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.