History of Spiritual Growth Teachings
Josiah Matthews · Sep 7, 2003
Church History, No. 10
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262258535007

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We've been studying through church history six different periods, sections along the church history timeline, and each Sunday we're looking at a topic, and specifically what did the church teach, what occurred in relation to the issue during each different section of church history. And so today we're going to be looking at spiritual growth teachings throughout church history. Spiritual growth was not a well-developed concept until later in the history of the Church, and the next slide will show that. Though the Apostles wrote about spiritual growth, both as applied to the Church body and as applied to the individual, deviations from Scripture in understanding of salvation and in spiritual growth caused the subject of spiritual growth to be lost in chronic misunderstanding for centuries. Last week, we looked at the history of salvation, or the history of teachings concerning salvation, and it was pretty shocking.

I believe by the year 220 AD, see if I can find the note real quick. By the year 220 AD, the Church had established a three-year process prior to adults being baptized as saved members of the Church, and eligible then to partake the Lord's Supper. That's shocking. They weren't considered saved until they completed this three-year process. And that was by 220 AD.

So, as we approach spiritual growth, what we're saying is, because they went off track so quickly and so severely, with salvation, their focus on spiritual growth was eclipsed. It wasn't an issue. Because if you're not saved, if you don't understand your justification by faith, then you'd be pretty foolish to be concerned about growing spiritually. Okay? Does that make sense?

This timeline shows the different issues that the Church has been concerned with historically. Early on, they sought to determine what books were inspired, and they sought to put together the canon. The group of men sought to discover which books were inspired. The books didn't become inspired because they included them in this canon, but they had a list of criteria that they'd subject the different letters and books to, to determine if they were inspired by God or not. Then the Church was concerned with doctrines of the Godhead, doctrines of man. Augustine and Pelagius went back and forth with the teaching of man.

Then it wasn't until the Reformation that any improvements were really made. The Dark Ages were pretty dark in relation to Church history. And, of course, the Reformers, they did a lot of good things. They didn't reform things far enough, for sure, but they did do a lot of good things.

They recovered the doctrine of justification by faith, and praise God that they did. We're saved by God's grace, period. And as we looked at last week, that's not what the Church had been teaching. There was quite a complex system that a person had to go through in order to be saved.

The Reformers also, thankfully, re-established that the Word of God alone is our authority. Before that time, the Church had been teaching that they were the authority. The Church's tradition, along with the Word of God and the Apocryphal Book, were authoritative. But the Reformers said, no, the Word of God, period, only, is authoritative for us.

That's our basis for truth. If you want to understand what truth is, go to the Word of God. They did, and then they discovered that salvation is by faith. Justification is by faith. That, by the way... Let's see if I can use this guy. That, by the way, laid the groundwork for other believers to come to the Word of God. Justification by faith being settled. Other believers then came to the Word of God and saw that spiritual growth was also by faith. not by law-keeping or some other weird method. Also then, Doctrine of the Last Things, which we'll actually be looking at next week, teachings concerning End Times eschatology, that also, in the modern period of Church history, was rediscovered, you could say, or correct teaching was finally taught to believers concerning the future, End Times.

If you have any comments, just stop me. This chart we've looked at before, and as you know, most of these pages are coded. That shows you that it was a special handout from Class 5. So if you have your notebook, it's in there somewhere. It should be in Section 5.

And this chart shows a pendulum swing effect that's occurred throughout church history. The center of this chart shows biblical Christianity, or correct teaching, and then, because of the world, the influences of the world, the Church has swung past, or by, the biblical orthodoxy, and into errors, or into extremes. And the point in showing this slide again is that spiritual growth often came to be seen as the focal point of the pendulum swing in each time period.

Okay? Monsonism, the fellow had some prophetesses that were similar to Pentecostal or Charismatic activity early on. Gnosticism, you know, special deeper knowledge for the eclectic few. Monasticism, which we'll talk about on the next slide, I believe. mysticism, then a few others. Most recently, Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement, and today's post-modernism.

Let's see what the Bible has to say about spiritual growth as we step through here. I don't know. I don't know where we're at, honestly. I think we're still over here. Most of the church, a large percentage of the church worldwide is charismatic Pentecostal. Although, it's interesting, the liberals last century, of course they're still prevalent today, they taught that you know, they didn't interpret the Bible literally, and it was more of, the Bible inspires me, instead of they see the Bible as being inspired. That attitude is still prevalent today and within post-modernism, you know, teaching that there is no absolute truth, and that you can believe, oh sure, you can say you're under grace, but I believe that, you know, I'm under law, and it doesn't matter. So there's still the liberal attitude today.

Obviously, the New Testament has a lot to say on spiritual growth. We're just going to touch on a few verses. 2 Peter 3.18, But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Notice, grow.

2 Corinthians 3.18, But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit. As we behold the Lord, we're being transformed into His very image.

Romans 12, Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship, And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Philippians 3, 8-11 Paul says, More than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things. I count them but rubbish, so that I may gain Christ, and be found in Him, not having any righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings being conformed to His death, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead." Ephesians 4.

And this, interestingly, is talking about the spiritual growth of the body together. As you may know, and as we will touch on here in a minute, oftentimes spiritual growth is viewed only as individualistic, but this verse is talking about the growth of the body. Verse 12, For the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ, until we all, not just a few, but all, attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the Head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love."

There are the identification truths, which are, of course, central to spiritual growth. These are just some of the key passages by Paul. Other New Testament writers also talk about our position in Christ. And you were given this chart before, and actually even before the Church History class, I think it's been passed out.

The believer, judicially, in God's sight, was made one with Christ in His death unto sin, the world, law, and Satan. He was made one with Christ in His burial, then His resurrection unto newness of life, His ascension to the Father's right hand, and His seating at the Father's right hand. Positionally, we are now there in Christ, absolutely accepted, complete, and righteous before God in Him, right now. And that's awesome. That's definitely good news. Okay, let's look at the next section.

As we mentioned before, the understanding of salvation became distorted so quickly after the end of the New Testament era that the understanding of spiritual growth also became quickly distorted. Once the means of salvation deviated from simple faith in the Gospel, spiritual growth became swallowed up and meriting one's own salvation. I briefly mentioned monasticism. It was prevalent during the 3rd to the 7th century, but there are still monasteries today, even in the United States. Monasticism taught that holiness came through asceticism and denial of the body. It was a more emotional expression of the intellectual movement of Gnosticism.

Now, you may... yeah, go ahead. Asceticism is... good question, ascetic. Good deal. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, you try to... Yeah, basically you try to separate yourself from everything that's evil and discipline your body to... I don't know, I better leave it. Basically try to separate yourself from everything outside that could stain your body and harm your holiness or something like that. Okay.

You may say, well, isn't that an attempt at spiritual growth, though? You know, if they're separating themselves from the world, say the men were separating themselves from women, you know, they didn't want to have any temptations of being involved with women inappropriately, so they just isolate themselves from the world, things in their culture.

Isn't that an attempt at spiritual growth? But it wasn't, because they were trying to protect their holiness so that they could merit salvation. They were trying to be holy to earn merit. They weren't attempting to be holy at spiritual... to be like Christ. Not that that's how we go about spiritual growth, but... Spiritual growth wasn't their focus. Their focus was being accepted by God. Okay.

Also, during that same time period, Augustine was teaching that salvation was totally and causally of God. On the other end of the spectrum, Pelagius was teaching that salvation was totally and causally of man. And, as we mentioned last week, what eventually was accepted by the Roman Catholic Church was a combination of both views, that which... The Forrest Gump approach. A century later, at the sign out of Orange, they determined that salvation originates in God and proceeds by God and man. And then also Cassian, Cassian's view, he was a contemporary of Augustine and Pelagius, his view also continued on throughout the centuries, that salvation originates in man and proceeds by man and God. And we'll throw this up again. This is the flowchart of a Roman Catholic's plan of salvation.

Very complex. And we'll focus in on that top left portion, which is going to look at their cycle, where a person attempts to accumulate merit. And, by the way, you don't want to sin and fall out of the cycle, work yourself back up into this cycle where you can continue then to accumulate merit. And if you commit a mortal sin, which basically is breaking one of the Ten Commandments, then your chances of getting back up are much, much more difficult.

Okay? Can you see, if this is your focus, if you are concerned about this, that you would not be concerned about spiritual growth, because this would be much more important. if you adhere to that teaching. Do you guys have any comments thus far? Good point. Yeah, I praise God that my acceptance, the righteousness that I have before the Lord is Christ's and not my own, or I wouldn't have it.

And you wouldn't either. Yeah, that was last week. All right, we'll step into the next period. Let's talk about the Reformers. Earlier I mentioned that they did a lot of good things. They addressed the issues of salvation and authority, but they still kept the believers under the rule of the law, which doesn't make sense. It's also not biblical, by the way. But they understood fairly well that the believer was justified by faith, but then you would have the Ten Commandments put on top of you in order to grow spiritually.

The Law is a ministry of death. It's also a curse. So there was little given with which to grow spiritually. And I think you're familiar with 2 Corinthians 3. The Law is a ministry of condemnation and death. And it does not make a person like Christ.

What the Law was intended to do was to expose our sinfulness. And it did that. It was given to the Jews, and it shows their sinfulness. Read the Old Testament. It's amazing. But the Law would have the same effect today. It would expose one's sinfulness. It would not make one a person like Christ. Here's an excerpt from the Heidelberg Catechism, just around the time of the Reformation. What is the Law of the Lord? The answer? God spoke all these words saying, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. One, you shall have no other gods before me.

And boom, it goes down the list. Over in England, about a century later, the Westminster Confessions, part of it says, this law, after Adam's fall, continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness, And as such was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai in ten commandments, and written in two tablets, and written, I'm sorry, the first four commandments containing our duty toward God, and the other six our duty to man. And by the way, here you go.

What we'll do now, is we'll talk about a few of the more contemporary views of spiritual growth. We're not going to talk about all of them. There are many. And some of them aren't even worthy to be called an attempt at spiritual growth or a view of spiritual growth.

Because you may have heard of contemplated spirituality, which is something that came out of the Roman Catholic Church. It's actually gaining ground in Protestant churches today, but it's based upon Eastern mysticism, and it's New Age-ish. So we're not even going to talk about that one, more than I've already done.

But as I mentioned a few minutes ago, the Reformers recovered the truth that the Bible is our authority, and the Bible then was distributed into the common people's hands, so they could then look for themselves and see what does the Bible have to say about life, about spiritual growth. And so that's why it wasn't until these more recent centuries that there has been a focus on spiritual growth by the Church. The first slide the group will mention is the Wesleyan Holiness Movement. John Wesley, lived in the 18th century, and he and his brother Charles and their friend John Fletcher taught similar things, and basically were represented by this chart, which shows the cross denotes a person's salvation.

At some point in the believer's life, there's a crisis event, an experience, a moment preceded by total surrender to God, where the second work of grace occurs. And, basically, what happens at this time is that the sin nature is removed. They taught that the believer retains the sin nature until the second event, until this crisis event. After this crisis event, the believer, then, can exhibit perfect love toward God and man. That will be his experience. Fletcher also taught that, at this time, the believer was infilled with the Holy Spirit.

Any comments? Yeah. And that's actually something that we're going to talk about, is that two nature, one nature issue. What's that, Marilyn? Yeah, we don't take that to go with the Lord with us, thankfully. What's interesting, you said, Roger, that if we were honest with ourselves, we would admit that we still have that two nature. It's funny that John Wesley, and that group, their view of Scripture was that, you know, Scripture can declare a doctrine, but our experience confirms it. Okay? So, in other words, the Word of God isn't their authority, but experience is. Okay?

Does a believer have one nature or two? And what this is, it's a timeline throughout Church history showing that the teaching that a believer has two natures was the main teaching throughout Church history. The dotted line represents the Wesleyan teaching, originating in the 1700s, which said that after a believer was saved, he still had his sin nature until that crisis event. Then his sin nature was eradicated, obliterated. It hasn't been until the last 60 years that this form of One Naturism, which we're most familiar with, has been taught, and that is that at the moment of a person's salvation, the sin nature is taken from him.

And we will talk more about that. Here is a chart showing the Keswick conferences, their view of spiritual growth. It's a similar form of of growth as to the West Wings, although they have doctrinal differences. It shows that, after a person's conversion, there is a crisis event, where the believer jumps to the higher plane, where he now experiences the victorious Christian life. Everything before this event is characterized by defeat and failure, and everything afterwards, potentially, is smooth sailing in the victorious Christian life. preceded by total surrender.

The Keswick movement was not affiliated with a particular denomination. It was a mixture of Reformed, Anglican, and other groups. And honestly, they had a lot of really good things to say. They did teach a lot of positional truth, but there was a lot of incorrect things intermixed. Questioner 3 Yeah. Yeah, and it's a little skewed, and we'll try to present the correct approach to spiritual growth at the end. Thank you.

Were these people one nature, two nature, or was that an issue that they didn't even address? I can't say I know enough about them. I do know that there were both views. Some thought, believe it, that the believer had one nature, but then some thought that they had two. Some of the Keswick speakers taught that you could lose your salvation. Some taught that you could not. Some were dispensationalists. Some were not. Some saw the church replacing Israel. Others saw the church as separate, the body of Christ, the bride of Christ. A big, big mix. Hannah Whitehall Smith, I did read a biography of her. She grew up in the Quaker church.

She and her husband left that. She did have some contact with the Plymouth Brethren. Her husband, Robert Pearsall Smith, claimed he was a Presbyterian. They both were involved in the Keswick Movement until her husband was kind of kicked out of the Keswick Movement because of some questionable activity with a lady, and he ended up His faith was shipwrecked in the end. He was just a bitter old man, agnostic. And their children were a mess. One of their children actually married Bertrand Russell. He spent time in their home as well. But you know, a lot of those guys have good things to say. I have a lot of their books.

But what does the Word of God say? We need to be wise and come back to that. Now, Pentecostal Perfectionism is... very similar to the Wesleyan holiness movement, because the Pentecostal movement came out of the Wesleyan movement. About a century later, this would have been the last quarter of the 19th century, 1875 to 1900, some Wesleyans started to say that the gift of tongues was necessary to validate that a person had had this, this second blessing, okay? And then there was a divide at that point between the New Pentecostals and the traditional Westlands, but their foundations are the same.

This slide shows the Reformed view of spiritual growth. And it does show spiritual growth as progressive. It's a process of being... spiritual growth is a process. I'll say that. But it's through law keeping. So, that's not true. That doesn't happen. You don't grow spiritually if you're under the law. The Bible teaches that. But you don't grow through the law.

John Murray, John Owen, J.I. Packer, he's alive today. Anthony Hokema, they're examples of Reformed theologians that would teach something like this. And again, the main problem is that, law keeping. You know, that's a great question. So Craig's question is, do they teach that you just have to, on your own strength, just keep this law in order to grow?

Some do, some don't. Some of the Reformed theologians were involved in, like, the Keswick Movement, and they would teach that the Lord and the Holy Spirit enables you to keep the Law, and they would emphasize that. Others would not emphasize the Holy Spirit as being the source of the power to keep the Law. So, some would teach that, although that's not correct either. So, there were different emphases. But there are different emphases within that group.

And here's an example of a Reformed theologian's book. And this fellow is a contemporary of ours, Blackaby. And this book is popular, very popular, throughout the churches in America. Thankfully, not at this one. And here are a couple of quotations from that book.

He says, in the following passages, he's quoting Deuteronomy, God says the commands are for our own good. They are your life. The commands are our life. That's what they teach. God gave the Ten Commandments. Are you obeying? Get with it. Okay? Obviously, they don't understand that the believer's not under law, but he's under grace. That's a very important distinction. This view called here the Schaeferian view. Also people call it the Augustinian Dispensational view.

But it shows that spiritual growth is progressive. But notice, spiritual growth really starts according to this view, when you make Christ the Lord of your life. And we're going to promote something a little different than that, although that's pretty close. Pretty close. Notice that they teach that the believer has two natures, all the way through, until he goes to be with the Lord, or until we're raptured. Schaefer, Walbert, Ryrie, and other very sound teachers would teach this view. It's kind of good that Mabel is there.

There's actually flat periods. It's always not up higher and higher, greater and greater. You may go long time periods, and not really I mean, I assume that's what that's showing here. There's flat periods, and then there may be some growth, so it's not guaranteed that you're always... And that's... I think that's the accuracy. Yeah, I think I agree with you.

We'll come back to that point here in a couple of slides. Let's revisit the question, does a believer have one nature or two? I showed that chart a moment ago. The two-nature teaching was the most common teaching throughout the history of the Church. It's only been in the last 60 years that this conversion one-natureism has been taught. Now, here are some examples of two-nature Reformed teachers, John Calvin It's taught in the Heidelberg Catechism.

Matthew Henry, Charles Hodge. Warfield, he had a different view. He believed that as a believer grows, the sin nature is eradicated in stages, or progressively eradicated. Bavinck, Nickel, Buswell, Barkley, and Hokema. examples of Reformed theologians that taught that a believer has two natures. And I think most of you have seen this chart before, but it's important to mention it.

The teaching of One Naturism as we know it today was taught basically, or spread basically, by two guys. John Murray, His influence was in the seminary realm. And then, Martin Lloyd-Jones, a medical doctor, his influence has come through the psychology area. Interestingly, they were both born in the same year, and about the same time, in the 1940s, they began teaching this view of One Natureism. I don't know, I don't believe there's any indication that they had interaction, but they may have.

Murray passed the view on to John Gerstner, also to J.I. Packer, also to John MacArthur. We say that after 1975, John MacArthur taught this view because in his Galatians commentary, published in 1975, MacArthur was a two-natureist. But at some point after that, he changed his view. Martin Lloyd-Jones passed his teaching on to Charles Solomon. who in turn passed it on to these other three fellows, Charles Stanley, Bill Gillum, and Lilo Febra.

Yeah. I wanted to maybe clarify something here, that 1940 Dr. John MacArthur is actually the father of Jack. They're not one and the same person. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute, say that again. Up there on the bottom of the first half. Right there? Yeah, that's the father of the fellow that's sitting right now. Ah, okay, so his birth is... Okay. Okay.

I'll make a note of that. I'll try to get that fixed. I don't know the answer to that, Marilyn. We can try to find out, though. I'll let you know. to let you know. She wanted to know what the Catholic Church taught in relation to two natures. Okay. If you do believe that at conversion the believer's sin nature is removed and he's left with only the new nature, then how do you answer the question, why is there sin in a believer? And there's three Basically, three approaches. Practically, people grab traits of these views, of different views, and incorporate them together, so it's not as clean as we show it. But why is there sin in a believer?

There's the charismatic approach. Their answer is that Satan is causing the believer to sin, or the demons are causing the believer to sin. and also that the problem is in the unredeemed body, which is the seat of evil. So then, what is their solution? Their solution is aggressive warfare tactics against Satan, casting or expelling the demons from believers, continually, or shun the body.

And, unfortunately, I used to be involved in some of that. Something I wasn't involved in is what is called spiritual mapping, where you'll take a physical map of your town and you get together as a group and you develop a battle plan to go through your town and cleanse it, you know, and take it back, reclaim it. So you'll go through the town and cast out demons and bind Satan to purge your village, your town. And I used to be involved in something similar to that. Prayer walks, we'd call them. This was like 10 years ago, where we would walk through the neighborhood and bind Satan and try to clean things up.

There's also then the psychological approach, which is very popular within Christianity today. They teach that the reason that the believer has sin is because of the dysfunctional family environment or influences sinful parent influences. So their answer, very psychological, is to analyze the residual flesh. Develop means for changing that bad habit pattern. Talk about the thoughts and emotions of the flesh.

They do teach a modified form of the identification truths, but they don't see a difference between your position and your conditioning. Hence their one nature. You died under sin, therefore you don't have it. They don't understand the difference between position and condition.

Then there's the Reformed approach. The reason that a believer has sin is because of habits that he held on to after he was saved. Or they blame it on the human body, a remaining humanness. Their answer is to bring in the law, to discipline yourself. Also, accountability is used. with other Believers to monitor the potentially sinning Believer. With the Wesleyan group and the Pentecostal group? Let's see if I can give you just a little bit of information. Maybe I can even go back to that. Oh, wrong way. Okay, pretty much the same slide.

So, they teach that after a believer's saved, there is a point. At this point, he's unsanctified, okay? He is saved, but he's not holy. At this point, he's holy. He becomes holy. The source of sin is removed, and then he's sanctified. And therefore, he can exercise this perfect love toward God and man, and I don't really know exactly what they mean by that. Falling out of that? Definitely. Definitely so, but I'm not sure how all that works. They may not teach what?

You know, I recently read an autobiography of Henry Ironside. He grew up in a holiness movement at a church. Actually, he was involved with the Salvation Army. And he describes his struggle with trying to get the blessing, because he thought he would have it, okay?

Answers your question, can they fall out of it? You think you have had the second blessing, but then you sin again and, oh, wait, I just never got it, so I have to try to get it again, or I never had it really, so now I'm going to try to have this experience where I can be made holy finally.

And that is agonizing to people. I heard a question about Catholicism, and this reminds me of the same effect we had with Catholic baptism, because when I was baptized, everyone came to me, and they said, and now you are finally holy, now you are like saints. Okay, interesting. So, it was kind of the same idea, like, before conversion to baptism, there is this time Interesting. And you know, I read something where John Wesley, who came out of the Anglican Church, is criticized of just evangelicalizing the teaching, the sacramental teaching of the Anglican Church, and making it more of a spiritual experience, similar to what you were saying there.

There are different views of this. Some teach that there's actually a third instance. You have this second blessing experience where you're sanctified, but then some Pentecostals, a group of the Pentecostals teach that there's actually a third mark, a third crisis experience where you receive power for service. So they would teach a third stage, a third event, where now you receive power from the Holy Spirit to go out and serve. But as you know, there's so many different denominations, so many different teachings today that it's a mess.

Okay. John Nelson Darby lived from 1800 to 1882, born, I believe, in Ireland. had a large influence in Europe, and then came to the United States. And he, and brothers around him, went to the Word of God and began teaching identification truths, which we mentioned earlier. And he also, Doug Darby also did a lot to recover the Biblical truth about end times, which we'll talk about next week. systematized dispensationalism.

Then the last main slide we'll look at is what we'd like to propose as the biblical view of spiritual growth. And it shows that growth is progressive. According to 2 Corinthians 3.18, as we behold the Lord Jesus Christ, we're transformed into His same image from glory to glory. As Roger was mentioning earlier, when we're walking in the flesh, which on this chart is shown by the flat line, when we're walking in the flesh, we're not growing. But it's as we're beholding the Lord in the Word, as revealed in the Word, that we're being conformed into His same image.

Notice, I believe it does have the two natures. That one should be in that, on page four. It's just a little, should be just a little block. No, I don't believe so. And I think that's why, the flat area reflects moments where you're walking in the flesh. I used to believe that you could, that spiritual growth was similar to the Reformed view, where it was up and down and up and down and God was sovereign in my failures and actually orchestrating them and causing them, but I don't believe you find that in the Word of God. The believer is admonished to walk by faith. It's by grace. It's absolutely by grace. Our part is to believe the Lord, to believe His Word, and to behold Him in His Word. And faith certainly isn't meritorious.

Do you guys have any comments, anything to add about this? Or about something else we talked about? There's a lot to talk about. There's a lot to study. You know, you could study for years a different history. Yeah? Even your salvation? Okay. And I think Bonnie mentioned earlier that That type of environment isn't conducive to spiritual growth, just like for a thousand, almost two thousand years. But anyway, you could study, we could study church history. you could study church history just in relation to spiritual growth. What did they actually teach? What did Wesley actually teach? Because a lot of contemporary Wesleyans or Methodists, what they say he taught isn't what he really taught.

And so you really have to go back to the source if you have time and desire to do that. But what's interesting is that I studied some of this for a couple of weeks, which is hardly any time at all, and with you, I have a hunger to understand what the Word of God has to say about this. This one? This box and this box?

Similarities are that you are depending upon the Lord, believing Him, and you're beholding the Lord Jesus Christ, He's your object. Differences are that, because spiritual growth is progressive, here you actually, you have actually grown spiritually, actually have been conformed to His image more so than here, because you just started out there. That's one difference. I mean, James actually tells you that doing a simple act is actually a stair-step process. You know, when you first say it, you think, oh, it's all happening at once. But it's actually a step-wise thing, and having grown to pretty much recognize the onset of a symptom, or maybe get ready to do something about it, or get the word out, Okay, Hal.

My question is, what's the difference, I mean, as you're growing, what's the difference between the communities you're walking in, in spirit, and the communities you're walking in, in thoughts? What's different about you as a relationship to the Lord? It's so easy. I mean, because the Lord doesn't exist. I mean, I probably thought it was more of a, you know, you're walking in the water, walking in the flesh, kind of thing. Zero or one?

I have an idea about that, but if you try to take this line as a final, every time you've used it only once in your life, and then you come back to work, you have already that experience. And if you use it in a relationship with me, it's like you were... And I do hope you, with the, like, the different kinds of things you make, or the different things that you make, that's what you'll get from that, and you'll learn from that, so that could be the growth. So, actually, if you are older, you should do these, like, normal issues, or any studies related to that.

So, up here right now, I'm going to say you make, Unfortunately, we should stop. But I think what Alicia is saying is similar to what Tom was saying. Next week, we're going to look at the history of end times teaching throughout the different periods of church history. And we better, we should close.

Dear Lord, thank You for again letting us get together and specifically look at what the Church has taught throughout the centuries in relation to Your Word and what it teaches about spiritual growth. And we ask that You continue to instruct us and teach us and also conform us into Christ's very image. In Jesus' name, Amen.