Revelation: The Bride, the Beast & Babylon Page #8

Peter Waldo,

by conventional scholarship,

Is the founder of the Waldenses,

A group

of bible-Believing individuals

Living in France and Italy.

He was a catholic layman

who became inspired

By the preaching

regarding the early church

And he started a group

of traveling preachers

Who would teach the gospel.

He spoke against

transubstantiation and the mass,

Although there are some

Waldenses who seem to go to mass

And then

do their own worships as well.

Once officially-Trained

inquisitors are out in Europe,

They start finding people whom

they start calling 'Waldenses'

Or followers of Valdes

all over the place.

So sprinkled across Europe

You get these little cells

of communities of people

Where laypeople are mostly,

Let's be honest, they're mostly

going to catholic churches

Most of the year.

But once or twice a year,

maybe every year or 2,

They will have a traveling team

of Waldensian pastors

Who will arrive

and talk to them.

Everywhere he went

Peter Waldo saw people

hungering for truth.

He believed that there was

a famine in the land

For the word of god,

so Waldo paid a cleric

To assist him

in translating the new testament

Into the Franco vernacular.

The story is that Valdes

commissioned two learned,

Religious people in Lyons

To prepare a translation

of part of the bible

And some sayings of the fathers

Into the vernacular language.

Something between

French and Provencal-

It's really

kind of hard to describe-

But it seems

to have established a tradition

That the Waldensian communities

Would try to acquire

copies of scripture

In the common language

of the people.

And they would carry

scriptures around with them.

They would act

as merchants and traders,

Share the scriptures

with the people where they went.

There's even references to them

sending their young people

To the great universities

and colleges of the land

So they could share

their faith there

And also gain an understanding

of contemporary theology

And use it to reach out

to the larger community.

But the roman church

could not long tolerate

This free preaching

of the gospel by peasants.

During the third

Lateran council in 1179,

Waldo's ideas were officially

condemned as heresy

And soon after,

He and his followers

were excommunicated.

Driven away from Lyons,

the Waldensians settled

In the high valleys of Piedmont

and the French alps.

Here, among their families,

the bible was made the chief study.

The gospels of Matthew and John

were committed to memory,

Along with many of the epistles.

With no printing press,

The Waldensians

were frequently employed

In hand-Copying the scriptures.

Known for their strict

adherence to the bible,

These lay preachers

spread their teachings abroad

While traveling as peddlers.

To avoid arrest,

They'd sometimes sew

hand-Copied passages of the bible

Into the lining

of their garments

And then they'd

carefully share them

When they detected

an open heart.

Even following the death

of peter Waldo in 1218,

The roman church

Continued to fiercely

persecute the Waldensians.

For centuries, many were tried

and sentenced to death

In various European countries.

The holy spirit stirred

upon many within the church

Who courageously stood up

and called for reform.

One such man was John Wycliff,

An English theologian

and lay preacher,

Translator,

and teacher at oxford.

His education proved

to be a great asset to him

As he began to address

the cancerous errors

That were spreading

among god's people.

Wycliff never wanted

to set himself up

Against the church's leaders,

But as he saw

the glaring contradictions

Between what the bible said

and what the church was doing,

He could not keep silent.

Well, Wycliff is really

a rather unusual person

To have become a heretic

because he was an oxford don,

He was very much

Brought up within the power

structure of the church

And, yet, he was distressed

by what he saw around him.

As he saw Rome

Substituting tradition

for the holy scripture,

He accused the priesthood

Of withholding the bread of life

From the spiritually

starving people.

He believed that the bible

was a supreme authority

And he commissioned

the translation of the bible.

He had some followers

called Lollards

That went around distributing

scripture and preaching.

They did believe

in bible reading.

They did read Wycliff's bible

And they did believe

in the same kind of simpler piety

That the Waldensians

and others had advocated

As early as the 12th century.

This was the greatest gift

He could give the common people.

No document has altered

the course of history

More than the English

translation of the bible.

He brought forward

some of the truths

That Protestantism

would later bring forward

And as I just suggested,

His teachings, even though

it's centuries before,

Is preparing the way

for many people in England

To accept the reformation

when it comes.

Wycliff had the audacity

To declare that the universal

authority of the pope

Was unbiblical.

It was under these conditions

that on may 22, 1377

Pope Gregory the 11 Th

Condemned the writings

of John Wycliff

Stating that his teachings

Were dangerous

to the church and the state.

Wycliff continued to teach

salvation through Christ alone

And that the scriptures

were infallible

Rather than the roman church.

Over time, his writings

and work of reform

Spread out like seismic waves

Influencing millions

of god's people.

They can be read anywhere

where there are schoolmen,

Where there are scholastic

theologians who can pick them up.

They do travel

and they travel to Bohemia

And they inspire

John Huss as well.

And Huss shares the attack

on transubstantiation,

On clerical power

and on, as with Wycliff,

On the wealth of the church.

Huss was only a young boy

when Wycliff passed away,

But Wycliff's works

had a powerful influence

On his life

and his future mission.

John Huss

was a bohemian preacher,

Also a university professor

And also

king's chaplain for awhile.

He's entrusted, eventually

with the office of preaching

At a little chapel

that has just been founded,

The Bethlehem chapel.

Like Wycliff, John Huss

preached the scriptures

In the language of the people

A practice that the church

had now forbidden

In favor

of the lost language of Latin.

He did preach

in the vernacular language

And the bohemians had had

scripture in their language

Despite church councils.

And it's from that

That he comes into contact

with the teachings of Wycliff

And he especially is drawn to

the attack on transubstantiation,

On the attack on the wealth

and influence of the church.

Walking through town one day,

Huss noticed a couple of paintings

That two men had displayed

as a silent protest.

Each of the canvases

portrayed a different scene.

On one was the image

of the lowly Jesus

Humbly entering Jerusalem

with his travel-Worn disciples.

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