Church History Conference Part 1 – What If Your Most Sacred Church Practices Are Pagan? | Early Church History Shocker

Now let me tell you why. You’ll be reading along, and you’re getting duped even while you’re reading. You’ll come to a chapter that says, “What was the liturgy of the early church?” Speaking of 100 to 500 A.D., well, you’ve lost right there because, first of all, you don’t know what liturgy means, but whatever it is, it looks awfully somber and dry. Then they describe the liturgy of the early church from 100 to 500, and this is the way it’ll sound. “They came into the meeting, and they had the singing of the Psalms, and someone who had been appointed would read a psalm or some passage out of the Scripture, and then someone within the meeting, the bishop would stand and bring a homily. There would be a solemn observance of the Eucharist, and then they would dismiss with a prayer and go home. That sounded like a Baptist church to me, boy. Or maybe even a Catholic one.

Now, you go back and check the original documents, find out where in the world they came up with this. First thing you have to understand is that the word liturgy simply means how they worshiped. That was the question being asked. Then you discover that they have interpreted what they have read. And I, a Christian outside the organized church from East Texas, who loves to not go to church. I can read those same original documents, and I can tell you what they did. You want to hear it? Different interpretation; here it comes: They came into the living room together, and they sang till they were hoarse. Somebody in the room could read. He had gone down to the synagogue, copied something from the Greek, and translated it into Latin. It was the book of Proverbs or Isaiah, and he read it, and everybody was really excited because it was something they had never heard before. Then brother Apollos, who had never gotten up and spoken in his life, got up and spoke to us that day, preached for three and a half hours till he was standing on 4 inches of his trouser legs. Then we had dinner together; dinner on the grounds. We had a wonderful, glorious meal together, and after it, we took the Lord’s supper, and then we sang for another two hours, and we finally went home, and that was the liturgy of the second and third century Christians. It’s all on how you interpret the original documents.

Now, in fear of losing every one of you to sleep, I’m going to attempt to talk to you about some things that are not easy to grasp. The first thing I want to talk to you about is introducing some words you will need to understand. Historians are getting a little bit more sophisticated. Church history is not simplistic. There are, in the words of Will Durant, the diastolic and systolic of history. There are many pressures and influences on every age, and we used to say, and they did this, and this, and we didn’t exactly know why. Church history is written very simplistically. We are beginning to understand what the surrounding culture, the social environment, and the particular land you’re living in do. I’m going to introduce a word: matrix. It comes from the word “womb.” That which surrounds the infant in his mother’s womb. Everything around him is what influences him. The matrix, the womb, everything around him has an influence on him. So, when I use the word matrix, I am talking about the total influence of everything around you.

The second thing I introduced to you is the word “mindset.” I want you to listen to me very carefully if you possibly can. We have been studying history from the viewpoints of events, but in about 1920, Fernando Lot wrote a book of history and made a point. His point was not only valid but correct. He said it is not events that change the course of history. He presented four or five major turning points in the history of Western man, and said those changes occurred when Western man’s mindset was altered. We heard about Martin Luther this morning. We have always looked at the events. But what Martin Luther really did… the Renaissance cracked the medieval mindset in science and art; Martin Luther cracked the medieval mindset in religion and changed it. When you can change the mindset of a people, you can change history.

Now, brothers and sisters, we are speaking this week about restoration. I want to confess to you exactly what I am up here to do in the afternoons more than anything else: it is to crack your present mindset, and that is always revolutionary, to crack the way you process thinking, culture, society, religion, Scripture, everything. I would use the word, I’ve invented for lack of any other way, I would invite you to turn your television set around sometimes and see plastered on the back of it something called a schematic, and at the bottom of it will show a little picture of the electric plug. It shows the path of the electricity, and by following that path, it eventually gives you a picture on your TV set. If you turn your big radio console around, you’ll find another totally different schematic. Electricity comes in, and beautiful stereo music comes out. Plug in something else, and it’s a heart machine. Different schematic; always electricity. The information comes in; the transistor puts it one way; the computer chip puts it another way. A transformer puts it somewhere else, and eventually, it comes out as a product. You have a brain and a mind, and information is coming into them all the time, but it is not the information; it’s the way you compute it. The way your mindset flows through its channels makes you and me people living in the latter part of the 20th century. We’re not medieval. We’re not early Socratic; we are not 21st-century; we are captured in this society with this particular mindset. Are you still awake?

Well, we’re going to have to understand the matrix of the early ages of our faith, and we’re going to have to understand our mindset. Now, there is one other thing: historiography. I am now going to try to explain to you why we never got a fair shake in church history. But before I do, I have one other thing to tell you. I was about to leave something out. We are unaware of the influences on us theologically, biblically, socially, and culturally. We are unaware of our matrix, and there are things we do not question in the world around us. The same thing is true about our Christian faith. We, for instance, trape into a church building every Sunday and never ask where it came from. We sit down in a pew and never ask who built that barbaric thing. We look up at the pulpit, and we assume that it is some wonderful, glorious thing given to us by God. We listen to the preacher preach his long, droll messages. We look at our stained-glass windows, and we don’t ask why. We need to crack open our present mindset. It will liberate you, and I think it will help us know the word of God better. I intend, toward the end of this week, to attack, if you please, the modern-day Christian mindset, including the Christian mindset outside the religious system. If I leave here this week with any friends at all, I will have probably, utterly failed.

Now, I want to show you, right here in living color, things you have never questioned but are ridiculous. Now then, as I do, keep in mind you’re doing this all the time as a believer in the Christian faith. Here is illustration number one. What is it? We never ask what it is, why it is, or where it came from. We need to do this as Christians. Not the tie, but where do these things come from? This used to be a napkin, and this is what’s left. It has absolutely no utilitarian value whatsoever. It is the most diabolical, uncomfortable thing that has ever been created. Look here. You see those buttons right there on my suit? You know where those came from? Do you have any ideas? Does anyone know? Raise your hand if you do. I’m going to tell the story. But you know, okay. Well, there was this queen who got tired of watching her guards when they had runny noses in winter do this. So, she demanded that they have buttons sewn on their palace uniforms, and that’s what’s left of it right there. I have no idea, and if you do, tell me where this stupid lapel came from. Have you ever walked in a suit in unexpected cold weather? These things have no utilitarian value. They’ll freeze you to death up front.

But more than that, do you have any idea why we have sleeves? Why a sleeve? Do you know why we have sleeves? It is because Nordic fashion won out over Southern European fashion. This came from the killing of sheep, goats, and bears. The skins were cut, and the bear’s arm was left for the human to keep his arm warm with, tight and uncomfortable. The Romans wore togas and tunics; they were much more comfortable and warmer in winter and cooler in summer. But Northwestern fashion gave us this, so I walk around all day in these uncomfortable things. The heel on your shoe, which is terrible for your spine, and you would never ask why. Came from the invention of the stirrup on the saddle so that a man wouldn’t stick his foot all the way through the saddle. You’re wearing one right now; it’s putting your spine two inches out of whack, and that’s why you’ve got a backache. You’ve never asked. Well, we’re going to ask some of these questions this week. Now, see these terrible things that we’re doing to ourselves. Let’s get rid of them. Now we’re free! The only problem left is you’re not going to let me take off my shoes.

Modern archaeology began in 1620, when a Roman Catholic Jesuit gentleman cataloged and classified all known second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-century literature, documents, and objects. And that’s all there is – literature, documents, and objects. The objects are frescos, monuments, gravestones, artifacts, paintings, graffiti, icons, documents, which could be religious censuses, city censuses, letters to people, and then doggone it, the literature, and there you’re dealing with Ambrose and Tertullian and all these fellas who really have us messed up. There are 2.5 million documents, artifacts, objects, and pieces of literature that bear directly on the Christian faith. Approximately 1% of that is Christian. 1% is Christian. That means we have about 25,000 documents, pieces of literature, or artifacts that open up to us second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-century Christianity.

The Jesuits were the fathers of modern archaeology. Therefore, they gave us the very first interpretations. By 1700, they had pretty well cemented their interpretation of early church history. They did it in a most unscientific and very prejudiced way, and that concept, that model of church history, is only beginning right now to crack. I would say it’ll be another hundred years before it cracks wide open. It’s slow to change once the model is accepted. This is going to be, today and this week, one of the first times we have ever discussed any of the new developments. Anyway, they interpreted what they had in front of them first in the light of church dogma. Secondly, with the prejudicial need to push their traditions as far forward as possible into the first century, they interpreted everything on the basis of unbroken Catholic tradition from the first century. Consequently, they attributed fourth- and fifth-century objects and literature to the second century, thereby distorting the history of the church.

When I was 19 years old, I went into the catacombs. I think I was with a Jesuit, whatever they are, a priest, and he was giving me a one-man guided tour of the catacombs, and he was showing me the graffiti and telling me that this was the second century. Even though I was only 19, I knew what he was telling me had to be inaccurate, because it said, “Peter and Paul, pray for us in this hour.” That is fifth-century graffiti. That is fourth- and fifth-century graffiti, and they dated it to the second century. Christianity started off with this archaeology majoring mostly in church history. I hope you can follow this. There was a shift away from research on Christian church history toward biblical archaeology, and for 200 years, this has reigned. And so, we’ve been out in Palestine digging up things. Now, let me tell you one other thing that is very important for you to understand. I want you to be armed with this. I want you to be able to shoot down the next Presbyterian preacher who pushes you in a corner. I want you to be able to intimidate this guy. I’m going to tell you why. I learned a long, long time ago that we can argue about scripture till doomsday, but if you’re the only one who knows church history, you can win any argument you want to.

Christian archaeology of church history was pretty well solidified, and most of it is centered around the city of Rome. Once more, you and I are in big trouble. First of all, they’ve got it all down in the Vatican. Secondly, they’ve got their interpretations and dating’s of it. Thirdly, the corruption of the Christian faith began in Rome, and it took 200 years to spread into the churches in villages in Asia Minor and North Africa. Rome has been the center of church history, archaeology, and literature. Now then, something had to happen, and I guess by the grace of God, I’ve never attributed this to the Lord, but I’m going to today. Something needed to bust this thinking wide open. In the year 1918, a group of British soldiers, I believe, were missing in Mesopotamia, and they were digging in for the night. As they dug, one of them came up on a hole. I mean, he either fell through or there was a hole there. In the 1920s, an excavation began, and some of the archaeologists opened up, and right there on that very spot, they found a second- and third-century Jewish synagogue. It shocked the world.