1/4: Descent into Darkness - Light UnshackledLight Unshackled is an on-location documentary on the Protestant Reformation. It contains stunning footage and powerful stories of the heroes of the Protestant Reformation who shaped the course of history forever. Join speaker Phil Mills, Jr., as we travel through 11 countries to share these inspiring stories.http://www.lightunshackled.com

<p>1/4: Descent into Darkness - Light UnshackledLight Unshackled is an on-location documentary on the Protestant Reformation. It contains stunning footage and powerful stories of the heroes of the Protestant Reformation who shaped the course of history forever. Join speaker Phil Mills, Jr., as we travel through 11 countries to share these inspiring stories.http://www.lightunshackled.com</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Light Unshackled

Philip Mills

1. Descent into Darkness

There was a time when the earth was dark.

It was an age of grinding poverty, disease, and death.

They lived in fear of the judgment and hell.

The state church controlled all aspects of life from birth until death.

And for a price, the priest assured a better afterlife.

But this all changed with a new dawn in England.

And once the flame of the Reformation was lit, it was never to be put out again.

This is a story of courage and fortitude against all odds, the burning of heretics and those who risk their lives to follow the light.

It is a struggle of ideas about men's souls, their dreams, and the purpose in life.

The state church responded by hunting down anyone who supported these radical new beliefs to put them to death.

Join us as we uncover the heroic lives of those who led out in this movement and changed the world forever.

In the first century AD, a new religion swept across the Roman Empire.

1 man with a simple life and profound teachings transformed the world of his day.

He claimed to be the Son of God and shared a message that changed lives and gave hope to many.

Paul, who at first bitterly persecuted this new religion, was brought face to face with Christ during a miraculous encounter.

Shocked to think that he might be fighting on the wrong side, he restudied the scriptures.

As the word illuminated his mind, he became convinced that this was truth.

He dedicated the rest of his life to spreading this message.

He traveled 10, 000 miles on foot and thousands more by ship as he carried the message of Christ across the Roman Empire.

In Rome, these new teachings were not popular.

Christianity, by its very nature, demanded exclusive worship of the God of Heaven.

Pagan deities from the surrounding tribes in Asia Minor fit well alongside the Roman gods of Juno, Neptune, and Mars.

Even some of the emperors were considered gods.

Christians called these pagan deities false gods.

It's not hard to imagine why Christianity became very unpopular within pagan Rome.

A battle raged between culture and scripture, paganism and truth.

Such philosophies cannot coexist any more than can darkness and light.

So Paul was arrested, carried down this road to await trial in Rome.

Paul was kept under house arrest for 2 years till his trial.

Once condemned, he was transferred to the Mamertine prison to await his execution.

It's incredible to think that right here was where Paul sat awaiting his execution.

This was not a place where you wanted to be for any period of time.

Paul, being taken from this prison, was beheaded outside the city wall of Rome.

Around the time of Paul's execution, on a hot summer night, a fire broke out in Rome.

It started among the shops near the Circus Maximus and burned uncontrollably for 6 days.

When the smoke had cleared, a large part of Rome lay in the ashes.

Rumors swirled that Nero had caused the fire.

For some time, Nero had wanted to tear down a third of the city of Rome to build a series of palaces called the Neuropolis.

Now, with the city in ashes, he could pursue his ambitions.

As rumors spread that he had caused the fire, he began looking for a scapegoat and his gaze fixed on the Christians.

Pleasure-seeking crowds, craving excitement and entertainment, flocked to amphitheaters and coliseums, where gladiators fought to the death, and starving wild beasts attacked armed men.

It's hard to imagine that this weed-infested field used to be the circus maximus of Rome.

Around the outside of this field, over 250, 000 people would gather.

But it's what happened in between the chariot races that I find most fascinating.

An altar would be set up, and Christians would be dragged before this altar and forced to make the ultimate choice.

With just a pinch of incense, they could save their lives.

But these Christians would not compromise.

Instead, they chose to die 1 of the most horrible deaths that can be imagined.

1 elderly man, Polycarp, a leader in the early Christian Church, was dragged into an amphitheater filled with thousands of bloodthirsty people.

The atmosphere changed as they watched this aged man brought before the pagan altar in the center.

The procouncil, wishing to save his life, offered him his freedom if he would just put a pinch of incense on the altar.

80 and 6 years I have served him and he has done me no wrong.

The fire was lit, but the wind blew the flames away from him.

As the crowd began to express their sympathy, a soldier stepped forward and thrust a spear into his side.

The impact on the onlookers as they watched these early Christians die was evident.

It is said that the blood of martyrs is seed, And when 1 died, many more would spring up to take their place.

Over the next 200 years, persecution of Christians continued in various parts of the Roman Empire.

But in 284 AD, as Diocletian came to power, Christians were to face the worst persecution, they had endured yet.

The Roman Empire was on the verge of collapse.

Diocletian tried to strengthen the empire by reviving practices of the ancient Roman religion, Paganism.

Intense persecution across the empire took place from 303 to 313 AD.

As the terrible persecution raged on, a new emperor came to power who would change the Roman Empire forever.

Christianity was about to face its greatest change and its most dangerous enemy.

The turning point came as Constantine prepared to battle with Maxentius, a rival for the throne.

The day before the battle he claimed to have had a vision of the Christ and to have heard the words, in this sign thou shalt conquer.

Being a man of action he went back to his troops and had them put the sign of the cross on their shields and also make it 1 of their standards to be carried into battle.

The next day, as Constantine's armies marched towards Maxentius, The enemy broke ranks and fled and Maxentius himself drowned in the river here below.

This convinced Constantine that Christianity was the true religion.

He had his soldiers march through the river and told all of them that they were now baptized Christians.

And he himself claimed to become a follower of Jesus Christ.

As the sun set on that momentous day, few realized what had just happened.

Constantine and Rome were embracing Christianity.

In 330 AD, Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to a strategic location in the east.

He named the city after himself, calling it Constantinople.

For nearly 8 centuries, Constantinople was the wealthiest and largest city in Europe.

It was credited with having the most advanced defenses of any city in the Empire.

Constantine also issued the Edict of Milan, which legalized Christianity and supported those who practiced it.

He also mandated that Sunday should become a universal day for rest and worship across the empire rather than Saturday kept by the Jews and the Apostles.

As controversies developed in Christianity, a shift began to take place.

Rather than searching the scriptures for the truth, the church councils or the emperor himself decided the beliefs and doctrines for the church.

These teachings often conflicted with the Bible.

2. Lighting a Flame

The Middle Ages were a time of disease, grinding poverty, and religious corruption.

Most were in Latin, locked away in universities or monasteries.

A Flicker of Flame was kept alive by the Waldensians, who painstakingly copied the scriptures by hand and carefully shared it with others on their missionary journeys.

In spite of the Waldensians' efforts, the state church was still the most powerful political and religious force in Western Europe.

Its persecution of dissenters and heretics forced the truth underground.

It was during this dark hour that a man stepped onto the stage who would herald the coming morning.

He arose from the edges of the Holy Roman Empire in the country of England.

As a young man, Wycliffe arrived at Oxford University to study theology.

He quickly was recognized as a diligent scholar and deep thinker.

While he was at Oxford in the summer of 1348 the Black Death arrived in England.

Hundreds of thousands of people died from this ravishing disease.

Carts would rumble down the streets in the morning to pick up those who had died during the night.

As church cemeteries filled up, many were thrown into mass graves and hastily buried.

There was hardly a family to be found who had not lost a loved 1 to the plague.

Wycliffe was deeply impacted by what he saw, as he contemplated the dead and the dying.

He, along with much of Europe, began to question the traditions of the church.

As a professor at Oxford, he had access to the scriptures.

He began spending more and more time reading them.

And within its pages he found answers and hope to the deep and painful questions surging through his mind.

As England's social conditions were deteriorating, friars and monks swarmed through the English countryside begging for money and food.

Though the monks had vows of poverty, the monasteries did not, and they became very, very wealthy.

The gulf between the church and the people was growing.

Having deeply studied the Bible and the teachings of the church, he found major discrepancies.

He boldly began to preach and write against any unscriptural practice.

He saw penance and indulgences as ways to manipulate people to donate money.

He rejected the idea of confessing one's sins to a priest and that a man could forgive sins.

Based on the Bible, he denounced many of the religious practices of the state church, including celibacy, the authority of the priest over God and the Mass, idol worship, pilgrimages, the veneration of the saints, and prayers to and for the dead.

When the church told the English monarch that he must pay a church tax, Wycliffe spoke to Parliament arguing eloquently that such demand was not in harmony with the Bible.

Wickless influence convinced the king to refuse the financial demands of the Pope, and this he had touched the church's source of money.

In rage that his influence is greater than their own, the church stirred up controversy against him and forced him out of Oxford.

He withdrew to Lutterworth and pastored this rural congregation behind me.

The church thought that this would decrease his influence, but he was about to release the greatest ally to the Reformation.

Wycliffe translated the Bible from Latin into English.

The state church had a long history of suppressing the Bible.

In 1199, Pope Innocent III stated that the Bible should not be in the language of the common person, for the unlearned would be unable to interpret it properly.

The Council of Toulouse in 1229 condemned anyone who translated or owned a Bible.

And just a few years later, in 1234, the Council of Tarragona decreed the following, no 1 may possess the books of the Old and New Testament in the common language and if anyone possesses them, he must turn them over to the local bishop within 8 days of this decree so that they may be burned.

Not only did Wycliffe translate the Bible into English, but he trained a group of lay pastors called Lawlords.

Fanning out across Europe, these men distributed thousands of handwritten copies of the Bible, as well as Wycliffe's writings.

The Church opposed his teachings and writings.

Over his lifetime, Wycliffe was put on trial 3 separate times, but each time he was able to escape.

During 1 trial, he gave a thundering response for his belief in God and the Bible is God's word, and then simply walked out.

It was as if God's hand was over this brilliant scholar, protecting him from a martyr's grave.

It was during this time that the Roman Church was rocked by a major scandal that distracted its attention and protected Wycliffe.

3 Separate men claimed to be the sole Pope of the Church and proceeded to excommunicate the others in what is now called the Western Schism.

They strongly denounced their opponents as being the Antichrist.

Speaking of the Pope of Rome and the Pope of Avignon, France, Wycliffe said that they were 2 halves of Antichrist, making up the perfect man of sin between them.

He encouraged people to look away from the men to the Word of God.

He said even though there were a hundred popes, and though every mendicant monk was a cardinal, they would be entitled to confidence only in so far as they agree with the Bible.

The Western Schism lasted almost 40 years and was finally resolved at the Council of Constance.

The 3 popes were removed, and another pope was elected to take their place.

While the Church was fighting, the truth of God was able to spread.

As the dust settled, the state church began to focus on rooting out the Reformation movement.

They found many in England had accepted Wycliffe's teachings.

In fact, 1 papal delegate complained, you could not meet 2 persons on the street, but 1 of them was a lawlord.

The Queen of England was herself a convert to Wycliffe's teachings and worked to protect him.

During 1 of his trials, she sent word to the council forbidding them to pass sentence against him.

And through her influence, the reformers' writings were widely circulated in her native country.

Wycliffe has been called the morning star of the Reformation.

Just before the sunrise, he was like a bright light in the darkened sky.

Morning was dawning and light was beginning to spread.

As the Lawlords carried the scriptures far and wide across Europe, concepts from the Bible were being embraced by the people.

The Bible had been translated into the Bohemian language, but over time it was outlawed.

In its place, ignorance and superstition took hold.

But the rumblings of change could be heard in the distance.

Jerome, a fiery preacher and professor from Bohemia, came to Oxford University in England to continue his studying.

Well there, he came across some pamphlets by Wycliffe.

While he read them he became convinced that these were truth.

Copying them down he took them back with him to Bohemia and shared them with professor by the name of Jan Hus.

Hus was named after the town he was from, Hacinic, or Goose Town.

His gentle and winning deportment earned him admiration from classmates and professors alike.

He graduated in 1396 and was asked to become a faculty member of the University in Prague.

Over the following years, Hus and Jerome became close friends.

Their personalities complemented each other.

Hus was thoughtful, wise, and discerning, while Jerome was passionate, charismatic, and a powerful speaker.

Jerome encouraged Hus to study the writings of Wycliffe that he had brought back from England.

Hus was intrigued and agreed with what he was reading.

He found Wycliffe's teachings to be supported in scripture and believed the church would benefit from these rediscovered beliefs found in the Bible.

In 1402, Huss was appointed rector of the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague.

It was in this church that week after week, Hus preached, not in Latin, but in the language of his members.

Thousands came out to hear about a Savior that loved them and cared about them personally.

From his pulpit and from his classroom, light was shining and reaching much of Prague and Bohemia and converting them to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The trouble was brewing at the University of Prague.

Johann Hübner, a fellow professor, strongly challenged 45 points of Wycliffe's teachings, including that the Bible was the only basis of authority for Christian doctrine.

He was determined to have Wycliffe's writings declared heretical by the state church.

3 years later, Pope Innocent VII ordered the Archbishop of Prague to suppress the reading, teaching and studying of Wycliffe's writings.

But Hus had seen the light of the Bible shining through the writings of Wycliffe and felt compelled to continue sharing them.

By the time Hus was preaching the Reformed doctrines, just under 20 years had passed since Wycliffe's death.

The church authorities in Bohemia appealed to the new pope, Alexander V.

They were upset at Hus for criticizing the selling of indulgences to raise funds.

He accused the church of acting out of selfish interest.

3. Fanning the Blaze

Europe was on the verge of widespread change, but hope for the Reformation seemed to have been extinguished at the stake following the burning of Wycliffe's bones and the very public deaths of Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague.

The state church was determined to wipe out all heretics who dared to express a different opinion and hurled armies at the reformed states of Bohemia, sparking the Hussite wars.

The Church of Rome rejoiced that the heretics were silenced forever, but this illusion was not to last.

The people's thirst for the enlightening doctrines was not to be quenched.

The prophecy of Hus predicting a coming swan that could be neither boiled nor roasted with nearing fulfillment.

On November 10, 1483, Martin Luther was born here in Eisleben, Germany.

His parents were poor German peasants who desired a better life for their son.

Through great sacrifice, they sent him to the university to become a lawyer.

Luther was a natural student and excelled in his studies.

He would have walked through this arch to enter the University Library.

1 day, while Luther was examining the books, he came across an entire Latin Bible.

Up to this point, he didn't even know that a whole Bible existed.

He had only heard portions of the Gospels and Psalms recited by the priests.

He stood in awe, holding not just a few passages, but the entire Bible.

His soul stirred within him and he thought, Oh that God would give me such a book for myself.

This was quite possibly the beginning of his desire to make the Bible available to the common person in their own language.

In 1505, Luther was traveling back to Erfurt where he was attending school when a massive thunderstorm blew in.

He fought to press on, but fear gripped him as he remembered that a friend had been killed by lightning.

The storm abated, And Luther did indeed survive.

He kept his promise and much to his father's dismay, left law school to join a monastery.

Luther's entire life had been filled with fear.

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Series

Light Unshackled

1. Descent into Darkness

Transcript

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Parent Series

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Recorded

Parts

1. Descent into Darkness

28m

2. Lighting a Flame

28m

3. Fanning the Blaze

28m

4. Passing the Torch

28m

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