Through The Church Age (part 3)

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Through The Church Age (part 4)

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Our Father in heaven, we come before you this morning just thankful for the many blessings that we have received in Christ Jesus Even as we think of salvation full and free the granting of your
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Holy Spirit the granting of the grace with which we can come to your word and see who you are see who we are and rejoice
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That you the great God the omnipotent omniscient God Would stoop and love us and would save the
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Lord Jesus or send the Lord Jesus Christ to save us We rejoice in that we pray for your blessing as we look to your word see what you have accomplished through the centuries
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Through your word through your people Father we praise you for these things in Jesus name.
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Amen well, we've been A Beginning in church history and last week we
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Concluded we were talking about how Christianity was Attractive to some in the
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Roman Empire for various reasons including the fact that you could have a personal relationship with God Which was so contrary.
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I mean the God of the Bible is so different Than all these pagan gods the
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Roman deities That Christianity had a certain attraction. They also liked the fact that it was a moral religion that it had standards unlike What they saw in Rome and then we started talking about the apostolic fathers
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And we specifically were talking about Papias who was the bishop pastor of Heriopolis in Asia Minor Turkey and we talked about a little bit about his writings talked about the fact that he was
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He somewhat fell out of favor during this period 100 to 200 AD the 2nd century
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It's hard to think about it that way, right? We are in the This is the 21st century
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It's hard to think about that because it starts to zero and yet it's the 21st century But it feels like it's not really the 24th, but it is
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Because the first century starts with one, right so anyway in this period he fell out of favor because He believed in a future a literal future millennium, which was not
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Always popular but it is clear from what survives of his work that a number of oral traditions
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Were in circulation during that period and our oral traditions bad. No Are they biblical is the key and so some of the things that were oral traditions were sort of proved out in Papias's writings
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The fact that Certain of the Apostles went to certain areas matched up nicely with what scripture said so And I think we talked a little bit about Judas Iscariot I'll just conclude by saying by giving you the quote of what
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Papias said about Judas Iscariot. He said he was a terrible walking example of ungodliness in this world
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I Won't describe everything that he said, but it's suffice it to say that he described
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Judas Iscariot as being a very large man. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what he said so Okay, so that's the first Apostolic writing so -called the not apostolic writing church father
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Writing the apostolic fathers the ones who came after the Apostles so then we have
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We have Papias then Clement of Rome Who wrote?
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One book, but two are attributed to him. I think it's kind of funny He wrote
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Clement First Clements written about 95 AD now
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Significant 95 AD is when what book of the Bible was written very good.
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Somebody's been listening Revelation Was written right about that time by John the
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Apostle So first Clement is written about the same time and And We have a complete record of it meaning we have a copy of it and it might be the oldest complete work of the apostolic fathers
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The letter is anonymous, but it's traditionally attributed to Clements who was
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Paul's Coworker, how many of you remember a Clement Paul's co -worker? Well, he's mentioned in foot
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Philippians chapter 4 Can anybody tell me what?
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Historical significance he has according to the Roman Catholic Church You might think of him as I'll give you a hint
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Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson, of course was the first president
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United States and Second third, okay, so they say
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Clement was the third Pope Which is kind of amazing
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He wasn't but that's what they claim The letter first Clement is written to the church at Corinth to address several issues one issue is kind of surprising and the first issue that they mentioned here is the resurrection
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Why would it be surprising that the church at Corinth would need to be talked to about the resurrection?
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I guess I'll have to defer to pastor Bob. Why would that be surprising pastor Bob? They they didn't really grasp the the importance of it and Here's the here's the thing if you recall first Corinthians 15 is all about The resurrection not just of Jesus Christ, although that's where it starts, but it's the resurrection of every believer
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So the fact that they would have any questions about the resurrection is somewhat surprising of all the churches first Corinthians 15 first Corinthians Yeah, the the the church of first Corinthians the
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Corinthian Church should have been the most knowledgeable about the resurrection But here was the main issue that he addresses.
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That was the first issue that he addressed one of the main issue and this is one that's near and dear to every pastor's heart is that the
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Elders had been sacked. They'd been fired. They've been overthrown and a new group of elders had taken their place
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It was kind of a church coup So Clements writing these guys and going what are you doing?
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The letter argues that the whole thing this whole coup had been motivated by pride of the people who the usurpers who had taken the place of the elder board and He told them that not only was that a rebellion against these elders, but it was a rebellion against God Because God had put those elders in place in the first place
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Here was his reasoning. He said God commissioned Christ who commissioned Apostles who commissioned pastors who commissioned deacons church elders were
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Significant in this letter and really had not been significant if you think back on First Corinthians one of the issues there was the fact that you know, some of you are following This leader
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Apollos and some of you are following others But the idea here was in first Corinthians was they lacked unity.
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Well the problem in Clements was not only did they still lack unity, but they were failing to follow
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Church the church established church leaders the elders First Corinthians or the
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Corinthian Church was an immature church still but it was immature for different reasons and So that was his number one issue was they needed to restore those who were in authority and eventually they did
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So that's first Clement Second Clement. I know it here sadly
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It's not a letter written by Clements. I always find those things interesting, you know gospel of Thomas And we'll talk a little bit about Gnosticism.
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Maybe not this week, but next week I have a lot of notes about Gnosticism just because I thought okay How many of you let me just put it this way
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How many of you know what Gnosticism is if I ask you if I ask you three questions about Gnosticism Could I answer those questions?
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Depends on the questions. Okay. I Know you can answer more of the questions than most people because I've heard you use some of the language that that will use but Point is we'll we'll we'll talk about it.
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But gospel of Thomas, you know, neither a gospel meaning good news Nor is it written by Thomas?
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Well the book of seven second. I want to say Samuel Clemens the book of second and Clement is
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Not written by Clement and it's not really his second book. Therefore a second letter It's not a letter and it's not written by Clement is a sermon possibly preached by one of the
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Corinthian elders who was restored after his first letter and Its greatest value is its treatment of Scripture again.
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We're just talking about these these are post Apostolic Letters, they're called for whatever reason the apostolic fathers
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They're the the first the church fathers here the church age they're the first leaders of the of the church and some of the things that they wrote and This letter has its as its greatest value its treatment of Scripture It contains the earliest example outside of the
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New Testament of a passage from the New Testament being referred to as Scripture and having the same value as that of the
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Old Testament It's interesting because I was just mentioning to Janet on the way in this morning.
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I'm having a discussion With a young man on Facebook. I I don't know you can like Twitter if you want.
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I like Facebook because sometimes And I'm gonna underline that sometimes you can have
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Decent conversations and right now. I'm having a conversation with a man.
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I know that I've spent some time with who happens to live in Australia, and he is a homosexual and I believe that he thinks he's a
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Christian so I'm not challenging him on that so much as We are discussing right now the difference between and here's my point.
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I think he wants to say that he's a red -letter Christian I Think he wants to say that the letter or the words of Jesus Have more value than the letters of the or the words of the
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Old Testament So we're at a I think a pretty thoughtful discussion so far, and I'm hoping to continue going down that road
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But the point of this is this is the first time that an outside source
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Says about the New Testament and keeping in mind that this is really early on in church history
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Says of the New Testament that it is of equal authority the Old Testament Well, we would know that from just studying and and my conversation with this man is you know mostly focused on?
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The words of Jesus I figure hey he wants to say he's a red -letter Christian so let's talk about what
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Jesus says about the Old Testament and what he says about the New Testament, and how you just can't take the words of Jesus and You know the literal
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Vocal words of Jesus and call yourself a Christian so But I'm being nice about it because it's good to be good, and it's nice to be nice So that's the significance of second
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Clement Ignatius of Antioch also a
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Apostolic father early church father It says here. We know almost nothing about him until he suddenly appears on the scene about 110
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AD and it's during a citywide persecution of Antioch, which is in Syria as I said he's a leader there in Antioch and It's during a citywide persecution that he is arrested and by the way
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I mentioned last week these persecutions Were not generally speaking driven by the government.
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I mean there were occasions where it was like the Neronian where Nero you know orders this persecution, but typically it was mobs who would get upset with the
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Christians for whatever reason They were always blaming the Christians for something So here it is in Syria and He is arrested and is sent to Rome with others to be thrown
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To wild beasts and While he's being transported. He's under a heavy guard and he writes seven letters to the churches of the towns that he travels through Ephesus Magnesia I Have to be honest.
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I wasn't really familiar with Magnesia when you think of Magnesia. What do you think of? Milk of Magnesia, which does anybody ever take that anywhere.
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I don't know Magnesia Trallis Philadelphia Smyrna he wrote one to Polly Carp who was the pastor of Smyrna, so he writes a letter to Smyrna and the pastor of Smyrna and one to Rome Seven letters now if you were being taken to your death
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Right you're being transported handcuffed as it were I guess he probably wasn't handcuffed, but you're under a very close guard
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What would you write as you were writing to all these things I'll tell you what I'd be writing cut me loose, right?
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Pay my bail, whatever get me out of here. These letters are written obviously hastily
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But according to dr. Reeves they make for good reading he was the or the last words of a man with only weeks to live and Metzger describes in this way
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They are filled with such strong faith and overwhelming love of Christ as to make them one of the finest literary expressions of Christianity during the 2nd century
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Being transported to what he knows is going to be a horrible death and his focus the whole time is on expressing the truths of the
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Christian faith Ignatius had three main concerns again as he's being dragged and arrested and transported to his certain death first Unity of the local churches under their leadership.
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He encouraged his readers to Welcome their pastor into their home as if they were welcoming the
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Lord himself now You can just imagine you're about to face death You know this and your first concern is
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I want to make sure that the churches are unified and that they treat their pastors Well his second emphasis was he warned a false teaching in two ways
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Both of which denied the truth or the biblical teaching about Jesus the first thing he warned about I mean just again
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Imagine this this is your these are your priorities as you're getting ready to die He warned the church's about docet
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ISM or doset ISM Which is Gnosticism and we're gonna briefly touch on it and we'll talk more about it next week
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Gnosticism claimed Jesus was Entirely divine And when
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I say entirely divine, I mean he's entirely spirit That he had no physical body.
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He only appeared to have a physical body Now, can you think about is there any other religion that teaches anything like that?
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I can think of a couple How about this? Can you think of a religion that teaches that Jesus did not really get crucified that he only
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Appeared to get crucified Islam is correct
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Okay. Now a religion that would teach that he appeared to be Physical to have a physical body, but actually didn't might be like Christian scientists
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Again neither Christian nor scientists, but you know, so that's what the
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Gnostic said They said he was entirely spirit entirely divine and only appeared to be human
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The most notorious docetic Gnostic teacher was Marcian Who taught that the good
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Savior of the New Testament had nothing to do with the bad? God of the
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Old Testament and that's consistent with Gnosticism Gnosticism says the
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Old Testament God Was a lesser God and the
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New Testament God is the greater God the true God In stark contrast to that Ignatius wrote about the blood of God The actual blood of God for if the divine
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Christ had not truly assumed our humanity In other words, if he hadn't really become a man
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Then he could not have died for our sins This is a quote from Ignatius.
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He says there is only one physician who is both flesh and spirits Born and unborn.
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I think this is a great let me start it again. There's only one physician who is both flesh and spirits born and unborn
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What does that mean born and unborn exactly
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God in man True life in death.
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I mean this is poetic to me. He is the true life the eternal life in Dying and going to the cross both from Mary and from God first subject to suffering and Then beyond it
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Jesus Christ our Lord who writes like that You know, let me just scribble a few things down as I'm and again under heavy guard not having a lot of time
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Certainly not, you know being able to go to the store buy some stationery sit down with ink and pen and write
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He's just scribbling this stuff out Reeve says it is hard to read such material and not be incredulous of the claim that Jesus Full divinity and full humanity is a later fourth century
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Invention how many of you ever heard that? that the idea that Jesus Christ is fully
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God and fully man only comes into being at the Council of Don't say
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Trent Okay, the
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Council of Nicaea right that there's some grand conspiracy there and You'll hear this from time to time that in 325
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AD after Constantine names Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire You know the powers that be get together at Nicaea and they conspire against the
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Gnostics, right? We're gonna talk about this a little bit next week Bart Ehrman has made a career out of this whole thing and so have some other
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Elaine Pagels and others this idea of lost Christianities that there was this big tug -of -war for what?
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Christianity would be who Jesus really was and that the Gnostics were just as valiant and right and true and believing in their own
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Christianity as the you know, so -called Christians were But the
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Empire got behind The Christians and the Gnostics lost out, right?
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So that's the idea But he says here This this idea that that the
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God man Fully God fully man only came about 325 AD is false We can find figure that out by reading
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Ignatius back in the early Second century probably about 110 AD so Judaizers That's the second group.
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He the first group he warned against where the the Gnostics second group the Judaizers He wants to warn them against this false religion of spirit only spirit good
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Flesh, you know and the and the physical world bad And he also wants to warn them against the
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Judaizers the idea that Christians must obey what the
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Old Testament law It's good to be a Christian. It's good to be leave in the Lord Jesus Christ, but in order to be a full
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Christian You have to add the Old Testament law. In other words Christianity plus Judaism is the way that we're supposed to live and Christians at the time
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Let's put it this way if if I was in the second century I'm gonna ask it in the in the frame of a question if I was in the second century and I was a
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Christian and I wanted to prove That I didn't need to live by the
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Old Testament law by the Jewish law What how would I do that if I'm at 110
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AD? What do I do? How do I prove it? What's that?
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gully Okay, I go back to Galatians. So I go down to the local bookstore.
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I pick up my copy of the Bible. I Go to Galatians and I go look Right here.
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Now. What if I don't have a copy of Galatians because I don't have a New Testament There are some in circulation
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It's true. But if I don't have a copy of Galatians If I don't have a copy of the
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New Testament, I'm going to do this.
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I'm going to argue That the Old Testament does what? Points to Christ that he is the fulfillment of the law
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All right. Now I may have some copy of The Gospels I may have
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Galatians. I may have something else, but the primary tool I'm going to use is The Old Testament because that's much more available.
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So here's the question that ultimately It's kind of implied here is the
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Old Testament Incompatible with Christianity is It Unchristian is it anti -christian?
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I think the answer is absolutely not It points to him. Does it give all the answers?
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No, but the hope is there the hope is placed there If he doesn't come and fulfill the
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Old Testament promises He doesn't come and fulfill the law Then we're rightly still under the law, right but if he did do that and We're freed from the law then it's wrong to place this back under the law, which is the
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Galatians argument but Galatians is only true because Christ fulfills the law
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Okay, so that's his his second warning was against false teaching Gnostics Judaizers those who want to take away from the law because as we'll see the
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Gnostics were very very libertine in their outlook Those who want to take away from The law and those who want to add to it those who want to take away from the word those who want to add to It and then his third warning or his third emphasis
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I should say This won't surprise you What's about his death?
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He was concerned about his death. He's being carted off for execution and he's concerned about it
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Listen what he says he writes the last church Rome, right? he's being taken to Rome where he's probably going to be fed to the animals or You know some other horrible death
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And he says I implore you to this church in Rome do not be unseasonably kind to me
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Now I've known thousands of inmates and That's what he is. He's an inmate.
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I never had one say Do not be unseasonably kind to me. He says let me be food for the wild beasts
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Bear with me. I know what is best for me now at last at last.
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I am beginning to be a disciple May nothing visible or invisible envy me so that I may reach
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Jesus Christ Fire and cross and battles with wild beasts mutilation mangling wrenching of bones the hacking of limbs
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The crushing of my whole body cruel tortures of the devil let these come upon me only let me reach
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Jesus Christ Paging dr.
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Freud. I mean, what would his therapist say to that? Son, you have some problems
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You have a low view of yourself. What was he really doing?
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Why would he say such a thing what do you think his motivation was did he have suffer from low self -esteem
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I think If you think about it this way, why do you say don't be nice to me, you know, don't be excessively kind to me
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I don't want to have any hope of deliverance. I don't want to think about Physical deliverance
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Because if I think about physical deliverance then I might want it
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There's a way out of this for me That way about out is what we talked about last week
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There's a way out of it for Roman citizens and since he's being taken off to Rome we could assume that he must be a
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Roman citizen There's a way out and all he has to do is
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Deny Christ So he's like don't give me any hope Don't give me any hope because if I think about this world, then
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I know what I'll do. I know I'll fail I know
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I'll say I deny Christ and the last thing I want to do Is deny Christ so don't do that Don't give me any hope whatsoever.
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I don't want it because I don't want to fail He didn't even ask the church to pray for his release and it's not because he had this idea of Glory or anything else his one desire
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Was not to fail Christ Was not to deny him So Ignatius was put to death, but he lives on in these letters
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In fact as I thought about it his death brings to life this quote from Tertullian he wrote the
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Roman Emperor Said we are but of yesterday Yet we fill your cities.
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In other words, we're not significant. We're dying Yet we fill your cities your islands forts towns councils even camps tribes decories
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The palace the Senate the forum we have left you the temples alone. In other words these temples to your false gods
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Then he says the blood of Christians the death of Christians is seed
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When Christians die in other words They prove out the veracity of the gospel why because they're willing to do anything not to deny
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Jesus Mentioned Polycarp last week.
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I want to go back there one more time after he refused To deny Jesus if you remember he said away with the atheist pointing to the crowd
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The man in charge of the trial the
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Pro Consul said to him. I have wild beasts at hand To these
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I will cast you unless you repent Polycarp said call them then
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For we are not a complete accustomed to repent of what is good in order to adopt that which is evil and It is well for me to be changed from what is evil to what is righteous in other words
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Fine for me to be rid of this wicked body and to be in the presence of the Lord So then the
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Pro Consul threatens him with fire Polycarp says you threaten me with fire
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Which burns for an hour and after a little is extinguished But you are ignorant of the fire of the coming judgment and of eternal punishment reserved for the ungodly
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But why do you tarry in other words? What are you waiting for bring forth what you will I admire that Bring forth what you will do your worst
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It's going to pass But eternity in the presence of Christ is not going to pass
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So Persecution is what we were talking about before the persecution of the church, which ultimately led to its growth ironically
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We wouldn't expect that the second big Obstacle facing the church was false teaching
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Few different forms of it and I'm going to briefly talk about syncretism And I think syncretism is ultimately
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What brings about the Roman Catholic Church? What is syncretism if you think about if you synchronize something?
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What do you do? I'm sorry.
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Well, that's what that's exactly what they do. They just add in right? That's what syncretism ultimately is add in if you synchronize you put
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You know, let's synchronize watches means let's make sure we have the same time so Syncretization is this idea of adding things in right?
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So I Would argue and I think we can make the case that if you look at Catholicism in say
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Cuba It's different than Catholicism in Rome and it's different than Catholicism in Japan.
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Why? Okay, because the culture influences the religion
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It influences it a lot. In fact, if you go to Cuba and you look at Catholicism it hardly resembles
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Catholicism or if you go to Brazil or some other places because they brought in like mystical practices almost like voodoo witch doctors and Even in Japan they bring in aspects of Buddhism in a
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Catholicism In fact what I like to compare I I wanted to write my Thesis if I had a thesis in seminary,
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I wanted to write it on Catholicism Compare and contrast it with the
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Borg from Star Trek Because it just it brings in all these disparate things and it just keeps growing and morphing and changing, right?
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I don't know for those of you don't watch Star Trek. It may not make any sense. But for those who do you were laughing
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And he also one of the authors I was reading Sinclair Ferguson said, you know syncretism can also just mean this
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When it comes to Christianity if we if we take this as our model of Christianity we see that Christianity brings about What I could call maybe civilization right as Christianity comes into an area
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We see that people become more refined more polite kinder gentler, etc, etc, etc
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It's not a big leap to somehow confuse the fruit of Christianity with the root of it and So it's also possible for syncretism to come about in this way and liberalization of Christianity in thinking that the outside Result is
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The is the motivation in other words, it's not about repentance. It's not about Christ anymore. It's about becoming a better person
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Why do we have churches that just practice this Therapeutic moralism, you know where you go in and you kind of learn, you know, how to be a better neighbor
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How to be a better husband how to be a better or whatever? It's because the world has impacted the church
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To produce something other than what the the scripture would talk about Okay, so that's one false teaching that was going on and we would mostly see it.
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Ultimately. It's in the Development of the Roman Catholic Church, which I think at some point we may take a side trip and do but I'm going to talk about Gnosticism a little bit and we'll finish talking about it next week, but at its root
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Gnosticism is this it's syncretism between Greek philosophy and Christianity Greek philosophy
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Melding into Christian worldview It was the
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Greeks who viewed and they you know, the the fancy -schmancy world word for this or phrase for it is
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Platonic dualism. Okay, the idea that there are ultimately two realities and those two realities are the spiritual realm and The physical realm now that doesn't sound that crazy, right?
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We would acknowledge that there's a spiritual realm and that there's a physical realm the problem isn't how they define them, you know that there's a really a greater separation that there is than there is and the way that the
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Greeks defined this was the spiritual world was Perfect. It was the ultimate good the physical world was
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Basically useless it was fallen. It was no good Now there's some truth to that and that's what you know
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Isn't that true if you look at any cult any false teaching? There's always a little bit of truth in it because otherwise
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Nobody would go for it, right? There has to be just enough truth to get you to go for it, but they believe the physical world was ultimately evil
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So it wasn't hard to go from there to the idea that Well, if the physical world is evil could a good
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God have created a physical world that was evil Could a good
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God create something that was of no value and For the
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Greeks the answer was no This had to be a lower form of deity who would create such a thing
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And even today we see that in people like my friend here who would call himself a red -letter
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Christian Where they say the Old Testament God is bad
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New Testament God is good and loving and kind and would never condemn my lifestyle or anything about me and the problem with that of course is same
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God But the idea for many today that it could be the same God is just impossible
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Sinclair Ferguson calls this kind of thinking How I like to think about God thinking
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I want the God that I want to worship I want to create him.
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I will decide what God should be like and what he shouldn't be like I will decide what he should command and what he shouldn't command.
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I will decide what he should allow and What he should not allow And what do we call that?
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What is it when you create a God? It's idolatry, but if you think about this and I and I already mentioned it, but let's think about it a little bit more
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Gnostic thinking if we're thinking like a Gnostic, there's one thing that is definitely true about Jesus Christ He absolutely could not have a physical body right because my worldview says that spirits good
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Physical bad, it's like fire and water. I can't put the two together
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No matter how hard I try I can't get them to stay in the same place and that's how they would view spirit and body it's impossible for the two to be together so the idea of a spiritual being becoming a
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Physical being is absolutely impossible Incarnation is therefore to Gnostics not genuine.
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It only appears to have happened From a biblical perspective.
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What's wrong with that? What are the Gospels say about Jesus? How would we know that he had a physical body?
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He got tired I'm sorry ate food. He was thirsty He got angry
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I mean we we know all these things we read them and This is a real person right, and that's important because as Ignatius wrote and his scripture testifies in Hebrews he had to be made like us in all things why to fulfill all righteousness, right if Jesus isn't an actual person then what can't he do?
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He can't die and He can't die as our substitutes
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He can't be the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world
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He can't be the one who sheds his blood for us so that our sins can be forgiven he can't do that if he doesn't have a physical body a
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Jesus who only appears to be human can't save anybody no
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Nor can you live a perfect life he can't do any of those things right Now I think it's interesting we just had st.
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Valentine's Day. There's a branch of Gnosticism called Valentinian I Guess it's one of the bigger branches of Gnosticism But according to the
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Valentinian branch of Gnosticism there are three kinds of people Listen to this the material
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People in other words there are only flesh and These cannot be saved
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Then there are the animal people a mix of material and spiritual
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They do have there they have to do good works to be saved and these are the people in the church
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And then there are the spiritual This is just amazing to me listen to this they are saved by their very nature
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It's like they're just born and they're saved They can do whatever they want much more like Well that doesn't matter, but they can do whatever they want.
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They're just saved now. How are we to know? I don't know how we're to determine. Who's what but Here are some of the basics of Gnosticism as defined by Irenaeus Irenaeus who's one of the early church fathers and Tertullian another church father
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The main issue of the is the Rejection of the God of the Old Testament as a false
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God Who made a mistake by creating the world and you just read that you go, okay, so basically
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I have to tear Genesis 1 out of my Bible Right he can't look at things and say you know you can't read them where Moses says
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God saw that it was good because it's not good according to Gnosticism Jesus Again according to Gnosticism is held up as a teacher of whatever school of Gnosticism was quoting him, so they like to You know
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Valentinians would say Jesus was a Valentinian whatever and He is always set in opposition to the
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God of the Old Testament Jesus good Old Testament God bad Generally the true
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God in their opinion was unknowable. In fact, they often referred to him as Bythos which means deep or profound this unknowable
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God somehow mysteriously produced eons and They're given names like unspeakable silence unity truth man church wisdom spirit
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Christ, etc These eons lived in a place called the pleroma or fullness
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These eons usually produced in sets of 2 4 8 or 12 Etc, etc, etc
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The way the world was produced the way that the world was produced is that wisdom one of these eons
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Wanting to know the unknowable father of all the eons left the pleroma. I mean, this is all just very mythological
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Then we come to the
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Old Testament supposed God they call him the Demiurge Who had no idea where he came from Who create and he's the one who creates the world?
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He didn't know about the pleroma the eons or the unknowable God So he thought he was
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God so he mistakenly creates the world. That's that's Gnosticism That's a supposedly and we're gonna talk more about it next week
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But supposedly this is the great thing that Christianity shunned But the interesting thing is if we read the
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Bible, we would never know anything of that and they go Well, that's only because you left out all the great Gnostic books.
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Well, there's a problem with those Gnostic books What's the problem with them? They go against the
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Bible and when we think we think about what does something have to do to get into the
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Bible? Okay apostolic you said
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Divinely inspired so we have to have this idea here Divinely inspired breathed out by the
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Holy Spirit Which would tell us right away that if we're gonna put a book in the Bible It can't contradict the other books of the
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Bible. Well, all these so -called Gnostic Gospels are not only non -apostolic in other words, they're written decades or even a
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Century or two after I mean what some of them are much later Than the Apostles were alive or any of their associates were alive
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But they're not inspired. They also contradict the New Testament books or and or the
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Old Testament books, right? And so we wind up, you know, my favorite is from the Gospel of Thomas Which I how many of you have
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Gospel of Thomas at home? Go ahead Neither gospel nor Thomas You know supposedly shunned kept out and my favorite quote from it is
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Jesus supposedly talking to his disciples says something along the lines of Unless a woman becomes a man she can and no wise inherit the kingdom of God and I'm like why women are fighting to get
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That into the Bible. I don't know, you know, it could be part of this whole transsexual movement. I don't know but it's very bizarre and this is the kind of thing that the
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Gnostics wrote because Women were held in lower esteem than men. And so, you know, it was a whole crazy hierarchy there
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And of course for the Gnostics they would reject the Apostles Irenaeus says
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They not only saw themselves as wiser than the elders of a church
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But also wiser than the Apostles the Gnostics did they claim that Jesus delivered his secret or his teachings and secrets on the side to someone other than the
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Apostles and this again the whole idea that this is somehow a competing version of Christianity Jesus spoke to the
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Apostles, but on the side he was teaching somebody else and that's what we should listen to and The secret knowledge usually involved what is called docet ism docet ism is the strong separation of flesh and spirit which we already talked about docet ism
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Caused different responses in Gnostic teachers some believed in being very strict and denying the body because the body's evil some believed it didn't matter what their body did because the body was insignificant and only the spirit would be saved and Generally the early
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Christians said the Gnostics to tent tended to live permissive and moral lives
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Especially the Gnostic teachers. Well, just imagine if you could say things like I Have a special revelation that nobody else knows
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And let me just tell you one of the signs of a cult is this idea that there is secret knowledge
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That God revealed to me that he didn't reveal to you All right
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God told me this. I mean, I think my favorite example is this
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Joseph Smith, I always go back. I'm on Mormon roots and this is actually in their doctrine and covenants.
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He receives a Supposed revelation from God telling
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Emma his wife that she needs to be quiet and Let Joseph do whatever
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Joseph wants to do and if he wants to take additional wives That's just fine.
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And she needs to be quiet. And By the way, he received that revelation After he had already taken additional wives now, that could be a coincidence
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Or it could be you know, again, it's that whole secret knowledge thing with secret knowledge secret revelations come about bad things are afoot
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But thankfully we have the Word of God. Let's close a prayer Father it is such a blessing to us that you have preserved against the power of the state
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Against the power of the mob and against the power of these false teachers. You have preserved your word.
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We have the revelation We have the finished work of your Holy Spirit We have the very words of Jesus Christ as told to the
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Apostles. We don't have to rely on some Charlatan telling us that Jesus was secretly speaking to them
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By your power by your might by the same word with which you created the universe
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You have preserved for us your revelation your special revelation that we might know you
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That we might see the love that you have for your people in how you sent the Lord Jesus Christ to die for sinners after living that perfect life and Then you raised him up on the third day that we might have life
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And you've granted and preserved these things that we might know you the one living true
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God and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ Whom you have sent and we give you all the praise in Jesus name.