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and we'll begin our our last class this evening father we do thank you again for this time together time in your word time with fellow Believers and we pray that you would again give us wisdom illuminate your
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word by your spirit and help us to to understand the times in which we live that we might live to your glory and according to your
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will we pray that what we do learn that we would be able to sink deep into our minds and our hearts it might change our lives and
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help us to understand your church even just a little better we pray your blessing upon our fellowship and upon our discussion we ask in Jesus name
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amen so we are finishing up this evening and um in in large measure it's going going to be
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review um the temptation of of hitting on all the hot button issues that we face in our current time is is is great um it's
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something that something that you a a lot of uh Christians pastors theologians they they like to immediately write a book
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these are the books that end up in the Goodwill store um because they're dealing with a contemporary issue that will not be around in five years okay um and and
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that's again the temptation but it's really better to avoid that and remember that the issue dour is just that it's the issue of the day and there will be
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another one in a couple of years and whatever is going on now uh will have been largely forgotten and something else will take its place so the purpose of this study was to try to to build a
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framework that is um Timeless because it is scriptural looking at the church in the world as Paul sees it uh do we need to pray for the you two
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okay I I just wanted to I I just want to jump in there because I I mean I know I said amen but we could go back oh she's coming all right she's returning to him that's good that's good all right
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um we began 16 weeks ago with John winthrip's vision for the Plymouth Plantation and um his vision of course was taken up subsequently by preachers and po politicians it became a vision of
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the U the colonies and then of course After the Revolution a vision of the United States the city set up on a hill in fact really um the the poem by Emma
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Lazarus at the base of the Statue of Liberty is kind of an expression of this Vision that the United States is is a country of Freedom uh a country that
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draws the dispossessed the oppressed the pour uh the huddled masses to its Shores um we're not really keen on that
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anymore but we haven't always been keen on that uh at times immigrants have not always been welcome here but the point is that this country not not not founded on God not a
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Christian Nation but nonetheless a a large uh large uh proportion of proportion of religious uh refugees from Europe coming
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to this country um they themselves were not highly tolerant of other religious views if you if you go if you get a chance to go to Rhode Island to
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Providence um look up Roger Williams and you know realize that um Baptists were not welcome in the congregationalist colony of Massachusetts and that's where
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Roger Williams was exiled to Rhode Island so we weren't tolerant um but the idea of a city upon a hill of course is scripture okay and
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we talked about that 16 weeks ago that the city on the hill was intended to be a a Haven and a a hope for travelers as
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the night was coming on and the roads would get dangerous they would see the lights of that City and that's where they would go very quickly for the night that was a safe haven but it was on a
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hill and it did not go down in the valley to get the people it it remained up on the hill so the question is how are we doing okay if
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if if Winthrop were to come back what would he find and how would he react uh I mean we can imagine he he
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would probably have a conion but of them would there's no way any of the the founding fathers any of the pilgrims any anybody
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from that from that era could remotely have dreamed of what this country or the world has become we were talking about this in our US government class the the idea of the
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Constitution being either a dead letter or a living document the fact that it's been 200 years since it was written but if you were to go 200 years in the past
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from 1787 to to 1587 the world wouldn't look all that much different and then another 200 years to 1387 it wouldn't look all that different you know as you go back things
6:13
didn't really progress all that much but then you go 200 years in the future and 1987 versus 1787 it's just it's Quantum okay and and so this is the world we
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live in and that's what matters because that's Providence but if we look at where we
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country the 21st century it's a whole series of posts where post
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impact the impact of rational jism has actually run its course into what we look around at and say this is irrational the conen theme that reality
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is what you perceive it to be has now been atomized into each individual person so that reality is what they think it is and no one else can say
7:26
otherwise there's a a book it's very very well written of the my history Professor from Seminary Greg singer wrote a book from rationalism to
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irrationality he traces the history of the Enlightenment and then what happened after that on into about the middle of the 20th century or the latter half of
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the 20th century so we've gone to we've gone from
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en pardon me what was Enlighten Enlightenment what was it from I mean really it Enlightenment is the secular or secular or Pagan response to the
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Renaissance the idea of of of new learning um going back to the original documents the Latin the Greek even the Hebrew but starting in the 16th century
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and then more so in the 17th the idea that human reason is supreme science modern science is traced
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to Francis Bacon which is um what was he El Elizabethan right so um late 16th century then um uh Renee deart he's kind
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of the the the beginning of the Enlightenment so what do you mean when is it from No it's it's it's early modern it's early modern uh very European France um
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England Germany and then over into the the new world in the north not so much Mediterranean but um it's it's moving
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away from philosophy and religion toward rationality and reason okay Thomas Jefferson would be a supreme example in our country in our early
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years of a an Enlightenment rationalist so would Benjamin Franklin the 30 years War provide sufficient shock and I I don't know that's a that's an
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interesting that's an interesting Theory um but the the problem with that is that the 30 Years War was really just one
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version of almost constant European Warfare um so prior to that it were the wars between Charles the 5ifth and Francis France and the Holy Roman Empire
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you know so it's almost constant The Hite Wars Wars of religion so I don't know that'd be an interesting line of thought whether that had something to do it's interesting
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that the the beginning of um the enlightenment 1648 is generally accepted because that's when decart published his
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magnumopus it's also the year that the piece of vesalia was signed ending the 30 Years War uh which uniquely is one of the only numbered Wars that actually
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lasted 30 years okay so like the 100 Years War was like 107 years you can pretty much bet that any numbered War but that one was actually 1618 to
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1648 ma we oh we had math okay that that's what did it we invented math um so the enlightenment comes in
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and it has it does have a massive impact and and really if you if you read the writings of the framers the founders of our country you'll find that they were
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far far more interest uh they were more informed and influenced by European enlightenment philosophers than they were any biblical writers they would
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quote Lo much more than Moses um and Hobbs much more than and not Calvin and Hobbs but Thomas Hobbs um Calvin and Hobbs are actually John Calvin and
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Thomas Hobbs but they rather than Paul they they were not really biblical Scholars but they were very well read in the in the
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contemporary um philosophy political philosophy of that day and so that's what informed their um their Rebellion against Great Britain so that it all all
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good except that it it dethroned reason dethroned faith and the relationship between faith and reason was that as science
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progresses knowledge progresses faith regresses faith is what we have have when we don't know but the more we know the less we need of faith and so there's
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this Paradigm that has become dominant in Western thought and that is Faith is is is really for the superstitious and the ignorant we're a scientific people
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and in fact science is going to become the new religion scientists will be the new priesthood that's where we are so post Enlightenment um we're also postmodern
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and again this is one that's often used nobody really knows what it means um but it it it's
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somewhat of a a philosophical statement of this of this irrationality that results from the individualized reality of an Emanuel
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Kant that we are all you know simply um blank slates that our surroundings right upon through our senses and that creates
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Ro faith gets by the rationalism over rationalism causes the reaction of
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that's a good point this Romanticism I didn't talk anything about that because it has more to do with the interior church this this is where Christianity is be also going to become a a private
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devotion that's John Wesley uh yeah Wesley yeah U and that's the 18th century Wesley the Wesley right his right his heart was strangely warm now
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that could have been anovi but um you know seriously but he's you know that's a famous phrase that um and it has led
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to a to really Pentecostalism even though he was Methodist you know the the idea that you know feelings are what matter and that's a reaction
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a reaction against the exaltation of reason so we have we have man basically fighting against himself trying to choose as
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Supreme one aspect of his complex nature so and that's what's happening in in the world uh during this period of time it
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gets to the point and really postmodernism is kind of a catchall phrase that indicates a culture in which all of these other attempts have been
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recognized as recognized as failures even right even Kant yeah everything right um just about everything I mean bant really is the unknown hero of the of
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postmodernism but although he did also try to preserve God he he could not get away from the fact that we all have a conscience and that
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conscience argues and that conscience is common and it argues against this idea of individualized reality and it really blows apart his whole system but the
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best he could do is he called it the categorical imperative and that's again that's a good indication that the people who know what they're talking about really don't they come up with
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phrases okay categorical imperative some shows have discretion as
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and just historically the Christians first they start with the Bible and then they mean well and go to PL or so philosophers reading those without any
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discretion yeah without any view or discretion it's okay to read them but you have to filter Through the Bible but then they start filing the Bible through well that's what that's what okay the
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idea that that you know Christians begin em bibing philosophers uh without any discretion without any critical thought um this is really what Thomas aquinus
16:30
did with Aristotle and that kind of started everything started everything downhill th well yes right um and it's
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amazing I've actually noted a number of leading reformed Scholars contemporary or near contemporary who are all of a sudden enamored with ainus again so it's
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it's like nothing new Under the Sun um but we're always going back to the same same tried and failed methods so we're
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postmodern um which again kind of means we don't stand for anything and that shows up in another phrase we discussed we're posttruth
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truth no longer has the meaning that it once had because facts have been separated from
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values are private they're personal okay we say okay well facts that's truth well not really because in the 18th century another rationalistic philosophy um
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generally attributed to the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham utilitarianism you see facts now have their value or their worth in their
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utility we're not really concerned about absolute truth we're concerned about truth that works in fact if it works it
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is truth and that's seeped into the church as well as our broader culture so facts are are are are really how do you spell it
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utilitarianism they're what works a pragmatism has seeped into our thinking efficiency productivity and getting the job done so
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now of course you you take the the languages the Greek and the Hebrew um out of the seminaries and you put in marketing courses and demographics and how to read statistics and um that's
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what makes a church grow and that's what it's all about because growth equals success in the modern Western capitalistic thought if
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you're not growing then there's something wrong with you okay so this is part of the post truuth um we also talked about the fact that we are
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constantinian the church is no longer welcome in the public forum we are allowed to have our private views and people are still gener glad
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that it works for us but that's also changing it's getting more and more um Insidious we're we are being labeled as
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uh racists white supremacists capitalist oppressors simply because we profess faith in Jesus Christ the religion is being being
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painted with the same brush uh more and more so times are changing okay but one thing that uh is I think very evident is
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that the influence the church once had remember we talked one week about the Patriotic preachers versus the loyalist preachers um you're not going to see that anymore you're not going to see
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preachers having that kind of influence in their communities and Beyond we we're now the denominationalism has had a massive effect on that but
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rationalism U and and I'm not saying the church in general widely understood broadly understood doesn't have some blame in all of this that that gets into
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more of modern church history 20th century church history and I think there is there is a fair amount of blame um one of the things that the church has done consistently throughout the last
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few Generations is we have consistently bet on the wrong horse and um it's beginning to show and frankly people don't want to hear
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what the church has to say it doesn't have a voice now there are still those bless their hearts they still think they they have an audience but you've heard the southern phrase preaching to the
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choir that's basically all the church can do anymore and even the choir is not listening anymore so we're in we're in an era again we started out in early in
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the session talking about the sons of issachar who recognized and understood their times and knew what Israel was to do now this was again this was not a
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consistent generational trait of the tribe of issachar this had to do with a particular time when God sovereignly and graciously granted them wisdom
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concerning their concerning their contemporary surroundings their culture I don't know that there are many sons of issachar in Western evangelicalism
21:54
today but there are some and there when you when you read their writings and you listen to them they are they are definitely hitting the nail on the head in terms of
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the times in which we live now the solutions are not always correct often times they are
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somewhat of a regurgitation of a previous attempt they fall in line we talked about uh Richard neor five different paradigms of the
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church's relationship with culture and again that's a very excellent book in terms of History because it accurately describes how the church has responded
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to culture pretty much throughout the thousand plus year constantinian settlement from the 4th Century on through the Holy Roman Empire on through
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the nation states and and the Reformation the union or the the attempted Union between church and state was pervasive it it was um it was a
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given that the church in the state would somehow work in tandem whether it's the Roman Catholic church and the Holy Roman Emperor or whether it's the Duke of Saxony and the the uh augustinian monk
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from vitberg you know they're going to work together and there will be settlements and acts of uniformity so that everybody in the land will have the same religion whose land his religion
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that was kind of the settlement of of vestalia um the prince was Catholic everybody's Catholic you're not Catholic get out go to someplace else where the prince is Protestant you can be
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Protestant but he's Lutheran you're Calvin get out so it was a settlement and we saw that as I mentioned just a few minutes ago that's basically what the American colonies were they were not
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the only one that was really tolerant was Pennsylvania and that's because it was found a by Quakers who aren't really Christian to begin with but Maryland was Catholic uh Virginia was was Unitarian
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the Carolinas were Presbyterian Massachusetts was congregationalist Rhode Island of course was Baptist we got Rhode Island you got to give it to the Baptists uh okay how many Baptists
24:16
can you fit on a Rhode Island um get back to scholasticism but uh that's what we get anyhow so we're post constantinian and the response to all of
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Retreat and by attack I mean let's try to regain the constantinian settlement that we once enjoyed or at least we think we did and there's a revisionism that goes on in this and you see this a lot you see this a lot in homeschool
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curricula where the early part of our country country is Rewritten to fit the current problem and we are being told that we were a Christian Nation that we founded on Christian principles um and
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then you go back and read the actual writings of these men and you realize no we were found on loan miltonian hsian uh Russo but not Moses Paul or anyone else
25:18
from the Bible okay not to say that these men were not brilliant men and not to say that the form of government that they came up with was probably the best possible form within a fallen Human
25:29
Society I don't get me wrong I love the Constitution okay I think it's a great human document but it's not a Christian
25:39
document and they were not Christian men who put it together they were some yes but that wasn't their purpose so we we try to return to that time when when the
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church actually had a voice in the public forum the problem is we don't have that have that voice and what we're actually doing is we are further and
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and more vehemently politicizing vehemently politicizing Christianity now that's not this not the first time this has happened this is this is fairly American if you've read any of Alexis daville Democracy in
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America one of the things he notices throughout his journeys is not only how religious Americans are but how religion impacts their political their civic mind
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that the church was the Town Meeting Hall and the preacher was the really the voice of the town's conscience of course if they didn't like what he was saying they ran him out and got another one
26:43
more to their liking but nonetheless he was an he was a recognized and respected Authority in the community pretty much regardless of the
26:54
topic that's not the way anymore and so there are also those who recognize that you know we've lost that battle let's go back to the New
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Church you know let's look at the book of Acts and let's do what they did and Let's ignore the world and again this is also not new every
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time culture hems the church in or seeks to persecute or exclude it the church responds one of several ways and again those those ways typically fall out in
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nebor five nebor five paradigms okay they they just we we end up in our in our minds and then we gather together in common denominations and common congregations because we all
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think the church should be a certain way in the world and so so that and then we're reinforced in that because everybody we hang around with says the same thing which only makes us think
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even more that we're right but it's only when we hear what others are saying and then make that heran effort of standing
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apart from your own perspective that you realize nobody's realize nobody's listening you're truly preaching to the choir I mean you look at the political
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scene right scene right now candidate no matter who it is is only being heard by those who already agree with what he has or she has to say no one's
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no one's dialoguing in our society right now that idea of of um Iron sharpening iron so one man sharpens another that's not happening we might be yelling at each
28:47
other but that doesn't matter because the other person isn't listening anyhow it's kind of like when you're you know when you have small kids and you're able to just tune them out okay um that well
28:58
liberals aren't hearing what conservatives are saying conservatives aren't hearing what Liberals are saying if you ever stopped and listen to what either side is saying you think these are idiots okay so this is the world that we
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live in and it's it's not a pretty picture um and the options that we have um are not they're not
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encouraging they're they're and I shouldn't say they're not encouraging because I think they're tremendous ly encouraging but they're not encouraging to our American nature we we are not the type of
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people who can just do nothing or what we think is nothing the the recommendation that I'm going to make is often too
29:48
quiescent it's like how how can you let these things happen again you know the famous statement the only thing necessary for evil men to succeed is for
29:58
good men to do nothing well that is wrong on several counts first of all there are no good men and second law God is Sovereign not evil men they will not
30:09
succeed and not because of good men standing in the way they will not succeed because God is standing in the way and every evil empire that ever existed ended when God said it would end
30:22
that doesn't mean we are not engaged but our engag agement with the world I think needs to find a completely different and intensely Pauline
30:35
Foundation rather than a neoran I don't think we should assimilate I don't think we should abdicate I don't think we should try to conquer and take over all of culture and
30:48
I don't think we should TI to dictate to culture how it should be in fact I don't think we should try to change culture at all because I think James Hunter in his book to change the world pretty much
30:59
definitively shows from the history and statistics that can't be done you much are you're much more successful nailing Jello to the wall than you are changing
31:13
culture it's hard enough even to Define it especially since there are other characteristics of our world we are um I
31:23
should have put these up here well let's this we are we are pluralist and we are
31:41
Multicultural aren we really often times upset that we're not influencing oh yes saying oh the church is not there anymore yeah we don't like we don't you're that's exactly right that's it's
31:52
very unamerican to be marginalized and to have no voice every vote counts you know you know that's what we're told um but we we had a whole session on talking about the real Powers okay um there
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there are still people in this country lots and lots of people that actually think Congress has real power Congress doesn't have any power Congress itself is determined by the
32:15
political action committees and the mega donors and I mean where's the power power is what influences people's minds into action there's more power on Madison Avenue than Pennsylvania Avenue
32:27
okay what is it that influences us there are so many people who could not even name their own representative but they can name their
32:37
favorite shampoo okay I mean seriously what is it that that has power those have power who influence our thoughts and our actions does anybody disagree with
32:48
that I mean you might say they have the power that they can they can bring to bear through the military well they don't really even have that okay so what we think are the structures of Power are actually a
33:00
facade and then even behind them I'm not talking that you know that's oh it's the Illuminati you know that's what he's talking about no there are powers and principalities in the heavenlies that we're told that is who we battle
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against so even these maharajas that we don't see the Koch brothers and and George Soros and and all of those people who are pulling the strings their
33:25
strings are being pulled Doo by powers and principalities that they don't even acknowledge but we know they're there so um I think impotence is actually a
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strength to the true church I think it always has been Paul himself said that in my weakness Christ is made strong you know so we don't we
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don't like that that's not American but is it Pauline that's what matters because that being biblical is more important than being
33:59
American and I think that's where I'm I'm headed with this tonight is that that we need to be and we need to be able to say you know that my my political thinking my economic thinking
34:09
my environmental thinking my consumer thinking is informed by scripture and not by consumerism not by
34:20
capitalism not by democracy not by the Constitution and where they align fine but there are many places where they don't align and we have to
34:53
we those things that are accomplished that happen from weakness um p a pretty clear picture that it is God yes see in our weakness we are forced back upon dependency upon God and
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in our impotence we are forced back to the realization that the new creation was initiated by a death and of course a
35:17
resurrection we we need to be constantly reminding ourselves from scripture that God is not failing that his work is going on what
35:28
we consider to be failure is actually our abortive attempts to do his work for him Leslie duban said that the project of bringing Heaven down
35:40
to earth always results in bringing Hell Up From Up From Below Leslie nuban was a 20th century prophet he saw a
35:50
lot U now he also I mean he was not infallible by any means and he was also he was Ang and so he thought in terms of of that type of church structure and the
36:02
sacramentalism and and he saw solutions that that fit the Anglican model but once again if they only fit one model or one age or one segment of humanity they
36:13
can't be true if it's biblical truth it fits every son and daughter of Adam and then every son and daughter of Jesus Christ regardless of where Korea China
36:27
Germany United States 18th Century fth Century doesn't matter okay so that's a that's a lmost test we can apply to all these different theories of what the
36:38
church needs to do is to for example ask can the church in Nigeria do this can the church in China do this okay because we can do things doesn't make it
36:52
right okay I want to point out this is a bit of a rabbit Trail but you know how we rail against the um the way
37:02
liberals interpret Paul according to the culture when it pertains to the role of women in the church right when the liberal says well that was just Paul
37:13
reacting to his culture we know better now so that's that's how the liberal handles 1 Corinthians 7 and 11 14 but how do we handle Romans
37:25
13 where Paul says submit to every form of government for it is ordained by go well we don't have to do that because we're a democracy now we have the vote
37:36
Paul didn't have that what are we doing if not the same thing we're we're filtering Paul through culture to our own interpretive Advantage we're just as
37:48
guilty as the liberal okay when we say that Revolution is fine if it's led by smart men who want want to bring about democracy it's okay because Paul didn't
38:00
understand democracy well no democracy comes from ancient Greece 500 years before Paul deos is a Greek word okay he knew what it meant and so you know we are doing the
38:13
same thing as the liberal does with Paul's teaching on women we're doing the same thing on Paul's teaching on government if Paul's inspired then he's inspired everywhere
38:24
he writes he writes okay and we we have to read what he says and say you know that's tough because I'm frankly very glad we
38:35
don't have to listen to the king anymore okay I I'm every time he speaks I thank God for okay every time the the British
38:45
do something I can thank God that for George Washington George Washington whatever that doesn't make it right it makes it history but it doesn't make it
38:57
biblical okay and so we have to be biblical in our thinking now what's encouraging about this what I've tried to weave through all of this is that while the world is going this way all this means
39:22
away that's all it is we can get into the weeds and we can see how it's passing away and we can start to smell the stench of its putri faction as it's passing away we're starting to smell that stench in the west but there will
39:33
be something behind it either the perusia or some other age that will then pass away that's been human
39:43
history okay we happen to be living in a time when the age is fairly far gone the things that our even our parents and
39:54
grandparents the tradition the the morality not necessarily Christian but nonetheless there was something there that you could point to is right and wrong there's nothing there
40:07
anymore that's gone and that's disturbing and we think well we have to do something for our children's sake well yeah get them in the word get them
40:17
in the Lord and then get them in the word and show them that Christ is building his Temple because if God
40:28
providentially determines that this country is going to go through a period of persecution for our faith we would not be different than many in this world
40:39
today who are doing so now we cannot claim some elitist status that protects us from the world reacting against us because of our faith and the writers of
40:51
the New Testament prepare us for that Peter and Paul both say Paul says those who would live Godly in Christ will
41:01
suffer persecution and he makes a statement so definitive that one would reasonably ask if they're not suffering persecution am I living Godly in
41:13
Christ you know if the church is on good terms with the world then what of the Beatitudes woe unto you when all men speak well of you but blessed are you
41:25
when they curse you and revile you for my name's sake okay what what do what do we want we want our comfortable life we want our freedoms we want our freedoms
41:36
so badly that we turn the other way when they're taken away from us little by little okay because we're not in a
41:46
position to maintain them what we have we enjoy as a gift from God not the government but our faith and our lives
41:57
cannot be founded on those things because as the Lord gives he can take away right so it's not a great time to be an American but
42:09
it's better than being anything else right now in the world but it's time uh one of the authors says it's it's time for the church to take itself
42:21
seriously so start thinking about itself in biblical terms and not in terms of politics and really not even in terms of
42:32
our children's our children's world we we are raised up for just such such a time as this we're not told to fight to establish a certain
42:44
social or Civic or economic framework for our children's lives we're told to raise them in the honor and admonition of the of the Lord the world in which they will live
42:55
we might be afraid of it but we don't know it and what what is beyond knowledge should also be Beyond fear should it not we do not know that our
43:06
children's lives will be worse than ours if things progress the way they're progressing we can say it's not going to be great but they don't necessarily progress that way and never have history
43:17
is up and down and all around and the Roman Empire was a time of stability for many many people people and then it completely collapsed and we
43:29
call the centuries after that we call it the Dark Ages as if the sun didn't shine okay but then Europe picked itself back up so we don't know the future what we
43:41
do know is what God has promised and has begun in Jesus
44:22
not being and right if you're complacent if you're if you're complaining if you're fearful then you're not not doing what Peter says I'm going to go ahead and read that because people can't necessarily hear and also those who um who might be tuning in on YouTube Can't
44:34
here 1 Peter 4:7 the end of all things is at hand therefore be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer above all keep fervent in your love for one another because
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love covers a multitude of sins be hospitable to one another without complaint as each one has received a special gift and back in the last session we talked about life in the church employ it in serving one another
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as good stewards of the manifold grace of God whoever speaks let him speak as it were the utterances of God whoever serves let him do so as by the strength which God supplies so that in all
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things uh God may be glorified through Jesus Christ to whom belongs the glory and the Dominion forever and ever amen okay that's Peter all right Peter and
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Paul were not at odds nor was James with what they were saying um what is True Religion James says VD visit widows and orphans in their distress and keep oneself unstained by
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yeah this phrase as if not is repeated multiple times in that passage it's a very very important phrase that commentators have commentators have misunderstood thinking that Paul thought that everything was going to end you
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know right away or that maybe Paul thought that certain persecution was going to come upon the church we don't really know what Paul was seeing but everything Paul says has been true in every generation of the church from his
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day to day to ours there every generation is passing away and the form of of whatever stability that is in the world at that time is passing
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away so um what what Paul exhorts us to hold on hold on to is the firm hope that is grounded in the fulfilled
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promise of promise of God now Israel now we as a church think that we should go from glory to glory in this world never suffering
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persecution why should we be any different in the world than Israel was and yet Israel the faithful especially they they have become almost
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um stereotypically a hopeful people never abandoning their identity even after their Messiah has come they still hold to their identity as God's people now I
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know to many of them it is no longer a religious thing not going there that's part of all of this that they've succumbed to as well rationalism and whatnot but as a church we were told
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that in this world we will have tribulation we were told that if the world hated Jesus it would hate us that's I mean we were told these things we were told in the latter days SC
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offers would come and say where is the promise of his appearing we were told in the latter days that that that that men would um gather to themselves teachers who would scratch their itchy ears okay
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that we were told these things would happen and then they happen and we like oh what's going on exactly what we were told is going on the light has come into the world and the Darkness has Preferred
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itself to the light Paul in Ephesians 4 or is it 5 he he says you were once Darkness now
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it's so important how he says this because he does not say you were once in darkness he says you were once Darkness but now you are children of
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light we are we are light in the darkness and we think the darkness should embrace should embrace us no it can do nothing but recoil in
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abject horror at the presence of light and the only time the church is embraced is when it puts its own light out and that's what's happening in many churches
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today they're not waiting for the Lord to come take the T Candlestick they're going around with the snuffers and putting it out themselves and so in a generation those
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places will be Civic centers retirement homes museums if they're really nice churches they'll be the type of churches you can see up all through New England really quaint cute little things that
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you can go in and nobody's there or if they are there they're having pride month you know you go into them it's all this Pride flags and in a church because
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that's what's that's what's happened they put their own lights out and now they're Darkness okay um the church isn't going to do that the true church
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the body of Christ is not going to do that because he who began a good work in us will bring it to Perfection unto the day of Christ Jesus that's what he's doing the question is where will we be
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in the mix we going to be out there campaigning for some issue that just has to be voted on a certain way or our culture is going to be destroyed and our
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children's hope in future will be ruined or we just going to retreat into our little Cloister church we we're all homeschooled wearing denim skirts and whes not all of us denim skirts of
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course okay the the girls of course you know well we'll be Scottish denim Kilts um um you know it's so ter it's now so
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stereotypical that we can make fun of it you know you think of something and that's the picture you get in your mind because we've done this okay but we can't do either Leslie nuban said it is
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certain we cannot go back to the Corpus christum the Christian excuse me the the body of Christ which was Christendom it is also certain and this needs to be
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said sharply in view of the prevalence among Christians of a kind of anarchist Romanticism that we cannot go back to a pre constantinian innocence we cannot
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turn the clock back to the first century that is illegitimate we also cannot turn it back to the fourth Century constantinian ISM that is
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illegitimate that period of what he says is innocence it's now romanticized the time when the church was largely persecuted okay fed to lions
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in Rome we really want to go back to that time um that time is gone but also the time in which the church had a say
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had a voice in the public form that time gone however the church cannot be
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quiet what it says and how it says it must change must change because what it has said over the past Generations has not been the
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gospel it has been a blend of traditional conservative lifestyle philosophy mixed with democracy and
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republicanism and republicanism and capitalism and also a bit of you got to throw some white paint in there too for the last couple hundred years the church has been mighty white and its reach
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across the world has has spread a Christianity that many nonwhite people view as view as colonialism and much of the missionary
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efforts have been nothing more than trying to change people into Brits or Americans or Germans depending on where they're coming from not Christians okay
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so we don't have a place in the public forum but that doesn't mean we don't have a voice how many of the prophets were welcomed in the public
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forum I mean the true prophets not the ones that said peace peace when there is no peace or go forth King and conquer no those prophets were false
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they were always welcome right but how many of the prophets were welcome none they were killed and if the church is a prophetic organism which I
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believe Christianity I think it's undeniably a prophetic religion it's a proclaiming thus saith the Lord it's also a proclaiming thus doeth the Lord he he has done
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this and that's what we Proclaim so what are the chances of that being acceptable well Paul said that the message that he brought of Christ
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crucified was crucified was foolishness it was a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles well we don't encounter many Jews
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anymore but is not the gospel still foolishness to the Greek it is is it not foolishness to
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science we we we hear people acting today like science has proven that when a man dies he stays dead as if the people of the first
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century didn't know that we needed modern science to tell us that the resurrection is
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unscientific we've always known that the dead stay dead okay so when Paul says how do I start where is the wise
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man where is the Scribe where is the debater of this age has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world he goes on he says we preach Christ crucified to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles
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foolishness but to those who are the called both Jews and Greeks Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God now elsewhere it's those who
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believe and there's that interesting tangle of divine sovereignty and human will right but which one is prior without denying human will one of
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them has to be prior one of them has to be um predominant whether it's the will of man or The Sovereign Choice election of
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God he says to those who are called it is the power of God it is the wisdom of God okay that hasn't changed when Paul says in 2 Corinthians
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that that we are the aroma of Life unto life we are the fragrance of Christ to God Among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing to the one
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Aroma from Death to death to the other an aroma from life to life and who is adequate for these things that hasn't changed when Paul says in 2 Corinthians
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5 that we have been entrusted with a Ministry of reconciliation on the basis of a new creation that hasn't changed the church in the world hasn't
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changed in fact the only thing that makes it appear that the church has CH have you ever been sitting in your car at an intersection and the car next to
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you starts to drift and you feel like you're moving and you hit the break you you're already on the break okay you're not moving but the perception is something's moving it must be me well
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something's moving but it's not us it's not the church the age around us is passing away the age around us is what's moving and
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it makes it feel like we're moving we're not we're grounded on the Rock we're the immovable object if we're
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the church because we are grounded on the rock of Jesus Christ we are grounded in the truth so Paul says the church is the pillar and
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Foundation the foundation is not supposed to move nor are the pillars supposed to move if the building is going to stay put
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then the foundation and the supports need to stay put now that does not mean as I've said many times that we go back into the past and try to adopt an ecclesiology of a
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different age this is again this is a very common it's a form of this retreat but we don't necessarily go back to the New Testament Church we go back
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to the 17th century Puritans in England okay we go back back to the 16th century in Geneva and and Calvin's little um
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what what do you call it perfect city of God or that what did John Knox call School of Christ the perfect School of Christ we can't do that that that is that is actually a denial of
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Providence we we're trying to actually we're we're not liking the way our age is passing away so we're going to go back to another one that has already passed away well one of the ADV of that is that
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we can recreate it however we want which is what a lot of homeschool curricula do with colonial America they rewrite it the way they wanted it to read but not
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the way it actually read at the time okay the 17th century in England was not a wonderful time they had a civil war okay the 16th century in Geneva was not
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a wonderful time so every generation of the church has faced the passing away of what was supposed to be stability and
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order in their culture but the church in every one of those Generations was intended to be a rock that was not moved by the
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storms which means as the writer of Hebrew says we hold fast the confession of our faith or as Paul says in
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Ephesians having done all to stand you know there are words of solidity in the New Testament not
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fluidity and everything around us is fluid but it's always been that way again I've said this before if you read the sermons of the Puritans you will
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hear them hear them lamenting the wickedness and immorality of their age every single generation of the church go back to chisone Golden tongue and you'll hear him
