It Is Written Reformation 500 Series

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: John Bradshaw

Series Code: IIWR

01:30 ♪[Theme Music]
01:40 ♪[Theme Music]
01:49 >>John Bradshaw: This is It Is Written. I'm John Bradshaw.
01:51 Thanks for joining me for 500, our series on the Reformation.
01:56 Today: "A Wall of Separation."
02:00 And my guest is Pastor Lincoln Steed from Liberty Magazine,
02:03 a magazine dedicated to the separation of church and state
02:07 and to advancing the concept of religious liberty.
02:10 Lincoln, thanks for joining me.
02:11 >>Lincoln Steed: Great to be with you.
02:12 >>John: You think most people recognize just how
02:13 important religious liberty is?
02:15 >>Lincoln: No, I don't think so,
02:16 although it's like apple pie.
02:18 Nobody is against religious liberty, nowhere,
02:21 but the way they define it varies greatly.
02:25 And that's the problem.
02:26 The true concept of religious liberty
02:28 is almost been forgotten,
02:30 even in the United States,
02:31 which to its credit still very publicly speaks about a
02:34 commitment to religious freedom.
02:37 But even in the
02:37 United States what it's devolving into
02:39 very quickly is religious entitlement,
02:42 and that is not religious liberty.
02:44 >>John: A Wall of Separation,
02:46 most of us take that for granted today,
02:48 but you don't have to rewind the calendar too far to get to
02:51 a place where there was no religious freedom
02:55 and when religion and government
02:57 were inextricably woven together.
03:00 In this program we'll understand why that might be
03:03 a bit of a problem,
03:04 or why when you unbind the two,
03:07 humanity has the opportunity to surge forward
03:10 under the aegis of the Holy Spirit.
03:13 Our last program dealt with the Counter Reformation.
03:17 Let me take a moment to review that.
03:20 We took you to northern Spain,
03:21 to the birthplace of Ignatius Loyola.
03:24 And then we took you to the Vatican City.
03:26 That was where Ignatius Loyola and others petitioned the Pope.
03:30 They said, "The Reformation is making a big dent
03:34 in God's church.
03:36 Give us the permission we need to establish an organization
03:40 with a charter that allows us to do whatever we must
03:45 to win back the ground that the church has lost over the years."
03:49 The Counter Reformation unleashed,
03:51 really, a barrage of Catholic influence as the Roman church
03:56 sought to retake ground that it had lost.
03:59 One of the things you heard when I spoke with Dr. Damsteegt
04:02 that was significant was that theologically
04:06 the church reasserted itself.
04:08 The position of the Reformers when it came
04:10 to the Bible prophecies was that the Roman Catholic Papacy
04:15 was implicated in Daniel chapter seven
04:17 and Revelation chapter 13.
04:19 Many of the Reformers were bold enough to claim
04:22 that the Vatican was Antichrist.
04:26 Of course, for Rome this was shocking.
04:29 That was not news that they wanted broadcast,
04:32 but now that that was made known,
04:35 now that there was a case made in the Bible
04:39 that the church of Rome was implicated in a negative
04:41 way in the last days of this earth's history,
04:44 Rome decided something had to be done.
04:46 No, they didn't reverse any theological positions,
04:49 and they could not rewrite history,
04:50 but a couple of Jesuits as it happened were commissioned
04:54 to reinterpret those prophesies of the Bible.
04:58 One version of the newly explained prophesies
05:02 posited that everything to do with Antichrist had
05:06 been fulfilled in the past,
05:08 previously, which is where we get the school of prophetic
05:11 interpretation known as preterism, or pre-terism.
05:16 Another scholar invented a system of
05:20 prophetic interpretation that placed all of the last end time
05:24 events in the very end of time.
05:27 Keep in mind,
05:28 the Reformers were largely historicists in their
05:32 interpretation of the Bible and Bible prophecy.
05:34 They looked at prophecy,
05:35 they looked at the book of Revelation
05:36 and they said some of that has been fulfilled in the past,
05:39 some of it is fufilling now,
05:41 and there will be some that's fulfilled in the future.
05:44 Not so.
05:45 Ribera, the Jesuit scholar,
05:47 he said it's all going to take place down in the end of time.
05:51 So if it wasn't fulfilled historically,
05:54 then it certainly couldn't apply to the church of Rome.
05:58 Was the Counter Reformation a success?
06:01 By many measures you'd have to say yes,
06:03 but you'd have to be the final determiner as to
06:06 whether or not that was actually so.
06:09 Well, as we look at A Wall of Separation,
06:13 this program takes us to the New World from the Old.
06:17 We travel from Italy to New England.
06:20 We find ourselves in Providence, Rhode Island
06:23 and Boston, Massachusets, and we go to the site
06:27 that has said to be the landing of the original Americans,
06:32 the pilgrim fathers,
06:33 who landed at what is said to be Plymouth Rock.
06:36 Well, as we find out it almost undoubtedly wasn't exactly
06:39 Plymouth Rock where they landed,
06:40 but nevertheless it's a great story.
06:43 And we go to Plymouth Rock and you might be surprised
06:44 as I was first time I went there that Plymouth Rock
06:47 isn't Ayers rock like in Australia.
06:50 It's not the Rock of Gibraltar.
06:53 It's kind of a small rock, unimpressive,
06:55 but nevertheless it stands as an icon and a symbol.
07:00 And it speaks to us today about new beginnings
07:02 and about the birth of a new nation.
07:05 It also, if you listen,
07:06 will speak to you about religious freedom.
07:09 Maybe religious freedom isn't the most glamorous of subjects
07:12 to be talking about, but here's what's fascinating.
07:15 When you go back to the time of Martin Luther,
07:20 just 103 years before the landing at Plymouth Rock,
07:26 Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Castle Church
07:30 in Wittenberg, just 100 years, a century,
07:32 103 years to be exact.
07:35 Martin Luther had no concept of religious freedom.
07:40 You know that Luther initially had no burden
07:42 to separate from his church.
07:45 To question the authority of the church,
07:47 well that was out of the question.
07:50 To speak back against a Pope,
07:53 somebody who has a divine right to do what he does
07:56 and to say what he says,
07:58 who would even dare to do that?
08:00 So Martin Luther wasn't as far along the continuum
08:03 as was Roger Williams.
08:06 Martin Luther agitated theologically.
08:09 Martin Luther championed the
08:12 doctrine of justification by faith.
08:13 Martin Luther spoke against the church dispensing grace out of
08:18 its treasury, against purgatory,
08:21 that place where one is purged from her or his sins
08:25 in preparation for heaven.
08:26 He spoke against purgatory.
08:29 He spoke against indulgences, and so many other things,
08:32 but Luther didn't talk about religious freedom.
08:36 Roger Williams did, and it was important to Roger Williams.
08:41 Stop and think about where we'd be today
08:44 without religious freedom.
08:46 I wonder if you'd, just give that some thought.
08:48 The United States where It Is Written is based
08:53 is said to be the land of the free and the home of the brave.
08:58 Those are the words inside the national anthem
09:01 of the United States of America,
09:03 the Star Spangled Banner.
09:06 It wouldn't be either, we couldn't say the United States
09:08 was either without religious freedom.
09:11 Very, very significant.
09:14 Imagine how you would feel if you were told what to believe,
09:18 if you were told how you could worship,
09:21 if you were told what you could study,
09:24 if you were prohibited from freely sharing your faith
09:28 with somebody else.
09:30 You couldn't challenge the way things were done
09:32 at your local church and you couldn't even freely decide
09:35 to stay away from church.
09:38 You had to do what you were told to do,
09:41 and if you didn't, severe was the punishment.
09:47 Can you imagine that in the 21st Century?
09:49 You know what's so very interesting?
09:51 As you look at the book of Revelation,
09:54 and you look at the overarching sweep of Bible prophecy,
09:58 as you look at that great battle between good and evil
10:01 that's been raging for millennia,
10:04 you have to come face to face with the inescapable conclusion
10:08 that in the end of time religious liberty
10:10 will again be denied.
10:12 The reason I say that is because in the book of Revelation
10:14 it says "he causes", or forces, or coerces,
10:20 "he causes all to receive a mark in their right hand.
10:24 He causes all to worship the beast."
10:27 We're not getting into defining that right now,
10:30 but we can see that in the closing moments
10:32 of earth's history,
10:33 religious liberty disappears and coercion becomes the norm again.
10:40 So these are significant times in which we live.
10:43 Look out on this program,
10:44 we'll take you to a beautiful site in Providence,
10:46 Rhode Island, an enormous statue of Roger Williams.
10:49 He's still considered to be an enormously important
10:52 figure in New England,
10:53 particularly in Rhode Island, a colony that he created.
10:56 The statue is there.
10:58 He's not a forgotten son.
11:00 Plymouth Rock still exists.
11:03 Hundreds of thousands of tourists visit it every year.
11:06 That still exists and it's still remembered.
11:10 But go beyond the surface, and are the issues still remembered?
11:15 This country was settled by people
11:16 who were seeking for religious freedom,
11:18 and God wanted that to be so.
11:20 Religious freedom.
11:23 This country was settled by people who were seeking a church
11:27 without a Pope and a state without a king.
11:32 The original inhabitants of this place were looking for that.
11:35 Now fast forward several hundred years,
11:38 and what are we looking for today?
11:39 Are we remembering the issues?
11:41 Do we remember what Roger Williams stood for?
11:43 Do we understand what religious freedom is?
11:47 As Pastor Steed will tell us in a few minutes from now,
11:50 religious freedom doesn't simply mean I get what I want.
11:54 Religious freedom means religious freedom for all.
11:58 A Wall of Separation.
11:58 You'll be blessed tonight.
12:00 I'll be back with more in just a moment.
12:02 ♪[Theme Music]
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13:11 >>John: This is It Is Written. I'm John Bradshaw.
13:14 Thanks for joining me.
13:16 1620, one of the most significant dates
13:20 in the history of the United States,
13:22 and it wouldn't be a stretch to say
13:24 in the history of the world.
13:34 Martin Luther had nailed the 95 Theses to the door
13:38 of the Castle Church in Wittenberg 103 years earlier.
13:42 By 1620, Luther had been dead for more than 70 years,
13:47 John Calvin for nearly 60,
13:49 Ulrich Zwingli had died almost 90 years before,
13:53 Theodore Beza, the disciple of Calvin whose likeness
13:56 is on the Reformation Wall in Geneva,
13:59 John Knox who stands to his left,
14:02 the Englishmen William Tyndale,
14:03 Thomas Cranmer,
14:04 Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer,
14:06 they'd all been gone for decades.
14:08 In fact, by the time you get to 1620,
14:12 the recognizable names of the Reformation
14:14 had all moved off the scene.
14:17 It could be said that the Reformation ended around
14:20 that time with many scholars saying that it came
14:23 to the end with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648,
14:27 a number of treaties that ended the religious wars in Europe.
14:32 So at about the time the Reformation ended
14:35 one of the most significant developments in the proclamation
14:37 of God's word was getting underway.
14:40 You could see God's fingerprints all over it.
14:54 If you've never seen it before, Plymouth Rock,
14:57 45 minutes south of Boston in Plymouth, Massachusetts
15:01 comes as a bit of a surprise.
15:04 The legend is that Plymouth Rock is where the pilgrims
15:06 got off the Mayflower when they arrived on these shores in 1620.
15:11 The fact is, this is only a fragment
15:14 of the original Plymouth Rock.
15:16 The original broke in half in 1774 and souvenir
15:21 hunters chipped away at the rock over the years,
15:23 so there's much less of it today than there once was.
15:27 I know you don't always want the facts
15:28 to get in the way of a good story,
15:30 but another fact is that no one ever claimed the pilgrims
15:34 landed at Plymouth Rock until 1741,
15:38 121 years after the Mayflower arrived in Plymouth Harbor.
15:44 But all that's incidental really.
15:46 The rock itself is not what's important.
15:49 Today it's a symbol, a symbol of new beginnings
15:53 and the pioneer spirit.
15:54 It's an icon visited by more than a million people a year.
15:59 So what were the pilgrims doing anyway landing at Plymouth Rock,
16:03 or wherever it was they landed?
16:06 Understand that and you'll understand
16:08 the birth of a great nation.
16:10 You'll see how the guiding hand of God shepherded his people
16:14 and fostered the growth of the principles
16:17 of the Protestant Reformation.
16:19 So let's back up a few years.
16:23 The pilgrims on board the Mayflower were Puritans,
16:27 English Protestants who were committed to
16:29 purifying the Church of England of Catholic practices.
16:33 The seeds for the English Reformation were sown by Patrick
16:36 and Columba and Aidan and others like them.
16:39 Centuries later, John Wycliffe was described as
16:43 "the morning star of the Reformation."
16:45 And then there was William Tyndale
16:47 who heroically stood up against
16:48 King Henry VIII and translated the Bible into English
16:52 at a time when such a translation
16:53 was desperately needed.
16:55 With his dying breath,
16:57 Tyndale prayed that God would open the eyes of Henry VIII,
17:00 which God did only two years later when the king
17:04 gave his permission for four different translations
17:06 of the Bible into the English language.
17:09 It was Tyndale's scholarship that provided the lion's share
17:12 of the King James Version of the Bible.
17:31 But even though the church in England,
17:32 or the Church of England,
17:33 had separated from Rome, it was in desperate need of reform.
17:37 Now while it's true that England's King Henry VIII
17:41 was strongly motivated to separate
17:43 from the Roman Catholic Church because it would not annul
17:46 his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in the 1530's,
17:49 England's antipathy towards Rome ran much deeper than that.
17:53 There were significant doctrinal issues that separated the two,
17:57 but the Puritans wanted even more than that.
18:03 Even though the Church of England was structurally
18:06 independent from Rome, that wasn't enough for the Puritans.
18:10 They believed that when it came to matters of Christian faith
18:13 and Christian worship,
18:15 that to depart from what the Bible said
18:16 was both unnecessary and unwise.
18:19 They wanted to follow the example of the Lutherans
18:22 or the Reformed Protestants elsewhere in Europe
18:26 and return to what they believed
18:27 was a more Biblical form of Christianity.
18:30 Yet, the Church of England continued to embrace many
18:34 of the forms of Catholicism.
18:40 The Protestant Movement was
18:41 separated largely into two wings.
18:45 The Lutheran, Calvinistic wing, often called Reformed Theology,
18:49 primarily after the teachings of Martin Luther and John Calvin;
18:53 and the Armenian wing, which was patterned after the teachings
18:56 of Jacob Arminius and others who focused
18:59 on the role of Christian free will in the salvation process,
19:03 along with practical teaching such as nonparticipation in war
19:06 and separation of church and state.
19:08 The Puritans of England clearly took their beliefs
19:12 from the Lutheran, Calvinistic wing.
19:14 And this would be demonstrated by their views
19:16 on religious freedom,
19:18 particularly when they came to the New World.
19:22 The Puritans played a significant role in the
19:24 political history of England throughout the 17th Century.
19:28 For a time, the Puritans ruled the country under the
19:30 leadership of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell
19:33 during the 1650's.
19:40 Early in the 1600's, King James I decided that he would not
19:44 tolerate the agitation of the Puritans any longer.
19:47 They'd either come into line with the policies and practices
19:49 of the Church of England, or they would leave.
19:52 And many of them left.
19:53 It was difficult for those who lived in England.
19:56 Many of them began describing themselves as Separatists,
19:59 because they came to the conclusion that
20:01 the Church of England was never going to change.
20:05 Many of them fled to the Dutch Republic,
20:07 which at the time was more favorable to
20:09 Reformed Protestantism.
20:11 Life was hard for those immigrants.
20:12 Many of them had been farmers and they were not
20:15 able to farm in their new homeland.
20:17 Instead, they had to learn a trade,
20:20 but they considered these difficulties just part of God's
20:23 way of forming in them a godly character.
20:26 "They knew they were pilgrims,
20:28 and looked not much on those things,
20:30 but lifted up their eyes to heaven,
20:32 their dearest country, and quieted their spirits".
20:38 But many of those pilgrims chose to leave the Netherlands
20:41 and return to England before leaving again
20:45 onboard a ship called the Mayflower.
20:48 They were headed for the New World.
20:51 Now some pilgrims didn't make it.
20:53 I'll tell you more in just a moment.
20:55 ♪[Theme Music]
21:03 I'm John Bradshaw from It Is Written,
21:05 inviting you to join me for 500.
21:09 Nine programs produced by It Is Written,
21:11 taking you deep into the Reformation.
21:14 This is the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation
21:18 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door
21:21 of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.
21:23 We'll take you to Wittenberg, and to Belgium,
21:26 to England,
21:27 to Ireland,
21:28 to Rome,
21:29 to the Vatican City,
21:30 and introduce you to the people who created the Reformation,
21:33 who pushed the Reformation forward.
21:35 We'll take you to sites all throughout Europe
21:37 where the Reformers lived and in some cases died.
21:40 We'll bring you back to the United States
21:42 and take you to a little farm in Upstate New York,
21:45 and show you how God spread the Reformation here.
21:48 Don't miss 500.
21:50 You can own the 500 series on DVD.
21:53 Call us on 888-664-5573
21:57 or visit us online at itiswritten.shop.
22:04 This is It Is Written.
22:06 There were actually two ships that left England,
22:09 bound for what would become known
22:11 as the United States of America.
22:14 There was the Mayflower and the Speedwell.
22:17 Together they left Southampton on August the 5th, 1620,
22:22 but the Speedwell leaked,
22:24 not great for a ship intending to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
22:28 Both ships stopped in Dartmouth
22:30 so the Speedwell could be repaired.
22:32 After leaving Dartmouth,
22:34 they made it 350 miles beyond land's end
22:37 before it was discovered that the Speedwell
22:40 was taking on water again.
22:44 So once more, they returned to Dartmouth.
22:47 The Mayflower decided it would push on without the Speedwell.
22:51 Some of the
22:52 Speedwell's passengers crammed into the Mayflower, and so the
22:55 Mayflower, with 102 passengers and between 25 and 30 crew,
23:00 headed off on what would be a miserable voyage,
23:04 but they made it.
23:06 Slowly, but surely,
23:07 life was established here in this new land.
23:10 More and more people would follow in the footsteps
23:13 or in the wake of the pilgrims of England.
23:24 They were driven by a desire for liberty of conscience,
23:29 but they really didn't understand what that truly was.
23:38 The idea that God has given the right to control the conscience
23:41 to the church and has given the church the right to define
23:46 and punish heresy is a school of thought
23:49 that came right out of Rome.
23:56 So while these people had rejected
23:57 many of the doctrines of Rome,
24:00 they retained the spirit of Rome: intolerance.
24:04 Any church they set up would ultimately be a church-state.
24:08 They dictated that only church members
24:10 could have a say in government.
24:12 The secular power was in the hands of the church,
24:16 which can only lead in one direction: persecution.
24:29 In 1631, when Boston was a brand new settlement,
24:33 a Puritan minister not 30 years old arrived here from England.
24:37 Roger Williams was a separatist.
24:40 He believed that for a person to be truly faithful to God,
24:43 that person should separate from the Anglican Church.
24:46 He and his wife Mary would have six children,
24:49 all born in the New World: Mary,
24:52 Freeborn,
24:53 Providence,
24:54 Mercy,
24:55 Daniel,
24:56 and Joseph.
24:57 It wasn't long and people knew he was here.
25:04 Roger Williams was the first person in this land
25:07 to stand up for something that today we regard as a right.
25:11 He believed that liberty of conscience
25:14 was the inalienable right of all people,
25:17 whatever their religion.
25:19 He went so far as to establish government upon
25:22 the principle of religious freedom.
25:24 He was the first person in modern Christianity to do that.
25:28 Williams believed that the government had no place
25:30 dictating to individuals when it came to religious matters.
25:34 That was an entirely new way of thinking.
25:37 It was revolutionary.
25:39 In the early days of the colonies,
25:41 church attendance was required by law.
25:45 You could be fined or even imprisoned
25:48 for not attending church.
25:51 Williams was scandalized by this
25:53 and he decided to do something about it.
25:56 >>Lincoln: And it didn't trouble the Puritans whatsoever,
25:59 that while they'd left a bad situation,
26:01 to come to the New World they just set the same model
26:04 where they would say everyone had to go to church.
26:06 You'd be fined.
26:07 You had to abide by what the minister said.
26:11 No freelance religion.
26:13 Roger Williams comes along,
26:15 and he was the conscience and really the guiding light
26:21 of the true principles of religious liberty
26:23 that we're keeping alive today.
26:26 >>John: It seems strange to be talking about a battle over
26:28 religious freedom in the United States,
26:31 but keep in mind the times and the mindset then.
26:34 The Church of Rome had taught very thoroughly
26:36 that there was no religious freedom.
26:38 It claimed to be the voice of God in the world.
26:41 The church spoke,
26:43 church members did what they were expected to do.
26:46 So even though the Church of England had separated
26:48 from the Roman Catholic Church,
26:49 it still retained a lot of Rome's ideas.
26:54 So when the Puritans came to the free world,
26:57 they were still hung up on the concept of the church saying,
27:00 "jump" and the faithful saying, "how high."
27:03 They had not embraced the concept of religious liberty.
27:07 So in spite of the Reformation, further reform was still needed.
27:13 So while the pilgrims and other Puritan settlers came
27:16 to these shores for the purpose of exercising
27:18 their own liberty of conscience,
27:20 many didn't believe in extending the same right
27:22 to those who held different beliefs.
27:25 Freedom was fine for themselves,
27:27 but not for people who taught and practiced things
27:29 they disagreed with.
27:31 One historian described this attitude with these words,
27:34 "New England divines (pastors and theologians)
27:37 insisted repeatedly that demand for uniformity
27:40 of religious practice in no way violated liberty of conscience.
27:45 They contended that there were two types of liberty: natural
27:50 (or corrupted) liberty and the
27:52 'liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.'
27:55 Liberty to practice error came under the former heading
27:59 and was not really liberty at all,
28:01 but license, the 'liberty for men to destroy themselves.'"
28:07 Roger Williams is truly one of the towering figures
28:09 in the American story.
28:11 And he's one of the towering figures in the advance
28:14 of the Word of God.
28:15 Not only did he advocate religious freedom for all,
28:19 he was also one of the earliest and most vocal opponents
28:21 of slavery on these shores.
28:24 He advocated fair treatment for Native American tribes.
28:27 He also learned many of the languages
28:30 of the tribes in the Northeast.
28:31 He'd run into trouble with the Anglican Church
28:33 before he came to America.
28:35 When he got here and he found the same principles
28:37 of intolerance in a place that was supposed to be
28:40 a haven for liberty, it disturbed him.
28:43 He did not agree with the Puritan's attempts to
28:45 set up a theocracy.
28:46 He said, "forced worship stinks in the nostrils of God."
28:51 Williams believed that Constantine
28:54 was worse for the church than Nero,
28:57 because Constantine successfully united the power
29:00 of the civil government with the authority of the church.
29:05 And before long,
29:06 things would get much worse for Roger Williams.
29:10 I'll have more in a moment.
29:11 ♪[Theme Music]
29:20 >>Announcer: In Matthew 4:4 the word of God says
29:22 "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone,
29:25 but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'"
29:29 Every Word is a one minute, Bible based daily devotional
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29:58 >>John: 500 years after the Protestant Reformation began
30:01 on October 31st, 1517,
30:04 we might be tempted to wonder what Luther, and Knox,
30:06 and Zwingli, and Calvin, and Farel, and Beza,
30:08 and the Huguenots, and the Anabaptists,
30:09 and so many others achieved.
30:12 Today it would seem that the protest is over,
30:15 even though the most influential church in the world
30:17 offers indulgences,
30:18 hears confessions,
30:19 teaches justification by faith and works,
30:22 considers Mary the queen of heaven,
30:24 where are the Protestants today?
30:26 Protestants are being welcomed back into the Church of Rome,
30:28 and many see this as positive.
30:30 It's being said it's more important to be divided by truth
30:34 than it is to be united by error.
30:36 Paul said in 2 Timothy 4, verse two,
30:39 "Preach the word; be instant in season,
30:41 out of season;
30:42 reprove,
30:43 rebuke,
30:44 exhort with all long suffering and doctrine."
30:45 The word, anything less will never do.
30:49 I'm John Bradshaw for It Is Written.
30:50 Let's live today by every word.
30:54 ♪[Music]
31:07 100 years after the Reformation ended,
31:09 there was still a lot of reform left to be accomplished.
31:13 As long as there was no liberty of conscience,
31:16 and as long as the state was united with the church,
31:18 the church was a long way short of where it should be
31:21 from a Biblical perspective.
31:24 The man who would bring the needed change was a Cambridge
31:26 educated Englishman who moved to the colonies
31:29 six weeks after his 27th birthday.
31:32 Williams was forced to leave Massachusetts,
31:36 and he went into exile in 1636.
31:39 In the winter, he journeyed through the forests,
31:43 not knowing where he was going.
31:45 Along the way he made friends with many of the natives
31:47 and later said that he would rather live
31:49 with Christian savages than savage Christians.
31:52 His journeys led him here,
31:55 to a place that he would name Providence,
31:58 convinced that the providence of God had guided him.
32:10 It was Roger Williams, not Thomas Jefferson
32:13 who first coined the phrase "wall of separation"
32:16 so far as church and state are concerned.
32:18 In 1644, Williams described the need to build a
32:22 "wall of separation between the garden of the church
32:26 and the wilderness of the world."
32:28 Leonard Levy, a U.S. Constitutional Scholar
32:31 commented on these words of Roger Williams
32:33 with the following statement.
32:34 "Thus, the wall of separation had the allegiance of the most
32:38 profound Christian impulse as well as a secular one.
32:43 To Christian fundamentalists of the Framers'
32:45 time the wall of separation derived from the Biblical
32:48 injunction that Christ's kingdom is not of this world."
32:53 The fundamental principle of Roger Williams' colony
32:55 was that every man should have liberty to worship God
32:59 according to the light of his own conscience.
33:02 Rhode Island's founding principles,
33:04 civil and religious liberty,
33:07 became the cornerstones of the American Republic.
33:10 This was extremely significant.
33:13 And so today, the Declaration of Independence states,
33:17 "We hold these truths to be self-evident,
33:20 that all men are created equal;
33:22 that they're endowed by their Creator
33:24 with certain unalienable rights;
33:27 that among these are life, liberty,
33:30 and the pursuit of happiness."
33:32 The Constitution guarantees freedom of conscience
33:35 in religious matters.
33:37 "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification
33:42 to any office of public trust under the United States."
33:46 "Congress shall make no law respecting
33:48 an establishment of religion,
33:50 or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
33:54 It was this environment that allowed the preaching
33:56 and the teaching of the Bible to flourish.
33:58 Of course, there have been those who have abused
34:01 their religious freedom,
34:03 but just think of the alternative:
34:05 a world in which you're not free to believe what you believe.
34:09 That's the world Martin Luther faced when he nailed
34:11 the 95 Theses to that famous door back in 1517.
34:16 Word began to spread back in Europe
34:18 about a place where a person could worship God
34:20 according to the dictates of his or her own conscience.
34:24 As one historian wrote, "Massachusetts,
34:27 by special law, offered free welcome and aid,
34:30 at the public cost, to Christians of any nationality
34:33 who might fly beyond the Atlantic
34:35 'to escape wars or famine,
34:37 or the oppression of their persecutors.'
34:38 And so the fugitive and the downtrodden were,
34:42 by statute, made the guests of the commonwealth."
34:46 The colonies grew, and the world saw the prosperity
34:50 and the increasing strength of a church without a pope
34:54 and a state without a king.
34:56 In this patch of earth, Roger Williams raised
34:59 up a memorial to religious freedom.
35:02 The establishment of the Rhode Island Colony was a landmark
35:05 event in the history of the Protestant Reformation,
35:09 a new haven in a new land where people would finally be free
35:14 to follow the dictates of their own conscience
35:16 when it came to matters of faith.
35:18 Even the Puritans of Roger Williams' day
35:20 couldn't accept his thinking.
35:22 You see, it was the prevailing belief 400 or so years ago
35:25 that the civil government had every right
35:28 to dictate to people's conscience.
35:30 That did not sit well with Roger Williams
35:32 and it led him into deep conflict.
35:35 But the conflict that he experienced brought to
35:37 everyone that followed freedom.
35:46 Now of course, that meant that if you wanted to opt out
35:48 to practice no religion,
35:50 to disagree with the church,
35:53 then it was your right to do so.
35:55 And it's this spirit of religious liberty
35:57 that's described in the New Testament,
35:59 just a few verses from the end
36:01 of the Bible where the bride of Christ blends her appeal
36:05 with that of the Holy Spirit in urging humanity
36:08 to accept God's gift of salvation.
36:11 "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come!'
36:13 And let him who hears say, 'Come!'
36:18 And let him who thirsts come;
36:21 and whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely."
36:27 Freedom of conscience would take hold in America in a way
36:30 not seen in any other civil experiment in human history.
36:35 The inalienable right to worship and follow conscience
36:38 as a person chooses would become
36:41 one of the main cornerstones of the American experience,
36:44 and of the final stages of the Protestant Reformation.
36:54 Roger Williams demonstrated how important it is
36:57 for believers to press forward.
37:00 While the Reformation accomplished an enormous amount
37:02 in terms of opening up the Bible and bringing the light
37:05 of God's Word to the human mind,
37:08 there was still a lot left to accomplish,
37:10 much more to learn,
37:12 more for the church and more for believers
37:14 as they grew towards God's ideal.
37:18 John Robinson was a pastor of pilgrims in Holland.
37:22 And he said this to many who were preparing to leave
37:24 for the New World.
37:26 "Brethren, we are now erelong to part asunder,
37:30 and the Lord knoweth whether I shall live ever
37:33 to see your faces more.
37:36 But whether the Lord hath appointed it or not,
37:38 I charge you before God and His blessed angels
37:41 to follow me no farther than I have followed Christ.
37:47 If God should reveal anything to you
37:49 by any other instrument of His,
37:52 be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive
37:55 any truth of my ministry;
37:58 for I am very confident the Lord hath more truth and light
38:03 yet to break forth out of His Holy Word."
38:08 I'm confident the Lord has more.
38:10 God has more for you in His Word.
38:14 That was true in the time of the pilgrims,
38:16 and that commitment to the Bible,
38:18 to the progress of God's light would lead others to advance
38:22 the course of the Reformation and guide multitudes
38:26 into a deeper understanding of God and His Word.
38:30 ♪[Music]
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39:38 Thanks for joining me on 500 brought to you by It Is Written.
39:42 My guest is Pastor Lincoln Steed.
39:44 He's the editor of Liberty Magazine,
39:46 which for 111 years has been advancing the cause of religious
39:50 liberty and the concept of the separation of church and state.
39:53 Pastor Steed, thanks for joining me.
39:55 >>Lincoln: My pleasure.
39:56 >>John: Religious liberty, okay. What is it?
39:58 >>Lincoln: Religious liberty is the freedom that you have
40:01 in Christ to worship Him and to explain that to other people.
40:05 And, you know and that's the bottom line,
40:07 but when you're dealing with civil society,
40:10 often there are claims the state has upon its citizens
40:14 and there are assumptions the people have about authority.
40:17 >>John: Now you mentioned when we began the program that today
40:20 what most people believe in is religious entitlement.
40:23 >>Lincoln: In the United States.
40:24 >>John: Yeah. So what's that, how do you define that?
40:26 >>Lincoln: Well they want a special legislative and social
40:29 privilege for their particular religious viewpoint,
40:33 and in the United States you often hear more and more today
40:36 that this is a Christian nation.
40:38 Now, they don't mean a Muslim nation,
40:41 they certainly don't mean that it's a secular nation.
40:45 They mean Christian.
40:46 They don't necessarily mean Protestant anymore,
40:48 but they believe a nation that will support
40:52 their particular viewpoints, of course the right to worship,
40:54 but it might be more and more their right to
40:57 legislatively guarantee certain moral viewpoints.
41:03 And so it's putting a certain class of religionists
41:06 up against secularists
41:08 and indeed up against some other religious viewpoints.
41:11 That's not religious liberty.
41:13 It's sometimes been said, in fact I say it a lot,
41:16 that the simple way to understand if something
41:18 is religious liberty or not: is there coercion involved.
41:22 If there is, it's not religious liberty.
41:24 It certainly doesn't comport at all with the original vision
41:27 of people like Roger Williams who had a very distinct idea
41:32 of the rights of the state and of the church.
41:34 >>John: Unpack that for me a little bit.
41:37 Where was Roger Williams on all of this?
41:39 Because he came from the Old World to the New World
41:41 and discovered we don't have freedom here,
41:44 which is a little bit of a surprise.
41:45 A surprise that people who were escaping persecution
41:48 brought persecution with them on the boat.
41:50 How did Williams see this, and what did he do
41:52 to bring religious freedom to the colonies?
41:53 Because without Williams, we may not have any semblance
41:56 of freedom of faith.
41:57 >>Lincoln:I purposely brought him up,
41:58 and I know you have a concern with Roger Williams.
42:02 In Europe the Reformation had precursors.
42:05 In England, and you and I and most of our viewers
42:09 certainly in the United States
42:10 look to the thread of English history,
42:13 and the Reformation in England started with John Wycliffe,
42:16 the distribution of the Bible and the Lollards,
42:18 his followers that he sent out,
42:20 and seeded the whole country with Protestant views,
42:23 or I'll put it another way,
42:25 the viewpoint of individual religious freedom.
42:28 In the United States, I think we see him the same way.
42:33 Of course this was before this Republic was formed,
42:36 way before 1776 and the events separating from England,
42:39 but it was a very formative period,
42:41 and he was the conscience and really the guiding light
42:47 of the true principles of religious liberty
42:49 that we're keeping alive today.
42:51 >>John: Now a lot of fine people will hear you speaking
42:53 and they'll think that you're an insurrectionist
42:56 or a radical because...
42:57 >>Lincoln: Well they thought Roger Williams was, absolutely.
42:59 >>John: ...Well, so let me bring this around to a question
43:01 that wisdom might later dictate I should've stayed
43:03 right away from.
43:05 See a lot of people, because of...
43:07 probably haven't really given this a lot of thought,
43:09 just see no problem with the state enforcing or endorsing
43:13 certain religious principles as long as they're theirs.
43:16 Would Roger Williams have supported the idea
43:20 of prayer in schools?
43:21 >>Lincoln: No.
43:22 >>John: Why not?
43:23 What's wrong with having the kids pray to God in school?
43:27 >>Lincoln: You want the state to decide
43:28 what those prayers must be,
43:30 how they are worded,
43:31 how they're directed,
43:31 how they're orchestrated,
43:32 what terms you apply to them?
43:35 That's not good.
43:37 What I really want to bring out
43:38 that hardly anybody seems to remember,
43:40 it's a plain matter of historical record,
43:43 but Roger Williams didn't just appear full blown suddenly
43:47 off the ship from England.
43:48 >>John: Sure.
43:49 >>Lincoln: There was a huge movement in England
43:51 that had begun with John Wycliffe.
43:53 He made the Bible available to people.
43:55 People were stirring and thinking that they had rights,
43:57 they had obligations before God, not to the church.
44:01 At the time that Roger Williams left England,
44:05 they were in a ferment of religious opposition,
44:08 not against the Catholic Church;
44:09 the Protestant Reformation had taken place;
44:12 but the true reformation in an understanding
44:14 of religious liberty was still developing.
44:16 The Church of England was being administered in the same way.
44:20 You had to worship at church.
44:21 You couldn't think anything except what they told.
44:25 You'd be fined if you preached in the streets
44:28 as a freelance preacher.
44:30 And Roger Williams, early on, saw that this could not be.
44:33 >>John: Let's back up.
44:34 Let's back up.
44:35 We'll go back to the time of Martin Luther.
44:37 Let's transport ourselves to Martin Luther's day.
44:41 And we'll look around and we're asking ourselves,
44:44 "what's religious freedom looking like here?"
44:48 in Luther's Wittenberg.
44:49 Explain that.
44:50 >>Lincoln: Well they didn't have religious freedom.
44:52 You were to do as the church and the state said.
44:55 It was partly that the church had established this absolutist
44:58 sort of relationship to its constituency,
45:02 but I think more particularly they were barely out
45:05 of the Medieval period where you were owned by the lord,
45:11 you didn't have individual rights.
45:13 Forget religion, you didn't have rights, period.
45:15 Even the lord was a vassal of the king,
45:20 so it would never have occurred to
45:22 anybody to think independently.
45:24 I'm constantly amused when I watch Hollywood type movies
45:26 that are set in these periods and you have you know the hero
45:29 backchatting the king.
45:31 They didn't do that.
45:32 You didn't have civil or religious rights.
45:34 And the Catholic Church was established in that.
45:37 They were not going to grant anything other than that.
45:40 What broke it apart, I believe, was two things.
45:44 Socially there was the movement of people from the land
45:47 to small shopkeepers and small business owners,
45:49 they were not bound by Medieval obligations.
45:54 And then the printing press came about.
45:56 There was some technical advancements.
46:00 And it's worth remembering,
46:01 at the time of the Reformation there were about five-million
46:04 books already distributed in Europe,
46:06 most of them Bibles.
46:08 That's the singular reason.
46:10 With the loosening of civil constraints
46:13 and then some knowledge of what the word was,
46:16 it was unstoppable.
46:17 >>John: This is what I was going to ask you next.
46:18 You really preempted the question.
46:22 Why'd it take so long?
46:24 I mean religious liberty, Roger Williams,
46:26 what about Martin Luther?
46:27 He wasn't talking anything about religious liberty
46:29 and religious freedom.
46:30 >>Lincoln: No.
46:31 >>John: It took all the way down to the time of Williams.
46:33 Why so long?
46:35 Maybe you've answered that already.
46:36 >>Lincoln: Well, I think it's a technical question.
46:38 Knowledge, you know the Bible predicts the end times.
46:40 It says "knowledge will be increased
46:41 and men run to and fro."
46:43 There was minimal knowledge.
46:44 It was called the Dark Ages for a number of reasons,
46:46 but not least of which learning and literacy was very low.
46:52 People couldn't read.
46:54 I myself have railed in sermons against the Bible
46:57 chained to the front of the church
47:01 and people weren't allowed to get to it,
47:02 but they didn't need to chain it.
47:04 It was meaningless to them.
47:06 And the first thing Martin Luther did
47:07 apart from the 95 Theses,
47:09 he started printing little tracks and things that
47:13 went out and around,
47:14 and of course he translated the Bible into German.
47:18 I believe that's the singular thing that broke apart
47:20 the hold that the church and the state had on
47:25 hitherto ignorant citizenry.
47:26 >>John: Thank so much.
47:27 We'll be back with more.
47:29 Wait right there.
47:29 We have much more from Pastor Lincoln Steed
47:31 from Liberty Magazine coming right up.
47:34 ♪[Music]
47:40 >>John: I'm John Bradshaw from It Is Written,
47:42 inviting you to join me for 500.
47:46 Nine programs produced by It Is Written,
47:48 taking you deep into the Reformation.
47:51 This is the 500th Anniversary
47:54 of the beginning of the Reformation,
47:55 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door
47:58 of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.
48:01 We'll take you to Wittenberg, and to Belgium,
48:03 to England,
48:04 to Ireland,
48:06 to Rome,
48:06 to the Vatican City,
48:08 and introduce you to the people who created the Reformation,
48:11 who pushed the Reformation forward.
48:13 We'll take you to sites all throughout Europe
48:15 where the reformers lived and in some cases died.
48:17 We'll bring you back to the United States
48:19 and take you to a little farm in Upstate New York
48:22 and show you how God spread the Reformation here.
48:25 Don't miss 500.
48:27 You can own the 500 series on DVD.
48:30 Call us on 888-664-5573
48:35 or visit us online at itiswritten.shop.
48:41 Welcome back to 500.
48:42 I'm John Bradshaw from It Is Written.
48:44 I'm glad to have with me Pastor Lincoln Steed,
48:46 who's the editor of Liberty Magazine,
48:47 which for more than 110 years has championed the cause
48:51 of religious freedom and has spoken about
48:54 the separation of church and state.
48:56 Pastor Steed, so religious liberty in Roger Williams day.
49:01 He comes to Massachusetts.
49:03 On a day to day experiential level,
49:06 what does it look like for people in terms
49:07 of religious freedom or not having it?
49:09 >>Lincoln: Well they didn't have it.
49:11 Early on they condemned Anne Hutchinson,
49:14 who was a woman,
49:15 a citizen of their little model experiment.
49:19 And she was brought to task and she refused to be silent,
49:22 so they banned her, sent her away.
49:25 And most people don't know.
49:26 She fled into the wilderness, just like Roger Williams.
49:30 And then a few years later,
49:31 her and her entire family and the many who went with her,
49:34 they were killed by the Indians.
49:35 At the time everyone said, "This is a judgment of God.
49:38 Therefore, she must've been wrong
49:39 to question the magistrates."
49:41 >>John: Explain then how you think Roger Williams,
49:46 the phenomenon that was Roger Williams
49:48 has effected life for us today.
49:49 What did he hand down to people living today?
49:51 >>Lincoln: Well he effected the Baptists,
49:53 the Baptists picked up on the Roger Williams approach
49:56 where he said that there was a wall or a hedge
50:00 in the garden that should separate church and state,
50:02 and there was to be no authority that transferred between
50:05 the two, be totally separate.
50:07 Yeah, that was a thread that came through from him,
50:11 but it was not the general social thread.
50:14 We've inherited really the other thread I think,
50:16 the idea that we use legislation to support religious liberty.
50:20 At the moment I think we're at the real crossroads
50:23 of these two threads from early Americana.
50:26 One was established in the Constitution
50:29 after much argument, and I think as much as anything,
50:32 a fear of other religious groups.
50:35 They jointly put the first Amendment in place that says,
50:38 "Congress will make no law establishing a religion,
50:41 nor prevent the free exercise thereof."
50:44 That was called by Thomas Jefferson
50:46 the wall of separation.
50:48 But I'm telling you, you go to many religious get-togethers now
50:53 of the so called religious right,
50:55 and they will openly dismiss that
50:58 and almost spit at that concept.
51:00 They say they don't believe in the separation
51:01 of church and state.
51:02 >>John: According to the documents
51:05 that guide our government,
51:07 what are we entitled to in terms of religious freedom,
51:10 religious liberty today?
51:11 >>Lincoln: Well by the first Amendment,
51:13 it's both the strength and the weakness of the Constitution
51:17 that it deals in sweeping statements,
51:18 but doesn't get into the particulars,
51:20 but it did essentially mandate a hands off approach.
51:24 But those that want otherwise of course have an angle,
51:27 because in the several states they all had,
51:29 not all, most of them had established churches.
51:33 But on the Federal level they were to stay away from religion.
51:36 I think that's been a very good protective mechanism.
51:39 There's no question.
51:40 >>John: But where are we heading today?
51:42 Where are we going in terms of religious liberty
51:44 in this country?
51:45 Where are we going?
51:46 >>Lincoln: Well as I say, this is a very free country.
51:47 I mean I'd be foolish to make a case that you're going to be
51:50 persecuted directly or inhibited in any general sort of a way
51:55 in the United States.
51:56 It's got a general freedom of function and of practice,
52:01 but we're heading close to a new sort of an entitlement,
52:06 and along with that I believe the first line
52:08 that's being crossed is an establishment one,
52:10 the idea that the state should support the true faith
52:15 or the truest elements.
52:17 In recent years President Bush for example
52:20 brought in the faith based initiative.
52:22 Remember that?
52:23 >>John: Sure.
52:24 >>Lincoln: Seems ancient history now,
52:26 but it established a bad precedent,
52:27 because billions of dollars in welfare moneys
52:30 that were going to people through the federal government
52:34 were then routed through churches.
52:36 And I remember talking to one of the government lawyers,
52:38 Carl Esbeck was his name.
52:41 He was in the Justice Department to oversee
52:43 of the faith based initiative.
52:45 I said to him.
52:46 I said, "Tell me, under this program where you have to decide
52:50 which churches are safe to run the money through,
52:53 how does that differ from countries like France
52:56 where they had a list of acceptable
52:57 and unacceptable churches."
52:59 It's a defacto acceptability list.
53:01 And once you start doing that,
53:03 and the church or the state rather has a favorite religion
53:06 or a favorite charity that it supports,
53:09 by definition religious liberty is broken down in the whole.
53:13 We're heading toward that very quickly.
53:15 But we're in the attack on establishment.
53:19 The free exercise, not yet.
53:21 But it probably will come,
53:24 because eventually you can't have an
53:25 imbalance in these two elements of the first Amendment.
53:28 >>John: Now a few hundred years ago,
53:31 the Roman Catholic Church
53:32 was in the cross-hairs of the Reformers.
53:34 They ruled absolutely.
53:35 In fact, somebody famously said,
53:37 "power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely",
53:40 and said that in reference to the Roman Catholic Church.
53:44 So we kind of got beyond that.
53:45 We live in many places in a Protestant society,
53:49 particularly in North America.
53:51 The power of the Roman Catholic Church and its influence
53:54 is on the rise.
53:55 If you were reading the tea leaves,
53:58 how would you say this could affect issues dealing
54:01 with religious freedom as we move forward?
54:03 >>Lincoln: Well, the Roman Catholic Church of course
54:06 cries foul when you talk history.
54:08 There was a document not too many years ago called
54:10 "Memory and Reconciliation"
54:13 where they disavowed things like the persecution
54:15 of the Jews,
54:16 the Crusades,
54:19 the Counter Reformation,
54:20 excesses and so on.
54:22 Although I read the document and it said is it really possible to
54:25 ascribe guilt to those of a previous age?
54:28 And then it drew a very strange parallel.
54:30 It said, "Just as Christ,
54:32 perfect and undefiled and incapable of error
54:37 took upon himself the sins of fallen human beings,
54:40 so the magisterium of the church,
54:42 holy and incapable of error,
54:45 will apologize for the actions of some of its adherents."
54:49 You know that's not an apology.
54:49 That's an affirmation of their...
54:51 >>John: Superiority.
54:52 >>Lincoln: Yeah, their superiority.
54:54 In a neat way they sort of cut themselves off from history.
54:59 It's true, they have changed in many practical ways,
55:02 but from history, which I love to study,
55:05 I think the easiest way is to say the Roman Catholic Church,
55:09 while it's part of the continuum of Christianity,
55:12 it really is also the continuum of the holy,
55:15 well not holy, of the Roman Empire itself.
55:18 It never went away.
55:20 And the proof is in the pudding.
55:22 Whenever there's big agreements,
55:24 like setting up the European Union,
55:26 or the European Common Market as it once was called,
55:30 all these agreements are made in Rome.
55:31 The Pope, I believe, operates, again,
55:35 as the religious godfather of European actions.
55:39 So I'd be careful because even with good intentions
55:43 they can't totally structurally remove themselves from
55:46 what they were and became.
55:50 It is worth mentioning that, at the moment,
55:55 the Roman Catholic Church is reordered somewhat
55:58 on religious liberty by a document that came
56:00 out of the Second Vatican Council.
56:02 It was a statement on the rights of man,
56:06 Dignitatis humanae.
56:07 It says that everybody has the right to believe
56:11 what they want, and to change their religion,
56:13 and to witness to other people.
56:15 I don't know if you were aware of that.
56:16 Most people are not.
56:17 For example, I was at a meeting at Catholic University
56:20 where Cardinal Dolan was addressing the
56:23 mostly Catholic group.
56:25 And in the middle of his speech on religious liberty
56:26 he stopped and he looked around, and he said,
56:29 "You know, the Catholic Church once would not have spoken
56:33 this way about religious liberty.
56:35 We once held that error has no rights."
56:39 And then he went on.
56:40 And after a short break they reconvened
56:42 and they dispensed with the program.
56:44 The audience kept calling out, "What did the Cardinal mean?
56:47 What was he talking about?"
56:48 And they had to be told that Vatican Two
56:50 and this document changed everything.
56:53 And my view is Roman Catholics,
56:56 I think, have had a refreshing on this topic, but watch out.
56:59 When they rethink Vatican Two,
57:02 then the other position will bubble up.
57:04 >>John: Protestantism seems pretty well to
57:07 have lost its protest.
57:08 >>Lincoln: Well it's forgotten what had protested about.
57:10 >>John: Why do you think we've forgotten?
57:12 >>Lincoln: That's just the nature of human beings.
57:14 You read the Old Testament and the children of Israel,
57:17 a couple of days removed from the fire on the mountain,
57:20 were wanting flesh or whatever it was,
57:22 I think that's human nature.
57:23 In the recent debate though, or not even debate now,
57:27 negotiations, I think an injustice has been done
57:30 to the memory of the Reformation because it's pretty much been
57:33 defined as just justification by faith.
57:35 Martin Luther wrote 95 Theses, many,
57:40 many points about idols, and saints,
57:44 and the abuse of power,
57:46 and the claims to dominance of the papacy.
57:48 >>John: Purgatory and indulgences.
57:49 >>Lincoln: Not just how we're saved and how
57:51 we appear before God.
57:53 And people should remember that.
57:54 But unfortunately the Lutheran Federation a decade or so ago
57:59 signed on the dotted line that it was a misunderstanding
58:02 on justification, and that the Roman Catholic Church
58:05 didn't misunderstand, they nailed that agreement
58:08 to the door of a Roman Basilica.
58:11 And only a few months ago now they had another meeting,
58:14 I'm sure you know about,
58:15 where they said there's now no longer
58:16 any impediment to full reunification.
58:20 So that's not the only aspect of the Reformation,
58:22 but I think they've forgotten where we came.
58:24 They've forgotten.
58:25 Which you can find out if you read
58:26 Foxe's Book of Martyrs.
58:28 Many people that were killed for their faith,
58:30 just the slight word of Biblical truth and they'd be cut down.
58:35 They've forgotten that even after the Reformation
58:38 in these wars of Europe that one Protestant sect
58:41 turned on the other.
58:43 >>John: We're out of time.
58:44 Thanks so much.
58:45 I've really enjoyed this.
58:46 I appreciate you making time for us.
58:47 Well, let's pray together before we go.
58:49 Let's do that now.
58:50 Our Father in heaven,
58:51 we're thankful that You've given us truth and light,
58:55 that in Jesus Christ we have salvation full and free,
58:58 that in Your Word we have guidance
59:00 and everything we need to understand You
59:02 and our purposes towards You.
59:05 So bless us as we allow You to reform us
59:07 and prepare us for an eternity which we believe
59:09 in Jesus is close at hand.
59:12 We thank You and we pray in Jesus' name,
59:15 Amen.
59:17 Thanks for joining me.
59:18 I look forward to seeing you again next time.
59:20 Until then, remember,
59:21 "it is written, 'man shall not live by bread alone,
59:25 but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."
59:28 ♪[Theme Music]
59:38 ♪[Theme Music]

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Revised 2017-10-27