Do you see almost a forgetfulness of the spirit in the church today?

Like a lack of dependence on the spirit?

Oh, absolutely.

I I think we've forgotten the book of the book of Acts is the blueprint for the church.

It tells us exactly.

It's not it's not received by a lot of stuff we're talking about, it's just got to be received by faith.

We we've got it written in God's word.

God breathed.

This is what the early church did.

And I've often said when the Holy Spirit was given, the disciples did not stay in the upper room and carpet it out and put a little sign outside saying tonight, seven o'clock, all welcome.

They went open air.

They began to preach, and that was their that was their mission.

Um and they said we cannot but speak that which was seen and heard and in jeopardy their lives.

They stayed with that agenda to preach the gospel.

And when they got kind of lazy, uh it took Saul of Tarsus to create havoc within the church.

Therefore, they were spread everywhere preaching the word.

And that's what the modern church needs to go back to, the book of Acts.

So many people are raising their hands and worship to God, failing to reach out their hands in evangelism for God, and that becomes nothing but an empty hypocrisy, drawing near to God with our lips but our hearts being far from him.

So I'd love the church to get back to the blueprint of the book of Acts so we would have the same power that they had in the book of Acts.

Wow, I love it.

Quiz your cohosts your co-hosts.

And I'm gonna quiz you too, friends.

Alright, guys.

So I wanna see if you guys, oh I'm gonna turn my computer because Oscar's gonna lack.

See if you guys uh recognize this song, the name of it, um, who wrote it, when it was written.

Hey Siri, can you tell me about this song?

Go ahead.

There you go.

Oh, that is um, it's a female, her name Inya.

Am I right?

No.

It's not Inya?

No, Oscar.

John Michael Tellman.

Oh, wait, sorry.

She redid it.

That's funny.

Is it Bach?

Oh, I love it.

No.

Canon and D.

You hear this at every wedding in the universe.

Oh, yeah, that's why it sounded familiar.

Canon and D by Johan Pachbel.

I thought it would be by copyright lawyers.

Well, it's Passa.

What do you call it?

The uh that is?

I would have to be now.

Are you gonna sing happy birthday next and get a song of restaurants?

Happy birthday.

You know what blew me away about this song?

First of all, my wife knows me so well because make you cry.

No, we were in a restaurant or somewhere and it was playing, and I go, Oh, I love that song.

So I look it up, I find it eventually, and uh she goes, Am I gonna hear that now for the next week?

Because when I come across something like that, I just play it to death.

But what blew my mind seriously, because this has always been to me one of the most beautiful songs.

You're the same with jokes.

Yeah, you start you start it and that's it.

The emotions start.

But that was written somewhere between 1680 and 1706.

Really?

I I I mean it's tell us about that time, right?

We want to know, please.

Uh that you know, but the fact that they had such beautiful music back then.

And you know what was crazy about that song is it was lost.

Like it was just in its time, it wasn't anything big, and then it wasn't like known for a long time, and then someone rediscovered it, and then uh found a C D or something.

I wonder how it got attached to the weddings.

Like what when was it correlated to that's what you listen to?

Oh, I don't know why anyone played anything else.

It's just so so beautiful.

Oh, we played something else.

No, you didn't.

Yeah, we didn't.

Did you?

How dare you?

We we walked into Mariachi?

That's uh that's such happy music.

It really is.

I love mariachi music.

Um really I've never met somebody who likes mariachi music.

I love it, I think it's great.

When when people get married, they play mariachi music, I guess.

Mariachi.

How do you isn't it funny though, like how you can define a music?

You you don't know that someone said that's a mariachi song, you hear it, you could say that's mariachi.

Yeah, Sue and I would laid awake at night for many an hour listening to the neighbors play that music.

You and poor Scotty.

What was really funny was that we'd hear them whine down, you think that's the inn we'll start up again.

No, but I mean it has this like right, Oscar?

That sounds nothing like it.

What does it sound like?

It sounds like a rat calling a trap.

That's pretty good.

Yeah, you were gonna say you walked.

Oh, we walked down to Doxology.

Oh song Doxology, and then we walked out to the wait, which is a thrice song.

So what are you talking about?

Praise God.

Wedding songs.

Oh, the doxology.

I thought you were talking about a restaurant.

Praise God from all blessings flow.

Legos!

We were talking about Legos, right?

What was that?

Well, I I've never trod on a Lego in my life.

Try it, right?

Yeah, it's pretty painful apparently.

But Lady in New Zealand ran a hundred meters barefoot on Legos.

Would you do that, Mark?

I can see Mark doing that.

I don't think it would hurt if you go fast.

Like cloaking.

Walking on hot coals, running on hot coals.

Yeah.

Would you run across thousands of Wiener Schnitz or hot dogs, Mark?

No, I wouldn't.

That's a great.

Did you know that you guys are both committing cardinal Lego sins by calling it Legos?

It's not Legos, though.

No, it's Lego.

And it's Lego's the name of the company, and when you refer to the bricks, you're supposed to say Lego bricks.

So the phrase is she ran on Lego bricks, not Legos.

Orthodoxy.

Fundamentalist.

Speaking of fundamentalism, easy.

Are you a perception?

How's your perception?

About the bottle sitting on the table that was.

Is that annoying?

So I get rid of it.

That was their turn in the last episode.

Did you notice that?

You didn't notice that.

I did.

Do you notice everything?

Everything and everything.

Yeah, Mark didn't change his shirt.

Mark.

What?

Hey, Mark's just a jacket on.

Yeah.

Claim Psalm 51, Mark.

Yeah, no, I'm Mark.

We're gonna have a talk out of it.

Yeah, we're supposed to change shirts.

Rebellious Mark.

Do you always throw your friends under the bus?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's fun.

We'll see.

Mark won't be smiling after he gets his next paycheck.

Sorry, just going back to mariachi music real quick.

I have an aunt.

She has twin boys.

Uh, no, it's not.

You can tell already.

You are so bad.

It's terrible.

That's terrible.

She has twin boys, uh, Amal and Juan.

Uh, but she's they get kind of frustrated because she only carries one picture of them with her.

And she claims if you've seen Juan, you've seen Amal.

That's terrible.

Isn't it great that Christians can't get away with lying?

It's like there's no way.

I know.

Raise nostrils.

Keep my nostrils out of this.

I never knew they did it.

Seriously, you never knew that?

No.

There are certain signs when people lie.

It's not lying.

It's just like it's the equivalent of like bringing out its like two road tunnels.

When does it happen?

Whenever you're about to like try to trick someone or be deceptive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm deceptive.

I just don't lie.

I didn't do that.

Yeah.

Anyway, uh, music is fun, Legos are fun.

Mark, you wouldn't do that?

I could see you doing stuff like that.

Boy, I if I could, for a certain amount of money, if I can give it away to my favorite nonprofit organization, Living Waters, I I might do something like that.

But then I'll set it up for you.

Running across crocodiles.

But seriously though, what is like what is the whole mystique with running across coals and stuff like that?

And it's it's old as the hills, though, isn't it?

It's in the Old Testament as well.

But why people do that?

Like, what's the point of this?

Religious ritual, apparently, in the past.

You should try it and get back to us.

I'll try that while I lie on a pen and a ship.

Oh, yeah, you've got little tanda feetsies, haven't you?

Don't you mock my feet?

I can't stand walking barefoot at like outside.

It's really good for you.

Grounding.

Like grounding?

Grounding.

We talked about grounding.

No, it's just I don't like my the feeling of my feet being dirty.

I just we don't like looking at your feet.

I was just gonna say that.

Want to look at Ken's ham's feet?

Don't even talk about it.

Lord of the Rings.

That's pretty accurate, actually.

Yeah.

All right, friends!

Time for the cool classy comment.

This is from Hunter Hardle Sr.

Love the podcast, have found it very edifying in my faith and has helped me grow in discernment.

It is nice having a group of doctrinally sound, gospel-focused men.

Who's that?

What podcast is he talking about?

My questionslash idea is how can we encourage our children towards ministry without imparting our will and desires over God's will for their lives?

My daughter Odelia is 10.

I felt she would end up in missions.

And my son Hunter Jr.

is 12.

I could see him being a Baptist, Baptist pastor.

Both children love the Lord, love scripture and church.

Is it okay to encourage them toward ministry?

P.S.

Easy is an inspiration.

I spent 22 years an addict.

Here we go.

And hearing his testimony from gangster to wheezy grandpa grandpa is helpful.

Raising inspiration toward missions.

Oscar's level-headedness and perspective is refreshing.

And Mark's deep knowledge of scripture and conviction is very helpful.

Man, Mark, you're a good deceiver.

Yours in Christ.

Hunter P.

Hardle Sr.

from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

Thanks, Hunter.

Thank you so much, brother.

And uh yeah, that is a good question about um all you do is mention your will.

Hey, children, guess what?

Will?

If you want to be in my will, do what I want.

Yeah, I think look, it is it is important to be careful in that regard because you don't want your kids, especially when it comes to ministry, to enter into a calling that may not be what the Lord has for them.

So I look, I'm talking spiritually, you guys are what popping marks are you bicep bicep zit?

He flexed and he went in like as if it was at zit.

Anyway, brother, yeah, I would just say be careful in that regard.

I'd say bring them up in the ways of the Lord.

Um, put different vocations before them because I think that that's what's important.

We can't forget that in Christ there's no longer the sacred secular divide.

Everything can be sacred because we do it under the Lord.

So give them uh, you know, a alternatives.

Do you want to pick up trash, be a trash man, or go to the mission of the Lord?

Yeah, for the Lord, yeah.

So there you have it, and thank you for the encouragement.

It means a lot to us.

And now a radically revolutionary resource.

This podcast is brought to you by the Blue Book of Evangelism.

That's a great book.

Remember that one, Mark?

I do.

Remember that one, Ray?

That came out just for the Academy at one point, didn't it, Ray?

That's right.

We did.

Yeah.

It was a good idea to do that, but we realized, hey, people like this.

You know, there's questions that people asked at the academy, and we put it into a book and it's gone really well.

For those of you who don't.

For the colorblind, can you please explain that book, Ray?

The color blue book of it.

Actually, that's what I love doing.

When I meet someone who's blind, uh, I run after them and say, Would you like to do an interview for YouTube?

And I first question I like to ask them is, You're born blind, they say, Yeah, describe color to me.

What's a blue sky mean to you?

And remember one girl who'd been born blind, she says, sad, a blue sky.

I said, You're kidding, why do you feel like that?

She says, When someone's blue, they're sad.

And so I I I I we talked about the fact that no one can describe to her what blue looks like without her having light.

And it's the same thing spiritually.

That's so good.

Uh, you know, I'm not gonna ask about vision because I don't think any of us would give up give up our vision for anything.

But would you give up your hearing or you have the choice of one or the other hearing or taste buds?

Taste.

Hearing.

Ooh, look at that.

I'd give up my taste buds.

You'd give up your taste buds.

Yeah, because I can now eat healthy.

That's true.

Why does it always taste like cardboard?

Wow.

Fat-free.

Flavor, flavor, and flavor and taste.

That's what fat-free is.

But no flavor, huh, Ray?

You wouldn't give that up.

Oh, the wonderful thing about life is the taste of food to not hear people experience.

Oh, just think, not hearing you go on and on and on with us.

Yeah.

All right, friends, the blue book of Evangelism, Living Water's Monk, the Study Bible, Living Waters TV.

All right.

Deaf people can put their hands on people's throats and actually feel vibrations.

They can do it with music and things like that.

But in a hands in my throat.

He probably might say no.

You know, Shaq thinks that Stevie Wonder can see.

Honestly.

Stop it.

He said he was in an elevator, and Stevie Wonder came on the elevator, and Shaq goes, I'm not kidding.

He looks at him and he goes, Hey, Diesel.

Like he knew that it was him.

Oh, come on, he bummed him to his leg.

He bumped him to his leg.

Well, I'm sure he had a helper there with him and he whispered to him, it's Diesel and the Have you ever seen Stevie Wonder's kids?

Neither has he.

That's terrible.

I actually tried to give him a gospel track one time.

You did?

Did you take it?

He didn't see me coming.

But that's actually a true story.

Who's this?

We're at LAX.

And I tried to give him a gospel track and he kept on walking.

It's obvious.

Did you know it was him, Mark?

Of course.

Why did he try to give him a track?

I don't know.

I got excited to hand out a gospel track too.

I lost my brain when it came to celebrity.

All right, friends, make sure to check all those things out.

Last time we did a higher opera.

Today we're going lower at LivingWaters.com.

Ooh, smooth.

I hate doing that, guys.

Can you there's no way out.

You mustn't be able to sing.

You've obviously got an ear for tone to pick that up like that.

Can I say something that you guys have not picked up on yet concerning this episode?

You didn't put the other on today.

No.

There's something very special about this episode.

No, Mark, that's what I'm getting.

Okay, I'll leave it.

You did catch it.

Yeah.

Okay, very quick.

See, it's in red right here.

And um don't forget the podcast YouTube channel.

Thousands and thousands of subscribers.

Make sure to subscribe.

Hit the bell.

And today, friends, is a very special episode.

Today is the 365th.

Good boy.

Is that what it is?

One episode.

One episode.

You know, I this has been a hallmark episode in my mind.

Why is that?

Because this means people can listen to a new episode every day.

What if it's a leap year?

I was just gonna say leap year, you can't what happens in leap?

Do you lose a day?

You can a day.

That's the year that a woman can propose to a guy.

Is that correct?

Am I making what?

That's what we heard when I was a kid.

A woman can propose to a guy on a leap year.

She's gonna leap to traditional.

But didn't Sue propose to you?

Yeah.

Was it on Leap Year?

That's understandable.

I don't know.

Can you imagine if it was?

That'd be funny.

She just couldn't contain herself.

So anyway, friends, this is exciting.

On Leapier, listen to two in one day.

Okay.

Just go for it.

Anyway, praise God, guys.

What a journey it's been.

And uh thank you all, our listeners, for listening, our listener, singular for listening.

Remember one of our first episodes that we did?

We got like halfway through, or we may even finish the whole thing.

And then they forgot to hit record.

Was 365 cold?

Yeah, I know why.

It's cold a yeah.

Why?

Well, Adam said 365 days today.

She says, yeah.

Yeah.

That's what did it.

All right, friends.

Today we're talking about important highlights from church history.

So unfair.

What what is it?

Uh what is it that that's been said about history?

One thing there's lots of it going on.

One thing that man has learned from history.

Man doesn't learn anything from history.

He's never learned history.

Yeah.

You know, church history, guys, it's it's one of those subjects that I I really do think almost makes people yawn in the faith when they hear about it.

A lot of people, you know, history's wonderful.

It's his story.

Yeah.

But I I love church history.

I I love I love any history.

Yeah, I love because it's gone.

You can move on.

It's over.

But looking back to the past and Ray, you love like especially World War II history type stuff, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

But for us, why you why are you doing that face?

Yeah, let's have it again.

Death of millions.

That's my favorite time.

Death of millions, 50 million people killed because one little twit wanted to explain.

Crazy.

Do what Putin's doing.

Yeah.

But you know, it's it's um, yeah, it's intriguing when you look back on things.

Because like, you know, we're living, I mean, we're living history now, and if the Lord Terries, and a few hundred years from now, people look back on us.

This this is history, but when you're living it, you don't think we're gonna be thought off in 300 years?

The idiots.

This is yeah, 365.

This is when Christianity took a downturn.

The Living Waters podcast.

But history, uh, Mark, history is important, and church history is important.

Yeah, in fact, I was talking to uh Dr.

James White and I had asked him, hey, we we homeschool, I want to get my child into uh church history.

What what would do you recommend?

And he said, Oh, this is a very easy question.

There's like a four-volume, maybe five volume set.

Staff, is it?

Uh no, uh, it's called, I'll have it right here, 2,000 years of Christ's power.

And then you have Renaissance and Reformation or the Age of the Early Church Fathers or the Middle Ages, uh, things of that nature.

And he said, if you get down these books, get the the only books that you need, you get there, it's a four-volume set, and the other one is the age of religious conflict.

Um, you get these down, you don't need anything else for books.

If you understand this, you're great when it comes to church history.

Yeah, because it has a really great in-depth and uh understandable religious.

Is there a synopsis on it?

Like in four volumes.

You know what?

I would tell people, man, I would if someone is gonna jump into church history, and it's good we're hitting this at the beginning because some people may not stick with us.

I want them to at least get this.

I would encourage every believer to begin with Church History in Plain Language by Shelley.

Yeah, Bruce Shelley as a beginning because it gives you he he it moves like a novel.

It does, and and he gives you such a great overview, and then you can go back and and maybe jump into what you're talking about.

So it starts in the book of X.

Uh yeah, yeah, basically he does, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah, he does.

Starts in Acts immediately after.

I I second that.

I I love church history.

My argument for church history before getting to book recommendations, is I think we enjoy history in general.

Like if you're a sports fan, you love to talk about the greatest players of all time.

You go back in history and you move forward and you make the argument over which era is better than the last.

I think we all love history as it pertains to the story of us.

That's why Ancestry.com is so popular.

We love to see ourselves through the narrative of our ancestors.

How did we get here?

Where did we come from?

What did we overcome?

Things of that nature.

As a Christian, church history is your history.

Those are your ancestors.

The things you understand and believe about the world has been passed down to us for the last 2,000 years.

And I the unfortunate reality of history is that historians are notoriously boring because historians are not narrators.

And we learn, we get engaged based on narrative, which is why I have a different take than James White.

Uh I think you you hit it on the head.

Church history and playing language, Bruce Shelley, it's written like a story.

Uh often historical books will dive too deep and you'll get stuck in the nuance, or they'll do too much of a glossary overview.

Uh, he writ writes it like a story and it's incredible.

Two other ones, Bullies and Saints by John Dickens, Incredible, and then Destroyer of the Gods.

Those two are more early church history.

But uh Destroy Destroyer of the Gods by Larry Hurtado.

I I would say I've read dozens of books on church histories.

If I can narrow it down to three to start with, those are the three I'd go with.

Uh you should you should love it because it's your story.

Yeah.

Amen.

And and it's also it's also uh really uh an indicator of how God moved.

And you know, the book of Acts continued on, right?

It it continued on.

That's what we have given to us from the first century church, but it continued on, Ray?

I was just thinking about Ancestry.com.

You have you checked your Ancestry?

No, I've never had no.

Would you want to?

I couldn't be bothered.

I'll tell you why.

You know, when you see plaques with names on them and that they sell, it's always positive stuff.

Ray?

The great one.

It's not Ray the idiot.

Um Anst Ancestry.com, do they hold back bad stuff?

I mean, they send you something that says Hitler, Mussolini, Resputin.

They will they will?

Yeah.

Cruel.

I I have a friend who found out that his like great-great-grandmother was raped, and that's how his whole entire ancestry came about.

Seriously?

Yeah.

Like his great-great-grandfathers in pr was in prison, blah blah blah.

It will do that.

And that's pretty wonderful, isn't it?

But property.

Seriously, for pro-life.

I thought the ancestry stuff just gave you like what your ethnicity is or like what your it could tell you who you're related to.

Lori did it, and she was 97% specific sort of Jewish.

I don't remember what it is.

Oh wow.

And uh it also shows you all your relatives who have done it as well.

And you go, I didn't know I was related to that person.

I didn't realize that.

I'm 98% Indian.

That's where that really comes from, right?

Yeah.

No, it's um, yeah, it's it's so good to look back and see what the Lord has done, you know, throughout history.

It makes me worship.

We all go back to Adam.

Yeah.

Oh, Ray.

He just came to me.

Wait, Ray, after Ray, after the flood, who do we all go back to?

Noah.

Whose name means comfort.

Ray's the father of all son of consolation.

That's the face of pride right there.

Look at that.

Humble pride.

There you go, the nostrils.

Oh man.

Yeah, so you know, and look, let me let me just say too, before we we jump into this, because what I want to do is hide.

We've already jumped into the halfway through the short time.

No, no, no, no.

I'm drying off.

Yeah, I can't remember what I'm gonna say.

You guys are jumping into the pool, he's dried up.

I got nothing to say.

No, man, you guys are the worst.

Have you thought about how we all of our families have gone through just crazy, crazy times to get us here, right?

You think of uh the Wild West and you know, just the the travels and everything that's uh supposedly my my brother had done the research for my past and uh he came from Ireland from a very specific town, and then we left during a war, apparently, and came over to uh um uh the east.

Uh and I'm just trying to help you gather.

My ancestors fled.

My ancestors fled Poland to England to New Zealand, changed their name.

So you you're Polish.

My great-grandfather was a Pole.

So you could be like Birkenstein or something.

Ray Birkenstein doesn't quite work as well as Comfort.

But what I was gonna say was too, I I think it's important to note that biographies of godly men and women, that's history.

That they're part of church history.

I think it's so funny.

And there's so few of those, there's not many of them around.

You guys have probably read every biography, right?

Right?

Yeah, we soon I used to read until we ran out of biographies.

I love biographies, those are good, you know, especially when it goes back to significant characters in church history.

It's a great word.

Yeah.

Boy so with boy withography.

So, what I want to do, what I think would be good to do, I don't know you guys might have other ideas because we don't talk before the show, but uh to highlight just some significant benchmarks in church history, significant events that like really help you.

I think it'd be stupid, no.

It's not kind of game.

What do you think, Matt?

Terrible idea.

Yeah.

What do you think?

You guys want to do something else?

Yeah, let's just get on something else.

I'm hungry.

So uh let's uh so I think uh I think it'd be it'd be it'd be good to start with the Council of Nicaea.

You're just gonna skip over the conversion of Paul.

Oh, you're gonna be able to do that.

Persecution under Nero.

You want to go with that?

Okay, go ahead, Oscar.

Start with that.

No, no, no, go ahead.

It's fine.

No, no, go ahead.

No, no, go ahead.

It's from Jerusalem, Roman Empire.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, yeah.

The the Second Temple Destruction, 70 AD.

I think uh a conversion of Paul is really important.

Yeah.

Um, which is, you know, we talked about Acts.

I mean, the it's important to recognize that the church doesn't all of a sudden pop into existence a couple hundred years after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.

It begins in Acts as a movement of 12 humble disciples um amongst 500 recent converts and spreads throughout uh in spite of social and and then eventually uh physical persecution.

The soul was the knife that spread Christianity.

Like butter.

Yeah, like butter.

Like butter.

Um yeah, so I mean the church begins.

You literally see the book of Acts end and then the beginning of the church.

Right.

Which is incredible.

Yeah.

No, it's amazing.

I mean, Paul's conversion was massive.

Um, but you know, again, when when you read uh the account of Stephen and you just get that glimpse of man, they they laid their tunics at the feet of you know a young man named Titzal.

And that's crazy.

He was there to help.

Yeah, he was there.

He was giving consent.

Why didn't he pick up the stone?

And he highlighted that about himself.

He was giving consent when Stephen was being stoned.

He was he went about with decrees to lock Christians up and throw them into prison.

And torture them.

Torture them.

A lot of tickling going on.

Yeah, and you guys remember the church wasn't receiving him at first.

What did you say?

A lot of tickling going on.

Oh, Ray, I'd love to see you.

Oh no, don't even talk about it.

Do you need to raise your hand?

I can tell Mark to do that if I want to.

No, no, no.

So yeah, so that that's a big deal.

Um yeah, of course, the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, that was huge.

Came down from the north, massive dispersion there.

Yeah.

Uh, but yeah, but let's let's get to Nicaea.

Nice Nicaea was huge because of its theological impact.

325 AD, we've just jumped 300 years.

Look at that.

If you guys want to hit other things before that, let me go ahead and do it.

Well, the pre-Nia pre-Nica uh years were very important.

Tell us about them, right?

They were just important, they were very significant.

Yeah, so so I think that was huge.

Of course, Constantine called that uh, and the main reason for it was addressing the Aryan controversy.

Was co was Constantine a good guy or bad?

There's none good, no not one.

Yeah, I would say Constantine was an instrument of God uh for stuff like Nicaea.

So I think in spite of himself, whatever his motives were, whatever.

So what did he do?

He he said Christianity is the religion of the state.

Is that right?

He officialized Christianity.

Yeah.

He he didn't call the Council of Nicaea, though.

He he allowed it to be conducted um under his protection.

There's not there's because he I think one of the arguments against Christianity is that Constantine called it, oversaw it, affirmed it.

He had very little to do with it.

He allowed it to come to be.

And so to your point, he didn't Christian.

This is super important.

Uh Constantine did not Christianize Rome, he pluralized it through the edict of Milan.

In other words, he allowed Christianity to be legalized and protected under law.

The reason he did that is arguably that he converted to Christianity, arguably.

Um, but nonetheless, it's just super important to be clear.

Constantine legalized Christianity.

He did not Christianize.

So it's with Stein.

With yeah, so yeah, so again, an instrument in God's hands.

I mean, we look at these different characters in church history, and not just church history, I'd say biblical history, going even back to guys like Nebuchadnezzar, like Cyrus, that God uses instruments in his hands, and you'll see glimmers of them, you know, giving glory to the God of Israel.

Were they really converted, were they not?

We don't know.

So, but but again, it's credited to Constantine because whether it, whether it was something that he called or not, uh it's his authorization of it made it possible.

Had he not done that, it couldn't have happened.

So, what do the council of Nicaea establish?

So there there were a number of things that established, but but one of the biggest things was affirming the the deity of Christ and and the the the triune nature of God.

And so um you know, especially especially that Christ was divine in nature.

Um, you know, and again, Athanasius was he was a deacon back then at the council, he became a key defender uh of orthodoxy in that time.

But you know, Arius, that guy was a big troublemaker.

This this could have split the church, and it was it was massive.

So yeah, if uh if you guys want to add anything to Nicene.

I'm excited to hear Oscar.

Honestly, because I I know that he knows so much about this, and you get excited to talk about it, and I like get excited to listen.

Very little.

Um I also, yeah, I mean, Council of Nicaea is huge.

I love uh one of the things I really enjoyed about Bullies and Saints is that John Dickens does a really good job of showing us all of the examples of you you mentioned biographies of of men and women who who were uh who were doing God's work that we don't hear about because of the Titan moment of the Council and Nicaea.

Uh, and so one of them is.

Basil of Sissory.

He points out that Basil was the father of the first hospital.

And you have to, that sounds so like, why is that that big of a deal?

You have to understand that back then the only people that would receive medical care, legitimate medical care, is people of great authority, kings and wealthy individuals.

And if you didn't have money, which was 95% of culture and society that time, and you got sick, you're probably going to die unless your neighbor rubs some dirt on it in the hopes that you would live, right?

And Basil came along and he read God's word and he realized that everybody deserved medical care, whether you were a homeless or a traveler or an abandoned child or someone with leprosy.

He says, uh, he he gave this sermon, actually, and we have a quote from the sermon.

It says, The bread you hold back, he's talking to the rich, the bread you hold back belongs to the hungry.

The coat in your chest belongs to the naked.

The silver buried in the ground belongs to the needy.

And because of him, Thomas Aquinas, 900 years later, goes back and attributes hospitals to Basil, who basically looked out in the world, saw image bearers, and said, We need to do something so that nobody just gets sick and dies.

Well, I struggle with that.

I when I'm on my bike, almost every day I find homeless people just lying on the sidewalk, and I think that's someone's child, you know, some girl, she's in her 30s, just lying there asleep with a blanket over and nothing.

I was like, what do they do when they get sick?

Where do they go?

Where do they sleep at night?

Aren't women vulnerable to being raped in the night?

And how do they get their money?

And I think different things.

It's just so we've we've kind of failed when you think way back to basil and think what happens now.

You can't just throw money at the homeless because of drugs and alcohol and all this stuff.

Yeah.

And yet at the same time, you know, I I found it it's uh it's so important that we're careful because it's easy to lose compassion um in in certain circumstances because of the abuse of certain things and where people are at.

But even the homeless person who is being deceptive or who's a drug addict or who's lazy, they're still within the camp of lost.

And we can't forget that.

They need the gospel.

And I think oftentimes we might look and say, Well, we we gotta be careful.

Okay, great.

Well, you may not give them money, but but are you gonna give them the gospel?

And you can do something tangible.

Everybody needs to eat, right?

At some point in some way.

And there are times where we have to say, okay, am I gonna go to erring on the side of, well, I give them money that's gonna, I'll give them food that's gonna enable them, versus like, well, I'm gonna give them the gospel.

Maybe no one has ever paused to do that with this person.

I'm not just gonna give them a tract, even, I'm gonna sit down with them on the on the pavement and just look at them as you mean.

I'm gonna put my hand on them and show them warmth.

Like those things are big.

If it's a male, if it's a male, yes.

And you're a male.

And but but I think church history gives us examples of people who in their time, because there were contextual things where society maybe rejected certain people for certain reasons, like our modern cases, but they still had that heart of compassion that reached out to them and loved them.

Even those that would go to the prostitutes and and reach them in the in the spirit of Christ, you know.

If Christians won't, who will?

Yeah.

Now I was gonna say the entire family, Basil's family is quite remarkable.

The daughter, the the oldest daughter inherited all the it looks like it.

The oldest daughter inherited uh all of the wealth from the family, and it was a large, wealthy sum.

And she basically made the family go broke helping Basil start that hospital.

And then his younger brother, Gregory of Nyssa, he's the first Western philosopher to ever write against slavery.

Mind you, this is 335 to 395, hundreds of years before abolition even began.

Um, but he writes, he has this famous quote when he says, Whenever a human being is for sale, nothing less than the owner of the earth is led into that sales room.

He was recognizing the image-bearing qualities of these slaves.

This is 335, hundreds of years before abolition begins.

Yeah, and then I I think another event that's important to note is the fall of Rome, uh, you know, AD 476, because again, Rome had a massive influence ultimately or eventually in the spread of the gospel.

Uh, but you know, what happened was, and this again could have negative effects as well, when Rome collapsed, you then have people turning to the authorities, the spiritual authorities in that time, which were bishops.

And they they, you know, and but that ended up, many believe, leading to the papacy uh as well.

And so, so I think that's a good one to note.

Did Rome fall because of immorality?

I think that was at the root of it, but there were political factors as well.

Tom Holland's book, Crossing of the Rubicon, talks a lot about Rome's fall.

And I think we try to oversimplify, I think everybody tries to oversimplify the fall of Rome, but it was a it was a collection of events.

There was definitely quite a bit of immorality.

There was also they spread themselves just simply too thin and could no longer protect their borders.

Uh so there's there's infighting amongst uh you know different Caesars and who was considered lord.

Um so there's there's quite a bit of reasons.

And I think you I'm really glad that you just said what you said, which is that history is sometimes muddied because there is something, something dark began to happen in in Christianity, which is the Catholicism, in that uh after after um Ambrose, uh Christianity became Romanized, in which they began to care more about authority and power than about service and sacrifice.

And when Rome fell, uh something beautiful happened in that the church protected literature and art, and they continued continued to provide care when there was no political power.

But it also, so one, there's a lot of good that happened, but there was a lot of bad that ended up happening too, in which they they stepped into political power when uh when Christianity was never meant to be a political movement.

Yeah, it's interesting.

Oscar reminded me of a quote uh there was some godly man that the Pope was touring through the Vatican and he was showing him all the treasures and everything they had, and then he said, I guess we could no longer say silver and gold have I done.

And the guy replied, and then neither can you say, in the name of Jesus, get up and walk.

So powerful.

And so um, yeah, I got the chill just thinking of that.

But no, those corrupting elements that were there, you had good and bad again as well.

Um, but Mark, I'd love you to touch on this in terms of like when we look back in history, because the next thing I wanted to touch on was the great schism 1054 between East and West, you know, the Orthodox Church and Catholicism.

But but but the the element of things that we can trace back both East and West to pagan practices that were going on, like the idolatry and the bowing down before statues and stuff like that.

Because a lot of people look and and this is what I mainly want you to focus on that that because these churches have history that they must be true.

But that's not always the case.

Just because something is old, it doesn't mean it's true, because there's a part where it could have departed.

Take Ray, for example.

Yeah, I often say when I'm out sharing and somebody says, Well, Christianity borrowed from other pagan religions, you know, with without even going into uh great detail concerning that, I will respond back and I'll say, just because uh something is old doesn't mean something is true.

We we have to remember that, right?

Antiquity does not validate truth.

Truth is truth.

Uh man has been swallowing nonsense since the dawn of time.

And that does not mean that truth does not exist.

And just because there's alternate views and thoughts and different worldviews that exist doesn't mean that uh one of them is wrong or that uh they're all right.

Right.

So um, yeah, antiquity doesn't necessarily mean something is true.

Jesus said, sanctify them by your truth, your word is truth.

And so if we want to know what truth is, uh we we have to open up the word of God.

And when we start talking about uh Eastern Orthodoxy, Russian Orthodoxy, Greek Orthodoxy, uh there's a schism even within themselves, right?

There's no agreement uh amongst themselves.

You know, when you enter into uh maybe uh that sort of worldview, that denomination, and they begin to say, Welcome home, you know, uh we alone had have uh uh the laurels of history.

You know, we're able to trace back all the way to uh uh Peter.

Nobody else can do that, but we've done that.

And then we have uh the Greek church or the Russian church or the Roman Catholic Church that'll say the same exact thing.

And uh we we need to be careful with that, right?

Because none of that holds any weight to what scripture has to say, right?

So if you're not meditating on truth, you're gonna believe lies are true.

And so the only way we can know what truth is is by opening up God's word, and there we get the very heartbeat of God.

Amen.

Yeah, Ray, I'm glad earlier you went back to Acts and you mentioned Acts.

Um the the significance uh of that book is just so powerful because it shows us, I think more than anything, dependence on the Holy Spirit.

You think of Paul citing, you know, but you know, the setting them apart and waiting on the Lord, and the Holy Spirit said, Send send Paul and Barnabas, or the Spirit forbade us to go into Asia.

I mean, do you see almost um a forgetfulness of the Spirit in the church today, like a lack of dependence on the spirit?

Oh, absolutely.

I I think we've forgotten the book of the book of Acts is the blueprint for the church.

It tells us exactly it's not it's not received by a lot of stuff we're talking about, it's just got to be received by faith.

We we've got it written in God's word, God breathed.

This is what the early church did.

And I've often said when the Holy Spirit was given, the disciples did not stay in the upper room and carpet it out and put a little sign outside saying tonight, seven o'clock, or welcome.

They went open air, they began to preach, and that was their that was their mission.

Um, and they said we cannot but speak that which was seen and heard and in jeopardy their lives.

They stayed with that agenda to preach the gospel.

And when they got kind of lazy, uh it took Saul of Tarsus to create havoc within the church.

Therefore, they were spread everywhere preaching the word.

And that's what the modern church needs to go back to, the book of Acts.

So many people are raising their hands and worship God and failing to reach out their hands in evangelism for God, and that becomes nothing but an empty hypocrisy, drawing near to God with our lips but our hearts being far from him.

So I'd love the church to get back to the blueprint of the book of Acts, so we would have the same power that they had in the book of Acts.

Wow.

I love it.

Man, you know what came to mind as you said that, Ray?

I um I'm thinking of what Jesus talked about, what's highly esteemed in man's eyes.

It's an abomination in the sight of God.

And I'm thinking of like these highbrow academics, you know, who just sit around pontificating about scripture, often infused with liberal theology, but yet still claiming to be disciples of Christ.

How disgusting that must be to the Lord.

They don't lift a finger to proclaim the gospel, they don't lift a finger to love their neighbor as themselves, to live, to honor and glorify God.

I mean, it you just think of the day of judgment.

And I and you know, again, it doesn't have to be those that just do that.

But I just I think man, we need to be careful that this applies to all of us, that we be careful how how much we get uh to a place of being so absorbed with that knowledge that it puffs up that man, we're not fulfilling and living out the Christian call.

It reminds me of when I caught fire making a cup of tea for your wife.

Oh, remember that story moves rather quickly.

Was it Leonard Ravenhill said uh the only reason why we don't have revivals because you're willing to live without it?

Whoa.

Yeah, that's bad, right?

Yeah, and and that and uh I'll let you, Oscar, but that one saying of you know, if the sp if the spirit were removed from the church today, would we even notice a difference?

Right.

Because we're so busy with everything that's going on.

We have uh a church gathering, a meeting, we have events, we have teachings, we have coffee gatherings, we have there's something for every single moment of the day.

Yeah, it's pretty good.

We haven't paused and lack of dependence on the Lord.

Right.

It's the Laodicean church says that it's rich, but it's poor, poor, blind, wretched, miserable, and naked because it's left its first love, it's forgotten the cross.

Yeah.

You know what's interesting is that I I feel like there are so many people that are getting a sense that that's what's going on in the church.

And what's fascinating is that there's a a rise in new church attendance that's being led by Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

Um, but what's fascinating is that the big box church of experience has not seen that rise.

This the rise is being amongst smaller churches.

And one of the things that more interesting as you dive into that data is that uh liturgical churches are seeing an increase as well.

Not that's a liturgical church.

Liturgical would be uh experientially, what a liturgical church would be is like a church that would have a call to worship, a benediction, uh a prayer of confession, and more than that.

Uh it is a it's usually thought of as more traditional.

If you think of like, so liturgical doesn't have to be Catholic, it doesn't have to be Presbyterian, but traditionally, when you think liturgy, you think those, and that and that there's a process.

And original liturgy, side note, because I'm a big fan of liturgy, original liturgy was meant to walk you through the gospel.

The idea was if the preacher misses it, you always have the liturgy.

That's why there's a call.

Uh there's a call of worship, there's a prayer of repentance, there's an assurance, and then there's a benediction ascending out at the very end.

So these are liturgies.

But anyway, in addition to that, there's also been a fascinating increase of people attending Latin-speaking churches that don't speak Latin.

Like the person attending doesn't even speak Latin.

Old school.

In addition to that, there's also people starting to move towards Eastern Orthodoxy.

All of this, uh, all of this, so there's a book called Um We Are What We Love, and the author, James K.A.

Smith, he looks at all of this and he says, ultimately, what we're looking for is transcendence.

Because the modern church, what ended up happening in the 80s and the 90s, is that churches wanted to compete with entertainment.

And so they started building these bigger, more comfortable, highly air-conditioned churches.

They started hiring worship leaders that were wearing, you know, bedazzled sports coats looking like, yeah, like Ray.

Um, the bedazzled sports coats coming in and they started creating church as a place of entertainment, which is a very man-centered way of seeing things.

They're ultimately competing with entertainment and they're competing with the mall.

And here's what's happening is that beginning with millennials and moving down, we're we can be, if we want to be entertained, we can be out, you're never gonna out-entertain the entertainment industry, right?

You're never gonna out-consumer the mall.

And so you've substituted transcendence for something that you'll never win at.

And the reality is that these younger generations, they want transcendence.

When people built buildings and built churches in the 1500 to 1800s, the architects got together and they thought to themselves, how can when somebody walks in the church, how can they be their breath be taken for them, from them?

They they sense awe and wonder, almost as if the gap between heaven and earth has gotten slightly more thin.

That's why those big cathedrals exist today.

And so I think isn't it funny how those big churches force you to whisper?

That's right.

You're right, because there's this sense that there's something more important.

This this isn't about me.

But when you walk into a modern church today, who who whispers?

It's more like, where's my cappuccino?

You know what I mean?

And so I think, you know, I love that you brought up, I love that you brought up this challenge of Eastern Orthodoxy, because here's the thing to the to the younger person listening, I don't think Eastern Orthodoxy is not the answer.

I don't think I know Eastern Orthodoxy is not the answer.

But I also sense your angst that the modern interpretation of church is not the answer either.

I think the answer, maybe it's liturgy, but it's definitely historical theology.

It's not a church building, it's it's historical theology, which is essentially why we care so much about churches.

I agree.

And then I also think prominence given to the word of God is essential.

And I think that when we talk about a lot of these churches that you know, Generation Z and or and um Alpha are leaving, uh, it's because there's such a weakness in the word.

You know, I mean, I think as some of the churches that we know that are preaching the word with authority and power, I don't think anyone there feels a lack.

You know, they may not be hyper-liturgical, there is liturgy to some degree, but but the word of God has has prominence, you know, and so the these younger generations are seeing almost the the kind of laxity within the church.

Like there isn't that it's just kind of like, yeah, and then and then they're seeing almost the the the um I'm trying to think of the word, sort of the frivolity of just the fun and games, the circus atmosphere.

Yeah, superficiality.

Yeah, that's a good word, right?

Yeah, so I think I think that's happening.

Okay, we went ahead a few more here.

So I'm not gonna get too deep into the the great schism, 1054, of course, East and West, Orthodox Roman Catholic Church.

Uh, they were they were dealing with different things they were disagreeing over, like the Filioque, um, you know, in the Nicene Creed, which is that the spirit proceeds from the Son, or is it just from the Father, or is it, or does he proceed from the Son and the Father?

Um, there were liturgical differences, um, whether you use leavened or unleavened bread and communion, whatnot.

Anyway, it ended up being this excommunication back and forth between East and West.

Constantinople was gaining primacy, you know, at that time and and basically battling with Rome.

So then we get to the next massive hallmark, which is the one I really want to get to, was the Protestant Reformation, 1570.

Why that one?

Why is that important?

Porque, pero but yeah, man, the Reformation, Luther.

I mean, I often think of what era in church history would I've wanted to live in.

It would have been a tumultuous one, but but to have seen a man like Luther, you know, step up against the monstrosity of the church.

And I think sometimes we think of Luther as this figure who was this, you know, big like cardinal within the church that did this.

He was a priest and then he became a, you know, he was a doctor of theology and he was, you know, teaching at a at a seminary basically.

But but man, how grateful I am to the Lord for Martin Luther, as flawed as he was, and he was, and for the reformation.

You and I went together to see a movie.

Oh, we didn't.

Yeah, I didn't know they had cameras in those days.

It was amazing.

Yeah, it's about it's a documentary.

Hmm.

So, yeah, so so let's let's get into that.

Um, you know?

It all launched basically with, I mean, it was brewing, but the pinnacle was that that fateful day when when Luther nailed the 95 thesis to the church door.

You think of how much uh camaraderie that we have amongst each other.

And if you guys were to all die, I four more people, five more people, a hundred more people.

I've got there's churches on every corner.

There's people who don't bow their knee, there's people who worship the Lord.

And God, don't get me wrong, God has always had his remnant.

But somebody like Martin Luther, you know, he it's not like he had a lot of support that that was around him.

You know, he he blazed a trail.

He said, a religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing is worth nothing.

And he went against the grain, he went against uh the Pope himself.

And he he basically said something along the lines of that he would teach a uh a young boy the word of God better than uh than the Pope, something to that degree, right?

And that's how important that the word of God was to Martin Luther as he gave the word to the people by and large.

A lot of words that we have inside of uh the English Bibles because of Wycliffe and people like Luther and things of that nature, you know.

So the what we have today, it almost makes it easy to walk with God, but that's not what happened.

That's not how the Reformation came in and took place, you know.

And I'm so thankful, as you are, as you guys all are, to uh people who rose up and just said, you know, though you kill me, though you slay me, uh I'm going to rise up tomorrow and I'm gonna give my all to the word of God.

And they were ones, like we talked about earlier, where Raven Leonard Ravenhill said, you know, the only reason why there's no revival is because you're willing to live without it.

Well, these guys were not willing to live without it.

They they wanted their lives to burn, and what happened is a lot of their bodies ended up burning so that we could have the word.

So when we talk about the reformation, it might be good if we give a little synopsis of what it was, because a lot of people listening, like me, uh, don't really know what, or didn't really know what a ref the reformation was.

And it really was birthed in the confessional where Luther saw his sin and couldn't get rid of it.

And and he read the just live by faith, and it just exploded in his heart.

Realized salvation's a free gift of God.

And suddenly that burden rolled off his back, and that was his motivation to knock him back.

I would say uh the Reformation was a culmination.

Yeah.

You know, it was it was the the the climax of what had been brewing.

You know, often we and and this is the big error that that a lot of well-meaning Catholics or or even Orthodox would make.

It's as if though, like all of a sudden there were these new believers who had different views, but you trace church history all throughout, and there were those who were who were rebelling against the the what became the norms of quote unquote the church.

Yeah, and the Catholics teach they they act as if we believed that Christianity began in the 16th century.

Right.

Right.

Come on.

Yeah, ridiculous.

No, God always had his remnant, that there were always those.

I mean, we can trace them back to the Waldensians and even before way before that.

I mean, there were there were strands of people that stood up.

But again, the Catholics also pretend like the church sprung up, like the Catholic Church in its current form sprung up in the first century of the church.

Of course not.

You can you can trace back and look at the different things that were not there and then and then and then got there.

And like I said earlier, they trace back to, I believe, the connections with the pagan cultures around them.

And that in the West, it was the the pagan Roman culture, in the East, it was the the pagan Greek culture.

So, Oscar.

Yeah, I I I love that you meant the culmination.

You said the culmination is something because something that stood out to me in um, I think it was Bruce Shelley's book that he talks about history, and he says more often than not, we want to talk about history as like this one hero, this one moment.

And that's because it's easy for us to wrap our head around a moment, but history often works more like uh more like the rising of a sun, in that at some point it's just up and it kind of was just coming along the way.

And the reformation is very similar.

Um, you know, we we often go to the 95 thesis, but uh others would say actually it was the invention of the printing press that democratized the Bible and made literacy possible, made all these guys finally be able to read and study and develop their doctrine and their theology, and that led to Luther's 95 thesis.

And the one other thing that I want to mention about Luther is that Luther did not seek to be a rebel.

He he was not He tried to work things out.

He was trying, it's called the Reformation because he was trying to reform the reason why the stapling the 95 thesis on the wall was not a weird thing.

He didn't invent that.

Theologians and and communic uh people who worked at the church, these doctors, these uh these teachers would often staple a thesis to the wall to start a conversation, not always a debate, but always a conversation.

And so that, like we often think, whoa, crazy, where did he get the idea of no?

That was a very common practice.

And the goal of Luther was to reform the church.

The church, the Catholic Church, made him a rebel because they refused to reform.

So doesn't exactly the same thing happen today when we try and get a Catholic to understand the gospel?

They come back with you hate Catholics.

Yeah.

So often there's not an ounce of hatred in our body.

We just want to explain what scripture says that you can be saved by God's grace alone, and you don't have to do works.

It's as simple as that.

And that's what Luther discovered, and that's why he was so demonized.

And it's spiritual, that's what's behind it.

And that brings us to the five solas.

Yeah.

So yeah, so you've got the you've got the solas.

I mean, uh his his big the big contentions were sola scriptura, sola fide, and then you had the indulgences, of course, Tetzel.

What a wicked guy that Tetzel was, man.

I think we need to explain a few things we're saying here, like sola, what does that mean?

Yeah, so sola means only or alone.

So um, and so sola scriptura, scripture alone, sola fide, faith alone, uh, not works, because that was obviously the big contention as it related to the gospel, the indulgences, the sacraments.

Um, those were the big things, but but the the solas um were were were huge and they dealt with scripture alone, faith alone.

Um uh they dealt with scripture alone, uh Christ alone, glory of God alone.

Grace alone, grace alone, salary, gracia.

So yeah, so those those were those were essential and they were a big part of of what happened, and we saw the the impact there.

I'll let you guys weigh in on any.

Well, the Catholic Church has always believed in grace and faith and wanting Christ to be glorified, and they believed in uh scripture, um, but it it's that alone, it's that sola that separates um Christianity from the false religion of Catholicism because the Protestantism comes along and says, No, there's nothing you can add to this.

You know, it's grace alone, through faith alone, by Christ alone, as found in Scripture alone, to the glory of God alone.

No, that there is nothing that we can add to that.

And so when I'm talking to a Catholic, I remember I was open air preaching and a Catholic came up to the microphone, and I got so excited to tell him about the solas, to talk to him about grace alone, faith alone.

No, there's nothing that you can do, you don't understand.

This is gloriously good news, yeah, and this is what makes it good news.

And that's why it's the gospel means good news, not good views, right?

So, how was his reaction?

Uh I think he was just kind of in awe, just kind of like like tripping out a little bit as he was just kind of watching me because I was so excited about it.

It did it didn't change him.

And um, oh, it's a seed planted.

Yeah.

I think it's also important to recognize the Reformation wasn't bringing new ideas to the table.

It was restorative in nature.

If you think about like an old classic car, it comes off, it comes off the factory line, brand spanking new, no missing bolts and no rust.

And over the course of uh, you know, the course of of years and years and years, 1500 years, um the the Catholic Church collected rust.

They lost their bolts.

And what Luther and other reformers wanted to do is restore it back to its original form.

And so one of the big arguments, you know, that I'll hear often is like, oh, is this new, these new ideas that they were bringing in with their with their views of law, because they were they were studied as theologians and lawyers.

But they were quoting, they were quote quoting, you know, constant, I'm sorry, they they were quoting old church fathers like Augustine and uh and Polycarp and uh Ignatius.

They the the reason like that they were looking back on church history and trying to bring forward the originality, the purest form of what was originally understood as grace.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, so thank God for the Reformation and Ray?

Um did Luther didn't have the scriptures as we have them to point to for authority during that time.

Am I correct?

Uh no, he would have.

So the common people could say, we know what you're talking about, Luther, because we have the scriptures.

Oh, you're talking about the common people.

Oh, I see what you mean.

Yeah, yeah.

No, they they didn't.

That was his whole aim.

I see what you mean.

Sorry, I misunderstood.

Yeah, they they that that was what he aimed at.

That's why he spent so much of his time sequestered translating, you know, um, into the common language.

So we have an easier job than than Luther did in trying to convince a Catholic that what we're saying is gospel truth.

Yeah, it's it's more readily available.

We can have them look at it, but at the same time, though, many have it, but it's as if though they Don't because they never look at scripture in order to understand.

So, so anyway, so much more to say.

I I had wanted to get into the the translation of the English Bible, uh Tyndale.

Um of course, we will say, and you'll probably say it again, we love Catholics.

And last Saturday I had a Catholic that was bigger than Mark, he's about six foot six.

Oh, I saw that.

And it was just so wonderful um that he was thirsty for the gospel when he heard it, and when he came up from prayer, he went to kneel down at me.

And I freaked out.

Is that what they do to the priests when they give them communion?

They kneel down.

Yeah, was that what his habit?

They'll they'll at least bow lower to receive the communion.

But when I lifted him up, I looked at the video afterwards and I saw him smiling.

Wow.

It was really precious.

He was still taller than you, Ray.

He was on the box.

He was huge, yeah.

You didn't want him to bow, but you did have him kiss your ring.

Yeah, man.

And I would have loved, and maybe we should do one on this.

I don't know if we have or not, but just on the evangelical Great Awakenings, you know, the 18th century with the right, you know, Edwards, Whitfield, Wesley, you know, so much good stuff.

So there you have it, friends.

We hope that's encouraged you.

Look, this this was meant to just whet your appetite, to help you realize that there's so much out there for us as believers to know and understand, and that you can be encouraged by.

What are you guys doing?

I took a picture of the wall because it looks so it looks so realistic that it's 3D.

It doesn't matter.

Just carry on with what you're saying.

Right, right.

So there you there you have it, friends.

Don't forget the blue book of evangelism and all the other great stuff at livingwaters.com, podcast at livingwaters.com with your thoughts, comments, send them in.

We'll read them.

Maybe you'll be famous.

Thank you for joining us, friends.

We'll see you here next time on the Living Waters podcast, where we have no idea what we're doing.