The next church (Laodicea) goes right back to the Roman monstrosity from whence it came out, and by 1950, we find the church in the same condition it was in during the Pergamos period, in 325 A.D.
The Philadelphia period is by far the most interesting period of church history. This is the church of the open door. This is the church that has all the great soul-winners, all the great evangelists, all the great missionaries. Consequently, this is the part of church history that people always refer to when they want to prove that God is still the God of revival. But this is the church that believed that the Authorized Version - the King James 1611 Bible was the word of God.
(One of the most asinine things you ever heard in your life is a modern, present-day evangelist, standing in the pulpit, talking about great revivals to come, when he no longer believes the Authorized Version is the word of God. Martin Luther's German Bible is the same text as the King James, 1611. Subsequently, all Bibles in Europe and the United States, from these translations, are Textus Receptus, Greek Byzantine text, Syrian type text, and they are NOT the text of the North African Latin Church - in other words today, the Roman Catholic Church.)
This period begins in 1500. Christopher Columbus discovers America in 1492. At this time, we see the paintings of da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael (in the Renaissance). WE observe the great discoverers Balboa, Magellan, Cortez, and Henry Hudson. We see the great painter, Rembrandt. We can study Copernicus and Gallileo. We note the Napoleonic Wars. We listen to the greatest musicians who ever livd - Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Wagner. We have, in this period, all the great revolutions in art, science, music, industry, travel and discovery. This was the day of the "open Bible," and every blessing this world had in these 400 years came from the fact that Martin Luther's Bible and the Authorized Version (1611) were all over the world, with multitudes being "born-again" outside the Catholic church.
In this same period is the Civil War, the American Revolution and the War of 1812. In this period are all the great discoveries and all the great inventions.
Also in this period is the most overwhelming wave of atheism, Communism, and Christ-rejecting scholarship that the world has ever seen. Spinoza, Leibnitz, Descarte, Hegel, Rosseau, Astruc, Kant, Weald, Delitzsch, Wellhausen, Semmler, Neuman, Schleirmacher, the Jesuits, Lessing, Tregelles, Tischendorf, Freud, Huxley, Bauer, Marx, Darwin, Strauss, James, and all their Mafia, Darin, a God-forsaken monkey with his tail cut off and Sigmund Freud, the sex-neurotic, who wrote books on dreams.
When Martin Luther, Storch, Stubner, Munzer, Staupitz, Melancthon, Hubmaier, Peter Bohler, Spener and Zinzendorb cut through the papacy (1500-1600), they tore the country up for God. But no sooner were they "dead and gone," than up pop Rauschenbusch, Strauss, Astruc, Wellhausen, Leibnitz, and all the others, who are Christ- rejecting, Bible-defying humanitarians, and who are dedicated to the overthrow of the word of God.
Martin Luther was a son of a German coal miner, born in 1493. He was raised in a little town in Germany, and was a coal miner himself. As a boy, he sang hymns on the street, and later became a monk. He went to the University of Erfurt to study law, and then entered the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt. When Luther went to Rome, he saw what a mess things were in. In 1512, he received his Doctor of Theology Degree and succeeded Staupitz as Professor of Theology, and held this position until 1546. He nailed his famous Ninety-five Theses on the church door at Wittenburg, Germany, on October 31, 1517, in protest against the sale of Indulgences. Printed copies of this Thesis went out all over Europe, and Luther even sent a copy of it to Rome. Subsequently, Luther was hauled up before a Mafia of priests, popes and bishops at the Diet of Worms (1512), and there he told the entire group of Bible-rejecting Roman Catholics, "I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor honest to act against one's conscience. My conscience is bound by the word of God, and so, God help me, here I stand."
After this, Martin Luther and his followers turned the world into an uproar. (Luther was a popular, dynamic leader in an age that looked for leadership. He could sing, write music and was a great preacher; he could preach in German or Latin. Martin Luther's translation of the Bible is a monument in the German language, exactly as the King James Bible is a monument in the English language.) Martin Luther addressed the pope as "Your Hellishness," and called him "Most Hellish Father," instead of most holy father.
Martin Luther's followers took over, and there follows the "Peasants War" under men like Zwingli, who was a little more radical than Martin Luther. Hoffman, Munzer and some of the radicals went out and burned monasteries, killed a few priests and monks, took a few nuns and tore up their clothes, burned up their candles, and busted their beads. (Martin Luther didn't approve of all this, but it went on.)
Ulrich Zwingly, 1484-1531, had a part in the Reformation in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. Zwingli was "born again" and he began to preach the word of God. He broke with the pope, got married, and preached openly against celibacy. Gradually, the Reformation which he started triumphed, and John CAlvin picked up his work in 1509-1564.
John CAlvin is often called the Protestant Pope. He was a dead-orthodox theologian and had some pretty wild theological ideas. He was A-millennial, as are all Roman CAtholics. However, Calvin was fairly fundamental in some beliefs.
Along with this Continental Reformation, the Church of England moved to "mend its ways." It produced some great preachers. The Reformation proceeded in Scotland under the work of John Knox. Farel was a great preacher. Bernadino was a converted Roman Catholic who preached. Menno Simmons, who founded the Mennonites, was a great preacher. Storch, Stubner, Munzer were great German preachers. Staupitz, Grebel, Hubmaier, were sounding their preaching. Peter Bohler (a German) led John Wesley to Jesus Christ. Zinzendorf (a German) founded an orphanage (Halle, Prussia), and took care of a group called Moravians, who went out all over India, China and Japan preaching the Gospel. Franke (a German) preached the Gospel and aided Pietists and Moravians in their missionary enterprises.
When John Wesley got saved, England was having a social upheaval. George Whitefield and John Wesley pitched into it, preaching the gospel, and turning England upside down. John Wesley would pray two to four hours a day. (He was preaching three hours at a time when he was in his seventies.) He and Whitefield preached in the open fields. They preached the new birth, and they preached repentance. They preached that the Roman Catholic Church was pagan, unholy, anti-Christian, archaic, and worthless. Wesley even broke with the Episcopal Church because it was too formal and too much like the Catholic Church. He said to his Episcopal priest, "The world is my parish," and began to preach outdoors. George Whitefield did the same thing. These two men were persecuted, shot at and threatened. Both of them lived to a ripe old age, and preached right on up to their dying day.
Whitefield had some messages that were three hours long, and he would often preach until his throat bled. (Wesley preached in Dublin, Ireland, and when the CAtholics tried to stone him there and push him down from a statue he was standing by - a ten foot statue of the Virgin Mary - one Catholic fell and broke his leg, another one got hit in the mouth with a stone thrown at Wesley, and one man got his hand split open across the knuckles, when he tried to muzzle Wesley's mouth.)
Once George Whitefield had a gun pointed at him about two feet behind his back by a man who said, "If you don't shut up, I'm going to blow your head off." Whitefield kept on preaching and the man walked around him for ten minutes, putting the gun against his nose, then in his ear, then on his eyes, then in his stomach, saying, "You blankety-blank, I'm going to blow your head off." Finally, the man stopped about ten feet behind Whitefield, pulled the trigger, and the gun exploded and blew the fellow's hands off, and just blew Whitefield's shirt off his back.
Whitefield came to America and preached in Georgia. The "old time religion" went right up through the Carolinas, and on up to Boston with him. When Whitefield got to Boston Common, Professor Stidger of Boston University met him "on the green" in Boston, and said, "I'm sorry to see you here, Brother Whitefield." Whitefield said, "So's the Devil," and began to preach. (Wesley and Whitefield probably led over two million men to Christ during their time.)
1500-1900 is the great period of the "open door," when Roger Williams came to America and became a Baptist missionary among the Indians. Roger taught "separation of Church and State," knowing that the Roman CAtholic Church would eventually try to take over in America.
At this time, around the 1700's, we have Jonathan Edwards preaching. WE have Thomas Webb and WIlliam Strawbridge, great Methodist preachers. WE have Darby a little later, in 1900. We have Phillip Embry, a great Methodist preacher. We have Munhall and Culpepper in the 1800's. WE have great missionaries in this period like William Carey who went to India, David Brainard who went to the Indians, Judson who went to Burma, Hudson Taylor of the China Inland Missions, C.T. Studd, Livingstone, Gordon. All the great missionary activities in China, Japan, and India take place in this period, between 1800-1900.
One will hear great pulpit preachers in this period. We have Talmadge, Baxter, Payson, Culpepper, Jacob Knapp (a traveling evangelist), Peter Cartwright (the Methodist circuit rider), who would knock a man down, sit on him, and tell him to trust Christ or he would bust his teeth out! WE have James McGready, a backwoods preacher in Tennessee, and Lorenzo Dow, a half-breed Seminole Indian who preached in Alabama and Georgia. We have Sheldon Jackson, Billy Bray and Charles Guthrie, and the great Methodist Welsh preachers.
This is the period which saw Charles G. Finney's great revivals, and the revivals under Spurgeon and Dwight L. Moody. Moody, who led millions to Christ, talked so fast it took two shorthand stenographers to write down what he said. Once a man came up after Moody had finished a message and said, "I counted 84 grammatical errors in your message." Moody stuck out his tongue and said, "You see that," pointing to his tongue. "I'm using that for the glory of God, what are you using yours for?"
Moody founded the Moody Bible Institute, which has gone by way of Modern Christianity today. Moody was succeeded in his preaching by R.A. Torrey, a great evangelist and militant theologian, who studied under Franklin Delitzsch. (Torrey inherited some of his Bible criticism from Delitzsch and he occasionally used the RV or the ASV, but Torrey was true to the word of God, and was a Pre-Millennial, fundamental, hell-fire-and-damnation, new-birth preacher.)
We have Joseph Parker and Simpson (Missionary Alliance) at this time, putting out the word of God; they were both great preachers and great souls.
As we come nearer to the 1900's, we find Sam Jones, a circuit riding Methodist preacher, who was born in Alabama. (He had a circuit in Cartersville, Georgia and his preaching salary for a year was $80.00.) Sam Jones was a drunken lawyer, and he was saved at his father's deathbed. He preached all over Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, California, Texas, the Carolinas, Mississippi, and Arkansas, as a circuit riding Methodist preacher. He later became a great evangelist, another truly great soul. (Half of what Will Rogers and dave GArdner knew, they got from the cracks and side remarks which Sam Jones made.) He was a great wit and he led thousands of people to Jesus Christ.
We have in this period the great George Mueller, who founded the orphanage in Bristol, England, and prayed in more than four million dollars. We have the Haldane brothers, converted from Godless sea privateers and pirates to great men of God. We have David Livingstone, who died out in Africa, and had his heart cut out of his body and buried in Africa. We have also C.T. Studd, Gordon and A.J. Cronin and the great Presbyterian preacher Earle, who traveled up and down across the western seaboard.
In the Philadelphia period are Taylor, Morgan, Goforth, Judson, Fiske, General Booth, Captain Bliss, Fannie Crosby, Havergal, the great woman missionary, Payson, Andrew Murray, who wrote books on holiness, Baxter McClendon (Cyclone Mac), a circuit riding Methodist preacher, H.C. Morrison, a great Methodist preacher and a great soul, and J. Wilbur Chapman, who was in a measure responsible for the success of Billy Sunday. We have the men born who edit the Scofield reference Bible - Gaebelein, Pettingil, and C.I. Scofield.
As we come up toward 1900, we see the tremendous impact of the Methodist Church which preached, "Ye must be born again." (Before the Methodist Church went modernistic in 1910-1920, it won literally thousands of people to Jesus Christ in the United States and England.)
During this time, we run into Billy Sunday, a converted baseball player (who still holds the fastest base running record of any man in the American League - and in his bare feet, too.) He got saved outside of Mel Trotter's Rescue Mission in Chicago, while two of his "buddies' laughed at him. Yet, Billy Sunday led more than a million souls to Christ. In response to the last sermon he preached before he died, eighteen grown men walked the aisles for Jesus Christ and were converted. (Billy Sunday is the evangelist whom Sincalir Lewis makes fun of in his dirty book, Elmer Gantry. Lewis was a chronic alcoholic and he hated Billy Sunday's 'guts' because Billy preached about liquor. So Lewis wrote a dirty book and from this came a dirty movie called "Elmer Gantry" which dirty people like to see, and especially drunken people who like to drink and don't like to listen to preachers talk against liquor. It was voted an 'Academy Award' winner some years ago in the US by the same kind of dirty people who subscribe to that particular kind of dirt.)
Billy Sunday was a clean and honest man. Homer Rodeheaver knew him for twenty years and said, "I never heard Billy Sunday tell a dirty joke offstage or on stage. He lived what he preached - one of the cleanest men that ever lived." He was a hard-hitting evangelist, and a great soul, who won literally thousands, perhaps millions, to Jesus Christ.
This is the period in which Mordecai Ham was born, the man who led Billy Graham to Jesus Christ. (Although a personal worker in Ham's meeting led Billy Graham to Jesus Christ, it was during one of Ham's meetings in Charlotte, N.C.) Mordecai Ham was raised in Kentucky and Arkansas. He was a great soul and a great soul winner. He was an iron man of God. Catholics threatened him; thugs threatened to kidnap his son, and on one occasion they knocked Mordecai down in the street with a car and dragged him a good ways on the bumper. Before Billy Graham was saved, a man stopped Mordecai Ham outside of his hotel, put a .45 pistol in his stomach, and told him to get in a cab, and that "they" were driving him out of town. Ham said, "I'll give you five seconds to put up that gun or I'll call a cop." The man put up the gun, and left himself. Later, Billy Graham was saved.
Along about this time, we have a man showing up who was born back in the little town of Brannon's Stand near Dothan, Alabama - Bob Jones, Sr. We also have a man raised in Texas, J. Frank Norris, who later attended Louisville Seminary.
This is the great hey-day of the true church, 1500-1900. While Darwin, Huxley, Marx, Bertrand Russell, Rauschenbusch, BAcon, Brunner, Ritschl, and all the lost, humanitarian, self-righteous Bible rejectors were trying to destroy and overthrow the word of God, the gospel was going across America, Canada, the United States, and Asia like a prairie fire, and people were getting saved by the thousands. Wherever the Bible went, educational standards came up. Wherever the Bible went, God blessed with material wealth and health. The power of Bible Christianity was so great that unsaved educators actually thought that man was evolving from a money! They figured he had come so far that he just must have come up all the way! A greater mistake could not have been made.
Under cover, the old depraved scholars worked away, and hammered at the foundations of Christianity. The 7th Day Adventists started in 1833 and tried to teach salvation by works. The RV was translated in 1885 and tried to replace the King James Bible. Mary Baker Patterson Eddy, 1879, came out with a lot of 'chittlens' and tripe not worth talking about. Then, of course, we find a group of spiritual degenerates called "Latter Day Saints," and "Mormons," who thought they were pretty smart. They professed to have discovered some gold plates. They put on a big show, and got real upset when people criticized them (as they do today), and they blasphemed the word of God, and contradicted the Holy Spirit, and began a century-long trip to hell out in Salt Lake City in a big religious way with a lot of show that doesn't amount to anything scripturally.
In the Philadelphia period, the Catholic Church goes undercover into the Bible revision committees. The Council of Trent in 1546 had officially pronounced a curse on all Bible-believing Protestants. (At the Council fo Trent, you will find the Roman CAtholic Church officially cursed every man who doesn't believe the Apocrypha is inspired, every man who teaches salvation without water baptism, and every man who teaches you can be born again of the Holy Spirit without subscribing to the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church! Religious bunk!) The Catholic Church went underground in 1700 and began to work on the Westcott and Hort revision committee.
So, when the RV comes out in 1884-1885, it comes out not as a new translation of the Bible, but as a completely new book from a DIFFERENT SET OF MANUSCRIPTS. The RV (1884), ASV (1901), and RSV (1952) are nothing but the recovered corrupt Roman Catholic text of 325 A.D. They are resurrections of the text that Eusebius and Constantine used to destroy the Apostolic church! This test is "Vaticanus" written in 350 A.D. and "Sinaiticus", written in 331 A.D. This is basically the text from which all Roman Catholic Bibles are taken. (In 325 A.D., this was the type of text that was adopted at the Council of Nicaea.) Consequently, we are not surprised to find the Federal Council adopting this text in 1900, the National Council adopting it in 1940, and the Ecumenical Council adopting the same text in 1962.
The year 1900 brings us to the end of the greatest, most wonderful, and most powerful period of church history. This is the Philadelphia period, the period of the church of the open door - when people were saved, when the gospel was world-wide, when the doors were open.
No matter what scholars think about it, the door stayed open as long as the born-again Christians believed that the 1611 Authorized Version was the word of God. The missionary doors to the gospel only closed when the Body of Christ rejected the King James Bible, and replaced it with the Westcott and Hort Vatican Text. (Dr. Ruckman personally says we can quote him on that to any Greek professor you know, anytime, anyplace, anywhere, under any condition, with his blessing. He will gladly discuss it with them anytime, out of Nestle's Critical Apparatus, containing the emendations, interpolations, transpositions, and conjectures on all 1600 manuscripts.)
There isn't any such thing as defeat and apostasy in the Body of Christ until God's people reject the English Bible. But, when they do, brother, you've had it. (Whether you know it or not!)
This brings us to 1900, the final church period before the Rapture, the Laodicean church.
In Revelation 2 and 3, we saw how the Church Age began with a good church, whose only fault was that it had left its' first love. But, by the time we reach the end of the Philadelphia period and enter the Laodicean period, the church is lukewarm and is everything except what it ought to be.
As the church was 'on fire' in Ephesus and Smyrna, and "went to pot" in Pergamos and Thyatira, the church is "on fire" in Sardis and Philadelphia, and goes "to pot" again in Laodicea. History repeats itself. As we always have said before, the only thin men learn from history is that men never learn from history.
What you are learning in the Book of Revelation is church history which is NOT TAUGHT in the public school system. No man is able to comment intelligently on 'the news' unless he knows what God has done in history, what the Devil has done in history and what the political movements of the Roman Catholic Church are in history. These things are found ONLY in church history - and what you just read, was a small segment of church history!
PSR