[Music] hello and welcome to church history i'm your professor john adams and over the next few few hours i'll be walking with you through the first thousand years of the history of the church first let me introduce myself a little bit uh i was born and raised in haiti in the caribbean my parents have been missionaries there since 1983. i came back to the states after high school and spent 10 years here getting a bachelor's and a master's in theology in 2013 i moved back to haiti and i've been working on a history degree since i taught high school history for a bit down there mostly i teach theology at the bible college that my dad started but i'm really excited to teach this class because it combines the two things i'm most passionate about theology and history brings those together and i hope you stick around until the end because i think we're gonna have a good time first of all we need to answer the question what is church history and why is it worth studying at the end of the second world war uh yale professor and church historian kenneth scott la tourette looking back on the last 2 000 years define church history as the spread of the influence of jesus and la tourette pointed out that no fact of history is more amazing than the fact that jesus's influence spread at all on the day that jesus was crucified it would have seemed extraordinarily unlikely that his influence would outlast the day as roman soldiers took jesus's lifeless body down from the cross it would have looked as though the odds were overwhelmingly stacked against jesus ever becoming an influential person let alone the most influential religious movement in history the odds would have seemed very slim that you would be watching a course about this on the internet today in the 21st century but you are and that did happen and so uh church history is a topic worth studying if for no other reason then just because of how unlikely it was uh that the church would survive long enough to have a history worth studying in case you aren't yet convinced though here are three more reasons why studying church history is worthwhile number one studying church history can make us humble ecclesiastes tells us there's nothing new under the sun the philosopher edmund burke wrote those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it and so familiarizing yourself with history can make you humble and it can help you avoid past mistakes for example studying the crusades warns us against using the ways of the world to achieve the purposes of god studying the nicene council can help us see that many of the same heresies that we're fighting today were fought over 1700 years ago and so studying church history can make us humble and it can help us see that every generation including our own has blind spots that other generations can help us correct the second reason studying church history is worthwhile is that it can fill us with hope a quick survey of church history reminds us that christianity survived despite being illegal for the first three centuries of its existence and that the church conquered and then outlasted the roman empire that tried to destroy it it also reminds us over and over how many times god raised up leaders on the margins when the establishment became corrupt furthermore reading the testimonies of thousands of individual believers whose lives were transformed by the gospel emboldens us to believe that by god's grace we can follow in their footsteps it also reminds us that we don't have to reinvent the wheel and that we stand upon the shoulders of giants by studying church history we can trace the fulfillment of jesus's promise that he would build his church and the gates of hell would not stand against it kenneth scott la tourette who we mentioned earlier wrote that the increase of jesus's influence upon the world has been like the incoming tide he says like the tide it has moved forward in waves each major wave has been followed by a major recession but each major wave has set a new high water mark and each major recession has been less pronounced than its predecessor so slowly but surely the church has not only survived but multiplied expanded and matured studying church history helps us see that jesus promise is coming true third and last reason why studying church history is worthwhile is that it helps us ground us it helps ground us in our identity as kingdom citizens when i was a kid i assumed that there wasn't a whole lot i needed to know about church history beyond what's written in the book of acts except for maybe a few highlights like the protestant reformation or because i was a pentecostal kid the azusa street revival in los angeles in school growing up i learned a whole lot about the history of of my own nation the united states and also about the nation that i grew up in haiti and virtually nothing about the history of the people of god since becoming an adult i've come to realize that the bible actually teaches that my primary citizenship is in heaven and that my kinship with other believers through the spirit is actually a lot thicker than the natural ties of nationality or ethnicity or even biological family that i share with other people according to blood in mark 3 jesus asks who are my mother and my brothers whoever does the will of god he is my brother and sister and mother and so i've come to realize that i need to know the history of my true people as the late great philosopher poet bob marley saying in the song buffalo soldiers if you don't know your history you don't know where you're coming from i'd have a pretty fuzzy idea of u.s history and how i fit into it if i didn't know anything about the declaration of independence the civil war or the civil rights movement in the same way i'd also be unclear on how my life fits into the spirit empowered kingdom people of god if i knew nothing about the council of calciton the protestant reformation or the great century of foreign missions so now we have defined what church history is it's the history of the spread of the influence of jesus and i've hopefully convinced you that that incredibly improbable ongoing historical event is worth knowing a little bit more about so now we're going to go back way back and do a quick overview of the biblical narrative up to the founding of the church so in the next lesson we'll get into the history of the church and once we do keep in mind that we'll be covering the first thousand years of church history in less than 10 hours that's about 100 years per lesson about a year and a half per minute which means that we are barely scratching the surface and so i'll include include a list of primary sources uh with each lesson after this one in case you want to dig deeper on your own [Music] [Music] today people often identify christianity uh with the civilizations that grew out of western europe or the west uh but christianity actually started in the middle east and so to understand christianity it's helpful to put it in its original context specifically christianity grew out of the middle eastern religion of the hebrew people the descendants of abraham jesus was and is ethnically jewish and the earliest christian gatherings took places in the jewish temple in jerusalem a majority of our christian bible consists of the hebrew scriptures originally written in the hebrew language to the descendants of abraham since christians believe that the coming of jesus started a new and final chapter in this history we have come to refer to this part of the bible as the old testament or the old covenant but to properly understand the jesus movement we need to put it into context as a continuation of the history of redemption that stretches all the way back to abraham the father of the jewish people and ultimately back to the beginning of the world in the garden of eden the old testament is a daunting collection of documents but it has a relatively simple narrative thread it consists of creation where god creates a good world and sets human beings over it to rule it fall human beings disobey god's commandment and ruin the world's original goodness and redemption god sets about restoring his creation back to its original goodness mostly by making promises or covenants that encourage his people to be faithful to him and he is faithful to them in return the first promise he makes in the old testament is to eve that one of her descendants will be wounded by the serpent but will end up crushing the serpent underfoot freeing god's good creation from the power of evil and the evil one since the creation and the fall take up only the first three chapters of genesis though it's helpful to organize the third section the history of redemption according to the major covenants or solemn promises made with blood oaths that god makes with key figures in the old testament it's not the only way to organize the narrative of the old testament but i found it to be helpful the first major covenant that god makes in the old testament is with abraham god calls abraham out of his homeland leads him to the land of canaan and makes him an unconditional promise he tells abraham you will bear a son that son will become a nation and that nation will end up inhabiting the land of canaan and will eventually bless the entire world abraham and his descendants live a nomadic lifestyle for the next several generations until the days of joseph when they end up settling in the land of egypt and a few generations after joseph they fall into slavery which leads to god's second major promise after delivering abraham's descendants out of slavery and leading them out of egypt god meets with his chosen leader moses on mount sinai and gives him his law and he also makes a covenant with him the mosaic covenant unlike abraham's covenant this covenant comes with a condition if the israelites are faithful to keep the law they will live blessed in the land that god promised to abraham on the other hand if the israelites are unfaithful and break the law they will be cursed and exiled from the land israel is eventually able to enter the land but they lack a strong leader and so they end up becoming weak and divided which leads to the third covenant that god makes with his people and that is with david the people ask for a strong leader to unite them and protect them from their enemies they ask god for a king and he gives them one but the first king saul is not god's choice and he quickly turns into an oppressor and an idolater so god raises up david in his place who the scripture says is a man after god's own heart and he becomes the standard for all subsequent kings god ends up making a covenant with david in 2nd samuel chapter 7 and he promises him that his throne will endure forever it's not clear how this promise will even be fulfilled though because a few generations after david his descendants mess up and the kingdom ends up splitting into two parts the ten northern tribes rebel against the house of david altogether and since they are never faithful to the keep the covenant despite repeated prophetic warnings god eventually allows assyria to put an end to them as a nation under the leadership of david's descendants the southern kingdom commonly referred to as judah lasts a lot longer but eventually it too breaks the covenant in spite of the warnings of the prophets and it is conquered as well and taken into exile in babylon now at this point in the old testament it looks like the story is over uh in his mercy however god allows the people of judah to return to the promised land he allows them to rebuild the temple that the babylonians destroyed and install a descendant of david on the throne as their governor the only catch is israel is no longer an independent nation and so its story still seems incomplete and during this period the jews longing for national independence stirs them to pay more and more attention to the promises that the prophets had made about a messiah who would come and who would establish an everlasting kingdom as god had promised to david who would make israel a blessing to the entire world as god had promised to abraham and who would crush the head of the serpent as god had promised eve the prophets made some other predictions during this era that were a lot more difficult for people to understand such as that god would send a suffering servant to atone for sin at the cost of his own life isaiah 53 that god would make a new covenant with his people and write the law that israel had never been able to keep on their hearts jeremiah 31 and that god would pour out his spirit upon all flesh joel chapter 2. all of these things created anticipation for the coming messiah by the time jesus was born quite a bit had changed since the last prophet malachi wrote the last old testament book in around 450 bc for one there was now a common language in the middle east alexander the conquest alexander the greats conquest of palestine had helped make greek the common language all over there was now a greek translation of the old testament called the septuagint not only that there were jews dispersed throughout alexander's former empire who had started synagogues in order to teach the word to jews in exile so that they wouldn't lose touch with their roots and then there was also something called the pax romana or roman peace after alexander's death the romans eventually conquered palestine and united it with the rest of their empire and because they were such a powerful nation with a strong army they were able to bring a measure of stability to the region they built roads that linked it to the rest of the empire and even though roman rule was pretty harsh and jews didn't really like being under it the romans the presence of the romans did ensure political stability that lasted for over 200 years so the world into which jesus and later the church were born was a world in which new ideas could spread relatively easily with astonishing speed in a common language people could spread those ideas with safe roads and jews who wanted to spread new teaching could go to synagogues in every city and find places where the scriptures were already being taught and so the time was really ripe for a new development in the jewish religion and the apostle paul writes in galatians 4 4 when the fullness of time had come god sent forth his son now in spite of the benefits of roman rule the jews never stopped seeing the romans as occupiers and oppressors many jews still cherish the hope of david's eternal kingdom and they coped with the frustrations of living under caesar's rule in different ways the sadducees who were mostly members of the temple leadership in jerusalem made their peace with roman rule and profited financially from doing so the pharisees who were more likely to come from the classes of common people interpreted roman occupation as divine judgment for israel's continued unfaithfulness to the covenant they stressed obedience to the law and developed elaborate systems to apply the law to every conceivable situation so that israel could be faithful the essenes a third group were an ascetic sect they checked out of society altogether they withdrew to desert communities and waited for the end of the world which they thought would come soon and then finally the zealots were the revolutionaries they revolted against the system carrying out assassinations and guerrilla attacks on roman targets rather than weakening roman resolve though these uh guerrilla strikes ended up leading to increasingly heavy-handed roman reprisals and so it is in this context that jesus began his ministry with a call to repent for the kingdom of heaven is near now jesus through his miracles demonstrated that the kingdom of god was breaking in and that created interest in his teaching a lot of jews lost interest in jesus pretty quickly though when they realized that he wasn't interested in political revolution instead jesus taught that the kingdom of god was within and would be established through his own death on a cross instead of through military conquest jesus predicted that he would have to die to purchase forgiveness of sins and establish a new covenant in his own blood he spoke of a future in which the temple would no longer be necessary and jews and gentiles would come to god on equal footing now a lot of aspects of jesus's message were very difficult for his contemporaries to accept but it was his claim to be god more than anything else that especially enraged the jewish religious leaders this claim undermined their authority and to their ears it sounded like blasphemy the jewish leaders knew that that claim would also sound like sedition to roman ears and they were able to convince the roman provincial governor to execute jesus and not just in any old way in the most humiliating way possible in that day and age through crucifixion now jesus was hardly the first person to claim to be the messiah and he wasn't the first would-be messiah to be crucified by the romans in the context of first century palestine the way that jesus died was lamentable but sadly predictable that was what always happened to young jewish men who rebelled against the powers that were the only thing that made jesus's death remarkable historically speaking is what happened next you