04 - Gnosticism

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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We are looking at church history. We did this a number of years ago late 90s and There have been a lot of requests to do it again, especially because well the recording was even worse back

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Then we did on something called real audio if any of you are old enough to remember that and so We're going a little bit more slowly to I've discovered then we we did back then and we're at probably one of the more difficult lessons to be honest with you because we've been looking at the background of Church history very often while the reasons that there are misunderstandings concerning the nature of church history what happened in the history of the church is

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Because we don't have the appropriate understanding of the context in which these events took place and especially the beginning context of where the church how the church was birthed and what the world was like and and Issues related to that and obviously so much of church history is an issue of why did

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Christians do what they did within the context they lived and Obviously, that's something that we deal with in our day as well to be able to understand have a better perspective as to how we are to Engage the world.

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It's always useful to be able to look back and see How Christians dealt with issues in the past?

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But to be able to do that We have to know something about the world in which they lived and that gospel went out into a world.

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It was not a vacuum Initially the last time we were together. However many weeks ago that was

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Initially you have the the issue of Judaism we looked at Taniyattic or second temple

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Judaism we looked a little bit at the Mishnah the

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Gemara the Talmud Which of course come after the time of Christ but give us some insight into some of the traditions and beliefs of second temple

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Judaism and the Jews of the Days of Jesus which they were not a monolithic group you we see that in the

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New Testament itself with the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the zealots and then history tells us about the

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Essenes and and things like that but the world outside of Israel ancient

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Israel was of course dominated by Greek culture by this time because of Alexander the

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Great and The tremendous expansion of his empire that had taken place prior to the time of Christ It's helpful it's useful to even review briefly the the political developments that had taken place

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We mentioned I think briefly that's one of the problems in doing this only every few weeks is sort of hard to remember exactly who

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I was speaking to last on certain issues, but it is very important to recognize that one of the reasons that the

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New Testament We talked we talked last time about all the theories out there about People saying that New Testament was originally written in Aramaic or Hebrew or things like that But the reality is the the lingua franca of the day was what is called coin a

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Greek common Greek now there obviously have been changes and developments in Greek over the many centuries

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Just there was in that day as well And so for example when you look at the

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Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint there are grammatical features in That which was translated 200 -250 years before Christ There are differences between that and the

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Greek of the New Testament, which is being written 50 to 100 years after Christ and so in only 300 some odd years 300 to 350 years you can see development in the language even in that time period and so the

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Importance of Alexander's expansion of the Empire and then the

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Romans coming along and and basically Appropriating Greek culture

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Borrowing Greek gods the Romans Were certainly good a lot of things, but they weren't the most imaginative folks when it comes to those things.

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They sort of Were somewhat eclectic borrowed from other people and things like that But it's it's vital to understand that as the gospel leaves a primarily

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Jewish context, what's it going to run into well Sort of depends on which direction you're looking.

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I Mean, obviously as the gospel goes east it's going to be encountering somewhat of a different religious milieu than when it goes

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West and Keep that in mind because One of the dates

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I mentioned to the class there are certain dates that you have to make sure you you memorize so that you don't fail the final examination and There might be a final examination.

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You never know. I mean, it's a stranger things have happened Thank you,

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I was about to say you already have one date and Gary's got it down He's been muttering it in his sleep, that's what

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I've been told anyways by certain people would know and The first first date which we haven't even gotten to yet But it's always on the final is the date of the

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Council of Nicaea Which as we have already heard is 325 AD, but another date that's always on that list is 1054

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AD That's long ways down the road, yes, but it's the the formal point of the split

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Between the East and the West between what we would call Eastern Orthodoxy and The Western By that time it wasn't full -blown

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Roman Catholicism but was certainly moving that way very quickly with the papacy so on and so forth and I'll try to remember to do this.

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I can't promise to do as well as I would like but it is Important I think to make note of some of the foundational reasons why that split took place and continues to exist to this day and One of those reasons well, there was a language reason big time but another one of those reasons is because the the

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Religious world into which the gospel went to the East was different than the religious world into which the gospel went in the

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West and so when you're fighting battles against a certain kind or certain range of worldviews on this frontier and a different Range and kind of worldviews on the other frontier.

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Well that can tend to end up developing Different flavors of emphasis and understanding and experience and so on and so forth and That will end up having an impact upon the development of the issues that eventually leads to that great

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What's called the great schism in in 1054 and that and as with everything else in church history

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I've already warned you once I'll warn you again Probably warn you 20 times before we're done When you see books when you see pamphlets that have this list of dates on them and it says

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Doctrine of purgatory invented and then there's a date to it You automatically know

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That whoever put that together Doesn't really understand how history works Because nobody woke up one morning and went voila picket purgatory, you know

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Or picatory or whatever else you want to call it It Doesn't work that way it's it's not a matter of a

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Sudden development, but but a doctrine such as purgatory as we'll see not too far down the road developed from numerous different strands of Beliefs that that developed and sometimes you get to they have to come together and become joined become a

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Strand that joins with something over here before you eventually get this belief that comes together and and and so those kinds of Simplistic ways of looking at history really aren't helpful to us.

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And in fact normally are rather Deceptive and and destructive to having a solid understanding

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So as I said last time we looked at the Jewish background, but we likewise need to especially understand the

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Greek religious Milieu into which the gospel went why why should we why should we care?

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Well You know, you might you might it might help you understand Acts chapter 17 a little bit better because Paul goes the

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Areopagus and They've got all these idols and and they're so concerned about making sure that all their bases are covered and no one's offended

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Hmm. We're to hear that anymore That there is an altar to the unknown

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God And so just in case there's a God out there. We forgot to build an altar to here

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Where it's obviously really trying not to offend anybody when it comes to the deities

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It could help us understand some of that but I think for a lot of people it's just like More important things to me to do with my time but When objections are made to the

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Christian faith very often those objections come in the form of well you all talk about things the

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Bible doesn't talk about and When we get to for example the

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Council of Nicaea which took place in Thank you very much in 325 we are going to discover that the council chose to To do something that a lot of people would object to even to this day unless they think through things rather clearly or try to think things things clearly and that is the only way they could find to Unmask the

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Aryans the people who are denying the deity of Christ was to utilize a a word that did not find its origin in Scripture itself and The reason that they had to do so is that Once you leave the initial context of the

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New Testament now people start asking questions That were not directly addressed in the context of the writing of New Testament itself.

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And so now you have to take the general principles and beliefs that have been revealed in Scripture and make application in all sorts of different contexts and that's where the difficulties arise

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And Surely one of the most common objections that for example

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Mormon apologists over the years I've done a number of debates on the Trinity for example up in Salt Lake City and on the radio stations up there and things like that And one of the things we hear all the time is well look, you know

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Christianity went off the rails, you know shortly after the last Apostles passed away and the priesthood authority was lost and went into apostasy and Started to borrow

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Greek philosophy to explain everything Well There's no question

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That someone like a Justin Martyr who will look at in a matter of weeks but a

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Justin Martyr most definitely utilized a lot of philosophical language and philosophical categories to express his understanding of the gospel so Might there have been some people who

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Were much more at home in Greek philosophy than in the scriptures and therefore

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Interpreted things in the context the Apostles would never have been able to understand most definitely

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But is it also possible that one of the reasons that Many people engaged these topics and even end up having to use the you know certain terminology was because questions were being asked of the

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Christian faith that had not been asked during the days of the Apostles and You have a choice. You can either just sit there and go.

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Well, I really can't answer that question because You're using words that were not found the

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Bible anywhere and therefore I can't answer your question. I Of how the church is supposed to function because the church was sent out into all the world

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We're make disciples of all nations. Well, that means we need to have to communicate to all nations and all those nations may well ask questions of us that we need to be able to provide an answer to and finding that balance between answering accurately and then compromising the message so as to try to Impress people with a particular worldview background.

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That's where much of the controversy is is to be found in even in our day and age and so one of the reasons to have some understanding of the

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Greek religions is Because the fact that so much of the first few centuries

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You know Justin Martyr is a converted Greek philosopher And he's going to influence people and we'll discover that some of the early

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Individuals that we'll be reading about They were called the apologists.

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All right. Well, what were they giving an apologetic to primarily to? criticisms against the church that came from a

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Greek philosophical background and some of the early enemies of the

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Christian faith Celsus for example is going to couch much of his criticism of the

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Christianity within that context and so that's why we need to look at some of these particular things now the

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Greek religion religions, there wasn't just one but there You you you would even have

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Differences between city -states. You're probably familiar with the fact there were city -states

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If you weren't from if you weren't familiar with that from studying in high school

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You may become familiar with that by seeing clips from 300 or something like that. You know, maybe the movies helped you

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Figure out that you have Athens and Sparta and these are city -states that have

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Maybe sometimes a loose alliance or Confederation, but very frequently you have a king over a particular area.

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Well When that exists for any length of time very frequently what you end up getting is a development of variations on a major religious theme

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Where you sort of alter some of the stories to make your city -state look a little bit better than the other city -states and This can end up especially when you're your your gods are pretty much everybody knows are mythological anyways

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Making a few changes in the overall story isn't considered all that big of a deal when you look at mythology

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It's not like it's not like they're saying well in such -and -such a year When such -and -such a person was reigning this took place.

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No, it's in the ancient days This sort of happened and it's just left sort of nebulous because you're not really grounding it in in history itself

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So, you know that there was a rather Complicated pantheon of gods who were quite human in their form in their desires in their behaviors

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These these gods were were basically exalted men in the sense that They had limitations

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Like most of the gods the ancient world there. There was a certain area over which they had

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Particular authority remember the Canaanite gods you'd have fertility gods and gods the weather and gods of war and gods of commerce and All the rest of these kinds of things and you'd sort of divide deities up amongst the various aspects of human life

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But especially in the Greek religion these gods Behaved very much like fallen

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Sinful human beings they made mistakes. They warred amongst each other They could be cast out there's just all sorts of stories that fill the various volumes of Greek and then

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Roman mythology the Roman mythology almost always just following on on the Greek The gods the

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Greeks were not always able to accomplish their will They were in themselves in the final analysis subject to fate

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They were not eternal in the Christian sense the term they were immortal, but the idea that And and this is difficult for us to understand but but we have a very

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Western way of looking at time Almost everyone in here has been raised with a very

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Western idea of time as a linear thing with a past present and future and you need to understand that Probably the majority of the human family down through the ages

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Has had for example a cyclical view of time That it runs in a in a cycle and it's not

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From here to there and it's never gonna go back to there. Well unless Something terrible happens like a nuclear war or something, but that still wouldn't be cyclical

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That would just be a huge bump in the road on this Progression always toward the future and and things like that.

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Many people had a very different understanding of time Many people for example in the medieval period as we will see

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Because they they were born Raised and lived and never traveled more than seven miles one direction or another

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The world was a very small world then they didn't see how the world had changed And so they didn't think the world did change and so it was just the same thing repeating over and over again and especially in the eastern

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Areas the eastern part of the world that would be a very common understanding of time

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The idea of it having a beginning and an end and a purpose all the way along is really something that Christianity Was very important in providing to the world the idea of a

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God who's the creator of all these things well these immortal gods of the

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Greeks Were not eternal in the sense of being in of themselves sufficient as the ground of all being

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Not even Zeus or Jupiter You know not even the chief of the pantheon of gods

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Would be great enough and powerful enough to be the creator of all things they all had their origin and source and something else and So there are a lot of questions left unanswered

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Cosmologically speaking as to the nature of creation where things came from and things like that About 500 years before Christ a

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Greek philosopher by name of Protagoras Wrote in a book called truth a phrase that you all have probably heard

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Man is the measure of all things man is the measure of all things and Though we like to think that ancient man

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That all ancient men had these very very limited Understandings the reality is we know that ancient

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Greeks Chinese and others Knew long long ago about the movements of the planets and and and things like that There were some bright minds in in the history of the of the human race, but still

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There was without light from God In the sense of divine revelation rather than just general revelation

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It was it was difficult to see how there could be any higher standard than man in his own mind and So paganism

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Really function in that way. You might talk about deities and things like that, but Even these deities that they created

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Function very much on a human level and We're judged very much in the same way And that's why

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I've said in some ways our culture is returning to paganism returning to that day where you have competing deities

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You know if if you're if you're allowed to define your own reality over against What is the reality of your physical makeup simply by the exercise of your will between you know?

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What's going on in your head? then you become your own deity you become your own creator of reality and And no one can dare say well, you're wrong about that because there is no right and wrong.

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It's all a matter of Subjectivity based upon man being the measure of all things and so These were some of the concepts that were going on another one of the

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Concepts is very important to understand. It's a concept of dualism dualism

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Now dualism is the idea that If we were to simplify it

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Completely and all simplifications are dangerous, but you can start there recognizing there may be some exceptions along the way but fundamentally dualism is the idea that the spiritual realm is good and The physical realm is evil the out

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Outworking of that in most of the religions of the day was a the idea that salvation involved the freeing of the good spirit from being trapped

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Inside the physical body and so the idea is you how you are a spark of the divine

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You are a Wandering lost

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Snippet of deity Your spiritual nature is a little flame from the great flame

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Yeah, I know I sound like I just got back from Sedona or something And if you don't know what

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Sedona is we have a it's a beautiful little city North of us here the

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Red Rock Country. It's gorgeous Unfortunately has been completely taken over invaded and taken over occupied by Loons It was the member the harmonic convergence was that 96 1996 something like that I forget what it was the harmonic convergence.

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You would remember you were really into that stuff, right? Okay. Okay. All right. Sure, right Yeah, sure.

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You just you just don't remember anymore And Shut out, but anyways Had to get that in there somewhere and it's recorded too.

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So that's good. Anyway the harmonic convergence where All of the universe was the the harmonies were gonna converge in Sedona and all it was was just everybody that had an old

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VW bus converged in Sedona and same thing and And you know, they unfortunately they just liked it so much didn't leave

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So it's just really whenever I ride through there on my bike, which I don't do very often But a few times

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I have it's just sort of like let's go even faster I want to I want to get out of here before these folks do strange things.

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But anyway This the idea is that that you are one of these

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Little sparks of the divine and your your ultimate goal is every little flame wants to get back to the big flame and be

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Absorbed into the big flame, you know and the idea of you being a creature made by a personal transcendent

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God that you have Worth and Value in God's sight and that your body was created by God for the purpose of glorifying

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God. So no, that's totally foreign to these types of religious ideas and so You can understand you can see this in the

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New Testament how pervasive dualism was in Greek culture It comes out very clearly in Acts chapter 17 because what is it?

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that causes Paul's sermon to come to an Abrupt halt.

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I guess he wouldn't call it a sermon, but whatever it was he was doing in the Areopagus when you look at Acts chapter 17, he's going along and and he's he's

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You know using what's around him to Get people to listen to what he's saying and but he's starting to you know, fill in the the proper truth and understanding

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But then eventually he says one word and The wheels fall off and they start mocking him and They say

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Apple listen to you again sometime there their interest in his new views

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Exploded, you know just put the pin in the balloon and it was gone because he said one word and that word was

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Anastasis Resurrection and they knew that that meant that which died coming to life again they didn't have any of these woo -woo ideas of what resurrection is and That liberalism has come up with and stuff like that.

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I'm reminded. This was one of the points that I brought up in my presentation in 2005

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I think it was. Yeah, I think it's 2005 When we had a debate on a

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Alaskan cruise Myself and Jim Renahan debated

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Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan on the resurrection and We were over halfway through the debate when

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I forget whether it was crossing or Borg And you have to look at it again sometime was it

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Borg see the people who watched the debates more than once and We were able to see the debate because we kept that particular individual away from the light switch.

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But anyway You're the one sat down front dude

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Anyway at one point one of the gentlemen said to be

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Marcus Borg, it's like so you guys you guys actually believe that Jesus's tomb was empty because The body was gone.

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We're like, yeah That's that's really what Christians believe, you know, and and it you know, we had both given 15 minute presentations at that point

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But it took that long to just sort of get it get it through that yes resurrection that which died coming to life again and The dualists there in Acts chapter 17, they start mocking

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Because that's no no, no, no, no, no, you don't understand the wonderful thing about death is the physical body this it's a trap

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It's part of the of this evil creation. I noticed I didn't say fallen creation. There's a there's difference we we again

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Even we hear these things interpret them within our context leading to misunderstanding

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This creation is evil in of itself It's not that it was made good and then became evil.

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No, it's just that's just its nature So it's a good thing to die because your spirit that spark is released from the trap that it's been in But the

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Christians come along and say guess what Not only is the body not evil and hence that removes all sorts of excuses for sin and Rebellion and sent things like that because obviously if you're a dualist, it was really easy to come up with the idea that well

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Hey, if this body's just a trap. Anyways, I can use in any way I wanted And so, you know hedonism, you know, my spirit remains good

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It's just by that evil body that's going out and doing all the terrible horrible nasty stuff and of course, there are others who also were dualists that went the other direction and Became ascetic in their thinking.

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Well since the body's an evil thing then I need to treat it in that way and Not pollute the good spirit

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So being a dualist didn't necessarily mean you ended up being a hedonist or something Or yeah, it ended up expressing itself in different ways, but there was a strong aversion and Rejection of this idea of resurrection that which died coming to life again

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Within dualist thinking now that is also very important to understand a

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Religious concept that came out of the East The East that sound like I said yeast yeast yeast whatever and Became one of the greatest enemies of the

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Christian faith and We see the initial Encounters between the

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Christian faith and this movement in the New Testament but then there's developments over time and Pretty much everybody who was anybody in the early church who wrote a book

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Eventually wrote against this movement And it's called Gnosticism Gnosticism Now that's

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GN the word starts with GN OS Gnosticism Gnosticism if you want to if you want to try to look really cool

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While insulting somebody while taking church history you say you sound like a Gnostic because most people are like I Don't think he meant that as a compliment.

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I'm not sure because what's a Gnostic? I don't know Lots of things end up being called

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Gnosticism that really the Gnostics themselves would have done it Why did you say that but?

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Gnosticism Develops over time there is no one systematic theology of Gnosticism.

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So all you can do is say Some Gnostics believe this some Gnostics believe that and there's some general concepts that sort of hold things together.

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They were dualist There's no question about that But if you're a dualist you have a question that is very troubling if you have an all -good

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God and Again, we think of God in a very concrete personal category

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But the Gnostics tend to think of God more in an Eastern vague pantheistic

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Of Force idea, okay, you know, you've got the you know, not the dark side, but the the good side of the force type stuff and If he's all spirit and hence all good and Our ultimate goal is to be absorbed back into it

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Then the question comes about Where the creation come from because they didn't have the idea like I said of the of a creation of a good creation that then falls by definition that which is physical is

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Evil and so where did creation come from and the odyssey

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Which comes from the awesome decay, oh it means to justify

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God in light of the existence of evil the odyssey has Is a part of every religion whether you have an in -depth the odyssey or an extremely shallow the odyssey doesn't matter every religion has some kind of the odyssey

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The answer they gave in essence Was that you have your your good your good

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God up here. Okay. Well, let's go ahead and follow God it's more of a Fuzzy cloud type thing, but no name, for example, just and so emanating out of God Come these beings

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Which looks a little bit like a bad spine but Made of kidney beans but you you have emanations from God and these are our divine beings and they're they're good beings, but they're not quite as high as God and Each one of them is known as an eon

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Eon is the time The word that is translated in New Testament as age sometimes world but but age sometimes in the plural ages and all these eons taken together are

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Called the play Roma Which is the Greek term for fullness?

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And it's interesting that the book of Colossians Colossi is to the east of Ephesus and it seems that some of the early

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Gnostic ideas were coming from the east and were Gnosticism was always, you know, the terminology

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I've used only works for young people are older people today But if you remember as a kid if you had either

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Play -doh or Silly putty Silly putty you could you could use to if you push it on the comic paper

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Remember how it would lift the ink off the comic paper and you can do fun stuff with the faces and all

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This is before video games But the problem with and Play -doh you could make little horses and stuff like that The problem is if you ever dropped it either one of them in the dirt

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What would they do? They just glom on that dirt and you can never get back out It would never be smooth and really usable again.

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It would just be it let it become like crunchy peanut butter, which I Inappropriate If you're gonna eat a peanut eat a peanut, but if you make it butter, it needs to be like butter

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I just So Gnosticism was like Play -doh

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It would roll along and when it would encounter another religion. It would just sort of take elements from it and just try to work it into its own system and That's seemingly was what was happening in Colossi because it's like Early Gnosticism ran into Judaism and said, oh, let's see what we can

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Bring along here. And when it ran into Christianity, it tried to do the same thing with Jesus just sort of Suck Jesus into the mold and find a place for him someplace because it's not like they have a systematic theology

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It's more like the board, you know, your your distinctiveness will be added to ours and you're sucked in so The terminology how many times is

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Paul and Colossians use the term play Roma all Hati and out of the twig.

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I taught on how play Roma taste the Adidas tomatoes for in him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form

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He uses their terminology against them in in Colossians And so it seems they ran to Judaism and now they're trying to sort of make room for a

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Jesus someplace And it seems they put Jesus up here is one of the eons. He's not truly

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God but he's emanation from God and You can see Paul just smacking him upside the head with the things that he says that there is no way they could ever accept

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Well, the point is eventually You get down here To a being that still has great power

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But it's far enough removed from the one true God that you get what's called a demi urge and the demi urge it has is far enough away from the one true

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God that Evil is found in it and it then can create the physical world still got power to create the physical world

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But it's it's removed from the one true God the one true God the totally spiritual God can't be blamed for the demi urge does

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Now if you think about it then What's the logical result once Gnosticism?

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Tries once you get a quote -unquote Christian Gnosticism well, the

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Creator God of the Old Testament Jehovah becomes the demi urge and the father of Jesus is the

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Good God at the top and then Jesus is one of the play Roma and then you've got

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Jehovah who's a different God And so there were quote -unquote Christian Gnostics Unfortunately when you go to university

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Read most of the textbooks these people all be called Christians Despite the fact is a completely different worldview and there was nobody in the

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New Testament that had any worldview anything like this It's completely contradictory to it and whatever as long as they as long as you said

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Jesus you get to be called a Christian They don't do that with Muslims for some reason. But anyway

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So you had quote -unquote Christian Gnostics who for example

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Rejected the entirety of the New Testament because it's the it's the scripture of the evil Demiurge and then they purged the

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New Testament of anything that would speak in a Appropriate or high fashion of the

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Old Testament the Old Testament God the God of Abraham Isaac Jacob blah blah blah blah And one of the big names in in that as we will see later on.

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This is the guy everybody wrote a book against for like 300 years Martial So he becomes the

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Big Daddy and So this is there for where creation comes from is from the

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Demiurge down here at the at the bottom and so this particular religious concept

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You know, there's no way, you know, no one did polls You didn't have online

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Facebook polls and stuff like that to go by back then and one of the big areas of argumentation is well, how big did any of these groups ever get a

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German scholar by name Bauer created a hypothesis that Basically, the early church was nothing but a complete mishmash of every kind of different belief in the world and then slowly the proto -orthodox

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One battle after battle after battle and wiped out the other folks and eventually you have Orthodox Christianity coming out at the end of the victor

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That particular theory has been torn apart, but All sorts of modern theories have been torn apart, but continue to live like like zombies like the walking dead theories

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You know, you can shoot him in the head and they keep going. It's a it's a bad thing and They end up having tremendous impact

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Because almost anybody who goes to university is gonna be taught. Well, it was just all this, you know

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We know there are all these different views. Well, yeah, there were but how big were they how many people actually?

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bought into these things and Did it really was it almost always a localized thing here a localized thing there

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How does all that work and that's gonna be one of the big? arguments that we're gonna have to deal with in the early church is

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How do you if you don't, you know, we have 2 ,000 years of history to look back on they didn't

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So, how do you deal? With someone who comes along and says well, I was taught this by Peter how do you how do you test a

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Statement like that and some of the answers the early church came up with were good Some of the answers they came up with were really bad and the really bad answers

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Ended up leading to really bad results way down the road In a way that the people who came up with those really bad answers could never have foreseen

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Could never have foreseen It's really easy for people today to you know Throw the javelin of hindsight at some poor guy in the late second century

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And say you messed everything up well All right from our perspective

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What that guy said ended up influencing this guy and that guy and it ended up with some really bad results

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But that guy didn't know that at the time He was doing the best he could and it's really easy for people to look back and just you know, rip and shred folks

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Rather than considering what the context those things were. So there's Gnosticism and So the next time

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I think next week is Going to be the tough week. I'll just warn you ahead of time because we need to look at the

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Greek philosophies of the day such as Stoicism and Epicureanism and Platonism and all that neat fun stuff and we'll try to get it all done in one shot because it's sort of like When mom made you take that certain kind of really icky medicine that you just really detested

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Get it down real quick and you'll feel better afterwards mainly because we're done with it and but it is important to cover.

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Okay All right, we're out of time. Let's close the word of prayer Father we thank you for the opportunity and freedom that we have to gather together and consider these things help us

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Lord Even as we study falsehood to recognize why it's false to recognize even its modern incarnations and We might be better servants of yours we might be able to better communicate your truth to others