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Dr. Jim Garlow is a lifelong pastor who most recently served in San Diego, California, and now leads Well Versed, a ministry dedicated to bringing biblical
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Beyond the Dark Ages: Themes and Gregory the Great 0:00 Well, we welcome you to the next session. Now we are up to the year 5 90. We've moved into the early part of the Middle Ages, 5 90 to the year 10 50. This thing0:12 called the Middle Ages is much more intimidating to me. Some people call it the Dark Ages. Now most people call it Dark Ages or Protestants because they like to kind of skip over it and say, here's the truth of the0:22 scripture, and here's the truth of the early church, and then there's this big period of 1000 years, it's dark, and then we get Martin Luther. And we have a tendency as Protestants just want to skip the whole thing. I0:33 wrote a book, several years ago called How God Saved Civilization, which has been re released, by the title of God and His People. And, I finished, I thought I'd finished the book and I sent it off to a friend to look at0:44 it. And she really took me to task. He says, you're typical she said, you're typical Protestant. You've just dismissed the Middle Ages. You just shot through that in a few pages, and you spent all your time before0:56 and after that. I said, well, why should I spend any more time with it? She says, you have not properly looked at what God was up to and what God did. I says, convince me. And she did.1:09 And I went back and spent months redoing that section of the book. And it became multiple chapters. And frankly, I could have made it a lot more. I1:20 realized I had dismissed God's hand at work because there is some garbage, and we'll talk about that, and some things that are pretty distasteful, I kind of1:32 assumed that it was all like that and it was not. We'll talk later about the phrase the underside of history. 1 of the most brilliant historians on this time1:44 frame is Kenneth Scott Ottaray from Yale. And it's he says that it's a little bit difficult to look at the Middle Ages in the typical chronological pattern. You almost1:56 have to do it more in themes than you do chronology. I'm gonna try to mix both as best I can, but you will notice that I'm gonna shift, to key themes, throughout this, and2:08 it won't be strict chronology. There'll be time saying, wait a minute. We were up here, and now you just skip way back. It's because I'm gonna skip back and pick up a theme and carry carry it through. So you'll2:17 understand why I'm doing that. 1 day, I sat down and thought, okay. How can I how can I summarize the Middle Ages in a few words? And I finally came up with 13 words all that start with the2:29 letter I or phrases. I had to push it a little bit to make them all come up with an I, but finally came up with the words. And this gives you a handle on what we're gonna be looking at in the pages ahead. This is in the2:39 early Middle Ages and the high Middle Ages. High means the middle Middle Ages and in the late Middle Ages. But here are the keywords. The 1 thing that puts us off about the Middle Ages is the immorality, the wickedness2:49 and debauchery at the top levels of church leadership, which cost the church tremendous amount of credibility. And then isolation, monasteries and monastic living caused people to pull away from the main3:01 populace. Then incredible architecture, 500 cathedrals were built, sometimes taking as long as 700 years to build. The inquisition, a method of torturing those who disagree with the church authorities, that began in3:13 14 79. Now, these are all under the, subtitle you see here of church life. We're gonna shift to another subtitle in a moment, but under church life. Then there was infighting, infighting both geographical and3:24 infighting governmentally. The geographical was East versus West. The infighting governmentally was who is gonna have the final say, a pope, 1 man, or a council? And that was hotly debated and3:36 hotly fought through the entire Middle Ages, and we'll see the repercussions from that. Then indifference, by that I mean since church and state were all 1, if you lived in Europe, it simply meant you were a Christian,3:46 thus, nominality or nominal in name only. Now, we go to specific theological concerns, icons and iconoclasm. Icons refer to3:58 images or relics, and iconoclasm means image breaking. There was a hotly debated issue, Could you have icons, sometimes statues, for example, incorporated in the church itself and in the4:10 worship service? And some tremendous battles, East versus West over this 1. Indulgences. This is 1 of the most fascinating ones where you could simply make a payment to the church and you could get forgiveness4:22 of sins before you even committed the sins. You planned on committing them but hadn't yet, so you you just bought it in advance. They were doing that to actually pay for Saint Peter's Basilica down in Rome. An4:32 interesting way to fund a church building. I I haven't tried that, but you might think about that that approach. You can buy them for your relatives to get them out of purgatory a few million years earlier.4:44 So it was really quite a scam and quite effective and very successful in raising tremendous sums of money. The intellect was stimulated during his time. It was called scholasticisms. We'll talk about4:56 that. Scholasticism will be discussed later. Then church and culture issues, investiture, what's what is that? That was a controversy over who's in charge. Who gets to appoint who's in charge of a church?5:08 Now, that's a no brainer to us. We wouldn't want the government doing that. But remember, the government and the church were all intermingled into 1, so whose task is it to run the church? And besides that, the church at5:20 times owned all the land, owned virtually everything. The church would put armies together and go defend the land if needed be. So this wasn't the kind of separation of church and state that we understand now. And then5:31 illness, bubonic plague hit in 13 48 to 13 51 destroyed 30 percent of the population. And then Islam, a constant threat to Christianity coming in the 6 hundreds, and we'll talk more about that 1, that 15:43 later. Well, so those are some of the key words starting with I that really typify what we're gonna walk through. Why do we pick the year 5 90? Some people see the Middle Ages starting earlier than that. I picked the5:52 year 5 90 simply because the influence of Gregory the Great. Very few people in history rightfully have the title of the Great. How many of you know? Not very many, a handful. But Gregory is 1 who's earned that title,6:04 and he's Gregory I or Pope Gregory from a Protestant perspective. He's really the first Protestant pope. Now, Catholics point all the way back to Peter and their lineage, but in terms of it being capital6:16 r, capital c, Roman Catholic, this is the 1 who sets that in motion. Gregory the Great was a phenomenal leader. Look at this list about him. Exceptional leadership6:27 gifts, skilled administrator over social programs oversight to 1800 square miles, a competent financier, and there was handled incredible amount of money, passionate communicator, preached to6:39 many. He was a theological influencer. He invented certain words that were not in the Christian vocabulary previously, purgatory and mass, for example, were introduced by him. Voluminous6:51 writer, creative entrepreneur, the Gregorian chant, Gregory, comes, of course, from him. Adept organizer of community life. He even issued a book on how7:03 should you live out life together in the Christian community. Accomplished disciplinarian would not tolerate laxity among the clergy. This was a huge problem before and really enormous problem afterwards. And he wouldn't7:14 tolerate, he wouldn't put up with careless, sloppy clergy. He expected them to be good shepherds and good pastors. He himself was a very caring pastor of an enormous congregation there in Rome. A political negotiator had7:26 to work out peace with Rome's invaders. Remember, this is a time when when various armies were coming in to take Rome. Outstanding civic leader, compassionate and generous to the poor. He he inaugurated7:38 incredible welfare programs, gifted missions strategizer. We're gonna talk about Augustine of Canterbury, not to be confused with the previous Augustine we talked about. Tolerant to those who desire to worship7:49 differently, specifically Jews. Very, very skilled in terms of career changes. He was a government official, then a monk, then an abbot, then a pope. And personally, very generous. The takeaway from this is8:01 this is a guy who was brilliantly talented, incredibly talented. We do all have our blind spots, and he concocted, invented this notion of purgatory, which got profoundly abused as time would go on8:12 with people buying their relatives by getting money to the church. We already talked about this in indulgences, by paying money to get them out of purgatory. Now, if we glimpse of this man's 1 glimpse of this8:24 man's ability, his intellectual acumen, his leadership abilities, it gives you an impression that he was bigger than life, and he was. But in the midst of all this, there is a flaw, And, he did8:36 unfortunately lead many in directions non biblical on that particular issue. As I walk through church history, I never hide the fact of the flaws and the brokenness of the other people we're gonna talk8:48 about. When we get to Luther, we'll talk openly about a a decision he made that, cost the lives of many. We'll talk about, Calvin, a decision decision he made that, caused a person to be9:00 killed. We'll talk about Wesley, a disastrous marriage. But God looks down from heaven. He sees us in our brokenness, but he says, you know, I can still use that guy. I can still use that lady. Yes,9:12 there are some things that just they don't have it all together, but I'm gonna use them in a profound and wonderful way. And I hope that's an encouragement to you because none of us have it all together. And I lookMissionary Zeal Against Barbarian Invasions 9:22 through these figures of church history and in their various flaws, as as they get bigger in life, they their flaws appear to get bigger than what they really probably were. But nonetheless, the fact is that God is able9:34 to use us in profound ways. 1 of the things I want you to see in this early church early middle age period that's fascinating is here are these hordes of barbarians literally spilling over from borders whose9:46 histories we do not know. They are spilling over and they're coming into areas geographically and historically that we do know. And we already talked about Rome being sacked9:57 and the various barbarian groups simply appearing. And how does the church respond to that and 1 other huge threat? And that was rapid, very rapid Muslim expansion. The church responds, if you look in10:09 your notes, with early Bible translation and missionary movements designed to respond to the barbarians. It is I think it's an incredible thing. It just fascinates me an impulse that cannot be stopped10:21 anywhere in the scope of church history. And the impulse has to do with a passion for the Word of God. When you see what they go through to get the Word of God out to us, way like I get to the story of the first time the10:32 Word of God was in English and the price that was paid in the language that you speak, It's amazing this impulse was so driving and that compulsion is so strong. A second 1 was the passion to10:44 sacrifice everything, your life included, your family included, in order to get the gospel out. And the missionary movement, under unbelievably difficult circumstances, it's a gripping story.10:56 And remember what I said in the last session, this is not their story, a bunch of dead guys. This is your story. This is how the gospel got to you. Had they not done what they did, had they not sacrificed, you would not11:05 have the gospel today. They would have had it there and they would have enjoyed it there and they would have all died off and that would have been it. But they went through herculean task in order to lay the Gospel out.11:16 And the story of the expansion of the Gospel, even during this period, the 5 90 to the 10 50 mark, is an incredible story. Who are these barbarians? Well, they were basically Germanic hordes that simply appear, we don't11:28 know much about them before they appear in the story of Western civilization and spilled out and overran all of Europe. Their names are not largely known to us until they appear on those pages of history, Visigoths,11:39 Vandals, Lombards, Franks, Saxons, etcetera. Some of them were like the Huns, they simply passed through and left a pathway of destruction. Others, like the Goths, were much more highly developed. Some were Christian.11:50 They had the gospel that got to them. However, they were not Orthodox Christians. Some of those that were Christians were actually, Arian Christians. In other words, they had an improper teaching of the nature of Christ12:01 being fully God and fully man at the same time. I take you to the next part. We've already talked briefly about this, but this is this impulsive Bible translation. A man named Bede, and he got an adjective12:13 attached to his name, venerable Bede, because he was so respected, translated the gospel of John into English. He also wrote the 1 of the first early church history. Why we know some of the things we know about the story12:24 is because of Venerable Bede, and we're talking about the year 6 73 through 7 35. And then I talked a moment ago about the missionary movements. Here are some of the key early missionaries during this time, and it's good12:35 for us to look at them for for us to appreciate the gospel coming to us. First 1, Augustine of Canterbury. He is sent there to England. Now why this is critical is because we're English speakers in this room.12:47 It's how the gospel gets to us. And he comes to Kent, England, and the king is converted. Queen possibly was converted or else she was already a Christian, very likely already a believer at this12:59 time. And he is given an area, Canterbury, an area for a church in Canterbury, thus you hear of the role of Canterbury. He was a bit too rigid that we find out later that the13:11 Celts, the Celtic Gospel, and the Roman gospel collide, and they had a different methodology, and that will be a point of conflict. The Celts were a group of people that also had the gospel, and they were rapidly growing13:21 as expansion of the gospel took place, Ireland, Scotland, and they clashed with the Romans. They disagreed over all kinds of things, some things as unimportant as what day you celebrate Easter, for example. And it got13:31 resolved in the year 6 64 largely through a special synod there, a conference church conference that was held, but they clashed quite a bit. There are some fascinating studies done today in terms of the difference13:41 between the Roman method of evangelism and the Celtic method of evangelism. And the Roman method tends to be you go in there and you accept my belief and then I accept you. The Celtic seem to be relationally founded. You13:51 go in there and form deep relationships and draw them in slowly, tenderly, much more what we call today, we call seeker sensitive. It's an interesting study in 2 methodologies. Both of them have their place, both of them14:02 have validity. One's an argumentative sort of apologetic, this is the truth, you better accept it. The other's, I'm I'm here to be your friend until you do accept it. And so they both have legitimacy. We may tend to14:13 identify with 1 more than the other, but they did clash and they clashed, fairly strongly at times. The second 1 is Columbo. Now he's not a detective that does reruns on on TV. I promise you.14:25 It's a fascinating story as well, a highly energetic missionary. He arrived in Iona, would be Iona, Scotland in the year 5 63. He headquartered there in Iona, sent14:37 many missionaries to England across Scotland full of zeal, zest. He's called the saint of the young. He was so invigorated. He also was an early environmentalist. He believed that God created all,14:48 and if you rejected the beauty of the earth, you rejected the lordship of Christ. Passionate, tireless worker, copied the Scripture. The study of his life is a fascinating,15:00 fast paced, energetic kind of missionary. Then Boniface, who was Boniface? He was the apostle to the Germans. Those of you that have a Germanic background, this is how the gospel came to you. He came from England. He was15:11 a brilliant scholar, preacher. He arrived there in 7 16. A war drove him right out, and he promptly came back in. In the year 7 19, he returned. Now he got there to Germany, and there was this 115:23 story about a sacred tree that nobody was to touch because this was some kind of a god of some sort or a tree belonging to a god. And to make his case pretty strong, he got out15:35 an ax and he promptly chopped it down. That was the nature of this very aggressive missionary. And by the way, it is said, ironically, another tree, that the notion of celebrating with a Christmas tree15:47 originated with him. And it's a little bit hard to prove. Some, of course, tie it with Martin Luther later on, but some suggest it actually come from him. In 10 54, as an old man, he could have retired. Old by those15:58 standards, he could have retired. He had accomplished so much, But he decided that year to go on and open brand new territory and charge on ahead, which is exactly what he did. And at 7 55 on Pentecost16:10 Sunday, a group of hoodlums showed up and murdered him. But the gospel, if you have a Germanic background, some of you in this room undoubtedly do, the gospel that you have came16:22 because of this man whose name is largely unknown. Slipped into the woodwork of history, but sacrifices lie. Think how convenient it would have been if he'd have stayed home, but think what it would have16:34 cost you. You would be moving someday into a Christ less eternity had he not done what he did. Now we go take a look at the next great force, Islam. RapidlyThe Rise and Menace of Islam 16:45 expands in the 6 hundreds. 5 70, Mohammed is born. Everything in our world changed. By 5 95, you married Khadija. She was, he was16:57 25. She was 40. She was 15 years older than him. She was a widow, wealthy widow. Had a export import business, camels, camel caravan. And so he17:09 immediately had quite a bit of of wealth. In 6 10, Mohammed claims to be a prophet. And during the 6 12 to 6 22 period, has many, many visions.17:22 Khadija dies in, in the year 6 20. And in 6 22, when he was in Mecca, he began to be persecuted for some of his beliefs. Some of his beliefs were good. For 1 thing, he was17:34 monotheistic. The Kabbal there, had 360 gods in it. He didn't believe in 360 gods. He says, oh, there's only 1 god. Secondly, he did try to establish a higher level of morality.17:46 That was a good and a very, very positive thing. But he was pretty unpopular for that and other things. There were only about 40 people following in Mecca, and finally he left, went a couple hundred miles north to17:54 Medina. When he got to Medina, things changed. His early writings are quite peaceful. His writings towards you, for example, as a Christian, or towards Jews. You're the people of the book, he calls you. So his early18:05 writings are really quite peaceful, and there's not the indications in those early writings of what would later develop in Islam. So when he got to Medina, a lady went down the street 1 day making fun of him. And, so 118:17 of his followers went over and she had just given birth to a newborn and was holding the newborn, by her breast. And he snuck in at night and drove the sword right through her and killed her. Her relatives showed up the18:28 next morning, and he informed them that the reason that he had taken her life is because she had formed she had created this little composed little ditty, a song against, Mohammed and the and the Muslims.18:40 And as a result, the family is terrorized by seeing their dead relative and dead daughter. They promptly converted to Islam, and that set the stage for what was to follow.18:52 The use of the sword. And as the caravanners would go by from Mecca, they would frequently attack them and they gained enormous wealth. There were Jewish goldsmiths in that area. They attacked and killed them. On 119:04 occasion, they attacked a group of people and made the wives and the children watch as they brought 5, 6, 7 men out of time and beheaded them. And they this went on the entire night. There were so many,19:17 to be killed. And thus, evangelism, Islam style was born. He then in the year 6 30 takes a force 10000 strong back to Mecca19:28 and surrounds Mecca. And Mecca Mecca just simply gives up without any bloodshed. They know he's come back home and they surrender and he takes control of the city. He dies in 6 32.19:40 He died because in part, he he had quite a few wives. Once once Khadija died, he had a very happy marriage with her a number of years. But once he gets to Mecca, he starts a polygamous lifestyle, has about 16 different19:52 wives, some as young as 7, 8, or 9 years of age. And, and so as he goes back, then, he has some of his wives that weren't all that enthused.20:03 1 was Jewish, for example, and she did not want to be his wife. He would conscript and just take these women when he would overrun an area. And so 1 of them put poison on some meat 1 day, and he was with a couple friends20:15 and he bit into it. 1 friend didn't realize it and died, and the other 2 spit it out. They realized right away they were being poisoned. Her view was if you, grew truly a prophet, you would have known it had poison on20:26 it. So the problem is yours, not mine. That didn't play well, with Mohammed or with her. He didn't die from it, but, initially at least, but it did seem to bring on his death earlier than expected. He was not he20:38 didn't have anything set up ready to handle who was gonna follow him. There was no successor. And so they had a series of what's called caliphs or or successors. The word means successor. 4 of them,20:50 1 after another. And this is where the Sunni and the Shiite split at this point. They split over, should the followers, the leader rather of Islam, should it be a relative, a blood relative of Mohammed, or should it21:02 be elected by consensus? And they never could agree on that. And that's 1 of the factors why the Sunnis and the Shiites, have very little to do with each other to to this day. The next 4 columns, this will give21:14 you a glimpse into the violence of Islam, the next 3 of the next 4 were assassinated. And by the year 6 91, Dome of the Rock is built in Jerusalem, and they claim this as 1 of their21:26 holy sites. Now, Mohammed was never there, except he claims he went to Jerusalem in a dream. But this is claimed as a holy site, and that will happen literally all over the world. Any place that's a holy21:38 site of any other religion somehow will be taken by Islam and claimed that this is going to be, their site. There was called the Umayyad dynasty that goes for about 100 years. This is after the21:49 immediate after the 4 caliphs or successors. Then a series of dynasties is set in motion that rules over this rapidly expanding movement called Islam. By 700, this is amazing growth. By22:01 700, Islam had spread across Palestine, Syria, east all the way to India, and west all the way to North Africa, and up into Spain. By 7 11,22:14 the Muslim Moors, that's a group of Arabs, had invaded Spain and Portugal. There were about 100000 people in Cordova, Spain at that time. There were over 700 mosques. We don't think of Spain22:26 as being Islamic, but it was at that time. And they made it all the way up to Paris. Paris's population at the time was about 38000, and they made it within 170 miles of Paris when something very significant happened in22:37 7 32 that ties in with this morning's news. The news I heard on the radio driving here this morning is directly tied to what happened in the year 7 32. We don't have long22:49 memories. They do. They have a long sense of of history. And that is that Charles Martel, known as the Hammer, defeated the Muslims in the Battle of Portier or the Battle of Tours23:01 and and drove them back. Had that not happened, you would be sitting in a worship center, this next weekend carrying a Quran and not a Bible.23:13 That is the hinge point of history on this issue. We don't think much about that because we don't have a long sense of continuity. They do. If you wanna find some of the reasons, there's 4 or 5 major reasons why they23:25 hate us, but this is 1 of them. I have a friend, Tasir Abduz Absada is his name, and he was a PLO fighter until he came to know Christ.23:37 And he knew Osama bin Laden's family, the bin Laden family. He knew Osama when he was a very young kid. Now, Osama's father, was a polygamist, had many, many wives and many, many children. So23:49 he doesn't he doesn't remember him really well, except he was a very quiet young child. But Osama would have been trained in this awareness that in 7 32, the infidels drove24:01 back the work of God, and he's to correct that. That's a very critical date in all of history. I know most of us are not into Islamic history and maybe not care too much about it, but it might be good for us to have some24:12 awareness of of what transpires. And if you think of the city of Jerusalem, for example, and the history of that, you have after after Muhammad, you have the 4 caliphs, then you have what's called the Umayyad dynasty24:22 that lasts for roughly 100 years. And then you have the Abbasid dynasty, and it lasts for about 500 years. Then the Seljuq Turks, we're gonna talk about them later because they're significant. Then what's called the24:34 Mamluk warriors, this is a group from coming out of Egypt. And then the Ottoman Turks, and that's from the time of Martin Luther's 95 Theses, that's 15 17, all the way to World War 1.24:46 And then Britain takes control of Palestine in 19 48, you know that Israel is formed as a nation. The reason I walked through this in this much detail is because I want you to see how the24:57 stage was set for that controversial period of church history called the Crusades. And we can only understand the Crusades, that year 10 95, in the context of what I've just described. So that's why we took25:09 that, extra little detour in understanding Islam. I know we're not about Islamic history, about Christian history, but you cannot comprehend the Crusades unless you comprehend what I have just described as an explosive25:20 growth by the power of the sword. We're gonna freeze frame that 1, come back to the Crusades at a later time, but I wanna move you to the next person and that is the personality of Charlemagne, 1 of the greatest leader25:31 of the period. His grandfather, who I just referred to a moment ago, was Charles Martel. 7 32, defeated the Muslims. We referred to that a moment ago. His father was Pepin. Pepin helped defend the25:43 pope from some invading Lombards, and the result is, that he honored the pope by giving to the pope what's called the donation of Pepin. In other words, a huge amount of landShow more In this video 0:00 Beyond the Dark Ages: Themes and Gregory the Great9:22 Missionary Zeal Against Barbarian Invasions16:45 The Rise and Menace of Islam25:49 Empires, Schisms, Reforms, and the Underside of History
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