth shall
have been already loosed in heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall
have already been bound in heaven. That's what it's talking about
here. This commandment, this I command you that you love one
another. Now the disciples' relationship
to the world is what it's talking about here. If the world hates
you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were
of the world, the world would love its own, but because you're
not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore
the world hates you. Remember the word that I said
to you, a slave is no greater than his master. If they persecuted
me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they
will keep yours also. But all these things they will
do to you for my name's sake because they do not know the
one who sent me." We got all kinds of religions in the world.
A really peaceful religion will never persecute anybody else.
The only group of people in this world that can establish that
as a fact is who? Baptists. Baptists never persecuted
anybody in any time. The Lutherans can't say that.
Calvinists can't say that. The Catholics can't say that.
The Muslims can't say that. Verse 22, if I had not come and
spoken to them, they would have not had sin. But now they have
no excuse for their sin. He who hates me hates my Father
also. If I had not done among you the
works which no one else did, they would not have sinned. But
now they have both seen and hated me and my Father as well. But
they have done this in order that the word may be fulfilled
that is written in the law. They hated me without a cause.
When the Helper comes, whom I shall send you from the Father, that
is the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear
witness of me, and you will bear witness also, because you have
been with me from the beginning." That is what we call a parable
of church history. Do you see how it worked out?
Do you see how things come down? God's gift of salvation is absolutely
free. to us, but it costs God everything. The world's idea of religion
is what? How much some religious person
can conjure up that you're going to have to do to follow them?
All the good works. The Catholics, they have all
these ideas of all these saints. Where do you think Mohammed got
all them ideas about Mohammed with Adam and all these being
saints that are supposed to be intercessors? If you are When
you're a Catholic, you pray to some saint, don't you? If you're
going to travel, you pray to Saint Christopher. If you're
in trouble, you ask the Mother of God to help you. And you say all those Hail Marys. They live such righteous lives
that they have more than enough to get them to heaven so they
can issue a little bit to you. They can be intercessors for
you. There's only one intercessor between man and God, and that's
Christ Jesus. That is the only person that's
the intercessor between man and God, and that's Christ Jesus.
Brother David, thank you for your attention today. Go out
and do something eternal.
Church History & Hell 8 Ages 418
Series Bible by Ages
Church History and the False Ideas of the Doctrine of Hell. Zoroaster and Muhammad's Idea of Hell. Dr. Jim Phillips preaches his way through the Gospel of John 15:1-27, Matthew 16:18 and 28:13-20.
| Sermon ID | 5101514484910 |
| Duration | 45:56 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | John 15; Matthew 16:18 |
| Language | English |
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