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0:54New baby. Huh? New baby? Who's that fourth? Well, I mean, it's actually seated in there. His fiancé's not here. Okay, we got Zach Adams right there. Then we got Anna and Noah. And so we got two weddings. Oh, yeah, that's right. Okay, and they're here today? Yes. I thought I saw them. All right. So anyway, it's a brand new baby. How about that? So the body's literally growing quite a bit around here. Take a look. Look at that nursery. I understand during the women's Bible study, one Tuesday, is it? I think they had 24 kids in there at one point. 24 kids? Oh, on Tuesday. Wow. All right, that beats us on some Sundays, I think. Okay, so anyway, but today we are going to be back to our history. And we were, of course, last time talking about John Wycliffe. And that's pronounced various ways, by the way. I've seen it Wycliffe, Wycliffe, just all sorts of different pronunciations. Pick your favorite one. And just as a little bit of background refresher, because I know some of you weren't here last time, but I can't put too much time on this. Remember, the background was this is medieval period. Of course, the church is very feudal in nature. It's changed, you know, over a thousand years have gone by. The church has departed many ways from, you know, the first century Christianity. And part of Wycliffe, part of Jan Hus is trying to bring the church back to the first century. And both of these leaders are really, in some ways, some would say, proto-Protestants. They kind of laid the groundwork for the coming of Luther and Calvin and a host of others, Wingley, for example. And we briefly talked about last time the fact that just prior to this, you have several scandals in the Catholic Church. That particularly was beginning to weaken the Roman Catholic Church in terms of respect for it and authority of the church. One of these scandals was the Babylonian captivity of the papacy. And if you weren't here last time, that's when the popes basically abandoned Rome. Remember, they're the bishops of Rome. You expect the bishop of a city to be in the city for which they're bishop of. They're not just the popes, they're the bishop of Rome. But they left Rome, they go up to this beautiful, beautiful little valley today, you know, is in France. Then it's actually part of the Holy Roman Empire called Avignon. And there they build a just fabulous, almost city, you know, a palace, and you have the popes living there. Many of these popes were very pro-French, and you got the Hundred Years' War going on at this time, you got the bubonic plague going on at this time, you got all these just horrible, terrible crises, you got peasants' rebellions, yakiris, jackeries, is what they call them in France. And so a lot of chaos and all this sort of stuff. And I yet reminded you last time, in spite of all this, though, Europe is progressing. You know, 1492, Columbus sells the ocean blue.

4:16Just prior to that, 1450, you know, Constantinople had fallen. Turks burst into southeastern Europe. In fact, almost all southeastern Europe falls to the Turks. You still had Muslims in Spain at this point. The last Muslim kingdom, in fact, does not fall into what year? It's familiar to you. You just mentioned it. 1492. You know, the old story that Isabella pawned her jewels to fund Columbus, that's not really true, but it is true she took some of the loot from the collapse of Granada, the last Moorish kingdom, and used some of that money to help fund the voyage to America. So it's kind of ironic the Muslims helped fund Columbus, and that's kind of ironic when you think of that. But anyway, so let's get back. John Wycliffe, of course, he comes on the scene. And what's going on at the church at the time he comes on? The Babylonian captivity is just recently ceased, and you have a new scandal. You got even bigger scandal. You got the Great Schism or Schism, whichever way you want to pronounce that. And this is where you have two popes.

5:30You had this election by the College of Cardinals. They're in Rome. A riot broke out. The Romans were fed up with popes being up there. And Avignon is frankly hurting the tourist industry, right? You know, no pope, no selling of pope dolls and all these other things. I remember what was it, John the one from Poland. Which number is he? I'm blank right now. Yeah, when John. John Paul II, right? When he was here, even he was outraged at the pope dolls, you know, and trinkets. But with the pope being out of Rome, this is really hurting things, and so they demanded a Roman pope. And remember, you get to Urban, and then Urban turns out to be in the first stages, some think of insanity. He turns on the very cardinals that elected him. The French cardinals, in particular, flee up to Avignon and they elect a second pope, Clement V, right? And so you have a split taking place. You got two popes, and each pope excommunicates the other pope, which is just really wild. You know, the popes excommunicating popes. And so it's with this backdrop that you have John Wycliffe in England. And as we told you last time, he's a brilliant scholar. But at some point, you know, he, like many, entered the church at this time not for spiritual reasons. It was a good living. You know, the church is the wealthiest institution there is. It's the largest landholder there is. You know, I said this last time, but I think it's very appropriate to keep in our minds. You know, Jesus said, foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has not even a place to lay his head. And now you have the medieval church pretty much owning all the places to lay your head. And Wycliffe, However, as a result of his studies, at some point, he really became a Christian, right?

7:38And then he, of course, being a brilliant young man, he begins to start criticizing the worldliness of the church. And he particularly goes after this having so much wealth. And he's going to argue that the church should have this wealth taken away, that this is actually impeding their spirituality. And of course, the politicians of the day like that idea. Not for good spiritual reasons, however, but why do you think they would like that idea? Yeah, taxes, money, take it to the secular state. And of course, ruling England at this time is John Agaunt. And John Agaunt is the brother of the Black Prince. The Black Prince, of course, is a famous warrior prince of England that defeated the French in two terrible battles and was a very, very charismatic person. But he's now sick and his son is just a kid. And so John of Gaunt is regent at this time, Regent of future Richard II. And so anyway, John of Gaunt is attracted to Wycliffe because of some of these ideas he has. And originally, Wycliffe does not. Get in trouble with the church over theology. He originally gets in trouble with the church over politics, actually. This idea that the state should have more authority over the church within the state. And they were trying to keep the pope out of interfering with appointment of church offices, and they want to let Englishmen choose their offices. Remember, part of this that's driving this too is the open favoritism that the popes are having towards the English. And remember, during this time period, England and France are at war. The 100 Years' War, that's going on as a backdrop as well. So, with all that, I think we've pretty much covered all that. Any questions about anything before we get to going?

9:49And so, we went through all this, I believe, as well. You know, I think we might have the wrong slide here. No, we don't. Okay, let me back up. This is not the right set. Okay, if you look on there, find the set that it should have last night's date on it. But let me just get to going. All right. Wycliffe, I have different versions of these things, and they got the wrong version up there. It's my fault. Anyway, you got, if y'all can look on the Seth's lives, you should see the last revision, and that should have been last night. So you have Wycliffe specifically, he is going to want the common ordinary Christian. You see, in the first century, what's the church? Y'all tell me.

11:11It's the entire body of believers. By the medieval period, guess what the church, when you say the church, what are people thinking? Yeah, the clergy is pretty much where the emphasis would lie. In fact, we're going to see when we get to Jan Hus, hopefully we'll get to that today. It got to such a situation where they were not even allowing the laity, that's us, ordinary folks, to partake of the cup. They could partake of the bread, but they weren't allowed to partake of the cup. All right? And because that's only reserved for the highfalutin clergy. You see? And so you have Wycliffe. Of course, this also along with that is this idea of transubstantiation. Are you all familiar with transubstantiation? The priest does that blessing, and the bread literally becomes the flesh of Jesus, the body of Jesus, and that wine literally becomes the blood of Jesus. And they take this so seriously: if you go to Catholic Mass, if you hang around and there's leftover wine, and of course, the bread they can store that way, but what must they do with the wine that's been poured out? The altar kids can hear it. Well, or the priests, or the priests. Because you do not pour the blood of Christ down a drain. Israel Fey, you know, Catholics often make fun of folks like us and the terminology of fundamentalism, but they take that passage there about the blood and wine, and they go way beyond any fundamentalists on it.

12:59And here's the thing: just for fun, when I prepare things, I try to listen to all sides. And in fact, last night I was listening to a Catholic describe Wycliffe. And that's very interesting, their perspective. And he was really condemning Wycliffe because he says, well, it's just so terrible that he was attacking transubstantiation, which is central to Roman Catholic belief. And I'm thinking as I'm sitting there being a historian. And I could do this remembering as he's saying this: well, this is a central belief to Roman Catholicism that at that point was only about 100 years old. And in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, that's smoking hot and you, okay? All right, you know, this was not that well-established of a doctrine when Wycliffe attacks it. It was actually a recent reinterpretation of the Catholic Church at the time. And so, Wycliffe is going to go after the idea of transubstantiation. He says that's false.

14:08And who else is very famously going to do this a little over 100 years later? Luther. Of course, we're going to see who does it as well. So, Wycliffe is going to attack that doctrine, and he's really going to emphasize that the church, once again, he brings it back to the idea that the church are the people, you know. And remember, they can now, he's real big on reading the Bible for yourselves. And there's neither, what's that famous passage? You know, there's neither male nor female, what? Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, for we are all one in Christ Jesus, right? And so he is going to really emphasize that. And that verse, I want. Want you to understand that's very important spiritually speaking, but you get politicians and they get a hold of that. What can be the implications of that?

15:13And it doesn't have to be politicians. This case is going to be peasants get a hold of it. And were they going to go some radical political directions, at least for feudalism? They're going to say there shouldn't be kings or queens or dukes or all that. In fact, it had a pretty powerful impact on the American Revolution. One of the big things about the Great Awakening, it re-emphasized this idea that God's no respecter of persons. And if you really come to the full understanding of that, can you really believe that somebody should have more power and authority and rights than you do because of their birth?

15:54See, it has very profound political implications as well. And that's one reason why one of the problems with followers of Wycliffe, after Wycliffe dies, some of the Lollerts are going to take this and they're going to go more with a political direction than just teaching the word of God. That's going to get them in trouble. But anyway, let's look now. We're in the right place here. Wycliffe states: the church is a totality of those who are predestined to blessedness. It includes the church triumphant in heaven, the church melting our men on earth. No one who is eternally lost has part in it. There is one universal church, and outside of it, there is no salvation. Its head is Christ. And notice this, this is very radical. No pope may say he is a head, for he cannot say that he is elect or even a member of the church. So that was a pretty radical thing to say. So he's going to argue for the unique authority of the Bible. He comes very close to what, you know, Protestants are very famous all the time, quoting sola scriptura, right? And it doesn't fully get quite all the way there. I think part of this causes feudal, you know, world he's living in. But he comes very close and he argues the unique authority of the Bible. And he says the Bible is what everything should basically be decided upon. Now, listen to the, you know, the Catholic gentleman last night viewing Wycliffe. He was making the comment that, well, if you let people interpret the Bible each for themselves, and that just leads to chaos, you know. And, well, we do have a lot of different Protestant denominations. That's true. That's true. And he was saying, well, you see, in the Catholic Church, we all agree on the same thing. Well, is that really true? No. In fact, different popes have had total different interpretations, and different church councils have completely repudiated each other. So it's really not true with the Catholics either. All right. But I will say this. I used to. Host graduate Bible study in my home for University of Christian Fellowship years ago. And we, of course, had very diverse groups of students. We had everything from Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, charismatic, jokingly, you say charismaniac. But, you know, we had all these different groupings and Baptists and fundamentalists and Lutherans and all sorts. And we would do what we call manuscript studies, which were, you know, it's kind of a fun, fun thing to do because you take out the chapter headings and you take out the verse numbers, and those are real good for usually most reasons, but it really makes you focus just strictly on what the passage is saying.

18:46And we sometimes dealt with some pretty controversial passages. But you know what? I found out if you really come to it with the spirit of I want to know what the Word of God is saying, God's pretty plain. You know, here are these people with different backgrounds, everything. We almost never, ever, when we really got into it, had a disagreement on what was actually saying. God's word is actually very clear, you know. And yeah, different people can have different interpretations, but you get a group of believers together and they're truly trying to understand the word of God, there's not usually that big of a difference, I've noticed.

19:31But anyway, I think Wycliffe comes to understand that. He wants people to be able to read the Word of God for themselves. Now, he has a huge problem that Luther doesn't have, and we touched on this last time. What's the problem he has that Luther's not going to have? There's no printing press. Plus, quite frankly, there's a lot more people illiterate at the time of Wycliffe than you have at the time of Luther. It's pretty bad at the time of Luther still, but it's even worse at the time of Wycliffe. So, what Wycliffe is going to have to do is translate the Bible into English.

20:11And of course, this shows him reading the Bible. I think we left off last time with this picture up here. You've got John of Gaunt over there in the red seated there, and he's reading from his English Bible. But this, of course, the English of that day was Middle English, and there you have it. I think, didn't I have somebody read the section? All right. So, you know, you can make it out. I made it simplified here so you can kind of follow it a little bit better. But it's different. And you put the English accent on it that time a bit. It's really different. But anyway, so he's going to translate the Bible, but then they had to hand copy it.

20:54And so, practically speaking, what he's going to wind up doing is they would hand copy little pieces. Of the Bible, and then he would get his supporters, his followers, two by two, go out, sort of like St. Francis sent his out, and they would share the scripture portions that they have, and they would do lay preaching in the English language that people could understand. And they become, over time, is really, there's all sorts of sources talking about where they got this name. Nobody really knows. I've never found an explanation that really fully explains it. But they're called the Lollards, the Lollards. And they have a huge influence in England. So he argues that salvation was an individual matter between the believer and God. Now, why is that so radical for this time?

21:48What does the Catholic Church teach at this point? Well, basically, the church saves you, right? And you've got to have the seven sacraments and all of this. And he's saying, no, no. Now, this is very close to a doctrine that is near and dear to us as Baptists. Who can name that doctrine for me? Priesthood of the believer. Priesthood of the believer. Now, I won't hold off on that, you know, especially as we get to the Anabaptists, why that is such an incredible, in fact, it's very important to the very foundation of this nation, that concept, priesthood of the believer, because politically that's going to help. To use the word evolved, but that's kind of the word I have to use here into this notion of what we call freedom of conscience, politically speaking.

22:38And really, what we have in the United States is very unique. The Greeks had democracy before anybody else did, but did it last? And do the Greeks have this concept of freedom of conscience? No, they didn't. That's why it didn't last. But here in the United States, very uniquely, because so many had come to this view, Wycliffe, way before anyone else. And of course, it's right there in the New Testament. We'll get to that later. But he argued that salvation was an individual marriage that each of us can go to our high priest, which is who? Jesus. Directly. Do we need to go through a saint? Do we need to go through this person or through a priest? No, we can approach the throne of God through prayer individually.

23:31And so this is huge, huge idea here that's going to have just profound impact later on. So he also, of course, attacks the veneration of relics, outward rituals that were, and he basically says they're idolatrous. You're substituting worship of God with the worship of things, right? And so he's going to argue that as well. And remember, this really. Really hits money. Why? What am I talking about? All these churches, they have pilgrimages. I mean, the more tourists you get, the more holy relics you have to have for them to come to view, to touch, and to get, you know, all this sort of stuff. And so he's really hurting the money-making things that the church is using at this time and attacking that. And that really upsets the bureaucracy. Now, you've got to remember: throughout the medieval period, you have sincere Christians within the medieval church. Now, they got a lot of messy doctrines and ideas that are not what the Bible is teaching, but you're always going to have Wycliffe's. They're going to, even though they had to read it in Latin, the gospel breaks through. And you will have sincere reformers in the church, but then you have those people that are in the church for all the wrong reasons.

25:07A lot of the bishops, they're not bishops because of spiritual qualifications. They're bishops because they bought their seat, literally, paid cash for it. When you get 13, 14-year-olds being made a bishop, something's wrong with that, don't you think? But daddy bought them the bishop's hat, you see, and stuff like that. That's going on. And so, you know, There's a struggle within the church itself. Okay, so you got these poor priests being sent out. And see, that's kind of a shocking thing because me of the Lollerts, they're doing this as a labor of love for Christ. And they're going, and they're not asking to be paid anything. You see, that's another reason why the Franciscans were so controversial.

25:55They didn't want to be paid. And so they're going to share Christ. And at least initially, they had pure intentions and they were going about this in the right way. Later on, it kind of gets a little bit corrupted with getting into some of the political side of things. So two by two, they go out barefoot, sort of like the Franciscans did, wearing long, dark red robes, carrying a staff in their hand, symbolizing their pastoral calling. They travel from place to place, preaching the sovereignty of God. And of course, unfortunately, though, after Wycliffe dies, and by the way, Wycliffe never does get condemned as a heretic. Anyone care to guess what the major reasons why? Several reasons, really.

26:41What's going on? I told you already. Within the church, what's going on? Instead of condemning him and ordering him to be burned at the stake, what are the pope's busy doing? Notice I said popes. They're fighting each other, you know, and excommunicating each other. And so this. This big distraction. And so he partly benefits from that. He also partly benefits, who did I tell you, is his protector? John of God. Who's John of God? He's running the country at this moment. Okay? So, and you see, the rulers of England actually have a lot of power over the clerics. On one occasion, when they call him to account, he shows up with the two most powerful men in England on either side of him. And guess what? The clergy at that point decide. Well, we'll kind of back off of this, you know. And then on another occasion, they call him to account, and there's an earthquake. You know, all right, God Himself intervenes, you know. So he, you know, the temptation to say he's very lucky. Being a Christian, I know it's not luck. God's protecting him. But he is slowly reduced. Remember, he's teaching Professor Oxford, and eventually they run him out of Oxford. He has to go back to this basically a little small church there, which is one of the livings he had. And that's Letterwork. And there he is, riding continuously, voluminously, right up until he writes famous work, De Ecclesia, which is going to have such an impact on the rest of Europe. So he is there. When he dies of old age, he never is having to face charges of heresy. While he's living. But after he's dead and after the Council of Constance, which we'll get into here in a minute, and he got back to one Pope again, they don't forget Wycliffe. And the reason they don't forget Wycliffe is because his teachings continue to live after he's dead. In fact, it spreads all the way to Eastern Europe, a place called Bohemia. And that would be what today?

28:59Czech Republic. Right. And it's going to have a huge impact there. But it's all over Europe, actually, he has a huge impact. And so they decide they have got to once and for all, you know, discredit John Wycliffe. So they dig up his bones and they have another trial. And they condemn him, and it's a long, drawn-out deal. And then they burn his bones, and then they scatter them in the River Swift. And, you know, thinking they're afraid that his followers will collect his bones as relics, which shows they just did not understand Wycliffe. You know, the followers of Wycliffe would not do that. That's one of the things that Wycliffe says, you know, these relics, we're not supposed to be worshiping those. So, anyway, you know, and they think. Finally, we've done away with Wycliffe. But you see, while he was at Oxford, you have college exchange students. That's nothing new. That's been going on for a long, long time. And of course, some of these also, one of the Czech princesses was married into English royalty at this time. Some of these students came over during that time as well. But keep it simple, some of these Bohemians, which are Czechs, go back to what then was Bohemia, today's Czech Republic, and they go back to their home university, you know, which is University of Prague. And University of Prague was having all kinds of problems. For one thing, most of the students, well, I should say most, over half the student body, were Czech. But almost all the professors were, guess what?

30:58German. They're all Catholic at this point. But yeah, they're German. And that should let you know: if you know anything about World War II, or if you know anything about the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Czechs have been oppressed by the Germans century after century after century, and there's already resentment building up. And so you have at this university a brilliant student. I mean, he just goes from From academic height to academic height, and that is Jan Hus. And Jan Hoos, the name is actually kind of funny.

31:40I think the Babers were over there. Y'all know about this. What does Hoos literally mean? Yeah, it means goose. If you translate the town that he came from, it was Goose Town. And so he's John a Goose Town. John Hoos. Hoose is goose. All right. And so, but, and he had a lot of fun with that himself. He was one that got a big kick out of that. In fact, I did not realize that in Mexico, Pato, you know, my name is Pat, and Pato is duck. So a lot of Mexicans, when they hear me say Pat, they think I'm, you know, I'm saying I'm calling myself duck. All right, so anyway, quack, quack. All right, Wade.

32:29You got Hoose. Let's see. Oh, but before we go there, I forgot. We got to do the scripture reading. Of all the scriptures, one of the lecturers I heard talking in the past about Wycliffe, he chose this psalm to sort of personify what Wycliffe was about. And I think this is an excellent, excellent psalm. If you think about what was motivating Wycliffe, I don't know if this was actually the main verse in the back of his mind, but I bet you Wycliffe was very familiar with this passage, and it certainly helps to explain some of what Wycliffe was about. So y'all can pass it around or whatever, but why don't you three read this for me? Start. Oh, how I love your law. It is my meditation all the day. Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me.

33:27Now, let's stop there. Wycliffe had a lot of enemies. And this passage so fits because he outsmarted all of them. And I don't think his enemies understood. He had what in his corner? The word of God. Yeah. All right. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, for I keep your precepts. Now, have you ever thought about this when you read the word of God?

34:04I have more understanding than all my teachers. I think this, of course, referring to human teachers. Maybe we would spend a little more time reading the Word of God. I've talked with students before who they'll say, well, I'm a Christian. I say, well, are you reading your Bible? Oh, no. Well, so we've got this document which is by the most. Profound intelligence of all time. I mean, you can go to university your entire life, and I'm all for going to college. You know, it makes my bread and butter for you to do so. But if you read that Bible, it is beyond anything I can ever teach you, or anyone else can ever teach you.

34:55And how many times do we not even bother to pick it up? You know, and but to understand his precepts and to be able to keep them, that is incredible, you know. All right? I hold back my feet from every evil way in order to keep your word. I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me. Okay. And how can we know what's a evil way? By reading it, yeah. And it's through the power of the Spirit and only through the power of Spirit that we can, you know, hold back your feet from the evil way. Okay?

35:39How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth? Through your precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way. You know, that little passage there, sweeter than honey to my mouth, our Pastor Emeritus, that is so profound a healing. And part of the reason is he loves honey. Y'all know about him and his bees. When I first came to Emmanuel, he had beehives across the street there. And some of the ladies in the lighthouse were not too happy about those bees because they got stung several times. But, you know, squeezed honey to my mouth, though your precepts I get understanding. And if you have that understanding, you're going to hate every false way.

36:35And of course, someone like Wycliffe, who was so intimately into the Word of God, can you kind of understand why he was so upset at what he saw going on within the church at that time? You see? All right. 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.

37:11I 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. I hate the double-minded, but I love your law. You are my hiding place and my shield. I hope in your word. Okay.

37:40Depart from me, you evildoers, that I may keep the commandments of my God. Alright. Okay. So, who will read this for us? I charge you in the presence of the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate.

38:16Wait. I'm sorry. Yes. And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed, and on the third day be raised. Okay. Take up your cross and follow Jesus. And he said to all, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. All right, well, these I added in because quite literally, you know, Wycliffe and especially Hus would take up his cross, follow Christ, and where is that going to lead? Hoos.

39:00Yeah, to being burned at a stake. And that, you know, should kind of sober us on just how serious this matter is. Can we switch over to Hoos now? How much time have we got? I guess it would be introduction to Hoos, is what we're going to have today. All right, and there we have one of the depictions of Hoos being burned at the stake, although I understand they actually had it right up to his neck.

39:34He, of course, also lives now, he briefly, for a time there, he's alive at the same time as Wycliffe, although they did not know each other at the time. And so he's there at Prague, brilliant young man. Some point, you know, he frankly said he entered the church at first because of the usual reasons. It's a good living, and he thought he would have an easier lifestyle by entering into the church. But at some point during his studies, he profoundly has a conversion experience, becomes what I'd say is a real Christian. And he had an incredible gift for preaching. And since we don't have that much time, let me simply say he becomes ultimately, you're going to have this big struggle there at the University of Prague.

40:30Teachings of Wycliffe begin to infiltrate into the University of Prague, and this is going to lead to eventually dissension. And the Bohemian students are the Czechs, they are going to grab on to the teachings of Wycliffe and make them very applicable to their situation there in Bohemia. And of course, Hus becomes pretty much the interpreter of Hus to the masses. And part of the reason is one of the things that happens there at the university: the German professors are kicked out. And they go back to a university in Germany. And that means you're going to have a lot of promotions there amongst the Czechs because all these German professors are kicked out. And for a while, there, Hus is going to be rector, pretty much the one in charge. And he, of course, some of his students apparently brought him some of these writings of Wycliffe, and he is pretty much going to whole hog adopt the teachings of Wycliffe. In fact, some of Hus's writings, he openly admits that he just takes Wycliffe's writings and he sort of summarizes them, you know. And his De Ecclesia, which is named the same as Wycliffe's De Ecclesia, it is. Pretty much just a lot of it's just Wycliffe's translated into the Czech language. And he, you know, he's not plagiarizing, he gives Wycliffe credit for it. But, and so, what I've said about Wycliffe is pretty much also true for Hus. I guess the biggest difference, or it's not so much a difference, it's Hus going further than what Wycliffe did, is on this subject of the Lord's Supper.

42:30The Hussites particularly emphasize that in the Lord's Supper, of course, they call it the Eucharist, you should allow the laity to partake of the cup. Eutichris, I think is how you pronounce that. Huh? Eucharist. Eucharist. But what they're saying is both. You have both. Both the bread, both the wine. And in fact, later on, when you have the Hussite wars break out, they have this big banner. Might see a picture here in a second. And on that big banner, you have a picture of a goose and you have a picture of a communion cup. That'd be there. And of course, one is I'm a follower of Hus, and the other is, you know, I believe that we should partake of both the elements, right? And so that is. Really, going to be a big, big distinctive with Hus. Now, later on, if you want to know the influence of Jan Hus, Luther, when he's standing, you know, giving a defense for his beliefs, one of the most dramatic moments is when he gets up and says, Iqbon Hussite.

43:53And which is saying what? I am a Hussite. Oh, you know, that really shocks everybody because, you know, Hus by that point been universally condemned by the Catholic Church. And so, you know, and in fact, Luther, one of his comments about Jan Hus, remember when, well, we haven't got to Luther yet, but at one point he's going to have to have this big debate with John Eck. And, of course, we're going to find out everything Luther does, he goes way overboard. And so he wants to read about all these other guys from the past. And he got the whole of Hus's writings. And one of the things that so profoundly affected him, he says, I cannot see how the church can condemn someone whose every word is so Christian.

44:48And one other thing about Hus that is kind of, I want y'all to remember too, considering such violent wars broke out after his death, he himself was very. Very non-violent. You know, he was very much about loving your enemies. In fact, when the flames consume him, he is like Stephen. What does Stephen do as they're stoning him? He prayed for those who were doing the killing. So does Hus. He does as well. He's a very, very humble person in that respect. So he, of course, is living during the high point or low point of the great schism. And what really, I guess you could say, ticks him off is you have one of these schismatic popes, one of the Pisan popes. Remember, later on, you had two popes, and then you had the Council of Pisa, and that tries to end the schism by electing a new one and only pope, but you couldn't get everybody on board. And so instead of reducing him from two to one, they now have three popes, okay? And they all excommunicate each other. So anyway, one of the Pisan, John the 22nd, he declares a crusade against Naples, Italy.

46:16Are the people in Naples Muslim? No. What are they? They're Roman Catholics. So here you got a Roman Catholic Pope declaring a crusade against fellow Roman Catholics. Because they're following one of these other schismatic popes, you see. And to fund the crusade, he issues something that's going to really get Luther upset later on. What does he issue? A special set of indulgences. Now, I won't hold off getting too detailed about indulgence because when we get to Luther, I won't get into detail about that. But basically, it's buying your way into heaven, right? And I must say, Jan Hus really nails the Pope on this. He said, okay, so what you're telling me is, if you're rich enough, you can buy your way out of purgatory. Because remember, they had this idea in the medieval where you got this holding tank to decide which way you're going to go. And if you pray long enough or hire enough nuns or monks to pray for you, they can pray you out of purgatory. Or you can work your way out, you know. And so, but the popes can, by special, you know, power, can release you with indulgence, you know, so you can go straight to heaven. And so popes are supposed to be Christians, right? You're supposed to love and care about people. But let me see here. And this is Huss, and I'm not quite using exactly his phraseology, but this was his line of argument. And you can imagine, and remember, Hus at this time, he was originally hired in Prague by the church, in addition to being, you know, rector of the university, as the pope. Public lay preacher, not lay preacher, but preaching to the laity, the common folks. And amazingly enough, he was to preach in the Czech language. And so you have this huge building there, I forget something, Bethlehem Chapel, something like that. And he still stands there today. You can go Prague, it's still there. And a huge, huge building. And he started preaching there in the Czech language, and huge crowds start coming to hear him. You know, because this was just phenomenal. And of course, you know, like Brother Tom here, he did his homework. You know, he'd tear it back down to the original languages, but then he would, you know, speak forth in the language that everyone can understand, which was, they just hadn't had that before, and they were hungry for it. And so he was a very popular preacher. And in the midst of him preaching during this time, this thing about this, you know, Pope declaring this crusade against fellow Roman Catholics, he kind of says, let's see. So the Pope says, you know, he's going to issue this special indulgence. And you can buy this if you're rich enough. And you get you out of purgatory. Now, the Pope's supposed to be a Christian. He should care about all Christians, right? And, well, if he has the power to free these folks over here, why doesn't he just go ahead and free everybody?

49:30You know? Wouldn't that be the Christian thing to do? You know? And it was rather embarrassing to put it that way, you know. And this, of course, infuriates the Pope because he's got his hand caught in the cookie jar here. And so he orders, you know, he has him condemned or orders a local bishop to condemn him. But it wasn't condemning him for theology. Once again, it was condemning him because, you know, more politics reached. Now, later on, they'll also condemn him for theology, especially when he starts teaching about the Eucharist, Ultracris, you should have both the cup and the wine. And, of course, you have the election of Martin V, you got the council. Well, no, he hadn't been elected yet. Basically, what happens is you have, well, his immediate protector initially was, you know, Mirror Christmas Carols, Good King, Wenceslaus.

50:37That was King of Bohemia at this time. Yeah. Yeah. And he wasn't so good, actually. All right. And he initially sticks up for a hus, but then he starts waffling. I don't have time to go through all the waffles. But he has a brother who is the Holy Roman Emperor. Wenceslaus, his brother, is a Holy Roman Emperor. You know, the Holy Roman Empire, which is really a German empire, but you have some folks in it, they're not German, and they're discriminated against by the Germans, which happens to be Bohemia.

51:14And so Sisismund, who is the brother of Wenceslaus, he also protects Luther initially because, remember, Hus is making some of these same arguments that politicians love. The church should be divested of its land, of its wealth, that secular rulers should have more control over the church within their borders and boundaries. And so, for all these reasons, they initially are protecting Hus, but then as time goes on, Wycliffe, I mean, Huss starts teaching them some things that they're not so happy about. For one thing, indulgences. You see, guess how indulgences were actually put out there?

51:59Every different feudal principality, if you have a sale of indulgences and people buy those indulgences, guess who gets a cut of the money? The local ruler does. And so, when he attacks indulgences, he's getting into their money, you know, and they're not too happy about that. Well, you have, therefore, in the background of all this, the Council of Constance is coming down. Together. Now, you don't normally have that many church councils in Rom Catholic times because that's the one thing popes were fearful of. You know, a church council is the one thing that can actually have more authority than a pope, and so popes are rather reluctant to have those. But this thing of having three popes simultaneously was such a mess that finally all the political leaders get together, along with the sincere reforming types within the church, say, we've got to end this mess. And so Sisymung gets on board, the Holy Roman Emperor, one of the leading politicians of the day, and they have the Council of Constance. And the primary purpose of the Council of Constance is to end this great schism.

53:10But a side note is to deal with Jan Hus. And how are we going to get him there? I mean, if you were Hus, would you go to the Council of Constance? All right. Well, the Holy Roman Emperor is going to make him a promise. And we'll find out about that next time. Okay. Could we have a let's see? Langson, you want to pray for us?