The church has had its ups and downs through the centuries.

It's had times of great strength and great weakness, of great faithfulness, and great frustration,

and wandering from the truth.

But Christ has always fulfilled his promise that he would build his church,

that he would preserve his church, and that the church would never fail.

That is a great promise from our Lord, isn't it?

That he will build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

It should encourage us today and give us hope as we look to the future of the global church around the world. You're listening to Renewing Your Mind, and beginning today

and continuing for the next several Saturdays, you'll hear select messages from W. Robert Godfrey's

six-part monumental study series on church history. You'll also have the opportunity to build

your church history library, as each Saturday we make a new part of this study series available

to you for one day only. So request part one today, covering the first 500 years of church history

for a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org.

So why study church history? Well, better put, why study our family history?

Well, here's Dr. Godfrey to answer that question and to provide the context of the time in which

our Lord and Savior was born.

Some years ago, I read a Peanuts cartoon,

and one of the Peanuts characters was assigned the topic for a paper,

Church History.

And she paused and thought a minute, and she said,

when writing on church history, you have to begin at the beginning.

My pastor was born in 1930.

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