How Calvinism Killed the Church - Sardis Part 2 | Faith By Reason

all right let's go to the prophetic level and the prophetic level states as i've talked about before these seven churches in the order in which they were presented represent a history of the church in advance jesus tells the entire church in advance from the apostolic age all the way up to our current age So Ephesus is the apostolic church of the first couple centuries.

Smyrna is the persecuted church of the next two centuries.

Pergamum represents the medieval church from about 400 to 800 A.D. And then the last church that we talked about, Thyatira, represents the apex of Roman Catholicism from about 1000 A.D. to about 1500 A.D.

So if that's the case, if that's correct, then Sardis would represent the next major church age, which would be the Reformation.

And for those of you who listen to the message of Sardis and you're Catholic and you were very uncomfortable because I had some pretty harsh things to say about the Catholic Church and deservedly so.

Well, take comfort in the fact that, again, the next church after Thyatira would have to be Sardis, and Sardis is one of two churches about which Jesus has absolutely nothing positive to say.

So, how did the Reformation happen? Well, there had been after with Catholicism, you know, taking it, it was at its apex as we were in the salad days of Catholicism.

And it was, again, the rule of the mystics of these pagans.

They had taken over the church and they had mixed their pagan mysticism with a facade of Christianity.

And again, they were ruling the church, a so-called church, and then ostensibly in the name of God, but had nothing to do with God or Jesus.

They were still pagans.

So there have been many attempts to reform the church.

People who could read the Bible, and it was very few because the Bible was written in Latin, the Catholic Church did not allow the Bible to be translated into any other language.

They did not want the common people to read the Bible because if they did, they would see that all the nonsense the Catholic hierarchy was putting forth was a completely anti anti-biblical, but the few who were educated and could read it would say, Hey, wait a minute.

This, the Bible has is completely divorced from what the Catholic hierarchy is saying is they're completely contradictory.

So they would attempt to reform it from inside thinking that, you know, the Rome and the Vatican were actually Christian and they would say, well, let's make it right.

But of course the hierarchy of Catholicism would fight against that because the last thing they wanted to do was lose power.

So it was more important to them to maintain their power than to actually reform.

So they would end up using their secular power to destroy physically and economically anyone who would come against them.

That all changed in the late 1500s with a man named Martin Luther.