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I'm going to plunge into some of the different major figures of the medieval period. And we're about to start with some of what I call the proto-reformers that comes even before Luther, particularly Wycliffe and Hus will be dealing with those, but probably won't get to those today. We're going to start with a very unique person in the medieval church, which is Saint Francis today.

He's quite an interesting person. Okay, well, as we were talking about last time, traditionally, the problems of the heretics had been, and remember a heretic is our heresy is described as incorrect belief. Who gets to determine what's a heretic? Well, in the medieval period, if you disagree with the Roman Catholic Church, you're a heretic.

And remember, I said there's two basic forms of heretics. I would call one the Christian form of heresy, which is not really Christian heresy, but it's Christians who disagree with the Catholic Church. And the example that I gave is: if you put all of us in this room together as Baptists, shoot us back to the medieval period, we would be heretics, all right, because we reject the authority of the Pope.

And then you had heretics who totally were preaching or following a system of beliefs that completely, totally diverged from Christianity, and the Albigensians were an example of that. Now, according After the suppression of the Albigensian heresy, the papacy is going to establish a central tribunal for the purpose of standardizing the procedures and increasing the efficiency in the suppression of heresy.

And the methods, of course, are abhorrent to our society today. They included torture, secret testimony, testimony by two witnesses were enough to convict you, and you could not even face your accusers. They'd be accusing you and you'd not know who they were. And of course, technically, usually the church did not carry out the tortures as secular authorities.

If you're convicted of being a heretic, they then would turn you over to the secular authorities. And of course, all these means were quite legal back then, and you must remember you're guilty until proven innocent in the medieval period. So that's not good. And while the Inquisition may seem indefensible by our standards today, while I was talking as we left off last time, it was actually strongly supported in the medieval period, despite what Hollywood might tell you.

You had strong support within the church, strong support, especially with the secular authorities of the day, and you had strong support amongst the masses of the people. Now, why is this? Well, you got to remember that the church was much more than just coming to a building or a local body of believers.

The church was an international institution, and it It was the welfare system of that day. It was the medical care system of that day. The educational public, what education they had is the educational system of that day, social services agency. If you get into trouble, the church was the only thing you could turn to in terms of help.

Now, imagine a politician coming out today and say, I'm going to cut off all welfare. I'm going to take away Social Security when you retire. I'm going to deny you any health care that you can have. That politician would probably not get elected to much, would he? Okay, and so that was it.

And you've got to remember, they took the afterlife, I would say, more seriously than we do today. You know how today someone passes away and we can't wait to get them in the grave and pretend it never happened. I don't mean to sound insensitive, but if you've had a loved one, you know, I don't think we give folks enough proper time to grieve today.

You know, whereas in the medieval period, they couldn't escape death. Death was all around them. And their great hope was the afterlife. And what will a heretic do to your chances of the afterlife? If you believe the heretic, follow that heretic's teachings, he's going to lead you to eternal hell.

And in their mind, that was far worse than modern-day terrorists. Be. And so he threatened this life now, condemned your soul to hell forever, is worse than a traitor. And so they would view Albigensians, for example, as, say, somebody today considering a Ku Klux Klansman or a Nazi or someone for ISIS, right?

And so heresy was strongly despised in medieval society. And yet, having said this, and we now know that the numbers of people who are actually condemned in the Inquisition are not nearly as high as Hollywood, other popular authorities would have you believe. And I think part of this goes back to Voltaire and the entire Enlightenment period.

You know, Voltaire hated Christianity. He particularly hated Catholicism. And he greatly expanded the numbers killed during the Inquisition. In fact, Voltaire would claim that during the Thirty Years' War that you have 8 million people killed in Germany. We now know that figure is probably more like a million.

So he expanded by a figure 8. And you have Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propaganda chief for Hitler. He once says, if you're going to tell a lie, repeat it over and over again and people will start believing it. And of course, the Enlightenment. Spread so many lies about Christianity during the 1700s that we're still dealing with some of these lies.

You still go to Western Civ textbooks today, I know, because I teach Western Civ, and they'll still quote that 8 million figure, and there's absolutely no basis for it. You know, we've actually had people go through the death records. You know, there's two things certain in life if you're Western European or Western heritage.

You know, of course, one's common to all people: death and taxes. And the Europeans were actually quite good at keeping death records and tax records. And when they actually went through the death records and tax records of Germany, there was nowhere close anywhere to 8 million people disappearing.

It was under a million. But, you know, they perpetuated that lie to make the church and make Christianity look bad. And it was bad. I mean, if one person is killed in the name of Jesus for wrong reasons, that's terrible, which I think is one reason they succeeded in blowing that up.

But anyway, as bad as the Inquisition was, it's not the Inquisition that brought about a drastic decline in heresy in the medieval period. It was the birth of a new type of monasticism, a reform movement. And this is sometimes referred to as mendicantism. These are monks who are going to live.

Leave the cloisters. You know, monks would isolate themselves from the world because they thought the world was so corrupt that they would isolate themselves in monasteries. These two monastic orders are going to leave the monasteries and go out into the world and, in some cases, actually preach the gospel.

I know that in the medieval period, Rom Catholicism has really obscured the gospel, has got all these different rituals that are non-biblical. But even with that, the gospel cannot be hidden. It's going to peep out. And I think one of these persons in particular, it really more than peeks out.

It bursts forth. And of course, these two orders are the Franciscans and the Dominicans. Saint Dominic, 1120, excuse me, 1170, 1221, well-educated Spaniard, spent his early manhood in Castile as an Augustinian monk. You know, Augustinians are pretty hardcore. And in his mid-30s, he travels to Rome, meets the all-powerful Pope Innocent III.

Remember, Pope Innocent III, if you have to guess a pope, you've got to question what medieval pope did this, and you have no idea, guess Pope Innocent III, because, you know, he's the pope that humbled John of England, you know, Magna Carta fame. He's the one who humbled Philip Augustus and Francis.

Made him take back his wife when he tried to divorce her, shut him down when he wanted to invade England, threatened him with excommunication if he dared invade England. He's the Pope of the Fourth Crusade, which he's very embarrassed about himself. That was a disaster. They don't fight the Muslims.

They go and take a Christian city of Constantinople. He's involved. He's brought one of the few church councils during his time. Just very, very powerful pope. Well, Pope Innocent III, although he was very much into worldly things, he did have a spiritual side, and he apparently recognized the spirituality of Saint Dominic.

And he agreed to allow him to found his own order, the Dominican Order, named for Saint Dominic. And Dominic's original assignment was to go and peacefully convert the Albigensians. As we know from last time, that didn't work out. But he tried. And after that, he helps to pick up the pieces after the Albisingian Crusades.

And he's going to send out literally thousands of converts literally to all parts. They even make it to China, you know, the Dominicans do. But anyway, he, of course, sets up this Dominican rule. By his death, you got 60 priories and 500 friars, and it just bursts forth after his death.

Now, that's the Dominican. At the top in white, and down below, there are the other group, which are, I would say, even more famous, and that's the Franciscans. Notice the Franciscans are barefoot. Dominicans, they had shoes. Okay, but let's talk a little bit about Saint Francis. Saint Francis is contemporaneous with Saint Dominic, 1182 to 1226.

He is, of course, in Catholicism, considered to be one of their greatest and most ideal medieval saints. He himself never considered himself a saint. In fact, one of the books about him is entitled The Reluctant Saint. He was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant there in Assisi.

And he was, I mean, maturely speaking, for that day and age, he pretty much had everything. I mean, he, wealthy family, plenty of food, very nice clothes. His father was, you know, into making clothing. And so he's one of the, apparently he was a strikingly handsome young man.

So he had wealth, he had good looks, a lot of friends. Apparently, he had a magnetic personality. People just, you know, he's one of these types of electricity in the air. When he walks in the room, everybody gravitates towards him. He, as a young man, the city of Assisi got into an argument with Peru.

A city next door. Back, you know, Italy doesn't exist at this time. It's Italian city-states, and the Italians are going at each other like crazy. And so these two little city-states have a little war. And he manages to get himself wounded and captured, held prisoner for about a year.

And it's during that time period, he learns what it is not to have nice clothes, not to have food. I mean, he almost starved to death, almost froze to death while he's a prisoner. And this apparently changed his, you know, his personal aspect somewhat. You know, prior to this, he was leader of sort of a teenage gang.

I don't mean a bad gang. They were going around pulling pranks, basically. And he is sort of their leader. And, of course, when he comes back, he's had a little bit of change of attitude and he begins going through this conversion, which apparently happens at several stages. One occasion, they've given a banquet in his honor.

He kind of disappears. When they finally find him, he seems to be in some sort of religious trance. And he then started devoting himself more and more to prayer and to solitude. He was quite, I think, this is a young man who is shocked by. Sin. He's shocked by all the wrong that is in the world.

He is shocked by poverty, especially. And he's shocked by people being sick. And particularly, what fascinated him and terrified him was a leper colony close by Sisi. And you know, there's a famous story, he's walking along the road, he sees this leper, and that society, much like at the time of Jesus, things had not changed one bit.

I mean, you shrink from a leper, you know, tell him to go away, and the leper is supposed to stay away from you. And he was personally recoiling from this, but something within him told him that this is wrong to have this attitude. And so he runs up to the leper, embraces him, kisses his gnarled hands.

And on another occasion, he runs into a beggar. The beggar is begging, and he had no money in his pockets. So he thought, what would it be like to roam about and see what you're treated like if you're a beggar? And so he exchanged his very nice outfit of clothing for the beathers, you know, stinky, smelly rags, and went about begging during the day just to see how beggars were treated.

And he got an education. You know, Marvin Lasky, I don't know if y'all know about him. He's the editor of World Magazine. Marvin Lasky was a Jewish Marxist. In fact, one of the high points of his life in his early period was to get to go to Moscow.

And visit all the revolutionary sites there. That's like his Bethlehem, his Mecca, you know, to go to Moscow. He is an American Jewish Marxist. And that made him an excellent candidate to be hired at UT Law School. No, no, he wasn't in the English department. So the English department, UT, they hired him, you know, because I suspect because of all these reasons, they seem to love types like that.

And he decides he wants to go to Moscow and he wants to learn Russian so he can talk to people. And he apparently was a, you know, he's one of these linguist geniuses who can pick up a language pretty quick. But he asked a friend, How in the world can I learn Russian real quick?

And he says, Well, you're going to think I'm crazy. Get a Russian Bible and read the Gospel of John. Yeah. And so he did, and he became a Christian, much to the consternation of the UT literature department. And he was one of the colleagues, St. Francis, at first.

He is a real radical type in his Christianity. And one of the first things he did was he decides to disguise himself as a homeless person in Austin and go to one of the food shelters just to see what their experience was like. And he went to, ironically, a church kitchen and he asked them for a Bible.

And first thing they said, oh, we can't give you a Bible. You know, that separates your church and state. And they're In a church, okay, but you couldn't give them a Bible. So that's going to spark him to read one of the most interesting books you ought to read, which is The Tragedy of American Compassion.

Tragedy of American Compassion. And he talks about how the church in the 1800s was doing so much better job of ministering to the poor than what the church is doing today. You know, we've surrendered all that to the government. And he says the first thing taken out is the gospel.

You know, of course, you take out the gospel, you can't really help the poor. By the way, that's one of our central points over here at the lighthouse. We'll feed and clothe you, but more importantly, we'll give you the gospel. All right, so anyway, St. Francis, you know, he's having some experiences here.

And his unconventional behavior shocks his friends, infuriates his father, by the way. By the way, during this period, he starts helping out with different little priests. They're ministering to the parishioners. And one of the places he comes across this old chapel that's literally crumbling down. And he decides that the Lord wants him to fix this chapel.

And so he goes and takes some cloth from his father, very expensive cloth, and sells it to raise money without asking his father's permission. And he also takes his father's horse, which is a big deal. Back then, okay, this will be your Mercedes. He sells that without asking daddy.

And needless to say, Daddy is upset, takes him to the bishop, and they have a bishop's trial. And the bishop ordered St. Francis to return everything. And the father's just, you know, this is a several-month period of time. And the father was totally unforgiving of his son, had a very uncompassionate heart towards the poor.

And so St. Francis is so heartbroken over what his dad, his dad's attitude, and of course, you know, he knew he was wrong too. But he, this is one of the famous incidents in his life. He strips buck naked, which I don't suggest for anybody to do, handed his clothing to his father, and every possession he had, he hands over to his father, and he marches out and says, I'm totally surrendering everything to Christ.

Okay. So anyway, as far as we know, we don't have a record of reconciliation there, I'm sad to say. But anyway, he then spends his life for the next three years basically begging for his food. Now, when I say begging, he would do things in return. He had this attitude that if you're a Christian, you shouldn't expect this lavish salary, which he knew some of the priests were getting and some of the bishops and all that.

But his own view was: you know, you should work for your meal. But in the process of doing this, do ministry. You know, somebody, you know, there's a widow lady, she needs her roof patch, patch her roof, and if she has a little food she can share with you, well, praise the Lord.

Okay, that type of attitude. And he starts attracting some followers, too. And they call themselves the lesser brothers because, you see, friars, real monks who were certified, I guess you could say, they were called brothers. And since they weren't even certified, you know, official with the Catholic Church, they call themselves Lesser Brothers.

I'm a lesser brother. And he is at this little chapel, Porteuncula, in there, close by Sisi. Another little broken-down chapel, which he personally, by his own hands, would restore. It's like just a little one-room little chapel. The Catholic Church has now built a gigantic church over the entire chapel.

It's still there, still standing. And he is listening to the priest give his little homily. And occasionally, they would actually, you know, in this case, he's giving the homily straight from Matthew 10, 7 through 10. And here we go. Who's got a loud voice? Didn't bring the mic today.

Anybody want a Zach? Would you take that? Zadams. And proclaim as you go, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead. Cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You receive without pain, give without pay. Acquire no gold or silver or copper for your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics or sandals or a staff, for the laborer deserves his food.

Okay, what's the circumstance going on here? Jesus is doing what? Sending out the disciples, right? Well, Francis looks at that. He says, What would happen if we as Christians would literally do that? And that becomes the cornerstone of Franciscanism. I don't know about too many people that raised from the dead, but pretty much everything else they did.

All right, and so that really does become the cornerstone. Now, you know, the gospel is so empowerful. Even the teachings of Christianity are so powerful. Because they're from God, the real, true, one, and only God. And even when people that are not Christians implement these principles, incredible things can happen.

I give you, for example, anybody heard of this guy from India, Gandhi? What was he famous for? Drove the British out of India through a peaceful, nonviolent revolution. Of course, there's a big mess afterwards between the Muslims and Hindus. But, you know, it's amazing. Now, this had worked with the, say, the Germans had been in power, the Nazis.

Why do you think it worked? Well, let me just say this. Anybody know where he got his concept, peaceful, non-violent revolution? Now, he had some ideas from Hinduism. There's no doubt about that. But when a reporter asked him one time, he says from the Sermon of the Mount.

In fact, he told that reporter, he says, you know, I would be a Christian today if it wasn't for the Christians I have known. Remember, he was raised not in India, in South Africa, apartheid, all that, if you know about that. And so that idea, though, you know, he took it, used it, implemented it, had powerful repercussions.

And certainly, a Christian taking Christian ideas and radically applying them is going to result in quite a fantastic movement in this case. So he makes his passage the social point of his ministry, and even though he's just an ordinary lay person from, you know, Ossisi's not one of the bigger cities in Italy by any means, he now has 12, his 12 disciples, so to speak, and he decides, I'm going to go see the Pope.

Now, this would be like me, little Pat Johnson, jumping on the play here at Easterwood, go down to Houston, get Lincoln, fly up to Washington, D.C., knock on the White House door and say, I want to see Mr. Trump. You know, they would probably carry me away in white suits, right?

Okay, and uh, but he does. He actually gets in to see the pope, and the pope, Innocent III, most powerful pope of the medieval period, is not impressed at first. But the claim is, and I don't know what to do with this, is that the Pope had a dream that night, and part of the dream, so in the dream, Assisi's holding up literally part of the church.

And so he called Francis back the next day, had a long conversation with him, and this time he's very impressed. And so he, on the spot, allows Francis to begin his own order with the official blessing of the church. Now, what Francis is about to embark upon, I would argue, is every bit as radical as what Wycliffe and Hus would argue in many cases.

Now, I say Francis' theology was definitely not good Protestant theology. He was messed up in some of his theological beliefs, I believe, according to Scripture. But really, I think the reason he's so non-controversial is because he always kept it very simple. He didn't give off in real deep theology.

He just knew that Jesus had radically changed him, and he could do the same for you. And I think that's one reason why he seems to permeate Christian history, and he's actually admired both by Protestants and Christians. If you don't believe me, we just sang a hymn that he wrote.

And it's very, very, very popular in Protestant churches today. He wrote that hymn that we sang coming in here this morning. And all creatures. And so, anyway, he now goes forth. He has official blessing of the Pope. And by the way, Francis is one of these types that, you know, if he thinks the church or someone's doing something wrong, he was always submissive to authority, church authority.

But he also knew what the Lord wanted him to do. He just sort of go around whatever they tell him, if he thinks it's conflicting with especially the love of Christ. But anyway, so he never was, like the Waldensians, a threat. You know, the Catholic Church didn't view him so much as a threat.

And I think that's one reason, even though some of his ideas were as radical as the Waldensians, because they didn't feel threatened by him, they allowed him to go forth and do all this lay preaching that caused so much problems when the Waldensians did it. So, anyway, and of course, you have this amazing growth.

Literally, the phenomenon of the Franciscan movement, the only parallel I can think of in modern times, and nothing really compares to it, it's just different age, different time, different spirit. But the closest thing I can think to it, and you're going to laugh at me, of course, the younger people here can't even relate, it'd be the 60s.

You know, the love-in, the hippies, and the yippies, and incredible music. By the way, Francis, as you saw the hymn we sang this morning, starting Sunday school, incredible musician, just incredible music. But you have all these young people, and a lot of them were nobility, start flocking to Assisi, and they get fired up with Jesus Christ.

And it was a love-in, but no drugs and no sex. Yeah. In fact, one of the young people who is a young noble lady who is attracted to the movement is Claire, who in Catholic history becomes St. Claire. She comes from a very, very wealthy family. She literally ran away from home, joins up with the movement there, and she is allowed with the assistance of St.

Francis to begin a sister movement called St. Claire, the Poor Clares is what they call themselves. And basically, the women is a parallel movement to the Franciscans. Totally celibate and totally focused on sharing the gospel. So, anyway, and in fact, some scholars now believe that it is the Franciscans and the Dominicans that truly bring Christianity to the countryside and to the medieval cities.

You have this growth in population taking place at this time. The church was woefully not reaching these new groups of people, and the Franciscans are the ones that take Christianity to these different groups of people. And, you know, there's so much that he wrote, but you know, we had to just pick a few things.

This is one of his more famous poems: Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon, where there's doubt, faith, where there's despair, hope, where there's darkness, light, where there's sadness, joy. Oh, divine master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, it is in dying that we're born again to eternal life. So, quite the writer as well. So, the Franciscans, he would literally, like Jesus's example that we read earlier there, would send them out two by two.

And they were barefoot, you know, and sent out these roads. Garments, and they had taken vows of poverty, so they could not accept pay, but they could accept food. And they go forth and do good works and share the gospel. And so they go forth and they go everywhere.

France, Germany, England, Hungary, Spain, Morocco, Turkey, the Holy Land, they go everywhere. And they have quite an impact. I've already given you that quote by Gandhi. They also emphasize this radical imitation of Christ. Literally, in everything you do, ask yourself, you know, we have a famous book, 1800s, in this country, called on the Sheldon, In His Steps, In His Steps.

Great book to read, still. And similar situation here, Sheldon says, in everything you do, ask yourself, what would Jesus do? And you have this devotional movement spring from this later, which had a huge impact on the people that are going to be so instrumental in influencing Luther. So there's actually a link between St.

Francis and Luther, although Luther is certainly more meaty in theology. Okay, and so you have this idea of radical imitation of Christ. And of course, the other thing was just joy. And I, you know, first time read about. Francis, all this stuff. I thought, well, you know, this nobody can have life so easy.

And he didn't have an easy life. After more reading about it, the guy got beat up time after again. You know, he was not always well accepted during his actual lifetime. And he was an idealist, but he affects us in ways you may not be aware of. Of course, we got the hymns that we still sing that he wrote.

But how about this? How many during Christmas time will set up a manger scene? Did you know for a thousand two hundred years nobody did that? Saint Francis was the first one to set up one. He was concerned that the church did not pay enough attention to the incarnation, the wondrous mystery of God coming to earth in a little child.

And so he set the first manger scene to thinking, hoping that this would get people to focus more upon that. And I would say he succeeded. Okay, a lot of folks do this today. But he's the first one to introduce it in 1223. As best we can tell.

Okay, now, of course, we sang all creatures over God and King today. You know, very joyful. Everything, give praise to God, especially creation. You know, he loved animals and, you know. And he saw everything as God's wondrous creation. And we should praise God for it and be thankful for it.

And we've already talked about St. Clair, so we'll move on. Now, the movement, Francis will be the first one to admit that he was no organizer. I mean, the movement just grew and it got beyond his control, really. It just goes crazy. And in terms of growth. And he finally, at one point, decides, and by the way, he's traveling like crazy.

He goes all over. He's traveling all through Europe and, you know, he's encouraging people. Everywhere he goes, people start imitating him. They take off, go in their directions. He decides finally to go to the Middle East. He wants to convert the Muslims to Christianity. And here's where I say St.

Francis was somewhat, sometimes a little naive here. But he goes during the Fifth Crusade, bad timing, okay? Goes to the Fifth Crusade was really a crazy crusade because instead of going to the Holy Land, they attack Egypt. It was nowhere close to Jerusalem. And he apparently was causing all kinds of troubles for the Crusaders because he didn't want to actually fight the Muslims.

He wanted to talk to the Muslims. And they have this big battle, which is kind of a, you know, both sides have a huge slaughter. And he is so upset that he decides just to. Walk over to talk to Muslims since his fellow crusaders don't want to do that.

He and his friend go over, and of course, you know, they're obviously Christians, and so the Muslims beat the slop out of them. But they don't kill him. Somehow, he talks his way into meeting the Sultan at Cairo. And this guy, Malik, I don't know how you say that, Al-Kamil, he's actually, I believe, nephew of the great Saladin, who, by the way, despite what romantic Hollywood tells you about how chivalric Saladin was and how nice he was to Christians, he killed thousands of Christians, okay?

All right, the true Saladin. But anyway, this guy, somehow, he gets in and has a talk with the Sultan. Instead of the Sultan Ordinan being killed, which you would expect, they have this big discussion. For 21 days, each of them tried to convert the other one for 21 days.

And he never would, of course, agree with Saint Francis, but he's so impressed with him that he says, okay, you know, you have my protection. You can travel anywhere you want to in the Holy Land. Apparently, with this, he goes up to view all the pilgrimage sites. In fact, it's there where someone showed him where they believed to be the birth of Jesus, and it was a cave, and that's where he came up with the idea.

I'm going to go back and do a manger scene, you know, to focus people on the birth of Christ. And so, anyway, it's just amazing that the Muslims don't kill him, you know, and they even allowed him to speak freely while he's there. But, of course, ultimately, he sees he's not going to be able to bring about mass conversions of the Muslims of Christianity.

So, he reluctantly returns back to Italy, and he at that point gives up leadership of the order and, you know, turns over to first Cardinal Jugliano and then Pope Gregory IX. And then they draw up a formal rule, and Saint Francis himself resigns from formal leadership. He had literally physically exhausted himself.

He was just, this is a guy that literally burned himself out for Christ. And he goes back, goes into seclusion. Now, the weird thing is, 1226, Catholics believe he received the stigmata. I'm not going to touch that 10-foot pole, but I think y'all know about the stigmata. You literally have visible wounds of Christ appear upon your body.

And then shortly thereafter, he dies. Now, the order is taken over by Saint Bonaventure, who immediately releases the Franciscans from their vows of poverty. And of course, bureaucratizes the organization, and it loses that spontaneity, needless to say. And they graduate from the huts and twigs that, you know, they first start out there for new Port Ukula.

You know, they had just had little huts out there and sending people off, you know, to do ministry. Now they become active missions. You know, Franciscans today are very famous for scholarship. you know but the original spontaneity of movement now some of the uh franciscans were very upset by all this and they uh refused to go along with this called themselves the spiritual franciscans and because they rejected church authority they're declared heretics okay and so they're repressed but anyway now uh so that's saint francis now one of the things uh in my uh uh life that i've found out in ministry uh the impact of witnessing for christ will affect people that you never dream of you know i know just a little thing we do with pioneers we just this last christmas you know some of y'all know moses salvar who is now uh sort of like associate minister at living hope uh he came gave his testimony how pioneers so impacted him for christ as a little kid And of course, we all knew about Moses because I remember picking him up as a little boy for Sunday school for several years.

I wasn't too surprised about him because we really do believe that if you spread the gospel, and of course, Tom's that sermon I'll never forget, he preached where we were to cast the seed indiscriminately because we can't save anybody. We are to preach the gospel, preach it indiscriminately, and all people groups.

You know, we were to, and we don't know where it's going to take root. God does. And so I knew all about Moses, but I had no idea about Lindsay. Yeah, I'd pick Lindsay up, a little bee girl, and I can remember her little golden curls bouncing. She'd come jumping on the van, but she only came for a year or two and then disappeared.

And then years later, I meet up with her again, and you know, she tells me how much this little program had impacted her life, you know. And so here's the same thing with St. Francis. Way over in Hungary, you got the king of Hungary, Andrew II, met St.

Francis, his life was transformed, became apparently very sincere, believing Christian, and had all. His children trained up, you know, with Christian teachings. And apparently, it really had a huge impact on his daughter. And this is Elizabeth, who later is called Elizabeth Hungary. Now, I know this seems strange to you and I.

I definitely would not fly with me and Hannah on this. Don't have to worry now. She's well past this age. But at age 14, remember I told you people had to grow up a lot quicker back then? At age 14, she is married to the Duke of Thuringia.

Turingia is a province in the Holy Roman Empire, Germany. And so she moves from Hungary to here. Does anybody recognize this castle? Yeah, this is Vartburg. What famous person is going to hide out here two centuries later? Luther. Yeah. Connections you didn't know about, did you? Right. But anyway, she becomes the duchess there in Thuringia.

And because of her Christian upbringing, she took a very big interest in the lives of her subjects that most nobility did not do. And when her husband would go off on business, she'd go down into the major city there and she would dress up like a commoner and then she'd go and figure out what people You know, we were having different problems and needing help with, and she would go and personally deliver whatever was needed.

And so she became very beloved by the people there. Meantime, she has three kids. On one occasion, you're going to have a famine strike Thuringia, and people literally start starving to death. Her husband was away again when this really hits. And so, on her authority, she ordered all the food in the castle to be distributed to the starving people.

And the government officials were very upset with her. You know, how dare you do this? And, you know, these are peasants and serfs, and they need to fend for themselves. And so her husband finds out about the famine, comes back. His officials who were angry at her meet him out as he's coming in to just give her down the road for having distributed the food in their coffers.

And the husband apparently had been converted by her. And he just reads them the right act, says, you call yourselves Christians? If somebody is starving, if you're a Christian, you feed them. And so he backs her up. In fact, he comes back and he borrows money to try to save his starving son.

And so that was kind of interesting. Then, however, he goes off on the Sixth Crusade. Doesn't even make it to the Crusade. He dies on the way, you know, which is a real sad story because apparently this was a real love story as well. And so I'm not quite sure why this happened because you would think the kingdom would go to one of his sons, but instead, the brother inherits.

And he was the opposite of her husband. In fact, first thing he does is kicks her out of the castle without anything, just the clothes on her back and her kids. She goes down to town seeking, you know, somebody, please help me. And some of the very people she had helped turn her away because they're so scared of her, you know, her brother-in-law.

Finally, one of the little chapels, in fact, I think it was a Franciscan chapel, opened up for her, and for three years she lived there. In the meantime, the knights eventually find out what's happened of the realm, and they basically stage a rebellion and tell this new duke, you know, this is horrible, terrible how you're treating this woman.

If you don't provide for her, we're going to throw you out. And so he does provide a small little pension or whatever. And it wasn't enough, though. And so she takes up making wool, cloth. And this is. Is a picture of her, you know, making wool, cloth. And even the little resources she had, she would still go and share that with others.

By the way, when her father first found out, this all happened very suddenly. He was so angry. He's the king of Hungary. He threatened to go to war with Thuringia over how his daughter is being treated and sent ambassadors. And she met with them and says, No, I don't want you to go to war.

I love these people. And so they don't. So, anyway, in the Warburg castle, there's a room. I think it's probably her room. And all along the walls and the ceiling is all of her story in picture. So they tell you where to start, and you walk around the room and ceiling, and it just tells her a whole story.

It's amazing. So, anyway, now, this is, I'm really flashing back here just to point out to you that Europe had a lot of problems. It's amazing Christianity is going to flourish. You have in the 800s, of course, the appearance of the Vikings, you know, come down from Scandinavia, and they were pagans at first.

The remarkable thing about the Vikings is, with all the carnage they created, remember, the Vikings caused carnage in Eastern Europe as well as Western Europe. We only hear about Western Europe, but the first Russian state was actually Viking, by the way. And, of course, they make it over to Greenland, they make it all the way over to the North America.

But the amazing thing about it is shortly after the Viking conquest from here, they take over Normandy. Normandy is literally named in France Northman. That is, Normandy comes from the word for Northmen. And they took over England under Canute, and at first they're pagan, and yet they become Christianized.

Oftentimes, as a result of the wife becoming a Christian, then converting the husband. In some cases, Christian slaves convert the Vikings, which is kind of ironic. Then, of course, you've got the Magyars coming, settling down in Hungary, which we just had already been Christianized by what we were talking about a while ago.

All right, so with that, how much time have I got? Eight minutes. I guess just a little intro. I've already made references in the background to the Crusades with Saint Francis. I think it's important that we talk just very. I don't want to get into the Crusades in great detail because I want to keep the focus on Europe.

But obviously, the Crusades are having a huge impact. And so let's run just a little bit here. You have the Muslims attacking Europe from both sides. They're attacking up through Spain in the west, and they're attacking, trying to take Constantinople, which they will repeatedly assault time and time again.

And the Byzantines had this incredible secret weapon called Greek Fire, which is sort of like napalm. Flamethrowers and I don't know how many Muslim fleets they literally burned up. By the way, the Vikings tried to take Constantinople one time and they burned them up too. You know, a thousand long ships and crispy critters, you know, with Greek fire.

But while the Byzantines are holding back the Muslims in the east, they do break through into Western Europe as early as 7-11. You have this Muslim army from North Africa across Strait Gibraltar. They conquer pretty much almost all of Spain except up where the Pyrenees are. A few little Christian pockets hold out there the entire period.

And of course, they set up the capital city of Cordoba, became one of the wealthiest, more culturally advanced cities of the medieval world. And of course, you have this often portrayed in modern textbooks as a land of great tolerance that is highly overblown. There's a lot of intolerance as well.

In fact, there are occasions where entire cities of Christians are wiped out by the Muslims, and other occasions where entire groups of Jews are wiped out. And you usually hear that they're very, very tolerant to the Jews. And in much of the period, they were, but on occasions, they would massacre Jews as well.

And of course, the Muslims sweep into France and they were attacking all over France, especially southern France. In fact, Toulouse was Toulon, I should say, was a Muslim city for a while. Very busy in southern Spain, but finally they make an advance, and Charles Martel, Charles the Hammer, with a much, much smaller army, is going to stop the Muslims.

You know, we talk about dark ages. The dark ages in Europe were not really that dark. It was a transformation period, you know, going from the old Roman Empire, old Roman civilization, to a new civilization. But actually, stop and think about it. In medieval Europe, you have the beginnings of modern science.

Remember, the Jews had the conception you need to do to do science, which is a creator God that is outside of creation. Remember, in paganism, whatever form of paganism or pantheism, you know, God is the universe, right? You know, and in paganism, which is sort of I view as a primitive form of pantheism, you know, the forces of nature are represented by gods and goddesses.

If you question something, then you're, you know, you're committing blasphemy. But if you have a concept of a God that's outside of creation, then you can see it's not blasphemous to see how God does things. And, you know, very, very famous, oh, okay. Goodness, Kepler. Kepler, when they asked him, How did you figure out the ellipses and what science to you basically?

He said to him, it's figuring out how God did it. Now, you understand, that's not blasphemous. But if you question lightning and thunder as being natural processes instead of being the God Zeus hurtling those thunderbolts, you're a blasphemer in paganism. You understand that? And so you have in the medieval period, you're going to have a lot of technological advances.

And this is unassociated with religion here in one aspect. Remember, in medieval Europe, they're going to come up with these iron plows that can break the land up there in northern Europe. They come up with all sorts of ways to drain the land, put marshes to use. They're in the development of these, you know, to pull these heavy plows, you had to have heavy drought animals.

So they come up with these gigantic horses, sort of like the Clysdale. Have you seen those horses? Those things are monsters, you know. And those horses, they can only pull a heavy plow, they can take an armored man on the horseback. And then they come up with this nifty idea which the Muslims just could not ever get a hold of, called the stirrup, which is really important in staying on a horse in battle.

And so you got now armored knights. With long lances on these Clysdale horses, and here you got the Muslims coming at the Battle of Tours. They're on these little Sahara, small, tiny horses. And even though it's like 40,000 Muslims and 7,000 knights, Frankish knights, they just slaughter the Muslims.

And of course, the Christians already had crossbows, you know, which Muslims were very reluctant to use. They had all kinds of weaponry, technology, that the Muslims refused to adopt, which is kind of odd because in many ways they were very adaptive to new war technology. And of course, the armor that the Muslims had was not nearly of the quality of the armor that the Christians had.

So anyway, they're going to be stopped there. And the point, though, that I want to get across to you is you have this incredible conquest by the Muslims. Just to recap, Fari, Syria falls in 634 and 640. Jerusalem falls in 636. Remember, all this had been Christian. This is Eastern, you know, Orthodoxy, Byzantine-ruled areas.

I mean, we're talking, if they're not Byzantine, then they're monophysite Christian, you know, and it's just all, except for a few Jews, all these areas conquered by the Muslims was. Very Christian. And so Jerusalem falls 636. Egypt falls 641, although that's a much lengthier thing than you get by that.

And of course, the Ottoman Empire starts at Western expansion into the European continent in the middle of the 1300s. Constantinople finally falls in 1453. Remember, that's the modern era. Columbus sails the ocean blue when 1492. You keep perspective on this. And then, of course, you have Battle of Arna, the Second Battle of Kosovo, all the Balkans fall, middle, you know, Eastern Europe, Balkan Peninsula falls to Islam, and they will stay there for centuries.

And then you have, of course, all of Greece falling in 1460. And this is the typical propaganda that you get in textbooks to this day. All right, read the little caption there. I left it exactly, and that's the Western textbook that I've taught from. They're being recruited. Know what's wrong with this picture?

They're not being recruited. They were kidnapped. They were forcibly taken from Christian families throughout Eastern Europe. They're brought to Constantinople. They are, against their will, brainwashed into accepting Islam. Some of them are castrated and made eunuchs to serve in the government, and others become Janissaries to serve in the army.

But, you know, instead of just flat out saying that, they'll try to tone it down, make it sound nice. They're, you know, they're recruiting these children. They've been forcibly by arms been taken from their moms out of their arms. You know, so anyway, that's that's in Eastern Europe.

So we didn't get to the Crusades really. Just give you a little bit of introduction. Next time we'll talk just a little bit about the Crusades. Then we're going to start moving on towards major Christian reformers in the medieval period, later medieval period, particularly Wycliffe and Hoos. All right.