Why Major Faiths Interpret the Bible Differently!

Well, thank you again. Mr. Housen, happy Sabbath, brethren. It's good to have all of you with us. Many years ago, when I attended an institution called Pasadena City College, I took a class called the Long Search. It was a religion class. I think it was even shown later on PBS. And the idea of the class was to show all kinds of religious traditions. How did Buddhists come to be? How did the Catholic Church come to be? How did all the various religions of the world come to believe what they believe? And it gave within me an interest in understanding people's perspectives, where they're coming from, even if I don't agree with them, especially if I don't agree with them. And I would kind of like to use a historical perspective today regarding this book. We call this book, of course, the Bible. Does or should it establish what we believe as believers? Are only parts of it valid for us? Is all the Bible valid for us? Does it have significance for our lives? There are many different interpretations of this book. Sometimes it seems like all as many different people there are. There are different interpretations regarding this book. And today in a sermon it's going to be a little unusual, a departure from my usual types of sermons. I'd like to give a historical and theological perspective on the distinct views of this book. And how it is historically that a Catholic can look at this book and come up with different doctrines and conclusions than you do.

Or how a Protestant can look at the same writings as someone who has a Catholic tradition and can come up with a distinct difference in doctrines than you and I may. So that's what I would like to do today. And this is a little bit of history. It's going to be a little bit of theology. It's going to be a little more reading, quoting, than I normally do. And you're either going to find this sermon very interesting or you're going to probably have the best nap you've ever had in your life.

One of the two.

So I'm going to take a look today at three different ways of looking at the validity of God's Word. We know it as the Bible. Let's begin by seeing what the Scriptures say, of course. If you'll turn to 2 Timothy 3 and verse 10, we'll see something that Paul told the young evangelist, Timothy.

2 Timothy 3 and verse 10.

He encouraged, he motivated, he inspired Timothy with this writing. He congratulated Timothy for following Paul's example, the example of his life. And here's what he said again. This is 2 Timothy 3 and verse 10.

He says to Timothy, but you have carefully followed my doctrine. He said, you have been a good mentee. Paul was older. Paul was his mentor. He said, you have carefully followed my teachings, manner of life, my purpose, faith, long suffering, the love and perseverance, persecutions, afflictions, which happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra, what persecutions I endured. And out of them all, the Lord delivered me.

Are you going through a problem right now in your life? A health problem? A job situation? Maybe a relationship issue? Much like he did, God did for Paul, he says, and out of them all, the Lord will deliver me. The Lord can deliver you too. The Lord can deliver me because he loves us, because we are his children.

Verse 12, yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. So they're just going to come times when because you are religious, because you even dare to believe in a deity anymore, that you are going to be labeled as righteous Joe or a weirdo or a cult member or whatever, because you dare to believe in a divine providence in this world or in your life.

Verse 13, and in context, he's speaking about ministers here. But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But, he says to Timothy, you must continue into things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them. And where did he learn these things from? He learned them from his mom, he learned them from his grandmother, and he learned them from his mentor, Paul. Verse 15, and then from childhood, you have known the holy scriptures. Notice he refers to the scriptures as holy, not just some man's idea, not just a collection of fables and fairy tales. He says you've known the holy scriptures by which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. So these holy scriptures give us wisdom that, combined along with our faith, provide the salvation that we're looking for, the faith in Christ and the wisdom from this book that tell us how to live, how to live our lives, and the standards to live our lives by. Guide us and give us the direction towards salvation.

Verse 16, he says, all scripture, not some of it, not what one may choose to believe and reject the rest, but all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine. In other words, understand what the teachings of God are. For reproof, to prove something over again in case it's been a while and you need a refresher.

For correction, in case you're off track and you need to be set right, understand what the right course is. For instruction in righteousness, how to live a righteous life, and the instructions in doing that. That the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. So it's our responsibility, obviously, to provide good works.

And as I like to say to people all the time, that you can say you have all the faith in the world, and that's wonderful, but living faith has action attached to it. All right? Faith means that you do something about what you believe. It doesn't mean that you say, okay, I'm okay just because I believe in Christ and I believe he was my Savior, and now I'm going to sit back and wait for God to do everything. Those aren't good works. So in context, Paul is endorsing the inspiration here, in context, of the Old Testament. You see, the New Testament isn't written yet by the time Paul writes this. Timothy learned them by his mother and his grandmother and the Apostle Paul, his mentor. So who wrote these verses? Well, who wrote these verses was the Apostle Paul. What scripture in context is he talking about? He's talking about the Old Testament. So we see an Apostle living under the New Covenant, which is what he believed in, teaching Timothy to study the Old Testament to receive knowledge about salvation. And this is an important understanding that the Church of God believes in, fervently. Verse 16 and 17, I'm going to read from the translation, a new international version. It says, all scripture is God-breathed, that literally comes from the breath of God, and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. So the context today, with that background of that scripture, is we are going to look at, first of all, the two most prominent views of the authority and the importance of the Bible.

And they are the Catholic view of the importance of these scriptures that you and I read, every Sabbath, and also the Protestant view. And I want to emphasize, this is not a sermon about bashing Catholics or Protestants. What I'm going to say here are in any history book, you can Google it, you can go to any modern secular history book, and today I'm just here to present the facts.

I am not attempting to put down or bash anyone, I'm just attempting to tell you the way it is, including from people's very own writings about their own beliefs.

So again, the two most prominent views of the authority and importance of the Bible are the Catholic view and the Protestant view. And in order to understand why we can read something and come to a totally different understanding of what that says, compared to a Catholic, someone who is a committed Catholic or someone who is a Protestant, we need to understand historically where these different views of the Bible came from. Because that explains why churches either embrace or abandon major biblical doctrines. So we need to understand these views. And the first thing that we need to understand is when change began to take place.

Let's go to 2 Thessalonians 2 and verse 7.

Something is already occurring near the end of Paul's life that he cautions us about. Now in context, he is prophesying about a coming son of perdition, also known as the man of sin. And in that connection, he makes a statement about what's going on then, right there in his own ministry, in his own lifetime. And this is the statement that he makes, because he sees problems occurring within these congregations that he's been pastoring. He says, for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. He says, I see a change. I see things going on that I'm not comfortable with. He says, continuing only, he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. This is only 20 years after Jesus walked on earth. A short 20 years later, Paul sees what he's been teaching being morphed in various ways. Let's take a look at what Jude wrote. Jude verses 3 and 4. Jude verses 3 and 4. Again, if you're new to the church and you're having trouble finding the book of Jude, I'll give you a little help here. Verses 3 and 4 are right after verse 2. Jude verses 3 and 4. Here's what Jude observed. This is about 65 AD. It's about 35 years after Jesus walked on earth. He said, Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly.

For the faith which was once delivered to the saints, for certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation. Ungodly men who turned the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. It's already in their lifetimes they see the simple message of Christianity as taught by the original disciples morphing into something different. This year I had an opportunity while I was actually painting our child set in the backyard. I was listening to audiobooks. I do that when I cut the grass and when I do a lot of mundane tasks. I listened to a book entitled The Modern Scholar from Jesus to Christianity by Thomas F. Madden. Now, that title itself should show you the direction that many Protestant scholars are heading. I'm going to give you the title again. From the Modern Scholar from Jesus to Christianity. You see, because the truth is that, and this is by a gentleman named Thomas F. Madden, it is now believed in many prominent universities and taught by many Protestant scholars that Jesus Christ was a very fine Jewish rabbi. And in his lifetime what he did is he attempted to reform Judaism. But it was the Apostle Paul who declared that Jesus was the Son of God, was divine, and was the Messiah, that Jesus never did that. That Paul created that. So you see, what they're basically doing is changing who the founder of Christianity was. From Jesus Christ himself to one of his followers. And that is a movement that is solidly going on within the universities in our country today. And here's what he says, and I think there's a lot of validity to what he says here. He says that by 200 AD there are many different versions of Christianity in the Roman Empire. There are versions that are Jewish-influenced. And, like ourselves, they're keeping the Seventh-Day Sabbath. They're keeping the Holy Days.

There are some who are Gnostic-influenced. Meaning, they don't even believe Jesus Christ was divine. Some of them don't even believe he walked in the flesh. They believe he was like a ghost, a phantom. There are some who are pagan-influenced already at that period of time.

In other words, Christianity is all over the place by 200 AD. There are people that believe all kinds of stuff, realize that there's no printed materials yet that are available. Travel is difficult. People are separated by languages and by their various traditions, their former religious traditions.

So Christianity is all over the place, and the teachings of Paul and others are quickly morphed into different variations of belief about who and what Jesus Christ is. And this man, and I think he's right at this point, says by 200 AD Christianity is all over the place. I had this discussion with someone about a year ago, a close friend of mine, and he said, Do you really think that happened? Do you really think that's possible? He says, I just don't think it's possible. I think that there was one church then, and it hadn't changed. And here's the only analogy that I could give him.

The only analogy I can give you is a look at our own government in the last 230 years. Now, we have a government here in the United States. It's 230 years old. And it is guarded by a free press. The role of a free press is to keep a government on us. The purpose of a free press is to investigate and to expose when governments are doing things that they shouldn't be doing.

Now, in those 230 years, this country formed a form of government that failed. It was called the Articles of Confederation and came up with a constitution. The constitution was flawed, so much so they had to have a Bill of Rights and immediately write a number of amendments to it. At the time of the original constitution, senators were appointed by the states. They wanted the states to have the authority over senators. Unfortunately, now those have become federal elections. At that time, the constitution made it very clear that the federal government was extremely limited in its authority. It outlined that everything that isn't in the constitution that's under the domain of the federal government automatically belongs to the states.

So here we are 230 years later, and the federal government interferes in every aspect of our lives. In other words, in just 230 years, with an open press writing and keeping guard on a secular government, it has morphed from being an original republic to a quasi-democracy, whatever term we want to give our government today. It has dramatically changed. I might also add that at the time when this nation was founded, there were two great states. There was a great state in the North called New York State.

There was a great state in the South called Virginia. Those were the dominant political spheres of the United States. 230 years later, all the power has been centralized in Washington, D.C., in a federal city. So my point is that in a modern age, even with a free press guarding and exposing the changes and corruption that go on in a secular government, you can imagine what happened in the Roman Empire for 200 years when you have all of these religious beliefs claiming to believe something about Jesus Christ, with their various backgrounds, and what eventually would occur.

And that's what secular history records about early Christianity. Again, it isn't my goal today to bash the beliefs of others. I just simply want to give a historical perspective of why people look at this book differently. So let's look at the emergence of the Catholic Church. By 160 AD, the Roman bishop Anasetus attempted to convince a man named Polycarp, who was the bishop of Smyrna, to change Passover observance from the 14th of Nissan to Sunday observance. And that is recorded. And in essence, the Roman bishop was saying that, because I am in the imperial city, I have a lot of authority, and you, Polycarp, should not be keeping the Passover on the 14th.

You should change it so that it's consistently on a Sunday like we're doing it here in Rome. And Polycarp basically told him, have a nice day. And at this point, even the Roman bishop agreed that Polycarp, he said, well, you have the right in your region of the world to keep the Passover on any day that you want it.

But we see as early as 160 AD that there are already conflicts going on within various groups that all call themselves Christian. Thirty years later, another pope, Victor I, threatened to excommunicate the Eastern churches for continuing to observe the Passover on the 14th of Nissan.

The bishops in Rome are assuming their own authority over the churches. Their power is slowly growing. And although the church in Rome is persecuted by the Roman Empire, and many of these early popes died a terrible death through persecution, the fact is that because they were located in the capital of the Roman Empire, much like Washington, D.C., has prominence in our nation, because they were located in the capital of the Roman Empire, they had a perceived authority.

So time marches on, and the strength of the Catholic Church continues to grow. By 220 A.D., Callixtus I was the first Roman bishop to say that my authority comes from Peter and what Jesus Christ told him in Matthew 16, 18. So let's turn to Matthew 16 and verse 18 and see what Jesus Christ told Peter. Because this was the first pope who said because of what Jesus told Peter, and Peter was in Rome, that me being the bishop of Rome have superiority over other bishops. Matthew 16 and verse 18.

Here's what Jesus told Peter. He says, quote, And I say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock, he was speaking of himself, on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it, and I will give you the keys of the kingdom, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

That's what Jesus Christ told Peter. Of course, there are two problems with the way the pope interpreted this scripture. First, the promise of binding and loosening was not limited to Peter. If you turn to chapter 18 and verse 18, if you'll turn there, you will see that it was given to all the disciples, not just Peter. Way back in Matthew chapter 18 and verse 1, he brings a little child in the midst of all of them, so this discourse is for all of the disciples, and he tries to get to them the understanding that they have to be humble, like this little child, in order to be servants, in order to be in the kingdom of God, much like the scriptures we read in the day of the blessing of the little children.

And going down now, the same discourse, here's what he says in verse 18 to all of them who are in his midst.

So shortly I say unto you, whatever you bind in earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose in earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, I say to you that if two of you agree in earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. So the first thing is that this exclusive right that Calixtus gives to himself, the statement was given to all the disciples, not simply to Peter.

That's point number one. Secondly, the scripture does not mean to imply that anything bound or loosed by the church on earth would automatically be done on heaven. In other words, if someone decides, all right, well, adultery is now acceptable, that suddenly in heaven they cross out the commandment, right, the seventh commandment, all right, let's exit through that, it's okay now. That's not what Jesus is saying here. Jesus meant that whatever had already been determined in heaven would be communicated to the church.

And through God's will, the church would come to understand if it needed to update, if it needed a deeper understanding on a doctrine or a teaching. Jesus was making the point that God would always communicate his will to the church if the church was willing and humble enough to listen. Jesus himself said in John 5, verse 30, I don't seek my own will, I seek the will of my Father in heaven.

So let's continue our timeline here in 312 A.D. An emperor comes to the throne in Rome, who is considered by many to be the first Christian emperor. His name was Constantine. And before he goes into a major battle and becomes the sole emperor of the Roman Empire, he claims that he sees a vision, by this you shall conquer, and that it is a cross. And he wins the battle, and he gives the credit to God that he is now emperor Constantine.

And he is the undisputed emperor of the Roman church. And he does something that's unusual. He elevates the Roman Catholic church from one that had been beaten down and persecuted on and off by many former emperors into being the unofficial state religion of the Roman Empire. But he considers himself to be the head of the Catholic church and not the pope. Remember, he was the emperor. Emperors were used to being numero uno over religions in the Roman Empire. And Constantine is a politician, and he's a very good politician, and he sees that Christianity is fragmented and scattered with all these other beliefs.

So he calls a council to try to create some dogma, some doctrine, some guidelines about what is acceptable and what isn't acceptable. It's the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. And he's not so much interested in theology as he is in unity. So he presides over this council to make sure that it comes to definite conclusions. And by the way, one of those conclusions was ostracizing any of the churches in the east to continue observing the Passover on the 14th of Nicaea. This occurred at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.

So from this point on, the church became an institution of vast political importance. And the church, now that it's recognized, now that it doesn't have to be underground, it makes great efforts to convert the masses of peoples by blending their pagan celebrations into beliefs with the Roman church doctrines.

And again, this isn't bashing the Catholic church. You can go into any history book. You can go into, you can watch Catholic television, what's E-T-W-N, whatever the station is. And they're very honest about how these conversions took place and how, quote, the pagan holy days were converted into Christian celebrations.

I mean, they're very open and honest about that. This is not some form of bashing. By 346, the Roman church was established as the official religion of the empire. So let's allow time to move forward. By 445 AD, the empire is just beginning to break up. And a pope at that time, Leo I, proclaimed his religious office, quote, the primate, which means the highest ranking of all bishops.

And the Eastern churches don't like this. So they begin resisting at 4, really resisting at 445 AD. What later would become known as the Greek Orthodox Church. Well, in 476 AD, Rome falls, and it gave the Roman popes an opportunity to establish relationships with a new group of people. The German invaders, who now had come in and were controlling Rome. There was more blending of the Roman church with pagan customs, and it encouraged many Germanic peoples to adopt Christianity.

Well, time rolls on, and the Catholic church is dominating the entire Christian world until the year 869 AD. And there was a council in Constantinople. Again, there's problems between the Catholic church and the Eastern churches. And there's a controversy about icons and images in the Eastern churches.

And the Eastern churches continue to say, we're going to do what we want to do, and you can do what you want to do. And for the next 200 years, this gulf increases. And by the year 1000 AD, the Greek Orthodox Church is separate from the Catholic church. And the Greek Orthodox Church has its own bishop, not someone who has total authority over the entire church. But someone who's recognized as a leader, contrary to the Catholic church. So as the church continues to move on towards what we call the Prosthette Reformation, what's been occurring within the church that is going to affect how they define this book that you and I read all the time? I think the quickest way for me to explain that is to give you a few quotes from a book called the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology by Walter L.

Well, in his article, Roman Catholicism. And here you're going to see what happened within the Catholic church that affects how they look at the value of this book. So first, under the description, the church, it says, quote, The most distinctive characteristic of Roman Catholicism has always been the theology of the church.

The church's role in mediating salvation has been emphasized more than in other Christian traditions. Supernatural life is mediated to Christians through the sacraments administered by the hierarchy to whom obedience is due. End of quote. So the Catholic church says that it's the church that provides you salvation as a mediator. You can't go directly to Jesus Christ. You have to go through the church. You have to keep the sacraments. And you have to do what the church tells you to do in order to achieve salvation. It is in a middle man. It is between you and God. Another distinctive feature is under this same article are the popes. It says it's succeeding centuries. The prestige of the church of Rome increased since it was located at the imperial capital and because of its association with the apostles Peter and Paul. It was increasingly looked at as an arbiter of Christianity. Pope Leo I maintained that Peter continues to speak to the whole church through the bishop of Rome, the first known such claim.

The rise of the Pope's temporal power, which means that there is secular power outside of a church more politically, the rise of the Pope's temporal power, for which over millennium Butrist his claims to supremacy is commonly traced to the middle of the eighth century when a vacuum in civil leadership was created by the collapse of the Western Empire.

When Rome collapses and the Catholic Church steps up and says, we will provide civilization, we will provide civil government. So they filled a vacuum that occurs when Rome falls. Continuing, it says the height of papal pretensions was reached in 1302. When Boniface the 8th bull, and by the way, that is a papal letter even though it can mean something else, his bull, Eunom sanctum, which decreed that the temporal power was subject to the spiritual and that submission to the Roman pontiff is absolutely necessary to salvation.

So this Pope said to all of you kings and queens out there of Spain and of Portugal and of Italy and of England and all of you people out there that you are subservient to the Pope. You may be the king of England, you may be the king of Spain, but you are subservient to the Pope.

And submission to the Pope is necessary for you king to be saved to achieve salvation. So again, they're using a little more leverage. They're assuming more and more control. Continuing, Vatican I declared that the Pope's authoritative teachings are not subject to the consent of the entire Church. The Pope was declared to be infallible, that means immune from error, when he speaks ex cathedra from the chair on matters of faith and morals with the intention of binding the whole Church.

So the Pope, when he's officially sitting within his seat and acting as Pope, has the ability to be immune from error. Whatever he says is from the Word of God. He is the vicar, the one in place of Christ. That is his title. Another area was canon law. This was the body of officially established rules governing the faith and practice of members of the Christian Church. So just like the Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus' day created and elevated something called the oral law and made it equal to the Word of God, the Catholic Church created a law called canon law and elevated it in importance.

Here's what it says here. It says, quote, In the eleventh and twelfth centuries a new branch of theological studies, canon law emerged as an adjunct, that means something that's attached to or subordinate, and as an adjunct to papal supremacy. Legal decrees rather than the gospel became the basis for moral judgments. And finally, quoting from this book, a section called Revelation, it says, So boiling down all of that gobbledygook, what does it mean?

Well, it means historically the Catholic view of the authority and the importance of this book is this. This is considered an important sacred book, but it is considered only of equal value with Catholic tradition and with the authority of the pope. So that is why you can read something in the Scriptures, and it will say something very clear and concise to you, but the Catholic Church may say, Oh, no, our tradition going back to the Council of whatever declared that such and such is true. So therefore, this is not valid. This is no longer valid. Or you may see something in here and say, well, this sounds, this is a teaching of Jesus.

This sounds like something I should be doing. And the answer would be, well, that may be true. However, the Holy Father stated in this bowl, twinkle, twinkle, in this bowl, that such and such is true, and that is authoritative over the words of Jesus. So it is through this history, the reason why someone of the Catholic faith can look at a Scripture and it means one thing to them, and you can read the same Scripture, and it means something totally different to you, that you're placing a different emphasis on what the Bible says. By the way, it's for this reason that until very recently Catholics were not even encouraged to read the Bible.

It wasn't part of their tradition for just laypeople to re-literally read the Bible, even though that is beginning to change. So that's the difference between the Catholic view of the Scriptures and a view that we might have in which we rely solely on Scriptures. So the Catholic view is that the Pope is the vicar of Christ, can establish dogma that is seemingly contrary to Scripture. And it's for this reason that the Church has felt content to accept doctrines such as worship on a Sunday because it's tradition.

A celebration of religious holidays of pre-Christian origin because it's either tradition or a Pope at a particular time made an edict that that was okay and acceptable. Or the worship of a Trinity because a particular council said that God is a Trinity. Or the worship of Mary because their tradition says that Mary was the mother of God and should be idolized and worshiped a little bit below Jesus Christ.

And purgatory and many other doctrines that are distinctly Catholic that you may not find in Scriptures are there because of equal authority to this book is considered tradition and considered. The words of the Pope when he speaks ex-Cathedra, that is from the chair. So that's the Catholic view of Scripture. What about Protestantism? How did it develop and what is the Protestant view of Scripture?

Let's continue to march down our road of history a little bit. After the separation of the Eastern churches, around 1000 AD, the Roman Church became the national religion of Western and Eastern Europe. It was the only game in town. It was the religion in Western and Central Europe. However, for the next 500 years, unfortunately, great corruption became prominent in the Roman Church. And again, this is recorded throughout history. You can find it on the Internet.

You can find it in a history book. Many of its leaders were grossly immoral. Major church offices were bought and sold. There was a female pope. There was a teenage pope. It was a time of real confusion and corruption within the Catholic Church. And the thing that irritated most people was something called indulgences. And this eventually led to the rupture of the Catholic Church.

Indulgences was the remission of punishment due for a sin that had already been sacramentally absolved. In other words, if you committed a sin, you could go and do a sacrament, but that wasn't enough. You had to do something else.

And early on indulgences meant that you did something charitable to help someone else. But eventually, someone figured out that money could be made through indulgences. And between the period of 1000 and 1500 AD, indulgences just exploded throughout Europe. Even to the point where they were used and changed into a gift of money, and it made the church very wealthy, it was used for building projects. St. Peter's Basilica was built by indulgences, by people paying money, so that their sins could be forgiven.

The Crusades were funded by indulgences. European kings were allowed to receive a commission on indulgences. So within your kingdom, if you took indulgences from people, you could keep 15-20% and simply send the rest to Rome. So it became something that was grossly abused. And the institutional corruption of church leaders and their iron control over all believers caused a deep resentment of many reform-minded priests, many secular rulers, and many common people.

And people are beginning to lose faith in the Catholic Church. One of the things that happens is a renaissance begins occurring in Europe, now that things are loosening up, now that faith is declining. This was a revival of classical art and architecture and literature, and learning that originated in Italy in the 14th century and spread throughout Europe. The end of what they called the Dark Ages, where Europe virtually stood still in all of these areas since the fall of the Roman Empire. It had not progressed. Civilization and learning and understanding had not progressed, and now it was beginning to through the Renaissance.

And its influence made the world more secular. Many political rulers wanted greater freedom from the Church and desired to confiscate Church lands, Church buildings, and Church revenues in the name of reform. Again, I'd like to read from another book here, just a paragraph, a book called The Mainstream of Civilization. Here's what it says in the context of the state of Western Europe and its corruption in the late Middle Ages.

Quote, The failure of secular government would not have been so serious had the Church been able to regain its old leadership. The people of Western Europe were still Christians, and they knew they were not living up to the precepts of their faith. They multiplied religious ceremonies and appeals for the intercession of the saints. They flocked to revival meetings to repent of their sins with tears and trembling. But the Church failed to remedy the disorders of Western society.

In fact, the Church was infected with the same evils that beset secular government. So the Catholic Church is beginning to fall apart. Two significant events occur that prepare for a revolt, what we call the Protestant Reformation. One of them was called the Western Schism. Due to politics, for a period of time, the papacy leaves Rome and goes to France. But there are Italian popes who also want to continue to be Pope of Italy. So you have two popes at the same time. And the Pope and France are saying, I'm the real Pope and you're a heretic.

You're disfellowshipped. And the Pope and Rome are saying, no, no, no, I'm the real deal. And you're anathema. And the other guy is saying, no, you are. And the other guy is saying, na, na, na, na, na, na. And this is going back and forth, and people are losing faith in the Church.

Because they see all of this politics going on. And they see the corruption going on within the structure of the Church. And something else happens that literally breaks the back of the Catholic Church. It's called the Black Death. The Black Death was a terrible plague. Millions died in Europe. Something like one-third the population of London died of the Black Death.

And people can't understand it. They're doing the sacraments. They're going to the priest. They're doing confession. They're doing everything they were ever told to do to be good Catholics. And they're dropping like flies. They're dying. Whole villages, whole cities are just dying out. And the people lose more confidence in the power, in the spiritual power of the Catholic Church. Well, in 1517, I'm sorry, a monk named Martin Luther posted what he called the 95 theses on the church door.

Most of these theses, and that just means a research dissertation, something you've researched and that you've written down. He posted them. Most of them were his anger over indulgences. But the heart of the protest was over the authority of the Pope. And he sparked a Protestant Reformation in Europe. The scripture that most impressed Luther in his theology was Romans 1.17 and Romans 3.28.

Romans 3.28, if you'll turn there with me, we'll take a look at this one. Romans chapter 3 and verse 28. He was not the first reformer, but unlike others before him like John Wycliffe and Jan House, Luther survived because he had protection from German princes. Luther suffered from a lot of discouragement and despondency. He suffered from extended periods of shame and guilt.

And he was doing all of the rituals that he had been told would make him right with God, and he never felt right with God. It never seemed to work. And he came across this scripture that changed his life. And the scripture is this, Romans chapter 3 and verse 28. Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. Unfortunately, that's been distorted a little bit. It's been mistranslated into faith alone. It's known as the doctrine of solified or by faith alone.

It isn't my intention to get into that today. But when Luther saw that, he said, all of these rituals, all of these indulgences, all of these sacraments, all of these things that I was ever told were important for salvation, are not important to be justified in God's sight. So again, I'm going to go back to the evangelical dictionary of theology, Walter L. Well, and I'm going to read a paragraph of what he says here.

It says, the term derives from protestations submitted by a minority of Lutheran and Reformed authorities at the German imperial diet at Sprayer in the year 1529 in dissenting from a clampdown on religious renewal. The protestation, that's where the name Protestant came from, was at once objection, appeal, and affirmation. It asked urgently, quote, what is the true and holy church? And asserted, there is no sure preaching or doctrine, but that which abides by the word of God according to God's command, no other doctrine should be preached.

Each text of the holy and divine scriptures should be elucidated and explained by other text. The holy book is in all things necessary for the Christian. It shines clearly in its own light and is found to enlighten the darkness. We are determined by God's grace to aid and abide by God's word alone, the holy gospel contained in the biblical books of the Old and New Testaments.

The word alone should be preached, and nothing that is contrary to it, it is the only truth, it is the sure rule of all Christian doctrine and conduct. It can never fail or deceive us. So basically what they're saying is, we don't care about church tradition. It has no value to us. We've got to go back to the book. They're saying we don't care about the Pope's authority being equal to this.

It's all got to come from this, not from a man's authority, and not through a tradition, no matter how many thousands of years old that tradition is. So the Protestant view of the Scriptures was a backlash against the autocratic corruption that had occurred in the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. The Protestants resented the domination of the Catholic Church in their lives.

They were offended by the elaborate rituals and rites required by the Church to achieve salvation. And beginning with Martin Luther, they found the writings of the Apostle Paul to be a justification for rebellion against the Catholic Church. But for many reformers, this belief in Scripture alone as a source of revelation had one fatal flaw.

And here's where much of Protestantism went wrong. Instead of looking at the Word of God and saying that we are going to study the Scriptures exhaustively, and we are going to come to conclusions void of tradition and void of papal authority, we are going to come to conclusions by taking the whole into context to understand what we believe. They came to the conclusion that the writings of Paul were the most important and authoritative in Scripture. And the reverence for Paul's writings naturally caused them to interpret all other Scriptures through their view of Paul's letters to the churches.

There's a theological term for this. You probably have not heard. It's called Paulinism. And here's what the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology says about Paulinism. And much of Protestant belief is embedded in Paulinism. And here's what it says.

It says, So my point is, is that instead of looking at the entire Word of God from cover to cover, to understand the context of the things that are believed, what they said is we are going to look primarily in Reverend Paul's writings and use that as a prism to interpret everything else, to interpret the Old Testament, to interpret what Jesus said, to interpret what the other disciples wrote. We're going to use Paul as that prism to define everything that we believe. So let me put it in a nutshell here. The Protestant view of the authority and importance of the Bible is this. The Bible is considered and inspired writing by conservative Protestants and a collection of questionable stories by liberal Protestants. However, one common thread is accepted by most. And that is that the Old Testament and the New Testament must be interpreted through the writings of Paul. And because his writings are valued as the most authoritative and enlightened doctrine is developed primarily through their interpretations of his writings. That's the Protestant view of the Bible.

And let me get back a little bit. I mentioned earlier about what many theologians are teaching today. Where did they get the idea that Jesus Christ himself never claimed to be the Messiah? That he himself never claimed to be the Son of God? That he himself never claimed to be God? That it was Paul who created these concepts about Jesus? Where did they get that from? It comes from having a root in Paulinism. Holding Paul as an authority even to the point where it gets above Jesus Christ. That's where, unfortunately, it ultimately leads to. Many books have been written about the Apostle Paul in the last few decades. Because much of Christianity has rejected its Jewish roots and the original teachings of Jesus to endorse what it believes, they look to Paul's writings for enlightenment, for doctrine. There was a book that came out ten years or so ago that led to much of what many believe about Paul today. It was called Paul, The Mind of an Apostle by A.N. Wilson. And Mr. Wilson's controversial book concludes that Paul is the real founder of Christianity and that he created the idea that Jesus was the Messiah by claiming that Jesus was divine. That Paul was the first one to do this. And therefore, Christianity began with Paul, not with Jesus Christ himself. Let's go to 2 Peter, chapter 3, verse 15. Why do some people give priority to the writings of Paul? Because of a particular way that Paul writes that lends his writings to interpretation, or some might even say to misinterpretation. And this even happened back in Peter's time. Peter is saying here in 2 Peter, chapter 3 and verse 15. We'll pick it up in verse 15. 2 Peter 3 and verse 15.

Notice he doesn't say Paul's out in his own world. He doesn't say Paul is going rogue. He refers to his beloved brother Paul according to the wisdom given to him. He says Paul's given wisdom, too. He writes, and he's written to you.

And also in all his epistles, speaking of them, of these things, in which some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they also do the rest of Scriptures. See, Paul was a highly educated man. He writes in phrases. He writes in extended thoughts. He writes in paragraphs. And that leads people, unfortunately, to often find in the writings of Paul what they want to find in his writing. You can look at the writings of Paul, and you can find where Paul says it's okay to eat meat offered to idols. And you can find another place where Paul implies that you shouldn't eat meat offered to idols. You can find Scriptures where Paul says the law is holy and royal. It's good. You can find other places where Paul says observing the law is like a curse. You can see Scriptures in which Paul says, in the minds of some, dramatically against homosexuality. Many in that movement today are turning to the Scriptures of Paul to say that it's acceptable, that it's acceptable Christian behavior. You can look in Paul, and if you want to, you can find where Paul awaited the kingdom of God on earth. Or you can go to Paul, and you can see that you go to heaven when you die. You can go to Paul and see that he supported the Sabbath and the holy days and encouraged other people to keep those days, including Gentiles and Corinth. And if you want to, you can go to Paul and find what you're looking for. You can find that the church was apparently moving worship to Sundays. The point of this is that Paul's writings lend itself, because of this style and the way he wrote, to virtually find anything that you want to believe in. And that's the problem with Paulinism. Paulinism submerges the teachings and the personal example of Jesus Christ, and it reduces it into something that's inferior. Let's go to Matthew 28 and verse 19.

I'd like to talk about the church of God view and the authority and the importance of the Bible. We've talked about the Catholic view. We've talked about the Protestant view. It started out so well, but unfortunately morphed into Paulinism. Now I'd like to talk about the church of God view, because the entire Bible by the church of God is considered the inspired word of God. We believe the Bible to be progressive revelation. There are some things in the Old Testament that are progressively revealed in the New Testament. We understand that. We believe that Jesus Christ was the messenger of the New Covenant. As the Christ, he set an example for us to live. And we don't believe that it was Paul's intention to change, modify, or supersede the teachings of Jesus Christ. Matthew 28 and verse 19, here's what Jesus Christ says, After his resurrection, after everything that's going to be nailed on the cross has been nailed to it, here's what he tells his disciples in Matthew 28 and 19, I don't believe Jesus was trying to confuse the disciples here. God is not the author of confusion. This is after his resurrection. He doesn't tell them that much of what he taught is now done away. He doesn't say, I just spent the last three and a half years teaching obsolete doctrines and principles to people that all vanished when I was crucified in the cross, so everything I set up to that point is now abolished.

Jesus doesn't say that. He says, teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you. He doesn't tell them to desire greater knowledge because he was under the old covenant. He doesn't tell them to expect to receive new truths from God because he was a Jew, which is always a phrase that sounds very anti-Semitic to me. I've heard in my lifetime so many people, when you're talking about the Holy Days or something, you refer to Christ, oh well, he was a Jew. They'll say that. He was a Jew. Like it's some type of derogatory term. Well, wow, I didn't know that. So was Paul. What does that have to do with anything? But the implication was that he's just limited. He wasn't enlightened because of his background and his belief. He was the Son of God. What he is telling the disciples is very clear and simple. Walk as he walked, believe what he taught, and follow his example. Why? Because Jesus Christ is our Savior, and he was the mediator of the new covenant. Paul stated in 1 Corinthians 11.1, Imitate me just as I also imitate Christ. Does it sound like Paul felt that he had revealed knowledge that was better than the teachings of Jesus Christ or superior to what Jesus Christ said? Brethren, we believe that all Scripture, not parts of it, are God-breathed and given for our edification. And yes, indeed, some parts of Scripture were given to a certain people for a certain time, like ancient Israel. Some things like animal sacrifices have been fulfilled.

Some Scriptures and doctrines are progressively revealed. But all Scriptures, the entire book, is God-breathed and came from the mind of God as revealed in the Gospels. If there's any preference that we place anywhere in this book that we put preference on and that we use to interpret the rest of the Scriptures, it would be the Gospels, because they reveal the mind of Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Messiah, the living example who spent three and a half years of his ministry teaching and preaching moral concepts and reinforcing the law of God and keeping the Sabbath and Holy Days by his personal example and instruction.

So if there's any part of the Bible that we would look at a prism, if we're confused about something else, it would be, what did Jesus Christ do? What did he say? What did he believe? So again, we believe that some Scriptures and doctrines are progressively revealed, but all originated from the mind of God.

So rather than in conclusion today in our sermon, the churches of God do not hold to the Catholic view. We do not believe that one man has the authority to be equal to what this book says. We don't believe that tradition, no matter if it's thousands of years old, are an equal authority or footing with this book. And we also don't believe in the Protestant or Paulinism view that everything in Scriptures, the Old Testament, the examples of Jesus, the other parts of the New... that everything has to be interpreted to the prism of what did Paul say, as if somehow he was better or more enlightened than any other author. We reject both of those concepts. We believe in the writings of the other apostles. We believe that the writings of Paul and the other apostles and the Old Testament are in complete harmony with the teachings of Jesus Christ. Again, we understand that there is a revelation, a revealed progression of revelation in the Scriptures. So my encouraging words to you today is, hold fast to the appreciation of God's Word. This is a precious book. Thousands of individuals gave up their lives, including John Wycliffe, a man that I mentioned earlier. So the translations could be made of this book so that just common people like you and I could read it. And indeed, how blessed we are to have the Word of God at our fingertips. Thank you, and have a wonderful Sabbath day.