GYC 2017: Arise

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

500 Years Later: Is the Reformation Still Relevant?

Michael Hasel

1. The New Roman Empire: The Modern Rise of the Papacy

This message was presented at the GYC 2017 conference, Arise, in Phoenix, Arizona.

For other resources like this, visit us online at www.gycweb.org.

I have my own microphone, I was just told.

1 is my voice and the other is we have a very small screen up here.

And so, particularly for the art presentations, that's going to be a little challenging.

But I encourage you to sit as close to the front as you can and try to get as much as you can as well.

Our presentation today, this morning, The New Roman Empire, The Modern Rise of the Papacy.

I took the beginning of this title from the cover of a recent Time magazine that didn't make the cover in the United States, but this was the cover of Time magazine, very interestingly, in Europe.

In the United States, it was Bernie Sanders that got the cover, And this particular image was inside Time Magazine.

But this was the cover of the European International Edition.

And it was very interesting, and I thought this was very remarkable, the new Roman Empire, the global reach of Pope Francis.

And If you've been watching what has been taking place, and we'll be doing this today, you'll be seeing how phenomenal the breadth and the speed in which things are happening are gaining momentum as time goes on.

Giselle and I were living on the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean, and I was on a Fulbright fellowship there for the year and was writing a book, and my wife was there with our young children, 4 and 6 years of age.

And I still remember the day, April 8th, as the world tuned in live, and All the television stations in Cyprus, this little Mediterranean island, third largest in the Mediterranean, all eyes were focused on this 1 event that was taking place.

It is estimated that 2000000000 people were watching worldwide.

USA Today had this to say, never have so many world leaders come together for a funeral of a religious leader.

Never has such a funeral drawn the interest of so many.

It was a choreographed public relations masterpiece.

Pope John Paul's funeral brought together what was at that time the single largest gathering of heads of state outside the United Nations in the history of the world.

It surpassed the funeral of Winston Churchill, which had taken place in 1965.

There were 4 kings present, 5 queens, at least 70 presidents and prime ministers, and more than 14 leaders of other religious groups, including non-Christian groups.

It is likely to have been 1 of the largest single gatherings of Christianity in history, with numbers estimated in excess of 4000000 mourners gathering in Rome itself.

The previous map that I was showing you here shows the heads of state that attended based on their geographical locations.

And you can see that this was a worldwide event.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the patriarch who is in charge, at least in title, of all the Orthodox churches, was in the honorary first seat in the sector reserved for delegates from churches not in full communion with the Holy See.

This was the first time that an ecumenical patriarch, or any orthodox patriarch, attended a papal funeral since the great schism in 1054.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, who at that time was Rowan Williams, was also present at the papal funeral, the first time since the Church of England had broken with the Catholic Church in the 16th century, the first time that the Archbishop of Canterbury was present for a papal funeral.

Perhaps most shocking was this image, at least for Protestant Americans.

3 former presidents of the United States kneeling before the caskets, at least 1 of them appearing to be in prayer.

It is quite humbling And amazing to see an image like this.

And we will be able to unwrap that a little bit more as our seminar goes on today.

Certainly Revelation 13, that great chapter that documents the rise of the sea beast, that documents that rise in history was being fulfilled in these events.

Revelation 13 says, and I stood on the sand of the sea, and I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having 7 heads and 10 horns, and his horns 10 crowns, and on his head's a blasphemous name.

Now the beast which I saw was like a leopard, his feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion.

The dragon gave him his power, his throne, and his great authority." It was through historical time that this sea beast, Together with the little horn of Daniel 7 and 8, and the man of sin in 2 Thessalonians, were recognized by many early on already as representing the Antichrist power.

Even early in the Christian era, and I don't know, sometimes we as Adventists think that we invented these ideas.

But the fact of the matter is that we are just at the end of a long legacy of men and women who lived and died for their faith and who had identified this aspect of biblical history, in biblical history, as the Antichrist power.

We have to go all the way back to the third century, just a few, less than 200 years, or less than 100 years after the death of some of the apostles, where Irenaeus of Gaul believed and connected these 3 aspects in the Old Testament and the New Testament with the Antichrist, although not yet exactly identified.

We have Tertullian and Hippolytus, all identifying these symbols with the Antichrist, although at this point none made a specific designation in history yet, because its fulfillment was when?

So there was no identification of the Antichrist because its identification was not ready to be fulfilled yet.

But by the end of the first millennium, when we have Arnuf, the Archbishop of Rheims, by the way, the Archbishop, that means he was a Catholic Archbishop, clearly made the identification with the papacy.

And this identification quickly grew into a crescendo with the Protestant Reformation.

By the time of Luther in the 16th century, many before him, including Wycliffe and Jan Hus, Jerome and others had already died and been martyred for their faith and for their convictions.

Luther was very clear, and I invite you to read a recent article published in a brand new book on the Reformation just published a month ago that's available through the ABC by Pacific Press, an article by my colleague Dennis Pettybone that talks about Luther's growth in identifying the Antichrist power in his writings throughout his lifetime.

But it's very clear that Luther also identified this beast as the papal power.

The papal empire and the imperial papacy which brings the secular sword under its control.

Other reformers followed so that this would become 1 of the clearest rallying cries of the protest.

There are historians today that say the Reformation would not have happened if it had not been for the historicist identification of the papacy and prophecy with this particular identifying mark in Revelation 13 and Daniel 7 and 8 with the little horn, and in the Man of Sin in 2 Thessalonians.

What led Martin Luther to identify the papacy and the church in this way?

And here I want to make it very clear that Martin Luther was a Catholic, and many of these early people were Catholics, and there are outstanding and godly Catholics today.

In fact, I spent Christmas with them just this week.

As we were sharing with 1 another, they were sharing about their faith, and I was sharing about our faith, and we were able to witness with 1 another.

We're not talking about individuals here.

We're talking about a system that has developed over time.

We want to talk about this in great detail, particularly in the second presentation in the series this morning.

It was the characteristics of the system which matched the biblical descriptions.

Anyone who witnessed the events over the last decade, as Martin Luther and other reformers have pointed to many years ago.

But as we've witnessed the events of the last decade, which we're gonna talk about right now, we would certainly think of these verses in Revelation 13, 3, which we haven't read yet.

The end of that passage, talking about the sea beast, and I saw 1 of his heads as if he had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed, and all the world marveled and followed the beast.

We're seeing the healing of the deadly wound taking place in front of our eyes, I believe.

Today, all the world is marveling at what appears to be the new face of Rome.

Everywhere we turn, we have a smiling Pope, a new face kissing babies, speaking of love, upholding the family, and the importance of saving the planet, working together for the common good.

The rallying cry has been to defend Christianity against the martyrdom that it is experiencing in many countries around the world.

Everywhere you turn, the popularity of this pope has been contagious.

Time Magazine called him the person of the year.

The sense he gives is of a reforming church, a kind of revival, a pope for a new world.

All we need to do is add 1 word to the end of that, don't we?

Even National Geographic describes him as a pope who is remaking the Vatican, almost suggesting, not almost, suggesting that this pope is going to change the Catholic Church.

And certainly he has been doing that in terms of its perception anyway.

1 recent book describes it as the Francis miracle because it's amazing how many people this pope connects with.

It's amazing to see what is taking place.

Rock stars are even enthralled by this pope.

Rolling Stone magazine has him on the cover.

Pope Francis, the times, they are a changing.

The question that we want to ask today, are they really changing Or is this just a facade that is taking place for the purpose of ecumenism?

And when Pope Francis visited America for the first time in 2015, it was wall-to-wall media coverage, wasn't it?

Let's put his visit into a little perspective.

Since 1620, When the Puritans escaped religious persecution in the old world and arrived in the new world in Plymouth, Rock, do you know how many popes there have been in Rome?

There have been 34 popes, but only 4 have ever visited the United States.

The first in 1965, I want you to think about this for a moment.

The first in 1965, And when President Truman tried to put an ambassador at the Vatican from the United States, it caused such a stir in America that he almost lost the presidency and he quickly withdrew that idea.

Today, nobody is batting an eye at any of this.

In other words, it took 345 years for a pope to visit this country.

And that visit was for only a single day.

And of course, this was Francis's first visit.

2. The Revolutionary Protest: Just a Misunderstanding?

The next 3 presentations are really the heart, This was more the introduction that we just had.

The next 3 presentations are really going to be the heart of the seminar and then the last presentation will deal specifically with what our mission and message as a Seventh-day Adventist church needs to be today.

And I truly believe that as a Protestant Reformation movement that we have been called for such a time as this, and We're gonna go into that tomorrow in tomorrow's last presentation.

So I wanna begin this presentation with a word of prayer, and then we'll get into it.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your presence in this room.

We thank you for your love for each 1 of us, and we ask that you would bless our time here together and we thank you that we have the truths of your word and that we can rely on your word today.

We pray that as we compare your word in this presentation with some of the teachings that led to the protest many years ago.

May we resonate with the truths of your word.

In the first presentation, I began with this slide of Pope John Paul II's funeral in 2005, a choreographed public relations masterpiece.

And within 5 years of that event, I documented how the Supreme Court went from a majority Protestant court to a two-thirds majority Catholic court, and that in 2017, that configuration remains the same.

Within 10 years of that event, just 2 years ago, Pope Francis was addressing the joint Congress of the United States and it was a media sensation with wall-to-wall media coverage in this country and around the world.

We are certainly reminded as Seventh-day Adventists of the prophecy of Revelation 13 verse 3, and I saw 1 of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed.

And all the world marveled and followed the beast.

We talked about how Everywhere we turn, we see a smiling pope, kissing babies, speaking of love, upholding the family and the importance of saving the planet and working together for the common good.

And just a few weeks ago, we celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

And we are being told in the media and by the ecumenical events around us that it's time for us all to come together, that it's time for us all to be inclusive.

Culture demands, after all, that we put aside our differences and simply focus on the common things that we hold in common.

During the break, somebody asked me about that.

That's what our culture is pushing for in the ethos that we live in today.

And some have said and have gone so far as to declare that the Reformation was based on a misunderstanding.

And that is in fact, And in fact, Lutheran did not understand properly the teachings of his church.

Today, I would like to suggest in this presentation and in the 1 that will come tomorrow that there are in fact 2 fundamental causes that sparked and upheld the protest by the early reformers.

Those 2 is the belief in the Bible, Sola Scriptura, and the historicist interpretation of prophecy that derived from the study of the Word of God.

Has Rome really been misunderstood or has the protest simply waned with time?

To answer that question, this morning we will look at several contemporary sources.

You know, 1 thing that I've noticed over the years as we have attended many times evangelistic meetings and as we've listened to presentations, many of our sources are dated sources sometimes, aren't they?

And while those dated sources are important, because we know that the Catholic Church doesn't really change in its fundamental makeup and its fundamental being.

It is important to look at contemporaneous sources.

This morning, I want to look at the most contemporaneous sources and look what is being taught and what is being said today, as in the last few years, particularly by this current Pope and by his encyclicals.

The Reformation stood on the imperative, the first by the way of the 5 solas, because from it derived everything else, sola scriptura, or the Bible alone.

This was based on the internal example of scripture itself.

The New Testament writers, according to 1 estimate by a Princeton University theologian some years ago, the New Testament writers employed 2, 688 quotes, not allusions, not paraphrases, but quotes from the Old Testament in their writings.

They allowed Scripture to not only inform, but they saw Scripture as continuing through their writings in the New Testament.

And we want to look today at Jesus and what he taught.

Because Jesus was a man that was fully founded, was Christ the Messiah, God, who founded himself and who subjugated himself, submitted himself to the living word of God.

He was the word of God according to John 1, right?

But he also submitted himself to the word of God.

And if we are Christians today and Christ is our example, we too, thank you so much, Daniela, we too must submit ourselves today to the living word of God.

Jesus has just been baptized, and after his baptism, he goes into the wilderness.

And as he goes into the wilderness, and is there for 40 days and 40 nights, what happens right after that?

The devil, Satan, comes and tempts Jesus.

It is written every single time to every temptation that the devil throws at him.

What does he do after that first, it is written?

He comes back and quotes scripture as well.

But the devil, who knows scripture better than any of us probably ever will, because he's been around a lot longer and has been studying it much longer than we have, He loves to quote things out of context.

So Jesus, when he quoted scripture, was quoting it in context and was quoting it particularly to combat what was being said.

It is written, we can finish this, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." That is a powerful testimony.

If Jesus can say that, certainly we need to say that today.

We need to be men and women who stand by the word and who refute by the word.

In Matthew 5 verse 18, Jesus tells the Pharisees, not 1 jot or tittle will pass from this law until all is fulfilled.

And in the last presentation we've seen how prophecy is being fulfilled today.

In John 5 39 Jesus says, you search the scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life and these are they which testify of me." In John 10.35, Jesus says, Scripture cannot be broken.

Now this is very significant because as we saw in our previous presentation, what is often happening today in the ecumenical dialogue between churches is that Scripture has been broken.

It's been broken into minute pieces through the historical critical method and by presuppositions that destroy the very authenticity and divine revelation and inspired nature of Scripture.

And when you do that, Scripture can become fluid, and you can do what you want with it, because the church ends up creating scripture, man creates scripture instead of God.

And when he is praying to his father in John chapter 17, for his disciples, which I believe can be extended to you and I that are here in this room today and listening today.

Now it's interesting that this verse comes just a few verses before the verse that is being touted today as the major verse to bring ecumenism together.

But the basis of that oneness, the basis of that unity, Jesus has said a few verses earlier, is what?

Not the counsels of men, not the decisions of ecumenical bodies.

So today what we want to do is we want to go back to the word.

That's what the reformers did and that's what we need to do today.

If Jesus is our example, should we not be standing on the authority of God's word today?

Even in his last words on the cross, in his agony as he's hanging on the cross, Jesus quotes Psalm 22.

He's quoting scripture, the last words that he speaks on this earth.

Before his resurrection, he quotes scripture.

Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

The word incarnate, Jesus Christ, submitting himself to the authority of the living word of God.

And Ellen White has that beautiful picture that even though Jesus in his agony and with the weight of our sins crushing him at the cross did not see or recognize in that horrible moment that the Father was standing there at his side.

The Protestant reformers stood firm on the Word of God because they knew that the Roman church had placed tradition equal to and ultimately above the Word of God.

And the Word of God provided a freedom to the reformers that they had never felt before.

Luther, if you study Luther, if you watch that wonderful film that came out, I think it was in 2003, on Luther.

I wish for 1 of our seminars here we could just show the whole film.

And as a monk, as he beat himself, as he languished in his cell, he felt a complete, complete separation from God.

Giselle Hasel

4. Art as Artillery: The Papal Counter-Reformation

All right, let's ask the Lord's presence.

Dear Father, thank you so much that we are part of a golden thread of truth that has been handed down through the generations and looking towards your second coming.

Lord, We want to be as faithful as the reformers were.

We want to be bold, courageous, and have the conviction that they have.

We need to memorize it, we need to know it, so that this conviction will penetrate every cell of our body.

We know this is what we want to live and die for.

And that we are willing to do this because we are going to see you and your face soon to be coming to make things right.

Please be with us this afternoon for 1 more lecture.

Help us to stay awake and give us the mental stability and energy and help me to have the presence of mind.

Use my lips, speak your words through me Lord.

Art as artillery, the papal counter-reformation.

I say this with a little bit of a clause because really the counter-reformation effort in art started after the Council of Trent.

So I'm going to start a little earlier than that.

So we'll just lump it together, but it's not really all counter-reformation.

I want to first, just because I believe in the power of art, and I want to share that power with you, I know it's a lot to learn.

There's a lot you have to learn to really use art and to understand art sometimes.

But really, it's not rocket science, okay?

At Seventh-day Adventist, we actually know a lot about art, and I'll tell you why.

He is the ultimate artist where we get all of our ideas from, because all of art comes from nature.

We get these things from God, and we remix it into our own experience, and we express our ideas.

And it's an amazing thing that we can take part in this thing called creativity, right?

We do it, some of you like writing poetry, some of you like writing music, and some of you like the visual arts.

And if you look at the heavens, what does the Bible say?

The heavens declare yeah, the glory of God.

And it also says in john 1, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.

So God has an amazing power because his word can make things happen.

And in that sense, I wish it would be much easier for me as an artist.

Man, I have an idea, just speak it and boom.

But what I want to get to is that nature reveals God as an artist, Christ as an artist.

And Christ does this Because he's showing us his love for us.

His art, by default, shows us his mind, shows us about his character.

There's actual in art, the Fibonacci rule, I don't know if you, yeah, there's actually something that keeps repeating itself in nature.

And you know that whoever designed this is the same person.

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500 Years Later: Is the Reformation Still Relevant?

1. The New Roman Empire: The Modern Rise of the Papacy

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Parts

1. The New Roman Empire: The Modern Rise of the Papacy

52m

2. The Revolutionary Protest: Just a Misunderstanding?

1h 10m

4. Art as Artillery: The Papal Counter-Reformation

57m

5. The Protest Continues: The Remnant through Prophecy

1h 20m

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