Heresy 101 (part 2)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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So I want to just quickly go over a couple of things that we talked about last week for those who weren't in attendance.

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Maybe also if you even were in attendance it will help to jar a couple of things. I know as I get older I quickly forget things that I've learned.

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So I just want to cover a couple of the topics. We'll get into some new subject matter. We'll see how far we go and maybe we'll get to about page 175 or so.

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I was on 8 I think when I left off last week. So we opened last week. We were talking about heresy and it was interesting because if you were here and you had realized

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I never defined heresy. We talked a little bit about it beforehand but I didn't give you a formal definition because I was really waiting.

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I wanted to give you some background, some details and a few other things. But we opened up last week with a quiz that actually was taken from a website again and the quiz came from a site called quizfarm .com.

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If any of you again are interested in going there you can go to quizfarm .com, type it in, do your little search engine there.

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And then in there you can do a quick look for are you a heretic? And you can answer 42 simple questions with strongly agree, strongly disagree and it will tell you what is the best means of a heretic that you are.

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Where you fit best in that arena if at all. So it would be interesting to go through and take some of it.

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Again the questions are fairly subjective in a lot of ways. But as we talked about that we looked at some of those questions and we saw that those questions that we were addressing or that were kind of laid out at least in the 10 questions that I had provided to you were attacking various fundamentals of the faith.

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We looked at things such as the nature of Christ which is very commonly attacked. We looked at was

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Christ a created being or not? We talked about creation itself. We talked about material items being either good or evil.

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We talked about original sin. We talked about the Trinity. Again all areas that are often attacked by various heresies out there in the world.

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Then I quickly went over why I was really teaching on the topic. Why I thought it was important that we as a congregation or a local body understand what heresy is so we can view it.

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And I had provided three different items. The first was that heresies repeat over time.

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So they may be dressed in a different outfit but most heresies just continue to repeat over time.

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They come, they're detected, they're discovered in most cases. Sometimes they get squashed and then they come back up in another year or two, a century or so forth.

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But as I talked about last time it's that lather rinse repeat like a shampoo bottle.

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It just continues over time. And as I talked about Phil Johnson and we'll use some of his material probably next week as we go into some of the various heresies themselves.

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But he categorized pretty much every heresy throughout time up until current into five unique heresies.

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So all the various heresies out there can really kind of be boiled down or solidified into these five different types of heresies that are out there.

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We talked about it really assists one in discernment, Christian discernment as you go to a Christian bookstore or as you talk to people about different things in their

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Christian walk. And there may be certain things as they mention something about the divinity of Christ and so forth that you may just say wait a minute that's not correct.

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And you don't right away want to call them a heretic. And we'll get into that today. That's not what we're here to do. But it helps us to discern both what we're reading, what we're hearing as you listen to sermons and others.

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Some of these things may come out. And we talked about how most of the cults today hold these false doctrines or heresies in most cases.

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And then the third thing was how do we educate others? And we talked a little bit about at the end of class the difference between just inerrant understanding of things.

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And we'll talk more about that today. And heretical teachings, very different things.

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So we'll get into that a little bit more. But that's one of the areas that we find that it really helps in just understanding and educating others to help people who may have an inerrant teaching and are willing to be taught or learn the correct way.

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And then I talked briefly about some of the issues I had in researching the topic and how today it appears a lot of that as Steve talked about comes into this whole diversity model, the postmodernism, the modernism and some other areas.

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But we need to be diverse and tolerant of all these other religions or theologies or understandings or doctrines.

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So we really can't call anyone out as a heretic because we're looked at being mean and unloving. And by no means is that what

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I'm trying to say here. We need to call out heresy for heresy's sake. And we need to understand it well.

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And as Steve had mentioned earlier if you're here this morning, we don't want diversity.

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We want to show, we want the biblical view. And that is what's important. So I just found it interesting that it was a hard topic to study or to find materials on that really pulled out that type of information for me.

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So kind of interesting. So one of the things we talked about too is I said how do we study heresy?

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What's the one thing we need to understand first if we're going to look at heresy? And who remembers what that was? Who remembers the first thing that you need to understand?

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And what do we call that? What do we call that truth in essence? It starts with an O is what I'm looking for. Do you remember?

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I'm sorry? Orthodoxy. So we need to understand orthodoxy, practice, beliefs, understandings in theology, orthodoxy and that's what is normal.

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So we kind of talked about what normal is and how that's defined and how orthodoxy and heresy really started in the early church.

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And we got into a little bit of history around why heresy kind of even grew and started.

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And we're almost to the point where we're in new information here. But I did want to just lay out again, we have to remember that the time was very different.

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They didn't have the scriptures as we have them today laid out. They had the Old Testament in most cases. Some churches or teachers or a copy of text or a copied portion of the text.

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But most of them couldn't just go and pull out the Bible and study and then be able to teach from it.

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It was a very difficult time. And Pastor Steve touched on it a little bit and we'll go into that on Ephesians 4 and how

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God actually commanded and gave that teaching ability to others.

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But what happened is we had the persecution that came. So right after Christ's death and we move into the book of Acts and in the book of Acts we see that there was this disparate,

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Christians were fleeing from persecution both locally but it also as we talked about was part of what

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God had planned in Acts 1 .8 which is the evangelistic move that they would be spread out, the

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Holy Spirit would come upon you and you would be witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria to the ends of the earth.

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So there was this great dispersion of people. So no longer did they have these large groups where people would always meet and talk and have communication.

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It normally ended up being very small groups usually in home churches and they were fleeing and trying to hide from persecution in most cases or trying to stay away from it as much as they can.

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And with that as we go through the history of heresy with that said what we see is there were times that there was some disparate teaching or there were issues where controversy was arising and we kind of closed with this last week and we talked about some of the things and that was as someone was teaching, again if you had nothing to verify against you probably would not have had the scriptures in your own hands.

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You would have been just listening and hopefully learning as you went through but it was what writings are authoritative?

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So what letters? Were Paul's letters authoritative? Is the gospel of Thomas authoritative?

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Is the gospel of Mary authoritative? What are the books that we should be looking to? What are the writings and all these additional texts that we need to struggle and deal with and understand?

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And then we have to understand not only that, not only what books were important and authoritative but whose teaching was correct.

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If their differences came up, if you were in one group of people and then you went into another group of people and something else was taught is they probably had to struggle with what is right, what is wrong and there was a lot of controversy going on in the early church.

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And again I want to make it clear God is still in control and He was sovereign over all the activities that were going on in the church. This is how

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God decided to grow the church and it strengthened the church in most ways. Heresy as bad as it is and as terrible of a thing that it is, it actually helps to purify the church and helps the church to grow.

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So we have what teaching is correct if we see differences? What do we do with people who teach something different?

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Do we call them out as a heretic? Do we find other means of addressing them? Do we just allow multiple teachings?

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And then how do we know what is kind of the primary items? What is required? As we talked about from an orthodoxy perspective there had to be standards set.

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There had to be what defines a Christian? And we think now it has been so long and for most cases it has been centuries that this has been stewing and continued to grow but we need to understand that again at the early stages the apostles and the preachers and the teachers of the day had to sit back and say what is a

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Christian? What is that defined as? What does the Bible say? And again as I said

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God was aware of all these controversies. This is nothing new to him. So what

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I left off is that there needed to be standards. There needed to be what is a

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Christian? What isn't a Christian? Maybe there are gray areas in certain areas. What are the fundamentals?

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What are the primary things that we must understand and know to be still considered part of Christendom or outside of Christendom?

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And it quickly became apparent that these needed to be done. One author, as I did some research, one author said this.

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He said after the church grew and developed any factious group within a local church was called heresis.

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And we will go into this in a little bit of detail. That is actually a Latin term that we will find in the scriptures.

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And that is a sect that held a certain opinions contrary to truths established by the apostles.

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We will define some of those as we move along in our text today. Another quote from the same author says this.

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Paul told the Corinthian church that factious sects would develop among them as a way of separating the false from the true.

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And we see that laid out in 1 Corinthians 11 .19. So 1 Corinthians 11 .19 Paul is already warning people.

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This is still first century as the Bible is being written and letters are being sent to these churches.

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Paul himself is saying watch out for false teaching and factious sects that are out there.

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Can someone actually read that for us? 1 Corinthians 11 .18 -19.

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Can I have someone read that please loud? 1 Corinthians 11 .18

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-19. Context is Lord's Supper. You may be familiar with the text in most cases. Who has it?

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Anybody? Yes sir. Excellent. So what do we think?

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Genuine? What is the opposite of genuine? False or non -genuine right?

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Not genuine. Counterfeit. Other words that come up and so forth.

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The same source said this. It said Peter warns Christians about various false teachings. Teachers who would try to deceive believers with their heretical teaching.

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And that comes from 2 Peter 2 .1. And I'm going to ask someone if they would read 2

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Peter 2 .1 -3 for me. 2 Peter 2 .1

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-3. Can someone read that out loud for me please? Anybody?

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Yes sir. Excellent. Thank you. Great. It's a great verse.

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And it needs to be said that this is a good understanding as we have these two verses that we just read.

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And there aren't many in the scriptures that specifically call out heresy more than a little bit of a different definition.

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And we'll talk about that. We'll talk about some of the changes in the terminology. But these two really focus on what we'll be looking at throughout our study.

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And these are false prophets, false teachers, heretical teachings and so forth. These are really what they call deviant or non -Orthodox teaching.

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We see it also, no need to turn there, we see it also in Hebrews 13 .9. We also see it in Galatians 1 .6

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-7. 2 Timothy 4 .3 -4. I'll actually read

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Hebrews 13 .1 -9. It says this. It says, Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them.

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Again, he talks about strange teachings and so forth. This is that term heresis that we'll look at.

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Again, the Latin term. So this, again, is in context of as the church is growing, as these letters are being written, as the definitions of what a

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Christian really is to be. This is what's going on at this time. And it needs to be understood that not only did

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God provide the materials as the scriptures themselves, as they come together, as we talk about some of that, but he also provided for, and Steve, if you were here for the first service,

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I don't want to spoil it for the second, but I'm going to a little bit. As Steve talked about in Ephesians chapter 4, not only was the message given, but God provided teachers, preachers, evangelists, and really the methods and the models for interpretation of the scriptures themselves.

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And that's key. It's key, especially in that time, during the first century. We have to remember there was no real printing presses.

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There were no real copies. There was no, for us older folks, right, the mimeograph, the ditto machine that you always smelled when the teacher handed out the paperwork.

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Long lost days. That's the most thing I remember about high school.

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So many of the early generations learned their theology from these house churches, these teachers that were given by God to come forth and proclaim the message.

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So it's important to understand, again, God had his hands in this. So let me ask you this.

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Ken, now we asked the question last week. It was raised in various ways, but I'm going to put it out to the congregation just to see what your thoughts are.

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Again, can Christianity have multiple orthodoxies? Can Christianity have multiple orthodoxies?

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Now, before you answer that, let me first define orthodoxy for you.

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Webster does it. Not the best, but here is the Webster's definition. Authorized or generally accepted theory, doctrine, or practice.

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With that definition, can Christianity have multiple orthodoxies? Yes, sir.

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Okay. Anyone disagree? Oh, come on. Someone disagree? No. We're all about unity here, so we agree, right?

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Correct. So we have both primary, the fundamentals that we cannot change, and then we have secondaries and even truciaries.

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And I don't know what the fourth is called, but you can have various areas. So who can name some of these fundamentals?

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What are the things that can't change? What are the things that we just can't take away from Christianity? Steve, you were like right away or just jumping on this one.

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The deity of Christ. Yeah. And that's one that most of these heresies attack in most cases as we look at them.

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What others? Fundamentals of the faith. Original sin. Very good. That was also attacked in the questions, right?

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Original sin. The Trinity is a big one. Virgin birth is also a big one.

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Others? Resurrection I heard somewhere. I didn't see who. Ah, resurrection, yes.

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Others? Means of salvation.

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Okay. Yeah. Agreed. Did we miss anything? We've got kind of a hand going up over there.

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Monotheism. Okay. Inerrancy of Scripture.

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All right. Eternal life. Excellent. Excellent. All right.

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So these are, I'm sorry, here's something else. Who is God, right? The who is God, who is man.

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All those are core areas to the Christian faith. Who can give me some of the secondary or truciary types of areas?

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Those things that we would not call out as heresy because they may do something different than what we do.

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Steve. Okay.

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Understanding of end times theology. Okay. Anything else? Secondaries. Infant baptism.

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Okay. Excellent. Church government. Yeah, yeah. Church government. Not much diversity there, right?

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Two. Others over here. Steve. Okay. That can be a touchy subject one, but I agree.

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I would say yes. Anything else? Secondary or truciary? What about baptism?

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What about means of baptism? Does it make you non -Christian if you're baptized in a different way?

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Now, we know what Scripture says. If you study your Scripture, it talks about being dunked, but is baptism even required for salvation?

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Let me ask it that way. If someone teaches that it is, is that inerrant or possibly heretical?

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Yeah, because it is putting works on salvation. But why should we want to be baptized?

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Baptism is definitely one of the key areas. Yeah, ordinance and commanded.

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Need more than that? God said to do it, right? Sacraments themselves. That's right.

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That's right. So we have things like baptism. How about the way we do communion? Is it heretical if we do it every week?

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Is it heretical if we don't do it every week? Does it make a difference? God says every time we meet.

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So these are where we talk about the fundamentals against those that are secondary or truciary.

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And we would never call our brothers and sisters, you know, heretical based on some of these areas such as baptism, communion, forms or method of worship.

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Can we have drums up here? Is that allowed? You see? Look at that.

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Thank you, brother. We'll be talking afterwards. Organs, pianos, right? Should we actually have dancers and tambourines and other things going on?

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Because that's what's laid out in Scripture, right? So instruments and even the types of worship music.

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Should it only be hymns? Should it be, you know, worship songs and so forth? So with all that said, what really started to happen is the development of we have creeds, doctrines and councils that were formed.

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And I have here my notes, creeds, councils and doctrines, oh my, for those who like the Wizard of Oz.

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But they had to be formed to really lay that out. And what's interesting is most people look at these creeds and councils and things that have gone through time and they say, ah, that's where they, you know, laid out what the

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New Testament was going to contain. Well, in most cases from a historical perspective, if you really do your study, you'll see that that isn't it.

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It's where they solidified that what was always held to be true was true and continues to be true throughout time.

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And that's where these creeds and councils and doctrines come in. It's really to just solidify what the

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Christian faith had known from the very beginning of time and going forward to prevent heresies.

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Who can name some of the creeds? Nicene Creed, Apostles' Creed, Creed of the

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Chalcedon Creed. Others? Athanasius' Creed, what?

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Nicene Creed, yep, yep. So these creeds, what do these creeds do? I mean, if you think about it, right, we speak them, we say them, what do they do?

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They affirm them. Okay. So they're a teaching mode, one, and for those who believe, they affirm those beliefs.

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Yes. Yeah. Now, do we see these creeds actually going against or going after the secondary or tertiary types of areas of the faith?

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Do we see creeds that talk about the mode of baptism, the methods of baptism, the way we should evangelize?

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Do we see creeds that do that, Steve? Statement of faith.

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Now, the church does do that, but from a historical creed is what I'm talking, and councils, do those lay out anything around the secondaries or tertiary points of Christendom?

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And they don't. They're all primaries. Yes. We'll get into that.

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No, we won't actually get into that. But that is a whole other issue. And there are,

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I'm not saying that they're all solid areas, but the creeds and the councils that were defined were really to help us in most cases to prevent heresy and understand what we believe, and there are some areas where there could be questions on when things were inserted or not inserted and how they're to be worded and so forth within some of these creeds.

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So the men of the faith didn't want to see confusion through heresies and distorting of the truth of Christianity, and so they wrote these creeds.

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And one author I was researching says this, quote, The proliferation of heresy led to the creedal definitions by church councils as the best means to combat the spread of heretical ideas and to help believers distinguish between the true and the spurious, the true and the false, what is right, what is not right.

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So Council of Nicaea 325, Council of Nicaea 325, what was this an issue with?

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What was the controversy it settled? Anyone know? We have

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Arian controversy, and that is the divinity of Christ.

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Yeah, it actually was more general in cases. It dealt with all of those areas, and it was really the relationship between Christ and God, and divinity was a key component of it.

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It was where does Christ fit in this based on Scripture? Was he a created being?

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Is he full divinity and so forth? That was all laid out in 325. How about the

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Council of Constantinople in 381? Anyone know what that argument was, what that tried to settle?

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It did have something to do with the Trinity. There was a little bit more, it was focused a little bit more on another area, and that was did

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Christ have a human mind and a human soul? These were arguments that were being raised within the body, and even outside of the body, did

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Christ have a human mind and soul? Council of Ephesus 431, any ideas?

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This revolved around Mary and whether she was divine or not. Council of Chalcedon in 451.

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This talked about the hypostatic union, big theological word. What's the hypostatic union? Who can define it for me?

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Hypostatic union. Yeah, Jesus is fully

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God, fully man, 100%, 100%, 200 % equals 100%. And those are the areas where we'll see there are still some mysteries involved, but we know from Scripture that it is laid out that Jesus Christ is fully

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God and fully man. He was never partially and so forth. And that's what the

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Council of Chalcedon dealt with is the hypostatic union. And then we had the Second Council of Constantinople, and it went after some different writings,

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Neostorian writings and so forth. We had the Third Council of Constantinople, which was in 680, and that went into monotheism.

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How can God be one? It went into the Trinity in some areas, and that continued into affirming

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Christ at both human and divine wills. That was the Council of Constantinople in 680.

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So let me take another step back, and I'll just ask the congregation, so does that mean then that Christianity is just a bunch of set of creeds, doctrines, and councils?

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Is that what Christianity is all about? Is that what we're here to do today? It would be kind of boring if it was.

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Anyone who has read some of these councils and creeds will, I mean, not creeds per se, but the councils, some of them are fairly dry in their writing and so forth.

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But no, Christianity is not all about that. But why is it important that we have it? Why were these so important?

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I have to pull out the taser, I think, soon here. Yeah, Charlie. And that's great because it really allowed them to then focus on what the key reason or the key purpose for what

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Christendom was, right? It gave the people the ability to now focus on salvation and evangelism and so forth and just teaching and preaching to the local body than to having to fight all these battles because they were constantly being attacked and shown that, you know, no,

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Christianity isn't this or, yes, it's this. And, you know, they were constantly having to battle that, and that's not what the church is all about or even what

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Christendom is all about. As Charlie had laid out, it is about the salvation of souls. And we have to understand that, you know, although we have creeds and councils, we have the

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Holy Scriptures and all this other stuff, there are still mysteries that exist in Christendom.

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So I don't want to bore you by saying it's all about these creeds and councils at all, but we need to understand that there are still great mysteries that we need to just affirm because we see it laid out in the pages of Scripture and we have to say,

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God, I don't understand it, but you say it, and I have to believe it. So that's important to understand that that's not what

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Christianity is all about. So with that said, so we're almost, we've got about 15 minutes left in this session.

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I'm going to get to what heresy is. So all last week and up and through this, you get to actually understand now what heresy is.

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And I wanted to lay it out because we're going to talk about some of the lay, you know, how heresy has changed over time, the term and so forth, definition.

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And so I want to lay something out, but I wanted to make sure we understood the history and how it came about and why it was so important to go after and define and weed out heresy.

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So who knows what another big word etymology means? Etymology, non -theological word, etymology, understanding of a word, right?

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Oftentimes, and I think it even says in the definition I have here, see if I have it here, is defined as on the next page.

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It is the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history.

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So it's looking at a word. Do we see that today? Do words change? Yeah? So based on if you're friended or unfriended, is that different like what it was 20 years ago?

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You know, browser. I'm trying to think of other terms that, you know, have changed quite a bit from what they had meant or if they were even used, but, you know, in the past to what they are today.

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So let me give you just a brief overview of the etymology of the word heresy and where it came about.

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So first, it's a

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Latin word. It's heresis, H -A -E -R -E -S -I -S, heresis.

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And during the biblical times, if we see that term used, if you were looking in your Bible dictionary and you wanted to look up heresis and where it appears and so forth, in most cases, what you're going to find is this word was defined as a choosing or a choice.

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A choosing or a choice. Very different from what we think of as heresy today.

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And I'll give you a couple examples. So let me first just read. Another author said this. The Greek word heresis literally means choice, oftentimes designating a sect or a faction.

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A sect or a faction. And some of the examples they give are, well, let me ask the congregation, what are some examples of sects or factions, and we'll make it easy for you, from the

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Jewish side of things? If we look at even Old Testament into even New Testament, but from the

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Jewish side, what would be some of the Jewish sects that are out there today? Sadducees.

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Pharisees. Essenes. Siddics, I heard.

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Zealots. That wasn't always a good term to be called, being a zealot. But right, so the term really was just to designate these various sects.

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And as we say here, for example, the Sadducees were a sect within Judaism, and we see this same word is used in Acts 5 .17,

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heresis, and it refers just to this sect of Judaism. They just have different choices.

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In most cases, again, in those days it would relate to groups that were held to the fundamentals of Judaism, but maybe had some choices that were permitted, weren't considered heretical.

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We also see in the Pharisees in Acts 15 .5, the same term is used.

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And when many Jews, this author says here that when many Jews believed that Jesus of Nazareth was the

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Messiah, they were known as the sect of the Nazarenes, and that's found in Acts 24 .5,

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the sect of the Nazarenes. And that same term is used, this heresis. They weren't considered heretics.

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It was just they have a different choice, a different understanding, but it wasn't a heretical one. And each of these verses, again, the author says here in each of these verses, the word heresis denotes nothing more than just a sect.

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It's just another group of people that hold a very similar belief system.

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Then we move into the first century. So the text that we read today, as we look into the first century and the creation of the

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New Testament and so forth, the word changes a little bit. It changes from just being a choice to something a little bit more threatening, something a little more specific, something a little more watch out, danger, right?

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Stranger danger kind of pops up now, first century writing and use of the word. And one author says this, after the church grew and developed, any factious groups within a local church was called heresis.

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That is, it was a sect that held certain opinions contrary to the truths established by the apostles.

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Now we get into danger, right? Here's where we hold your horses. This is the, whoa, something is really wrong here, use of the word.

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Before it wasn't a negative connotation. It was just, yep, they're another heresis group. This is a group that is contrary to orthodoxy.

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These are the key core points of Christianity. And that's where these words come in.

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And we see this in 1 Corinthians 11, 19. 1 Corinthians 11, 19 talks about this directly.

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We see this word heresis and the modified form of it in pointing to those who hold contrary beliefs, false teachers, false preachers.

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And as we move further into the first century, we'll see this word continuing to become more and more focused and pointed towards groups and or individuals that depart more and more from this

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Christian orthodoxy, the biblical understanding of what Christendom is. The same author says this, eventually the word heresy came to connote the particular teaching that caused certain ones to break away from orthodoxy.

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So this is now a separation. This is a complete breakaway. It continues with, thus

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Peter warned Christians about various false teachers, heresis, who would try to deceive believers with their heretical teachings.

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And we see that in 2 Peter 2 .1, as we talked about earlier. And then as the church progressed, as we now move into the second century, it even changes a little bit more.

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It just gets a little more defined, a little bit more solidified as we study this word. And it says this, it says, another author says this, quote, in the modern era, so from the second century to today, in the modern era, this is how the word heresy is usually understood.

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It is, quote, unorthodox and or false teaching that damages the faith of certain believers and also causes diverse factions within the church.

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And we see this attack on orthodoxy, and it's actually called heterodoxy or heretical orthodoxy is what it is bound together, those two words together, heterodoxy.

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This is heretical teaching, heretical beliefs, heretical understandings. And that's really why

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I wanted to spend so much time initially laying out some of the history and the background of the word because it changes.

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If you just go and look for heresy in your Bible, you need to understand there were kind of three different definitions of the word based on when it was used.

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And as we progress now through the lesson, I just want to make it clear that heresy as I go forward will be defined as we know it today.

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It is this negative connotation, this unorthodox, these false teachers that are damaging the faith, and it's key.

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And to better understand it in the time I have remaining, I want to just talk about some of the things that heresy is not.

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So it's good to understand, well, what is heresy? But to sometimes better understand it is what is it not? And I'm going to see if you guys can answer why it is not.

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Is apostasy heresy? Before you answer that, I will define the term for you, apostasy.

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Apostasy is defined as, quote, the abandonment or renunciation of a religious or political belief.

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Is apostasy heretical? People say no.

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Everyone agrees no? Okay. That's correct. It is not. It is not considered heresy.

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Apostasy is the removal. You are actually exchanging one belief system for another belief system.

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You are completely abandoning that entire belief system. You're not attacking it or anything else. You are just abandoning it.

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Apostasy is removal, leaving, renunciation. You don't even want to be called a Christian anymore.

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And these might be people who say, yes, I'm a Christian, and they grew up in a Christian home, and they just happened to be Christian because of that.

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Their parents were Christian, and they went to church, and they were Christian. And so many reasons why people believe they were Christians, and then they finally go,

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I don't know if I believe this whole Christian thing, so I'm going to get rid of my Christianity. I'm going to go to Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism or some of these others.

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And that's apostasy. So it's a complete removal of or walking away from a religious system.

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How about other religious systems? Is that heretical? Other religious systems.

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And I'll lay out things like Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam. Are those heretical?

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Why are they not heretical? It is.

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Does everyone agree with that? Now that I said it is, you're all going, yeah, I do, yeah, sure. No, that's correct.

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They are completely separate doctrines, completely separate beliefs. And as hard as it may sound, you know,

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Islam has an orthodoxy. Islam or Buddhism has an orthodoxy.

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They are defined areas of their beliefs and their understandings. How about different denominations or sects within Christendom?

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Baptism, Baptists, you know, some of these other denominations or sects, are they heretical?

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Could be. So if they are, are they in Christendom? Okay. Charlie?

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Okay. So let me just say, so from a general perspective, if we look at, if we call someone a sect of Christianity or a denomination within Christianity, is that heretical?

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Could they be called heretics because they are in a different denomination? Charlie says sometime, no.

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So it depends on the belief. But based on, again, if they're attacking the core fundamentals of the faith, we have to question are they even

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Christian, right? If you're attacking those components, you know, Baptists in most cases will hold to most of the key orthodox fundamentals.

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Most of the others, Lutheran and Methodist, and some of the others that we would consider brothers and sisters in Christ, may have different understandings of some of the secondary and truciary types of orthodoxy, but they often will hold to the keys within orthodoxy.

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Was there a question? Well, Mormons themselves in their belief system, they don't hold to the core orthodoxies within the

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Christian faith. They're actually a cult, considered a whole separate religious system. Now, they're more heretical because they also are saying they are

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Christendom when they aren't. And that's heretical, right? So they're really a heretical cult.

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Best of both worlds for my teaching class, right? But that, yeah, two for one.

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That we can get into a bunch of other areas. But in most instances, denominations or sects, we don't call our brothers and sisters in some of these other groups.

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Similar to as in Judaism, right? You had the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Essenes, and so forth.

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They were still considered Jewish, but they held some other different belief systems that, again, would not oftentimes violate those core teachings within that group.

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I've got just a couple minutes, if even that. But what I want to do is I want to read this really quick because I think this will help solidify it before we get to the end.

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And I may read it next week again just beforehand, as we start as kind of an overview. But I wanted to lay out.

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An author did a great job of really giving examples of the differences between, and we talked a little bit about this last week, between error, erroneous teaching, schisms, and heresies.

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And let me just do a quick definition, and then I want to just read what this author has said. He's laid out about five different differences between these, and you'll get an understanding of how they differ, and I think it's great the way they do it.

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So heresy, again, just real quickly. Heresy, based on its current definition, is belief or opinion contrary to Orthodox religion, especially

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Christian doctrine. A schism is a split or a division between strongly opposed sections of parties caused by differences in opinion or beliefs.

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Erroneous teaching, errorous teaching, or learning, is considered wrong, incorrect, often denoting non -intentional motives.

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And we talked about that last week, that someone who is just teaching error, oftentimes you have to look at the motive.

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Are they doing it knowing that it's heretical, or are they doing it because they don't know any different? And that's where erroneous teaching comes into play.

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So let me just read these really quick, because, again, I think he's laid out really well for what these different teachings are.

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So he says, first thing, error, so these are just kind of little quips, little sentences.

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Error is when one holds a strong opinion alone. Schism, when many consent in their opinion.

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And heresy runs further and contends to root out the truth. It is the pulling out.

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It is the damaging, as we talked about last week. Same source says it this way.

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Error offends, but doesn't separate. Error offends, but doesn't separate.

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Schism offends and oftentimes separates. So schism usually is a little bit more formal.

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It's a separation. Denomination break -offs sometimes are schisms because of certain beliefs that are held.

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Heresy, on the other hand, offends, separates, and then rages to destroy.

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It's pretty powerful. Third view he talks about here is error is weak, often immature, weakness.

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Schism is strong. Heresy is considered obstinate. Another he gives is error goes out and often comes in again.

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Willingness to be taught, willingness to learn, willingness to grow, willingness to say,

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I was wrong, forgive me. Schism comes not in, but instead breaks away and makes a new church.

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So big enough of a schism, usually there's a new denomination, a new sect, a new group. And heresy makes not a new church, but no church.

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He says also error is reproved and pitied. Schism is reproved and punished.

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Heresy is reproved and excommunicated. And lastly, he breaks up schism and heresy by themselves, leaves error out of this last one, and that is schism is in the same faith.

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Heresy makes another faith. So those are some pretty interesting changes or definitions.

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And I think the author just lays out a good way that we can understand the differences between just errorist teaching and preaching or errorist understanding to schisms to what heresy really is and how it's defined today.

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Any questions? Another question, yes. It could be.

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I would almost consider it more schism. It's pretty hard to read the scriptural text and find a way around that.

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So it's very errorist in their teaching, if at all. We can claim ignorance because I don't know any better than that for them.

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I don't know their heart and their motives in doing that. But it could go all the way into the gamut of heretical teaching.

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Yes, that's heretical. I mean, that's plainly, again, laid out in Scripture.

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Similar to the ordination of women, it's plainly laid out in Scripture that it is a position for men that God has commanded.

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So I would say both of those are heretical teachings more than schisms.

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There was another back here. It can.

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It can, yes. Correct. Charlie, I'm sorry. Yes, heresy in general as defined by multiple definitions

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I read relates again to any orthodoxy, anything that is the key fundamentals of the faith. So any changes from that.

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So who is God? Who is Christ? Trinity. All the core areas.

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Salvation. Is it by works? Is it not by works? All those core areas. Anything that teaches against the fundamentals would be considered heretical.

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Wow, all right. Yes, I would consider that more schism than not, especially if it's erroneous teaching.

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I mean, if someone didn't know that, right, in ignorance it falls into that category where they're not openly trying to misrepresent what the

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Bible says. Through their own ignorance they taught and by God's grace a person got saved, right, is how that would fall.

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So it could be schism. I would almost more go towards just erroneous teaching than anything else.

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Heretical is there to destroy. That was not probably the intent or the motives of that person in this example.

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Any other quick questions? Okay. Let me pray.

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Next week we'll get into some of the meat of areas as we talked about. We'll start looking at some of the various heresies.

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And, you know, now that we've got a definition you'll know what we're looking at. And we'll dig into whatever we can from a kind of historical heretical perspective.

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So let's go ahead and let's close in prayer. Lord, we want to thank you again for this opportunity that we have to look at your word,

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Lord, as we also take this time to study the subject of heresy, what is heretical, what is not heretical,

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Lord, and as we look into what is orthodoxy and what is non -orthodoxy. Lord, we just want to thank you and we want to praise you that, again,

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Lord, we know it is not by our strength, it is not by our will, it is not by our intelligence, it is not by anything that is in us, but it is through Christ and through the illumination of the

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Holy Spirit that we are even able to discuss these areas, Lord, knowing that at one time we were ignorant, we were lost, we were dead in our sins.

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And, Lord, apart from your son raising us from the dead to salvation,

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Lord, we want to thank you and praise you for this opportunity. We pray that those here would be learning areas, maybe something new,

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Lord, and even if it is something old that they can pick up little bits of information as we go through this study.

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just thank you and we praise you now for this opportunity to learn. And we ask all this now in your holy and precious name. Amen.