Separation of Church and State

All right. Good morning and welcome. I greet you in the blessed and worthy name of our Lord again this morning.

Grace and peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. May it be multiplied in each one of your hearts as my heart's desire. OK, I have something that I need to get off my chest.

I felt convicted after yesterday's message. And I just want to share with you what the conviction is. So when I said about my friend in Tennessee who climbed, who the people would say would rather climb a tree to tell a lie than to stand on the ground and tell the truth.

And how I liken that to some people who seem to do a bit of that when it comes to how they interpret the word of God. I just felt like that was a bit of a slant that I was going further than I feel is right or what I desire to do. I do not want to slander or in any way.

Cause anyone harm by my words. I desire to speak boldly the word of God. But also humbly and meekly.

And so if it in any way was offensive to any of you, I apologize and I'm very sorry. And if even if it wasn't, I am sorry. I just wanted to say that at the outset here.

I desire that the Lord could use me as a vessel and where I get out of that place. I desire to have any of you. And no one did come to me by if you have questions about that.

It's just I felt afterward. I just felt a check in my spirit and I wanted to share that with you. OK, so this morning we want to continue on from where we began yesterday.

I would like to again, if we could all rise for prayer and let's pray the Lord's Prayer again this morning. Our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

Again, I would point you to that twice we asked or we we spoke about the kingdom in that prayer. I'd like to again think about the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven. But I'd like to go on from where we were yesterday and I'd like to look at the relationship of this kingdom.

The government, should we say, the government of the kingdom of heaven with the government of this world. And when I say the government of this world, I mean what you probably are thinking is the authorities that we deal with in the world today. The whether it's the policemen on the street or the senators or the congressmen or the governors, you name it, I'm talking about them.

The civil authorities of the land. I'd like to look at scripture this morning and see what our responsibility and their responsibility is. Back in, well, I think it was in 2014.

In a, I told you yesterday, I lived most of my life in Tennessee in a town just north of where we were, it would have been the town that we would have gone to if we needed much of anything. It was a bit larger town, maybe about the size of Lancaster. But Jackson, Tennessee, I'll just tell you where Jackson, Tennessee.

But back in, I think it was in 2014, there was a young couple arrested in that town. Why were they arrested? Well, the police in the town there came up behind them and they seen that on the back of their car where you have your tags, they had a homemade tag. And on that homemade tag, it had a set of numbers.

I don't remember what it was, 55-so-and-so, but it was a statute number and something to the effect about them being sovereign citizens and therefore not bound by the laws of the state. Well, the police didn't automatically accept that they weren't bound by the laws of the state of Tennessee or the laws of the city of Jackson. So they stopped them and they communicated to some extent with them for a half hour trying to get driver's license.

Of course, they were sovereign citizens. They didn't need driver's license and on and on and those type of things because they considered themselves beyond the laws of this country because they were sovereign citizens. In some ways, you and I, if we are born again, if we are born into the kingdom of God, are sovereign citizens.

But it does not allow us to think that we are above the laws of the land we live in. You can turn your Bibles this morning to Romans chapter 13 and we want to look at the Christian view of civil government. I titled it Separation of Church and State.

I told you yesterday about how it is disastrous for those two to mix. I believe that's the case. I believe that it is something, if you look at history, and we want to do a bit of that today, you find that time and again, that's what happened when the two were tried, where they tried to mix them, where they did mix them.

The results were not what you and I would desire to see. So, if we could, this morning, we could look at Romans chapter 13 in light of what we looked at yesterday, that we are foreigners. We are aliens.

I gave you an example of how that I've been in other countries, and maybe before we start reading here this morning, I'll just give you, since I related a little bit about the sovereign citizen, the difference for me, when I have been in foreign countries, I did not go there and when, for instance, we've been to Mexico lots of times. And it was a situation there where, I'll just be right up front with you about how it was. The police there seen Americans, it seemed to me at least, this is the case, they seen Americans as someone that's easy to get some money out of.

And what they would try to do is they'd stop you for violations which didn't happen, if I could say that. So, it wasn't uncommon for you to get stopped for speeding when you weren't speeding. And so, I learned after some time, after getting stopped a few times, I learned that my best bet was to look straight ahead, even if I seen, and usually these policemen were on foot, and they would use whistles to stop you.

But when I was stopped by those policemen, I didn't tell them, I'm a U.S. citizen, so you have no right to stop me. No, because I was in their country, and I was bound by the laws of their country. And so, I think it is for us as citizens of the kingdom of heaven, we are citizens of the kingdom of heaven, here in this country, and we're bound by the laws of this country to a degree.

And I'll give some of the caveats a little bit later. Romans chapter 13, verse 1. Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no power but of God. The powers that be are ordained of God.

Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God, and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do thou which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same.

For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid. For he beareth not the sword in vain.

For he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore, ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. For for this cause pay ye tribute also, for they are God's ministers attending continually upon this very thing.

Render, therefore, to all their dues tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, and fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. And that's where we'll end our reading in Romans here this morning. I'd like to make a couple of comments and then look at the verses.

The power that it's speaking of here is not power like having might in that sense, but it's authority. So when it talks about the higher powers, it's talking about the higher authorities. It's talking in verse 1 there, for there is no power but of God.

That is saying there is no authority but of God. Another word that I'd like to just point out to you this morning is minister. Now today in many churches a minister is the one who is leading out in the church and shepherding and giving oversight and those type of things.

This minister here is the same word that's used for deacon in the New Testament. Diakonos, I think, is the word. I didn't look these words up this morning, but it's servant is what that means.

So when it says here he's the minister of God, it's just saying that he's the servant of God. That these officers or these authorities are servants of God. So we can see from that, I think, that what Paul is writing here is that he is concerned that they understand what their place is as citizens, shall I say, of a higher country in the country that they are currently living in.

Verse 1, this power or authority that they have is given to them by God. Jesus said all power or all authority is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Ultimate authority belongs to God and he can put up or he can put down.

He can exalt or he can abase. And yet he allows many things to happen because of the free will of man, because of sin and many other things in the world. I'd like to just, I guess, for the sake of who I'm speaking to here this morning, maybe as much as anything, not that we older people don't need this as well.

But I'd like to point out in the second sentence, therefore, there is no power but of God. There is no authority but of God. Do you see that? When you go down the highway, do you recognize these authorities are of God? And do you honor them in that way? When you, there's all kinds of other authorities, whether it's in the workplace or in the church or in the home.

Do you respect and reverence your authority as put there by God? They are my godly authority, whether it's in the civil government, which is what it's speaking about here or otherwise. I just thought I would take that because it clearly says there is no authority but of God. It's all of God.

And yes, we're going to look at where the limitations of some of that authority are. But I want to point out that we are tender about it, that we recognize that God is the one that placed them there for us. And it is for our good.

He goes on in verse 2, Whosoever therefore resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God. He's making it very clear that if you resist, you're resisting God. And they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.

And then he goes on and he says this, For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Now see, so I think we can gather from this that Paul is not referring to despots when he says this. He's not referring to Mussolini's or Hitler's or Idi Amin's or you name the people who, because of them, millions of people have been murdered.

That's not what he's referring to when he says here in verse 3, For rulers are not a terror to good works. Those people were. They were a terror to good works.

And so we can't take this across the board and say that all of these people are not a terror to good works. We're referring to the benevolent authorities. I think it has to be understood in the context of what we have here.

Does that mean that if we have authorities that aren't benevolent, that automatically lets us off the hook? No, that is not what that means. But I'm just trying to point out that that is who he's referring to in this verse. For he makes it clear that they are not a terror to good works.

There are authorities that are terrors to good works. We know that of many Christians who suffered tremendously for their faith, that was a terror to their good works. But he's pointing out here benevolent authorities.

Verse 4, For he is the minister of God to thee for good. Again, he's pointing out that he's there for our good. They are there for our good.

These benevolent authorities are for our good. And we'll look at a couple other scriptures that point out the very same thing and actually point out that that is what their intended purpose is. What I'd like to point out at this point, if you just ponder with me for a bit, the life of the Apostle Paul himself.

He's writing here about Roman government. He's writing this to the people in Rome. And he's giving these, shall I say, precepts, these counsels, these exhortations to the Christians there in Rome.

But think about the Apostle Paul himself and how he met his end. It was right from one of these authorities. They chopped his head off.

The emperor of Rome, the Caesar, who is the emperor, was the one that passed sentence on him, as we look at history at least, that's what it would seem. They passed the sentence and he was executed. So, do we believe then that if we, some people might take this, I think they take it too far and think that the fact that they're God's servants means that okay, whatever they do is okay and right, or is what they should do.

That's why I'm trying to point out that that is not the case. We don't believe that it was God that designed for Nero, if that was who it was, there's some question about that. Many people believe that it was Nero who actually executed or had Paul executed.

I don't believe that it was God's will that that would be done, but that is what he did. I'd like to look a bit at the purpose, the limitations, the obligations, and the responsibilities of authorities. The purpose, if you look, you can turn your Bibles to 1 Peter 2 and we'll start reading in verse 13.

Here, not only do we see what we're again called to, the very same thing that Paul wrote to the Romans there, Peter is writing to the ones that he's writing to there. He says in verse 13 of 1 Peter chapter 2, Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king as supreme or unto governors as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God that with well-doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men as free and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God, honor all men, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.

In verse 14, we see clearly what the purpose of authorities is. And I believe if we gather just by, maybe we can say more by reading between the lines in Romans 13, we see the exact same thing. But here it says it's for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of them that do well.

Now, let's look at 1 Timothy chapter 2 in the same context and see what our... Here in 1 Peter, we've seen what our responsibility is towards them. But in 1 Timothy chapter 2, in verse 1, he says, I exhort, therefore, that first of all supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and for all that are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. So here again, he gives us what they're there for, I believe, when he says that we should pray for this.

We should pray for what they are there for, which is that we could live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. That is what we are to pray for. That's our responsibility to the authorities of the land.

We are called, as Christians, as citizens of another country, we are called to pray. To pray for those. Not only to pray, but to submit.

Those are our responsibilities. Those are what we as citizens of another country are called to do. Limitations.

Well, maybe I'll, before I go to that, maybe I'll, if you want to turn your Bible to Matthew chapter 26, I'd just like to look and make a comparison here in Matthew chapter 26 to Romans chapter 13. I should have maybe told you to keep your finger in Romans chapter 13, because we'll go back and forth to that occasionally here. But in Matthew chapter 26, the context here is where Judas comes with a band of men to apprehend Jesus, and we'll break in here in verse 51.

And behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword and struck a servant of the high priest and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto him, put up again thy sword into his place, for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be? So Jesus is making it clear to Peter here, though it doesn't name him in this account.

We do in another gospel it does. He's making it clear there to him that he did have the authority. He could have called twelve legions of angels if he had so chosen, but he didn't do it.

He had the authority to do that, but he didn't. He allowed this to happen. But what I want to point out here in relation to Romans chapter 13, in Romans chapter 13 we have this phrase, for he beareth not the sword in vain.

Whereas in this passage it says, they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Do you see the difference? Do you see how that the ministers of God that we're reading about, or the servants of God, the authorities that are put in place, the civil authorities, that they are responsible to bear the sword. They are there to, it's not the sword anymore.

Let's use modern day vernacular. They're there to bear the gun. They're there to use the gun, and they don't do it in vain.

We know there are people that have risen up because of that. And we live in a time when they're talking about blue lives matter. And we've heard the thing about defunding police.

And those type of things are going on in the country that we live in. But we as citizens of another country, it's clear here in Matthew chapter 26, that we do not bear the sword. Because he that takes the sword shall perish with the sword.

That's what Jesus says to us, citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, rather than the earthly Jerusalem. There's a clear difference there.

The other thing I'd like to point out from Romans chapter 13 is, let me see where it is here. In verse 4, it says, For he is the minister of God to thee for good, but if thou do that which is evil, be afraid. So there it says, if you do that which is evil, be afraid.

Why? It goes on and it says, because he doesn't, I'll use the modern vernacular, he doesn't bear or carry the gun in vain. If you would look at the previous chapter in Romans, in Romans chapter 12, Paul is giving instruction there to us, the citizens of the heavenly kingdom. And what he says to us is, again, in opposition to what he's saying about the government of this world.

He says there that we are not to be overcome of evil, but to overcome evil with good. Here it says, if you do evil, be afraid. They're going to do something.

That sword is there for a purpose. That gun is there for a reason. And they'll use it.

And it's right for them to do it according to the authority that's placed to them or allowed for them to have by God. I'd like to give some of my thoughts and some of this is just that. It's my thoughts.

Why is it that God has designed this? Why is it that we have Romans chapter 13 and given this that they are the ministers of God. They are ordained of God. They are put in place.

Why is that? Well, I believe that God is a God of order. He orders the world. He has put things in order.

And we know that as we looked yesterday at some of what happened in the Old Testament as sin came into the world and how wickedness got worse and worse and on and on, I believe that it's His design, not in the perfection of the kingdom of God, but in the earthly that He has put these people in place to keep order. That is what their responsibility is. And as long as they're doing that, they're in the realm that God has placed them in.

That's why it seems to me as I look at the Scriptures that we have that give us what their responsibilities are, what their powers are, and what their purpose is. It seems that is what the place is for them. Jesus, in Luke chapter 20, verse 22, He was asked a question.

And the question was this. Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar or no? But He perceived their craftiness and said unto them, Why tempt ye me? And then He asked them to show Him a penny. Show me a penny.

Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar's. And He said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar's, and unto God the things which be God's. So we clearly see that we do have a responsibility to, the same way as it speaks of there in Romans, of paying tribute or taxes.

It's interesting that He didn't have a penny to pull out of His own pocket, isn't it? We'll just point out one more example where we see that Jesus clearly would have power, or does have power. And that's in John chapter 19, verse 10. This is when He's before Pilate.

And then saith Pilate unto him, Speakest thou not unto me? This is when He'd been asking Him questions and He wasn't answering. And He asks Him, Don't you speak to me? Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee? And Jesus answered, How couldst thou have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above? Therefore He that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin. So, it's making it clear again here that Pilate didn't have any power unless it was given him.

Moving on. So, what does it mean that they are ordained by God? I'll just give you a couple of Old Testament scriptures. Again, I would just again ask you to consider what we have looked at now.

We've seen that in Romans there, it's obviously speaking about benevolent authorities. We see there in 1 Timothy and 1 Peter, where we read that there it's clear that that is what we're to pray for, and that's what they're there for, is to protect the good and punish the evil. And here in Jeremiah, it gives us a little bit about how God uses kings.

For example, in Jeremiah chapter 27 verse 6, And now have I given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, who my servant. Now, I don't think any of us think that he was a righteous king at this point. We don't think that he was a citizen of the Israelite kingdom.

Not at all. He was a Babylonian. And yet, God says of him, my servant.

The same word basically as what we see there in Romans chapter 13. Isaiah of Cyrus, who was a later conqueror there of the kingdom there of Babylon, of the Medes and the Persians there. It says in Isaiah chapter 44 verse 28, That saith of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, speaking of God.

And he says of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, And shall perform all my pleasure, even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built, and to the temple thy foundation shall be laid. At this point, I'd like to point out another thing. This here could make us think that God just somehow makes them do whatever he wants them to do.

He just somehow works in their mind or whatever, and they do what he wants them to do. I tend to think that's not the case, because we see so many examples of how God actually works to accomplish his purpose. He brings circumstances into people's lives to bring about what he wants to accomplish.

And I turn your attention, just for an example of this, to Pharaoh in Egypt. So what you had there is you had a king who had the children of Israel captive. They were enslaved there in Egypt.

And this king, God's design was to let these people go. That's what God designed. So what did he do? Did he just go in and he changed Pharaoh's mind? And Pharaoh all of a sudden said, oh, I don't need you guys after all.

Just go ahead and go. No. He had to bring those plagues and those things into his life to cause him to be willing to let them go.

Because he won't go against our wills. He will work with the will to cause people to do what he needs done. And ultimately, they don't have to do it.

He made him willing to do it. Just to point that out. And I'm seeing all of a sudden that I need to probably move a little bit quicker here.

I'd like to point out another aspect here. And that's if you want to turn your Bibles to Luke chapter 4. We'll quickly read that. Luke chapter 4, a beginning reading in verse 5. And this is when Jesus was very, very hungry.

This is when he had been tempted. And now Satan is taking him up into a high mountain. It says, and the devil taking him up into a high mountain showed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

And the devil said unto him, all this power will I give thee, and the glory of them, for that is delivered unto me. And to whomsoever I will, I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.

And Jesus answered and said unto him, you're lying? No, he didn't say that. Get thee behind me, Satan, for it is written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. So, I do think that Satan is the prince of the power of the air, is the way it says.

But he is the prince in this world. He is ordering the affairs of men in many ways. God ultimately can call him on the carpet, so to speak.

He can ultimately keep him from doing things, but he has a lot of power. He is loose, and he is about seeking whom he may devour. And he's using people and doing all kinds of things to destroy and to bring into destruction.

People and governments and churches. He's about to try to devour us. That's what he's about.

That's how I see it. I know there are some that would say, well, he was just lying. I find it interesting that Jesus, if he was, he at least didn't point it out to him that it was a lie.

Now I'd like to just point out some of the limitations of government, where we can see clearly that the early church did not view that these authorities had ultimate authority to tell them what they could and couldn't do as far as religion. So look at Acts chapter 4. And then for the sake of time, I'm going to just, I think probably we have a lot of Bible scholars here. You probably all know the account without me even having to go to it.

But in Acts chapter 4, we have the example here of where Peter and John were brought before the council. And in verse 19, well, let me just read verse 18. And they called them and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus.

So they were brought before the ordained by God authorities. They were brought before them and they were told that you are not to speak about this name Jesus. What was their response? But Peter and John answered and said unto them, whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.

And of course, I think it's obvious what they did about that. They went right on preaching. They did not stop for an instant.

They went right on. And so should we. We should not be cowered by authorities that tell us that we cannot speak the name of Christ.

Now, we should be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. We should be wise. I don't think it's wise, generally speaking, for us to try to ram the gospel down people's throat.

I have seen people who had that type of mentality, it seemed to me, where they were trying to force feed people. You cannot give a person a drink with a fire hose. It is just going to be overpowering and they're not going to get to drink.

Set the cup of water before them and make it appealing. Give them some salt, maybe, to where they get thirsty enough that they want to drink. Anyway, I'm veering off here again.

And then I'd like to just point quickly another verse in 2 Corinthians 10. And that verse is, I was going to read more, but I'll just read verse 4. 2 Corinthians 10, verse 4. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. What does that mean? That means the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly.

That means that the weapons of our warfare are not guns and spears and swords and those type of things. What are they? The weapons of our warfare are strong to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ and having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience when your disobedience is fulfilled. All right.

I said that I would give you some stories of the chaos that came about because of the mixing of these kingdoms. I don't know how many of you are students of history, how many of you know what happened in history. But I expect a good portion of you are quite familiar with some extent of history at least.

And so I'm going to quickly point out to you some of what happened in early church history. Before I do that, I'll just give you how Jesus responded when they tried to make him. An authority, an authority here.

I want to give you two scriptures that give us an indication. And we as followers of Jesus Christ should follow his example, I believe. In John chapter 6 verse 15, when Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force to make him a king.

He said, Hallelujah, I'll go with you. No, not at all. No, what he said, what he did was he departed, he hid himself, he went out into the mountain himself alone.

I believe that's an example for us to see what we should do when we are asked. I have been in those type of places and yeah, I'm not going to go into those stories. But where people want good people, they want upstanding citizens to take their place as an authority in the community.

That's not something that's out of the stretch of maybe some of you of where you live. Where people will come to you and ask you. I'd like you to be the mayor of the town or you name it.

Those type of things happened in my lifetime. Anyway, going on to Luke chapter 12 verse 13. And one of the company said unto him, Master, speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance with me.

And he said unto him, Man, who made me a judge or divider over you? So here again, he would have had the possibility if he would have taken it to be a judge there. To judge between these brothers about what's right in this place. He said, that's not me.

I've got a higher work to do. That's my words for it. That's what I see.

And you and I have a higher calling in life than to get involved in these things of this life. This kingdom that is from beneath is much lower than the kingdom that you and I are from. And we don't want to be ensnared in the kingdom from here.

Here's what Tertullian said. He addressed this to Roman pagans. And he said, all zeal and pursuit of glory and honor is dead in us.

So we have no pressing inducement to take part in your public meetings. Nor is there anything more entirely foreign to us than the affairs of state. Would to God that would be the testimony of all of us.

We acknowledge one all-embracing commonwealth, the world. We renounce all your spectacles. Among us, nothing is ever said, seen or heard that has anything in common with the madness of the circus, the immodesty of the theater, the atrocities of the arena or the useless exercise of the wrestling ground.

Why do you take offense at us? Because we differ from you in regard to your pleasures. I would to God that the authorities of this country, the people in our communities, would wonder why we are different in the things that we find pleasure in. I hope that's the testimony for you.

So going on to history for the first almost 300 years, there was very little mixing. But then in 312 A.D., something happened. And let's see a show of hands.

How many of you know what might have happened in 312 A.D.? OK, so I see a couple of hands. Could you tell me what happened? Yes. OK, Constantine became a Christian, supposedly.

Well, actually, I don't even know whether he claimed to have been a Christian. But what happened is he made an edict. It's called the Edict of Milan.

And that was in 312, is when he made that edict. And that's when Christianity was legalized. Up to that point, Christianity was not legal.

It was not legal to be a Christian. And so he legalized Christianity. Why did he do that? What he said, I don't know whether this was Satan, what happened, but what he said was that he seen the sign of the cross in the sky.

And the words in Latin, I guess, were, In this sign, conquer. And so, the cross, obviously, is Christian. And so he decided, OK, this already happened, I believe, in 310.

In 310 or 311, maybe, where he seen this sign, and he was on his way to a battle, I believe, and he seen this sign, and he went to that battle, and what they did is they put this cross on the shields of the men, had all kinds of ways that they showed now that they're conquering in this sign, the sign of the cross. And he was victorious. He went out and conquered.

What about Constantine? Let me give you a little bit of history. He was divorced and remarried. His first wife met Minervina, and he divorced her to marry his second wife, Falsta.

Actually, I said the edict of Milan was in 312. It was in 313. It was in 312 where he seen that sign.

He felt that he could bless the church. That's what he felt. And I'm not saying that he wasn't sincere.

He felt he could bless the church by using the means that he had in his power to give them, to be a friend to the church. He rebuilt Christian places of worship. He built them up, not only these little places where they had been meeting before, but he made them into big temples like the pagans were meeting in.

And he made these huge things. And not only that, but he started paying the ministers of the gospel. He started paying them.

He was very friendly towards Christians. Some good came from it. He outlawed the gladiator games.

Abortion was made unlawful. Some of those types of things happened which were good. But what was lost? What happened? Up to this time, the pagans persecuted the Christians.

Can you believe it, brothers and sisters? What happened now is it turned the other. Christians persecuted pagans. They demolished the pagan temples.

And they thought they were doing God's service. They thought they were doing God's service in doing it. That's what happened from that.

And not only did they start fighting the pagans, they even started fighting each other. That's what happened. For 300 years, they didn't have any of that.

While they didn't mix with the secular authorities, with the civil authorities. But when they mixed, that's the disaster that happened. Is this some isolated incident? Not at all.

This is what has happened through the ages, time and again. You can think with me, if you would, to what happened with the reformers, with the Catholics and the persecution of the Christians there. You can think with me with even what happened, what was it called, where they were, the word escapes me now, but where they were trying to, they went over and were conquering the Muslims.

What was the? The Crusades. The Crusades, thank you. They were out, again, a holy war, they considered it.

And again, we see the terrible injustices that were done. In 8325, Constantine called the Council of Nicaea. There were, at that point in time, he gave an invitation to 1800 bishops, about 250 to 300 of them accepted the invitation.

All expenses paid, come to Nicaea in present day Turkey. They went to that, he was the one that called it, he was the one that moderated, to some extent, they did have another bishop that was supposed to be responsible and for the most part was taking responsibility for the discussions that they had while they were there. But then, the next year, so you tell me whether he was a Christian or not.

The next year, he had his oldest son, Crispus, killed. And not only that, he had his second wife killed. That's in AD 326.

This Christian emperor. Well, about AD 337, he was on his deathbed. And he still had all kinds of people who, Christian, and I'll just use quotes for that, who thought he was the best thing that had ever happened for them.

But in AD 337, he was on his deathbed. And he called for Eusebius, by name, to come and baptize him. That was his first baptism, as far as I know.

Whether he died a Christian, I can't tell you. I hope he did turn to the Lord in his last days. I need to bring this to a close.

I just mentioned to you that even in this country, there has been a lot of these type of things that have happened where you take the Puritans, for instance. They hanged Quakers in Massachusetts. It happened here.

I'd just like to read this here in closing. Back in 1950, at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, Professor Theodore Erisman decided to conduct an intriguing experiment. He fitted a man with a pair of spectacles that turned his whole vision upside down.

At first, that man stumbled and groped his way about. But then, after less than ten days, something very interesting happened. His brain turned his upside down vision back the way it was before, so that everything appeared the right way up again.

Now, very much the same thing can happen to you and I. And I think happens time and again. When we get the kingdom of this world and the kingdom of heaven mixed up, and we get things upside down, and we don't have it in its place in that order, we are going to get to the place where it looks like it's right side up, and it's not. I think that's what has happened in many of these circumstances, and I could go on and on about the many different examples that we see in history where Christians got mixed up in the wrong kingdom.

God bless you. God be with you. Thank you for listening to this message.

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