Welcome back to another episode of Five Minutes in Church History.

Some of you may know that this past year, Reformation Bible College opened its first remote campus, and it is in Alabama, and it is inside Bibb County Correctional Facility.

We have a classroom in that facility, and we have

14 students who are RBC students. I visited with them recently, and I asked them about their first semester

and asked them what they learned, and they all said to me, 325. And of course, they were talking about

the Council of Nicaea, and I thought, that's fantastic, that they're learning about the Council of Nicaea and the great thought that's fantastic, that they're learning about the Council

of Nicaea and the great Nicene Creed.

And 325 is one of those very significant numbers of the early church.

But here's a number that you may not know of a date of the early church.

401.

In June of 401, our friend Augustine was not in Hippo in his pulpit preaching.

He was in Carthage, and he was there at Carthage for the Synod of Carthage.

Now, just to catch up Augustine's context here, he's born in 354.

He actually is in Carthage from 376 to 383, both as a student and as a professional rhetorician, and he is

taking that city by storm. It's after that that he sets his eyes on Rome, gets to Rome,

a little bit unsatisfactory for him, ends up in Milan and is converted in 386. In 391, he's back. He's back in North

Africa. He's in Hipporegius, and he is ordained in 391, and in 395 he becomes a bishop.

And here it is, six years later, and he is at the Synod of Carthage. Overseeing the Synod is his good friend,

the Bishop Aurelius of Carthage. He was installed as bishop around 390, so he just has a few years

of experience on Augustine. And this Synod in 401 had to do with the Donatist controversy and a few other things.

But the Donatist controversy was ricocheting around North Africa, causing all kinds of problems.

This goes back to 311 and the whole Christianizing of the Roman Empire under Constantine.

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