Revelation chapter one. And verse twenty. Revelations one and verse twenty. As the mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches. and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches. Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus writes, These things saith he, that holdeth the seven stars, or the seven angels, the seven messengers, in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks. Now chapter three. And verse one, an unto the angel of the church in Stardust writes, These things sayeth he that hath the seven spirits of God. Now you'll notice the seven spirits of God with the seven angels now as you shall read. And the seven stars or the messengers, I know thy works. that thou hast the name that thou livest and are dead, be watchful and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found thy work perfect before God. Remember, therefore, how thou hast received, and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If, therefore, thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee. Thou hast a few names even in Stardust, which have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. He that overcometh the same shall be clothed in white raiment, and I will not blot out his name out of the book of night. but I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit sayeth unto the churches. I believe in the churches saw this. We have that period in church history following the Great Reformation. Now these churches, as we pointed out and taken them up from the book of Revelation, They not only represent churches that existed at that time, but also different periods in the history of the church. Conditions existed in that church then that fitted right into a period of time during the church's history. You notice that how Rome came upon the scene in one of the churches that is symbolized in a woman's Jezebel and what she did. And we see that period when Rome began to develop about the fifth century. And here we come to the great tribulation period, a great reformation period. And you see parallel conditions. And I want to point that out. For instance, you'll notice how in chapter one, the seven angels or the messengers of the seven churches, they were in his hands. The Lord Jesus has seen walking in the midst of the churches, not only the churches then as they existed, but down the centuries. Christ is the one seen walking in the midst of his peaceful century after century, generation after generation. And he is seen with his dress good about, with a golden girdle, a strange expression, love restrained with Peter Brass, grass and mollick of judgment. His eyes are the flame of fire, not the eyes, the melting, moving, gentle eyes of a loving bridegroom. But eyes searching out troubled in the church. With love restrained, he can't give them all the love he'd like to give. And all but one church He finds fault. Myrna was the only church he found no fault in. That was the suffering church, the second following he. So we come here to this church. And as we read in chapter one and also part of chapter two, you find a fresh outpouring of the Spirit of God relative to Sabbath, the seven spirits of God. That was characteristic in the beginning of the church period and during the times of the apostles. Now you'll see here in this church period, in verse one, and unto the angel of the church in Sardis, right, he, sing, says, He that passed the seven cities of God. Now that's not found in any of the previous churches except in the beginning, if not found later. Showing here is a fresh outpouring of the spirit of God in the history of the church. The church in the plentitude of his power, seven spirits of God, the spirit of God in the perfection of all his offices. And so we see in the Great Reformation, the spirit of God being poured out, not in tongues, you don't hear a thing about tongues in the Reformation. One of the things I want to point out in taking up church history, how tongue teeth, after the Apostle period, and is never heard of again until just the beginning of the century, this century, showing as a period of something near eighteen hundred years, no medicine made or use of made of tongues, carrying out the word of God, whether there be tongues they shall be. Now that's an amazing thing. And I can give you the names of the two that, the final ones, the used tongues, when we get to that point. And when and who the man was, they got stopped. And so that is the turn of the century. And so we find the spirit of God poured out at the time of the great defamation, man mightily used of God. But here is the solemn thing. In this passage, in Sardis, The stars are not in his hands. In chapter one they are in his hands, under his control, because the apostles did exactly what he wanted done in establishing those churches. But in the time of the Reformation the stars, the messengers, the men that God used are not in his hands. They were not fully and absolutely under his control. Therefore you did not have a going back to the establishing of New Testament churches as was happened at the beginning of the church era. And we'll see what happened instead of that. Yet there's a very significant point. And although these men did great things, yet there's the Lord Jesus writing to these men and fathers, the men that followed the Great Reformation, I have not found your work perfect before me. Now he tells you that. Right here in this verse. These verses are there. Verse two. Be watchful and strengthen the things which remain and that are ready to die, for I have not found thy work perfect. They did not reestablish New Testament churches as was begun in the Apostolic era. Now, this is very significant. We want to point that out. But God used these men is very evident. Great men, they were. But I want to say this. They were not absolutely under the complete and full control of the Holy Spirit of God. There were efforts and endeavors that staggered, trying to get onto their feet. an established New Testament church back in the Reformation days. We're going to point out as we go along. One of these things we've already mentioned, and he says in this church is Silas. It means the word Silas means those escaping. That's the meaning of Silas. Those escaping, those who escape the bondage and the servitude and the tradition of Catholicism during those dreadful dark ages. They escaped by the gospel that was preached by Martin Luther and other mighty men. But the one big mistake and the failure was that instead of establishing New Testament churches, Protestantism broke up into denominations. Now it's stirring to lead to a history, and I've been doing a lot of it recently, there were millions of people who got saved through the preaching of these men. And they were so happy, so thrilled, to get salvation, find salvation free. And along with that salvation, they felt a freedom from tradition, a freedom from the yoke of Catholicism. And they were rejoiced only to find that Martin Luther, the man so mightily used of God, turned it out, and started a big organization after his own name. Not only so, he took a lot of the captains of Catholicism along with him. He even kept France of Sanctuary, saying that that wafer is the body of Christ. That's one thing that a staggered man, he studied Martin Luther. A man who had a wonderful knowledge of the Bible. Yet he would stand in the debate, as I read this when I studied church history forty years ago, he would stand before those who pledged with Martin Luther. Give that up. That's hopeless. To say that a man has the right to turn a wafer into the actual body of Christ, Martin Luther, when they got too laboring their point, he would put his finger on this text, Death is my heart. refer to that text when the Lord Jesus looked below. He says, this is my body. That was his sole argument. And they tried their best to explain it. Christ also said, I am the door. I am the true vine. He wasn't a literal door. He wasn't a vine. He was speaking figuratively. Triggerless. And they tried to point that out to Martin Luther. He wouldn't budge. Martin Luther became greatly organized. He organized the people. God saved. Not only so, he actually courted the state and the authority of the kings and those in power to enforce. Leap the doctrine upon the populace until Lutheranism became the church of many a state. The very thing. that Rome had been guilty of for centuries, using secular force to enforce spiritual adoption of certain doctrines. Here is where Martin Luther, his works were not pleasing to God. The Son of God found hope for that. That's only one thing, or other things. Infant baptism. Believing that children can be baptized into the kingdom of God. Luther never gave up that one. And so we see these men, giants in one respect, tracking the armor of the enemy, but they didn't slay the enemy. They wounded them, but they didn't kill them. He said, I have not found thy work perfect before me. Much could be said about Martin Luther. about this man the doggy of this much but one's insidified. We saw the thing that he didn't do that he should have done. So I want to note a couple of articles. I've been using Lindsay Marshall, Marshall, a kind of secretary of the name of the study, giving him little articles on tapes out of church history, and he's been taping it. To support what I've been saying, I'm going to give you... with a little article. Here is one. The errors, however, which prevailed in the professing churches, were reflected in their missionary work. There was no longer the simple preaching of Christ and pounding of churches as in the early days. Now, this was after the Reformation. But with a measure of the truth, there was also insistence on rituals and on legal observances. And when kings came to confess Christianity, the principle of church and state led to the forcible outward conversion of multitudes of their subject to the new state religion, making Christianity their state religion, instead of churches being founded in the different towns and counties. independent of any central organization and having direct relations with the Lord as an apostolic day, all were drawn into one of the great organizations which had its center in Rome or Constantinople or elsewhere. What is true on a large scale applies also on a small and the harmful workings of this system are seen. The evident set of sinners being led to Christ and given the Scriptures as their guides they were pressed into membership of some foreign denomination or taught to look to some mission or guidance for guidance and supply. The development of the gifts of the Holy Spirit among them being hindered and the spread of the gospel among their countrymen was entirely. Here's another one. The line of talks of the districts in the Roman Catholic Church, and the districts, as we looked upon, as heretics or those of a fanatic, the line of thought of the mystics in the Roman Catholic Church affected a young man, Jean de Lobortes, born in Bordeaux in sixteen ten, and educated by the Jesuits, which is the most severe form of Catholicism, strict, and educated by the Jesuits with a view to his becoming a member of their society. dissatisfied with his theological study, he turned to the New Testament and became deeply impressed by the greatness of the gospel. He saw too how current Christendom had become, or corrupt Christendom had become at that day. become and that that way of restoration could only be in a return to the pattern of the First Assembly in Jerusalem. I'll read that sentence over again. He saw, too, corrupt Christians had become and that the way of restoration could only be in a return to the pattern of the First Assembly in Jerusalem. This is the price they paid when people try to carry out New Testament sentiment. After the capture of another place, La Minority, about a hundred and forty believers were found, women in one house, men and another, in days in prayer. As they awaited their doom, Die Monfort had a great pile of wood prepared, and told them to be converted to the Catholic faith or mount that pile. They answered that they owed no faithful or priestly authority, only that of Christ and his word. The fire was lighted, and the confessors without hesitation entered the flame. A hundred and forty men and women walked right onto the fire and were burnt to death, rather than give up. Now this happened thousands of times during Kyrgyzstan. People would get saved. They'd see the simplicity of these testimonials. And the first thing you know, it would grow and it would grow, and then somebody wanted to organize. And so the organization did that. It grew and it grew, and then someone broke off from that, and there's another organization. And the Christians found themselves rent between just the nomination and that denominator. The millions who were delivered from post-Re and Catholicism, who were saved, and they got delivered from that, why this was wonderful, only to find themselves now caught up between another system, Lutheranism, and then another. Many of those Christians who were happy over their deliverance from tradition, along with their wonderful salvation, they were stumbled. Some went back to Rome. Others went along with Lutheranism or some other big organization. Some gave up all together in this job. This is one of the tragic things in reading church history. How simple believers, wanting to gather according to the word of God, but being prevented, because men wanted organizations. When you have an organization, you have a head, man, have a rule. Order committee, order council, order council, an official order, order an associate, order head off, order presiding elder, a bishop, a cardinal, a pope. What do they do? They control what their men say on where they go to stay at. Can you think of anything like that in the Bible? Right here in George. There are thousands of men go to a big conference, and they don't know where their next pastor is going to be. They're looking to the bishop. believers give up where they are and go there for two years, go somewhere else. And there they go. They're not looking for Christ. They're not getting the orders from headquarters. They're going to some committee, some conference, some association, the final word they're going to preach. And what they're going to preach? and how much they're going to get to the priest. Is there anything more foreign to the word of God, just what partisanism developed into? Is it any one way, because I had not found I was part of it? They were not in his hand. As to salvation, yet as to how to gather no, they wanted an organization. They control all their members and keep them in that mood. What's prospering today in these countries like Russia and China? They want nothing in the way of an organization working in their midst. Because they think of capitalism. On the Middle East, another communist country, if they find a person working in those countries that get help from the United States, that's capitalism. But believers have discovered this. Yes, they refuse all connections with the United States, even help, and depend upon local people in that country for their maintenance and God in his wonderful way has left their needs. They're at liberty to gather in homes. mostly in hope, a number, ten, twelve, twenty believers, and carry out New Testament principles, remember the Lord Jesus the first day of the week, having no paid pastor, no code of essence, except the Bible, no rules and regulations coming from some higher-up committee or organization. They are local. They are not dictated to by any outside church. Their Bible is their guide, and they can meet and study and carry out the New Testament scripture to their hearts and tastes without being stopped. That's God's original path. When these groups get together and start organizing, that's when the Communists turn on the power. It is true sometimes a Russian soldier, a Chinese soldier, says, you know, Not to stop them from what they're doing, but to see if they're going to become political. Are they a front for some big political organization or some other country? Should they have any connection with capitalism? And in China today there are thousands, and also in Russia, Christians meeting just like we do here, unmolested, to carry out Christian principles. This is what God wanted all down the fifth. The fifth of them got into trouble when they became organized after the Great Reformation because it split up the people of God. It split the church. And if you cut a body enough, you're going to bleed it to death. And the church has been split up and touched in so many denominations. It's testimony weakening. All these very heads and what have you, official organs, instead of getting back to the simple playing people, all beneath them. When you say I'm glad I don't live back in old days when there were so long amounts of pile of fire, wood, how'd you go into there? No. It'd be a good thing, maybe if we had some persecution like that. There are people today in some of these denominations that are modernistic, and they wouldn't come out with a light dependent on it. Well, I might have been some of my friends. And they're so attached to that naming, they put more confidence in that and they do in Jesus' sight. They're trained to pay the price to go outside the camp and enjoy the plain, simple truth. of the New Testament. Now, you're not asked to do something like that. And yet people today, they fear the face of men who want to do the face of God. They don't want to pay the price. But in spite of all that went on in those days, the inconsistency that followed the great reformation, taught it in me breaking up into all these different sects and churches. God still kicked out men and used them. He didn't use them in the sense that he favored the organizations that they were in them. He used them in spite of that. Because God wanted to get his gospel out. But he never condoned that. But he did use men in them like he used men when they were in Rome. And then we've been looking at over these studies. They were in the church of Rome, but God might leave. He didn't condone the system. But he used old men, and the same is today in Protestantism. Now one of the men, the first one I want to mention, is John Knox, one of the giants. John Knox was a giant. In the fifteen, thirty, Worms died in fifteen seventy years. When I was over in Scotland, Twenty-some years ago, I stood in the very room in Edinburgh, Scotland, where John Knox died. He was open to tourists. He had to pay the price, but it was worth it. To stand in the very bedroom, where John Knox died. What do you mean by that? Well, John Knox, he was a priest. Then he became some brother. When he found Jesus Christ, he wrote a book. By the permission of the Scottish, not only by the permission, but by the suggestion of the Scottish Parliament, he wrote a book on discipline. Because the church of Scotland was so corrupt, why the school system was terrible. And John Knox wrote this book on discipline by the permission and persuasion of the Scottish government. It turned Scotsmen around, and also England. And I'll tell you, John Knox was no proud of us teachers. John Knox, he preached fire and damnation to Bloody Mary of England, a merry scene of Scots. He did not spare the other. He lowered the hammer on royalties because of their wicked Queen of Godliness and Queen of Eden, they dreaded the prayers and presents of John Knox more than they did the armies of the enemy. John Knox was a wonderful man, and God used to be the beginning of just the fear of God. John Knox knew today what was going on. He'd almost spit five-dream stone from his grave. If he wrote what he did and preached what he did back in those days, only God knows what would happen today if he amounted to focus on what's going on today under his name. The next character, John Bunyan. I'm only picking out a few of these guys. John Bunyan from Everybody knows about John Bunyan. His celebrated work, Pilgrim's progress. He was a tinker by trade. And he found Christ. When he found Christ, my what a change in his life. He was preaching, and the authorities came and arrested him because he did not get a permit to preach. That's how strict it was, Moses, preaching without a permit from the state. And so he was apprehended. He was put in prison. You say, wasn't that a shame? No. God never makes mistakes. While Bunyan was in prison, he wrote children's progress. The next to the Bible. Furgeon wrote his treasure of David when he was sick. Many men have done their dreamers' work on his good days. And so here is Bunyan. He writes the Pilgrim Project, and if you've never written it, you'll be wisely, I'll read it. That celebrated work by John Bunyan. There's another one that God views. The Reformation comes to America. to Connecticut, a man by the name of Jonathan Edwards. He had ten sisters, and he was the only boy, two or three. There were four sisters came along for ideas, and they spoiled me to death. My father tried to correct that. My recompense for my sister for all their kind care and attention was a bit of dolls every time I got fancy. But nevertheless, Jonathan Edwards had ten sisters, and they said that they all tried the training. Is it any wonder, he, I'll get this lady, she, Jonathan Edwards, entered Yale at the age of thirteen. His teacher, his Christmas must have been good teachers. At the age of thirteen, Jonathan Edwards entered jail, and he was so brilliant, he became a man of power before God. And as he preached, often phonetically, during, I think it was seventeen thirty-four to seventeen-forty-four, ten years he shut the colony. with his teaching of the gospel. Thousands upon thousands were saved during Jonathan Edwards. That same message that cracked over, cracked cause hauls them over on the continent and was preached there by the two men with benches. Now it comes to Connecticut the same message. Jonathan Edwards was a fiery preacher. He preached A sermon sinners in the hands of an angry God that modernist to this day haven't forgiven them. But I'll tell you one thing. He took a lot of sinners loose from their sins. And I'm just going to give you a sense. In my earlier days I might have submitted it to memory, but I can't do it now. But I ask Lindsay to type this out. This is just a little of Jonathan Edwards' teaching. I want to mention it in the book, and there's a whole sermon about sinners in the hands of an angry God. The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire that pours you, and is dreadfully provoked. There are in the souls of wicked men those hellish principles reigning that would presently kindle a flame out in hell, hell fire if it were not for God's strength. It is laid in the very nature of the fondle men, the foundation for the torment of hell. There are those corrupt principles in reigning power in them, and in full possession of them, that are the beginnings of hellfire. So that dust it is, that natural men, are hailed in the hand of God over the pits of hell. They had deserved the fiery pit, and already sentenced to it, and God is dreadfully provoked. His anger is as great toward them as to those that are suffering actually the execution of the fierceness of his wrath and hair now. They have done nothing in the least to appease or abate their anger. Neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold them up one moment. The devil is waiting for them. Hell is gaping for them. The flames gather and flash about them, and the train lay hold of them, and swallow them up. higher pent up in their old hearts is struggling to break out, and they have no interest in them immediately. There are no means within reach that can be any security to them. In short they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of them. All are preserved then. Every moment is the mere arbitrary will, an unconvenanted, unobliged forbearance of an incensed God. The use of this message may be of awakening to unconverted persons. in this congregation. Just that you have heard is the case of every one of you that are out of sight. That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pits of the glowing plains of the wrath of God. There is hell's wide gaping mouth open, and you have nothing to stand upon, nor anything to take hold of. There is nothing between you and hell but the air. It is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up. O sinner, consider the fearful danger you are in. It is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hands of that God whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to sing that thread and turn in the thunder and you have no interest in any mediator and nothing to lay hold on to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of their own, nothing that you have ever done, nothing that you can do to induce God to spare you another moment. How would you like to listen to that for forty-five minutes? That was the preaching of Jonathan Edwards. Did any wonder he shook the colonies that have found these men and women by the thousands came to track us? Today I get sick in listening men preach, and they don't even mention hell once during the whole sermon, let alone the lake of fire. They don't preach throughout this world. It's all talk, talk, and nothing above God fears wrath against the sinner. How a person can read the Book of Revelation and stop preaching messages like this. The conscience of the men and women need to be served the day they call to the wrath that is ahead for this world and everyone who dies without Christ. There's one more and I'm going to conclude. The last one is John Wesley, in born in Epworth, England, well educated, very religious from Pittsburgh. And he admitted this much. He said his faith is but little more than right opinion. And this is what he puts in his diary. He says during my stay at Oxford University, following my first four years, now listen to this, I preach much but saw no fruit of my labor. Indeed, it could not be that I should, for I neither laid the foundation of repentance nor of preaching the gospel, taking it for granted, that to all I preached were believers, and that many of them needed no repentance. The next five years he put more emphasis on repentance, and saw little fruit, and no wonder, for I did not preach faith in the blood of the covenant. And then he formed, John Wesley, formed what was known at Oxford as the Holy Club, and his brother, Charles, or one of them. And this is what this Holy Club did. This is also in history of history. They visited prisoners. They instructed the ignorance of children. They helped the poor. They passed it each day. They took the communion weekly. And in seventeen thirty-five, John and Charles Westley journeyed to Georgia because of the revival under Whitfield. All of this comes back, because the year before I came to us, I read ten biographies, Surgeon, Moody, Vinnie, and the one who just was hearing about Edward, and also of Whitfield, George Whitfield. And I want to tell you, I don't know anything that stirred me up more than reading ten biographies of these men. When I read about George Whitfield, he came to Savannah, Georgia. He would have told me back then that I was going to spend twenty-two years on my life in Georgia. I wouldn't have believed it. But I read it back then and made an impression of him going to Georgia. Where they came to Georgia? Both John... and Charles Wesley changed to Georgia, and they became missionaries of the Propagation Society, which was a Moravian missionary society, still not saved. That's all there. He says, I was a high Anglican churchman, rigidly adhering to ritual and law with a tingling mixture of mysticism. He left Georgia out of failure. Just out of that. His conversation with the Moravian missionary on board ship left its mark. And in Aldersgate Street, London, and when I was over there twenty-some years ago, I went to this place, one of the brethren there took me, so I suppose you'd like to know where the strong estuary lived and the very place he's tabled his horse. and the apartment overhead, and they did. And he saw the actual table, and the apartment overhead where he lived, and a big statue of John Wesley's horse and him sitting on it, as it is there today. So that was quite interesting. Well, while he was at Elder's Gate, he said, I felt my heart strangely warm, and Christ entered in. Listen what he did. For the next fifty years, he treached, and he rode on horseback fifteen and twenty miles a day treaching four to five times a day, and during his lifetime he traveled two hundred and fifty thousand miles treaching forty-two thousand foot. John Lester. See what that man went through? It was forty-pound price. I believe God made these men too. The rottenness of human nature, the awfulness of sin, the holiness of God, the fury of his wrath, because it came out in their churches. And that was what God blessed them. John Wesley favored him, and after his conversion, he even wanted to attend that wonderful hymn. Soon as my all I ventured on the atoning blood, the Holy Spirit entered, and I was born of God. And this is in closing. I will conclude with this in his journal. He describes his condition just before his conversion. I went to America to convert the Indians. But who, oh who shall convert me? Who is he? And what will deliver me from this evil heart of unbelief? I am a fair weather religion. I have a fair weather religion. I can talk well. Nay, believe myself. While no danger is near. But let death look me in the face, and my spirit is troubled. Nor can I say to die is gain. I have a sin of fear. that when I've spun my last thread, I shall carry on the shore. After that, he saw the truth of that verse, as soon as my all-night centered on the atonement blood of the Holy Spirit entered, and I was formed again. Here are four men raised up of God to do a great work. He had the Methodist with us to this day, and also the Presbyterian. And the reason they were called Methodist is because they were so methodical. Then these students at Oxford, they get together, and they provide up their day. The first half an hour was given to each devotion. Then another half an hour, to studying the word. Another half an hour, something else. Then they went through the day. And the day was divided up. There was so much prodigal about the shrubbies, their devotion, their visitings, and that hollowed that they were. He was very much prodigal, and so they got the name Nestor Dirt. So we see what the Great Reformation is. It certainly delivered millions in the ponderance of Rome, that prodigy, he says, decided, Thou hast a name that thou livest, for it's dead. Protestant is a dead name. It means nothing. Do you live in a day of permissiveness when people go?