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0:53And largely, I believe, because this isn't something Halloween isn't something that starts so simply. Yeah, there may be one in Western civilization that a date that may have stuck out, or a Celtic festival, or some kind of festival that is celebrated, and commemorating the dead, linking to the dead. But when you look around the world, there's those kind of celebrations all over the World. There's all kinds of practices, and they're not just in Western world, they're not a phenomenon of the Western world, but they're really a phenomenon of humanity. And so it's hard to pin point one specific day. It's more of a disposition of humanity to seek the spirit world, to understand the spirit world by means other than God has ordained. It's been that way. Where did why do little boys love mud puddles?

2:07It's not because some grandfather somewhere down the road just liked mud puddles and just passed it on down, right? It's something within humanity. And so, you know, I know there's those out here, there are those that think today somehow the spirit world gets closer, the division point becomes the thinnest, and so the ability to link, connect, intersect with the spirit world is easier on certain days of the year. But we know the truth. We know this is a beautiful day, a glorious day that God created.

2:56And so I don't think it's just so simple. There's an infatuation. With the dead and a desire to understand the spirit world by means of communicating with the dead and celebrating the dead. And God makes it very clear from the very beginning that His people are not to have anything to do with that. In fact, this interest, this inquiry into the realm of the dead, God specifically forbid way back in Deuteronomy 18. If you remember the very cultures that were in Israel at the time, God brought Israel out of Egypt and He said, Look, I'm bringing you into the land of Israel, which would become Israel. And he said, But it's not because you guys are a bunch of great people. It's because the wickedness is so bad in that land.

4:03And so, like in Deuteronomy, before God sends children of Israel into the land, he says, There shall not be found among you anyone who practices witchcraft, interprets omens, or a sorcerer, one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For whoever does these things is detestable to the Lord. You want to know one reason why we don't pray to saints? We don't call up the dead. We're particularly forbidden to do so. There's one mediator that we are to direct our prayers, even good saints, right?

4:54That's one reason why we see a direct prohibition here in Scripture for us to pray to anybody except to the Father through the name of Jesus Christ. That's the way into the spirit realm. That's the way to have your prayers heard. But the thing that God makes very plain is whoever does these things is detestable to the Lord. And he goes on to say, and this is exactly why I'm kicking these people out of the land. And if you do these things, if you get caught up in these things, you too will be kicked out of the land.

5:34And so this infatuation with death, he can survey cultures all around the world throughout time. There's cultures that would actually go out and dig up graves, even today, dig up cemeteries on certain days, and that they felt that somehow there was a communication with all that spiritism, all that's communicating and. Making inquiries into a realm that God has given us light. He's given us what He wants to understand about the Spirit realm. There is certainly a spiritual realm.

6:14There is certainly the spirit world. And God wants us to understand it. And He wants us to understand it through the words that He has given us. By the way, I'm going to get up here and visit or just talk for a while on some of these Reformation thoughts and notions. I have a lengthy PowerPoint, but I'm not intending to, we don't have to get through it all. But I realize there's a great event coming up here in a little bit to watch Luther, a good version of it. And so I do intend to move us on out of here for that. But I do want to just talk about these Reformation thoughts, lay them out before you, and they're going to come in several ways and several streams of thought here, and some of it will just be a stream of consciences.

7:23But there are these times when God, when we rediscover truth. The children of Israel go into the land. The God of Abraham had come and visited them, brought them out of Egypt. It was a great time of truth. God had given His law to the children of Israel, entered into a covenant with them, and there was great light, there was understanding, there was excitement, and yet very quickly, they get into the land, and Israel obviously has all kinds of problems. They drift away. They go into the land. They are established in the land. God raises up a king. And it's not too long before they are doing the very things that God forbid them to do, right here in Deuteronomy 18. Now, you remember it got so bad that right after Solomon, there was a civil war, really. The nations split.

8:32There were those that went to the north, those that stayed in the south, and the ten tribes to the north. And Jeroboam took the leadership of those, and he set up two golden calves, and he set one up in Bethel, and he set one up in Dan. And if you've been to Israel, you've probably been to the one in Dan. And he said, Here, Israel, you don't need to go all the way down. To Jerusalem, you can worship God here. Behold, your gods, these calves. And then there was this prophecy that came. It said in 1 Kings 13, Now, behold, there came a man of God from Judah to Bethel by the word of the Lord, while Jeroboam was standing by the altar to burn incense. He cried against the altar by the word of the Lord and said, O altar, O altar, thus says the Lord, Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name, and on you he shall sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and human bones shall be burned on you.

9:49And I remember it was on this verse when we first had our son named Josiah. I don't know if he's here. Is he here? I'm going to embarrass him, but anyway, we would hold him up as a little baby and say, look, I'm going to go burn some bones. I'm going to go burn some bones. And it was based on this passage right here. People are like, what are you talking about? Go to 1 Kings 13. Josiah's going to go burn some bones, right?

10:20And so you come to 2 Kings 22, and this is exactly what happens. It's a period if you. You'll remember great darkness. The ten tribes have just totally given over to idolatry. And then in chapter 21 of 2 Kings, Amon, 22 years when he became king, and he reigned two years. He did evil in the sight of the Lord, a great evil man. But he has a son named Josiah. In chapter 22, Josiah was eight years old when he became king. And he reigned 31 years in Jerusalem, and his mother's name was Jedediah, and the daughter, Adiah. And he did what was right. Here's the point. He did what was right in the sight of the Lord. And he walked in all the way of his father David, nor did he turn aside to the right or to the left.

11:33And so then in the process, he says, now in the 18th year of him, it's like 26 years old or so. He says, go up into the house of the Lord, Hilkiah, go up in there, and that he may, let me just read in verse 4, go up to Hilkiah the high priest, that he may count the money brought into the house. House of the Lord, which the doorkeepers have gathered from the people. Let them deliver it into the hand of the workmen who have the oversight of the house of the Lord, and let them give it to the workmen who are in the house of the Lord to repair the damages of the house. So you got all these workmen in there that are repairing the damages to the house of the Lord, to the carpenters, and to the builders and to the masons, and for buying timber and hewn stones to repair the house. Only no accounting shall be made with them for the money delivered into their hands, for they deal faithfully. So they go in there, they've got all this construction project, and you remember what happened. What happens?

12:37They find something, right? Verse 8. Then Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. The book of the law. They found the Bible. All these centuries, Israel had neglected the Bible. And so, as a society, they fell into biblical ignorance, superstition. They were away from God and they were under the curse of God. They find the Bible and they begin to read. This is one of those periods in time where truth was rediscovered. And Josiah, he listens to the word and he tears his clothes because he's so. Upset. He's got a soft heart towards God's word, and he understands why God's curse is upon the land, what's going to happen, and he gets very concerned, and he prays, and he calls out, and he then goes and burns some bones. He goes and he burns some bones. He says, that's it. I get it. We're taking out all these mediums, all these spiritists, all this superstitious, all this pagan nonsense. Even Solomon had built a whole bunch of shrines. Josiah goes and takes them down.

14:13He goes through, it says, chapter 23, the king, he burned all the, he took all the vessels that were made for Baal that were in the house of the Lord, and he burned them outside in Jerusalem. He broke down the houses of the male cult prostitutes which were in the house of the Lord. Think about just how bad. And he brought the priests, he burned, he tore down, in verse 10, he also defiled Topith, which is in the valley of the Son of Hinnom, that no man might make his son. Or his daughter passed through the fire to Melech.

15:04They were sacrificing children. He's like, we're done with this. He did away with the horses, which the king of Judah has given to the son. He takes down the Ashtaroths. He takes down the sacred pillars. In verse 14, he broke in pieces the sacred pillars and cut down their ashram and filled their places with human bones. And then it wasn't enough. He cleans the land. And then in verse 21 of chapter 23, the king commanded all the people, celebrate the Passover to the Lord your God, as it is written in this book of the covenant. Apparently, they had forgotten who they were, forgotten where they had come from. They reinstitutes the celebration. Surely, such a Passover had not been celebrated from the days of the judges who judged Israel, nor in all the days of the kings of Israel and of the kings of Judah. Now, that's a lot, right? But in the 18th year of King Josiah, this Passover was observed to the Lord in Jerusalem. Moreover, in verse 24, Josiah removed the mediums and the spiritus and the teraphim and the idols.

16:20Verse 25, behold, before him there was no king like him. Before him, there was not a king like him who Turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might according to all the law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him. That's a pretty prophetic pedigree. No one like him before, no one like him after. And so he is this man who discovers truth. He embraces truth, and he leads the people in truth. And I want you to see something in Jeremiah. Jeremiah chapter 3, verse 8, verse 6.

17:18The people got excited. There was some superficial turning. There was a number of people who turned. They were excited about Josiah's reign and the word that he found, but a lot of people just went with it a little bit. They were excited about the truth for a while and they let it go. It was a superficial change for many. Then the Lord said, and this is Jeremiah chapter 3, verse 6, then the Lord said to me, In the days of Josiah the king, remember the days of Josiah the king? Have you seen what faithless Israel did? She went up on every high hill and under every high hill. Every green tree, and she was a harlot there. I thought, after she has done all these things, she will return to me, but she did not. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it. Judah saw what happened to Israel and what God did. And I saw that for all the adulteries of faithless Israel, I had sent her away and given her a writ of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear, but she went and was a harlot also. Because of the lightness of her harlotry, she polluted the land and committed adultery with stones and trees. Yet, in spite of all this, her treacherous sister Judah did not return to me with all her heart, but rather in deception, declares the Lord. Truth was discovered. It was embraced by many.

19:00But there is an ongoing need of discovering the truth. And we who have found the truth need to keep rediscovering that truth and keep walking in that truth. Because what happens is times of darkness then come after. And you see this pattern throughout scriptures. You see this pattern throughout church history. You remember, of course, if you were. These are some artists. This is an artist, right? Jackson. I asked him to put some paintings for me or whatever, drawings, renderings. And this is something I showed on Friday night: capturing the concept of what Christ, when he came and walked among us again, it was a time of great discovery of truth. God incarnate has walked among us. God is here. And you see on the one side, you see the concept of John 3. You see an old house.

20:09It's condemned, right? Condemned. And have you ever seen the houses around in our city that when they get too old, they get condemned, right? They're not fit for human habitation. The city decides they're no longer fit for anything but to be torn down. They are to be stayed away from, right? That's what a condemned building is about. It's no longer fit for human habitation. It is not a safe place. It is to be destroyed. That's what the word condemned means. And so Jesus comes in John 3 and he says, Look, I didn't come to condemn the world. The world was already condemned. This is the state of the world without God, without specifically Jesus Christ, God's Son.

21:00This is the state of humanity. This is the state of you. This is your current condition. If you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ, this is you, unfit for a place for God to dwell and a place of grief, sorrow, unfit for what God created you to be, what He created humanity to be. But then we get this truth that Jesus said, I came that they may have life and they may have it more abundantly. So you see another house, the same house, actually, renewed, refreshed, born again, if you will, restored. And that's what needs to happen. You need to be born from above. You need God in you. And He comes in us by understanding that God sent His Son, put him on a cross as an expression of love for us and as the means to rid us of our sin, to be forgiven judicially and to change us on the inside, transform us as a place where God can inhabit us. And the two houses are two very different. But that's the truth.

22:30So when you this Christ comes and he shined and then the following centuries there was excitement as the word of God went forth. There was persecution, there was opposition, but the church, the church grew in light of some of the most fiercest, fiercest opposition. What do you see here? Where you see a woman strapped to a stake. You see others. This is just one example of some of the martyrs. This is a sketch of a martyr mother. You see her child there, and these are those who would not deny Christ. And this is just one image. They would stake him in the, this is just one place, one instance.

23:26And then this place, they would stake them close to the water and let the waves come in. And they'd give them time to recant, to turn away. But they didn't. In fact, let me give you, this picture reminds me of a noble Christian woman. You may have heard her name if you've studied history, Perpetua. Perpetua, and I'll just read this to you. Perpetua was a Christian noblewoman who at the turn of the Of the third century, lived with her husband and her son in Carthage.

24:06At this time, North Africa was the center of a vibrant Christian community. It is no surprise when the emperor who decided to cripple Christianity, and this is Septimus, he focused his attention on North Africa. Among the first to be arrested were five new Christians taking classes to prepare for baptism. One of them was Perpetua. So she's getting ready to take a baptism class, getting ready to go and follow the Lord. But this Roman suppression comes in, and they felt like this Christianity undermined Roman patriotism, and they took her. Her father immediately came to her in prison. He was a pagan, and he saw an easy way for Perpetua to save herself. He entreated her to simply deny she was a Christian. So here comes her father. Don't go through with this. Just deny you're a Christian. She holds up a vase, and she says, Father, do you see this vase here? She replied, Could it be called by any other name than what it is? No, he replied. Well, neither can I be called anything. Other than what I am, a Christian. He threw himself down before her and kissed her hands. Do not abandon me to be the reproach of men. Think of your brothers. Think of your mother. Think of your aunt. Think of your child who will not be able to live once you're gone. Give up your pride.

25:56Perpetua was touched, but remained unshaken. She tried to comfort her father. It will all happen in the prisoner's dock as God wills, for you may be sure that we are not left to ourselves, but are all in his power. The day of the hearing arrived. Perpetua and her friends were marched before the governor. Hilarianus, Perpetua's friends, or the governor was Hilarianus. Perpetua's friends were questioned first, and each in turn admitted to being a Christian, and each in turn refused to make a sacrifice. This is the time of the emperor worship. Come and offer the sacrifices to the emperor. This is what the churches in Revelation are facing when we were in our morning study. The emperor worship, the cult.

26:53They wouldn't do it. The governor turned to question Perpetua. At that moment, her father, carrying Perpetua's son. In his arms, he burst into the room. He grabbed Perpetua and pleaded, Perform the sacrifice. Have pity on your baby. Hilarianus, probably wishing to avoid the unpleasantness of executing a mother who still nursed a child, added, Have pity on your father's gray head. Have pity on your infant son. Offer the sacrifice for the welfare of the emperor. Perpetua replied simply, I will not. Are you a Christian then? asked the governor. Yes, I am, Perpetua replied. Her father interrupted again, begging her to sacrifice, but Hilarianus had heard enough. He ordered the soldiers to beat him into silence. He then condemned Perpetua and her friends to die in the arena. This is just one story of countless sacrifices. These people loved the truth. They understood the truth. They were born again by the truth. And you can't take, you couldn't separate them from the truth because they were born of the truth. Can't be anything other than what they are. And here's a sketch. I have old books. I can't keep up with old sketches and stuff like this. Here's a sketch of a group of Christians awaiting in an In an arena waiting to be taken out into the arena. Well, you can imagine how this happens. You can just get a picture of what those moments were like. Here's another one: a picture. What do you see in this picture? Talk to me.

29:02Yeah, he's asleep. No, he's asleep. He's restful. That's a picture of a Christian. You can see the cross in his hand. He's sleeping. What's going on around him? The arena, and what's happening? He's about to be taken out there. You see the Roman there opening up the gate, and you hear the crowd, the crowd behind the scene of all this. Now, let me tell you, these things would happen after they've already had the gladiator games. They've already had their evening of entertainment, and then the crowd would say, Enough. It's time for a Christian to die.

29:51And the crowds would roar, the hatred toward Christians. It's time for him to bring. Out a Christian. Let us see a Christian die. And this catches that moment. And countless youth like this, restful, peaceful. I mean, you see our youth. You see our young people this young, this strong, this much in front of them, yet so committed to the truth, could be in perfect peace. And such was the story of many, many martyrs. Now, let's suppose this was your brother. And let's suppose it was August 4th, and this happened. What would you want to do the next August 4th?

30:52You'd want to remember him, right? Now, suppose one of these is your mother, or your aunt, or your uncle, or a brother, or a sister, or a friend, and one was on January 15th, the other one was on April 3rd, and the other one was June 17th. What would you want to do? You'd want to remember them, right? And then you'd want to remember them, right? And then you'd want to remember them. And there were so many that they would just fill up every day of the calendar. So what would They do? Let's pick a day and have a Memorial Day.

31:37We kind of do that here, right? We have a Memorial Day. Why? To remember those who have fallen. And if we remembered the actual day, what would happen? Every single day, right? Would be, well, so you can think about what starts to form here: a Memorial Day. And it would happen All Saints' Day. You would start remembering the day. You'd remember all the Christians on a day. And so All Saints' Day really begins as a memorial. And it's different in different parts of the world. Why do you think that is? Well, if you're in the eastern part of the world, they would celebrate in the spring. Well, maybe a big event happened then. Maybe there was a lot of people who died on one day.

32:34Maybe they just chose that day for whatever reason, but you'll have these different Saints' Days to remember the martyrs. Well, what starts out very good can become darkened, right? And so by the time you get to another episode in church history, you've got. Martin Luther, and all of a sudden, it's like Josiah of old, he has found the Bible. And at this time, October 31st is All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day, the eve of what does he do? There's an issue going on with the church there in Wittenberg, and with really the Roman Catholic Church all over. But really, this is his area. This is a monk. I don't really believe, I'm not even sure, I would almost say that he isn't a believer at this time, Martin Luther.

33:44He's got some issues because the church is actually selling. They've got relics. They've got, here's a saint's foot. Come rub the foot, and you will have some kind of spiritual power granted to you. Maybe it was an amulet. Maybe it was all kinds of, maybe it was a skull, maybe it was bones. They had all these kinds of relics. And instead of remembering the dead, remembering the martyrs, it had become something very gross, superstitious. And so it's on this day. That Martin Luther goes and nails up, and it's no accident. That's a very, the celebrations for All Saints' Day would begin the day before, you know, the eve, October 31st. And so you start, you've got this mixture of a bunch of different, and you would see this syncretism with all kinds of Celtic, paganism, and just, well, Germanic and all over, and you would have sort of these mixture. Remember, this is the concepts of communing with the dead and all that. This isn't just a date that somebody picked on the calendar. This is a disposition of humanity, and this is what happens when we walk away from truth. We start looking for spiritual guidance from other sources.

35:23And so this is what's happening with a lot of what the church is promoting and doing. And so Luther, what really begins as a matter of authority. He's reading his Bible. And what is this? This is a little picture, I think, that describes the one big issue of the Reformation. And what is that? What do you see there? You see the Bible on one side, you see some scale, right? You see like a, well, You see some scales, right? What do you have on this side? The Word of God. What do you have on this side?

36:12You have monks, you have priests, you have relics, you have traditions, you have the keys, you have cardinals, you have, and then what do you have here? A demon or a devil, right? And the devils, right? And what carries more weight here? The Word of God. And that's really what it's truth. We have found truth again, and truth outweighs all these other sources. And so, out of that, you have the five points of the Reformation. Well, what is the first point? What does this one speak about? Sola, what? Scriptur. The Word of God alone is the final authority. That is the key premise of the Reformation, right? Scripture is the final authority. What's another point? Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, for the glory of God alone.

37:30And that's the issue. Those of you who are going to watch Luther, you're going to, this is the issue. How does one go from being in a cursed state to a blessed state? How does one get there? That is the age-old question of humanity. And God has given us His light. And we get there, right? Based upon the Word of God alone. Salvation comes by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

38:05Well, the thing that didn't get touched upon in the Reformation, and I can see I've talked much of my evening away already, that issue of Scripture alone, salvation by grace alone through faith alone, and Christ alone to the glory of God alone, is really what the movie's about. Soteriology. Let us correct the doctrine of salvation through the lens of Scripture. But there's a how did they get there? How did they get there? Well, there's an issue that the Reformers, the early Reformers, really didn't address. That I believe is the root, or even one of the more watershed issues. And that is ecclesiology. They dealt with soteriology. What is soteriology? The doctrine of salvation. What is ecclesiology? Doctrine of the church. So we could say the church. The watershed issue not addressed by the early reformers was their perception of the church. That is what I believe is what sets the stage for them to go so far off in the doctrine of salvation because they misunderstood themselves, their authority, and everything else. I'll just, first of all, the Roman Catholic Church saw themselves as replacing Israel in terms of blessings and duties. In other words, they see that God divorced Israel and basically gave the spiritual blessings and duties to them.

40:05The Roman Catholic Church saw the church as being composed of believers and unbelievers. That's why they baptize infants, right? Listen, in Israel, you could be an unbeliever and be part of the Mosaic covenant. Did you know that? Because the Mosaic covenant was for your, for you and for you. For your children, right? So when you were born in Israel, guess what? You were under the law of Israel. When you were born in American, guess what? You're under the law of American. You're in covenant. You're in responsibility to the laws, right? Well, same is true with Israel. Israel, if you were born in Israel, the males were circumcised as a mark that they were part of this covenant, right? They were in. You were born into it, regardless of whether you believed or not. You were born in it. And so you were part of this Israel nation structure. You didn't have a choice. And as Scripture, some were believers, some were not. But they were all part of that covenant. Well, the Roman Catholic Church, they make this link between circumcision and baptism. So just like you would bring a child into Israel, you would do the same. And so you would have unbelievers. I mean, listen, infants have not believed through faith alone. The only way they can be part, they're brought into this covenant, but they're not believing by faith alone. They don't. Somebody else has believed for them, which when you come to Scripture, No, each one of us must believe. And so one of the key distinctives of Baptists, they kept going with this, right? Regenerated church membership. Only those who are born again are part of the church. This is huge. This is huge. That's saying, well, we'll even to this day. And it's interesting because what happens is then Lutheranism really kind of stays there. I mean, with a couple of exceptions of some traditions within Lutherans, some veins and schools, largely you've got Lutheranism in that time period, right?

42:50Still with a lot of the Catholic hangovers. They didn't change their ecclesiology largely, and I'm speaking in, you know, obviously this isn't true of all of them. Some of them have continued to reform in many ways. But they're there. The word reform, the reformers, kind of get picked up. The name reformers kind of start really more with Zwingli, who taught some of the initial Baptists, and the Baptists went forward with the, kept going with it, and they actually started baptizing. And then That didn't set well with the church-state world there, and Zwingli started drowning them. So then you have another area. Calvin was far more friendly to Baptists, to the Anabaptists, probably because he saw a cute little one and married her. That probably had something to do with it, but a far more, you know, in Calvin's Geneva, a place of working through these issues. By the way, just as maybe a side note, what would you do if all of a sudden you see all this border crisis, all these people teaming at the border, wanting in? What would you do if all of a sudden we had, I don't know, 20,000, 30,000 refugees, and they came here to Steep Hollow, and they came here, and we were to be the ones, this church was to form a, or to receive them and to govern them.

44:44That would be kind of challenging, right? Welcome to Calvin's Geneva. All these refugees coming in, and it's kind of like, what in the world? And he receives them, and he sets up, and you know what he does? He sets up, he says, for the refugees, Reformation to continue, there's going to have to be a public education system because only illiterate people can read the Bible and understand the Bible and apply the Bible. And so, guess what? We have our whole Western public school system coming out of Calvin's Geneva. So, if you're one of these today that believe, you know what, the whole purpose for reading, writing, and arithmetic and to think logically is primarily so that people can pick up their Bibles and understand what God's Word says.

45:39That's Reformation. Thank the Reformation for that. There has to be some level of literacy to come to the Scriptures, to be trained in them. So, that was their ecclesiology. They saw themselves replacing Israel. They saw themselves as composed of believers and unbelievers. They also saw their priests as mediators. And I want to say this: if you go and read the catechism, they see themselves as mediators, little M, for the one mediator, Jesus. But effectively, they become the ones who are the go-between between the big mediator who is the mediator to God.

46:30And so where people put the Lord's table, where you get the elements, right, where you see that in a church says everything says a lot about their ecclesiology, and it says a lot about how they view their priests. If you go to some churches, Roman churches, you'll see the table up here. And what do you need? You need a priest to bring Christ down, right, to you. What do we have here? Even in other ones, you'll see it in different places. But where they put that says a lot about their view of the priesthood of the believer. We have it right here, right? Why? There's one mediator we all have access. There isn't another between us. But what is another distinctive of Baptist priesthood of the believer?

47:34And so the Roman Catholic Church saw themselves as the dispensers of salvation, having the keys. What they loose is loosed. And so that but it was behind a lot of it was their ecclesiology that I believe led to their faulty soteriology that so Stirred Luther to action. And so there is an ongoing need for reformation. I'm out of time. I would like to spend some time on this issue, the ongoing need for reformation. But I think you can just see from our survey there are periods of truth.

48:28There are periods in time when God breaks into our world and to us individually. And He gives us truth, and that truth renews us. We are to hold on to that truth. Continue to grow. Walk in the truth. Walk in the light as you have the light. Celebrate the truth. But let's become more informed by the truth. Let's let it take a deeper hold. Let us not grow stale because we never do drift in a good direction.

49:07Well, maybe that's sufficient for tonight. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do thank you as we remember, Lord, these times where you have intervened our world with the truth, whether it was Israel and Egypt, whether it was. A time when you walked among us, whether it's the time that a monk started reading and understanding your great grace, or whether it's you coming and visiting us individually and the truth, awakening our hearts. Father, we see your hand in the way you've handled this church and way you've led this church. And Father, we thank you. Father, help us to be stewards of this truth. Help us to walk in this truth as we celebrate this truth. We thank you for a beautiful day we had today. We thank you for it. We go with us now in Jesus' name. Amen.