If Anyone Would Follow Me

And can I get a clicker for the slides and then we're gonna do some slides here too, so this is fun we're gonna start this Sunday school class and Looking forward to it. Everybody has your book raise your book up in the air there. All right.

All right. So, oh, thank you, buddy So the the idea Is is that you kind of read the lesson it's it's short. It's a really nice little book John Koblenz put this together with at faith builders and It just is a quick summary of this and the idea of this is, you know the 500th anniversary and to learn from this but it's not to It's certainly not to idolize the Anabaptist if there's anything there's if there's an advantage of being 500 years old it's that you have 500 years of wisdom and 500 years of mistakes I'm 59 years old if I sit around going.

Hey, I'm 59 I've done everything right you'd all laugh at me. And so the same way I think in each of the the different elements of Anabaptism as we look at it We can look at some of the mistakes we've made as well as some of the the good things we've done The book has us today starting from the beginning and looking at the early church So I'm gonna hit that I think I have what till 1030. Is that right? And so I made some slides I put it together some of these you've seen before But we're gonna talk about the early Church and how that leads to the next lesson will be I'm talking about the particulars of the beginning of Anabaptism.

It starts in your book though with the the baptism That was given and I don't have a slide for this the the baptism that was given at somebody give me the date the 500th anniversary date is You got January 21 1525. So that's the 500 years does it by the way? Does anybody know something else? That's celebrated in a 25 That's also people celebrate at this time It's it's actually the birth like the 1800 birthday of the Nicene Creed by the way And so 25 is a big one, but in this look at your books the setting You're down the street. You can see the gross Munster Church Over in the in the right over across the way They've just outlawed that you can no longer be preaching about adult baptism and things like that They made they pass them severe.

It was Reformers. These weren't the Catholics. These were the the New Evangelicals These were the Reformers in town that the ones that you thought were your brethren and they've now made laws that you can't do this And finally they're saying, you know We've got to stand in our faith and this is what happened This is recorded in the Hutterian Chronicles and this is where we get this little scene the Hutterian Chronicle reads like a diary and it says They're on page two and it came to pass that they were together until anxiety came upon them It's like it's funny choice of words for me.

That's pretty natural, you know Yes, they were so pressed in their hearts. So this was like you can imagine the Other I mean the the this the whole meeting itself was illegal Thereupon they began to bow their knees to the Most High God in heaven and called upon him as the informer of hearts That's impressive and they prayed that he would give to them his divine will and that he would show his mercy unto them for flesh and blood and Human forwardness did not drive them since they well knew what they would have to suffer on account of this After that prayer George of the house of Jacob, that's George Blaurock Stood up and besought Conrad Grebel for God's sake to baptize him with true Christian baptism Upon his faith and knowledge and when he had knelt down in such a request and desire Conrad baptized him since at that time there was no ordained minister to perform such a work and After his baptism at the hand of Conrad Grebel Blaurock proceeded to baptize all the other present the newly baptized and pledged themselves as true disciples of Christ to live lives Separated from the world and to teach the gospel and hold the faith. It's a good proclamation.

Amen so again, the book then wants me to get into Oh Try that hit a click and I can get going Well, you got something. There you go. Oh Nice.

Okay. I've showed you these pictures before but I'm gonna set the stage of why I think an Understanding of a historical theology is important I love these pictures because during the Renaissance you had these ideas and if you notice I've showed these before in a sermon I think that the the Renaissance people loved this because the irony in it You're in Rome and then during the 1500s in Rome You'd have literally had the ruins around everywhere But yet people found little ways to put up their huts and put up their little you know And if you look at closely to these paintings, you'll see people doing their laundry and and like oh you see right here You can see she's got her laundry out there and you know, they're hanging it on these columns and they're they're living life around these famous Structures not really thinking about it and the Renaissance artists love these there's tons of these paintings like this There's the Pantheon and you know There's a little dogs running around and all that kind of stuff and this one I love the best so you're in this giant Cathedral and You've got your house and they got their house and you get this farm and everything but then suddenly It's like what happened in the Renaissance that somebody started looking up and going you mean we used to build like that Do you mean that human beings used to do art and architecture and and things like that it's not just the gods that put these things here that there was something that people were able to live in a society like that and That's what kind of broke on to the world and several different things now I'm not exactly telling us that we should build cathedrals like that actually in this sense Probably the chicken farms better than the Cathedral but in the church sense This is kind of analogy that you need to get a hold of You mean church life used to be like that You mean all this sort of way of life and that type of a thing that we could be living a Christian at Christianity Like that That's the kind of thing the aha moment that I'm hoping a historical understanding of the faith will will give you Let me just give I'm gonna go deep just for a minute I'll back up a little bit, but I want to go deep for a second to make you appreciate why this is so important I'll give you another analogy on January 21st 17. What is it 93? The French Revolution was raising to power and it beheaded the king of France King Louis the 14th and it was something like there was it was so dramatic to the audience that Some of the people ran and just ended their life by running into the river And why was it because they loved Louis the 14th so much.

No, it was that Somehow mass hysteria Somehow ideas and everything had in a moment destroyed Thousands of years of what was being developed in France and now we were just running in a frenzy and killing the king There was an interesting kickback in in England Ah, and this is the point I wanted to make ideas have consequences and As we think about what's being thrown around us today with the Internet and everything else ideas have Consequences and that's one thing you're going to get from a historical theology a historical understanding of the faith But there was a guy in England. I mean Edwin Burke and I won't go into a lot of details about him But he was scared in England there in the 1700s and he said I don't want what they've got going on in in France everybody thought he was gonna love he said no I don't like it at all and he wrote this book on reflections on the Revolution in France And he said what you're doing is terrible, but here's the point. He's kind of make it's a bit deep So I want you to pay attention He's saying that we can't just exist in ideas or 25 articles or or some new radical thought or this or the other that that Institutions and in this case nations.

He was mainly talking about have organic genius They develop over centuries and and like in the church You've got kind of the guys who want to be more mission-minded and the guys that want to be more Church-minded and the the more this way and the more that way that those balances those tensions those things that actually annoy us are part of What it's supposed to be like and it's taken centuries to develop that and if you just do what happened in In France, you know what? You're gonna get you're gonna destroy the communities You're gonna destroy the guilds the church the family and you're gonna end up with an Antichrist leading your nation And this is what and you're gonna destroy everything and you're gonna end up with an Antichrist that leads a nation. That's what they have Napoleon Took over and taking the crown from the Pope himself put it on his head. He said I I Am the revolution and this kind of what we use the term atomizing or being knocked down to the lowest atom to where only the state and populace is is is What you miss by the depth by a robust and healthy understanding of The historic faith.

I'm gonna read you to these quotes from a guy by the name of Russell Kirk Who's a scholar of Burke and I'll and I won't stay so deep, but these are deep thoughts And then I'll back off but they're if you catch it, I mean it you'll have an aha moment think of all the different ideas that get thrown to us and and and the internet and all these kind of things and Look what he says here He says human beings participate in the accumulated experiences of their innumerable Ancestors Very little is totally forgotten Only a small part of knowledge. However is formalized in literature and deliberate instruction In other words, you can't put this into books or colleges or teaching It's formalized and it's formalized in literature and deliberate instruction. The greater part remains embedded in instinct common custom Prejudice and he means that in a good way prejudice means you naturally don't want to do something or do this thing and ancient usage if you ignore this enormous bulk of cultural knowledge or tinker impudently with it and man is left awfully afloat in a sea of emotions and ambitions with only the scanty stock of formal learning and the puny resources of individual reason to sustain him And what that's basically saying and I'll give you this next quote.

It's the common man The common man the genius of the common man and the common community That's deep and you can't just teach this in school and you lose it in a generation and it's gone He goes on the common man is not ignorant But his knowledge is a kind of collective wisdom The sum of the slow accretions of a thousand generation this lost He is thrown back upon his own private stock of reason with the consequences Which attend shipwreck even the shrewdest of men are puffed up with vanity if they try to set their product over their reason against the consensus of the centuries, so It's so tempting today That We want to take the old ways the old thoughts the old and say quiet to them I say this there's something to learn even in our mistakes. And here's my point. I like I say often If an argument has lasted over 500 years, it's probably not stupid.

So that's stupid. Oh, that's stupid It's a 500 year old argument and even if I disagree with it We need to be wise and understand and this is where I think It brings us today to our study of historical theology So we take us to this point. That's from the behold.

Of course. That's the scene there that I just read to you a Lot has happened to that, you know, it's funny me being a history geek You know when you all introduce yourselves to me and you tell me your name and your last name and such my mind goes to like your forefathers house in Switzerland Seriously I go you're a Yoder. Yeah, I've seen that.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, you're a beachy. Yeah, I've seen that house and stole space I've been to Nicholas's house and you know, I my mind goes to that and I like I like geek out on the Faithfulness in the history of how that of all that's gone to it now in some weird bizarre way You've entered it in your life into Baltic, Ohio And it's your turn How are you going to? Stand on the shoulders of Giants and see further not knock off the And think just like what we just read it just okay.

I'm gonna start over I'm gonna scrap everything and start over you can do that You can do that, but so many people have and it's ended up in shipwreck now We need to do something for the 21st century. We're not living in the 1525 It's time for us to answer the questions for this generation But let's not lose the collective genius that all of you have and and all that's within The the whole Christian Church that we've come to today So then let's talk about the 500th birthday and how we can learn from this and this heritage and and take from it Something that's beautiful and this is a quote. I love It's one of my favorite historians.

Yeah, slav Pelican and he says this and catch the catch the The difference that he says Tradition is a living faith of the dead Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living You can be a traditionalist and just oh, I'm gonna hold of this and all of that and have a dead faith But there's a tradition a rich Christian heritage that today gets thrown over and trampled over to the strange fires that were brought before God or the Touching of the cart or all those analogies that I don't think pleases God So I'm gonna give you a quick little my quick little hermeneutic that I use Here's what I use to to when I look at to a subject. Let's say. All right Dean.

Let's talk about politics Let's talk about war. Let's talk about modesty. Let's talk about the head covering.

Let's talk about women's roles men's roles, let's talk whatever it is, I try to have a An example of a historic way that I use what's called a hermeneutic or a Bible principle How I interpret it and I use this term called a scar and you see this picture there. It's Thomas That's me doubting Thomas looking at Jesus's hand and that uses the scar and here's what it is SC AR Scripture I Look at a topic scripture. Is it crystal centric? I look at antiquity and I look that it's real SC AR So and it goes into like a a top-down Scripture in other words It's more dogmatic at the top and it gets fluffy because it gets difficult to define towards the end Let me just quickly run over that and then we'll get into what the book wants us to do to get to Nicaea scripture It's a lot of things that are tempted to us a lot of things You're gonna get tempted and your children are gonna get attempted and and the Internet and different things today But the scripture alone The Bible is received as the sole and fallible source of authority for the Christian faith and practice now I love church history Obviously, I want to know what Justin Martyr and Tertullian and origin said about something but they never replaced the Word of God Never you have to draw the line somewhere or what I've noticed if you draw it at, you know 100 Well, then you're all debating what Justin thought then you go to 200 and you're just debating what Tertullian thought and you go and it never Ends you have to go back and stick to the one thing that we know was given to us It is the Word of God as infallible scripture and scripture is is the line that we draw how you read scripture It's crystal centric Scripture is interpreted through the person and teaching of Jesus Christ the the two axioms that I love about early anabaptism was done by Conrad Grebel one of those founders the guy that was baptized there first from Blaurock and he wrote to Vadian his Mentor and he said in two different letters.

I love these things first one. He says I Believe the Word of God Without a complicated interpretation and out of that I speak But another one he said later on he said the teachings of the Lord are meant to be put into practice I mean that's simple right and but that's a bedrock difference and if we can it will try to explain how that's different but It's you can get caught up in so many great theological debates and I love a good strong cup of coffee sitting around a you know nightstand and talk about Transubstantiation or parts of predestination or or whatever soteriology thing you want to talk about and I love geeking out on that but the bottom line is these the teachings of Christ and a practical real living and Embodied way is one of the big difference of why I'm an anabaptist today It's a big deal to just ignore the teachings of Jesus It's not something you tack on at the end of a thousand page systematic theology book It's what generates the faith. Is it Christo centric? I read the Old Testament looking to Christ and I read the New Testament looking at Christ Jesus Christ is The the our salvation he is our church.

He it we He is he he is embodied everything that we have Antiquity Doctrine and practice should endeavor to be supported by the early church. I try to look at things I'm gonna look at the head covering issue or roles of women ministry communion practices But all these different things you can look at I try to look at the most ancient and say, okay What is the consensus of that first generation of church right after the Apostles? Have a bedrock of historic Christianity and stand on that It's it's an important thing and then real The real I got this one from John Wesley's quadrilateral, but When his was experienced but real means Again, you can have so many of those coffee table revivals, but is it real? Is this idea that you're dreaming up today about church and this is kind of cure this and this is kind of cure that Has there been anybody in 2,000 years? It's ever practiced that. Oh, no it's maybe just a young person's idea or a brilliant person's zealous thoughts or something, but I Want to know that it's in Embedded in a historic Christianity that we can that we can sink our teeth on so today we're gonna look at the antiquity the antiquity and that's where the book wants to take us now up to Constantine is what your Sunday school lesson does and what happens then? Antiquity remember doctrine and practice should endeavor to be supported by the early church now Remember the arrow it starts from the top and goes down the priority Yes, I care what Clement of Rome says and the DDK says but none of those can even bypass scripture It goes from the top down to the bottom.

But nevertheless, it's very important and Because it's important in the Bible look at this verse in 2nd Thessalonians 2 15 It commands us to do this It says therefore brethren stand fast and hold the traditions which were taught whether by word or Epistle so we have the epistles we have the written word, but it commands us to hold to this ancient faith and so we need to at least give an effort of understanding that and this is where again tradition is the living faith of What is it? It's a living faith Traditionalism is not what he's talking about there. So I just being stuck in we're still wearing robes or sandals or something and running around You know, I don't know. That's not what it's talking about.

But there is a body of faith The early church would refer to it like the rule of faith that this is the deposit Given to us and it's important. We don't just pick the new fad that's coming around today an Historic faith is what we need and what our children need and what we must as a church base ourself on It's a filter Somebody knew somebody something has something going on and like, okay The Bible commands me to stand fast and hold the traditions that were taught by the Apostles And so when I hear this new fad or something that's going on Can it make it through the filter of 2nd Thessalonians 2 15? That means a lot to me and I'm I don't like to be an ogre I don't like to be a traditionalist and just you know, I like a new I like something I think there's ways that your gender the next generation has to make it creative. Don't get me wrong here But nevertheless, we must root ourself in what the Word of God says and then Jude 1 3 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 for all delivered to the Saints Are you doing that? So it means that there's somehow in your understanding of Christianity that you are contending earnestly to hold to an apostolic faith a Historic faith the one faith that was handed down There's many things that try to you know Both Catholicism that tries to say that the Holy Spirit is continually leading it And now we can even have discussions that go into some bizarre ways in the news There's people with new revelations. There's new Prophecies or new different things we have a faith That's given to us like a deposit not stale and And dead it still has to have the Spirit of God blowing on it to make it alive for every generation But you should at the very least be contending earnestly, right? For a historic faith a faith that is handed down to the Saints and then this one I just have the different interpretations I love the second that's the second Timothy 114 Guard the good deposit it says in the NIV that was entrusted to you guard it with the help Of the Holy Spirit who lives in us Or the ESB by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us guard the good deposit I look that's kind of brings together the the idea of An apostolic deposit breathed on by the Holy Spirit, and I think that's what we need for every generation In a historic faith. Okay.

So again tradition is the living faith of the dead Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. All right, so when you look at this Picture so, you know up here is the stream You know, and so if I'm gonna go get some water, I'm not gonna go get it down here by these cows I'm gonna go up here And so if I'm gonna look at the commentary or things that look at the Word of God, I want to go to the source I'm gonna go closer to the historic faith. And again, that's an idea of what it's giving to us So, all right, the book wants me to give you a quick introduction then of the early Christians.

Who were they if you were to take? The whole first 300 years of the church they exist in for the most part There's other ones that have been put together well since this and he's antonyzing fathers means before Nicaea in ten volumes if you were to read just Just this one over here That's the first whole hundred years of the church if you guys want to just kind of to know what the apostolic fathers These are the guys that knew the Apostles or apostolic men Just volume one would would would be a big treat That's what the volumes are. If you look at the the map of how it spread, you know You have the basic Roman Empire that was going on here Of course everything starting from Jerusalem But then the Apostle Paul and you can see some of the strong Christian areas that began to emerge Carthage, Rome Alexandria And these kind of places were that's Lenica different ones Philippi. They were areas that were Strong sinners, you can't see this one probably from where you're setting but these are the different heresies that started from the early church Gnosticism and Donatism and different things money monetism Montanus ism.

I don't you say that When you look at the the history they went through a lot so for instance like when you get to 250 Rome almost felled it was a thousandth year birthday of Rome. They threw this gigantic party and after that Trajan through this giant party and then it brought the plague into Rome because people came from everywhere It's kind of like having a Bible school and all the kids come from everywhere And then after they leave you have this terrible cold, you know that on steroids except without steroids I could have used but anyway, that was what they had In 250 and Rome was devastated. You see the writings of Cyprian and that kind of thing Was terrible.

This is when you started Empire wide Persecution and here's like even a document that they found where the guy is signing the guards signing that okay, he has Pinched the incense to the gods and this began to go all over the nation all over the Roman Empire but through this all a Simple Christ like faith was existing. And so what is just remarkable to me? With this simple faith is again when you read the earlier writings those apostolic fathers that first volume, you know what you get You get kind of like Conrad Grebel, I believe the Bible without a complicated interpretation and out of that I speak across the nations across languages across mountains Across things you've got everybody kind of saying those things and then when it comes to the teachings of Jesus It's not just some sort of Annex that you put on You know at the end of your Systematic theology You read the DDK, which is the earliest writings outside of the Bible. You know what it sounds like a reader's digest version of the the Sermon on the Mount Just following Jesus.

There's a simple faith And embracing it and letting it come to life and taking that simple faith in the Word of God that the common man the genius of the of just the the simple faith existing and and holding on and propagating that faith Took over the whole Empire Finally by the time you get up close to the 300s There's there's massive persecutions. The church is beginning to compromise the church is getting big way before even Constantine You start to see some pretty weird stuff But by the time you get to Constantine you get this guy I consider him like a George Washington of the early church brilliant guy Constantine was one absolutely one of the best Roman Roman Emperors Brilliant leader and he knew how to run an empire. So he started from Britain came over and Came over the Alps and on his way there He claims he saw a vision.

It's a pagan Emperor worshipping the Sun Had a vision and this is written in two different historic accounts that he went out in the morning and he saw he says The Sun rising and over the Sun this high row. You see these you sayings You can kind of see an X and a P it looks like and he said that over that it said in this name conquer So he goes, okay. This is my vision So he runs to Rome takes over Rome and tells all the Christians.

I am your deliverer And I'm now here to make Christianity legal and he becomes oh there's a symbol that X and P was what he said he saw and he puts this on all the on all the shields he puts it on the army and he this is where he takes over crosses this Melvion Bridge and takes over Christianity And then Thousands and tens of thousands of people are entering into the nation. I mean enter into the church They start having these theological debates over this thing and over that thing and next thing, you know it a simple faith following Jesus became turned into understanding some Theological nuances that if you don't understand that you're not a Christian Constantine himself said guys drop this. This is ridiculous nobody understands those high things of theology, but no the church said no we're gonna use this power of Constantine and we're gonna win and that started a Adjoining of the church in the state together.

That's never been the same Constantine was never baptized until his deathbed at least by the exact person that he condemned as a heretic or those exact doctrines He ended up killing his son his is uh, because if he was worried about rivals he ended up killing that's his son he killed His son his brother-in-law after he made a solemn oath that he wouldn't and But this coming together of this The state in the church has created Christendom and we have always been apart from that That this idea and so this to this day on May 21st in both the Roman Catholic and the Greek Orthodox world You can pray to this guy and his mother Later on different emperors did things and using the power of the sword and we don't have a lot of documents That exist during this time because you were running and it's kind of like when you read the early Anabaptist writings a faith but we know that when we turn a thousand that suddenly the church looks and they look at the different heretical groups and they start a crusade against the several of the different what they call heresies and we start to see people like the Waldensians and that type of a thing come out and And they at 325 had the Council of Nicaea so This is where that the danger has always been and the danger that I give to you these two last things is in the Aesop's Fable and I know it's 1030. Well, if you have any quick questions think of them right now There's a story that the wind and the Sun were having a contest who could get this travelers coat off and So the the wind was like I got this this is crazy. You're just a son.

What are you gonna do? I'm gonna blow his coat off So the wind blew and blew and blew on this traveler with a coat blue and blue and blue and the traveler just kept taking the taking the You know coat and getting closer and closer Like you're tighter and tighter, you know with this thing and finally the wind Lost his wind and he gave up. He said, okay, I'm done. I can't get it and the Sun said, okay, watch this And he just shone on him And all of a sudden he got whoo This feels good.

I I'm gonna I'm gonna take my coat off BAM he won That's your history You look through the history and we'll see this through this 500 years when the persecution has come on you When the times of hard you're pretty good at putting that coat on and saying we're gonna make it we're gonna last but I'm telling you right now we're living in an age of sunshine and If we don't understand that we understand that this is the test that's on us. We're gonna lose We're gonna lose the context. So as we look through the 500, I'm not let's not praise The heritage but let's do at least respect it because of this There's a brilliant genius not in the teachings or the schools or the academics It's deeper in you than you know it but I tell you this I've seen it I've read it a hundred times over in your own history every time You can lose it in one generation and just spend all that it is gone and you do very hard to get it back All right, any quick questions anyone? It's just about 1030 have we have like three minutes.

That's pretty good Anyway, any thoughts about this and how you all come to all this? All right. Yes, sir Mm-hmm. Yes Yeah so he's talking about the way and a Baptist read the scripture is different than the Roman Catholics and I would say to a large degree kind of a theological world is that again you find within us and we kind of make fun of it a little bit and laugh at it and okay some of it is funny and laughable, but There is a simplicity in starting with Jesus and now I read a thousand page systematic theology by Michael Horton under when in my seminary and it's It's funny or sad rather.

He goes through all this incredible theology Like whoa, this is so deep and finally at the very end of the thousand pages or them in section At least he starts talking about the teachings of Jesus and we got to somehow get those back in. Oh You can't separate the teachings of Jesus from the persons of Jesus and that's why if there's anywhere that I could draw the line Please don't let your children end up in a heritage that loses that simplicity. It's there.

It's easy It's not hard to understand follow Jesus those teachings are given to us for a reason. So yeah great anyone else thoughts So so through that we're gonna develop how this goes in the next week whoever has the next week we're gonna talk about the beginning and the Reformation time where a lot of this was taught get your questions read it and Let's ask him. We've made a little group mark made a group or we Sunday school teachers can talk about this and so you can get your questions in and we could address them to the next week And that kind of thing and and and this is meant to be Sunday school So you can stop the guy who's up there blabbing like myself But you know asked him and also asked for the next week how it connects and all that So anyway, I think it's gonna be a lot of fun.

I think it's gonna be important Because the Bible Criticizes us to be being thrown to and fro by every wind of doctrine. Oh What we have now in your next generation is going to be a hurricane of winds of doctrine Stand firm on a historic faith. So Oh Perfect yes Ah Real quick So good.

So dark ages Zach where's that? I saw you back there. Yes, Zach's gonna be amazing He's gonna do the Reformation next week and you can you can repeat some of this to the gap So we're talking about 300. Well now we're going to 1500 Dean what happened between that? well Rome kind of fell apart around 4 or 20 people debate all over about and then by whole different things so all those ruins kind of got ran over by a bunch of Germans Different German tribes.

Yes, your ancestors ran over and and it kind of you know Changed the Empire but Christianity existed Constantine actually moved the whole Roman Empire to Constantinople Istanbul today set up a huge naked statue of himself put a Sun God symbol on it and said hey, this is Christianity But then that grew in power They started having councils and it grew with that military strength and finally you had military powers growing and all that Finally by the time you get to around 500 and and 600 you have different wars and and simple Christianity existed and we find it in little things like the Waldensians such and people that gather together to read the Word of God and read the Jesus read Jesus but the power struggles of military might destroy Christianity the rise of Islam came and and then Instead of them seeing a peacekeeping world that followed Jesus. They were met by a bunch of warriors that made a mockery of Jesus and some of the worst things in our history happened the Crusades the battles of the church and the and never did this simple Christ like example of loving your enemies and changing the world through love Get expressed and it's a one of our darkest histories of how the name of Christ was blaspheme but the church never stopped and we see pockets of it and and see strains of people who believe Jesus and not the power of the state and all those things and said no love is Amazing and this is the cure for humanity and that raises us up into these different power struggles that we get into the 1500s of the Reformation Zach you can pick that back up and give us the Renaissance in the beginning of that and everything and Zach will do a Great job with that, but it's important to look at that The church didn't die during the Dark Ages if I can some ways it might have been better for us But nevertheless Christianity was now seen as the state power Which I look into the the book of Revelation and I see when all the kings of the earth Committed fornication with the bride You ended up with a great harlot and she is not only the harlot she is the daughter of harlots I'm excuse me she's the mother of harlots and so I see this generation of this mixture of the state in the church together as the apostasy that we see in the book of Revelation that we must be on guard for because ideas have Consequences, so yeah good questions