Restoration by D. Thomas Lancaster: A critical review (video version) by Pastor Powell

This is the video version of the work that was previously released in written form: Restoration by D. Thomas Lancaster (FFOZ): A review - This is "another gospel" built on a foundation of lies

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4 

What Every Christian Should Know About: Church History

Church History
In this 3 part series, Pastor Powell seeks to highlight some of the most important ideas, people, and movements within the universal Church during its two-thousand year history.  

To view the PowerPoint used by Pastor Powell during the presentation, click on the link below:

Church History PowerPoint

In part 1, the Early Church, the Early heresies regarding the person of Jesus, the Ecumenical Councils, and St. Augustine are the focus.

Church History, Part 1 of 3

In part 2, Monasticism, the power struggle between popes and emperors/kings, the Great Schism, and the Crusades are discussed.

Church History, Part 2 of 3

In part 3, The Reformation, the Thirty Years War, the Modern Missions Movement, and the status of the Church in the World Today are discussed.

Church History, Part 3 of 3

Our Christmas Gift from God

Christmas is the time that we give gifts to others, our children in particular, more than any other time of the year.  At Christmas many of us give gifts to people beyond our family, and devote more to charity as well.  This enthusiasm for giving gits is appropriate at Christmas, for it was at the original advent that our Heavenly Father gave to humanity the beginning of a gift that would surpass all others, even our gifts of life.  That gift was the redemption of our souls, and the renewal of our relationship with Almighty God, given to humanity by grace through faith in the person of the child born of the Virgin Mary, the God-Man Jesus Christ.

Having recently passed the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation, it is also appropriate for us to remember that God's gift was given to humanity: Sola scriptura ("by Scripture alone"), Sola fide ("by faith alone"), Sola gratia ("by grace alone"), Solus Christus or Solo Christo ("Christ alone" or "through Christ alone"), and Soli Deo gloria ("glory to God alone")  What God gave to us, beginning at Bethlehem and culminating at Calvary and the Empty Tomb, is a truly free gift.  It can be no other, for it was a work solely of the trinity, with God the Father planning/directing it, the Holy Spirit assisting in it, and Jesus carrying it out in the flesh.

A gift is not a gift if you pay for it, nor is it a gift if you earn it.  Our salvation in Jesus Christ, is and always will be, a gift from God.  As Paul explains in Ephesians 2:8-9 "For it is by grace you have been saved, though faith - and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast."

This Christmas, as you give and receive gifts, remember to thank God not only for the material blessings which we have received, but primarily for the far more important spiritual redemption which has been offered to all who put their faith in Jesus Christ.  The gift of God is available to all, may the Spirit of God call those who have not yet received it to accept this one of a kind gift, and may those who have already received it always remain grateful for the bountiful love of God.

The Reformation - How We Got Here

            Unity has always been a concept that it was easier for the Church to proclaim than to actualize.  When the Apostle John wrote his first epistle, as the first generation of Christianity came to a close and the second non-eyewitness generation came to the fore, it was already necessary for him to counter the heretical claims of the Gnostics by reaffirming the humanity of Jesus, both before and after the resurrection, as the one, “we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched.”  Three centuries later, the Arians would put forth the heresy that Jesus was less than God, the Church, now the official religion of Rome after remarkable growth from humble beginnings, responded under the leadership of men like Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, ultimately leading to the councils of Nicea and Calcedon where the theology of the person of Christ; handed down from the Apostles, was codified.  From that point forward, only fringe groups would challenge the humanity and deity of Christ, but even with theological unity regarding Jesus, division was still coming, developing along cultural lines as the Latin West drifted away from the Greek East.  The Emperor Diocletian had already administratively split the Roman Empire in half in A.D. 284, after the fall of the empire in the West in the 5^th century, the Latin Western Church and the Easter Greek Church grew more and more estranged.

          The Protestant Reformation, which began 500 years ago on October 31^st, 1517, was not the first major division within the Church, that occurred formally in A.D. 1054, and is known as the Great Schism.  In 1054, the functional East-West divide was made formal when the legate of Pope Leo IX excommunicated the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius (Keroularios), who in return excommunicated the representative of the Pope.  There were theological and cultural issues that divided the two sides, but the proximate cause of the split was a dispute over power; Leo IX was seeking to assert universal papal authority, the bishops of the East, the Patriarch of Constantinople in particular, refused to accept that claim.

          While the Eastern and Western Churches went their own way, struggling to make a unified response to the rise of Islam and deepening their animosity when the army of the 4^th Crusade turned under Venetian prompting from Jerusalem to sack Constantinople, new issues of theology and politics developed in the West that would lead toward the spirit of reform which Martin Luther inherited.  The West had never been politically unified after the fall of Rome.  In the East, the Emperor of Constantinople held authority over the Patriarch, but in the West the authority of the bishop of Rome had been challenged by Charlemagne and his successors, the Holy Roman Emperors.  Dynastic feuds kept Christian vs. Christian warfare in the West at endemic levels as families vied for power, and the various kings claimed the right to choose their own bishops, typically choosing a family relative regardless of qualifications, as an extension of those power struggles.  On multiple occasions, the right to install a bishop was asserted against the claims of kings, by a Pope, leading to episodes like the excommunication of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV in the 11^th century, who in response led his army over the Alps to besiege Rome, seeking to depose Gregory VII and replace him with a Pope who would do his bidding.

          The Fall of Constantinople in 1453 caused a flood of Greek speaking refugees to head west, sparking a renewed interest in the original Greek of the New Testament.  The Dutch priest, Desiderius Erasmus published his Greek New Testament in 1516, spurring on those who desired the Scriptures in the vernacular, for only the educated few could read Jerome’s Latin Vulgate.  In the 16^th century, ideas spread much more rapidly than in the past thanks to the invention of a workable printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1455; by 1500, 10 million books had been printed in Europe.

          Add to this mix of political turmoil and warfare, and ongoing struggles for power between kings and popes, a series of would-be reformers like the Englishmen John Wycliffe and the Czech Jan Hus.  Reforms did occur within the Church, but the pressure was building for more substantial changes, and that pressure burst forth when a young German priest named Martin Luther issued a call for debate concerning issues that troubled him regarding salvation theology.  Luther had been inspired by his readings of Saint Augustine, as well as Erasmus’ Greek edition at Romans 1:17 where the Vulgate’s Latin read “Justitia”, but the Greek read “dikaios”, that is righteousness rather than justice.  This translational nuance spoke to Martin Luther, leading him to issue his challenge by posting his 95 objections on the Castle Church door in Wittenberg on October 31^st, 1517.

          At this point, Martin Luther was no revolutionary in intent or spirit, merely a reformer, like many within the Western Church.  One hundred years prior, Jan Hus had been promised safe conduct to discuss his proposed reforms, by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund himself, but had been burned at the stake anyway as a heretic.  Knowing this, Martin Luther still came to Worms to meet with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and Pope Leo X’s representative, Johann Eck.  Asked by Eck to recant his writings, Luther refused saying, “Unless I am convinced by testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason, I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God.  I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against my conscience.  May God help me.  Amen.”

          The tribunal then issued the Edict of Worms, declaring Martin Luther to be a heretic and outlaw and excommunicating him.  Luther would have ended like Jan Hus, but several German princes, opposed to Charles V and seeking to curb his authority over them, sheltered Martin Luther, allowing him time to translate the Bible into German, and time for the spark which he had inadvertently lit, to fan into flame and turn from reform to Reformation, leading quickly toward conflict and war as Luther’s ideas spread throughout northern Europe, dividing the Western Church along roughly north-south lines. 

          How did we get here, how did the Church become divided, east-west, and then 500 years later, north-south too?  Theology was a necessary part of it, interpretation and application of Scripture being a task that often leads to disagreement, even among otherwise like-minded people.  Cultural and linguistic differences were also a part, when the fault lines did occur, there was a reason why they split so neatly where differences already existed.  But in the end, the one avoidable factor, the one factor that should have been absent within the Church, was the pursuit of power.  Fallible people lead the Church, they always have, and they are not immune to the siren’s call of power.  On all sides men made choices tainted by their own greed for power, and in the end, it was the unity of the Church of Jesus Christ which paid the price.

          Let us, then, recognize our theological and cultural differences, welcoming honest and respectful study, dialogue, and debate as we together attempt to be what the bride of Christ ought to be, but let us fully reject as folly unbecoming of servants in the kingdom of God, the desire for power which led our ancestors in the faith toward division, and ultimately toward violence and war amongst themselves; for regardless of what they did, and what we here do today, “God’s truth abideth still: His kingdom is forever.”

Sermon Video: Joash restores the house of the LORD, 2 Chronicles 24:1-16

It isn’t often that the maintenance or repair of the church building ends up being a sermon topic, but given how prominently such work can be in the life of a church, perhaps it should be.  It was a church restoration project, and the unscrupulous financing that was attempted to fund it, that led to Martin Luther’s protest against indulgences and eventually the Protestant Reformation.  Few churches with a long history can say that they haven’t had to deal with strife or dissension centered around the funding for, or execution of, a plan to build or repair their church building.

                In 2 Chronicles 24, King Joash, now come of age following the regency of his protector, the priest Jehoida, has decided to use his authority as king to correct the disrepair that has befallen the house of the LORD.  Joash’s initial attempt, simply telling the priests to divert some of their incoming funds to the project, fails through lack of cooperation by the priests.  At this point the king, in cooperation with Jehoida, takes charge of the collection of the annual tax that the priests had formerly collected in decides to place an offering box at the entrance to the temple to collect these funds with the restoration project as the top priority.

                The alternative fund collecting idea of Joash is a great success, the people give gladly to the project enabling it to move forward quickly.  With the help of honest and hardworking craftsmen, the temple repair project is finished with enough funds left over to replace the golden objects used in worship that had been stolen and profaned by being used to worship Baal.  In the end, the efforts of Joash and Jehoida are entirely successful, and once again proper worship of the LORD can take place within the temple.

                The maintenance and repair, building or expanding, of the place wherein God is to be worshiped is an act of piety.  It ought to be an effort of collective sacrifice that brings the people of God together, which makes it all the more tragic when it instead tears them apart.  Those who give of their time, talent, or treasure to the service of the church building itself deserve gratitude and honor alongside those who likewise give to the benefit of the church’s programs.

To watch the video, click on the link below:
Sermon Video

Lenten thoughts on peace among Christians

As we begin today the season of Lent we are reminded of the wide variety of Christian practice here in the United States.  We are not separated from each other by region, race, education, or any other social factor that has throughout history driven wedges between the various churches of the Church.  It wasn't always this way, America has a past where the type of church you attended meant a great deal more than the type of man/woman you were.  As we have our racial past sins, we've been on the long road of moving beyond our past.
Nearly every day I work with a Christian volunteer, lay leader, or pastor from a non-Baptist church.  My work with Mustard Seed Missions crosses boundaries all the time without even consciously thinking about them.  We will soon join together in a community wide cross walk followed by an ecumenical tenebre worship service.  We are still many, but we function more and more as one.  In this we certainly please God whose son is the groom of the whole Church, no local version has a monopoly on the claim to being the Bride of Christ, nor does any continent spanning denomination. 
That being said, most of us don't know about two experiments that took place in Eastern Europe prior to the Thirty Years War that offered hope of toleration and civil peace among Catholics, Lutherans, Reformed, and Orthodox Christians.  That these experiments didn't survive into the modern world do not detract from the vision, honor, and courage of those who embarked upon a journey of hope in peace.
The first example comes from the nobility of Transylvania, a small principality that was wedged between hostile Ottoman Turks and the Hapsburg Holy Roman Emperor.  Transylvania was home to a wide variety of Christian churches,  as such these nobles were forced to find common ground with each other for their very survival.  The result was and agreement in 1568 in the town of Torda that stated,
"ministers should everywhere preach and proclaim {the Gospel} according to their understanding of it, and if their community is willing to accept this, good; if not, however, no one should be compelled by force if their spirit is not at peace...no one is permitted to threaten to imprison or banish anyone because of their teaching, because faith is a gift from God." (from Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid McCulloch, page 640)
Likewise, the kingdom to the north, Poland-Lithuania was faced with choosing a new king after the death of Sigismund Augustus in 1572; they were also faced with Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, and Orthodox churches within their territory.  When the nobility decided to ask Henri, Duke of Anjou to be their next king they required him to first sign a agreement that had been drawn up in Warsaw which stated,
"Since there is in our Commonwealth no little disagreement on the subject of religion, in order to prevent any such hurtful strife from beginning among our people on this account...we mutually promise for ourselves and our successors forever...that we who differ with regard to religion will keep the peace with one another, and will not for a different faith or a change of churches shed blood nor punish one another by confiscation of property, infamy, imprisonment or banishment, and will not in any way assist any magistrate or officer in such an act." (McCulloch, page 643)

As we begin the path of Lent, the road that leads to the Cross and the Empty Grave, let us remember those who tried (often in vain) to bring peace among Christians, to foster a sense of brotherhood among those who claim Jesus as their Lord.  We should be rightly proud of our current level of brotherly love here in America, but we should rightly remember that we didn't walk this whole path on our own, there were visionaries in Transylvania and Poland-Lithuania hoping for peace five hundred years ago.

Ancient Words Ever True...

I was listening to the song Ancient Words in the office today, considering the words of Peter in Acts 4, and pondering the book, The Reformation by Diarmaid MacCulloch.  Where did all of that lead me?  The Reformation (in conjunction with the Renaissance) was a difficult time for those who wished to respect ancient traditions.  If you wanted to revere all the wisdom of the ancients, you had to deny the observations of men like Copernicus and Galileo in favor of men dead for two thousand years like Aristotle and Ptolemy. 
If instead, you opened up the wisdom of the ancients to doubt, even ridicule, how could you hold the line and protect the Orthodox faith from those who would deny the Trinity (for example)?
For us, the answers seem easy: Copernicus was right and that doesn't say anything about Biblical interpretation, it's just an observation from the natural world.  It wasn't so simple at the time.  We, as supposedly enlightened modern thinkers, may scoff at the foolishness of our forefathers, and shake our heads that they ever burned "witches" at the stake; but the question should be, "Are we any better?"
Take a look around the world we live in.  It has become the accepted belief in the Modern West that a human embryo can be disposed of with not a bit of care, and even an ironic moral outrage at those who would seek to "force" a young girl to give birth to the child growing inside of her.  It has also become the accepted belief in much of the Modern West that any and all variations of sexuality, co-habitation, and separation are equally valid.  That nobody has the right to tell anyone else that their choices are wrong.
Does it really seem so funny that men in the 16th Century were troubled that Copernicus was claiming the earth revolved around the sun?  In reality, humanity hasn't "advanced" much at all over the last five centuries.  We may know more stuff, and have a lot more widgets and gizmoes to entertain ourselves, but our moral state is just as deprived as the day Luther became troubled with Paul's insistence on fallen humanity in his letter to the Romans.

A History Lesson: How NOT to run a Church

This nugget of wisdom also comes from Diarmaid MacCulloch's The Reformation but isn't one that very many people will know already.
In 1561 a Greek soldier of fortune named Heraklides found himself in the employ of an unpopular king in the small Eastern Orthodox Christian principality of Moldavia.  Heraklides had little love for the Orthodox tradition of his homeland and had rather become enamored with Protestant Christianity (his work as a soldier had taken him all over Europe to this point).  With the backing of the Hapsburgs and the Lithuanian nobility, Heraklides overthrew the king and took his place.  In and of itself, this wouldn't be much of a lesson for the Church, such coups we fairly common in Europe, but what happened next proves to be rather instructive.
Heraklides ordered Protestant worship in his court, appointed a Polish Reformer as his bishop, and generally annoyed the traditional Orthodox people he intended to rule.  To make matters much worse, Heraklides raided the Orthodox monasteries because of his zeal against sacred images (a huge matter of contention at the time in much of Europe struggling with the ideas of the Reformation) and took their golden crosses and the gilded frames of their icons (Orthodox two dimensional Christian paintings; Heraklides didn't destroy them, just took their valuable frames) which he proceeded to melt down and turn into coinage with, of course, his own image on it.  Forget for a moment the irony of having zeal against idolatry, but making coins with your own image on them, and just think about the choices that Heraklides was making.  As an outsider, he was imposing Reform ideas (whether right or wrong) on the local population of Christians without any regard for how they felt about it.  In other words, he was trying to lead a movement from the top; against the will of the people.
The story ends badly; his army deserted him and he was butchered without mercy, along with any who were suspected of being sympathizers with his cause.  The entire experiment of imposing a Reformation on an unwilling populace had lasted two years.  Similar problems were happening all over Europe (though not to this extent) as nobles and kings attempted to guide/direct/coerce their people toward their own chosen side in the Catholic/Protestant divide.  This certainly should enlighten us about the danger of governing against the will of the people, but it also teaches us about how church leadership, be it local or denominational, cannot simply force people to accept changes (good or bad, right or wrong) from the top down. 
For those of us who are church pastors, this lesson is helpful, though sadly easy to ignore when our own circumstances convince us otherwise.  We see a need, something that our heart tells us is what God wants, and we try to force our people to see it to.  The fault, typically, arises from not taking the time/effort to lay the groundwork properly or not allowing for the fact that change is difficult.  Rather than running around melting down our people's icons (a symbolic stand-in for anything they hold sacred), we should be asking ourselves WHY they feel that way about them?  Where does this passion come from, is it healthy or not?  Can it be utilized rather than attacked?
There are few easy answers for a pastor, elder, or lay leader in a church that is in need of reform or restoration.  The problems were not arrived at quickly or easily (in most cases) and they won't be solved that way either.  But do yourself a favor, don't aspire to be a Heraklides, it didn't end well for him.

The Plot Thickens...or...The More You Learn, the More There is to Learn.

One of the things I love about a good thick book on a subject I already know about is the chance to learn new things and see things in a new perspective.  As I continue with Diarmaid MacCulloch's book, The Reformation, I've been intrigued by the author's attempts to show the parallel developments that were going on throughout the 1500's in areas that converted to Protestantism, and those that did not.  It was not as if reform was absent in Spain or Italy while Martin Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin were working in Northern Europe, but rather that those initiatives toward reform took different tracks and ended up with different outcomes.  Some of the explanation is as simple as the normal N/S divide in Europe's culture (along with its climate and geography), as well as the differing relationships between rulers and their nobility, and the simple fact that Rome was in the south.
One particular connection between the Jesuits and Methodists struck me as interesting.  The Jesuits resisted the urge to become a clerical order, "We are not monks!  The world is our house." (Jeronimo Nadal, Society member, 1550's)  Likewise, two centuries later John Wesley sent out another group of traveling preachers saying, "the world is my parish".  That Jesuits and Methodist preachers would have anything in common may seem surprising, but one of Loyola's core beliefs was that the Medieval Church was wrong to think that priests or monks had any greater chance of getting to heaven than anyone else. {an idea he learned from Thomas a Kempis' The Imitation of Christ}.  That idea was at home within the Protestant Reformation, where the idea of the priesthood of all believers became a foundational understanding of our salvation by grace. 
What's the point of all this?  Am I saying that there are no real differences between Catholics and Protestants?  Of course not, but if we are ever going to see past those differences and begin to work together for the kingdom of God, it would help if we understood that our common ancestry, the Medieval Church, gave rise to reformers throughout Europe (not just in the North).  That we went down differing paths from there is obvious, but that both groups were in the process of reform should help us see that our paths may at some point run closer together once again. 

The Word of God in the hands of the people

In Diarmaid MacCulloch's superb book "The Reformation" there is a profound observation that comes originally from Bernard Cottret's biography of John Calvin, "the increase in Bibles created the Reformation rather than being created by it, and it is notable how many of these Bibles were translations from Latin into local languages." (P.73)
In other words, there were plenty of would-be reformers and reform movements throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, but it was the printing of Bibles in the vernacular (the language of the people) through movable type that made the Reformation possible.  It is an amazing thing when the Word of God is read by God's people.  In the days of Josiah (II Kings 22), the people of Israel had so little contact with Scripture that not a single copy was available until a dusty old scroll was found in the temple and read to the people.  The subsequent weeping and mourning were inevitable because without God's Word his people will always wander away from the truth.
The same thing could be said of any church, regardless of denomination, in our world today.  The closer the people in the pews are to God's Word, the more they ingest it themselves on a regular basis, the better off the church will be.  Worried about a crack-pot pastor leading his flock astray?  There is far less a chance of that happening when the people know God's Word as well as he does.  Worried about people remaining true to the Gospel message in its original form?  Not if they read it, teach it, and preach it every week.
Does our local church need reform, does yours?  Follow the example of the Reformation, get the Bible into the hands of the common people and let the power of the Word of God convict God's people of their sins and bring them to their knees in worship of the LORD.

"take hold of the hope offered to us" - Hebrews 6:18

Something I was reading in the book, "The Reformation", by Diarmaid MacCulloch reminded me of this verse from Hebrews that we'll be looking at during Bible study tonight.  The reference in Hebrews is to those who fled for their lives to the Tabernacle, and later the Temple, in order to physically take hold of the horns of the altar in hopes that their lives would be spared by those who pursued them.  It was an appeal to God's mercy that was sometimes granted, (as it was by Solomon when his older brother Adonijah fled to the alter in I Kings 1:49-53 upon hearing that Solomon had been made king; although Adonijah later tried to get the throne anyway and was killed) and sometimes it was not (as with the case of Joab who had conspired against Solomon with Adonijah and who also had the blood of two innocent men killed in cold blood on his hands; he was killed despite having his hands on the horns of the altar).  The whole point of the passage in Hebrews is that our hope in Christ is greater than taking hold of the horns of the altar.  We can truly seek a sanctuary that is secure against all storms.
How does any of this relate to the Reformation?  Simply enough, it was in 1414 that the Bohemian reformer, Jan Hus was given safe-conduct (a guarantee of protection) by the Holy Roman Emperor so that he would be willing to go before a church council and explain his grievances.  The council and the Emperor changed their mind, put Jan on trial for heresy (Jan's reforms?  He wanted the Mass given in the language of the people, and the cup given to all so that they could fully participate in the Mass); they then had Jan burned at the stake.  The resulting uproar and civil war in Bohemia paved the way for the first Western Church that was independent of Rome, and example that would later influence Martin Luther.  Had these men been true to their word the reforms of Hus could have been debated and evaluated, but instead those in authority tried to crush dissent.  That such short-sighted and ungodly decisions led to the splintering of the Church is no doubt (more on MacCulloch's book as I work my way through it)
So how does this apply to me?  The hope that we have in Christ avoid all such human double-dealing and uncertainty.  God does not lie.  His Word will stand for all time.  When we flee and take hold of the Cross of Christ, "We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure." -Hebrews 6:19