Jibu chapter eleven. Hebrews chapter eleven. And verse thirty-two. And what shall I more say, for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, David, Samson, Gepta, David, Samuel, and of the prophets, who through faith the two kingdoms brought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in sight, turned to flight the armies of the alien, women received their dead, raised to life again. But others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain the better resurrection. And others had trial of cruel mockings, insurgents, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. They were stones, they were saw in the thunder. They were tempted, were slain at the shore. They wandered about in sheep-gins, and goat-gins, being desperately afflicted, tormented. Of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and in mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained the good report to faith, received not the promise, God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us would not be made perfect. Reading this through yesterday, I was impressed with one expression here. Verse thirty-eight, of whom the world was not worthy. In other words, of whom the world is not worthy of having in their midst or in their presence. These people were just too good for this world. The world was too evil for them to live in it. They must have been wonderful Christians. When you stop to think that they were living just in the glimmer of God's revelation back in the Old Testament. And yet their lives were so godly, so holy, so godlike in every way that God says they don't belong on earth. They're just too holy to be down there. And yet with just the glimmer of divine revolution, that's how they live. such was their hunger and thirst and longing after God. And here we are in the full day day of the revelation of God. God speak unto the fathers by the prophets, but now he speaks unto us by his son. We have all the testimony of the New Testament of what God has been doing in the New Testament age. And yet very few Christians live up to their godliness. of those in the Old Testament we've been reading about. And yet we have far more evidence of the living God than they have. We have the Holy Spirit dwelling constantly in our hearts. They didn't. We have all the New Testament, the resurrection of Christ, the power of the Spirit throughout this age. They didn't. And yes, we see what they did. Now this is something I think ought to exercise all our hearts. We'll exercise mine as I read it. I want to speak for a little while, and this is going to have a direct connection with what we've been taking up in the Acts, and you'll see later on. That is the subject of the history of the church. Church history. What is church history? Well, church history is just the history of the church, and its survival in the face of all kinds of hostile enemies, political, economic, political, diabolical, horrors of false religion, and ecclesiastical opposition from those who claim to know the truth and sought the practice. The church has been under fire for nineteen hundred years, and I mean under fire. After I was saved, there was one thing I wanted to know. I wanted to know what went on between the times that the New Testament ends after Apostle time and up to the day in which I lived. I thought, well, something must have gone on all the way through those years, and I'd like to know what went on. There's a big gap, I want to know something about. So I spoke to one of the President in the Assembly there in Stratford, George Stuart. He said, get Miller's church history. He said, a lot of historians are very biased. Naturally, you can understand a Catholic historian would be prejudiced toward Rome and try and play down the horrible atrocities and persecutions of the Dark Ages. And so he said, Miller was a Christian and a very honest man, and he said his book is one of the best. So I purchased these three volumes and some cold winter nights I spent those nights reading through church history. I'll tell you, many a night, it might have been cold on the outside, but there was a fire burning on the inside. Inside my house, as I saw what Christians suffered and how they suffered for Christ, the price they paid for their witness for Christ, their willingness, their readiness to lay down their life for Christ. Christ was everything to them. Their life meant nothing. It was all Christ. And then sometimes you would see how just a little incident turned the tide against the Christians. And you'd wonder why did God permit that? Well, I couldn't understand why God seemed to give the victory to the enemy. And the righteousness went down in defeat. And the threat of Christianity almost snapped, the light began to flicker. It almost went up. When just a little hand of God, in a little incident, could have strung the tide in favor of Christianity and the defeat of the forces of God. And he made your blood flow sometimes to think of how God's people were treated by the powers that be. Yet they stood their ground. And so I went on to it. When I finished those three volumes, I said, I'm going to read these volumes many times in my life to find out how things began, some of these movements, religious movements, how they began and how they ended right up until the turn of the century when he finished his final book. But I've never read it yet. I've been too busy another day. But how much of it comes back? And then there's another book. And this book had been published. The last, I think the first edition was in nineteen seventy-two. And it dented to the sister Balls of it. I still have it. I'm still studying. And it gives a history of the Christians in this dispensation, that is in the age of the church. What we've been reading about here is God's record of the Old Testament. There's no such record, inspired record, of the New Testament. God tells us in Hebrews about this great part of witnesses of all those shining lights of the Old Testament. But when the New Testament concluded, it was concluded with this warning about anyone adding to this revelation. There's no additional divine revelation to be added to the Bible. And so we have no heavenly way of knowing exactly, and God is not prejudiced, God gives the truth. We have no way of knowing exactly all about the church history and the history of the church. That's been left up to men. And thank God God has raised up men with the ability, historians who have given us the account, the very name, and the time of their birth, and the time of their death, and how they died, and what it is, it's in, Church History. And this book is a lovely book. It's the most up-to-date because it even mentions Billy Graham. There's another one, and that chief men among the dead. It covers the last hundred and eighty years, and gives the history of ninety-two giants. Most of them well-educated, Sir Robert Anderson and Anderson, the head, of Scotland Yard, almost like Edgar Hoover would be in this country, or was. Three men, lords, highly educated men, and how they lived for Christ, and the power they had in preaching the word, the ability to unearth the deep things of God, how they expounded the Scriptures. All ninety-two of them were bright and shining lights. They're not mentioned in the Bible, but they'll be mentioned, and many more. And soon, getting these three books together, I'm going to give you what I see, and I hope it'll be of some help to you. Now, you'll notice in Miller's church history, he devised the church age into three sections, first five hundred years. And during that first five hundred years of history, And if you want to know what the Bible does say about that first five hundred years, read the first three churches in Revelation chapter two, Ephesians, Myrna, and Pergamot, for that covers that period. So that's the first period. Then the next one thousand years, known as the Dark Ages, when Christianity almost went out, and the devil did everything he could to drown with us. Then you have the last five hundred years, and it's a glorious era. Wonderful. The men that have risen up will be giving these names as we go along. But to show you, in the first five hundred years, there were just five bright and shining lights. Five. The next one thousand years, one. The next, the last five hundred years, hundreds. showing the wonderful area in which we live in us, and how we are as we are today. So these are the subjects I want to try and speak on. In the New Testament, Paul invites him to the churches. He's writing to those who are saved. And if you write, lead the beginning of all the churches, letters to the churches. Paul doesn't have in his mind that there's one unscathed person in that church. To go by what they have in the Scriptures, and we must go by, Paul doesn't have it the slightest idea that an unscathed person is in that assembly. For all these epistles are addressed to the truth. The children of God, the church of God, the body refers to those in Corinth. ye are the body of Christ. Now if one unsaved person was in that body, there would be a foreign substance in the organism. Paul never let it enter his mind that there was one unsaved person in that assembly. He was addressing this letter too. Showing how that God, in the beginning, the reason I'm saying this is because at that time there were only three classified groups According to the New Testament, the Jews, the Gentiles, the Church of God, the Church of God were those saved by the grace of God and were in fellowship, they were in that one body. And so here you find God singling out from all the rest of humanity, the Church. And that's what he's interested in. The Lord Jesus, when he prayed in John, he didn't pray for the unsaved. He didn't pray for the world. He tells you that. I pray not for the world. I pray for those who now have given me out of the world. That's wonderful. You can read the sermons in chapter in John, and all the ones who are the same person can say to any. That's not written to him. That belongs to Christians. That's the Lord's prayer. For his people. and his people own. And the same thing applies to the additional, they're written to the birth people only, to the body of Christ, those living organisms. So what we want to take up is those who were really saved in the beginning and their bright and shining testimony down through the time of their little existence here upon the earth. I want to read a text to you along this line, and it's over in Acts fifteen twenty-two. Then please it the apostles and elders with the whole church to send chosen men of their own company to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas, namely Judas, surname Barnabas, and Silas, chief men among the brethren. And so you have these cheap men, these outstanding men. There are those who are outstanding. It doesn't mean to say that there are heaven's shoulders and the eyes of men, the mother of the body of the house, for in the reckoning of God, God loves all his children. But we must remember this. There is such a thing as the average Christian. Just the average Christian. Rank them high, if you like to use the word. And yet I don't. There's no such thing in the Bible as clergy and laity. Those known as the clergy. And that was the big trouble in the first century. Emerging is a clergy, the Catholic Church. And there's the laity. And the laity were not allowed to read the Bible through the Dark Ages. All the knowledge was supposed to be in the hands of the clergy. And all of us were subject not to the Bible, but to what the clergy said about the Bible. This is it. But God knows nothing of that. And yet, as you read history, you can see how God laid his hands on individuals. Men who turned out to be giants. They had what God wanted and God used them. And their names are the ones you'll find. chief men among the best. I'm talking about the whole scope of church history, how these men were raised up by God. Now in the Old Testament, you find God laying hold of a shepherd, if God laying hold of a king, laying hold of a tribe, a fruit gatherer as an Amos. Men of different walks of life were used in the Old Testament by God to give us the Old Testament scripture. And same throughout the church age. Men of varied ranks of life, some greatly educated, brilliant men. God picked up this one, and he picked up that one, and he saved. And he used them. He used them for his glory. They were chief men among God's people. And I'm not putting a capital B to that, brethren. They were chief men that God had chose to use. for his glory. Well, I want to notice this first five hundred years. The first five hundred years is known as the Apostolic Church. And the first night that turns up in this church was a man by the name of... Let me see how they name it. I thought it... Ignatius, that's why. Ignatius is the man. And this man Ignatius, when God raised him up, the church was in a terrible state. In other words, there was this decline. You have it in the Ephesian church in Revelation, declining. The apostolic church. And this man Ignatius, he was an eyewitness to some of the apostles. And he had a first-hand line or testimony of what went on among the Apostles and the Christians at that time. This man was raised up, and he was the Bishop of Antioch. And this man, what a wonderful testimony. He ever had great ability. He was a contemporary of Polycarp. This man was raised up, and he's a first shining light, not included in the twelve, not included in the seventy that the Lord sent forth. that here is one, the first one to come up after the conclusion of the New Testament. And this man, Ignato, Bishop of Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians. And is it significant that out of Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians, should emerge this man? At that time, instead of calling him elders, they were called bishops. Well, the word elder can be thus phrased. Bishop. And this man, an elder, he comes to the fore, a very capable man. And another thing he used, and this is very significant, he's the first one in church history to ever use the word Catholic. Now, what does that mean, and I want you to get a hold of it? The word Catholic is not as it's used today. The word Catholic means universal. and he only led by God, began seeing a system that was arising that was going to claim control and power over all God's people. He uses the word Catholic to bring out the unity of the body of Christ. And when he used the word, it implied that those who were in that universal Catholic or union were born again, written by the Spirit. planted together in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. It had no reference. Neither did he have any reference to Roman Catholicism. Now, there's a big difference. If you ask me if I'm a Catholic, yes. As the Bible puts it, I'm a Catholic. I'm not a Roman Catholic. Every Christian is a Catholic. You're in the universal church. Roman Catholicism began with Rome. Rome taking over supremacy, Rome trying to gather all Christians together, not only using her ecclesiastical power, vested in the first Pope, but her military power, her political power, to try and dominate and control the early church. And so this is the first man that ever used the word Catholic. And as I say again, he had no reference whatever to the Roman Catholic Church, which came later. It's remarkable to think how this man was such a bright and shining light. He was born again, and he didn't believe in household baptism or baptism for children. He was strong on baptism by immersion. And this is noticeable. It's telling me if I have noticed it. Catholician believes that people can be baptized into the Roman Catholic Church. This man was very strong, according to church history, on baptism by immersion. He was very strong on the unity of the body of Christ. He was very strong on the clear, plain gospel of the grace of God. He began to see the trend of things. And there's one lone voice raising it in the wilderness to proclaim these wonderful truths. And so this man was born in A.B. And here is his actual statement. I would rather, under severe persecution, the object of hate, I would rather die for Christ than Christian, I want you to get this. I would rather die for Christ than rule the whole world. He saw creeping into the early church powers that wanted to rule. Not only the church, but the world. I would rather die for Christ than rule the whole world. Leave me to the beasts that I may by then be a partaker of God, welcome nails, welcome cross, welcome broken bones, welcome bruised body, welcome all the diabolical torture that I may, that I may obtain the Lord Jesus Christ or attain unto his life. What a statement. It's just like the Apostle says, I haven't already attained. The Apostle Paul wasn't talking about salvation. He had salvation. He was speaking about likeness to Jesus Christ, and the one consuming passion of this man. Christ like him, I am willing to die for the one who died for me. And as you go through these characters in churches, this is the one thing that stands out. It's the dedication of these men and some women. Madame Gaul was a wonderful singer. But very little said about her, outside of her personal piety, God doesn't seem to have used her other than her personal testimony. But he's picking up these men, and they're godless, they're devoted, they're pious, and pure in their life. And they see in their testimony with their blood. Ignatius was thrown to the lion, and eaten alive in AD, one hundred and seven, seven, at the age of century. Here you have the first shining light in the first five hundred years of the church history. She began seeing the trend of things. Reminds you of what Joshua said, what would happen, because the children of Israel, they obeyed Moses, and they obeyed Joshua. until that generation died and then things began getting worse. And then the time of the judges when everything went to pieces. Paul said the same thing, I know that after my departure shall grieve his woes enter in not sparing a flock. But it seemed that after one of these men would come up and be mightily used of God, and at their death things would begin to go down again. Man is strange, isn't he? And yet that's how history has proven it to be. But it's also remarkable that right at this time, somebody else was born for the name of Parikah. And he was a remarkable character. He was born in sixty-nine AD. And he was part of the first, or rather he had good acquaintance with, the first generation of the apostle, or the generation after the apostle. He's the last survivor of those who had talked with the eyewitnesses of the Lord Jesus. He was a dedicated student of the Pauline Epistle and also the Gospel of John. They were his universities. Paul's Epistle and the Gospel of John. And he studied them. And he was a brilliant student. Each church... That time, and this was one of the things that he began bringing out in his ministry back at that time, that each church was independent of outside human authority. He was strong on the gospel. All these men were strong on the gospel. But now you see how his message is coming right in. Rome is trying, or some of these men eventually turned out to be like Catholicism. wanting to take over the churches and organize them under one authority, a head office, an official order. And this was his emphasis. He emphasized that each church was independent, independent of outside human authority. Each church was based upon its own grasp of the scriptures and responsibilities of God and God alone through the world. not being governed or controlled or dictated to by some big office hundreds of miles away. It was nothing like that. But he saw how organization was keeping them. It turned out to be one of the biggest organizations in the world, Roman Catholicism. But how God was leading these men to detect these trends. And so this man, his ministry, next to the gospel, was the independence. of the local church responsible to God and God alone. Also another thing was water baptism by immersion. That's another thing these organizations tried to do away with, immersion. They wanted to replace that with infant baptism, eventually household baptism and things like that. It's so amazing when you see what these men preached. so long ago, right after the apostolic era, when he was asked to recant because he was arrested, he was brought to trial, he was condemned. He was asked that he would repent. Will you give up your faith in Christ? Will you start preaching what you've been preaching? You want his answer? Here it is. Eighty-six years have I served him, and he hath done me no wrong. How can I speak evil of my sin, who saved me? And he would burn the life. And according to the tradition, when the flames refused to devour his body, he was killed with a sword, and his body burned. Such what Polly Cuth received of the hands of the enemy of the gospel. That's the second signing letter. And there's another one. So Killian, he was born in AD. One sixty. Born to pagan parents in Carthage in Athens. He studied law and was a brilliant lawyer, but he turned out to live a wicked, ungodly, resentful life. Until he was thirty years of age, he passed the law of sin in his life. But he was impressed. The historians tell us what impressed him. Why impressed him was how the Christian stood up to punish him, to suffer for persecution. They held their ground. They were kneeled. They chose the state, they chose the amphitheater, rather than back down on one principle. Somehow they stripped of the sentvious young man, and because of the stances of the Christian, and how they suffered, he was brought to a knowledge of Christ. And from then on he was a strict, ardent, courageous defender. of Christianity and the Christians. It's got off on time and time again in Christianity. Many a time when I sat through those cold nights, you almost visualized yourself at that amphitheater. And there you see that little band of Christians. No Bible. We didn't have it. There they were, a few families who had been found just peasant. They'd been found talking about, thinking about, witnessing about their faith in Jesus Christ. And they were condemned to be devoured by the lions. And they were laid out, and there they were a little huddled. And in the ramp of the air where thousands were looking on to get squashed out of these crystals, the moment came and the door of the pit opened and out came these lions. They hadn't been fed for days. And you can imagine the sheen that follows. As mothers and fathers and children were devoured by those hungry eyes. And Miller says that on some of those occasions, a man would stand up here, a woman would stand up here, while others were crying, in other words, shouting out, approving what was going on. one here and one there would stand up and say, I said, Jesus Christ. If those people are willing to die, for Jesus Christ, there must be something to this Christianity. And from one marker, oftentimes a low two and sometimes three, take place. This is how early Christians are. And so this fellow is a great defender of the faith. And against Catholic, he saw this thing getting stronger and stronger and stronger that broke the Roman Catholic. And he preached against their traditions and their teachings and their practices. He wrote his famous apologeticism. He wrote that. Huge book and work. And he wrote it in AD. One ninety-seven. Apologeticism is what it's called. In AD one ninety-seven. And it was a fierce attack on all pagan morals and doctrines on the wonderful defense of the preaching of primary Christianity. And this fellow, he died at the age of sixty and one ninth. And there you have the third shining light of the first five hundred years of Christianity. The fourth one is Christosomus, spoken out of John of Antioch. He was born in three forty-seven. Born and reared in Antioch City and like Timothy, he evidently had an upbringing in a Christian home. He knew the world, developed into being a great student, a great teacher of the world. He wrote a number of commentaries, very able writers. His, too, was an attack upon Catholicism. He became the Archbishop of Constantinople in . He was condemning sin in high places, in low places. He was thundering out the New Testament doctrines against Rome, the doctrines of Rome, the patches of Rome, and paganism on right hand and on the left and against sin, especially among the rich and the wealthy. He was so fierce in his attack that the Empress, Eudoxia, she had him banished to the desert. But he didn't stay long. He was brought back. He was recalled that he wasn't changed. He maintained his attack against all these encampments. He was attacked upon infant Christianity. When he preached until again he was banished, for the last time, and died in the desert. Thirty years later, because of public appeal and respect for this godly man, they brought his bones back to continental locals, and they were buried as there was an eulogy given at his funeral. That's the fourth one. St. Patrick, this may register, St. Patrick is called to date. He was an Irishman. lived in England, born in England, captured when sixteen and taken to Ireland. There he worked for a farmer, tending sheep, praying that God would enable him to escape. He went back home. After six years he did his thing. He went back home to England and he found Christ. When he got saved, all he thought about was Ireland. Ireland. And after a while he was sent back to Ireland, a distant priest. Thousands upon thousands of people were saved through his preaching. Many churches were planted through the preaching of this highly Irishman. And that's why today, right to this day, you'll find a deep Christianity. In Northern Ireland, you know that. It's a religious war. But elsewhere in Northern England and Scotland, they can trace the work in old places back to this man. And so influential was this man that the Roman Catholic Church in a political mood, they canonized him and had him called or made a saint. He was a saint already. But they did this, just to try and corral all his work under the wing of Roman Catholic. Today you see what's going on after all these years, this same fierce conflict. And this is not exactly politics. This is a religious war. And most of the great conflict down the centuries have been in. One religion against another. And here's the church with her simple faith, her simple custom, her simple life, living day by day. working with the law, witnessing for the law, not going after all immaterial and tangible things, seeking to live that quiet, broadly consistent life, yet under constant attack by the government, its armies, under the attack of kings and emperors, and priests and cardinals, today the church is stronger than that. And as you follow throughout church history, you see how at times it looked as though the lights were going up. But how God answered prayer that once again the fires of revival began to burn. And God had his name. In the first five hundred years, we have these five categories. They just seemed to come up. As one went down, another came up. And that went down, another went up. That's the end of the first five hundred years of the age. We call the church. We today know nothing of what those Christian suffer. We're living in the millennium. Paul said, that's the Corinthians. He says, you're reigning as change. I wish that God you did reign and that we reign with you. You're living as though you're in the millennium, he said. You have everything you want. I wish you were living in the millennium. But I was there with you. But the Apostle Paul knew something of suffering. Look what he said. And show the early Christians how they suffered for Christ, willing to lay down their lives. Even to all men, the one referred to the apostles. K-B-T, he was alive. I'd sooner do that than give it one inch. on the principle of God's precious grace. I trust these things. It will be a message to you and to me of what we stand for. How not only much it costs Christ when it costs you in the grave of Christ, but how much it has cost people to maintain the value. And to give us what we have today, we owe it to the suffering change. Men and women who've paid the price. In the Dark Ages, there might be a Bible in a little place known as the capital of that province. And that Bible was chained in the courthouse. And you had to get permission to go and read that Bible. You couldn't copy it. You couldn't take a portion of it. And you were closely watched as you read it. And here we have... There's going to price pay. what you and I enjoy today. I wonder if, in the day to come, if another generation or three or four comes along, will they be for property from this generation, because of your stand and mind, like we are profiting from the generation's past, the price they take, the lives they live, the testimonies they bore, the death they die, for Christ's sake. Our Father in heaven, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, come into thy presence. We ask thy blessing upon thy word. How wonderful is thy word. Father, we thank thee for these men. How thou didst raise them up, and they were willing to be raised up. They yielded themselves to thy spittance. Thou did use them, and we pray thee for them. For what a reward is there? The martyrs crown with their portion. Holy Father, may we be exercised about our testimony in this life, right here in order. We know that our forces still oppose to these simple principles. Give us faith. Give us grace. Give us strength. Fit us with stamina. Stand. Stand firm. Stand fast. Christ. We ask that you be worthy and trustworthy. Amen.