Winona Conference Part 2 – You’re Made for Two Realms

Okay, now for the— which one you want first, the seminary or the pastor? You want the seminary? It’s true. The seminary first. It’s embarrassing. December 13th, 1543— the Pope of Rome called all his bishops and cardinals together for one discussion. Luther was alive at this time. The Reformation was going on. Would the Catholic Church reform, or would it continue in its traditional way? And it was debated at the Council of Trent, beginning on December 13th, 1543, debated for 18 years, which way to go. And finally decided it would not reform but continue on its own—on its way. But it had two big problems to deal with.

One of them was the ignorance of its priests. Most of them could not read. Many of them were scholars, but most could not read. And the immorality in the clergy and the immorality in the people throughout the whole Roman Catholic domain. And they came up with two solutions. How many of you have heard me tell this story? Can I see if anybody heard this story? My wife knows this story. Okay, good. It’s embarrassing, but it’s history.

Here’s what they decided to do about immorality in the clergy and in the people. They decided that the immorality that had gripped the Roman Catholic Church had come from the Renaissance. There had been too much freedom, too much expressiveness. They decided to bring the spirit of the Renaissance to an end. And the way they proposed to do that was—I’m telling you the history, don’t ask. I’m not in this. I didn’t invent this story. They decided that what was happening was that there had been too many statues and too many paintings of a certain kind. And so, they commissioned a group of men to take plaster of Paris and go all over Europe, placing plaster of Paris fig leaves in appropriate places. And you can go to Europe today and to any museum, and you’ll find those plaster of Paris fig leaves everywhere. And that’s how they cured immorality in the Roman Catholic Church.

Number one. That’s what came out of 18 years. A bunch of single brothers talking. Alex, you will appreciate this because you have to deal with them, even though you are one. Alex, you can never understand the Roman Catholic Church until you can just understand one simple fact: it is being run by a bunch of religious, dumb single brothers. And if you can get that fact over, then you will understand the Roman Catholic Church. It’s very simple. Isn’t it?

The other thing they decided to do was to educate their priest. And so in each diocese—and the very word diocese comes from the way the Roman government set up areas to be governed, and the Catholic Church had adopted it as an area within a province—in every diocese there would be a “Seminarium” started for the training to teach their clergy how to read and write, and to teach them Catholic doctrines. It became very successful under the Jesuits, who were extremely scholarly, well-educated people, and the Protestants got jealous, and they adopted it. And now it is a totally, utterly, absolutely New Testament. That’s where seminaries came from. And Bible schools came later as an adjunct—or at least a, yeah, a poor man’s seminary. A cheap way of getting some education.

And yet I doubt that there is one-tenth of one percent of all the seminary professors in America—or in the world—who know that story, and every one of them feels that he’s there in a scriptural situation, teaching men to be obedient to the scripture. Here we are standing in pulpits and church buildings and in seminaries, beating on the Bible, saying we’ve got to be New Testament, and it’s a paradox. In fact, it’s a contradiction of the terms.

Alright, quickly, what the community of the believer is not. Help me find in the New Testament a man…Think of the New Testament for a moment now. Let’s see if we can find a man who delivers orations over dead bodies. We’re being New Testament. Find me a man who marries young people. Find me a man who hears confession. Is there a man in the New Testament church who blesses civic and social activity? Is there a person who is a fundraiser for the church? Is there a man who goes about visiting the sick? And old ladies? I got one more, and I don’t remember what it is. Can you help me? Huh? Yeah. Social and civic events? I think we’ve. Huh? Okay. Okay. One person who is in charge of baptizing.
Yes, ma’am. Okay. Baptizing, thank you. Now, there are a couple of others in here, but I can never get this list correct. Now, let me explain to you…Alright, first of all, do you know of such a thing? Can you find any of that in the New Testament? Well, if you remove that list from pastoral responsibilities, he disappears. That plus the preaching on Sunday morning, which we’ve already taken care of.

I come from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, the largest seminary in the world, and the largest seminary in the history of mankind, which houses the largest theological library on this planet. And I have walked into that library, and I have tried to find a book anywhere that takes the pastoral concept and presents it from a scriptural viewpoint. Having given up that, I tried to find a chapter. And having not been able to find a chapter, I tried to find a paragraph. Finally, I found one book with one sentence saying: Timothy was sent by Paul to the church in—and I think it was the church in Thessalonica—and he stayed there, preached to those people, and was its pastor, that church’s pastor. And I went back and looked that up, and I studied it, and Timothy had to be there for maybe two weeks, and that was it. That’s the only sentence I’ve ever found.

Can you understand that as surely as a heel on my foot and the sleeve on my shirt, and the collar on my shirt are a tradition? That standing up when you sing the Hallelujah Chorus is a tradition? That blowing out candles at a birthday party is a tradition? That the pastoral concept today is nothing but a tradition. No one has ever, at any time, debated it or brought it into being as a New Testament thing, and yet it is the pillar and the center of the Christian faith. Remove it, and the Christian faith would collapse. Would it not? If you took every pastor out of every church in America and everybody showed up next Sunday, they would not know what to do. They’d have to go get another one; probably ordain the minister of music or something like that. I don’t know what they would do. He is—he’s all of it.

None of these things is scriptural. He says, Before the Reformation, there were seven pastoral duties of the priest. During the Reformation, when so many priests became Protestants, and when the Protestants themselves began filling up these empty church buildings because of wars and the Catholic religion was outlawed. Protestants had all these empty Catholic buildings, and they were sending men out there. They said to those men who would preach: take the seven pastoral duties of the priest, only don’t do confessional counsel. And that’s the only one they changed. Say an oration over the dead. Baptize the baby. Visit the sick. These are all priestly duties. What are the others? Marry. Oh, bless the civic things. And the actual Lord’s Supper—well, yes, it is one of the seven sacraments. The duty of it was pastoral. You are correct. It is one of the things that is the Lord’s Supper. Now, these are the things. Now I have something to say to you, and I have something to say to all of you. And I want to show you just how radical I am, but I’m on a lot better scriptural grounds than anybody else is on this business. The spiritual community of the believer—honey, I don’t care how sick you get, I’m not going to come visit you. I will not do it. I don’t care if you’re 80 years old. I’m not going to come visit you. If, as a pastor, I do not visit you, I’ll be hung. I’m not going to come visit you. I will stay at home, even if I care about you, which is probably very unlikely. I don’t really care to come visit you and pat your hand every week, tell you what a great Christian you are.

I’m not going to go visit the sick, and I do not visit the sick, and I will not visit the sick. If you are a very close, dear friend of mine and you get sick, I’ll come see you, but it’s because I like you. Now, what do you think about that? Now, just how do you feel right now, hearing me tell you exactly how I feel? “Well, Gene, you un-Christian person.” Saints, you ought not to ever ask anybody to do that. You’re making them some kind of sacred thing. In the community of Christ, the sick are cared for by the brothers and sisters within that community.

I will not bury your dead. If you die…good luck. Let some of the people who know you and love you care for you. When my dad died, they couldn’t find the grave diggers. And he had five sons. I wasn’t present, but the other four were. They got so excited about digging their dad’s grave. And they suddenly—all four of them—felt that way. And I did too. I felt suddenly that I’d been deprived of something by not being allowed to dig my own father’s grave just because of a tradition. Anyway, the grave diggers showed up about 15 minutes before the funeral and dug that thing. But let the family do that. Let the brothers, the sisters, the husbands, the wives. If somebody wants to say something over them, that’s a good thing. A better thing is just to take them out to the cemetery, thank God for them, and cover them up and let it be. I’ve got five people on my side.