In this sermon, the speaker discusses the coming of a man of sin who is described as being influenced by Satan. This man will possess great power, perform signs and wonders, and deceive those who do not love the truth. The speaker also talks about the Christian Church, which had lost sight of Christ and salvation by grace through faith. Instead, it embraced a new head, the vicar of Christ, who held authority over kings and played a role in the division of the Roman Empire. The sermon also touches on the danger of being influenced by external rituals and traditions instead of focusing on the liberty of faith in Christ.

But it is good to know the history of the Church. Israel knew her history, and as you know, in many of the Psalms and many of the Prophets, the history of the nation was re-do, both with praise and thankfulness, and also remembering the failures of previous generations. So, we look at Church history as something which happened under the hand and under the foreknowledge of God. A mere haphazard string of events, but something which the Lord knew about, and in spite of all the machinations of evil, God planned his own tremendous purposes down through the age. In our earlier lectures we looked at the Church from the time of the Acts of the Apostles on to the reign of Constantine. We saw how the Church began vigorously with Gentile outreach, proclaiming the Gospel all around the Mediterranean and probably as far as Britain in New Testament times. We saw the pure doctrine that Paul was teaching. We thank God for that tremendous fountainhead of Church teaching in the Pauline Epistles. We then saw how the mystery of iniquity was already at work. Paul knew it, and John knew it, and John was able to say, already many Antichrists have come. Soon after the death of the Apostles, as we look at the writings of the early Church, we find that the Gospel is quickly lost sight of. The plain declaration of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, the plain conditions of repentance and faith become obscured. And in the place of the basic simplicities of the Gospel, another kind of Gospel is taught. A Gospel of obedience and submission to your Bishop. A Gospel of salvation and eternal life through the sacraments of the Church, particularly through baptism and the Lord's Supper. It became a sacramental Gospel rather than a Gospel of grace through faith. And then Paul began to accrue to the great Metropolitan Bishops. That is those Bishops who were the head of the Church in one of the big towns, like Jerusalem, Alexandria, Ephesus, Rome, and later on Constantinople. The corruptions that were creeping into the early Church, almost like ivy creeps into an oak tree, those corruptions were hindered by the Roman Emperor and the power of Rome. Hindered chiefly through persecution. The very thing that the Church feared was the best thing for it. Because men who were ambitious for power and joined the Church in times of peace and prosperity were missing when persecution arose. And they had great difficulty in reinstating themselves in the positions of responsibility which they had once held. These series of major persecutions, at least ten of them, during those two fifty years discouraged corrupt human ambition in the Church. And so kept it much more pure than it would have been. After the Diocletian persecutions, which were the worst of all, Constantine was elected by his army to be the Caesar, the Augustus. He was converted apparently to Christianity in 312 and the following year passed the Edict of Toleration for Christianity. It now became an accepted religion among the other religions. It began to pay men to be Christians. You were better off now if you belonged to the Christian Church. You would get government favour and government posts. Your business would prosper. It was a good thing now. Whereas before it had been a costly thing to follow Christ. Now it was a good thing to join the Church. And of course the Church rapidly grew. No longer persecuted but favoured. It rapidly grew in number, in power and in riches. And then an extraordinary thing happened. Constantine, having consolidated his power at Rome, went over to Byzantium on the northern end of the Adriatic and had a look at the old city of Byzantium and under some kind of inspiration marked out on foot the boundaries of his new capital. Those who were with him were amazed that the circuit that he drew was bigger than any city then existing. But Constantine, quite undismayed, went on marking out the boundary of that enormous city and soon Constantine came to be a tremendous city. Well fortified, almost impregnable. And before he died Constantine moved the seat of his power from Rome to Constantinople. So that the Emperor, who had been the great limiting power against corruption in the Christian Church at Rome, was removed out of his place. A most significant moment. Many of the Church Fathers living at that time said this is one of the signs that Antichrist is on his way. You will find out that in your last notes. The Roman Bishop was now free to consolidate and expand the new empire of the Church. At first it was spiritual but later on it took on all the qualities of an ordinary earthly empire. Rome now had Christian Emperors, that is Christian by name, with the exception of Julian the Apostate. He was the man who tried to rebuild Jerusalem. The story goes that being a rationalist and deciding that prophecy was not real, he thought that as Christ had said that Jerusalem wouldn't be rebuilt until the times of the Gentiles were fulfilled, he would prove that Christ was wrong. And he ordered teams of workmen to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem. Something happened. Fire broke out from the foundations. Fireballs scattered the workmen and eventually that tremendous team, ordered by the Emperor, had to be given up. In the meantime, wave after wave of invading Germanic tribes from beyond the Rhine, that had come apparently from Asia and the Baltic Sea, and now came flooding in beyond the Rhine and the Danube, Goths and Ostrogoths and Vandals and Franks, Alimani and Huns and Heruli, coming one after another, someways driving the other ones before them, pillaged and partitioned the helpless empire. It collapsed in 476 AD. In 426, they used to tell me at school, the Roman armies withdrew from Britain for the last time. The great empire was drawing in its tentacles to defend the life of its heart. And in 476 AD the whole thing collapsed. The Roman power was now removed. We have already seen that Paul was writing to the Thessalonians about the mystery of iniquity. And he said that the mystery of iniquity was already working in the church. He said that they knew who it was who hindered and what it was that hindered. He said that the men of sin would not be revealed until those two hindering powers had been taken out of the way. You may check that in 2 Thessalonians 2, a most interesting prophetic passage. In order to steady the Christian church against the idea of an any moment catastrophe, he told the church those things which would happen before the coming of the day of the Lord. Things obviously that the church would see, because it would be a waste of time trying to steady the mind of God's people by explaining to them in detail something that they would never see. They were to see the events leading up to the coming of the Lord, so that as these events passed into history, the church of God might be prepared for the great crisis of the second coming. And so, he saw this sequence of falling away first. You have already noted that as having begun. Then, after the falling away, that man of sin be revealed, the son of tradition, the Judas-like apostle, who opposes and exalted himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, which was a paraphrase of the title of Caesar. He opposed, he would oppose and exalt himself against all heathen forms of religion. And he, as God, would sit in the temple of God, that is the church, not some rebuilt temple at Jerusalem. Paul never referred to that as the temple of God, only to the church. Sitting in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Then, speaking of these things, he said, Remember ye not that when I was yet with you I told you, and now ye know what could hold it that he might be revealed in his time? For the mystery of iniquity does already work. The corruption was in the church in Paul's day. Only he who hinders will hinder until he be taken out of the way. The hindering oppressions of the Roman emperors kept the early church in a measure of purity. Then shall that wicked one be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume to stages, first consume with the spirit of his mouth, and eventually destroy with the brightness of his coming. And then he goes on to describe the career of this man of sin. His coming is after the working of Satan, with all power. You remember Satan entering into Judas during the time of our Lord's ministry? So would be the coming of this one. With all power and signs and lying wonders, with all deceivableness and unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. That is, they didn't want the pure gospel, so God let them have strong delusion that they should believe the lie. That they all might be damned who believe not the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness. Something similar had happened in Israel, when they did not want the pure law of God from his own utterance, impinging upon their hearts. And they asked for a secondary form of religion. It was through their own destruction. And they baptised and baptised until all except two died, as you know, in the wilderness of that generation. Roman security, coming back to our notes, was destroyed. Men feared in the 5th century that the end of the world was at hand. There was quite a panic. They felt that the times were closing in on them, that destruction was coming. Then, out of the ruins of the Roman Empire of the West, within the boundaries of the Atlantic on the West, the Mediterranean on the South, the Danube on the East, and the Rhine on the North, the ten turbulent kingdoms of medieval Europe began to show themselves. At first invading, slaughtering and destroying, but later settling down and becoming civilised. They were the fathers of modern Europe. The Franks settled in France, the Visigoths in Spain, the Lombards in Italy, and so on. They began to divide up the old Roman Empire into what was beginning to become the dawn of modern Europe. But they were violent people, half savage. There was one civilising force, however, which met them and little by little tamed them. And that was the Christian Church. With its monks, its priests, its churches, its crosses, its sacraments, its feast days, it was ready for them. And as they came pouring in, so the missionaries were out to meet them. Some very heroically lost their eyes in those tremendous days. But alas, the converts they made were not usually converts to Christ himself, but converts of a huge organised church. Converts sprinkled quickly with water when the king of a country submitted in all his subjects to have to become Christians or else pay the consequences. It was a rapid but unreal growth. The great civilising force was the Christian Church, which although it had lost sight of Christ the head and the truth of salvation by grace through faith, now had a new head to take Christ's place. The lamb-like vicar of Christ, dressed in his priestly robes, with his shepherd's crook in his hand. He was now able to stand in Christ's place as Christ's first apostle and be recognised as the vicar of Christ and the bishop of Rome. Although lamb-like in appearance, he could speak as a dragon and by his edicts he could make and unmake kings and bring those warring kings to order so that in due course they became the ten kings of Christendom. People are still looking for them. They turned up a thousand years ago and more. You know, right down through medieval history, the ten kings of Christendom. So they were always looking forward to see things fulfilled whereas often they've been fulfilled in the past on a scale so big that we couldn't see the wood for trees. So now let's have a look at some of the major dates in that period which indicate this gradual shift of power into the hands of the Roman bishop. You needn't pass an exam on these things but I would advise you to keep this bit of paper because these dates are not easy to find in ordinary history books or it's only a few of them. The A.D. 313, the Edict of Toleration, frees the church from oppression. In 324 Constantine was founded, Constantinople was founded. Constantine leads Rome to the bishop. In 325 the council of Nice or Nicea called by Constantine to decide Christian doctrine. That is when the Arian heresy was at last, after a long struggle, condemned and the Trinitarian viewpoint adopted by the church. The great Cathedral of Saints of Fire was dedicated at Constantinople and Christian churches, buildings, began to appear all over the empire. Some of them were converted heathen temples and some of them were new edifices built mostly on the Byzantine style. By this time it is said that one half of the inhabitants of the Roman Empire professed to be Christians. That's really some God. But very, very few knew Christ as Saviour. The Lord just had a handful here and there. Christianity is now the state religion. 361-363, the shorter career of Julian the Apostate who was a rationalist, not an out-and-out heathen, but he wanted to disprove Christianity. The following bishop, the following emperor, Jovian, restored the church and the bishops. Now comes the division of East and West, Rome. Valentin took the Western Empire and his brother Valens took the Eastern Empire and so there was a division made. Rome being the capital of the West, that is the area that particularly concerns both Daniel and John in Revelation. In 375, the Christian emperor Rhaetian renounces the heathen title of Pontifex Maximus, that is, head of all the heathen religions. Twenty years later, the bishop of Rome took it for himself and has kept it ever since. The head of the mystery religions. The chief priest. Pontifex comes from the Roman word for a bridge. The man who builds the bridge between God and man. 410, Rome was sacked by Alaric the Visigoth. It had no more strength to resist the invaders. They came sweeping across the Alps, rapidly advanced through Lombardy and sacked Rome. It was only the intervention of the Roman bishop that prevented them destroying the city altogether. Pope Innocent I, now beginning to use the title Pope, requires all Western churches to conform to the customs of Rome. The church is now becoming unified under Rome. Notice how the Roman bishop is stepping into power. Then a little while later, 425, the emperor enacts that all Western bishops obey the bishop of Rome. Now he's backed by the empire authority. Another plundering of Rome in 425 by another wave of invaders, the Vandals, and against Eric. They plunder Rome. Once again, the Roman bishop intervenes and prevents the city from being destroyed. In 476, Romulus Augustulus, the man with the great big title but no power, was the last emperor of Rome. He was banished. That was the end of the Roman Empire. Odoacer becomes the king of Italy. And in the confusion, the bishop of Rome, or Pope of Rome, withdraws the excommunication of the emperor and patriarch of Constantinople on condition that he is acknowledged to be the supreme head of all the churches in the world. And he gets it. That's now confirmed, AD 533, by Justinian, an eager supporter. Justinian is an Eastern emperor, of course. The Western emperors are finished now. Justinian decrees bishop of Rome head of all the churches and of the holy priests of God. Uh-oh. Now backed by the only emperor of Rome left, that is the Eastern emperor, he is declared head of all the churches and of the holy priests of God. No more argument now. Rome leads. In the meantime, we have a note of Columbus, the Celtic missionary, who defected Ireland. Oh, did I miss that? Yes, Patrick in the previous century. I'm sorry I missed him out. He was a man who preached the gospel. Columbus was a good missionary and defected to some of the German tribes, and Scotland particularly. AD 590, Gregory the Great. Tremendous man. Able leader. Powerful organizer. He didn't understand the gospel, but he knew he was head of the church, all right. And he established his power and he demanded that some of the priests straighten up their ways, because there was a general tendency towards celibacy and its inevitable reaction, they were taking spare women in secret. And he spoke out bitterly against this. And he began to shape the church into what it has become from that day on. It began to shape Latin Christianity. And now the church has really assumed tremendous power. And the godless emperor Pocas of the East concedes to Gregory's successor, Pope Boniface III, headship over all Christendom. There it is. He is now fully established in total power. Anybody who disagrees with him is a heretic. His position is absolute. I ought to say a lot more about the tremendous power that Gregory the Great exercised. But if you are reading your tally, I hope you are, I hope that you will read in Church History, page 757, now as far as page 773, which will cover our period. It will help you to see the confirmations of many of the things we are talking about. Halley, page 757 to 773. Halley is not exciting to read. If you want the interesting side of history, you read this one. And when you start reading this one, you don't want to drop it. This is the, no, this is especially pre-digestive. And you may read in Fire Upon the Earth, which is delightfully written, up to page 83, and keep more or less abreast of where we are. Fire Upon the Earth, up to page 83. Halley, from 757 to 773. The one will give you some of the atmosphere, the other will give you some of the hard facts. You will see how little by little the papacy had come into power, and was now so well established that there was no power in Europe that could effectively and successfully oppose the papacy for long. Before long we shall see that the papacy gained its states, and so became a king among the ten kings of Europe. Although those estates were never large, the power that the Pope wielded was greater than any other monarch. In some of the great clashes that he had with the, later on with the Holy Roman Emperor, another monarch that had turned up, you will find that always, eventually, although there is a struggle, the papacy comes out on top, gaining strength after strength, until none dare oppose him. In 608, we have Pope Boniface IV, and during his time, the Pantheon at Rome, which was built in 25 BC, and dedicated to Sibylle, the goddess of fertility, and all the gods, was now taken over as one of the chief Christian churches, and was dedicated, instead of Sibylle, and all the gods, dedicated to, oh, I missed that last, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and all the martyrs. You can see how easy it was then, for those who had been worshipping gods, to begin to worship the saints. It's a perfectly natural thing, because the Virgin Mary, and the martyrs, replace, in their thinking, the female deity, and all the gods of the Pantheon. There is scarcely a Christian feast, or Christian ex-biblical custom, which hasn't its roots in the old pagan worship of the nations of Europe. In fact, it's fairly conclusive, that even the bishop's martyr is little more than the fish-head of the god David. Certainly Christ never wore a thing like that. And if you have a look at it, it's a beautiful fish-head. That came straight over from the heathen priests. The emperor Phocas, who had given to the Pope that tremendous exaltation, in 607, two years later, was beheaded for his villainies. He was a murderer, he committed fratricide, he brought such misery on those closely associated with him, that he himself was tried and beheaded for his cruelties. A few years later, something quite obscure happened in the Middle East. Obscure at the time, Mohammed fled under persecution from Mecca to Medina. And the Mohammedans take their calendar from that flight, that Sagira, the flight of Mohammed. He was acquainted with Christians and with Jews of the Middle East, but satisfied with neither, founded his own militant religion. The Christians were all worshipping idols, images of the saints, images of the apostles, icons, pictures of the saints. They were bowing down and worshipping them. And he reacted against this idolatry and the anti-hypocrisy of it all, and he went away and sought his own religion, in which he turned away from the Christian concepts, returned to the Israel concepts of one El, God, now Allah, El, Allah, the same thing, El in our Hebrew, Allah in the Arabic. And the Mohammedan scholars rapidly growing, swept across the Middle East, around the shores of the Mediterranean, and was one of the first great judgments against apostate Christendom. And nearly every church mentioned in the New Testament was wiped out. Ephesus, Smyrna, Thyatira, Pergamon, Colossae, all the lot, wiped out every trace of Christianity gone. Only one left around the Mediterranean, Rome. In 637 Jerusalem was captured by the Pharisees. A quote from the Koran, O people, enter ye into the holy land which God hath decreed for you. It was the basis of their invasion, and you may understand why the Arabs still want to cling to Palestine, when they had that in the Koran. 663, Pope Vitarian orders exclusive use of Latin tongue in church worship. All these tribes which were invading Europe and were settling down, had their own dialects and tongues. But as nobody took much interest in church services anyway, it was people of the sound and the beauty of the building that attracted people. Then it was time for the Pope to order everything to be in the Latin tongue, so you could come to church and not understand a thing, and go home satisfied. Well, why not? That was his decree, and the Latin tongue governed the situation then on for how many years? 1400 years, nearly. In Asia Minor, the Paulipians were reading the Bible, reading the New Testament, loving the Lord, proclaiming Christ, especially devoted to Paul's epistles. They were true believers, so very naturally persecution broke out against them at that time. In the meantime, Pope Leo II was more profitably engaged. He instituted holy water in the churches, so that people could have a nice way of cleansing their soul with their fingers. This was believed right through Christendom. This was believed right through Christendom, and governed Christendom for over a thousand years. 708, Pope Constantine, and in his time, the custom of kissing the Pope's toe was introduced. This was done by the emperors of Europe, and by the cardinals, to remind every generation that the Pope was supreme, king of kings. In 711, the Saracens, that is Mohammedans, having swept through North Africa, came and invaded Spain, and through Spain, the rest of Europe. In 716, we had a lovely character, the Venerable Bede, in North Britain, a general at the time. He loved the Lord, and translated the scriptures into the old English tongue. I forgot what it was called. But it was a readable tongue at the time. And that gracious old monk translated the scriptures for the people of Britain. But at the same time, Winifred in Germany was preaching a pure gospel. A little while later, in the great battle of Tours in France, Charles the Hammer, Charles Martel the Hammer, spanned the tide of Saracen advance, which might have wiped out all Europe, and all Christianity. It was thought, at that point. Tremendous date in history. We might have all been reading the Koran tonight, instead of looking at your Bible. If that hadn't happened. 754. Up to this time, the Bishop of Rome had just been the head of all the churches. But from now on, he becomes a king among kings, as well as a king over kings. For Pepin, the forefather of Charlemagne, father of Charlemagne, grants to the Pope the Exarchate of Ravenna, a big section of central Italy, part of Lombardy. Now he has his own territory, the papal state. A little later, 768, Charlemagne, that great ruler, nominally Christian, and being an eager servant and son of the church, wherever he conquered, he compelled those who surrendered to become Christians. That's the way to make converts. You get them fast, with what they call the point of the sword. It's much easier to be sprinkled than to be stabbed. And he gained tremendous numbers for Christianity. He also added to the estates of the Pope another kingdom, I've forgotten which. He replaced three kings before he was fully established. And Charlemagne made tithes legally binding to all Europe. That is, everybody, every emperor, every nation, every town, paid its tithe to the church, and particularly as centred in the Pope. He now became one of the richest kings in Europe. 772, Adrian I, sanctioned the use of images. They had been used before, but people weren't entirely happy about them. There were some who protested. But he gave the official papal sanction to the use of images in the churches. He said it was good and profitable. At the same time, he was the first to cause papal money to be coined. Coins bearing his own name. 787, Charlemagne increases the papal states further. A few dates missing there. And we come down to 844, the cruel persecution of the Polyphians by the Empress Theodora. Hundreds of thousands of them were killed, tortured, driven out. The remainder fled to Europe and probably became the forebears of those who protested against the darkness of the church during the following dark ages. In 857, I think we've had a turn to Harry at this point. In 857, Pope Nicholas I put forth the pseudo-Isidorean decrees. Here it is. Nicholas I, 858-867, the first pope to wear a crown. Showing now that he's a king, you see. He has his own land. To promote his claim of universal authority, he used, with great effect, the pseudo-Isidorean decrees. A book that appeared about 857, containing documents that purported to be letters and decrees of bishops and councils of the second and third centuries, all tending to exalt the power of the pope. These included the donation of Constantine, in which Constantine gave power to the pope and gave the papal lands which he later possessed. All these were deliberate forgeries and corruptions of ancient historical documents. But their spurious character was not discovered until some centuries later. Whether Nicholas knew them to be forgeries, at least he lied in stating that they had been kept in the archives of the Roman church from ancient times. But they served their purpose in stamping the claims of the medieval priesthood with the authority of antiquity. The whole thing was a forgery. The papacy, which was the growth of several centuries, was made to appear as something complete and unchangeable from the very beginning. You know, Peter I spoke, and so on. And that was through the pseudo-Isidorean secretum. The object was to antedate by five centuries the pope's temporal power. And he quotes another one, I think it might be Hallam's history, the most colossal literary fraud in history. Yet, it strengthened the papacy more than any other one agency, and formed to a large extent the basis of the canon law of the Roman church. That's high church politics. Well, that's a sad story, isn't it? When you think of the purity of the gospel which Paul handled, and left. If he could see even a tenth of all this, it would be enough to bring him to tears. I don't remember how he wrote, I warned you day and night with tears that after my departure evil men shall come among you, wolves not sparing the flock. He saw it. And all those other related views which we read in his epistles all show that our Lord Jesus and Paul foresaw this fearful apostasy, this falling away, which took the best part of ten centuries to develop. It was so huge. Little by little, it crept into power and displaced the original gospel. Wouldn't this look almost to be like a contradiction to put the cut there? Lord Jesus said, on this rock I will build my church. The gates of hell are not revealed again. If you look at it from the outside you see the gates of hell, gates of hell. Yes, that's right. It looks as though the mystery of iniquity won. But God has a principle in the Old Testament and in the New. It's that principle known as the election of grace. And in all the dark hours of the history of God's dealing with his people, he has kept a handful. You remember Elijah saying, I, even I only, am left. And the Lord said, Elijah, I still have seven thousand who haven't bowed the knee to Baal. And Paul said, even so, there is at this present time an election of grace. There was an election of grace among Israel. There is an election of grace in prison. And we shall be having a look at those. I think, probably right away. Unless somebody else has got any questions. Why would the church continue to use those? I think that as long as the church was Jerusalem centred. They still kept the feasts. Or you remember Paul said, I must be at Jerusalem for Passover. Our translation says Easter. It's in James, but it's really Passover. And then he mentions Pentecost. When he came back to the church. So, it does seem that they found no difficulty in cooperating with Jewish Christians, with the Jewish nation, in keeping the feasts. But, as the gospel spread out, the question of days and seasons and times became a point of controversy. Let's see, where did Paul handle this? Let's have a look at Galatians. Galatians 4.10 4.9 and 10 But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage? Ye observe days and months and times and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain. So there was a church, largely Gentile, being influenced by Jewish Christians, and in danger of going into the bondage of externals, instead of the liberty of the faith of Christ. In Romans, Paul explains that if a man keeps the day, as unto the Lord, he is free to do so. If he refuses to keep the day, he does it for the Lord's sake, he is free to do so. But he says, don't judge your brother. Romans 14. Verse 5 One man esteemeth one day above another, another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord. And he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks. He that eateth not to the Lord, he eateth not, and giveth God thanks. For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord. And whether we die, we die unto the Lord. Whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ both died and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of dead and living. But why dost thou judge, thy brother? Or why dost thou set it not, thy brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord. Every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue confess to God. You may notice incidentally, that Christ is God, and Christ is Lord, from that very passage. So there's the Aryan heresy handled for you. Almost by accident. So, let's see, Paul advocates liberty. But the church rapidly re-imposed its calendar on liberating Christians. It was Easter, Christmas, Good Friday, Saints' Days, until almost every week had some sort of holy day in it. If the church had obeyed the Aryan call of God, to keep us from year to year, let us hear what the Spirit says. If we could watch the Spirit participate and learn the wisdom from Him, then the Holy Spirit would set aside and raise us back again. And interruptions set in, and the light would come. That's the major disease of the Christian church, and our major disease too. Not to respond to the voice of the Holy Spirit. Yes. Is there a time that they can walk on the calendar when the church stops observing the gifts of the Holy Spirit, or the programs of the Christian church? No. There is no clear time. We find some of the ministry gifts obviously functioning during the 2nd century of the Christian era, because we have some warnings in the Didache, the teachings of the Twelve, that if a prophet comes to you and prophesies that you should feed him or give him money, he's a liar. So we know that there were traveling prophetic ministries during the 2nd century. Then, in nearly every group of persecuted believers, there have been evidences of prophetic gifts. Among the polytheans, there were prophets. What age did Madame Diane, Madame Diane was a woman, possessed the nine gifts of the Spirit, the Word of God, the Word of Wisdom, and she was in the church of Rome. She never came out of the church because she was in the church. She was a woman of God. Madame Diane was a wonderful woman. I haven't read it. I'm afraid of it. No, I haven't read it. I'm afraid of it. She had the Word of Wisdom and the Word of Knowledge, people coming to her, to tell her that the prophet had to know what to do, pray for her, and give her, I think, all those gifts of the Spirit. Wesley says, that God has never withdrawn the gifts of the Spirit. They've always been available where there have been people who repent and believe and are willing to move in God. We shall be looking at some of them as we go down through our later history. But the evidence for the Dark Ages isn't very complete. Just a brief note before we have a break. From the 4th to the 10th centuries, the true church was largely lost of view, but God had His remnant according to the election of grace. Thus, Patrick preached the Gospel of Repentance and Faith in Ireland and St. Columba in Scotland. The Venerable B. translated the Gospel of John in Northumbria. Winifred preached Christ in Germany. And Alfred the Great promoted the Gospel in Britain in the 9th century. It's interesting, isn't it? In Atom... In Atom, the Catholics claimed that Patrick preached in fact as a patron saint, and the Protestants claimed that he was just... You were in our home at that time. Freddie Thompson. Yes. It was a Campbell family. Yes, I've seen it. In fact, a heretic chief, while not as a boy. And he was just a... He wasn't a preacher, but he was a preacher. He went to Scotland, and there he committed a real sin. He was a salvation. And from back to Ireland, from Scotland, he preached the Gospel of Christ. So the world would laugh at Tom Cummings and knew it was a great sin to preach the Gospel of Jesus. He was afraid of it because he knew it was a man of God. Afraid so. He actually killed the Protestants. Oh yes. Yes, there's no doubt he left his mark on Ireland. Yes. And in Asia Minor, the Polyphians preached the Gospel in spite of persecution. Constantine of... San Nafoto, that should be. San Nafoto. And then the others paid for this with their lives, that the official church had them killed. Incidentally, the state of the church may be indicated by this. When Pope Domitius in the 5th century was due for election, there was such fighting in the church that 130 were left dead inside the church building. That was the kind of Christianity that was around in those days. Alright, we'll take a break.