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Series Code: FE
Program Code: FE000002S
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00:04 [upbeat music]
00:14 [upbeat music continues] 00:24 [upbeat music continues] 00:34 [upbeat music] 00:40 - When you migrate from the old world 00:42 to the new the way my own parents did, 00:44 countries in the new world like the United States 00:46 just feel like brand new places. 00:49 After all, America isn't even 250 years old, 00:53 and some of the homes here in Leiden 00:54 are much, much older than that. 00:57 And it's here in the Netherlands 00:58 that we pick up the next thread in the complicated story 01:01 of how America was born. 01:03 But to really understand what happened in this place 01:06 and why it matters, we need to travel back about 1700 years 01:12 to a time when the Roman Empire 01:13 was in danger of becoming destabilized. 01:17 The emperor, Diocles, 01:19 famous for his ruthless persecution of Christians, 01:21 had decided to retire and in the wake of his retirement, 01:25 a number of powerful men made it their business 01:28 to come out on top. 01:29 The massive empire was already being ruled by a tetrarchy, 01:34 a carefully designed system where four men shared power. 01:37 But after Diocletian retired, 01:39 a fifth man emerged in the city of Rome, 01:42 a pretender to the throne, named Maxentius. 01:49 What happens next is one of the most important stories 01:52 on the road to the birth of America, 01:54 although it's going to take a little bit of patience 01:57 and quite a lot of Bible prophecy to work it all out. 02:00 [people shouting] 02:04 In 312 AD, a man by the name of Constantine 02:07 defeats Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. 02:10 And because his mother is a Christian convert, 02:13 Constantine becomes convinced 02:15 that the Christian God has smiled on him. 02:18 So he brings the persecution of Christians to an abrupt halt 02:21 and he actually begins to favor them. 02:24 Now, whether or not Constantine himself 02:26 ever really did become a Christian is somewhat doubtful, 02:29 but he did bring the church out of the shadows, 02:32 and elevated the Christian faith 02:34 to the point where it became Rome's official religion. 02:39 After that, Constantine pulled up stakes 02:41 and moved to the east where he founded 02:44 the city of Constantinople, 02:46 and that was the beginning of the end for the West. 02:50 In 410 AD the Goths sacked the city of Rome, 02:53 and by 476 it was all over. 02:56 The last western emperor had been deposed. 03:01 That left an incredible power vacuum in the west, 03:04 because the Romans who had been sent 03:06 to the far-flung regions of the empire 03:09 started to head back home. 03:11 The British Isles were left to be overrun 03:13 by the Anglians, the Saxons and the Jutes, 03:16 and the Celtic Gauls filled the vacuum in France. 03:19 Bit by bit the barbarian tribes that had conquered Rome 03:23 became the modern nations of Western Europe. 03:26 And at the same time, 03:27 they started converting to Christianity, 03:29 really starting with Clovis, King of the Franks in 508 AD. 03:35 So essentially what happened 03:37 is that when the Romans began to pack up 03:38 and leave their posts, 03:40 the Christian church started to fill the power void 03:42 that they left behind, so to this day 03:44 you can still find remnants of this period 03:46 in the way that Christian churches 03:48 continue to structure themselves 03:50 after the ancient Roman government, 03:54 For example, a regional administrative unit 03:57 in the Roman Empire was known as a diocese, 04:00 which came from the Greek word for administration. 04:03 When the church was legalized after Constantine's victory, 04:06 they too used the same administrative structure 04:09 organized by diocese. 04:12 Then in 533 AD, the Roman emperor, Justinian, 04:17 the man who had built Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. 04:20 Well, he essentially handed the reins of power 04:23 in the Western empire to the Bishop of Rome, 04:26 declaring him to be head of all the holy churches. 04:29 And since the political Roman structure was gone, 04:31 the church simply filled the void, 04:34 and that's how organized Christianity 04:36 became so politically powerful during the medieval period. 04:42 Now add to that a clever eighth century forgery 04:45 known as the Donation of Constantine, 04:47 which was a supposed decree from Constantine himself, 04:51 giving the whole western empire to the church. 04:54 Well, you can suddenly see why so many kings and princes 04:56 found themselves bowing to the wishes 04:58 of high ranking clergy. 05:00 What really happened is that the Christian religion 05:03 had gone from being a humble persecuted group 05:05 to the most powerful political institution 05:08 on the face of the planet. 05:10 And as Lord Acton so famously put it, 05:12 "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power 05:15 corrupts absolutely." 05:17 [upbeat music] 05:27 [upbeat music continues] 05:38 It's painful to admit that the medieval period 05:40 wasn't exactly our most exemplary moment. 05:44 There's a good reason that when the black plague hit 05:46 and Constantinople suddenly fell to the Turks, 05:49 that a lot of people started to suspect 05:51 that this might be judgment 05:53 for the horrible behavior of God's people. 05:55 I mean, we were rooting out heretics 05:57 and burning them at the stake, 05:58 and you'd be hard pressed to find Jesus 06:01 doing that kind of thing. 06:02 Down in Spain, we were forcing Jews to convert 06:05 or lose everything. 06:06 And while Jesus said, "Foxes half holes 06:09 and birds of the air have nests, 06:10 but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head," 06:14 we were living like princes buying and selling 06:17 lofty positions in the church 06:18 and generating fabulous wealth. 06:21 So you've got to admit it wasn't our proudest moment. 06:25 And of course, that's where the emergence of people 06:27 like Martin Luther really made a difference. 06:30 Just 25 years after Columbus landed in the New World, 06:33 Luther stirred up all of Western Europe 06:36 with a challenge to return to a more biblical Christianity. 06:39 And thanks to another random coincidence, 06:42 the printing press had just been invented, 06:45 so the reformation began to spread like wildfire. 06:50 So what we've got as we begin the 16th century 06:53 is a brand new printing press, 06:56 the discovery of a brand new world and a courageous monk 07:00 who was willing to upset the apple cart, 07:03 and all of that set the table 07:05 for the emergence of a brand new republic, 07:07 the likes of which the world had never seen. 07:13 [soothing music] 07:22 To really understand what happened, 07:24 we need to wind the clock back even further 07:27 to a moment in history that few people ever give thought to. 07:30 It's a story in the Bible 07:32 that only takes up a couple of chapters, 07:34 but proves to be ground zero for every political problem 07:37 the world has experienced ever since, 07:41 including some of the turmoil we're experiencing 07:44 in 21st century America. 07:46 [soothing music continues] 07:50 The story goes that a deeply loved prophet, named Samuel, 07:54 had been acting as liaison between God and his people 07:58 in a nation built on a voluntary covenant 08:01 where God was the ultimate king 08:03 and the descendants of Abraham were his subjects. 08:07 Now, I can't stress this enough 08:08 because it's really important if we want to understand 08:12 how America was born, this was a voluntary arrangement 08:18 built on a covenant that God established with Abraham 08:20 and renewed with Moses at Mount Sinai. 08:26 There was no king in Israel, at least no king but God. 08:30 And in this story, Samuel, the prophet, 08:32 is starting to show his age, 08:33 and the Israelites are afraid that when he dies, 08:36 they're not going to have any leadership. 08:39 Now again, Samuel is not a king. 08:42 He never passes any legislation. 08:44 He's simply a messenger from God, but when he dies, 08:48 who's going to take his place? 08:50 They don't want his sons 08:52 because they were absolutely corrupt, 08:54 so they came up with another idea. 08:57 All of the neighboring nations had human kings, 09:00 and now that's what they wanted too. 09:04 "Look, you are old," they told Samuel, 09:06 "And your sons do not walk in your ways. 09:08 Now, make us a king to judge us like all the nations." 09:13 And that was an unmitigated disaster 09:15 because it was an outright rejection of the covenant 09:18 and the sovereignty of God. 09:21 And the Lord said to Samuel, 09:23 "Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you, 09:27 for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, 09:30 that I should not reign over them." 09:38 Now, what follows is a warning from God, 09:40 a detailed list of things that kings normally do 09:43 to their subjects, like impose high taxes, 09:46 or confiscate property, or even use military conscription. 09:50 I'm not gonna force you to keep me, God says, 09:52 but I think you're going to find 09:54 that you haven't really liberated yourselves, 09:57 because well, this king is going to make you serve him. 10:01 And God was absolutely right, it was a disaster. 10:05 It was a marriage of church and state 10:07 that placed an awful lot of power 10:09 in the hands of just one person. 10:13 The first king, Saul, was a man who abandoned his faith 10:17 and resorted to spiritualistic seances 10:19 in order to run the country. 10:21 Then you had David, a man that God really loved, 10:25 but even he managed to bring a devastating plague 10:28 on the nation through his disobedience. 10:30 And then there was Ahab, whose wicked reign 10:32 brought a three and a half year drought, 10:34 and finally, Zedekiah, a man whose wickedness 10:38 was so legendary that it resulted in the destruction 10:41 of Jerusalem and the temple. 10:44 It ended with God's holy city 10:46 in the control of an actual heathen king, 10:49 who took the Israelites prisoner 10:51 and marched them hundreds of miles to the city of Babylon 10:54 where they were exiled for 70 years. 10:57 They had wanted a king like the nations around them, 11:00 and now they had exactly what they asked for. 11:05 And in many ways, that's exactly what happened 11:08 with the medieval church, 11:09 because we also started behaving badly 11:12 when we married church to state. 11:14 Before the rise of Constantine, 11:16 we had been a persecuted minority, 11:19 but after he liberated us, 11:21 we started asking him to settle the disputes of the church, 11:24 like the Donatist controversy in North Africa, 11:27 or the Arian controversy that led to the Council of Nicaea. 11:31 What we did was invite a human king into the church, 11:35 and what we ended up with was this odd mix 11:38 of pagan Roman politics and the religion of Christ, 11:41 which led to the bad behavior of the dark ages. 11:45 Now back in the case of the Babylonian captivity, 11:48 God was careful to remind his people that not all was lost. 11:53 As they slaved under the hot sun 11:54 for their new Babylonian masters, 11:56 God sent word through a prophet named Daniel 11:59 that Babylon would eventually collapse. 12:02 And He did that through a remarkable series of visions 12:05 that managed to predict the history of the world somehow 12:08 hundreds of years in advance. 12:13 In Daniel chapter two, it's a vision of a massive statue 12:16 with a head of gold, chest and arms of silver, 12:19 a belly and thighs of brass, legs of iron, 12:21 and feet made of iron mixed with clay. 12:25 It was a symbolic prediction of the world empires 12:27 that would follow on the heels of Babylon. 12:30 The head of gold was Babylon, 12:32 which was succeeded by the Persians, 12:33 or the chest and arms of silver. 12:36 They in turn were succeeded by the Greeks 12:38 under Alexander the Great, the belly and thighs of brass. 12:42 Then we get the legs of iron, the Romans. 12:45 An empire more than any other 12:47 left its fingerprints all over the western world. 12:50 And finally, the feet and toes of the image 12:53 made of iron and clay, which predicted a time 12:56 when the western empire would be carved up 12:58 among other kings never to be reunited, 13:02 which is exactly what happened after 476, 13:05 when the barbarians shattered the west 13:08 and eventually gave us the modern nations of Western Europe, 13:11 the toes of the statue. 13:14 Then the final part of the vision is a stone 13:16 that crushes the statue and grows to fill the earth. 13:19 And what does that mean? 13:22 "In the days of these kings," the Bible says, 13:25 "the God of heaven will set up a kingdom 13:26 which shall never be destroyed, 13:28 and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, 13:31 it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, 13:35 and it shall stand forever." 13:37 [soothing music] 13:44 In other words, the decision to run with human kings 13:47 was going to last a very long time. 13:50 We will have to live with human government 13:52 until the day that God sets up 13:54 a permanent kingdom of his own. 13:57 It's describing the second coming of Christ, 13:59 and it's as if God is saying, "Listen, 14:02 if you want to have a human kingdom, I'll let you have one. 14:05 In fact, I'll let you have whatever you want, 14:07 because well, I never intended to force you 14:10 to take me as your king, but after a while, 14:13 you're going to be convinced the human government 14:15 doesn't have the answers, 14:17 and I'm gonna put an end to all the pain and suffering, 14:19 and establish a permanent kingdom 14:22 where this will never happen again." 14:26 It's a message that repeats itself several times 14:28 in the book of Daniel. 14:30 In Daniel chapter seven, instead of a statue, 14:33 we see animals coming up out of the sea. 14:36 Babylon is portrayed as a winged lion, 14:39 a common symbol of the kingdom. 14:41 Persia is a lumbering bear eating the three provinces 14:44 of Babylon represented by the three bones 14:47 clenched in its mouth. 14:49 Greece is a four headed leopard, 14:51 because when Alexander the Great died, 14:54 his empire was divided among his four generals, 14:57 and Rome is portrayed as a fearsome beast 14:59 with iron teeth and 10 horns. 15:02 And it tells us the 10 horns are the kingdoms 15:06 that emerged from the broken empire, 15:08 which is exactly what happened 15:09 when the barbarians carved up the west. 15:12 And again, the vision ends with human kingdoms, 15:15 and all their problems being swept away 15:18 in favor of the kingdom of God. 15:21 "I was watching in the night visions, and behold, 15:23 one like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven! 15:27 He came to the Ancient of Days, 15:29 and they brought Him near before Him. 15:32 Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, 15:35 that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. 15:38 His dominion is an everlasting dominion, 15:41 which shall not pass away, and His kingdom 15:43 the one which shall not be destroyed. 15:47 But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom, 15:51 and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever." 15:58 Now in this version, there's a new component, 16:00 something that wasn't there in Daniel chapter two. 16:04 Among the 10 horns on the fourth beast's head 16:07 is a little horn, and the description of this kingdom 16:10 is anything but flattering. 16:12 It goes to war with other kingdoms 16:13 and makes exalted claims for itself. 16:16 It persecutes people described as the saints, 16:20 and it makes unauthorized changes to God's laws. 16:25 And by the time we get to the most troublesome periods 16:28 of medieval history, when the black plague 16:30 is wiping out a third of the population, 16:32 and Jerusalem falls to the Muslims, 16:35 and Constantinople falls to the Ottoman Turks, 16:38 a lot of people started to look at this prophecy 16:41 and they began to ask a very embarrassing question. 16:45 This little horn was a religious and political power 16:48 that grew out of the shattered Roman empire, 16:50 out of the nations of Western Europe, 16:53 and it was behaving very badly. 16:57 It was like a bucket of cold water to the conscience. 17:00 They'd been persecuting any number of Christian sects 17:02 who didn't agree with them, from the Albigensians of France 17:05 to the Waldensians of the Piedmont Valley. 17:08 They'd gone to war against entire nations as a church, 17:12 a decidedly political church. 17:14 So they had to ask the question, 17:16 is it possible that this prophecy could be talking about us? 17:20 Is this 11th kingdom in Daniel, our own Christian Church? 17:27 You see, they had noticed that Paul had warned us 17:28 about a time in the future when Christianity would go bad. 17:32 "But know this," he wrote, 17:34 "That in the last days perilous times will come. 17:38 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, 17:41 boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, 17:45 unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, 17:50 slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, 17:55 traitors, headstrong, haughty, 17:57 lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 18:00 having a form of godliness but denying its power." 18:06 Is it really possible that Christianity itself 18:08 would go off the rails? 18:10 To those of us living in the 21st century, 18:12 the answer seems obvious. 18:15 Of course we did. 18:17 [soothing music] 18:25 From the inquisition to the pompous claims 18:27 we made about our own importance, 18:29 to the way we use the power of the state 18:32 to persecute people who didn't share our faith. 18:35 Well, it seems obvious to us from our vantage point today 18:38 that something went very wrong. 18:40 But back in the day to admit that, well, it was staggering. 18:43 It was a tough pill to swallow. 18:45 Everybody, from Joachim of Fiore, 18:47 to the humanist scholar, Erasmus, and Luther. 18:50 Well, they were all coming to the same conclusion. 18:53 God had actually predicted what was happening. 18:57 So the churches of the West 18:58 suddenly had a lot of soul searching to do. 19:01 And that unfortunately led to some very sharp disagreements 19:04 about what should happen next. 19:06 And it's at this point that some very serious religious wars 19:10 took place on the European continent, 19:12 wars like the Thirty Years' War from 1618 to 1648, 19:17 which was fought between Catholic and Protestant princes. 19:20 It's a war that may have killed anywhere 19:22 from three to 11 million people. 19:26 Protestants started pushing back 19:27 against the persecution of Rome, but then in turn, 19:31 many Protestants started persecuting people 19:33 who didn't agree with them, like the Anabaptists, 19:36 who were baptizing adults, 19:38 and were sometimes punished for that by being drowned. 19:44 It was an unholy mess, and it all started the day 19:47 we did what Israel had done. 19:50 We invited a king to run the church. 19:52 And that king was eventually replaced by a kingly bishop, 19:55 who sometimes behaved like the kings of Israel. 19:59 We married church and state, in spite of the fact 20:01 that Jesus specifically told us 20:04 there should be no king in the church. 20:07 Here's what Jesus said. 20:08 "The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, 20:12 but not so among you. 20:14 On the contrary, he who is greatest among you, 20:17 let him be as the younger, 20:18 and he who governs as he who serves." 20:22 We did exactly what Jesus warned us not to do. 20:25 And to this day that serves as rich fodder 20:28 for critics of the Christian faith. 20:30 Jesus originally told his followers, by this, 20:33 all will know that you are my disciples. 20:36 If you have love for one another. 20:38 But when you look at our behavior back in those years, 20:41 well, it was obvious that most of us 20:43 stopped listening to Jesus a very long time ago. 20:47 [soothing music] 20:57 [soothing music continues] 21:04 The reformation of the 16th century 21:06 was about a number of important ideas. 21:09 It was a call to shake off some of the bad tendencies 21:12 that had crept into the church 21:13 in the centuries after Constantine. 21:16 And it was an appeal to return to the Bible 21:18 as the standard of faith. 21:20 It was also a call in the face of some very public abuses 21:24 to return to simple faith in Christ 21:26 as the only means of salvation. 21:28 But underneath all those changes, 21:30 there was also a deliberate attempt 21:32 to free ourselves from the king 21:34 we'd invited into the church. 21:36 And that proved to be a hard thing to do, 21:39 even after we'd overturned the idea 21:41 that political power should be with a bishop 21:43 who had risen to power because of the Roman emperor. 21:46 Even after we came to terms with that, 21:48 we still had a very hard time letting go. 21:50 So in the beginning, we tried to keep the marriage 21:53 between church and state alive, 21:56 except that we now did it on a local basis. 22:01 [soothing music] 22:11 [soothing music continues] 22:15 That's what happened here in the city of Geneva 22:17 where my own family's longstanding religious tradition 22:20 used to be headquartered. 22:22 In 1553, the city government, 22:24 which was clearly blended with the church, 22:27 burned a man at the stake. 22:29 His name was Michael Servetus. 22:33 Now, the people who did this had condemned Rome 22:35 for the very same kinds of things. 22:37 Honestly, I think Servetus really did have some bad ideas. 22:41 After all, he denied the divinity of Christ, 22:44 but did that really warrant the death penalty? 22:49 [solemn music] 22:56 Word of the brutal execution reached the ears 22:58 of a former friend of John Calvin's, 23:00 named Sebastian Castellio, 23:02 and it moved him to start writing down 23:04 some very important ideas, under a pseudonym, of course, 23:07 because he didn't want to die at the stake like Servetus, 23:11 and Castellio's ideas began to take hold 23:13 in the hearts of God-fearing Christians. 23:16 Now remember, this is just a few years 23:18 after Columbus discovered The New World. 23:21 So what kinds of ideas did Castellio have? 23:24 Well, they were the kinds of ideas 23:26 that made a place like America possible. 23:32 - [Narrator] "Such conduct is not actuated by Christ, 23:35 as it seems to me, for He did not defend Himself by arms, 23:39 though He might readily have done so, 23:41 since He had at His disposal ten legions of angels. 23:46 The oppressors are actuated rather by the desire 23:49 to defend their power and worldly kingdom 23:52 by the arms of the world. 23:55 This appears from the fact that when they were poor 23:56 and powerless, they detested persecutors, 24:00 but now having become strong, imitate them. 24:04 Abandoning the arms of Christ, 24:06 they take the arms of the Pharisees, 24:09 without which they would not be able to defend 24:11 or retain their power. 24:14 When I see how much blood has been shed 24:16 since the creation of the world under the color of religion 24:19 and how they just have always been slain 24:21 before they were recognized, 24:24 I fear less the same thing happened in our day, 24:27 that we kill as unjust those whom our descendants 24:30 will revere as just." 24:33 [solemn music] 24:38 - To kill a man, said Castellio, 24:39 is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man. 24:43 When the Genevans killed Servetus, 24:45 they did not defend a doctrine, they killed a man. 24:49 [solemn music continues] 24:53 [upbeat music] 25:03 [upbeat music continues] 25:13 [upbeat music continues] 25:16 That was the beginning of a very important idea 25:19 that people with different belief systems 25:21 might actually be able to coexist. 25:24 That it was time for Christians to let go of the power 25:27 of the state and start just living like Jesus suggested. 25:30 At the time, that was hard for a lot of people to accept, 25:34 because for more than a thousand years, 25:36 they'd taken political power for granted. 25:38 If they disagreed with someone, 25:40 they simply forced their opponents to change. 25:43 And if that failed, well they killed them. 25:46 What you and I enjoy is a relatively new thing. 25:49 An idea that came at a very high cost 25:51 as the people of Western Europe sorted out 25:53 what life might look like if the church 25:56 was no longer running the state. 25:58 They were taking the hands of the bishop 26:00 off political power for the first time 26:02 since Justinian had established the church 26:05 as the political power of the West. 26:08 That was a huge leap forwards 26:10 toward one of the boldest ideas in history, 26:13 a republic where church and state 26:15 would actually be separated by law. 26:20 And to get from Castellio to the birth of America, 26:21 we're going to have to figure out 26:23 what happened back here in Leiden. 26:25 And that's a story that almost defies imagination. 26:29 [upbeat music continues] 26:39 [upbeat music continues] 26:49 [upbeat music continues] 26:52 [soothing music] 26:55 - [Narrator] This has been a broadcast 26:56 of the "Voice of Prophecy." 26:58 To learn more about how you can get a DVD copy 27:01 of "Final Empire" for yourself, 27:03 please visit FinalEmpireDVD.com, 27:07 or call toll free 844-822-2943. 27:12 [soothing music continues] 27:23 [soothing music continues] 27:33 [soothing music continues] 27:43 [soothing music continues] 28:02 - [Narrator] Life can throw a lot at us. 28:04 Sometimes we don't have all the answers, 28:08 but that's where the Bible comes in. 28:10 It's our guide to a more fulfilling life. 28:13 Here at The Voice of Prophecy, 28:15 we've created the "Discover Bible Guides" 28:17 to be your guide to the Bible. 28:19 They're designed to be simple, easy to use, 28:21 and provide answers to many of life's toughest questions, 28:24 and they're absolutely free. 28:26 So 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Revised 2023-11-22