Church History - Great Britain & U.S. vs. Rome

Today we're going to complete our series on Church History. We've been going over it, and then, of course, we had the spring holy days, and so we had to take a little bit of pause. But after these days are finished, I mentioned to you that we would go through the rest of the history.

That we did.

And so, this first slide shows, in general terms, what we know about God's people as they were persecuted throughout the ages.

And basically, around 1585 is when they are able to begin to come out openly in England, in that area of Great Britain. You see, God's Church does not have the prerogative, the right to just say, okay, we're going into battle. We're going to see who wins and who's going to impose their religion upon others.

We don't have that luxury. Christ didn't tell us to go out there and fight and battle and see who's the best. Those that fought the most and killed the most generally were the ones that were able to impose religion upon others. And that's the case all around the world. The Chinese have their leaders because after World War II, they came and then they basically conquered the area. Some of the Chinese had to flee to an island called Taiwan, and then communism was established until today.

God's Church cannot thrive in these areas because there's censorship, there's persecution, and we are not going to accommodate ourselves like many churches do because they would rather just be friends and allow their people to go ahead and follow the party line. We cannot take up arms. Children of members of the church are not going to join the Chinese army, and so you're going to have persecution. So God's people were pushed by God's hand from the area of Israel.

If you notice, the first point there is the area of Jerusalem. And how they eventually, through persecution, had to leave that area and eventually congregated around the last apostle, which was the Apostle John. He lived about at least 30 years longer than the rest of the apostles, and he taught and trained all of the disciples and leaders, ministers in that area for over 30 years. That's why when he wrote the book Inspired by God, the book of Revelation, the seven churches were the ones where he had the most coverage.

Of course, he wrote to other places, but this was the area. One of them was Ephesus, and that was sort of like the central headquarters where God's Word could radiate to the rest. So at first, these people that kept God's commandments and had the faith of Jesus, they were called by others, number one, Nazarenes, or the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. In the second century, while they were there in Ephesus, they basically were the ones that held to the truth during the second century. That's about 100 AD to 200 AD.

It was there in Ephesus where the true church could thrive. That's where Polycarp was one of the bishops. He was from Smyrna, one of the seven churches around that area. That was taught by John the Apostle himself. Then, about 30 years later, another generation with Polycarpies, who was the bishop at Ephesus, were able to continue. They faced Rome. There was a famous letter, 180 AD, where Polycarpies says, look, we have this whole area. We're all keeping the Passover.

We're keeping the Sabbaths. We're keeping the things that were taught by the Apostle John, and we're not going to bow to Rome. So that's how they were viewed. They were called quartodecimans because they kept the Passover on the 14th day of the first month of Nisan, or ABIB. So that's the way the world identifies. That's where the true church was. Heretical groups rose up all around, and basically with the headquarters in Rome, plus many other groups, the Gnostics and others, that were much smaller.

Then, eventually, in 325 AD, Emperor Constantine accepts Catholicism as the state religion, and warned all the other churches, you must join Rome. You must submit, or else we are going after you. From 325 AD to 1585, which the Bible talks prophetically about 1260 years, day for a year equivalent, the church would have to flee and hide. From that area of Ephesus, where they still had the majority by the 4th century, they were hounded to the point where they had to go to the third place, which is Armenia, which is Eastern Turkey, Asia Minor.

There they were far from the Roman Empire, they were far from the Byzantine Empire, which had split into two parts. They were able to thrive. In the 500, 600, 700, all the way to about 1000 AD, they were called Paulicians, because they followed the teachings of the Apostle Paul.

And, of course, the rest of the Bible, but they just were able to focus on the Apostle Paul. And around that area of Armenia, they actually used Paul's followers to name their different congregations.

So they had the collage group. Even if they weren't in the city, they were all following Paul's example. And certainly our church believes that Apostle Paul is one of the key persons to understand the New Testament teachings. And from there, basically, I mentioned the last time, Empress Theodora, around 850 AD. She was from the Byzantine. This was the church, basically had two centers, a Catholic church, one in Rome, one over there in Constantinople. And from Constantinople, which was part of Turkey, they had a terrible persecution. The Empress Theodora killed about 100,000 Paulicians, slaughtered. And then those that she captured, she sent to the area of Europe. And that's where you get, if you notice here, from the Paulicians, then you have the Bogle mills, which is a term, Friends of God. This was the area of Bulgaria.

And then around 1000 AD, they eventually were persecuted to go to northern Italy and southern France. And from there arose the next church of God group. And there were pre-Waldencians. The last study I did on this, we got to the point of the Waldencians. And they basically were the ones that spread the good news and kept the Sabbath, kept Holy Days.

Now, there was a group that separated that didn't, but by and large, they still kept these teachings.

And eventually, they are pushed. And the church was called at that time, Petru Brugians, which were, was from Peter the Bruce. That was before Peter Waldo, also the Henricians, before Peter Waldo. And then the Arnoldists, these were three Church of God leaders, before that time. Basically, Peter Waldo took over around 1150 in history.

The Passaginians means birds that passed from one place to another. A lot were wanderers. They were Sabbath keepers.

Passagians, that's another name for them. And then we come to number five, Waldencians.

You see where they're at there? They spread the true gospel and converted so many people that Catholic Church had a crusade against them. And then, from these Waldencians, there were people called Anabaptists, which means they didn't accept the baptism from the Catholic Church, little infant baptism. They required people to re-baptize as adults to be part of the Church.

And then lastly, it was Sabbatarians. So that's where we're at around 1585. The 1260 years has expired, and now God is going to open up the doors to get the gospel to the world. He has a plan before mankind is eventually engulfed in a World War III.

God has to have a place where he can get the gospel out. He can't do it in Europe. He can't do it in Asia Minor, which today is Turkey. That's Muslim. And then you have all of these Protestant and Catholic groups in Europe. God was taking God's people first from England that had religious freedom up to a point, and eventually he had to get them to the United States. Because there in America they would have the religious freedom and the prosperity to eventually, in the end time, get the gospel out to the world. They would have the financial backing. They would have the training. And from here the true gospel could radiate to many other places in England, Australia, other places. We're also helping, but it had to come. So what we're seeing is God knows what he's doing. He's guiding his church to be in a place where there's going to be freedom and you're not going to be persecuted and burned at the stake as you were in Europe. So let's go to the next slide.

Here we see and just keep on putting it there, that one. So in 1585, Queen Elizabeth eventually breaks from being dominated, in a sense, by the Spanish and the Pope.

And now the Spanish and the Pope say we have to invade England because they have refused to submit to Rome and to Spain. And this starts 1260 years after Constantine's decree, persecuting the church. It says, it was in Elizabethan, England, where finally some religious freedom is allowed for the first time in its history. After Mary, Queen of Scots, a Catholic, is executed in 1587, and the Spanish armada is defeated in 1588, the church in the wilderness can emerge from its hiding place and finds a relatively safe haven in Protestant England, thanks to its constitutional rights. So there is a constitution and you got more religious freedoms.

Chambers, encyclopaedia says, in the reign of Elizabeth, it occurred to many conscientious and independent thinkers, as it previously had done to some Protestants in Bohemia, that the Fourth Commandment required of them the observance not of the first, but of the specified seventh day of the week.

So here again, this is an opening. God is opening the door now for people that keep the Sabbath to be able to come out in the open and not be burnt at the stake. Next slide. Here we have a slide of when the Spanish armada was defeated. In 1588, this was after 1585, where Spain declared war on England, took them a while to prepare 150 Spanish galleons to come and invade England. The Spanish armies, backed by the Pope, were utterly defeated, with a great storm driving them north of 150 ships. Only 65 ships returned. The power of Rome, and also you can add Spain, was never the same. They could never impose the Inquisition in England. They could never impose their Catholicism. And so here you have the opening that the church needed, because it always had existed. Christ said he would always be with the church, but of course, because of the circumstances, it couldn't come out in the open. Queen Elizabeth had a coin made saying, God blew, and they were scattered. What happened was you have a fleet of 150 ships full of soldiers, thousands of soldiers, and they also had others that were going to come aboard. Everything looked like there was no way England could win this. The Spanish had the soldiers. Queen Elizabeth didn't even have a battalion ready. She just had some people that would voluntarily help out. But as the fleet came into the English Channel, they were going to land close to London. Everybody said there's no way to stop this. If they land in England, they will be able to conquer, and then England would become a Catholic country. No more Sabbath keepers that could arise. So what happened? There was a wind that rose so powerfully that the fleet, that after fighting some of the British ships and fire ships and all of that, but the point is that they were going to go west. And instead, a storm came and pushed them north. And even with all the power, they couldn't get the galleons back to land the troops. So they were taken up north past Scotland, where you see there, on the green. And a lot of the ships were smashed at that time. And as they went around Ireland, they lost almost a hundred of the ships. And so when they came back, they had no more power to impose it. So that's what happened. And Queen Elizabeth, she had a coin made saying, God blew, and they were scattered. She attributed not to the armies, not to the navies, but to God. This marks, as best as we know, the end of the Thyatyr era and the start of the Sardis era, when religious freedom truly begins. So after that defeat, it opened up even more. Continuing on, it says, unfortunately, after the death of Queen Elizabeth, religious freedom was curtailed. It was limited. Not attending Sunday services meant a 20-pound fine, about two years of an average wage.

Failure to pay the fine resulted in prison. One of the Sabbatarian leaders, minister of the Church of God at that time, John Trask, was one of the first in England to suffer persecution for keeping the Sabbath and the feast days. He was one of the ministers of the first Sabbatarian churches, the Mill Yard Church, founded in 1607. At his trial, Trask was charged on two counts, teaching that Christians are to abstain from those meats which were forbidden in Leviticus, in other words, the food laws in the Bible, the other that they were to observe the Sabbath day.

Because he preached this, he was whipped for half a mile. He was just taken in front of everybody and for half a mile, a person whipping him in the back. He was imprisoned for life, and he was branded with a J, which was symbolic of the Jew, on his forehead and tortured.

After a year, he recanted, but his wife refused to give up the Sabbath, and after 15 years, bravely died in prison. So a lot of people have gone through a lot to be able to sit down here, and enjoy the Sabbath in peace. I wonder how many people would keep the Sabbath if you were under that type of persecution. Let's go on.

Seventh-day Adventist historian J.N. Andrews writes about Sabbatarians in England.

Quote, In the 17th century, eleven churches of Sabbatarians flourished in England, while many scattered Sabbath keepers were to be found in various parts of that kingdom.

His book, History of the Sabbath, you can get a PDF file on that. Very good. From there, a few brought the teachings to New England, to America. Nowhere else in Europe did you have Sabbath-keeping congregations like you did in England. But even so, the state religion of England was the Church of England, and they did not accept the Sabbath as a way of keeping the commandments of God. And so they were tolerated, but they were not allowed to thrive. And so God was opening the door from some of these Sabbatarians to come to the New World.

And here's what the next slide shows. Here we see the first local church of Sabbath-keeping Christians in America in Newport, Rhode Island in 1671. Rhode Island was the smallest state of the thirteen colonies, and it was like the little grain of mustard. It was a place where it was the humblest, the smallest, and that's where God planted the seed, because that's where you had the most religious freedom. Roger William, who founded it, was a Baptist, and he had the most open approach. Then in 1664, Stephen Mumford from the Sabbatarian Bell Lane London Church, one of those little places you'd seen in the previous slide.

And with his wife, Anne, attended a first-day Baptist church and taught the Sabbath truth among them. As a result, a number of them embraced the Sabbath in 1665. So here in Newport, Rhode Island, we have the first church building, and guess what? It's not like the church of England with a king and persecutions. They soon learned, though, that even in Rhode Island, Baptists' liberty of conscience was supposed to prevail, but the Sabbath was not allowed.

Accordingly, the seventh-day observers left the Baptist church on December 7, 1671, and 16 days later, on December 23, formed the first Sabbatarian church organization in the U.S.

This was unknown in Europe, that a Sabbath-keeping organization could really be organized and recognized. Let's go to the next slide.

From this church in Rhode Island, Sabbatarian churches gradually formed throughout the relatively religiously tolerant colonies. Finally, Sabbath-keepers found a place where they would not be hounded by Catholic or Protestant state churches. God had prepared a place for the true gospel to be preached and to grow in power, especially to preach the gospel, as it tells us in Matthew 24, verse 14. And this gospel of the kingdom of God will be preached in all the world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. So God was planning everything, building the foundation. So from the United States, Sabbath-keepers would be protected and would be able to get out the gospel to all the world. This is where everything radiates. This is where we have the programs beyond today, the publications, and it goes to all the world. That's not a coincidence. Continuing on, we see some Sabbath-day Sabbath-keepers were prominent citizens of Rhode Island in the 18th century. Two of the colony's governors, Richard Ward and his son Samuel, were seven-day Sabbath-keepers. So here's one of the men who were prominent.

Even the first president of Brown University, one of the Ivy Leagues, James Manning, was a Sabbatarian. In 1684, a group was formed by Abel Noble near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at Piscataway, New Jersey. From these areas, Sabbatarian groups spread west and south until they were around 20 churches in nine of the ten colonies when the general conference of Seventh-day Baptists was organized in 1802. Their headquarters was at Plainfield, New Jersey.

We derive our history from these Seventh-day Baptists. Continuing on, things were thriving.

And then, all of a sudden, Satan was going to stifle the church. He didn't want the true gospel to go out. Then, from 1835 to 1844, William Miller, a student of Bible prophecy, was licensed to preach from a Baptist church and stirred many thousands into believing that Jesus would return to the earth on October 22, 1844. This was called the Millerite Movement.

His conclusions were largely based on Daniel 8.13.14, thinking that 2,300 evening and morning sacrifices were days and stood for years instead of literal days. He believed the earth was a sanctuary and that it would be cleansed by fire when Jesus returned. But Jesus didn't come.

People were waiting on that day. They were all dressed in white robes. They even had their horses and cows all dressed in white raiment because they were so sure nothing happened. And so, when Jesus didn't come, it was called by Adventists, which means those that believe in the return of Christ, as the Great Disappointment. 1844, that's a part of American history.

It should have been called the Great Speculation because that was all based on wrong speculation.

Then, the Advent people, and there were many thousands and thousands across the United States that believed in this, of the town of Washington, New Hampshire, learned about the Sabbath from a Seventh-day Baptist, Mrs. Rachel Preston. Some 40 members of the church, these Adventists, then accepted the Seventh-day Sabbath. Elder Joseph Bates, a prominent member of the Advent movement, also learned about the Sabbath, and in 1845, he said it before the ministry, James White and his wife Ellen G. White later accepted it, and they became the most prominent leaders of what became known as the Seventh-day Adventists. That's how they arose.

Continuing on.

William Miller finally admitted he had made a mistake, but there were some of those who thought he was still right, among them Ellen G. White. Thanks to the, quote, visions of Ellen G. White that said Jesus in heaven had only entered the holy place until 1844, but they were not entered the holy place until 1844, but then moved to the most holy place afterwards to cleanse the sanctuary, blot out sins, make a final atonement, and start, quote, the investigative judgment of mankind since 1844. So this is the way she papered over there. Well, Christ didn't come physically, but in heaven he went from the holy place, kind of like in the temple, to the most holy place.

But of course, that's not what the Bible says. That's just papering over something. Even William Miller admitted he had been wrong, but with that she had a very powerful spirit enter her, and of course people were impressed. They should have checked their Bibles more carefully, because 1 John 4 verse 1, it says, test the spirits. Check it out. Just because a person shows some miraculous power, that doesn't mean you have to check what she was saying with the Bible.

And so the Seventh-day Adventists were incorporated, we can go to the next slide, in Battle Creek, Michigan, in May 3rd, 1861, with Ellen G. White as their prophetess. Now, if you go to, they are by far the most numerous Sabbath keepers in the world, and their headquarters is in Washington, D.C. Now, if you go to that headquarters, there's this very large area dedicated just to her, and there where you see her bust, and then in the back, it says the following thing, at home with the prophet. Not even the prophetess, no, the prophet talking about, this is a prophet that we should look to for our teachings. Yet, isolated groups of Sabbath keepers, aside from the Seventh-day Baptists, existed before 1844, disappointment. Even though some 125 Sabbath groups did affiliate with the Seventh-day Adventists in 1863, some of the Sabbath-keeping congregations refused to cooperate and unite because they opposed the visions and speculations of Ellen G. White and wanted to retain the name Church of God. So, even today, if you want to become a Seventh-day Adventist, the fundamental belief number 17 in their church is to believe, you have to believe in the teachings of Ellen White as authoritative. In other words, that's something that has to be believed if you want to be a Seventh-day Adventist. And by the way, there are a lot of things wrong with the teachings. They don't drink wine, for instance. So, what did Christ drink at Passover? And when they have Passover services, they have to take grape wine because they don't believe that alcohol is accepted. They just have to look at the Bible and see. Even Paul said to Timothy, drink a bit of wine for your stomach's sake. That's in 1 Timothy. So, continuing on, because people have asked, what is our relationship with the Seventh-day Adventist group?

We never were part. We are part of those Sabbath keepers that rejected Ellen White.

Continuing on, Ellen G. White did not allow the Bible to interpret itself, but rather wanted her visions to interpret and add to the Bible. I can tell you stories about just every aberration you can imagine of interpreting the Bible. This clearly goes against the warning that, quote, no prophecy is of private interpretation. So, some independent Sabbatarian groups rejected the Seventh-day Adventists or the Seventh-day Baptists, and they finally were organized in a general conference under the eventual name of Church of God's Seventh-day. So, here we're tracing our history. This is one of the proofs of God's true church that it would retain the biblical name for the church, named as such 12 times in the New Testament. It talks about the Church of God. It doesn't say Adventist Church or whatever. We don't have the authority from the Bible to name ourselves according to our own whim. Continuing, in 1860, churches were raised in Michigan and later in Iowa and several other states.

In 1883, a general conference was formed in Michigan, and in 1889, they established their headquarters in Stambarry, Missouri. Presently, their headquarters of the Church of God's Seventh-day is located in Denver, Colorado, and they published a magazine, Sabbath Advocate.

So, what happened after that? What kind of work did they do? Next slide.

At the end of the 19th century, some of their ministers evangelized in places in Latin America, such as Mexico and Chile.

There are still groups of Sabbath keepers that faithfully keep God's Holy Days. Here's a photo of a group in Chile, and there in Chile they're called the Israelite Church of the New Covenant.

In 1969, out of the group, a group in Chile of around 100 of them joined with what is now our church. My wife, Cottie, was part of that group and kept the Sabbath and Holy Days for several years before attending our church. So, we consider that as part of the Sardis era of the church, just like at the end of those dark ages, in 1885, the beginning of the Sardis era church. So, we see these churches also, and they still keep the commandments of God and have the faith of Jesus, but they're very isolated. They don't believe in unifying. So, each pastor is basically in charge of their congregations, and so they don't really have worldwide work.

There are a number of members in Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, and Argentina that come out of that group.

So, we still have families in our church that came from the Church of God's seventh day, the branch that was in Latin America. Continuing on, now at the beginning of the 20th century, the remnant of God's original church in the United States, the remnants were divided and in a weakened condition.

Ivar Fletcher writes, quote, by 1923, the number of ministers had increased to 126, and church membership estimated at 1,000 to 1,500. So, from 1863, you basically have here another 60 years or so, and by that time, they only had about 1,000 to 1,500 members. Still, it was a very small number. The Ambassador College Correspondents Course, number 53, that dedicated to the church history, says, certain strong families provided the church of God a tenuous continuity. This church of God's seventh day. They came to be located mainly in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Oregon. Some of them retained a knowledge of God's Holy Days and the identity of modern Israel. But for 70 years after the departure of the Adventists, the church in the U.S. remained spiritually powerless. Then, in the 1930s, comes the inspiring history of Herbert Armstrong. Let's go to that part. Again, the Correspondents Course continues. Herbert Armstrong came to the conclusion that the Sabbath must be kept on the seventh day. He began to search for the one true church, which he knew must exist. Matthew 16, 18, where Christ said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. These church of God people in Oregon seemed to have the truth. Certainly, they were the closest of any, but something was wrong.

They were spiritually dead. And if you read a revelation about the Sardis church, it says, you say you have a name that you live, but you're dead. So, Mr. Armstrong began to fellowship with them. These are the different parts. They were in the Oregon area, where they had churches.

And finally, was ordained by the Oregon Conference of the Church of God's Seventh Day in 1931.

Let's go on. Next slide. The Ambassador College Correspondence Course continues.

At the critical moment when the Church of God in the Sardis era was breaking up, that's in 1933, the living Jesus Christ separated a mere handful of people, 20, in Eugene, Oregon, to begin the, quote, Philadelphia era of his church. This is the first place they met Gene's schoolhouse. Quote, he began to use Mr. Armstrong and the small group God called to assist as co-workers to reach the world with the good news of the coming kingdom of God.

As a proverbial mustard seed in Matthew 13, from so humble a beginning, in 30 years, it became a globe-spanning work. None of that could have happened in Europe or any other part of the world. It had to be in the U.S., where the freedom and the prosperity that the country was experiencing gave it the backing it needed. Continue.

Correspondence of course continues.

Christ promised to set up an open door to the Philadelphia era, Revelation 3.8, an opportunity to spread Christ's gospel. Christ opened the powerful door of mass communications to his church. Since the first Sunday in January 1934, the World Tomorrow broadcast started in a tiny radio station, as you see Mr. Armstrong with Mrs. Armstrong, doing a radio program. And eventually, for a time, it became the biggest religious TV program in the United States.

The Plain Truth magazine with eight million readers was one of the top in circulation.

This church era had, quote, only a little strength of itself, but it is magnified greatly through the modern doors of radio, television, and the printing press, and most important of all, through the power of the Holy Spirit. So all of this opened up. As Christ gets nearer to come, it needed a work that was also equally prepared to get the gospel to the entire world. Continuing on, we'll see church growth. Ambassador College Correspondence Course continues. Philadelphia means, quote, brotherly love. It expresses the characteristic which is the motivating zeal and loyalty of the Philadelphia era of God's church. The church shows love to mankind by carrying out God's commission, preaching the gospel, and preparing a people for the coming kingdom of God. It is revealing how Jesus Christ will rescue humanity from cosmocide, which means total destruction of the planet, and teach man the way of peace, happiness, and prosperity. Christ is not going to let man blow this world up. The church grew at an average of 30% per year for the first 30 years, as you can see there in the graph. Mr. Armstrong died in 1986, and membership was 101,000. Feast attendance was 150,000, the biggest annual convention at that time in the world. Let's continue on. I just got three more slides left. Eventually, God used Mr. Armstrong to found three liberal art colleges with theology at its core in Pasadena, California. The campus is still there. Big Sandy, Texas, and Bricklewood, England. Thousands of students attended and majored in theology.

I am one of those. Lee is one of those.

More than a thousand ministers were ordained that were graduates from these campuses in its 50 years.

Continuing on.

Shortly before his death, Mr. Armstrong named Joseph Tkach as his successor.

Tragically, he did not follow in Mr. Armstrong's footsteps. He allowed his son, who became steeped in Protestant theology, along with other key men, to introduce major heresies.

They planned a wholesale change in key doctrines, hoping to attract a wider audience.

But the result was they kept few members. His son, Joseph Tkach Jr., took over in 1995.

The church went through a major apostasy or falling away. Today, their membership has dwindled to about 20 percent of what it was in 1986 when Mr. Armstrong died.

They no longer keep the Sabbath, Holy Days, food laws, or tithing, and have accepted the Trinity and pagan holidays. They are now no different than any other Protestant church.

Last slide.

In 1995, the United Church of God was formed to preserve the biblical truths that had been previously taught and set up a system of governance with checks and balances that would help avoid repeating what had occurred that a few men could take the church into heresy. By the way, that first photo is our world headquarters, and that's where I was for the council meetings. Now, almost 30 years later, we have approximately 400 ministers serving hundreds of congregations around the world. We are busy carrying out the mission of the church to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God in all the world to make disciples in all nations and to care for those disciples. So that's the history of the church from the time of Christ and his disciples and apostles to today.