If you've got your Bibles, I'd like you to turn to Revelation chapter 2. Revelation chapter 2, we're going to be looking at verses 18 through 29. I'm actually going to break this sermon up in two parts because this is the longest addressed message to one of the churches, the church of Thyatira. And there's so much here, I'm going to have to break it up in two. So we're probably going to just get to point number four, and then we'll finish the rest of the points next week as we conclude that. The message is to Thyatira, the corrupt church. This is in Revelation 2 verses 18 through 29. We started the book of Revelation, as you know, it starts off with dealing with the church age. And just to refresh our minds, what Jesus is doing is giving a message to the churches. These particular seven churches were picked out not only because of the historical issues that were going on in the churches of that day when John was writing them, But it has a message that spans the whole church history. The church age is shown here in the seven churches. Seven is complete, seven is the number of perfection. So it's a message given to the whole church. And the reason we know that from interpretative methods is that the promises and the warnings are universal. They're not just endemic to that particular church, they're universal to all the believers of all ages. But one particular note we want to make attention to, it's called the historical prophetic interpretation. And what we see from church history as we look back and we understand why these seven churches were given, there's a sequence to them, there's a chronological order to them that matches with what other scriptures talk about how the church ends. And in this chronological sequence, we're going to discover as well that we're looking from about AD 600 to the Protestant Reformation of 1517. This era of church history is called the Pornocracy. Yeah, you heard me right, Pornocracy. It got really bad. This is during the Dark Ages, as they were called. And there's a reason why they're called the Dark Ages, particularly because of the Catholic Church. This is a message not only endemic to the historical situation in Thyatira, but from the prophetic standpoint, this is a dead aim at the Catholic Church. I don't care if it hair lips the Pope, I'm going to speak it. I'm going to tell what the Catholic Church has done and is doing. because you're going to see the Jezebel element that's introduced into the church era at this point in time in church history. And the Jezebel corruption is still with us and will result in what we know in the book of Revelation as the whore of Babylon. She is the woman of wickedness. She is the harlot. She is the whore of Babylon, this Jezebel element. And so it's going to be important for us to understand how the Jezebel element got in, what she does, and how she seduces believers and people of the world to follow her. Because right now, there's a movement to return to the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has put its message out. They want everybody to return to Rome, the mother church. And a lot of Protestants are following suit. A lot of Protestants are practicing Catholic practices. I had an individual a couple years ago call me. He was at a Southern Baptist church, called me up and asked me, hey, my church, a Southern Baptist church, is doing Ash Wednesday. Is that okay? And I said, no way is that okay. That's a Catholic practice. No Baptist church should be participating in that kind of thing. Now, this message hits home to me because I grew up Catholic. I lived it. I know what I'm talking about. I went through the rituals. I know what it's about. I dealt with the priests. I have been excommunicated. I have been pronounced an anathema on me, and so have you, and you don't know it, but Vatican II pronounced an anathema on anyone who believes in justification by faith alone for salvation is condemned to hell by the Catholic Church. They have not rescinded that and it still is alive today. They are liars. They are enemies of the cross. And when I say that, I'm talking about the Vatican. I am talking about the official teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. I'm not talking about your Catholic neighbor. They might be good people. They might be good neighbors to you, but they're part of a system that is a false religion. It is the whore of Babylon that will consume the entire world when we're raptured and will tolerate all religions under its banner. There's a lot for me to unpack today. It'll be difficult sometimes. I ask that you bear with me through it because it's important for you to understand it. You must know church history. It is extremely important how these doctrines, these false doctrines infiltrated the church and are with us today and now we're seeing them in Protestantism. So this is a dead aim at Thyatira, at the Catholic Church. Let's start with principle number one and we'll start unpacking this. Principle number one or point number one, I should say, is this. Thyatira means a continual or perpetual sacrifice and it dominated the era of AD 600 to 1517. Thyatira means perpetual sacrifice. Look at verse 18 and we'll unpack it. Verse 18 says this, And to the angel of the church of Thyatira write...so this is a message from Jesus to the angel who is to execute judgment on the church of Thyatira. That's why it's addressed to the angel. This angel will be responsible for putting the judgment on this particular church, not only in the historical sense, but also in the prophetic sense. As you see in the book of Revelation later on, angels are responsible for carrying out the judgments of God in the book of Revelation. This particular angel will be responsible for destroying Babylon, the whore of Babylon. So it's a message to this angel who is going to execute this kind of judgment. Again, let's go back to the name, perpetual sacrifice. How apropos for this church, because you know what happened with this church? The Catholic Church made a perpetual sacrifice with communion and sacrificing in every mass that goes on today a repeat of the sacrifice of Christ. That's why the Catholic Church has an altar in it. Why would you have an altar in the church? You have an altar for a sacrifice. In every mass today around the world, they are re-sacrificing Christ again and again and again and again. This is why they're enemies of the cross, because they say that Christ's sacrifice on the cross was not sufficient for our salvation. It must happen again and again by transubstantiation of the changing of the Eucharist, the wine element, and the bread element into the actual body and blood of Christ, which creates an idol. And again, this is going on continually. I'll show you in church history when this started, but the name fits. Let's just get this all straightened out. Christ died one time, and for sin, he died and it was sufficient. Let me show you several scriptures just to show you how wrong this continual sacrifice of Christ in the Catholic Church is. Hebrews 9, 28. So Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. Jump to Hebrews chapter 10, verses 12 through 14. But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down at the right hand of God. From that time, waiting till his enemies are made at his footstool. For by one offering, not perpetual, one offering, he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. You don't need any more sacrifice. You don't need to sacrifice. Christ paid it all. Romans 10, Paul says this, for the death that he died, he died to sin once for all. Everybody in this room understands that. Christ died for all and it's sufficient for my sins, for my salvation. Great. You tell me why so many Protestants want to hook up with Catholics? Why do they want to do joint ventures with those who claim that Christ's death on the cross was not sufficient for all their sins? Why would anyone put them in that category? Because in Paul's category, they're considered enemies of the cross. When you don't say Christ's sacrifice is sufficient, you have now made yourself an enemy. You have trampled on the blood of Christ, saying it's not good enough. Let me talk to you a little bit about the city. Let me show you some pictures and some maps so you can kind of get an idea of what we're talking about. We've dealt with seven churches, and the first church we dealt with Ephesus, then we dealt with Smyrna, then Pergamum, and now we're into Thyatira. If you look on a map, the way the postal route went, it went like this in a clockwise situation. That's a spiritual lesson in and of itself. And I'm going to show you this. But when you start with Ephesus, you lose your first love. Then Smyrna is persecuted, but Pergamum is the compromising church. They start compromising, and then once you compromise, you end up with corruption. This is the corrupt church. And so the postal route actually teaches a spiritual lesson. I'll come back to that in just a bit. Let me show you some ruins, and you can see that today. You go to Turkey, these are the ruins of Thyatira. And some of the pillars left, very Greek and Roman influence there. The amphitheater is still there today. And it was a very wealthy, there's some of the ruins there. It was a very wealthy city. And there's some more Greek structures still standing. And there's some pillars. There's some other ruins there. And let's stop right there. The interesting thing about this place is it's an extremely wealthy, really wealthy church. And in this church era, this was the time when the Catholic Church was amassing its fortune. So it not only serves the situation well there for the situation John was talking about, but in the prophetic era, that's exactly what was happening. They were amassing wealth. The Roman Catholic Church became one of the wealthiest religions on the face of the planet, and today still is. Let me show you what the commodity was there. Go to the next slide. It was purple, purple dye, still there today. It was made from a root and they made tons of money off this purple dye. Well, if you recall, just a historical note, a biblical historical note, Paul actually met a woman from Thyatira. Her name was Lydia. You remember her? He led her to the Lord, he baptized her. A lot of scholars theorize she was a very wealthy woman because she was a seller of this dye. A lot of people conjecture that Lydia was the primary support financially for the Apostle Paul that paid for all his mission trips because she was so wealthy because of being in the dye trade. This made incredible amounts of money. You're talking in a modern day terms, you would be a millionaire if you sold this kind of dye. So Paul had a financier that helped him through all his journeys and paid for his journeys and stuff. One more thing I want to mention is if you sold dye, if you made pottery, if you were a tanner, if you made bronze or anything in that era, you had to be part of a trade guild. Our modern-day usage would be a union. You had to belong to the union in order to be part of these guilds, in order to have commerce and trade and bargain and things like that. Now, here was the problem with this, and I think this is where the compromise and the corruption started happening. In order to do business in these trade guilds, you had to participate in pagan idolatrous feasts. You had to play the game. You had to go along. And really, if you think about it, there's no difference now when someone belongs to a union. And I would just say this, most unions don't follow biblical principles. Think about the teacher's union, how corrupt that is. My wife's a teacher. Everything she gets from the teacher's union is anti-biblical. The unions have seen their day. The trade unions back then were causing people to do things that went against the Bible in order to do business. Really, nothing's changed. Nothing new under the sun. The unions are still doing the same. If you belong to a union, be careful about that. They will cause you to vote for candidates that don't support biblical principles. They will cause you to vote for issues that really are not in line with the Bible. Be aware of that. Be careful and check out what your union is telling you if you belong to one. We have to keep alert because of that teacher's union all the time. But anyway, here's the deal. This may be what caused them to not only compromise, but then to be corrupted. Because in order to sell and trade and do different things, you had to participate in these pagan duties. Now here's the deal, if you didn't, you were cut off. No one would do business with you. So there was something there to it, historically. We don't have all the details, but we think that's a pretty good idea of what was causing the problem there in Thyatira. Anyway, that's a little bit about the name and the background. Let's go to point number two then. Jesus then is described as ready to judge those who do not exclusively worship Him. Now, that's a curious point. He is going to judge the church who does not exclusively worship Him? Who else are they worshiping? Ah, yes. When you see this message to the church, And I put this in your notes, I think on your outline. The address is to the church in general. But we also know that Jesus said the church would have unbelievers and believers in the same corporate body. So a lot of the messages sometimes are given to people who claim to be Christian but are not. You'll see this with Laodicea, and you'll see this with Thyatira, and even with the church of Sardis. These people are claiming to be Christian. They're in Christendom, but they're not really born-again believers. So this is why people get confused sometimes reading the book of Revelation. They don't realize the audience is a mixed audience. And so, in this case, You're going to see eventually admonition to escape from this church because it's a false church. So understand that the message is both to the wheat and the tares as well. This is why he says I must be exclusively worshiped. Let's read the text. This is verse 18b. These things say the Son of God who has eyes like a flame of fire and His feet like fine brass." So right there in the message, John is referring to chapter 1, but he's referring to certain aspects of Messiah that he wants to emphasize. The first thing he emphasizes is that Messiah is not only the Son of Man, He is the Son of God. He is deity. He is the second person of the Trinity and God must be worshiped. This is a reference to Revelation 1 and Psalm 2. because there's a false deity that has entered into the church that Jezebel has let in and will explain that. But that's why Jesus is emphasizing, I am the one true God. And then it says his eyes are like a flame of fire. The idea is it's burning with indignation because he is angry at what this church is doing and corrupting his believers. And he is going to bring judgment and he knows all. His eyes see everything. He sees what's going on behind the scenes. And his feet, like fine brass, is the idea is the feet is a metaphor of carrying the Word of God into action. He is about to do something. The idea of brass has to do with judgment. So the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, is about to bring judgment on this church for Worshipping idols for worshipping other deities. That's what's going on here. So, the point we need to come away with before we move on, and we all probably understand this, but it has to be stated. I'm going to state the obvious. Christianity does not accommodate any other religion. There is no such thing as Chrislam. There is no joining up with Catholics, a Catholic and Protestant debate. There is no thing such as Protestants and Greek Orthodox. And for the most part, really what we're talking about is Bible-believing Christians, because most of the Protestants have went south as well. I characterize the three groups of Greek Orthodox, or just called Orthodox, Roman Catholicism and Protestant because those are the three major splits that happened in the church. And I know a lot of us don't want to be called Protestants, but we're in that era of when that happened. We might call ourselves Bible believers, evangelicals, Christians, whatever. We cannot accommodate Hindus, Catholicism, Buddhism, New Age, Scientology, Christian science. All of that is false religions. The cults, Mormonism, Jehovah Witness, all that, you add it, parts and major portions of Seventh-day Adventists are culted. They're not worshiping the same Jesus. If you worship a Jesus that didn't pay for all your sins, you have a defect in your understanding of who Jesus is and the work he did. That's Roman Catholicism. They get the Trinity right, they get the deity of Christ right, but they get the work of Christ wrong. If you don't have the person and work of Christ correct, you will go to hell. I must tell you that. If you have the wrong Jesus and he did the wrong work, you will go to hell. Because what does the Catholic do? They're trying to earn salvation because he didn't pay for it all. I'll explain that a little bit further. But the idea that Jesus is trying to say is, I do not tolerate other foreign gods. I desire exclusive worship. I know that's not politically correct. The Bible's not politically correct. It is what it is. It's truth. I find it interesting, there was a guy talking to a pastor and he was complaining that his wife had cheated on him. And he says, pastor, it's just not right that she wouldn't be loyal to me, that I wouldn't have exclusive rights to my wife, she cheated with this guy and this and that. He goes, isn't that wrong? And the pastor says, of course that's wrong, she shouldn't have done that. And then interesting enough, the conversation went a little further. And the guy started talking about God. And he goes, you know what, pastor, I just don't think it's right that God says that we must accept Jesus and His way of salvation. Why does God put conditions on us? Why does He have an only exclusive road through Jesus? I don't think that's fair. I think He should accept everybody. And the pastor turned to him and said, do you see what you're saying? You just started the conversation and said you wanted exclusive rights to your wife, that your wife shouldn't have the right to commit adultery on you. Was that correct? Yes. But yet, you don't want that for yourself with God. You want God to just accept you and you bypass His Son and His sacrifice. See, love is exclusive, the pastor said. Love has boundaries. Love has limitations. And what God is saying is love is exclusive. You must play by the rules in order to get that love. Same thing in a marriage relationship, but the same thing goes for God. You must play by the rules to have true love because love has boundaries and conditions and limitations. If there's a concept of love that has no boundaries and limitations, it isn't biblical love. That's the kind of love the world has. No boundaries, do anything you want. Point number three, Jesus commends the church for their increasingly good works and appearance. They are doing something. So he says this, verse 19, I know your works, love, service, faith, your patience. And as for your works, the last are more than the first. Now this church was busy. This church had a lot of activities. This church had a lot of programs. Because you know why? They were extremely wealthy. That church was wealthy. When you have money, you can have a lot of programs. They look busy. They look like they're doing a lot of ministry. Don't be fooled by that. Just because a church has a lot of programs, they have a lot of money backing them, doesn't mean you're gonna get any depth from that. You can have all the programs in the world. I've been a part of that. I know exactly how to march in that path. But people can be a mile wide and an inch deep. Programs is not a sign of spirituality. And yet so many people think it is. What was happening, if I could put this in modern day terms, it was called cafeteria Christianity. The church of Thyatira could give you exactly what you wanted. You want this, you want that, you want this, you want that, we got it for you baby, here it is. That's what's happening today. A lot of the churches can't compete with the mega churches because the mega churches have million dollar budgets and hundreds of programs. Do you know how many people Rock Harbor has lost to megachurches because we can't afford programs? We don't have a lot of staff. And yet people make that decision, well, you know, I got to go over here because they have this program and that program. And we're all victims. Everybody sitting here is a victim of that, by the way, because the megachurch has the programs. Thyatira had all the programs, but they also had someone lurking in the shadows. And no one saw her. She was there. And she was corrupting the church. But it was covered by the programs. The programs. Here's what happened. Programs trumped truth. Programs trumped truth. That's what's happening today. I find it so amazing that the same message is happening today. Huh. So they got that going for them, and I can tell you why. They started amassing riches. They started land grabbing. The Catholic Church amassed so much land, it wasn't even funny. They owned all of Italy, by the way, and most of Europe. They gave back Italy some of it later on, but they owned most of the European continent. They owned almost all the whole world. They amassed gold and riches. Of course they could do all this stuff. Of course they could do it. We saw it all through history. They had the great missions that they sent out. You growing up in California, your kids at fourth grade study the missions. Who funded all those missions? The Vatican did. They had oodles and oodles of money. That's why the missions are up and down California, the state of California. Who could fund that? The Catholic Church could. They had tons of money. Point number four, and this is where we're going to cap out a little bit. Jesus condemns the church for introducing false religion into Christianity that corrupts the church. Verse 20, he says, nevertheless, I have a few things against you because you allow that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality and to eat things sacrificed to idols. May it never be, but it did happen. Let's talk about the historical point and then we'll talk about the prophetic point. The historical point, there was a dominant woman in this church, this local church. And you see this all through America now with these husbands, these pastors who are making their wives a pastrix. Have you seen that? What a joke! Because it violates Paul's word to Timothy. I do not permit a woman to have authority or teach over a man. It's so clear, how could anyone miss that? But yet they do. In this church, they did as well. They didn't listen to the Apostle Paul. They had a woman there who was a prophetess. They had a dominant position in that church who was getting revelations, prophetic. She was a prophetess. She called herself a prophetess. What did that mean? It meant that she was telling that local congregation that God was speaking to her Her alone, not through the Apostles, because John was still alive at this point, but speaking to her and telling her, I've got new revelation. God is saying we need to do this and God is saying we need to do that. And I thought, that's the same thing we have today. There's a lot of women today writing books and writing blogs who say and claim that God is talking to them personally. It's number one bestseller. How does history keep repeating itself? Hasn't the church learned its lesson? When you see a pastor, it's on stage, whoever it is, Paula White, or Joyce Myers, or whoever, Joel Osteen's wife, or whoever, Beth Moore, doesn't that cause people to say, wait a second, that's a violation of what Paul told Timothy? She is not to be behind that pulpit. How dare she do that? But yet no one says anything. And you know what the next step is? And it always happens. Everyone down to the wire. The woman eventually who's taking that pulpit starts saying she's got direct revelations from God. You go down the list and exactly down the wire they'll start doing that. Most of the cults were started by women. Mary Baker Eddy, all of that. started by women. Most of these cults or these weird methodologies that are being introduced are infused into the church by women. I'm not attacking women, I'm not a misogynist or anything like that, I'm just pointing out facts. Jesus Calling, number one bestseller, a woman is saying she's having direct conversations with God. No one has a problem with that. If she's getting direct revelations from God, it's scripture. If it's not, it's blasphemy. It's one of the two. Beth Moore, same thing. Claims that God is speaking to her. God told her this. God told Beth Moore to include the Catholics into the evangelical realm. Huh, I just showed you the Catholics don't believe that Christ's cross was sufficient. How could God tell her to include the Catholics? Unless something else is telling her. It's demonic. It's demonic, and when a woman gets behind a pulpit, she moves herself from out of the authority of what God has caused, and the demons go right after that. Where do you think false doctrine comes from? It comes from demons, and demons introduce it to anyone who won't obey God. When someone won't submit to authority, the demons go right after them, because if they're in rebellion, that's the person they're going to go after. And so, of course, all this junk that we're now seeing, contemplative prayer, centering prayer, coloring mandalas, guess where that's coming from? Women. Hey, there's plenty of loony tune guys out there doing the same thing, right? But there's a reason the Jezebel element is being introduced. It was a woman doing this to this church. And it's a woman that did it later on. Now, let me explain what the Jezebel element is, because that's from the Old Testament. It's a term you've probably heard. No one names their kid Jezebel, by the way, or Judas, one of the two. They're not going to name that. But what is Jezebel about? You know she was a pretty wicked woman. You know that. But she was the first one, she was the wife of Ahab in the northern kingdom when the kingdom split. And she was the wife that introduced, for the first time, false religion, a foreign god. Now you think, well, wait a second, I saw Israel worship a golden calf with Moses out there and then Rehoboam did that in the northern tribe when he split with his brother. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but there's something different about what happened with the golden calf with Moses and with Rehoboam. They were still worshiping Yahweh, but they were doing it in a corrupted form of a calf. They were still the worship of Yahweh. Jezebel was the first one in Israel history, in Old Testament history, to introduce a pagan deity into the worship of Israel. She brought it in. That's when it entered into Israel and started corrupting Israel. This Jezebel element was the first time that the church started worshiping pagan deities. Now, I'll explain that in just a bit when I show you the outline of history, but what was this Jezebel doing? What was this element doing? This woman, she was seducing the Messiah's servants to commit sexual immorality. and to eat things sacrificed to idols." Now isn't that funny? Anytime you see idolatry, sexual immorality will be next to it all the time. The two go hand in hand. Again, to back it up even further, the apostle Paul said behind an idol is a demon. It's serious business when someone goes to India and they see idols there or they go to Greece or wherever and they see the idol in the shop. Behind every idol is a demonic. So if someone brings that idol into their house or whatever, they're bringing a demon into it. That's how it works. That's how the biblical world works. Well anyway, this woman brought these elements in. Now I don't know how it was formed, but a lot of people trace it to the guilds. And perhaps she was saying something like this, and we're guessing, but this is maybe what she was saying, that God is saying that it's okay for them to be part of a guild, to be part of these pagan feasts, and in the pagan feasts you had sexual morality because you had temple prostitutes. And so to participate in the pagan feast, you would have sexual encounters with the temple prostitutes. She was saying, perhaps, that it was okay to do that and still do business because God would still want them to stay in business, and God has grace, and He gives more grace when they sin. Yeah, we don't know the whole line about that, right? Hyper-grace movement, still with us today. Actually, it's Billy Graham's grandson that actually was a big proponent of that. Doesn't that shock you? the hyper-grace. Well, Paul countered the hyper-grace. He said, we may be sin if grace should abound. He goes, far be it. He goes, grace isn't a license to do anything you want, right? And he said that in Romans. But this is perhaps what she told that church, and they started doing it. In order to keep their jobs, to stay in the union, the trade guild, to make their money, they had to compromise in order to make money. And in order to make money, That compromise led to corruption. They started worshiping false deities. Do you see how it works? You compromise and then you get corrupted. That's what happened to this church. It started getting corrupted fast. Well, anyway, that's a historical setting. But where are we at on the historical prophetic interpretation? Well, hold on to your hat because I'm about to show you history, how the Jezebel element in a prophetic sense entered in. Now let me make a qualification before we start looking at the history. I think last time I preached, I told you to marry Matthew 13 with the seven churches of Revelation. You'll see in a chronological sense in the mystery kingdom in Matthew 13, when Jesus gives the mystery kingdom, how is the era of the church age going to look once Israel has rejected Messiah, Matthew chapter 12. He gives parables in sequential order of what the kingdom will look like. It's interesting. If you marry the parables with the seven churches, they match. They actually explain what happened in history. And you look at history, and sure enough, it happened. Let me show you the parable that he gave for this particular church. This is Matthew 13, 33. Another parable, he spoke to them, he said, the kingdom of heaven is like leaven. Leaven is always a symbol of sin, right? Which a woman, ah, did you catch that? A woman, you see the connection? It's the Jezebel, which a woman took and hid in three measures, three measures, notice the three, of meal till it was all leavened. Now everybody knows that if you make dough and you introduce leaven, if you let it sit there a long time, the leaven will work throughout the entire dough. Huh. Leaven is a representative sin. Sin will start small in these three loaves and it will go through the entire loaf. But notice there's how many loaves? Three loaves. If you look at church history, I think you can pinpoint the three loaves. The first loaf that was split was the East and West Schism, the Great Schism of 1054. It's called the Byzantine Split. This is where Greek Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church split, right? That was the first split. The second split was the Protestant Reformation of 1517. The Protestants broke away from the Catholic Church. If you think about that, it created three large branches of Christianity. You and I right now are part of the Protestant loaf. Whether you like the name or not, it doesn't matter. You're part of that loaf because you're not part of the Catholic loaf and you're not part of the Greek Orthodox loaf. There's your three loaves. And what is happening as sin is introduced into all three loaves? As the woman, the Jezebel element, infiltrates and she introduces leaven, right? What will happen to all three loaves? Got it. All three will be corrupted. Wow. So from the prophetic scenario, the way the church ends, There will only be a small remnant that is raptured and the rest of the church is lost as a ball in high weeds. Yeah, because of the Jezebel element infiltrating and corrupting the church. It's the same thing. Before Messiah came in His first coming with Israel, Israel ended up in the same situation. They had completely been corrupted by the Jezebel element, kept alive by the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and only a remnant remained. Interesting enough, as we get into it, the Philadelphia church is the remnant. We're part of that Philadelphia church, but the church ends in Laodicea, the apostate church. The church ends corrupted. That's the message that goes hand-in-hand with this church. I have a kind of a table. If you want, email me, I'll send you the table. And you can see the characterization of Matthew 13, Revelation 2, the Thyatira, the continual sacrifice, it's the dark ages, papal domination, doctrinal corruption in three branches of Christianity, Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant. It's an empty profession, financial exploitations of the church is the characterization of Thyatira and are still with us today. Okay, that being said, now let me introduce history to you. And I know people don't like history, sometimes it gets boring. I think it's extremely important when you saw the Jezebel element introduced. I want to take you back before 600 because it started being introduced then. There's a little overlap. But let me run through this as quickly as I can. I'll make some brief comments, but just bear with me on this and just follow along. Let's start with the church of Pergamum. We already did that. That's the church of compromise. And this is what started happening. By A.D. 300, prayers are now offered for the dead. That never happened before then. Then by A.D. 300, making the sign of the cross became a special blessing in order to do that. In 313, the Edict of Milan happened, that's when the church was married to the Roman Empire. That caused it to spread, but it caused a doctrinal corruption as well. 375 A.D., worship of saints and angels. Look, if you're worshiping saints or angels, guess what? That's another deity, so to speak. That's a foreign god, right? They started telling these pagans that came into the church, you can worship the saints and Mary. They're just like the female deities and the other deities you worship over there in these other temples. AD 375, use of images in worship started happening. 394, mass is instituted as a daily occurrence. And every Catholic church is having a daily mass, right? It's instituted there. 431, beginning of the exaltation of Mary, hyper-veneration of her. She almost becomes a female deity at this point. 431, proclamation of infant baptism that regenerates the soul is pronounced. A.D. 500, priests began dressing differently than laymen. A.D. 500, the Mass is instituted as a reenactment of Christ's sacrifice. Now the reenacting, it's not an official proclamation of a continual sacrifice, but they're reenacting it. 526 A.D., extreme unction, or last rites, is instituted as a last sacrament before you die in order to assure your salvation. It's not Christ dying on the cross, it's making sure you do a ritual before you die. 8593, Doctrine of Purgatory introduced, but it's not official. They start having it. Came from the Jewish sources of Purgatory, not from the Bible, but Jewish mysticism and things like that. By 8600, the Church of Thyatira is alive and well. By 8600, worship services are conducted in Latin. Do you know what that did to the average person sitting in the pew? They had no idea what was being said by the priest. No idea. The whole mass is in Latin. They took Christianity out of the Lengua Franca of the day. Christianity is made to speak at the common language of everybody. They took it away so nobody knew what was going on. Had no idea what the priest was saying. That was intentional. 8,600 prayers now are officially directed to Mary and the Saints because they have a treasury of merit and they can give you some of their merit. Not Christ, but Mary and the Saints. How blasphemous is that? AD 607, Boniface III made you the first universal pope. That's when you start seeing the Catholic Church as it is today, then it started with their pope. And then they started instituting, trying to say he was from the line of Peter, and this has been a succession of things, of popes. 8786, the worship of images and relics started happening. By 8850, the use of holy water begins. By 8995, the canonization of dead saints and the worship of saints starts happening. 8998, fasting on feast days and Lent, which they took in from Babylon, which the Jezebel element brought in with her into the church. 81000, attendance at Mass made mandatory under the penalty of mortal sin. Did you catch that? If you didn't come to church, you're under mortal sin, mortal sin. This was a forced coercion to come to church. It's crazy, huh? And people put up with it, because you know why? The church had married with the state. And if you didn't come to church, they sent state officials to your house and they would knock. And if you didn't play by the rules, you know what church discipline was? They'd burn you alive. off with your head. That's how they played. It is estimated that the Catholic Church from that time on today has killed nearly 50 million people because of the inquisitions, because of burning people alive at the stake, thinking they had the right to purge the sin out of the individual. AD 1079, celibacy of the priesthood is now introduced. Do you know why? It wasn't for some spiritual reason. Do you know why they made the priests celibate? The priests, a lot of them that went in the priesthood were very wealthy. Catholic Church wanted that wealth because when the priest died, that wealth went to their family, right? So you know what they said? They said, that's it. We need that wealth. So when you guys die, your inheritance comes to us. Because you will have no family. We want that wealth. At that time, the Catholic Church amassed major properties all over Europe because of priests giving their inheritance to the Catholic Church. That's really what it was. But do you know what the celibacy of the priesthood did to the people or to the priests? The introduction of sexual morality. injured then. This is why this era is called the Pornocracy. The Pornocracy. It got so rank sexually. So rank. Like I said before in a previous message, you always had a monastery, you always had a convent, and you always had an orphanage. Do the math. And then another thing started occurring. The priests, because they had taken vows of celibacy, were allowed to basically fulfill themselves sexually with prostitutes. That was okay. Not officially, but it was okay because when Martin Luther got there, he saw it. He reported it. He saw priests going in with harlots and prostitutes. He saw it all over. It shocked him. It was one of the things that caused him to say, wait a second, what's going on here? The pornography had already started developing. The sexual immorality was rampant among the priests. Let me bring you into today. You think the sexual immorality among the priesthood of the Catholic Church has went away? I'm about to shock you right now. It is worse. It is so bad. You would not imagine. Some of the stuff I researched, I cannot even tell you. Let's start with this. In Ireland. They have found 800 children dead and buried in a place, the remains of babies in sewers of unwed mothers that were kept by the Catholic Church. Why is there 800 dead babies in the sewers hidden by the Catholic Church in Ireland? What have they been doing with these unwed mothers? Apartment complex in the Vatican. A lot of the cardinals live there. The bottom floor is a gay bar, which is frequented most of the time by the cardinals. Constant, the Swiss Guard of the Vatican are reporting that the priests and cardinals are hitting on them sexually. Oh yeah, there's a gay ring in the priesthood. You better believe there is. They allow homosexuals to be priests. Yeah. No, it's not official. But estimates are, and this is coming from Donald B. Cousins, he's well regarded, the changing face of the priesthood, he wrote about this, he studied this, he said, though the number of gay priests in general and specifically among the curia in Rome is unknown, the proportion is much higher than the general population. Between 20 to 60 percent of the Catholic priests are gay. Think about that. That's one in five priests, if you stand them up, they're gay. Talk about a corrupt priesthood. And so, should anyone be shocked that pedophilia is running wild in their Catholic Church with the priests and the altar boys? Is it any wonder that the third highest ranked Catholic official just a couple weeks ago in Australia was busted for pedophilia? Should it shock anybody that they pay people off the hush money to shut them up? Should it shock anybody? Because the Vatican has oodles of money. They don't want that getting out. How many people have reported being molested by gay priests? Oh, it's the Jezebel element. That's why. Reports that priests in the Vatican having drug-fueled gay orgies at the Vatican. lured accusations of priests all over the planet involved in sex orgies, porn videos, prostitutions. Southern city of Naples, for example, a priest was recently suspended from the parish over the claims he had gay orgies and used the internet sites to recruit potential partners to have paid sex with them. Another 48-year-old priest in the Vatican is accused of having over 30 lovers Reports of bestiality among the priests as well. And stuff I can't even name. I can't even go into. It's that bad. And people want to pretend like the Catholic Church is the same as them. It is so sexually corrupt, it's frightening what's happening in that false church. But here's the deal, if you study any cult, any false religion, I don't care what it is, Islam, Mormonism, Jehovah Witness, Catholicism, behind every false religion, you unveil it, there will be a host of sexual immorality all over the place. All over the place. Because idolatry, and sexual immorality go hand in hand. You just didn't think it would get that bad, but it does. That's what Jesus was referring to. That's what started happening. Let's go back to the timeline. 1184, the Inquisition starts happening. Like I said, 50 million people died at the hands of the Inquisition. A.D. 1090, prayer beads are instituted, the rosary. 1190, cell of indulgences. A.D. 1215, transubstantiation with a host, the body and blood of Christ is seen in the wafer and in the wine. And that becomes an idol, by the way. 1220, adoration of the host or the wafer, again idolatry. 1229, Bible forbidden to laymen. They took the Bible out of the layman's hands. Not only did they take the message out and put it in Latin, they took the Bible out of people's hands. The cup is forbidden to laymen in 1414. You couldn't drink from the wine cup anymore. That's still in effect today. 1438, doctrine of purgatory is officially decreed. Guess what that was about? It's about making money. They made up this thing about purgatory. They got this idea from Jewish mysticism, I guess. And they said, look, you know, hey, since Christ's death on the cross didn't pay for all your sins, you're going to have to spend some time in this place that's really not hell, it's not heaven, it's purgatory, and you're going to be burned there for a while. They burn off the rest of your sins. But here's the deal. You can get that family member out if you start donating to the church. You can reduce their time in purgatory. Well, if I'm a family member and poor old Joe is burning in purgatory, I want him out of purgatory, right? And they say, well, what's the solution? Start giving to the church. How much? I don't know. How do I know when Joe's out of purgatory? You don't know. It's a money scheme that makes people continue to give money to the church, and there's never any end to it. It was a money-making scheme. Still with them today. Now they light candles to get people out of purgatory, but they really want the dough. That's really what they want. You go through that and then doctrines of the seven sacraments are affirmed in 1439. That's for salvation. It's Jesus plus the seven sacraments. If you don't do the seven sacraments, you're either going to go to purgatory or you're going to hell. But Jesus didn't pay at all. That's my point at the initial staging of the sermon. AD 1508, Ave Maria approved. I go to funerals, I do funerals for Bible-believing Christians, and they're singing Ave Maria, and I just can't figure that out. It's a worship song to Mary. 1517 Protestant Reformation, Church of Sardis starts. A.D. 1534, the Jesuit Order is founded. That is an evil institution. These are the assassins of the Catholic Church, by the way. They are no joke, man. That's an evil institution, the Jesuit Order. They're behind everything evil in this world, everything. They're the ones who discovered and developed Communism. It is coming from the Jesuits. Where do you think Marx and Engel learned communism from? Jesuit priests. They were practicing communism way before Europe had ever understood communism. The Jesuits started that. 1545, tradition granted equal authority with the Bible. 1546, apocryphal books put into the Bible. 1569, rosary instituted. 1648, Peace of Westphalia between Protestants and Catholics. Then the Church of Philadelphia starts in 1648. 1854, Immaculate Conception of Mary, that she was born sinless. 1864, Syllabus of Errors proclaimed. 1870, infallibility of the Pope declared. He doesn't say anything wrong. 1870, declaration of no salvation found outside the Catholic Church. Then you move into the era of Laodicea. In 1922, Mary declared co-redeemer with Jesus. 1850, assumption of the Virgin Mary. She was bodily assumed into heaven. In 1865, Mary proclaimed mother of the church. Wow. The Jezebel element will eventually its final form will form into the whore of Babylon. Now, I'm not saying that it's just simply the Catholic Church. I'm saying that she will incorporate all the false religions on the planet under her umbrella. Please ask yourself this question. If the rapture happened today and you and I were taken and removed, who would lead the charge religiously in this world? Yeah, you know, it's the Catholic Church. So the Catholic Church will incorporate other religions, Hinduism, Buddhism, all the other left behind so-called Christians under her umbrella. And oh, my friends, you already see her forming, don't you? Tolerance. Love without no boundaries and limitations, right? Just love, acceptance, tolerate. She's here, she's right with us, and she's introducing pagan concepts into Christianity. What's the application? I'll explain this a little bit more next week when I talk about her forming her headquarters in Babylon and ruling the world for three and a half years before the Antichrist takes the seat. What's the application? Let's bring it down to a personal level for us. I know we've been talking history and it's real big and broad, but what's the deal? The application for you and I is this. Notice the pattern of the churches. You have a church that lost its first love, its devotion to the Lord. It has theology correct, but it really wasn't on fire for the Lord. And then you go to a church, Pergamum, it starts compromising. And follow the mail route, and then once the church compromises, The church corrupts. That's how it starts. That's the pattern. You lose your first love for Messiah. Your relationship with him gets kind of loose, and it's not all there. And it's not his fault. It's our fault. And then before you know it, you start making compromises in your life. That's how it happens personally. Well, you know, I don't want to be legalistic about it. You say to yourself, and so you compromise. You let something happen. You know you shouldn't let happen. But you know, you're just trying to get along. You want to make people happy. You don't want to get in their face or in their dish and call them out. You just start to, I just want to keep that relationship with that person. So I'm just going to let that one slide. Once you start down the road of compromise, it's dangerous. You take one step and it's okay. Nothing really happens to you. The lightning bolts will come out of the sky. Okay. You take one more step and then you take another. And before you know it, you're off the path. And before you know it, you're in corruption. The old preacher, Adrian Rogers, he went home with the Lord. He used to say a familiar thing, and I want you all to get it down. Once you're over here off the path, and you're starting to get corrupted, he says, sin will take you further than you wanted to go. It'll keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and it'll make you pay way more than you wanted to pay. I like that line. He was right. And it starts incrementally, just allowing a little bit, a little bit here, a little bit there. Well, that book is okay. I don't want to make my wife upset. I know she brought a book home. Her friend gave it to her. I'm trying to get along with my wife or this and that. Whatever, you'll make a rationalization for it. And it will primarily be before a family member. That's what the issue starts becoming. You'll compromise in order to keep the relationship. Because you don't want to be hard-nosed. You don't want to be always opposing things. But that's the way the world is, man. You will have to oppose a lot of things. You will have to stand in the gap, say, no, I'm not doing that. I'm not taking my family down that path. I'm not letting myself do this. See, you're all going to be tested. You're going to be tested of whether you're going to compromise. And if the devil can get you to compromise, he will eventually corrupt you. That's how he gets it. And then before you know it, when you start compromising, you'll start having a split inside of you. It's called a secular-sacred dichotomy. You live almost two lives, like a double life. It's weird because I've lived it. I know what it feels like. As a Catholic, I could remain spiritual if I did the rituals. But I could live like the devil the rest of the week. And then come back Saturday, go to confession, Sunday take communion, and be right with God again. And then Monday morning go live like a devil again. See, that's what false religion does. It says, you live the way you want to live as long as you do the rituals. The minute you get into that mode, you're split with a secular-sacred dichotomy. What you do on Sunday will not translate into what you do during the week. You will run a business like a pagan. You will have a marriage like a pagan. You will put on your Sunday smile on Sunday and pretend to be a Christian, but you're not real. I finally figured that out at 19. I'm playing a game. I'm playing a game with God. Do the ritual and live like a devil. And I was going straight to hell. Until finally I saw what the gospel said. You can't do anything to please me. I just need you to believe in me. Believe that I died and I was sufficient for you on that cross. It's my faith. See, religion taught me rituals. That is the answer. So you come down, you think personally, am I compromising in any area of my life? You must identify that quickly because that will be used against you. I don't want you to end up way out here saying, how did I get out here? Stop the compromise, no compromise, stand for the truth, and you won't do that. I pray all of you in this climate will heed the warning that Jesus has given Thyatira.