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Last little thing I wanted to do on Islam, but I'm going to skip that today. However, you can do it on your own as homework. Go to YouTube, David Wood, and type in Takiyah. And that's T-A-Y-K-I-A, I think. And if some of you have wondered, sometimes you see on the news where someone who is Islamic has harmed someone and they say, well, I don't understand it because they seem to be such good friends.

Well, when you watch that video, you understand. Because if you go to the Quran, there's an explicit place in there where you have Muhammad telling his fellow Muslims that they must never befriend a non-believer. Now, David Wood points out, fortunately, most Muslims don't even know about that because, unfortunately, like some Christians, but fortunately for Muslims, they don't read their Quran.

And so there can be true friendships between Christians and Muslims. However, Takiyah teaches that you can pretend to be a friend in order to get an advantage over them. And that's what that video explains in great detail, huh? Can you spell that for that? Could you look that up on Google?

Well, how you spell it? T-A-Q. T-A-Q-I-Y-Y-A. Okay, Takiyah. If we have time at the end of this series, we'll watch it, but I don't think we're going to have time. I want to at least get through Wycliffe and Hoos, if I possibly can. You can also Google something like violence called for by the Quran, and there's several dozen commands to commit violence against non-believers if they don't commerce.

In fact, there's, well, we'll get all. All right. Okay, so we're going to do the end of the medieval ages today, and this sets us up for the Reformation. And next year, if y'all so desire, I will just strictly start with the Reformation next summer, if y'all want to do that.

But today we're going to try to end out the medieval ages, and I'm sorry if some of you are guests and weren't here previously. Hopefully, I'm doing this in such a way that you at least will understand what we're going over today, although it really helps you if you had the background.

So, we're talking about the 14th, 15th centuries, and that was a time of incredible, incredible confusion, chaos in the Western world. You got economic depression, you got war, in fact, one of the longest wars in history, the Hundred Years' War. And you got, of course, the Jackaries in France, the peasants' rebellions, if you're in England, all kinds of uprisings.

Risings and rebellions going on during this time. And then at the same time, you got the bubonic plague, all right? The Black Death. Have you ever heard ring around the roses, pocket full of poses, we all fall dead? Is the original, you know, before they cleaned it up politically correctly, but that's all about the plague.

There's pretty grim fairy tales, you know. You know, Grimm's fairy tales are pretty grim, too. All right. So you got the plague. And then in the midst of all this, when folks need the church at the worst time, it fails them quite dramatically, too. And so that's what we're going to be looking at.

But if I could, the person on PowerPoint, you could jump back there and just help me out here. Jump down there all the way down to where it looks like it's talking about the Black Death. I want to run through that real quick. Then we're going to actually do this backwards the way I usually do it.

Can you just click? I'm going to literally run through those two things. Just want to scroll really far down. Yeah. After John Whitehood? Yeah. After Hoos. After the war wagons. Yeah, we're going to learn about war wagons in here. I'm trying to get in the slide yet. I can just go through it myself, I guess.

Well, no, if it helps if I turn it on. All right. Ah, here we are. Okay, Black Death. First appeared in Italy, 1340, swept through Europe the next two decades. Worst of his order by 1360, but it repeatedly plagues Europe. you know, decade after decade after decade. Initially, some towns lost more than two-fifths of their population, and the only refuge was isolation.

And after the facts, you know, you have peasants' revolts, civil war going on at the same time. We do, some scholars speculate that the Black Death is going to help break down feudalism. And of course, the reason for that is since half your workers are dead, the workers that are left are a lot more scarce and therefore more valuable.

And so serfs become peasants, which is better than serfs, by the way. You see, a peasant can actually leave the land. A serf is bound to the land almost like a slave. And in Western Europe, you notice serfdom starts breaking down. Now, the odd thing about this is in Eastern Europe, the opposite happens.

They were moving towards being peasants, and then they go back into serfdom. And of course, Russia had serfdom right up before World War II. One, you know, and I think the reason for that is 1492 kicks in, Columbus sells the ocean blue, and all that gold and silver starts flooding into Western Europe, and that helped accelerate the breakdown of feudalism.

So, you got all that going on. Of course, you have witchcraft crazes popping up during the bubonic plague. And as you can see, it's pretty nasty. You know, dubos would appear on your body, and some surgeons figured out you lance that, you had a greater likelihood of survivability.

But, you know, really, medieval medicine was terrible. And there you can see the darkness, that's where it was worse, and how it's scattered across Europe is very horrible. Then, on top of that, you got the Hundred Years' War. This is primarily between England and France. And I'm really not going to even cover this.

It is up there. Those of you that, you know, if you want to get the PowerPoints, you know, they're available for you. But of course, Edward III starts off, he's going to pay homage to the King of France. Technically, though, he had a claim to the throne, and so he changes his mind.

At one point, there, England actually controls more of France than the King of France did. But then that woman messed it all up. Who's that? No, ma'am. Joan of Arc. Yeah. Yeah, the greatest, most famous military leader in France was a woman. All right. I'll go leave it at that.

Of course, you know, the British had, you know, just incredible victories, Creasy, Fortier, Agincourt. At Agincourt, 1415, the French lost 7,000 mounted knights, okay, to the lone bow. And by the way, this also helped to accelerate the breakdown of feudalism. Okay, literally on the field there. So I wish we had time to go through all that, but that's more for the secular course.

What we want to do now is back up and get to the religious side of all this. But just from what I've told you here, it should be quite clear to you that this was a very depressing time. And yet, at the end of all this horrible, terrible stuff going on, what blossoms forth?

The Renaissance. The Renaissance. Just incredible artistic, incredible art, incredible music, incredible culture burst forth. And of course, shortly thereafter, you have the Reformation breaking forth as well. So just an incredible period of time. Now, we're hopefully going to at least get to Wycliffe today. And I thought an appropriate passage for us to meditate upon as we look over these historical events is taken from Psalms 119, 97 through 112.

And could Micah, would you just stand up and read this for the congregation? Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. The commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts.

I hold back my feet from every evil way, in order to keep your word. I do not depart from your rules, for you have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. But your precepts, through your precepts, I get understanding.

Therefore, I hate every false way. Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path. I have sworn an oath and confirmed it to keep your righteous rules. I am severely afflicted. Give me life, O Lord, according to your word. Accept my free will offerings of praise, O Lord, and teach me your rules.

I hold my life in my hand continually, but I do not forget your law. The wicked have laid a snare for me, but I do not stray from your precepts. Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart. I incline my heart to perform your statutes forever to the end.

Appreciate it, Micah. Okay, so all this, you've got these events going on, and yet, as we've already discussed, we've pretty much already covered this slide, we have coming forth from out of this, the Renaissance. Now, the great schism there, schism means separation or division, and there's a little bit of confusion historically speaking in Western civilization because people get confused on whether you're talking about the first great schism and what would be the first great schism class.

The first division in Christianity is between the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodoxy, Greek Orthodoxy. And so henceforth, to make you more aware that this is a different schism, I'll start referring to this at some point as a papal schism, the Great Papal Schism. All right, so that's just some of the secular means of punishment that they had back then.

So you've got secular government having troubles, economic weaknesses, and warfare, and during this time period when the church is so needed, it fails to provide adequate leadership and becomes increasingly worldly and interested in material matters, as we're about to see, and often seemingly was ignoring the spiritual needs of the people.

Having said that, however, this is not to say the people of Europe became irreligious during this time period. Quite the contrary. They multiplied the number of religious ceremonies, religious holidays multiplied. Of course, they flocked to revival meetings, bought tons of religious images. One of the comics of the day said that if all the splinters of the true cross were counted up, entire forest of Europe would disappear.

And what they're talking about is: you have these scam artists back then, just like you have scam artists today. You know, I remember the Reverend Tilton. Anyone remember him? He was real big until they finally sent him off to prison. But at one time, I remember my home, there was a gentleman there who was homeless visiting with me.

And we were watching a program, I think it's 2020. And they did a number on the Reverend Tilton. And they showed how the money that you're sending him did not even go to his church. It went straight to a bank. And they cut the envelopes. And all these pitiful prayer requests, pictures of some loved ones suffering from cancer, that he claimed he would take these letters and he'd pray.

For them, and he had all these little things where you know he'd get money out of them, and it is just real scandalous, you know. And well, they had a scam artist back then, is what I'm trying to say. Nothing's really changed in that respect. Whatever is legitimate and true, there's all other people always out there trying to make money off of it or to scam people.

That does not take away, though, from what is true and good. All right, but do always be aware of the fact that people will try to take advantage of it. And in that sense, the medieval age was no different from our age. You know, they had a lot of that going on.

And of course, the splinters of the true cross-people would go chop down a tree and they make thousands of little splinters, dip it in a little bit of blood, let it dry, and they would swear and claim that this was actually a splinter of the true cross upon which Christ was crucified.

If you buy the splinter, it has miraculous healing powers. Okay, and so stuff like that was going on. And of course, you know, they have images and all that. Okay, so as a result of this, you have a setup for what is coming, and that is the great papal schism or the great schism.

Now, let's get the backdrop of this. You have, let's just jump in. Pope Boniface VIII is Pope at the time that in France, you have a king named. Philip the Fair. Now I'm sure they call him Philip the Fair probably his blonde, light complexion. But just kind of joking, Philip the Fair was not fair.

Okay, he was one of the most brutal, dastardly, treacherous kings that ever sat on the throne of France. And he was quite a money grubber. He wanted to go to war with England and he needed money. And he realized the church has money. So he starts trying to tax the church.

And, you know, here in the United States, we finally came to a solution of taxing churches. You know, that's part of the separation of church and state. You don't tax churches. Although we've got some folks now that are wanting to do that. And of course, all they should do is go back and take a Western Civ course, and they would know why you shouldn't do that.

We had wars over this in the past. And of course, the Pope refused to allow the church to be taxed. And so he starts arresting bishops and throw them in jail, hold them sore as negotiating pawns. And then finally, he comes up with a really nifty idea. Let's go after the Knights Templars.

Now, this is a monastic order. Now, why do you want to go after the Knights Templars? Yeah, the Knights Templars, going back to the Crusades and all that, weird set of circumstances, they come out to be the bankers of Europe. And this was very controversial because, you know, Christians this time didn't.

Believe in charging interest on another Christian. And that's a long story on how they got around that. But the Knights Templars, there's all kinds of wild legends and wild stories about them, most of which are not true. And that's why, of all the items to Google, Knights Templars, you've got to be very careful what you're reading because about 90% of it's not true.

They actually did a lot of good works. Usually they're the guys you go to, you want to build an orphanage, hospital, or if you want to build a new church building, they loan you the money. And they did all kinds of good works. But they were incredibly financially successful.

And so he decides to have them all arrested in France and accuse them of being homosexuals, which was not true. And of course, you torture somebody long enough, they'll admit to anything. And, you know, but that's all in the future. He hasn't got to that quite yet. Under Boniface, though, he tries to tax the church.

Boniface refuses. So he has some of his henchmen in Italy. You know, Italy as a country doesn't really exist. You have all these Italian city-states and they're fighting each other. And he, of course, France was always intervening in Italy at this time. And he had some supporters. He has the supporters kidnap the Pope.

All right. The supporters of Philip the Fair have the Pope kidnapped. And they take him up into northern Italy, have him in this castle, and they apparently start beating him up. He's an elderly man. And some of the townspeople in the town below were servants in the castle.

They observe this. They're shocked, horrified. They run out into the town below. And they're beating the pope. They're beating the pope. The townspeople rise up. They rush the castle and they free the pope. And he heads down back to southern Italy. And apparently, this really shook him up so bad, poor old guy, he dies shortly afterwards.

Which Philip was real happy about. Because all during the backdrop of this, he'd been stacking the College of Cardinals. You know, those are the ones that elect popes. And he now has enough French cardinals that the next election, they elect Clement V, who is French. Now, you know, popes usually are Italian, because the popes are also the bishops of Rome, and you would expect the Bishop of Rome to be Italian, right?

But now they have a French Pope. And the more recent scholarship on Clement V say that he's not a puppet of the king, but I would argue he is still, despite modern scholarship, because he stands by, allows the Knights Templars, who, by the way, is his order, you know.

He's over there as a pope now. He should have been their protectors. And he allows this horrible murdering of the Knights Templars to be done. Just an outrageous thing. And then he authorizes the order to be suppressed, and the rest of the kings of Europe also take over all their possessions and all that.

So it was a horrible thing. And Clement cooperates with Philip the Fair. And by the way, this is going to set up one of the big gripes between England and France here on out. The kings of France will go to the popes. They will acquire loans from the pope because the pope has more money than anyone.

Everybody has to pay your tithe. And that's just the start of it. They had all kinds of other ways to raise money. And they use this money to make war on England. That's one of the reasons when Henry VIII breaks with the papacy and starts the Church of England, that there wasn't that much protest in England.

There's other areas of concern as well. And do remember, what is the tithe supposed to go to? Take care of the widow, the poor. It's supposed to go for good works. If you're an Englishman, do you like giving a tithe to the church, knowing that they might be used to float a loan to the king of France to kill your son on the battlefield?

You see why that is a little irritating? Okay, so anyway, that was going on. Now, the other thing, Clement, being French, finds out he doesn't get a very warm reception in Italy. So, about this time, he had been traveling and discovered a beautiful little town, still beautiful, still there, Avignon.

Today it's in southern France. Back then, it's actually part of the Holy Roman Empire, but it's right on the edge of France. And, of course, today it is in France. And he decides to build a vacation villa there. Later, one of his successors builds a papal palace there.

And the popes start living at Avignon. And this will go on for 70 years, thereabout. And later on, scholars will look back on this and they will call this the Babylonian captivity of the papacy. The Babylonian captivity of the papacy. Because you know anything about the Jews when they're carried off to Babylon, you know, after the, you know, Nebuchadnezzar, and, you know, that exile before a group of them come back under the Persians, you know, to start rebuilding the temple, that was a period of 70 years thereabout.

And so they will refer to this because after Clement dies, His successor also stays at Avignon, and then his successor and his successor. And so the popes, we've already done that, they are all going to be rather subservient to the king of France, maybe not outright puppets, but they're very French-friendly, let's say that.

And of course, you know, other kings of Europe were very resentful of that and somewhat jealous. Now, the popes being at Avignon is a huge problem for Italy and especially Rome. Can anyone tell me why? What is the number one industry of Rome today? Huh? Tourism. And what's the number one attraction of tourists to Rome?

The Vatican, right? And if you're Catholic, which a large portion of the population of the world is, what do they expect to see when they go to the Vatican? All right, you know, he goes out of that balcony, and, you know, you have that big plaza just packed with people.

And, you know, that is like a high point of some of those folks' lives to see that. Now, can you have that? There's no Pope. Can you see all those religious Images and little charms. I remember Pope John Paul II himself, to his credit, was very upset when he came to America and found out they're selling Pope dolls.

Okay, all right, all right, so anyway, all these, you know, this was a disaster to the economy of Rome. No pope, no tourist. And economically, Rome had been in a deep depression for 70 years. And of course, throughout Europe, there's a lot of criticism of the Avignon papacy because, hey, the bishop, you know, the pope is the bishop of Rome.

Why isn't the bishop of Rome in Rome? You know, and so they're getting a lot of heap for that. Now, I should say, though, meantime, the Avignon papacy was like a money machine. Probably, this is a high watermark in terms of organizationally of the bureaucracy of the Roman Catholic Church in medieval Europe.

And they were making money like crazy because one of the practices that's going to so upset Martin Luther coming down the pipe here is they're selling church offices. You want to be something in the church for enough money, cash, we'll let you be that. And one of the things that really upset people was selling bishoprics.

You had some bishops. Bishops that had three or four bishoprics and they were never there, you know, and they would hire some other little person to stand in for them and pay him a pittance. And while meantime, he's collecting all the money and they lived in palaces that would embarrass a king in some cases.

And so all this is going on. Well, you have Gregory, the 11th, he decides to return to Rome. He apparently had fallen ill, and he apparently kind of superstitiously believed that God was punishing him because he was not carrying out his duties of being the bishop of Rome by being up in Avignon.

So against the advice of his College of Cardinals, who are majority French now, he decides to go to Rome. Of course, the College of Cardinals have to go where the Pope is. And he is in Rome for just a year and he dies. All right. Well, when the Roman population, now, this is not the Romans of ancient York, these are Italians living in Rome, but the Roman Italians realize this means we're having an election.

Okay? And we want an Italian pope. We don't want any more French popes running off to Avignon. And so when the College of Cardinals convene, there is a riot. They surround The church where they're meeting. It is claimed they even broke into a lower room and they had swords poking up through the floorboards.

And they're telling them, you elect Italian pope or else. And so it shouldn't be too surprising. This is supposed to be by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but anyway, they elect Pope Urban VI, who is an Italian, and so that makes the Italians happy. But it's kind of an odd choice.

He is from peasant background. Normally, bishops and archbishops were what? Of noble birth. They're the second, third, fourth sons. Why is that? Can y'all say primogenitor? Come on, repeat. I just love to hear people say, primogenitor. What does that mean? First son gets everything. And so, quite frankly, it's sad to say, folks, but the super wealthy view the church as a way to get rid of Junior and me not have to take care of him.

Because even though you get everything, you're the patriarch of the family now, you're still responsible for your younger brothers. You know, you're not supposed to let them starve. And so, one way that you don't have to take care of them financially is to make them a churchman. Okay?

Now, obviously, that also explains why. Some of the clergy in the Roman Catholic Church were not of what I would call high spiritual quality. They were there for the wrong reason. All right, so anyway, Pope Urban, why would you think these French cardinals would vote for a guy who's from peasant background?

That's what they thought. Unfortunately for them, and unbeknownst to everyone, this guy is entering probably, is controversial, there's arguments over this, the first stages of insanity. He's one of the mad popes, okay? And he has a complete personality change after he's elevated, and he is going to thank some of these French cardinals who elected him by throwing them into prison and by torturing them.

Okay? The other French cardinals flee Rome. They go back up to Avignon and they declare the election null and void. All right. And they elect a new pope. This is Clement VII. Okay? And now Clement VII, you know, tries to go to Rome to run Urban out. And by the way, much of the upper clergy have abandoned Urban, but the people don't.

They fiercely stick by him. And Urban simply declares these clergy that had abandoned him, he's going to excommunicate them, and he's going to nominate new clergy and new college of cardinals, which are fiercely foreign. And so, what happens is you have two popes: schism, division, separation. Two popes.

Now, we've had what they call anti-popes prior to this, but it doesn't really go anywhere. This is different, though, because both popes were duly elected by College of Cardinals. All right? And both had a certain legitimacy, therefore. And so, Clement VII, when he sees that he can't drive Urban out, what you have is, I forget which one does it first, they excommunicate each other.

This is unprecedented in history. You know, a pope excommunicating a pope. All right, this has never happened before. And now, you know, this, this, and now, this sounds kind of funny, us being Protestants, you know, ha ha, look at those poor Catholics here. But let me tell you, for, you remember, everybody's Catholic at this time.

And this was a horrible situation for a sincere believing Christian. Because you know, they have all this Catholic baggage with their beliefs, and even those that are sincerely Christians, just imagine the confusion this brought. Because remember, part of their baggage is they believe that the Pope is the successor to Peter, and Peter has the keys to heaven.

And if you are following the wrong Pope, you're going to go to hell. You see? All right? And so this splits Europe right down the middle and takes on a political component. Because obviously, the French are going to fall which one? Clement. What do you think the Brits are going to do?

Urban, urban all the way, you know. And so you have different politicians following different popes. And here's another little game some of these politicians pull. It would be a great sin for me to send the tithe to the wrong pope. So we'll just hold the tithe back. You know, we might borrow from it in the meantime.

You see how that was going? All kinds of political shenanigans and games are being played with this. But meantime, you have in some districts, you know, two priests fighting over the church. One priest is from the Clement bunch and one's from the urban bunch. Which priest do you follow?

Who gets to have the church building? And then they fight over the burial grounds. Who's going to be in charge of the cemetery? Who's going to marry you? Who's going to baptize you? It was a terrible, terrible schism. And, of course, we call this the Great Papal Schism.

And what's worse, as I told you before, they had anti-popes before, one of them dies, that ends it. We're back to one pope again. But in this situation, both Urban and Clement, when they die, their college of cardinals reassemble and continue the schism. And you have one pope sitting up in Avignon claiming to be the one and only pope.

You had another pope seated in Rome claiming to be the one and only pope. And this is just chaos in the church. So people in Europe are distressed over who to follow, impossible to tell who the true pope was. And this, of course, greatly weakens respect for the papacy, as you can imagine.

And so, a great period of collusion. And that's a modern cartoon, but you can imagine the medievals were probably doing all kinds of funny cartoons back then, too. You know, popes fighting over who's the real pope. Now, with this backdrop, we have good things can come out of something like this.

And you have people really questioning what are the essentials of Christianity as a result of this. How did we get to this mess? And one of these guys who asked these questions was John Wycliffe. Wycliffe was a linguistic genius. Let's just leave it at that. All these reformers were.

Oxford professor, his dates are 1324-84. Of course, he was a doctor, professor. And let me tell you, be a doctor back then really required a lot of study. And so he had observed the Avignon papacy in particular and was very critical of it. And one of the things that's very critical was this material wealth.

He argued that the secularization of the ecclesiastical properties in England would be a good thing. Other words, even before Henry VIII, he was calling for the kings in England to take away all these lands that the church owned. And remember, he's a churchman. He's saying all these material possessions eat against spirituality.

People more interested in the material than they are in the spiritual. And you've got to remember: what had been going on in medieval Europe at this time is gradually the church was acquiring more and more property. Now, stop and think. Let's say you're claimed to be a Christian because everybody is born supposedly as a Christian at this time.

You're immediately baptized to the Catholic Church. But let's say you're not. Let's say you're a very terrible person. Person, and you're willing to stomp on your mother's grave, cheap, chisel, whatever, to acquire other people's possessions. And by the end of your life, you have succeeded. You're a very wealthy person, own vast properties, acreages of land, but now you're dying.

And let's say you have an extended illness and you're on the flat of your back, and all those material possessions that glittered in your eye, now you realize how utterly worthless they truly are. And you start feeling real guilty. Not really repenting, you're just guilty. Think of all the horrible, terrible things you've done.

And so, what you do, you call in the priest, and I've sinned. You know, your confession is going to take that poor priest all day to listen to. And by the time you're done with that, what can I do? What can I do? And well, some priests, you know, maybe it's a legitimate need, you know, orphanage or hospital or something.

Why don't you give all your possessions to the church? And in return, we got these monks over here in this monastery and these nuns over here who they will contract to pray your soul out of purgatory for 20 years. We think 20 years might do it. Okay, yeah.

And so, guess what that person does when he dies? He wills all his possessions to the church. Now, this goes on generation after generation after generation. How much land do you think the church owns in England by the 1300s? Vast portions of the lands owned by the church.

And this is rather ironic because I believe did Jesus Himself not say, Foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has not even a place to lay his head. And yet, the institution he founded owns pretty much all the places to lay your head now.

Do you think Jesus is pleased? Wycliffe would say, No, he's not. He's not pleased with this. And so he says the church is corrupt. He's talking primarily the Avignon papacy here. Remember, he's England, so he's very much against the Avignon. And he says, Christians need to go back to the Franciscan idea.

You know, we don't need all this material stuff. And so he says, you know, particularly the church leadership is what he's talking about. The church leadership should not be wealthy, should not have these palaces. They should be serving Christ and focused on that. He is our portion, not material things.

All right. He also said that the church is made up of predestined believers, which is kind of interesting. The church is the Totality of those who are predestined to blessedness. It includes the church triumphant in heaven, the church militant or men on earth. No one who is eternally lost has part in it.

It is one universal church. Outside of it, there is no salvation. Its head is Christ. No pope may say that he is the head, for he cannot say that he is elect or even a member of the church. In other words, he's even suggesting, which was very controversial back then, some popes may not even be saved.

Okay? And so this is, you know, this idea that the church is made up of those chosen by Christ, not by the church. The church doesn't save you. That itself is dynamite at that time, because pretty much the medieval teaching is you're saved through the church and by the church.

You say, no, no, Jesus saves you. Okay? All right. So that was pretty rough. And this is almost like Luther here. He is saying the Bible alone is the basis for all belief and all authority. All right. At this time period, even to this day, the Catholic Church position is that they gave us the Bible.

And, you know, they have an argument they think is very reasonable and rational on that, but that is not biblical. Okay. The church received the Bible. The church did not write the Bible. However, this is very nifty if you believe the church wrote the Bible because then the church can tell you what it says, even if it doesn't say that, if you know what I mean.

Or they have authority over the Bible, whereas Wycliffe says, no, no, no, the Bible is our sole authority, and the church, even the church, and even the Pope and all the clergy are subject to what the Word of God says. And that was complete turning around of what was being taught at the time.

And notice this sounds very Protestant. This is very, very much the same thing that Luther and Calvin and all the other reformers are going to come to a realization of. And so Christ alone is sufficient for salvation. Pilgrimages, see, see a lot of these people, they're stuck in this works mode of salvation.

I have got to make myself good enough for Jesus to accept me. Oh, folks, I hope nobody's in that trap in here. You'll never make yourself good enough. It is through grace and grace alone. We can never make ourselves worthy. And so this was very, very radical for Wichula to say this.

Of course, all this is coming from his reading the Bible. He is a scholar of Scripture, he is a teacher of Scripture. And, you know, to him, this is like, duh, don't you see? This is what the Bible says. Okay, so this, now, Wycliffe is unusual because usually, by the way, what I've said already, in normal times, the Roman Catholic Church would immediately declare him what?

Heretic. Heretic, right? Wycliffe is never burned at the stake. In fact, he's never even tortured. And this is divine providence of God that, you know, he's one of the lucky ones, I would say, in that respect. But one of the reasons is, at the time he is at his high watermark, so to speak, England has a king who is a little kid.

And when you have little kids, who really rules the country? A regent. And the regent at this time, which is a very interesting fellow. Boy, we could have a whole lecture on him by himself, but we're not going to go there. Is John of Gaunt, John of Gaunt, who's of royal blood.

And John of Gaunt is very upset with what's going on in the church, the great papal schism. He's also very upset, you know, you know, French getting their money from the Pope to make war on England. He's upset about a whole bunch of corruption. And he likes what Wycliffe is saying.

Now, if you're in the government and you're short on funding, and Wycliffe is saying the government should, you know, take over all this property. Of the church, you're probably going to like that, you know, for practical reasons as well. So, John of Gaunt protects Wycliffe. All right, and there's a long, complicated story of what happens because Wycliffe will be charged with heresy.

He will be ordered to stand trial, but then one of these schismatic popes dies, who was actually in charge of having him tried, and that just blows the trial out of the water. He's able just to walk out. He's not, you know, the trial just stops. You know, they really don't decide anything.

So, he's very lucky in that respect, too. Now, you notice he's holding a book there. Guess what the book is? It's one of the first English Bibles. He wanted to return to the idea of Jerome that a translation of the Bible should be for the people. Everyone who can read should be able to read the Bible for themselves, which was a pretty radical notion back then.

And so, he starts translating the Bible, and this would be Middle English, which is kind of a little bit readable. Any of y'all ever had to do with Old English? Oh, you know, it's worse than German. All right, but anyway, hey, believe it or not, I have a minor in English, and my most feared course was.

History of the English language. It was taught by an English teacher, and I had to learn how to speak and read Old, Middle, and Modern English. And modern was King James. But anyway, I made an A in that course. I don't normally brag on stuff, but that I will brag about.

I did not think I was going to pass that course. But anyway, to help you out here, that's actually a Wycliffe Bible on the right. And that's not really the true thing because that's printed. Anybody know what the problem with the Wycliffe Bible was, why it doesn't take off like Luther's Bible does?

The whole thing had to be hand-copied. There are no printing presses. There are no printing presses. If you have a Bible, it has to be hand-copied. And right there is one of the reasons that this does not become the Protestant Reformation right then and there. You know, it just could not spread as far and as fast as what you have with Luther with the printing press.

But even that, it is somewhat successful. Now, I go ahead and put it like that because now the fonts, there were no fonts, it's handwritten, so it'd be very difficult to read for that reason as well. But you can kind of sort of make it out, right? I use modern fonts to try to help you a little bit there.

So, where's that from? Okay, okay. Clyde's proud, I'm sure. Okay, so now, he also, remember, you got the Fourth Lateran Council, and at that Fourth Lateran Council, the church officially declares their position on the Lord's Supper is transubstantiation. That the blood literally becomes the blood of Christ, and the bread literally becomes his body.

And Wycliffe had a view that was very similar to the Baptist view. He says this is a symbol, okay? It's not, you know, transubstantiation, he would say, is false. And boy, that really got him in trouble, you know, to say that. And he therefore argued that salvation was an individual matter between the believer and God.

And right here, he's getting real close to a concept that we'll take up next summer that's so important, priesthood of the believer. And that's more important than you realize. That concept, priest of the believer, is going to go beyond just a religious belief into, in America, it really helps to formulate what we call freedom of conscience.

You know, that each person is a priest before God. You don't need an intermediator. You don't have to go to a priest. You don't have to go to a preacher. You can go directly in prayer to the deity. And commune and pray and have a personal relationship. That is something that is just so incredible that even before the Reformation, he is teaching.

Actually, this goes back to the Apostle Paul, folks. I think if you ever read Paul, do you think he had maybe a personal relationship with Christ? That comes through pretty clearly. This is really nothing new, but unfortunately, because of the teachings of the medieval period, there had been all these divisions trying to tell people you got to go through this priest or you got to go through this saint.

You got these screens, even hiding the altar. At one point, they wouldn't even allow the people to partake of the bread, you know, the cup. You know, they wouldn't allow them of the full communion. So, all these attempts to separate the people and give all the power to the clergy instead of recognizing that each person is responsible unto God.

And so, now he also was very upset with this over-veneration of relics, outward rituals, which he held to be idolatrous. And this is another element that we'll see coming forth during the Protestant Reformation. Remember, this is way before the Protestant Reformation happens, he is teaching all this. And so, now he translates the Bible.

Apparently, he gets an army of college students and other people. People to start making handwritten copies. And of course, copying the entire Bible was just way too difficult. So, what they would do is they would do certain segments of Scripture, and he would hand these out to these young, zealous people who had a conversion experience, learned the truths of Christ, and they are sent out, almost kind of Franciscan style, too, only they had red robes instead of the brown robes of the Franciscans.

And they go out and they start preaching and they start winning people to Christ. And that really upsets the church clergy, as you can well imagine. Okay, so two by two, they go forth barefoot, wearing long dark red robes, carrying a staff in their hand, symbolizing the pastoral calling, travel from place to place, preaching the sovereignty of God.

And some of his followers, of course, unfortunately, though, are radicalized by this idea of priesthood of the believer. And by the way, I would argue, and you never hear this in textbooks anymore, that one of the primary reasons the American Revolution was inevitable is because right before the American Revolution, you have the Great Awakening, the first Great Awakening, which permeated all the 13 colonies.

And one of the essential teachings of the Great Awakening is this concept. Priest of the believer, that God is no respecter of persons, that before Christ we are all equal. And it's directly out of that, too, that if I have the time, I could show you how this very concept that we hold these truths self-evident, that all men are created equal, goes right back to where Paul is saying there's neither male nor female, Jew nor Gentile, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.

Now, when you have a whole bunch of people coming around to the idea that we are equal before Christ, can you really have a society that is based upon your ruler is ruler because he is the son of so-and-so? Do you see the problem with that? Yeah, Americans no longer accepted that idea.

And that's one of the really under-girding movements behind the American Revolution, you see. And so you had some of that breaking out even during this time period. And some of these peasants in England were upset with how the lords and nobility and even the church was mistreating them and taking advantage of them.

And apparently a couple of these Lollerts were involved in the Peasants' Rebellion in England at this time that occurred. And so that's going to shut down the Lollert movement as a result of that. As I've already said, he was never actually punished while he was alive. He is forced out of his seat there at Oxford, goes to Lambeth, and he just basically preaches the rest of his tenure.

And he's constantly working on the translation of the Bible and sending out his followers. And the story of his death is quite interesting, which I'm going to have to skip that too. But upon his death, the Great Schism, we're going to see. How much time have I got, James?

One minute. So we'll get back to that next time and do Jan Hus next time. But upon his death, you know, the Great Schism is finally going to come to an end. The church, Catholic authorities in England, are reasserting themselves. And so they're going to dig up his body, his corpse.

They're going to put him on trial. They're going to convict him of heresy. They're then going to hang the corpse. They're then going to burn it. And then they're going to scatter his bones. I forget what river it was. It wasn't the Thames. I used to say Thames.

Oh, yeah, thanks. All right. So follow my own notes. The Swift. But anyway, and the funny thing about that was: everything Wycliffe taught was not to have pieces of bone and all that. But of course, the Roman Catholic Church and their mentality, though. Oh, they're going to make a mortar of him by doing this to him, so we're going to scatter his bones so they can't try to make trinkets out of his bones, which is no danger in the first place.

But anyway, and so they thought we're done with Wycliffe. Are they? No. Stay tuned. Yeah, that's right. We'll be back next time. Could we have a question? Sure. Did the King James Bible come from Wycliffe's translation? No, sir. No, sir. We have another gentleman who had a lot of the same ideas, especially about every Englishman should have a Bible to read for themselves.

His name is Tyndall. And Tyndall, talk about linguistic genius. Tyndall, over 75% of the word renderings in the King James Bible are the exact same renderings that Tyndall did. 75%. Yeah, he probably had the biggest effect. Well, it's just like Luther on German. The German Lutheran translation had this humongous effect on the spoken language of Germany today.

Tyndall had the same effect on English. He's really underrated in that respect, the more I think about it. But that's that'll be next year, Lord willing, if y'all want to do that.