Needed: A New Way to Meet #1: History of Church Meetings – Why Do We Meet This Way?

Well, one night back in the 500s, somebody walked into these musty, stinky old buildings that didn’t have any windows because the architect’s teachings at the time couldn’t provide windows. The walls had to be really thick to hold up a roof. There was room for only little bitty windows, and it was dark inside, so they had to bring in candles. Well, then they had the little kids bringing in the candles, giving them something to do, like we do a Sunday school booster bag. Then they started putting clothes on the little kids, and so pretty soon, you had the little altar boys coming in with candles to light up those dark buildings.

Well, the buildings stank because so much fungus grew on the walls and mildew covered everything, so somebody went in there and tried to cover the stink up with burning incense, and somebody said, “Well, let’s hire someone who’ll do that every day, every time we meet.” So the guy did, and pretty soon they had a uniform on him. And pretty soon, here again, you have institutionalized the candle and the burning of the incense. It has become a sacred, holy thing when it started out being nothing but light and covering up stink.

Now, brothers and sisters, I hope you enjoy what you are laughing at, because wait until you get to the Protestants! Now, I want you all to understand something, and it is this. People today try to justify what we do by appealing to Jewish tradition and going back to the Old Testament to pick up words. No historian, no historian who knows his history, will go along with that. You and I trace our traditions and our concepts back to Greece and Rome, not to Judaism. There is a break there; that break comes with Constantine.

In fact, it really comes with about 45 or 50 A.D. The Christian church was primarily Gentile as it moved westward, and it had left the Jewish mind entirely. You cannot justify what we do today by saying, ‘choir’; it’s mentioned in the Old Testament. Pulpit; it’s mentioned in the Old Testament. Once more, that is trying to take present-day concepts and put them back into the Bible. Besides that, I don’t happen to be an Old Testament Jew. I happen to be an ex-heathen, pagan, uncircumcised Gentile, and the faith of Christ is for me, without ritual, and it came to the rest without ritual.

Well, anyhow, it’s solidified. It’s stuck. It is now part of classical…of the classical faith. Along with medicine, it has been classicalized. Theology, classicalized, frozen, petrified. Our astronomy, classicalized. The earth, the sun, and all else move around the earth. Everything is frozen in time and will remain that way until help me, until when? Philosophy, medicine, psychology, theology, astronomy, science, all of science, frozen. That’s why they had a dark age, saints. You cannot say intelligence, observation, and science died, but boy, it sure slowed down. We cannot say it quit, but it slowed down.

Then what happened? The Renaissance. Where did the Renaissance come from? Do you know?  The Arab; the Arab world. That is correct. They never took the bait. They never did. Even the Eastern Church never quite became what the Latin Church had become. The original Greek language was still alive. Real architecture never went into Western classicism. The ability to think was still a little bit alive. When Western man tried to get over and get those herbs and spices and all those beautiful cloths and that stuff, he began to reach and touch a freer mind, freer architecture, freer medicine, freer astronomy. We can’t say theology particularly; someone will have to break the mold of theology. I’m not sure it’s ever been done.

Now, brothers and sisters, we’re coming up to you and me: Protestants. If you’re taking notes, tomorrow and the next day, I ask you to take copious notes, because tomorrow I’m not going to be laying ground. I’m going to rip down strongholds and build whole new concepts in your mind.

Do you realize what we have left behind us? We have left behind us. We turn around and look at nothing but carnage. Nothing that I’ve talked to you about has got anything to do with the Christian faith of the first century. None of this is even remotely similar to the first-century church.

It’s hard to talk about the Reformation without getting off topic. Let me say, this is in print by me, but let me see if any of you remember. Who is most responsible for the Reformation? Always, Luther gets in there; Luther would have been burned at the stake before he ever saw his 30th birthday if it hadn’t been for Frederick the Wise. Frederick the Wise, who may be burning in hell right now, for all I know, who had wanted to be pope so bad, who had the largest army in Europe. He was a German, and he heard about this beer-drinking German down there who was raising fits and making the pope worry, and he thought that was an absolutely royal idea. You tell the pope to leave that man alone, and don’t you dare try to come in there with your army and burn him at the stake.

A brother and his wife were telling me this story. Their little girl was asking how old they were and trying to figure it out; you know how a little child is. They don’t exactly know who Mom and Daddy are, and the little child says, “So you lived…’, now see if you can catch where this came from: “…you lived back in the day when the world was black and white.” Did you catch that? That little girl had been sitting there watching old films in black and white, and new things on television were in color. This little kid thought Mom and Daddy lived in the world before it ended and turned into color.

Please think of the Reformation as the period when everything…there was no color. I mean, I want you to think that we’re coming out of a dark day. What year did Gutenberg invent his movable-type press? In the middle of the 1400s. Okay, now Luther’s coming around the early part of the 1500s; you have less than 100 years of movable type. I don’t know if you can understand this, but people in general were living in abject poverty, still with the medieval mind and superstition deeply rooted in the lower levels of Europe. Illiteracy ran somewhere between 95 and 97 percent, leaving scientists, theologians, philosophers, and others whose profession was to write. And others whose profession was to read. Some could read but not write; others could write and left the reading to someone else. You hired someone, just like today; you would hire a mechanic to write for you and to read for you.

The Gutenberg Press is revolutionizing Europe, but don’t you ever think you’re suddenly waking up to a world where everybody can read. No more than 5 percent of people outside can read. People are living in filth. Homes have no windows. They dump garbage in the middle of the street. Most people have never been 5 or 10 miles from their home. They are provincial. They are superstitious. What is called the Reformation is happening up here at the top. What is happening in Switzerland and what is happening in Germany is mostly a few people taking over church buildings that victorious rebel armies have given to them. Are you following me here? Can you imagine this? Calvin, because of the Swiss people’s independence, and please understand, most of this is happening…boy, I’m going to be off subject here.