Clough Acts Lesson 25

Doctrine of Heathenism – Acts 10:1-8

We are studying Acts 10. Acts is a great book of transition; it’s a book that speaks of the increasing emphasis upon the Church, the decreasing emphasis upon the kingdom, until by the time the book if finished you have the emphasis completely on the body of Christ in the days of the Church and the kingdom offer to Israel has come to an end. The book of Acts, outlined in Acts 1:8 is consisting of three stages, when the gospel would go to Jerusalem, would go to Judea and Samaria and when it would go throughout all the world. And the entire book of Acts can be outlined this way. Chapters 2-7 the gospel in Jerusalem; chapters 8-9 the gospel in Judea and Samaria, and chapters 10 to the end of the book it is the gospel in all the world.

At each point in the transition from stage one to stage two, from stage two to stage three you have the Holy Spirit unconsciously guiding the Church. We say unconsciously guiding the Church because the Church did not sit down and determine consciously that [can’t understand word]; God told us to do this in all the world so we’d better do it in all the world, so let’s get started here, let’s move over to there and so on. That’s conscious decision making. As far as we can tell from the pages of Scripture the first Christians apparently didn’t function that way at all. What they did do was they followed the Word of God in their own backyard and as they followed the Word of God in their own backyard, then the Holy Spirit moved them. So it’s the story of they minded their business at hand and then God dealt with the business in more distant places.

So He would use things like the widow’s dispute and things like two apostles fighting and so on, all this stuff that we would consider just destructive, basically, of the whole system, all this destruction is used and turned into good, the Romans 8:28 operation of the Holy Spirit, “All things work together for good to them that are the called according to His purpose.” World evangelization in Acts was done by the Holy Spirit unconsciously getting the Church in a position where it would carry out the great commission. The Church did not decide to do that by itself and this, of course, shows grace, it shows the fact that God is leading whether we understand it or not. Sanctification is an application of the principle and that is that God guides you by Romans 8:14 in the sense that if you are a believer God is guiding you constantly along the ascending plain of sanctification. He will use catastrophe, diversity, pressures and setbacks in your life to bring this good goal to fruition.

Now we said that chapter 10 was a transition to stage three of the gospel and as always the Holy Spirit picked out the right men, put them in the right place, doing the right thing at the right time. And the key man who stars is a man by the name of Cornelius. Cornelius is the first official Gentile convert into the body of Christ and therefore he is chosen with his background in mind that all through history when we study this portion of Acts we would understand why God chose to operate this way. Cornelius was a member, as we studied last week, of the Roman military and there are several factors in Cornelius’ background show, not only how evangelization occurs but it shows how God made these great transitions from stage to stage in the gospel. First of all, Cornelius was a Roman. He wasn’t a Greek; he wasn’t a neo-Babylonian, he wasn’t a Mede or a Persian, he was a member of the Roman society because it was that fourth kingdom of Daniel’s four kingdom, it was the fourth kingdom of Rome that ruled the Mediterranean at that time. And because it was and because this was the Gentile power, it only stands to follow that there couldn’t have been a more appropriate person won to Christ at this point than a member of that power structure, Rome.

Now when Rome did rule the ancient world, what was the physical concrete symbol of the Roman presence? It was always the Roman legionnaire with his eagle on his staff, SPQR, always the theme and the motto of the Roman army. And so how more appropriate that not only a Roman being the first Gentile convert, but a Roman soldier being the first Gentile convert. And the Roman soldier had a rank; we don’t know exactly what Cornelius’ rank was because the structure of the Roman army was built like this, and the word “centurion” doesn’t really fit one of our military categories. The legion would be equivalent to our division, a little smaller than the American division but larger than a Russian division, so here we have the legion, 4200 to 5500 men. These legions would generally be assigned geographical areas in the Mediterranean and the Romans came up with an improvement in the military organization that has been followed by every army since in the world, and that is that they took the old Greek phalanx and broke it down into parts, cohorts, and this enabled the Roman legion to be able to fight and to maneuver against flanking motions, against attacks from the rear, and so forth.

The Greeks, while they had a tremendous bulldozer operation with their…put their 15 foot, 10 foot spears on the soldier in front and start marching, forward march, and this big wave would start moving, the phalanx was an awesome thing to behold, but the phalanx with a sharp cavalry could be flanked and could be charged at from the rear and when it was they had all their spears facing frontward and they were totally vulnerable to rear attack. So to keep this problem down the Romans divided their legions up into autonomous subsets so these groups of soldiers could fight on their own. And depending on the political and military situation, maybe three or four cohorts extra would be a sign to a particular legion, maybe they’d be assigned to another legion. But generally speaking there were ten cohorts in each legion. A cohort consisted of anywhere from 1100 men max to about 500 men minimum. It would correspond in our military to a regiment or a brigade, again depending on whether it’s a special service brigade or something like that. And then underneath the cohort, this would be divided up into three maniples, the nearest thing would correspond to our battalion structure. The commander of the cohort would be a full colonel, by our standards; the commander of the 200 men maniples or battalions would be lieutenant colonel. And then each one of these maniples would be divided into two or more sentries, sentry being 100 men, each sentry corresponding with what we would call a company.

So since a centurion would be a commander of one sentry or could upon promotion be graduated to commanding two sentries or a maniple, he could hold a rank that would correspond to our military of Captain, Major, or Lieutenant Colonel, one of those three ranks, field grade on up to LC. So if that’s the situation we really can’t pinpoint any more than that the rank of Cornelius except to show that he was well up into the structure, he was probably a seasoned soldier and he was the man that God had picked out. Not only was he a Roman, not only was he a Roman soldier, not only was he a Roman soldier, not only was he a Roman soldier who was an officer, but Cornelius was a member of a very particular cohort called the Second Italian Cohort of Roman Citizen Volunteers. The second cohort, cohort [sounds like mill ee air ee ah] here, this particular cohort was a cohort that was transferred from legion to legion depending on the political situation. So when the Romans had problems in a certain area they’d send in this Italian cohort, the reason being that these men were recruited in Rome’s back door, straight from the Peninsula of Italy itself, and therefore there’s a higher loyalty to SPQR. And therefore it was used in every hot spot in the near east. Rome had their middle eastern policy problems and their near eastern policy problems and therefore they could not allow the eastern perimeter of the Roman Empire to be threatened by adverse political military situations. From 69 AD on in history the second cohort was assigned to Damascus and the Syria area and it was there that the archeologists found the particular plaque that stated the existence of this cohort. This is the cohort described in Acts 10:1; “There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion,” that means captain, major or lieutenant colonel, “of the cohort called the Italian cohort.” So this pinpoints his rank as best we can and it also shows his location in history.

We want to go back and as we see Acts 10:1-8 we want you to see how the gospel goes out to the heathen. It will be a study on evangelization, missionary work among heathen, or by definition heathen being people who are not exposed to the Scriptures. It doesn’t mean they’re stupid. When you call someone a heathen it’s usually considered derogatory but there’s some very fine moral heathen and if you’re ever in a situation where you find a lot of human good it’ll be best to start flavoring your conversation with the word heathen or pagan. People don’t like that, they’re very sensitive that you called them a pagan but they ought to be called pagans because if they disbelieve the authority of Scripture that’s what they are, pagans. And so if you do get this chance try to explain to them, it kind of shakes them up but it’s good, it’ll give you an opportunity to witness. It kind of shakes them up but just explain what a heathen is; say, you know, you’re a perfectly good heathen, heathen are very civilized, there have been some wonderful heathen through history. Marcus Aurelius was a great Roman philosophic and stoic heathen, there have been great men, Plato was a heathen, Aristotle was a heathen, there have been brilliant heathen, and go on and develop the concept of heathen because if you’re around a highly religious environment the first stage in witnessing is to separate, not join. It’s not the case where the unbeliever has his little bag and then you come along and you add Jesus to the top of it. That’s not witnessing. What you do is you just destroy the whole bag and make him start all the way from the foundation up; that’s real type of challenge between human viewpoint and divine viewpoint.

So it’s very important, I think that when we talk about witnessing and evangelism and introducing Christ to someone that they understand that they are a heathen, and that they are a pagan and try to show them that you’re not name-calling them, you’re trying to properly label them, and watch them squirm. Nobody likes to be called a heathen because they have this image that a heathen is immoral, or a heathen is some lesser individual, or a heathen is somehow uneducated. No, there are good educated heathen. So be proud to join their ranks, tell them.

Now Cornelius was this kind of a heathen. Turn to Acts 11:14 it proves that Cornelius was not saved at this point in Acts 10 because obviously in Acts 11:14 Peter is told to go, “tell thee words, whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved.” Well, Cornelius can’t be saved if he isn’t lost. So therefore the only conclusion you can come to is that he was lost. And so in Acts 10:1 you’re dealing with a lost man, you’re dealing with a heathen, a fine heathen, one that you’d love to be with, one who probably was a great man, but nevertheless a lost heathen.

Now let’s see if we can use a little historical imagination and we have to at this point because we don’t have all the data from history to do this, but let’s use a little historical imagination and think what it must have been like if you had met Mr. Cornelius or Major Cornelius or Colonel Cornelius. Colonel Cornelius, what would your life story have been, that kind of thing. We can guess from his name, Cornelius, that he’s a freed slave, the reason being that when Roman families freed their slaves the slave took the name of the family and this Cornelius is a very famous…comes from a very famous Roman aristocratic family. So Cornelius probably as a boy began his life as a slave, who was enmeshed in paganism from childhood, somewhere along the line he was released from slavery, liberated by this aristocratic family. After he was liberated from slavery he joined the army, which at that time was one of the most honored professions. You did not have CBS news with a documentary every other night knocking the military and why we should under fund it and so on. In those days they were free of all that trash and they could have a very excellent military machine. The Roman military served a great purpose as we saw last week under the fourth divine institution; the military’s main objective is to physically protect citizens.

Now this is the elementary function of government. The government’s major function is not to provide food stamps for poor students. The government’s job is not to provide bed and clothing for people who need it. These may be or may not be legitimate functions, that’s another question but there must never be a debate about the government’s primary function and the primary function is physical protection against evil. Now the Romans did not operate the way Britain, France and the United States operate. Rome had tourism in the ancient world so their citizens were going all over the place touring; they had trade so their businessmen were going all over the place. And Rome protected both her tourists and her businessmen and her military.

Wherever there was a Roman citizen he received the full protection of the Roman legion and so where there are group of what would correspond today to internationalist terrorists on the Mediterranean Sea who would intercept Roman shipping, would rob the cargoes, would rape the women, would kill the men, would take the children hostage and sell them off as slaves, when this began to happen to Roman citizens the Roman Senate simply said hey, this just doesn’t go on; it might have gone on with the Greeks and it might have gone on with the Medo-Persians but we’re Romans and in Rome you don’t do this kind of thing so we’re going to go take care of those situations. And they didn’t consult the newspaper. And they didn’t take a straw vote on what to do, they just knew exactly that the job of government was to physically destroy evil.

And so as these people began to raid in the Mediterranean shipping lanes the Roman navy came on them, and they had a very famous assault on the shores of an area close to the city of Corinth. That particular raid is a background for a passage in 2 Corinthians 10 when Paul says, “Casting down vain imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.” The vocabulary and the imagery behind that passage refers to this famous raid, it’s on the west side of Greece, this is the Adriatic Sea and here is where these pirates had one of their base of operations and they thought they were impermeable, even to the Romans, because it was high up on a cliff, and they had their ships docked down here and they’d go out on raids and the main shipping route went right by here, and from time to time they’d rip off a ship and get enough money to go buy some more arms, get bigger so they could rip off more ships to buy more arms to get bigger. And this went on. So finally the Romans had a two-pronged attack, they landed troops on both sides of this thing and surrounded it; that was the first thing Rome always did when sieging somebody. It’s always psychologically debilitating to see yourself trapped in a situation and a long, everywhere, north, south, east and west you use see this tremendous siege work and you know you’re just not going to escape from the thing. So the Romans did that; then they had a problem of sieging the place, they couldn’t get in because of the high wall. So they thought of a neat little deal, they had catapults with grappling hooks and they shot these grappling hooks up to the top of the wall and probably got a few guys with it but they got the walls on the end of these grappling hooks and then pulled the walls down, just physically tore them apart. And that’s how they took care of the pirates. And then they went in and they murdered every single pirate there was. And a funny thing, after that, Rome didn’t have any more trouble with terrorism on the high seas. And she didn’t ask for world opinion; she just knew that that was evil and you destroy evil physically. And they certainly would not have tolerated some North Korean animals chopping up their soldiers with axes. If they ever dared to chop up a Roman soldier with an axe there’d be a legion there tomorrow and they’d chop them up with axes. So the Roman Empire was a great, great thing as far as physical destruction of evil. This is why a lot of professors in universities hate the Roman Empire, because to them it did not permit their kind of rebelliousness and their kind of mental attitude in that society, it just wasn’t tolerated.

So that’s the kind of a background for Cornelius. He, therefore, was a man who had participated in pirate raids, he participated in all these assaults, he was a man who was familiar with the main job of government, physical destruction. Now what did Cornelius have by way of religious training. We can guess at this also. We can guess by verse 2, it says that Cornelius “was a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house,” the word to “fear” is present tense which means he continually feared God with all his house. The word “fear” doesn’t mean to tremble in his boots; it means to respect the authority of God. Cornelius, being a Roman, being involved in an authority structure respected authority and this was a tremendous thing going for Cornelius. Something that few Christian men in this generation seem to have and that’s respect for authority. They’re good at dishing it out but they’re not good at taking it and this is why I always recommend to any young guy that’s graduating from college who thinks that he might possibly be interested in seminary to go into the service because you are not going to learn how to take orders inside most Christian work.

The only place left in our society where you’re going to learn what an order is, whether you like it or not, is the military. There’s something terribly sanctifying about having a DI chew your butt off with his mouth three inches in front of yours and he’s on full volume and you’re standing there at attention and can’t do anything. Tremendously sanctifying experience. And when that happens you learn what an order is and you learn authority and if you never learned it in your home because you had permissive parents that let you do anything you wanted when you wanted, oh do you have lots of sanctification ahead of you. And it gets it all out of your system and it’s great; it’s kind of a bittersweet experience, as I call it, because on the one hand you don’t like it, nobody likes it, and yet on the other hand there’s something tremendous about it because you can see yourself beginning to see the structure of authority and begin to respond to the structure of authority and you see your own personal growth in your own soul and it builds leaders. Leaders have to start out being followers. And this is frankly one reason why I think there’s problems in Christian churches all over this country, that men don’t rise to positions of responsibility because they’re irresponsible; it’s just that simple. Men, basically, in Christian…there’s many, many fine exceptions, but generally men have not been trained in our society, we’ve gone through a generation of the Vietnam protests and so on, so the guy that’s coming into his 20s and in his late 20s has not had to go through what men had to go through in previous generations. So we’ve got a weak link in the system now and it’s showing up. It’s showing up all over the place.

Cornelius wasn’t that kind of an individual; Cornelius understood authority and understood it and responded to a particular kind of authority. In his society he had an option between human viewpoint and divine viewpoint. In the human viewpoint realm as a good pagan he had the pagan cult; these were the various sundry cults Rome had, sort of like Southern California, they had one a day and all throughout the city in the major metropolitan areas you had this cult, that cult, and then sometimes you would have the philosophic movement that emanated from Athens, and so forth. Out of this Cornelius was exposed to the idea that the universe was just one, we call that monism, the idea there there’s just one grade of being all the way from God, then the gods, then angels, then men, then animals, then plants, then rocks on down to atoms. In other words, being is one… like a rainbow, it’s one spectrum, that sort of shades in and God and men together are in the same universe concept. That was true of all paganism, still is, the same with the concept of modern evolution, it hasn’t changed a bit. And then you go to the concept of knowing. In the ancient world paganism said that man knows, that man can know on his own, either through mystery rituals, practices or just sitting down, speculating and thinking, man can basically know things. Then they also said in the area of morals and ethics and what is right and what is wrong is that man cranks out what is right and what is wrong out of his own finite resources.

Now that was the set of options that Cornelius had. It came to him under a thousand different names, under a thousand different groups. But now consider circulating among the millions of people that lived in the Levant at that time were another group of people, a peculiar group of people, people that never fit. Wherever these people went they seemed always to be misfits; they always seemed to gather in their little ghettos inside the great urban cities of Alexandria, Corinth and Rome; the Jews, the Diaspora, the people who had been thrown out of the country in 586 BC who had never made it back in 516 and didn’t want to, who set up areas of learning all through the Levant. These were the Jews, and Cornelius must have encountered the Jews. They were in Rome, they were in Athens, they were in Corinth, they were in North Africa, they were all up and down the Levant, everywhere he went he would be exposed to at least some Jewish influence.

And this Jewish influence testified that instead of having one, monism, there were two, there was the Creator and the creature and there was a fundamental difference between the two; God and man are not together in the universe; God is outside of the universe as its sovereign omnipotent Creator and man is inside as a finite creature and you cannot bridge that chasm, that is absolute as far as being is concerned. And then we find out by the Jews that instead of man knowing, it is man knowing by revelation of the Word of God; the Jews testified that it was the Torah of Moses, that God spoke into history from outside of history and that’s how you begin to know. You don’t start by your own finite resources. And then they obviously learned very well that the Jewish witness or testimony to the fact that standards emanate from this God who speaks. The Ten Commandments were not thought up by Moses; they did not have a house of Parliament in the middle of the Sinai Peninsula, it was rather God speaking.

Now Cornelius having faced these two options, it says in verse 2 he “feared God;” it means that Cornelius made a conscious positive volition reaction against all of this human viewpoint paganism and identified himself willingly and publicly with this despised minority of Jewish people. That was as far as Cornelius had come in verse 2. Cornelius was yet unsaved but he was on the way; he was a man who was beginning to respond to the light available to him; he was coming out of the darkness of heathenism. Which now introduces us to a doctrine, the doctrine of heathenism. This is the doctrine that you always need when someone comes up to you and says “well what about those who haven’t heard,” as if they came up with one of the greatest most profound questions. People have been asking that for 20 centuries so it’s not new; the answer has been the same down through the ages of history. It goes all the way back to the New Testament times and Paul answered it in the New Testament. It’s a nice question but sometimes the arrogant attitude with which it’s asked signifies that the asker is looking down his long nose at you, wondering whether you little peon can come up with the answer. Well, you may be a little peon but you don’t have to come up with the answer, the answer is already available.

What is the answer to the heathen question? Five points on the doctrine of heathenism. The first thing about heathenism, if you want to understand that we freely admit that as Bible-believing Christians is that throughout history there have been billions of people totally unexposed to Scripture, billions of people totally unexposed to Scripture. We have no qualms, we’re not arguing that every person has had to see the Scripture. We admit this, that’s why we’re interested in sending missionaries out, because we do believe that billions of men have never seen the Scripture. The issue on the first point, though, is yes, there are the billions minus the Bible, correct. The question is are these billions minus the Bible be, or going to be held responsible for rejecting light which they do not have. How can these billions of people be held responsible before God, when in fact, they don’t have the Bible; they haven’t had the choice that we’ve had.

That leads us to our second point under the doctrine of heathenism. The first point is that yes, there are billions of people who have always lived and will live apart from the Scripture, unexposed. The second point says that on the basis of God’s righteousness and His justice, God never holds men responsible for rejecting light which they never had, John 15:22. In John 15:22 Jesus said to the people, “If I hadn’t come… they wouldn’t have sin;” I have come, they had a chance to reject so they rejected, now they’ve got sin. And that principle, you can see it time and time after time, point after point in Scripture, and that again is that God holds men responsible only for light that they have got…ONLY for light which they have. It’s kind of an elementary point, but out of the first two points of the doctrine now we can come to a logical conclusion.

Before we go any further in this doctrine of heathenism let’s force ourselves to think through to a logical conclusion. Here it is; if all men are going to be held responsible, if they are going to be held responsible, our only conclusion is they must have light apart from the Scripture. Now that conclusion logically follows as night follows day, as day follows night from the first two point. The first point was that all men don’t have the Bible. The second point is that God holds men responsible only for the light they’ve got. Then we can conclude logically that if God holds all men responsible it must be because all men have light other than and in addition to the Scripture. Or, saying this same logical conclusion another way, if the Scripture is the only light that men have, then all men cannot be held responsible. That’s the other corollary. If the Bible is the only light that is available in the world system, the creature, then it follows that all men, then, since they don’t have the Bible, all men cannot be held responsible.

So let’s look at these two conclusion to those first two points: one conclusion is that if all men are responsible then there has to be light outside of the Scripture. The other conclusion is that if the Scriptures are the only light that’s available then all men cannot be held responsible. So our third point, we’ve got to resolve this problem some way; we’ve got to introduce a third point in the doctrine to settle the issue. What’s the third point in the doctrine? The third point in the doctrine is that all men are indeed said to be responsible. Hebrews 9:27, “It is appointed unto men once to die, after this the judgment.” All men are being held responsible; that’s the third point in the doctrine. Now we come out with another conclusion, let’s look at this again. For point one, all men do not have the Bible; point two, God never holds one responsible for light which one does not have; point three, all men, in fact, in Scripture are declared to be responsible, whether they have the Bible or not they’re held to be responsible, “It is appointed unto men once to die and after this the judgment” and there’s no distinction being made in that verse between saved, unsaved, elect, non-elect, you name it, whatever.

Then the conclusion so far to these three points can only be this: there must be, therefore, light available to all men outside of the Bible. There must be light available to men apart from the text of the Scripture. That’s the only way it can be resolved.

And now we come to the fourth point, the location of that light outside of the Bible. Where is this light that is outside of the Bible to which all men are held responsible. Turn to John 1; in John we have a discourse by the apostle on the Logos; the Logos was the word used her for the Second personality of the Trinity, God the Son. It was also the same word used by the philosophic writers to describe the structure of the universe. It’s a very, very philosophically loaded term and John deliberately picks this term up to describe Jesus Christ in His preincarnate form because he wants to communicate the cosmic significance of God the Son, that God the Son structures the universe. And in John 1:9 he goes on to add that, “That was the true Light,” still talking about God the Son, “that was the true Light,” or “He as the true Light,” always the true Light, imperfect tense, “who lights every man who comes into the world.” So doesn’t that text clearly say that every man who comes into the world gets some light? Yes. Every man that is born gets some, not necessarily the same, but gets some light, and the some light is coming out of God the Son.

Now we’d like a little bit more information on what this light is and we have it. Turn to Romans 1:18. In Romans 1:18 the “some light” that is coming to all men, whether they have the Bible or not, is amplified. This passage, beginning in Romans 1:18 and continuing through the end of Romans 1 is one of the most important texts of the New Testament. Whenever we discuss the problem of apologetics or how to respond to attacks of unbelief our theory of response must be grounded on this text. This text controls Christian philosophy, it controls Christian apologetics, it controls Christian psychology, or should, it controls all these other areas because it is THE critical passage; that’s why we come back to this about once a month here at Lubbock Bible Church, over and over and over again. Let’s look at it once more.

Romans 1:18, “For the wrath of God is being revealed,” that is light, “is,” present tense, “is being revealed,” now, “from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who are right now,” present tense, “holding the truth in unrighteousness.” Verse 18 is talking about Roman heathen, it’s not talking about the cultured spheres of Judaism; it is talking about people without the Bible and it says these people without the Bible nevertheless are, present tense, “holding the truth in unrighteousness.” Well, what is this truth that they’re holding in unrighteousness to which they’re going to be held responsible and accountable. Paul goes on, verse 19, “Because that which may be known of God is manifest,” notice the word “manifest,” it means clear, no question about that, this is not just an innocent verse kind of tucked in between a couple of others, there’s dogmatic statements being made here, look at the language, “is clear in them; for God has shown it to them.” And However it was that God showed it to them, since this is Roman heathen and not Jews, it isn’t the Scriptures. He’s not talking about the Scriptures here, he’s talking about this other light that causes all men to be responsible.

Romans 1:20, “For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly,” present tense, “clearly being seen.” Now could language be any less ambiguous than that? Is there any chance of misunderstand what Paul just told us, that all men including the men without the Bible are clearly in contact with some light? But the tabla rosa concept, where it’s the idea that John Locke had that man comes into the world, his brain is like the blackboard at the beginning of the semester in school, all nice and washed, nothing on it, and that’s how you come into this world. That is a pagan idea of epistemology or knowledge. That’s not true. The Bible insists that there’s no such thing as tabla rosa; there is no such thing as a person who enters ignorant into the system. Children are God-conscious. They are not nothing; they are God-conscious and they have it. If you want to know when your child becomes God-conscious the best guess is when they can handle language because when they can handle language that makes them able to think conceptually and they can absorb doctrine, elementary maybe, but they still can absorb doctrine.

You don’t think kids can’t answer big questions? [refers to some teacher that wrote an article] Every major question that any philosopher has ever asked was asked in her first grade. Where did God come from? Try it on for size; what would you answer to that, a little kid in first grade. Then the kids are a little more sneaky: is it right that we should love everyone? Then what about Satan? First grade. Usually what happens is that nobody gives these children any good answer worth anything so by the time they get in fourth and fifth grade they’re tired of asking these kinds of questions because nobody gives them answers. And then finally by the time they get in Jr. and Sr. High they’ve just given up and from that point on they’re just regurgitating crud for the next exam so they can get a good grade so they can get in college and get out of college and get a degree and impress everyone. And the whole spirit of finding truth is shot because at the very beginning in first grade nobody took questions seriously; nobody with doctrine was there to handle the situation, to stimulate, yeah, that’s a good question, here are some possibilities. A child is the most inquisitive thing on the face of the earth. Just watch them for five minutes; they could disassemble one of these pews, they try every time after service, always want to see how things are put together and they want to find out how the universe is put together. Oh, no, we don’t want to answer that right now, when you get bigger Johnnie we’ll answer it, which translated means I don’t know what the answer is right now and maybe by that time I’ll know the answer.

So here it says that everyone has some light. Children have light, and it says in verse 20 where they get the light from. “The invisible things from Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things…,” look at that word “clearly seen,” “being understood by the things that are made,” what two qualities does Paul mention in particular? God’s “eternal power,” that’s His sovereignty, that’s His eternality, “and His Godhead,” there’s His righteousness, His holiness and so on, “so that they are without excuse.” That is the light that all men have.

Now Paul goes on to describe what happens and here’s a very interesting concept of what sin is for a heathen. You see when you think of heathenism you think oh gee, there’s somebody that goes out and raises hell, some sort of native running around in their loin cloth, that concept. But that is not heathenism; in this list of historical and sociological cause/effect, beginning at verse 21 you have described for you the spiritual decline of man. Notice verse 21, “When they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” No mention there of immorality. Then it says in verse 23, “Then they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image like corruptible man,” there’s your idolatry starting. Then in verse 24 it says “God gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts,” then verse 26 discusses homosexuality, and then verse 29 talks about fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; [envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers,” etc. etc. etc.

Now when you read that you think oh, there’s a sin list. Really now; is that what that is? Is Paul blaming the heathen for all these things? Not really, he’s describing them, he’s not blaming them. Where he’s blaming them is back up in verse 21, where they went on negative volition to start with, that’s where he’s blaming them. The heathen sin, as far as the Holy Spirit is concerned is not the homosexual and all the gross stuff that comes out of it. The heathen sin is back up earlier in the chain of cause and effect, up back at the point when they were unthankful, that’s where the Holy Spirit put the emphasis. And when the Holy Spirit convicts He is not convicting for this whole big long chain; the chain is only used to do what? Back to verse 18, what does it say in verse 18? It says, “The wrath of God is being revealed against unrighteousness.” Now verse 18 therefore is describing the decline, that is the revelation. In other words it’s different than the way we usually read this; we usually say oh, if society gets much worse God’s going to judge it. Wrong! Wrong!!! This passage is saying when society is in that state that is the judgment of God. The judgment of God is right there in front of your face.

Stated in a nutshell what Paul is talking about is that man cannot go on negative volition without setting off a social destruct system. That’s the revelation of the wrath of God. It is impossible for a man who rebels against the Word of God to preserve society, no matter how hard they may try, they come up with all the socialist, welfare schemes that you can imagine to hold it together, even conservatives think they can hold it together without a teaching of the Word. But God says that when you have negative volition to Him, a negative rebellion against His greater light, that’s available to all men, you can try all the band-aids you want to, it’s not going to work because there’s got to be the social destruction because men have got to realize the consequences of turning away from God and His authority. And that’s the way God has, He rubs our noses in it. That’s part of the system of teaching men.

So now we can summarize under point four of the doctrine of heathenism some of the things that God uses specifically to point to Himself. One of the things He uses to point to Himself is design and creation; you can see that in Psalm 19. You know how that works, you’ve seen the breath-taking picture of a natural scene, the first time you saw the Grand Canyon or something, and you know how there’s a response. Well, that’s what Paul is talking about, that’s the response, wow! The first time a science student really gets a good microscope and looks into the microscopic world and sees it, it’s awe-inspiring. The first time a child gets his telescope and he looks out into the heavens, he’s kind of amazed at it. That is the greater light, the sense of WOW! It’s not too articulate, granted; and it’s not fine detailed theology, granted; but it’s the initial step. The design of creation.

Another one, the design of man himself, that’s covered in Romans 2, man has a conscience. Everywhere man has a conscience. C. S. Lewis does a lot of work with this in his book Mere Christianity. Then we have what we’ll call society and that’s given in Romans 1 and that’s the fact that when you have a society of negative volition it can never hold itself together, it always goes down. “The wrath of God is being revealed against unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth.” Another area that goes along with that in history in general, that’s Acts 17:27. So these are parts and pieces throughout the Bible where the light that is not in Scripture, that’s beyond Scripture, that all men have.

So let’s review where we’ve come in this heathenism so we can finish it, go back to Cornelius. The first point is yes, there are billions of people who have lived who don’t have the Bible; correct. Second point, under the principle of God’s righteousness and justice He never will hold someone responsible for light which they did not have. Third principle: all men are in fact held responsible, Bible or no Bible, they are held responsible, Hebrews 9:27. The fourth point, all men have the light through creation and we call the technical word for this, in theology it’s called general revelation as opposed to specific revelation of the Scriptures. This is called general revelation and men have access to general revelation, they also have access if you want to argue the case, to some specific revelation but that’s a theological fine point that’s not pertinent right now.

The fifth point in the doctrine of heathenism; men, therefore are judged on the basis of what light they have already had, not on the light they do not yet have. Men are going to be judged on the basis of light which they have already had, and since all men have had sufficient enough to render them excuseless, therefore that is why all men can be held responsible. Now for those among the ranks of heathenism in whom the Holy Spirit is working and they’re responding to this general revelation, God does something for them. The principle is given in Jeremiah 29:13 and John 7:17. Jeremiah 29:13 says, “And you shall seek me, and find me, when you search for me with all your heart.” John 7:17 says, “This doctrine, you will know of it, whether it be of Myself or whether it be of the Father, if you will to know it.” If you really want to know God you’ll know.

So as the heart is moving into a positive volition mode under grace, then you’ll find God begins to add light and depending on the dispensation of history or the age of history He adds a certain volume of light. Let’s take the age of the Gentiles; in the age of the Gentiles, which is that age of history preceding the call of Abraham, during the age of the Gentiles God added volumes of light by several means, one of which was the king-priests who ruled the urban cultures. Correcting the chronology but keeping the correlation, this would correspond to the Plasticine epic in geology because we believe that the Plasticine epic is post-deluge and therefore the Plasticine epic is the epic of the book of Job, it is the epic of this early structure of Genesis. Genesis 10, 11l, 12, 13. And in this era there was a primitive monotheism on the face of the earth; heathenism hadn’t generated all this crud yet and all the detailed mythology yet, all the stuff they teach in schools; we send missionaries to Africa to get them out of their heathenism so then they bring the heathenism into the public schools so they can draw pictures of the Indian myths and all the rest of it, do rain dances and so on because we have great Indian culture now. Well the Indians are fine people but you don’t get to know an Indian by studying all of his worst points, and this rain dance business and drawing all their little idiot gods is not the best side of the American Indian, any more than going out and crawling through a sewer is the best way to find out about people in Lubbock, just slop through the sewer and pick out this sample and that sample and from this we deduce the character of the people that live in Lubbock. That’s exactly what’s happening in the public schools; we go through the sewer of the Indian civilization, which is its mythological output, we pick up this sample and that sample and conclude great things about the Indian. That’s the Indian’s degenerate side; the great thing about the Indian is he’s made in God’s image, he’s the son of Ham and therefore he has great destiny in history and he’s done some many powerful things about inventing technology, that’s the way to get to know the Indian.

So during this age of the Gentiles you have the king-priests, and the king-priests, one of whom is listed in Genesis 14 is Melchizedek, you have another verse of Scripture about this period and how it worked in Job 31:26, 28 where it tells how the urban cultures of that time prohibited anything but monotheism. Monotheism did not evolve out of a prior polytheism. Polytheism evolved out of monotheism; should say it devolved from monotheism. So in this first era where you would have someone on positive volition, God would bring them up out of the mud by introducing him to primitive monotheism; they didn’t have much doctrine but they had enough to be saved on.

In the second era of history, the era of the age of Israel, God apparently would bring a heathen up out of the mire of darkness into the light by exposing him to the word available through the nation Israel. Exodus 19:6 says that Israel was to be a mediatorial nation, that is a nation that stands between God above and all the other nations. Israel would be the transfer system of doctrine from God to the human race. This is why archeologists have found temple structures, for example in China that are remarkably like Solomon’s temple. This is not to be surprising because after all, where did Israel sit but on the major trade route of the ancient world. You mean people went all through Israel and never had any cultural contact? Ridiculous!

Then we come to the age of the Church and this makes it pertinent for our Cornelius friend, because in the age of the Church God, when he works in the heart of a heathen to bring him up out of out of darkness, he is going to place him in contact with the right believer to do the right witnessing under the right conditions at the right time. That’s the great commission, Matthew 28; we are told to witness to every creature. Why? God said so, that’s why. But in the course of our witnessing and in the course of going out to present the gospel, keep Acts 10 in mind because here you have a portrait of how the Spirit takes the heathen that He’s slurping out of this unregenerate darkness and He takes the believer who’s skilled, who’s trained, he’s properly prepared to do just the right mission for that and He brings the two together, in this case Cornelius and Peter.

So turn to Acts 10, we’ll have for a few verses of how this worked out. Cornelius was “a devout man” who respected God’s authority, he is unsaved. He “gave many alms to the people, and prayed to God always.” See how much spiritual work can be done by an unregenerate person. Don’t be fooled, don’t fool yourself worst of all.

Acts 10:3, “He saw in a vision clearly about the ninth hour of the day,” 3:00 p.m., “an angel of God coming unto him, and saying unto him, Cornelius.” Now look at this startling thing; the angel does not do the witnessing. The believer is going to do the witnessing; angels are not missionaries; believers are missionaries. Angels physically protect, angels can handle this situation, that situation, they busted the jail a couple of times in the book of Acts and took care of those things; that’s the job of the angels, but the angels have not been commissioned as we have. If you are a believer you have a commission to do something that no angel has ever had; no angel has ever had the high privilege of speaking the gospel to another human being; that is a job solely for believers.

Acts 10:4, so Cornelius, “when he looked on him, he was afraid, and said, What is it, Kurios?” Here the word “Kurios” is used for “sir,” that means he respects the angel’s authority. “And the angel said to him, Your prayers and your alms are come up for a memorial before God.” Now that phrase, a memorial before God, goes back into the language of the Old Testament, it has a very, very particular reference. There is something that students call an anthropomorphism; anthro, meaning man, morphism, formed; the form of man. God is revealed anthropomorphically in Scripture, that is, God sees, He has eyes; God hears, He has ears; He has things that correspond to our empirical senses. Another thing is God smells, He has the olfactory sensation, the empirical sense of smell. And this sense of smell is always used in Scripture to depict good works in prayers; in the Old Testament good works, sacrifices and prayers were always said to be incense. They had an altar in the tabernacle and on this altar 24 hours a day they would be burning incense; perfume if you will. And what it’s communicating as the Old Testament so effectively does, it’s communicating in a physical way as you have pleasure from good perfume so also God has pleasure from prayer. It causes the same thing to Him that perfume is causing to you. It’s just like the vine, just as a good glass of wine is very delightful, in the Scriptures, contrary to fundamentalist grape juice, a good glass of wine is nourishing and it’s a thing to be enjoyed in Scripture; that’s why God pictures us as a vine. He didn’t make Kool-aid from grapes, they made wine from grapes. It’s not unfermented wine; I dare you to produce grape juice unfermented in a hot climate. Try it some time; the most marvelous grape juice you’ve ever tasted.

So as this goes on the prayers of Cornelius of the unsaved heathen in whom the Holy Spirit is working, he’s bringing the smell and the odors up to God and God is pleased so God, verse 4, is pictured as pleased with Cornelius’ response to general revelation and God expresses His pleasure to Cornelius by arranging a witnessing situation. He sends the angel, lines it up.

Acts 10:5, “And now send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter. [6] He lodges with one Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the seaside; he shall tell the what thou ought to do.” In verse 5 you have the preparation. What you’ve got here is that you’ve got the right man at the right place, Peter, the chosen apostle, in the chosen position. What did I say about all that rigmarole we went through in Acts 9 about Peter had to do this, he had to heal Dorcas, he went down [can't understand word], what’s all that about? To get Peter in the right place for this; all part of the movement of God, slowly leading to get Peter in the right place. And what does it say again in verse 6, repeated from the last chapter? He lived in the house of a tanner; what’s significant about that? A tanner worked with carcasses, carcasses were unclean by the Torah, by Mishnaic Law, and therefore the tanner’s house would be considered an unclean place for a Jew, an unclean motel. So therefore where does God have Peter park his car? Outside of an unclean motel. So he’s got the right apostle in the right place having to live for a few days in an unclean motel so he’ll learn, and he’s going to have to talk to people who live in this kind of environment; that’s the boot camp that he’s getting for missionary training.

Acts 10:7, “And when the angel who spoke to Cornelius was departed, he called two of his household servants, and a devout soldier [of those that waited on him continually],” there’s just one comment on that, you do notice that throughout the book of Acts and Luke in general, Luke being a doctor who apparently is preparing a brief for a courtroom usage in Rome at Paul’s trial or at least an apologetic for the Christian faith, Luke is very careful whenever there’s a shift to bring two witnesses. Luke is thinking, wait a minute, wait a minute, I’ve got to bring out every fact of history that will substantiate the Christian position and I must have two witnesses; that’s law. So Luke is sharp to remember those little things like that. Notice there’s a third man that goes with the part, the soldier. Why that, they’re only going to travel thirty-five miles. That’s all it is from Caesarea down to Joppa along the coastline. It’s because this man was a body guard, and here’s a little tip, particularly for Christian girls. You may think you are, because you’re a Christian you can be protected and be very, very foolish, you can leave all your doors unlocked, you can drive around with the doors in your car unlocked, and so on because “God is going to protect me.” Well God does protect drunks and other idiots but that is not qualification for you to just be stupid.

Now here are two men on a mission directly commissioned by an angel and they take physical precautions; that man is a bodyguard to protect them against violence. One of our girls was raped this summer in Dallas, I don’t know the circumstance, but that should shape some of you up in your very sloppy attitudes, leaving your windows unlocked, your doors unlocked; we live in a society of animals. Don’t be depressed by it, that’s just the doctrine of the sin nature. You, of all people, ought to be the one to think of this more than the non-Christian, the non-Christian he’s out there thinking that all men are basically, if you dig down deep enough you’ll find some good. But if we’re Christians we know there isn’t good, what good there is is due to regeneracy, due to grace, but we live in a society of rebellious animals, so think that way and protect yourself, and that’s what Cornelius is doing. Cornelius isn’t snowed because an angel said do it. An angel said do it all right, but he said do it sensibly and he’s sensible, he sensed protection.

Acts 10:8, And when he had declared all these things unto them, he sent them to Joppa,” and this begins the witnessing episode that we’ll study next week. We’ve seen the doctrine of heathenism; you have watched how the gospel goes out and now the emphasis in Acts will tend in a very, heavy, heavy direction into the direction of missionary work.