Church History Conference Part 3 – The Christian Mind: Older Than Creation and Found in Christ

There were probably two schools in the early dawn of the Greek age that fought for supremacy above any others. One was called the Pythagorean school, and the other was the Ionian school. And the great tragedy of Western history is that the Pythagorean school won out. The Ionian school was utterly destroyed and ceased to exist, bringing forth a literal 2,000-year curse. Now the Pythagorean school is better known as the Socratic Platonic school, and their concept was basically “think,” don’t experiment, don’t investigate, think and think and think, and by the way, think according to my rules of thinking; that’s Aristotle. From that, you’ll be able to figure out everything, and that became the way of the Western mind. It has been said that a Westerner cannot think except he thinks Aristotle, and that is true. I want to drive that into you now because this is a very important hour for all of us.

Western man cannot think, but he thinks “Aristotle”. Aristotle’s dialectics became our way of comprehending what is around us. When the Aristotelian mind came to the Gospel, I’ll tell you exactly what it did. It took a knife, cut out the verses, pasted them up according to topics, studied them with Aristotelian dialectics, and out of it was born something neither Christian nor pagan philosophy, something totally new on this earth: Christian theology with its roots in the analytical mind of Western man.

The Aristotelian…the Western mind…changed radically. Now this is not an event. This is a great historical term. I told you the other day, Fernando Lot, one of the great historians of all time, said, “You look for the changes in the mind of man to find the changes in history, not events.” There arose the medieval mind, a blend of paganism, Western thought, and Christianity, all mixed together, and there came a turn. We slipped into a dark age for several hundred years and gradually emerged into the Renaissance. The Renaissance gave us science, art, and so forth. Luther gave us a new perspective on the Christian faith.

There came after Rousseau, and with the emergence of modern science, what is today called the modern mind. So, the Western mind has gone through three basic changes. You are the son of that mind. Now, if you don’t think it was a tragedy that the Aristotelian-type mind won, listen to this if you please. When the Pythagorean, Aristotelian mind school was fighting the Ionian mind, if the Ionian mind had won, and the Aristotelian mind had disappeared off the face of the earth by all reason. Are you ready for this? Mankind probably would have gone to the moon in the year 600 AD. For the Ionian mind was simply what we call the empirical observe, test, observe, and test.

That mind did not return until the days of Roger Bacon, 600 years ago, from a dead standstill… the empirical scientific mind. From the day of Roger Bacon till the day at Cape Kennedy was approximately 600-650 years. If the Ionian school had won, man would have moved into a scientific environment, rather than a philosophical, rationalistic mind. Well, Gene, what on earth has that got to do with me? It has got this to do with you. In the fourth grade, you were told to outline that. Remember? Do you remember in the fourth grade: outline that. You were taught Aristotle that day, and everything we do as westerners, and as I look at us from the viewpoint I’m speaking now, it gets just downright laughable. How interested we are in dialectics in debate, in reasoning, in logic, in rationalization, in frontal lobe intellectualism, and we approach the Gospel this way. It is the Western mind. That mind will never bring us to the restoration of the house of God. Are you following me? The Western mind is about to go through another turn. I don’t know where it’s headed, frankly, but it is about to go through another one. Things are moving too rapidly. We are going to see the Western mind go…I hope it doesn’t go high-tech. I have a 10-year-old grandson who knows more about computers…I can’t even spell the word…and there’s no end to what that boy knows. I don’t know what it’s going to do to human society if the Lord tarries.

Now then, I want to come…there is another mind going right alongside that one, and I’m going to talk about the so-called mind of Christianity. Can I just use that term? I just made it up just now. The mind of Christianity. It began in the first and second centuries; I think it lasted into the third, and that would be what we might call the mind of the first-century Christian. We will find out later that this is inaccurate. I’ll use it now. The first-century Christian mind. Are you with me? This slipped away. We’re now out of Western Man and into Western Christians. Okay, that slipped away into the medieval Christian mind, full of darkness, shadows, demons, superstition, a frightful god holding us close to damnation if we weren’t good little boys, filled with superstition, magic, hocus pocus. It changed during the Reformation, but not much, because Luther was of the school of Augustine, and Augustine was of the school of Aristotle. About the only thing that our brother did, as far as changing the mind, is that he threw out Plato or Neoplatonism., Plato was more of a mystic, and he said, “We’re not going to have anymore…” and this is a quotation, “of the Roman Catholic Christian mystics”; they were a little bitty group of people within the Roman Catholic Church who thought they were into the deeper Christian life, but they were into Neoplatonism which was a series of a ascents up to God.

Now, we come out of the reformation still highly intellectual, still dragging our seminaries behind us, still approaching the scripture with great intellectualism. This is why when the brother asked me the other day, “What would you say to a liberal if…?” I wouldn’t say anything to a liberal. Why would I discuss anything with a liberal? I gave my heart to Jesus Christ. The word of God is established in me. I’ve got a job to do. I have no desire or interest to reason with Him about anything on earth. My heart is fixed toward the things of the Lord Jesus Christ on this earth. He can believe anything he wants to. I simply do not care. I am not an apologist nor a defender. He can believe anything he wishes to, and the fact that we would ask such a question shows our Aristotelian bent.

Out of the Protestant mind has come a branch, the fundamentalist mind. It’s a set mind, set in concrete. I hate to say this, and I’m not picking on any of you, but out of the Protestant mind has grown another little branch, the Pentecostal mind. It’s set, and it is impenetrable at this time. It could not possibly grasp future restoration. It is set in its way.

Now, two minds are working. And then, brothers and sisters, there’s a third and glorious line down here. And that’s those brothers and sisters that are covered in the torch of the testimony by John W. Kennedy and the Pilgrim Church. And those are the brothers and sisters, by the sheer instincts of their spirit, they knew something was wrong. They would not have the slightest idea what I was talking about today. They had no more idea what I was talking about than you do, but they had a deep instinct for Christ. And somewhere around the middle of the 300s, they began fighting for something. They were fighting for a testimony. They were fighting for a torch. They were fighting for something they instinctively held, each expressing it differently in their own age. I’m going to try to hurry, uncover, discover, and restore a bit more today.

Some of these men had a revelation of Christ and a revelation of their Lord, and out of that, they were impelled as they broke through and saw something of liberty and light. They couldn’t even define it or give a word to it, but they were willing to die for it. It meant everything to them. It possessed them, and we only begin to see them clearly after the Reformation because some of their writings were preserved. I could not deliver to you what they have done in ages past, better than what was done last night by brother Lance when he presented the five elements that you will find in each and all of these people, as they plunge forward in restoring and restoring and restoring.

Now, there are young men in this room to whom that torch must be one day passed. And as you go back to your homes this week, I would like to give you some equipment, rather radical equipment. Now, you are surprised at that, aren’t you? Brothers, I believe that there’s ground to be taken. What I will say to you today and tomorrow, don’t take it lightly. I didn’t think this up because I was asked to speak at this conference. I have been asking myself, “What are those basic, practical, and spiritual needs of Christians outside the religious system to press this battle?” Now I want you to know that I’m speaking in the light of what brother Lance and brother Steven have said. Lance has already told you a great deal that this is a spiritual matter and a matter of Christ. It is not a matter of being informal and things like that. We’re not back here trying to get into a home. We’re not trying to get to be “New Testament.” We’re not trying to have any clergy or any ritual. We are dealing with spirituals, but we are also dealing with a Western mind that has a difficult time grasping spiritual matters. We will invariably intellectualize and rationalize our faith, left to our own devices. We are Western men, and to Western men I speak.

By the way, just for a word, I find some of the things going on today very humorous. Someone told me, ” Don’t go to a doctor who has acupuncture and does things like that. That came from demons.” Well, I went to acupuncture once, and he gave me some herbs. That was two years ago, and I took them, and it’s one of the reasons I’m standing on my feet right now, because I’ve been in bed for the last 10 years most of the time. So, my point is, what are you going to do? Are you going to go to a Western doctor? Don’t go to an eastern doctor. That all came up out of demonology, he says. Good, go to a Western doctor. His roots are in witchcraft. He’ll sit down there, and he’ll make this little thing for you, and he’ll say, “Here, take this little potion and you’ll take it.” Clipper, are you here? Ask Clipper after the meeting. I wouldn’t dare to ask him what a tranquilizer is made out of, and if you don’t throw up when he tells you. You wouldn’t want to know what your Western doctor feeds you in those little pills he hands you. It’s just about as bad as a bat wing and a lizard’s tongue and all that stuff.