Sermon Tone Analysis

Over the course of this study specifically in this chapter we have focused on current cultural Trends.

To be honest these things that I am talking about are the whole reason why I got into ministry.

I knew that if change was going to take place it would have to take place from within.

I knew that if the culture was ever going to shift at what have to be from the people of God.

Politicians will not and cannot save us, politicians will not and cannot to save our land.

Only God and his people can be active in reversing the issues that we see.

And the reason why I make such a statement is because sin is the driving factor behind what we see.

This means we are at spiritual warfare add you cannot battle with policy.

To go forward in the fight of spiritual warfare, we have to have a proper understanding of the very written revelation of God.

Because in this written revelation we find how to have the proper understanding of God himself.But it doesn't stop at a proper understanding we have to be able to execute proper application in order for Impact to take place.

I have argued from this pulpit that we are seeing a philosophical change and I don't know what to label this New philosophy that is dominating our culture but the name I would like to give it, the name that I see it taken upon itself, is the post Christian culture.

The church in general is on the decline.

We have more self professing believers fleeing from the people of God then ever before .

We are beginning to see this selfish attitude and the self righteous nature begin to rein in the hearts and minds of God's people.

This could be because The gospel is being buried.

The people of God are burying the gospel, they are putting the gospel in darkness.

That is what we have been talking about over the course of the study is all of this ways of creating Self Help and using the scriptures in order to create this Self Help is The very action that Berries the gospel.

And the result of it is chaos, The laws of God no longer are cared for.

We are seeing absolute chaos and we are seeing a culture who does not know how to respond to this chaos.

We are seeing a culture that is desiring something, and they do not know what that something is, and so they react in very sinful ways.

Those who were to be shepherding the flock are failing the flock by not proclaiming the word of God but proclaiming a self centered message Based on the word of God.

This is not the 1st time that the gospel has been buried.

From its roots the gospel was hostile to the unbelieving world.

It took 300 years for christians to be culturally accepted.

And even then if you were still to the core of the scriptures you still faced persecution.

But 300 years before Christianity was culturally Accepted.

The amount of persecution that took place within those 300 years, historians agree, that There is no way to determine how many were persecuted but they claim that the numbers are higher than any other modern day persecution we have ever seen, including the holocaust.

And then there was a Beacon of hope, there was light for the church.

Rome being the power at be that allowed Christianity to be practice out in the open.

They were finally allowed to own property and have buildings of worship.

Things were going fairly well, at least compared to the 1st 300 years that the christians experienced.

But then wolves have crept in, and Jesus warned us about such wolves.

Men who had power on their minds, men who were Anti-Christ in nature were taking over.

And the did take over.

And one of the 1st things they did was they distorted the gospel until it was buried.

They were using The Bible as a weapon to get people to do what they wanted them to do, including fighting wars.

The men in charge were the ones who were put in other men in charge.

This is actually where the word nepotism came from.

Nepotism is were you favor your family or your friends specifically for a job.

Nepotism comes from the word net poss which is Latin for nephew.

Pope's would make sure it was all their nephews that had positions of bishops and cardinals.

And so the word nepotism came out of that because everyone was noticing that if somebody was going to get this position it was going to be the nephew.

So they controlled who was in charge and made sure that these men were running it the way that they wanted.

Greedy vile lustful men were in charge of the Catholic Church.

And the amount of controversy, cover UPS, and sexual immorality that took place at the highest seat of the Catholic Church was during these times.

Not only was the gospel in the darkness, but the churches leaders or ran by many Anti-Christ.

Some historians even go as far as claiming That you can trace the roots of something that we call today the mafia back to the medieval papacy.

The Pope and his family during the middle ages.

And for several 100 years it was like this .

And the time that we are referring to now was called the dark ages, coincidence?

I don't think so.

And throughout the dark ages you had some strong but very minor voices proclaiming that something is not right.

And each one of those voices were put to death.

Think about that the 1 who is claiming to be the vicar of Christ was the 1 who was promoting the death of people proclaiming God's word.

This is real history and this is the history of our people the christians.

Before Martin Luther the resume in named John Huss and Before John Huss there was a man named John Wiclif.

Both of these men are the original reformers.

They proceeded at the reformation but they were 2 individuals, with the following, That was teaching That it was fundamental that the church get back to its roots.

They challenged the teaching of the Eucharist, the Lord's supper.

And they challenged ecclesiology of the Catholic Church.

Ecclesiology is the doctrine of the church or the doctrine about the church.Both of these men were put to death for challenging Rome.

They were labeled as heretics and anyone who followed them after would Receive the same label.

And by the days of Luther it was deemed a badd to even think about these men.

But when we think about the timeline of the reformers and the gospel coming out of the darkness It is really reformed thought that change the world and not the Renaissance.

Some historians believe that it was the Renaissance that inspired Luther however these 2 men proceed the Renaissance.

It is my belief that the reformation, if we begin at John Wiclif, was the very historical event that brought the world out of darkness.

And it was the very event that inspired the world to wanna get back to its roots.

Which is a century with the reformation is.

When we think about the word reform we think change but that was not the motivation of the reformers.

Not to change something or to improve something.

But because the Catholic Church has deformed the church so much it was time that somebody re formed it, And reform it back to its original form.

So 200 years after John Wiclif, we have Martin Luther over in Germany and all Ulrich zwingly in Switzerland.

While the 2 men did not agree on everything fully, the one specific issue that they were in agreement On was the doctrine of faith.

You see while today many protestants criticized the Catholic Church for their worship of saints, and Mary, and their adoration for the Pope.

Those were not the biggest issues during the time of the reformation.

Actually during the time of the reformation, The worship of saints and Mary were not official Catholic doctrine.

Not at this .

It was practiced but not by everyone and it was not the official stance of the church.

The issue was salvation and the doctrine Of justification by faith.

And after Zwingli and Luther There was John Calvin.

And after John Calvin there was John Knox who led the reformation in Scotland.

And after John Knox there was the English puritans.

And eventually those English puritans took their teachings that came from the reformation and the inspirations that came from the reformation and came to this land that we now call America.

Back then they called it the new world.

The idea was to make a land that was inspired by the reformers.

Now there were many other active people during this time then just the few that I named.

And there was many controversial situations throughout period between Luther and the early foundations of America, there was much controversial subjects.

And some of those controversial subject surrounded Luther and some of them surrounded Calvin and some of them surrounded the puritans.

We are not talking about perfect people.

And the reformation is actually not about the people.

We are talking about a perfect God accomplishing his will amongst imperfect people.

We have not experienced the dark ages before .

We know nothing of this kind of hardship.

But all the signs are there And we are repeating the same mistakes.

Are we have grown so arrogant though we have convinced ourselves that we are a sophisticated societee in there is no way we can fall back into barbarianism.

I Will argue that we already have.

And as I stated earlier I do not think any of these movements are coincidental.

I do not find the world entering the dark ages the same time as the Gospels being buried coincidental.

I do not find the idea of bringing the gospel out of that darkness by way of the reformation and the entire world benefited from that as coincidental.

And the same issues that we seen during the dark ages are making a comeback.