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THE SINS OF MY CHURCH

In what many religious people feel is John Grisham’s best novel, The Chamber, a young lawyer named Adam Hall finds out that his own grandpa, his flesh and blood, used to be in the Ku Klux Klan. Sam Cahall, his mother’s father, had burned crosses and used the “N-word” and, as a teenager, participated in lynchings. What is worse, this young attorney’s grandfather was now on Death Row at Parchman, Mississippi’s state penitentiary, for participating in the fatal bombing of a Jewish attorney’s office. And it fell to Adam as a grandson and as a lawyer to try to make a defense for his grandpa, to gently probe into the sad history and find out why such a tragic turn of events could have happened.

The reason we appreciate this story — and we don’t generally recommend “airport novels” for our radio listeners — is that this story, The Chamber, takes a decidedly Christian twist right at the end. As the aging racist, Sam Cahall, is counting down to midnight and the gas chamber, he confesses his sins to God. He accepts the blood of Jesus Christ, his Savior. And he bravely meets his end, knowing that he has a home waiting in heaven.

I carefully tell that story for a reason today, friend. We’ve spent a week now studying this marvelous, colorful prophetic dream found in the book of Daniel, chapter 7. First there’s a lion, representing Babylon. That was 2600 years ago. Then a bear: Medo-Persia and King Darius and the wonderful den-of-lions story. Then a four-headed, four-winged leopard: ancient Greece and Alexander the Great. Then the terrifying beast with iron teeth and razor-sharp claws: that would be Rome, the empire in place when Jesus of Nazareth was born. Then, as we concluded our studying last week, the ten horns ON that dreadful beast . . . which appears to represent the fragmenting of Rome into ten tribes and kingdoms of old Europe, many of which are still on our maps today, sharing euros and inviting us over to watch Wimbledon tennis matches.

And what we find next in this vividly colorful panorama of our world’s history is that the political power and might of that fourth beast of Daniel 7 slowly and inexorably becomes a spiritual power. And after the breakup of Rome in 476 B.C., the civilized world enters a long period where the Christian church — my church and your church — is in reality the ruling power. The Bible commentary for my own denomination quotes from a Dr. A. C. Flick, author of The Rise of the Medieval Church, and says this:

“It will be seen that this was the continuation of the Roman power in the Roman church.” And here’s the quote: “‘Out of the ruins of political Rome arose the great MORAL Empire in the ‘giant form’ of the Roman Church.’”

A very good essay on Daniel 7 was printed on the worldwide web not long ago, under “christiancourier.com.” In it, Wayne Jackson describes how, until about the eighth century A.D., the Christian church of that era was essentially that: a church. The leadership of the church “limited [itself] to church affairs.” Then he adds this:

“However, near the middle of that century, the Roman pontiff began to acquire political territories, thus transforming the Church into a politico-ecclesiastical organism.” He goes on: “In A.D. 755, Pepin, a French ruler, conferred upon pope Stephen III the principality of Ravenna. Later, in 774, Charles the Great, monarch of France, conquered the kingdom of the Lombards and gave their dominion to pope Adrian I. Finally, in 817, Lewis the Pious, son of Charles the Great, confirmed the state of Rome to pope Paschal I.” And Jackson’s concluding remark: “The Roman church was the most powerful force in Europe.”

Now, friend, let me make two points. Today we look back in the history books and find it difficult to understand the complications of medieval life. Americans everywhere rejoice — for the most part — in the first 16 words of the Bill of Rights, the famous First Amendment to our constitution:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

The idea that the Church — any church — would actually hold the reins of national power is foreign to us. The recent horror stories about the political rule of the Taliban, the civil enforcing of the “Sharia,” a religious code of conduct, the idea that a woman could be, in the year 2003, stoned to death for adultery . . . is incomprehensible to most of us. And yet, following the empire of civil Rome, spiritual Rome — the Christian Church of the Middle Ages — was a ruling figure. Kings paid homage to the church leadership and not the other way around.

The second thing I want to very forthrightly say here is this: this is our Church we’re talking about. This was Christianity. If today you’re a born-again believer, a man or woman who confesses Jesus, then this is the history of your Church. We are all “catholic” in that we believe in one universal Body of Christ.

We’re going to discover as we dig through the evidence of Daniel’s ancient dream some tragic turns in the road. We’ll read about persecution and about abuse. There were some very good, very valid reason in 1517 A.D., on the eve of All Saints Day, why a young Christian priest named Martin Luther went up to the church door in Wittenberg, East Germany, and nailed his “95 Theses” to it. And yet, through the agonizing birth of the Reformation, Luther loved the Church. Even when he decried its abuses, he still loved it as the Body of Christ.

There’s some excellent material on Daniel 7 to be found in the reference book, God Cares, written by Dr. C. Mervyn Maxwell. Here’s what he writes:

“To call this Christian church the ‘Roman Catholic’ Church can be misleading if Protestants assume that the Roman Catholic Church of, say, the sixth century was one big denomination among others, as it is today. Actually the Roman Catholic Church was virtually the Christian church in Western Europe for about a thousand years.” And I like this very much; listen: “Because of this early universality, both Protestants and Catholics may regard it as the embodiment of ‘our’ Christian heritage, for better or for worse.”

Isn’t that beautiful? Friend, if you’re a Christian today, then you are a brother or a sister to every other Christian who has ever walked on this world. The people living in the Middle Ages — the peasants, the priests, the popes — those were our forebears. Did they make tragic mistakes? Do the prophetic passages in the Bible warn about how Satan would endeavor to hijack the Body of Christ? Of course. Is it any different today? And yet, you and I, as we study, need to gratefully look back and see how good people tried to stay the course, and how the Lord God Almighty did not abandon His people.

Maxwell uses the expression “for better or for worse,” and immediately adds this gracious note:

“And very often it was for the better. Of course! Catholic universities fed the torch of learning in law, medicine, and theology. Most Catholic monasteries maintained hospitals, virtually the only hospitals that existed, and provided care also for the orphaned and the aged. Catholic Latin provided a lingua franca” — a common language — “for diplomacy and commerce, and Catholic schools provided education for diplomats and business clerks. The Cistercian monks in Britain greatly improved that land’s vital wool trade. Most importantly, Roman Catholic missionaries Christianized large areas of western Europe and provided pastoral care.”

And you know, friend, it needs to be the same way today. When one denomination is hit with a sex-abuse scandal, we should all weep . . . not gloat. We should all pray and support. If there’s a mess in my church, then you please pray for us. When terrorists break into a church and blow up the believers with hand grenades and AK-47s, we need to all mourn together and hold hands at the altar of prayer. And just as that young lawyer in our opening story looked in the court records and saw the terrible mistakes of his grandfather, we still need to say: “These were our people. Thank God for forgiveness! Thank God truth wasn’t ultimately snuffed out. Thank God for graciously sending reformers.”

It’s good news, isn’t it, that even when the prophetic Word paints a clear picture of apostasy and sin, God still brings this great cosmic drama to a successful conclusion. He still redeems. He still forgives. Back in the Old Testament book of Nehemiah, there was disobedience and rebellion as well. God’s people fell into tragic errors. “They refused to listen,” the prophet writes, “and failed to remember the miracles.” And yet how does Nehemiah conclude the warning?

“But You are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore You did not desert them, even when they cast for themselves an image of a calf and said, ‘This is your god, who brought you up out of Egypt,’ or when they committed awful blasphemies.”

And in the end — we keep returning to this theme — God’s eternal kingdom triumphs. The cross-currents of political ambition come to an end; the Prince of Peace is seated on the throne. And from all corners and from all ages, martyrs and forgiven persecutors alike bow at the feet of their King.