Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012

Okay, history of missions is what we're set for this time. Next time, origins and history of Islam and interactions with the church. I think you'll find that real interesting, especially in view of the events of 9-11 and subsequently, and even things we're involved in as a nation now. So, anyway, we will go through that. History of missions here, we'll start off with the apostolic era, the era from the time when Christ ascended, and imagine that the disciples were still asking questions when Jesus left. So, at any rate, up to 96, which is the date of the death of John, the last living apostle, so far as we have any record.

Matthew 28, 18-20, Jesus was speaking to the disciples, and Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Some of the things we point out here is that one go, and boy, I'm sure whole sermons have been preached on go, go, go, and it's not an imperative. As you're going, you know, as you're going is what it actually says. As you're going, therefore, make disciples. Make disciples is the imperative. Make disciples, baptizing them, And that's a follow-on to make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And interesting, you've got the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Does he say the names of? No, it's name of, singular. The original language is in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Three personal beings, one God, one essence, right?

Teaching them, so you have making disciples involves baptizing and teaching. Teaching them to observe all I command you and aloha, I'm with you always even to the end of the age. So note the direction and goal of missionary action. It isn't just to get converts.

And a number of churches, although they're to be commended for seeking converts, forget the fact that, you know, you need to grow them up. It's like we've got this baby ward, and that's the only part of the hospital we've got. We're birthing babies, but nothing else, right? And they all just stay in the baby ward. So this says, teaching them, in other words, you're growing them up, in God's Word.

Acts 1.8, But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria, even to the remotest part of the earth. Something I'll point out that's consistent with what we've been learning here in the Romans passage. Here, Jesus says, I am with you always, right? So he's always present.

And then in Acts 1.8, Who else is present? The Holy Spirit, right? So both of those passages are consistent with what's taught there in Romans 8. Romans 11, 13a and b, but I'm speaking to you who are Gentiles inasmuch as that I am an apostle of the Gentiles. What's meant by that? I'm an apostle of the Gentiles. Is Paul a Gentile? No. He was sent to the Gentiles, right? By the way, why do you think Paul would be particularly suited, even as a Jew, why would he be particularly suited to go to the Gentiles?

Pardon? Isn't it interesting that his persecution may in fact be one of the things that, when reversed, puts him in a particular place, alright? Why else? He spent personal time with Christ, therefore would be able to reveal things that were revealed specifically to him, consistent with what the other disciples taught, but also uniquely. Good. Why else?

Yeah. He was there when, I can't think of his name right now, was stoned. Stephen was stoned. Right. And the scriptures even recorded. Okay. So there, and here's Stephen, you know, says, I see, you know, describing what he saw. And later on, that would have significance to Paul, wouldn't it? Yes. He was from an educated family. Ah, yes. He wasn't just a yokel. Yes.

Now, on the Jewish side, he had some real clear qualifications, didn't he? But on the Gentile side, what would be some of his qualifications? Where was he born and raised? Pardon? Well, he had a Roman citizenship, but he was Saul of Tarsus, right? Tarsus was a university city, and so he was a man of both Gentile and Jewish education and a high intellect, but likely spoke Greek and Latin and Hebrew and Aramaic, yes. He also had a desire, and he was zealous, to learn the scriptures, live out the scriptures, and be a medium for God. He would already have had the scriptures down, but you notice he was able to quote, as he did in a couple of places, secular writers. So he had a very broad education. He was a very fitting apostle to the Gentiles.

You have here, and these maps are starting on page one, show Paul's first missionary journey and he basically made a loop that went once through Cyprus and then went into Southern Galatia. This is the letter to the Galatians is written to those five churches there.

And then he made a loop back through them and when he went back through them he appointed elders in each of these churches and in each of the subsequent missionary journeys he went also through those same cities. In the second missionary journey, what did he do? He left from Antioch and went through those same cities where he had been before in southern Galatia. And then He made the loop then. On that second missionary journey was when he made the move to go from what was Asia there, we now call it Turkey, into establishing in Philippi the first church on the European continent, and then going down into Macedonia and Greece, and then sailing back and heading back through Jerusalem. And then on his third missionary journey, what does he do? He starts at Antioch and goes back to the same churches as he went on his first missionary journey twice, and on his second missionary journey, and now on the third one. So notice he's very consistent on going back to the ones he's founded before. Ah, yes. So Paul was fulfilling even though that wasn't directly said to him. He was making disciples, not just making converts. Very important.

And finally, the fourth missionary journey, which was one that was because he appealed to Caesar, took him to Rome. He had intended to go to Rome anyway. As you read earlier, he had intended to go to Rome anyway, but this wasn't exactly the way he planned on doing it, but that got him there. It also got him away from the Jews who were trying to kill him. If he had been let loose in Israel at that time, rather than appealing to Caesar, he would have been exposed to a whole bunch of Jews who had vowed to kill him. And so by his appeal to Caesar, he went to Rome and it took him away from the danger, and ultimately took him where he wanted to go anyway, which is to Rome.

We could ask the question, whatever happened to the Apostles? We covered that in more detail in Lesson 9, The Life and Times of John. We talked about what happened to the Apostles. I'll just make a couple of quick notes. One is, of course, of the original disciples. We have it in the Bible that Judas took his own life. We have it that James, the brother of John, was killed. That's recorded in Acts chapter 12. Killed by the sword. And so we have that now the accounts of the rest of them. You can take a look at the life and times of John I'll make this summary statement though that all the rest of them there from Andrew up to Peter Who are part of the original?

12 all of them eventually died somewhere else in a missionary capacity Thomas went all the way to India and As the record has it, Matthew died shouting out the gospel in North Africa while they were driving wooden stakes through him. Others, Philip died in Herapolis. His Herapolis, Laodicea, and Colossae are the cities there. Just this year, an archaeologist claims to have found his tomb. So, real interesting. So, all of them that we have from Andrew to Peter all died in some foreign missionary capacity. John being the only one that we know of that died a natural death.

Did the apostles take the gospel to China? I think the record doesn't indicate that. but possibly those who had been taught by the Apostles may have taken the Gospel to China. China's Professor Wang Weifan, who is a professor in Nanjing, has found a bunch of tombstones dating from 86 AD that give a number of Bible stories in the pictures. Everything from Adam and Eve in the garden on into accounts in the Gospels and Acts. And those stories are told on the tombstones. I have just one sample here, but it's got even the Nativity and Herod going after Jesus while he escapes. Pardon? Yes. Yes. And so anyway, real interesting.

Now stepping into the area after the time of the Apostles, 96 to 312, 96 being the death of John, 312 being the year that Christianity was made legal in the Roman Empire, that period of time. Here we have a map, I didn't reproduce it here, but it shows in general Christianity in 100 A.D. I would say that this does not tell the whole story because Christianity went to the east farther, like I say, all the way to India and all the way to China.

So it doesn't tell the story farther on. There's even some indication that it went to Britain and that's not shown here. So at any rate, this is a minimal statement and not a complete statement. The spread of the church, here's a map that shows up. I think it's smaller in the first instance, but we have some larger versions of it in your handout.

What we have is three different versions. outside of the Greek of the New Testament, three different versions within that 96 to 312 period and going into different directions, North Africa and into the Middle East and Syriac and then the old Latin versions. So those three versions heading in different directions and different continents during that time. But one of the things we want to point out is while we can give a history of Christian missions, it must be kept in mind here that the role of the church and the understanding of the gospel largely drifted from God's Word. So we talk about Christian missions, it's a distorted picture unfortunately, after the era of the apostles.

And what do I mean by that? The church began to change from the body of those who are saved. In other words, who is responsible for placing us into the church, the body, the church body? And specifically the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12, 13. The Holy Spirit places us into the church body and we are saved as God's doing.

But what happened is Though the New Testament speaks otherwise, by 170 AD, that was the time when they began calling pastors priests. And by 220 AD, they began talking about both baptism and the Lord's Table as being spiritually effective. Therefore, when the church baptizes and when the church serves the Lord's Table, as we'll do this morning, the teaching began to be, around the year 220, that that does something to you and therefore it makes the church the saving agent instead of God. Right? Problem. Yes? What was that reference?

1 Corinthians 12? 1 Corinthians 12.13 says that the Holy Spirit baptizes us into the body of Christ.

So that was a big change and a change that in a significant portion of Christendom is still the case. where the church is looked upon as the saving agent rather than the body of those who are saved by God. Catholicism and even the Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, etc. headed in that direction. They split but still has that same route got carried out where the church becomes the saving agent. And then there are also various, I'll call them cult groups, who look upon themselves as, you know, you've got to get saved through us or else it doesn't count.

We have no written statement, it doesn't mean it wasn't believed, but we have no written statement outside the New Testament that Christ died in our place until the year 1100 with Anselm, who was a Roman Catholic theologian. Isn't that strange? The idea that Christ died in my place, the idea that he took my sins, mine, upon himself, we have no written record of it for a thousand years. And we have a record of a lot of things. It's not exhaustive, but we can't find any record during that thousand year period of time in writing that remains to this day.

So churches in the Roman Empire at the end of the third century, now this is in the Roman Empire so this doesn't talk about farther east. It doesn't refer to that. But so here you see churches spread throughout everywhere from Britain on down to Egypt and North Africa and then on into the Middle East. Of course they extended farther into the Middle East beyond what's shown on this map. So it's the end of the third century which is just before Christianity is made legal in 312, right? So now, 312, when Christianity is made legal, to 590, the beginning of the reign of Pope Gregory I, Gregory the Great, as he's called.

So during that period, you have, and page four has this, I think, in a little bit larger map, you had some translations into other languages during this period of time. Can you imagine what a job this is? I mean, that's a lot of text to not just copy, Copying is a big job in itself, but to translate, it's quite a task. And then write it down, right? So, thank the Lord for word processors, right?

So at any rate, what you see here is several, and again it goes in each direction, several that are during this period of time translated into other languages. What's interesting is that the Catholic Church ended up centering on the Latin, but other translations were still made and used elsewhere.

Now, here's Christian missions during this time, and by the way, this is just a sampling. Ulfilas begins work with the Goths in present-day Romania, that's 341. And then you have the mission to the Vandals, an East German tribe. And that took place in 364, began in 364. 378, Jerome writes, from India to Britain, all nations resound with the death and resurrection of Christ.

Now, nobody knows what it means, but we're telling people about it. 432, Patrick sent to Ireland. Was Patrick Irish? No, he was not. But he was sent to Ireland, sent with what message? Pardon? Get rid of the mice? So did Patrick go with a true biblical gospel to Ireland? But supposedly his writings could say he actually was born again. Yeah, so with a lot of cases, yeah, a lot of cases, you know, the message may get crossed, fairly muddled, you know.

But at any rate, yeah, he wasn't Irish, and what he taught was, I would say, leaning towards Catholicism. that point in time. Now, 563, Columba, that's not Columbus. Columba sails from Ireland to Scotland and founds an evangelistic training center on Iona, which is an island on the west side of Scotland. So from there they went out into Scotland during that time.

Now, going in the next period, 590 to 517, almost a thousand year period of time there, 590 being the beginning of the reign of Gregory the Great, the Pope, and then 517 being Luther's nailing the 95 Theses onto the door at Wittenberg, which we have right here. There's the Church at Wittenberg.

Now, during that period of time, Muhammad died in 632 AD, and then the Muslims went out in three different directions to three different continents to spread Islam with the sword. And so they give the dates for the different directions and times here. By 732, 100 years after the death of Muhammad, the Muslim advance was finally turned back in Tours, France, not too far outside of Paris. Charles Martel, that is Charles the Hammer, was the one who said, you know, Muslim Europe bad, Christian Europe good, and went with this slogan and turned around the Muslim advance in Europe.

Did not drive it out completely. Some areas where it remained was in Spain, and we had what was Yugoslavia, and there's some Muslim culture in there. So, yes? He said that you labeled up there the spread of Islam, and then you said it was the sword. Was that your goal? That's what you do. You go in there and if you're not going to be Muslim, you're going to die. And of course, a lot of it, there's been Christian influence in there, so they kill them.

But they swept so fast that it was difficult for anybody to get any kind of an advance notice and get a significant defense in place. And so it was all the way to Tours France before they finally turned this thing around. Well, it didn't happen. Nobody was able to actually come in and stop them.

And one of the reasons why this happened, you've heard of the Sunni Shiite division and what happened is, that's basically different parts of his family, of Muhammad's family. They would have slaughtered each other. But they said, you know, let's not do this. Let's instead, you know, go and slaughter other people. And that's what they did.

And so to this day, you have the Sunni Shiite division, which is, I mean, they'll take it to the point of death. So, we have, for example, the messages to the seven churches in Revelation, right? All of those are now in Muslim country. Because the Muslims went in.

The only way that Christians could survive is if they agreed not to evangelize, and they paid a dimitude. Basically, I'll nickname it a stupid tax. And that's what the Coptic Church did in Egypt, and that's why you have the Coptics. They're not allowed to evangelize. And they have to pay dimitude. Yes, still. Any time where they've tried to step outside of that, it's beheading. You get beheaded if you step outside of that agreement. So, that happened.

You also have the Viking raids and expansions. Basically, the Vikings went into coastal areas, areas that were accessible. They would do this sort of a surprise raid. You know, you'd just be living your life and all of a sudden this ship comes up and they boom and they hit and they come and do these raids and take what they want and destroy whatever they want and then go back to the ship and leave.

And so it was not, I mean, it was difficult to have a defense ready when they come just kind of, you know, shooting in on the shore, jump out and attack. Yeah. It was almost like piratism. Yeah, it was kind of like that. The Muslims have and had pirate, you know, activity.

And same thing with the Vikings back in those days. The Vikings delighted in raiding church buildings, burning the churches, and selling the monks into slavery. Make plenty good booty, you know. Ansgar, 801 to 854, called the Apostle to the North, put forth some missionary efforts to the Vikings, but didn't amount to much.

So there was some attempt Now, missions to China. During this time, we talked about the 86 AD impact of the gospel. There were subsequent missions, but of course by this time, you're talking about Catholic and even more so Orthodox church movements into China. Here's Nestorian monks from Persia arrive in China. Here is one near Xi'an, China, built 638. In 1289, Franciscan, based on Francis of Assisi, Franciscan friars begin mission work in China, 1289. In 1368, Franciscan mission to China falls. It was real interesting, the Khan in the Far East asked Marco Polo's father, send a hundred Christian missionaries here. They sent two. One died on the way. So they essentially got one out of request for a hundred.

Missionary activity in the medieval period, and this is just kind of a broad sweep here of the time frames and where some of the missionary activity came from. Interesting that what you had is somebody gets sent to Ireland, and from Ireland you get sent to Scotland, and from Scotland you go somewhere else. So an interesting migration of where the gospel got circulated. Here you have more translations during this period of time.

Here's Nubian and North Africa, and then you have English, and by the way, you and I could not read that English. We earlier gave some samples of what that was like. John 3.16, you cannot understand it.

About two or three words are barely recognizable out of John 3.16. So, but anyway, we say English, it's really pre-English. And then German, which of course changed as well, right?

And then Old Slavic. And then I have here a Georgian and it's with a dashed underline because some of it's from the prior period and some into this period of time that we're talking about here, 590 to 1517. Cyril and Methodius went from Thessalonica, which was about over here, okay? Thessalonica up into the area of what is now Czech and Eastern Europe.

Matter of fact, I was talking with Elishka about this. She said, yeah, they're the ones who brought us our alphabet. So that's why some of the Russian and similar lettering looks sort of like Greek. It's because of that. It's because of the history of that. Yes?

So who was in charge of, you said they were sent. So who sent it? Often times when they're being sent, it's by the Roman Catholic Church. Not always, but often times that was the case in what we're showing here. And who else would be? Well, you've got the Roman Catholic Church, you've got the Orthodox Churches. During this period of time, largely those are the ones sending missionaries. So were any of the cities involved?

What happened with the places that Paul went is that the churches began to drift, just like I was talking about, in terms of what's the gospel. They began to see themselves as we described as a saving organization rather than being an organization of those saved, an organism actually of those saved. And so that transition took place. But then the impact of Islam coming in with the sword, basically most of those churches, particularly the ones in what is now Turkey, got wiped out completely.

Because, bottom line, you're not going to convert, you're going to be dead. And Allah wills it. Well, strangely enough, the word Coptic and Egypt are related linguistically. Coptic, Egypt, it's Egypt. They're actually related linguistically and basically they were Christians that headed off as non-Catholic churches did, that headed off among the Orthodox. So you have Coptic Orthodox, you've got Serbian Orthodox, you've got Syrian Orthodox, Antiochian Orthodox, you've got a couple dozen different Orthodox groups, and then there's Rome. And that came from the federation of bishops that came out of the Roman Empire and there was an initial split back in the 6th century and then another split again just before the time of the Crusades. The final split took place just before the time of the Crusades when one of the patriarchs of the Orthodox Church and the Pope excommunicated each other. Then finally, 1455, so a few decades before Luther nailed his thesis on the door at Wittenberg, the printing press was introduced in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg. The first thing he printed was a Latin Bible.

But the printing press allowed for people to, for example, I can get now a Greek grammar and You know, you can have one, and you can have one, and you can have one, and I can look up what's, you know, here's the meanings of the different Greek words and that kind of thing, so I can look that up.

And now I can study this and translate the Bible for myself. And I can get hold of copies of different writings that previously I'd have to copy by hand. So now they can be produced en masse and have things distributed far more easily. And that began to change things quite a bit. It set the stage for Martin Luther and other reformers to begin to say, hey, wait a minute, I know what the Bible says. I know what it really says. And that was a part of the great discovery, starting with the printing press.

So now 1517 to 1648, 1517 being the time of Martin Luther's nailing his theses on the door at Wittenberg and 1648 being the end of the Thirty Years War, the Peace of Westphalia. Missions during this period of time from 1517 to 1648 included mission work to the native peoples in the Americas.

See, what's happening in Europe is just roiling, just boiling and fighting going on and just a wild time. But what's happening is because people looking for escape from all this battling and fighting and for people looking for religious freedom, they head to America, right? So what you have is work with the native peoples, and we're going to see that in just a minute here. The Protestant Reformation itself could be considered under missions in that people went out and tried to spread the idea that it's just sola scriptura, you know, there's salvation by faith. And so people within Europe even spreading that message.

This period included translation and printing of the Bible in native languages of Europe. So you have that effort going on. Here's the Tyndale New Testament, 1525. Tyndale lost his life for getting the Tyndale Bible put out. Interestingly, he was ready to have it, he was taking it across the English Channel, ready to have it all printed up when the ship went down. And he lost it and had to start over again. Had no backup copy, he lost it and had to do it all over again from scratch.

So, then we find, since the end of the Thirty Years War, missionary activity expanded to places all over the world, including native peoples on occupied areas. There are areas that weren't occupied, desert or mountain or Antarctica, for example. But going to a lot of native peoples during this period of time all over the world, a lot of different places.

The first Bible printed in America was not in English. It was written in the Algonquin Indian language used by John Eliot to begin to evangelize the Native Americans. So that was the first Bible printed in America and what you can see of it is basically print that we would recognize but words that we would not. And that's how it was done. So what did John Eliot have to do? He had to teach them how to read their own language. So he first had to learn the language himself to be able to put it into some English sort of print, and then teach them how to read that, because prior to that it was just an oral language.

Sunday School was begun in this period of time. Sunday School was begun in Britain by Robert Rakes prior to 1786. We say prior to because we know it was before 1786, I'm not quite sure when, but prior to 1786, it was designed for the poor unchurched children. See a lot of times we typically think of Sunday school where you take your kids to church for Sunday school, but at that time it was for those who were unchurched, the idea being that the parents had responsibility for teaching the kids the Bible if they were churched.

So this was an evangelistic outreach, a missionary outreach among people where the family didn't go to church. So, it included reading lessons. Basically, they were released from the factories on Sundays, and so that was why you had Sunday school. They were from unchurched homes and so they taught them how to read because they're working all the time. They taught them how to read on those Sundays and then of course the object of that was so they could read the Bible and books about the Bible. Missionary societies and missions found. 1649, so you notice this is a year after the Peace of Westphalia.

The end of the 30 years were the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England established about that time. Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts of 1701. 1792 William Carey, forming Baptist Missionary Society, launches a mission to India, which by the way initially was not terribly successful. And what he did is he ended up doing a lot of translation work, self-taught. but a lot of translation work, and others were actually more successful in evangelizing people in India. 1795, London Missionary Society formed.

1810, American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions. So it was a lot of missions organizations that were being developed over this time. 1813, the Wesleyan Missionary Society Forum, of course that was a Wesley Methodist outreach. And 1865, China Inland Mission founded by James Hudson Taylor. So 1865 is around the time of the end of the Civil War here in the Americas. Orphanages, 1849, George Muller began founding orphanages in Britain.

Very interesting, as they had needs, he never let anyone know what the needs were. He just prayed about it. At times, it would be getting close to dinner time. and they had no food to feed the children. But he would just pray. And in that one instance, that happened. And this baker came knocking at the door and said, I've got a bunch of bread left over. Do you guys need any? So he just prayed. Eventually, about 2,100 orphans were housed and provided for in five different homes. By the way, those were big homes, right? Okay. David Livingstone, 1813 to 1873, explorer and medical missionary to Africa, including the area not too far away from where I was there.

He focused on the widest possible expansion of the gospel so as to prepare whole peoples for the gospel. Then the 20th century brought missions organizations based on speech, excuse me, special missions needs in modern technology. So you have Wycliffe Bible Translators, founded in 1942, middle of World War II, William Cameron Townsend, a Central American Indian, this is Let's see, Choctaw, I think is the way to pronounce it. Choctaw man, and that's old Mayan, challenged him, if your god is so great, why doesn't he speak in my language? And so that's the founding of Wycliffe Bible Translators. Later, to become Mission Aviation Fellowship, the Christian Airmen's Missionary Fellowship was launched in 1945.

And my dad has had some involvement with that. Yes? Basically what happened is you had various people coming out here and establishing churches out in the West during pioneering times. Just as you had people coming across, you also had pastors coming through. Sometimes it would be pretty thin and so they'd have itinerant Pastors, you know, kind of running around a certain area as things first started up. My great-great-grandfather was one that came through Denver here and he was earlier a medical doctor and later a pastor. And so I was one out west and my own grandfather was in a tent meeting evangelistic group about 1910. But that had been going on for a while. Some present challenges.

There are unreached people groups throughout the world totaling 2 billion people unreached. They're not getting the gospel in their location and or language. With 60% of those being in places where missionaries cannot legally go. There are places in the world where It is illegal to change your religion. There are places in the world where you cannot teach anything but whatever the adopted religion is, and most often that's Islam. And it's at least imprisonment if not capital punishment to teach Christianity in some of those places.

Of all the funds spent by Christian organizations, about one half of a percent goes toward missions towards these unreached people groups. Islam, the fastest growing world religion, has no tolerance policy for Christians where they have power. Anyone converting from Islam to Christianity, the best opportunity among Muslims is in Africa, Christians are often former Muslims. And that's what I found to be true in Uganda and Tanzania and Kenya. Christians are often former Muslims. Hassan raised a Muslim. We had here visiting with us and staying with us a lady who was raised Muslim. And when she became a Christian, her father came after her with a knife. This was Ida.

Okay, so those are some present challenges. Biblical teaching and the true gospel. Here's another big challenge. Perhaps one of the greatest challenges to missionary work is lack of biblically sound teaching and the understanding of the true gospel of Jesus Christ. There's a lot of missionary activity that lacks those elements. Do we really have a saving gospel and clear gospel that we're teaching people? That's part one.

And then the next one is biblically sound teaching, something you can actually grow on. One of the things that Roy is trying to work on is even some of the people that are going up to this missions opportunity there in Canada. Many of them do not have a clear understanding of, you know, alright, now that I'm saved, how do I live? Now that you're saved, are you obeying?

This is the way a lot of it comes across instead of a grace message. Next, Christendom now consists of more than 40,000 denominations. That's the latest count. I think previously when I taught church history, I said upwards of 30,000. It's now upwards of 40,000.

And many of those do not have a saving gospel and most lack biblical teaching. Key doctrines missing and misunderstood are grace, identification, and position and condition. Ignorance or distortion in those three areas is real common. In many churches, God's grace is God giving you the opportunity to earn your salvation.

That's what grace is. Pardon? Yes, that's right. Opening the door so you can basically earn your salvation. That's grace. In Calvinist churches, grace is something God forces on you. So, real interesting. In an open theist viewpoint, grace is something that God tries to give you as much as He can, but He just doesn't know what's happening.

Identification is almost entirely an area of ignorance. You will have people who are very knowledgeable and even conservative in their biblical teaching and have no idea what this identification thing is about. And I would say that's true of where I went to seminary.

Yes? Well, wasn't that kind of a situation until God came down with the law and explain to the Israelite people through the law that there was a sin issue and that you could err in life and that you got to a certain standard. I mean, none of these people without the law would know that, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're all born thinking that this is the way it is. Yeah. Okay. Right. Yeah. You know, we're all born good. Yeah. On and on. Yes.

It would be very difficult to start from the very beginning. all these different locations, so I think it's pretty amazing that they were even able to teach resurrection. That in itself is proof that a man rose from the dead. That's pretty spectacular, right? Yeah, but then we have those who teach from a liberal standpoint, still call themselves Christians, I was over by Iliff Seminary at a coffee shop and I look over at a couple of the guys and look at their books. The myth of the resurrection. So do they teach the resurrection? Yeah. The myth of it. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Oh good. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, the Muslims teach that Jesus will come again and point to Muhammad.

I think we're going to have to stop here because we're running out of time. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you. As we look at this, certainly there are some things that are encouraging on the one hand and other things we could kind of shake our heads at. We're thankful that you, in fact, have revealed truth to a great many, and even those in places that are apparently unreached who respond to what you have revealed, you'll reveal more. And Lord, we do thank you for that. We just thank you for your amazing grace. In Jesus' name, amen.