Through The Church Age (part 2)

Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for the opportunity we have to just remind ourselves of the goodness you have shown your people throughout the centuries.

Even as your word says, Jesus said that he would build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it.

And again and again and again, the powers of darkness, which is to say the philosophies of men and the ideas of Satan, the doctrines of demons have assaulted the church and you have kept the truth.

You have preserved the truth. You have preserved us. We thank you and praise you. And as we look just to your work through the men and women through the centuries who have been faithful to you, we praise you and thank you for them.

Father, we pray for your blessing on our time in Jesus' name, amen. Well, as I mentioned, in some of the books we'll be going through,

Christian History Made Easy by Timothy Jones. And I wanna say, even though he's a Southern Baptist, sometimes

I think he takes positions that are a little too favorable to Rome.

So I sort of modify them a little bit with all apologies to the good doctor. Theologians You Should Know by Michael Reeves and In the

Year of Our Lord by Sinclair Ferguson. Last week, I mentioned Matthew 16, 18. And I wanna just kind of not really go through it a lot, but just look at it again, because even as I was praying about it,

I just thought it's good to look and see why this is such a problematic text.

When I say problematic, what do I mean? It's not a problem that it's in the text. It's just, let me read it.

And I tell you, this is after Peter's confession. Jesus says, and I tell you, you are

Peter and on this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. The Roman church,

I don't like to call it Roman Catholic, but the Roman church says that this means that Peter is the first Pope, that he is infallible, and that after him, there will be a succession of bishops of Rome, because he was the first bishop of Rome.

And they say it, this is all comes from this one verse. Peter's the first Pope, the bishop of Rome, he's infallible, and there'll be an unbroken chain of bishops of Rome after Peter to guide the church.

That all comes out of this verse. It's kind of hard to see that.

Well, in verse 19, they throw in too. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.

Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. And they say that makes, you know,

Peter the vicar of Christ on earth, which means he is the actual representative of Jesus on earth, that's what

Rome says. And there are problems with that. I mean, a lot.

In fact, I thought maybe we should, sometime we should just do a whole thing on the history of Rome and all that other stuff because Roman Catholic church as such doesn't probably come into existence until somewhere in the late third century.

So anyway, with that said, I wanted to read this. I mentioned last week, you know, this idea of Peter being one of the super friends, kind of flying around, stuff like that.

Let me just read this to you. This comes from the apocryphal Acts of Peter, which they say is a

Christian text. I don't know what that means. I mean, that would be like the prayer of Jabez is a Christian text.

I don't know. The apocryphal Acts of Peter recounts many things that Peter did in the city, in the city of Rome.

At one point in Acts of Peter, Peter is taunted by a flamboyant heretic, Simon Magus.

Remember who Simon Magus is? Okay. May your silver perish with you.

Simon challenges Peter to a flying contest around the Roman Forum, but Peter's prayers make

Simon crash to the ground. Now, what does this sound like? Is something really,

I mean, it's just, Peter's prayers make Simon crash to the ground, proving that Simon's powers are not as great as his own, as Peter's.

At the end of this text, Peter, not wishing to be martyred for his faith, flees from Roman authorities.

Now, as he's fleeing, unexpectedly, Peter meets

Jesus, who is traveling in the opposite direction. He asked

Jesus, where are you going? Jesus tells Peter that he is going to Rome to be crucified again. Peter realizes from this that he cannot flee from his fate.

Anyway, don't rush out and get a copy of the apocryphal

Acts of Peter. That's all I can say. Okay. So we were talking about last week that Christianity was new, it was unknown, unknown religion.

How even Judaism had some respect, even though Jews were persecuted, but the fact was that Romans respected

Judaism because it was preceded the Roman Empire by a thousand years.

So it had some respect just by being old. Jewish religion was tolerated.

I think I may have mentioned that the Roman soldiers in Jerusalem provoked a riot around 50 AD that resulted in the deaths of 30 ,000

Jews. Ultimately, there was a rebellion. And in fact,

I have a game about this. It's called the Siege of Jerusalem, where they lead the

Roman troops, they surround Jerusalem, lay siege to it, and eventually destroy the temple.

Not much of a game. But anyway, from AD 70, so from about 70

AD, the destruction of the temple, to the early 80s, Christianity was pretty much ignored in terms of the official

Roman position. But Vespasian's son, he was the emperor who sent the troops.

He was originally dispatched to Jerusalem, in case you don't remember. And then he's interrupted when he hears that Nero committed suicide.

So he goes, I'm gonna go back, and I'm gonna make myself emperor, and he does.

And then he sends troops to Jerusalem. They're the ones who destroy it. Vespasian's son,

Domitian, Domitian, succeeds Vespasian as emperor.

And he demanded this title be applied to him, which was Lord and God.

Now you can see how that could be a problem when he takes power in the 80s, because Christians are not going to call him that.

And it wasn't just enough that he wanted to be called Lord and God, that's a pretty good title. He also thought, well, wait a minute, the

Jewish temple no longer exists. So all the money that the

Jews paid for the upkeep of the temple and everything else, he thought that money should all come to me, all their tithes should come to me.

How do you suppose the Jews responded to that? Let's send our money to the

Roman emperor instead of the temple. The Roman emperor who wants to be known as Lord and God.

Obviously that didn't go over very well. So that led to new laws against all

Jewish practices, which included a lot of Christian practices, in fact,

Christian worship. And persecution was not limited just to Italy, but it spread throughout the entire empire.

When Domitian was replaced by Trajan as emperor, as Caesar, he received a letter, this is

Trajan received a letter from one of his regional governors, a man named

Pliny, was talking about how he dealt with Christians.

And he developed basically this method, he would give the Christians three chances to recant, that is to renounce their faith.

And if they did so, they were released, right? If you said, I deny

Christ, you were released. Roman citizens who declined to renounce

Jesus, in other words, who maintain their testimony, Roman citizens were sent to Rome for trial, right?

But non -citizens who refused to recant were executed on the spot.

So the crime of being a Christian, which the crime would be ultimately, they would see it as atheism or blasphemy because you're refusing to call

Caesar Lord and God. Emperor Trajan reads this letter from Pliny, and he likes it, he likes the methods, he thinks this is good.

Pliny wrote about how he interrogated a couple of deacons from a local church, tried to understand what

Christianity was all about. Here was his summary of Christianity. It's nothing but a bunch of outlandish superstitions.

And that's how Romans generally viewed Christianity. They even accused

Christianity, I don't know if I mentioned this last week, but of atheism because they refused to acknowledge the reality of the

Roman pantheon of gods, not only the emperors who were alive, but the emperors who were dead, plus you throw in,

I mean, who are some of the Roman gods? Isn't it, is it Jupiter or Zeus?

I get them, Jupiter, okay. And you know, the whole pantheon of Roman gods. They refused to do that, so they were called atheists.

And to that charge, you know, we're not atheists, so then this group of people developed, they were really scholars in the

Christian world. They developed and they were called apologists. And what do you suppose their, basically their life verse was?

Yeah, 1 Peter 3, let's look at that for a moment. 1

Peter 3, and we're gonna read verses 14 to 17. And if somebody wants to read that, please.

1 Peter 3, verses 14 to 17. Now, thank you.

Now, just thinking about 1 Peter, was written to Christians that he knew were going to be persecuted.

And this is, you know, what the period we're talking about is long after this, Peter's already dead.

But it's interesting because they really, the Christians really try to live this out and we're gonna see more of this this morning.

But this idea of making a defense is the word what? Apologia, okay, from which we would get apology, like I'm sorry.

We would also get apologist, somebody who gives a reason for the hope, you know, the reason for the

Christian faith. But it's interesting because the apologists of that day were not trying to make converts.

Let me say that again. They were not trying to make converts. Here was their whole point. You say we're atheists.

I'm going to demonstrate, I'm going to defend the faith and show that we're not, okay?

I don't care whether you, you know, they wouldn't put it quite this way, but it's not ultimately my purpose to proclaim the gospel to you so much as it is to prove that we're not atheists.

One of the most famous apologists was a man named Justin. Justin, and this is a phrase

I never really like, point of contact. What is, when somebody says point of contact, what do they mean?

I mean, you know, please don't say, you know, well, point of contact is when, you know, we touch hands or, you know,

I give you my business card or whatever. What do people mean when they're, philosophically speaking, when they're talking about a point of contact?

What's that? Go -to person, okay. Okay, ultimately

Bob's right. What they're talking about is common ground. So an apologist who's looking for a point of contact is trying to find some way to rationalize the pagan worldview and the

Christian worldview to create a point of contact. In other words, a place of commonality, a place of agreements, a place where we might say, where non -Christians would say to Christians, oh, okay,

I understand what you're saying. I mean, I get it. And Justin was one of those, he was an apologist who was looking for a point of contact with the

Greek philosophers and with the Roman world. You know, when I say, now don't get,

I guess I need to say it this way. When I say Greek philosophers, because the culture itself, while we talk a lot about the

Roman empire, the culture was largely Greek, right?

Greek was the preferred language and Greek was the dominant philosophy because the empire or the,

I don't know if you'd really call it an empire. Well, you could. From Alexander on, everything was

Greek. The fact that the Romans took over power and eventually became the world power didn't change the fact that Greece was the dominant culture.

So Rome was the power, Rome was the empire, but the culture was

Greek. I mean, we could say it this way. America might be the dominant force in the world today, but the culture is ultimately, it's kind of English, right?

I mean, it's derivative of English. So similar in that sense. Okay, so he had this idea that he was going to sort of look at the

Greek culture and at Christianity and find this point of contact. And he did, and he tried to present it that way and defend the fact that we're not atheists.

That didn't really work out for him. Because what happened was he's confronted,

Justin is, and they say, well, are you going to renounce Christ or not? It was nice to have a point of contact.

It was nice to have a point of commonality, but ultimately he wouldn't deny Christ. So he was put to death and therefore became known as Justin Martyr.

But it wasn't just philosophers who found themselves facing persecution and execution. Happened with pastors.

Polycarp was a prominent pastor who had known John the beloved apostle. And as I'm reading these things,

I'm just like, just imagine what it was like. We're going to see somebody else who allegedly was a scribe for John the apostle as he wrote his gospel, as he dictated the gospel.

And I'm just like, just imagine what it was like to be with the apostles and to just say, you know what, could you explain when this was happening?

You know, what were you thinking? Go through the Last Supper with us, you know, and that kind of thing.

And I'm just like, how cool was that, you know, to just be able to ask questions like that.

But Polycarp was somebody who had known John and he was pastoring in Smyrna, which is in, you know,

I mean, I'm just stupid sometimes when I read and when I think about things. When you read the term

Asia Minor, what do you think of? Turkey, yes. But I'm like, do you ever wonder why they call it

Asia Minor, okay? And I'm just like, I never even think about why do they call it

Asia Minor? It's just because it's just this little section of Asia that probably doesn't even kind of look like it belongs to Asia, you know, so therefore it's

Asia Minor. Okay, piece of cake. Turkey, so Smyrna, that's where it is.

And if you played Diplomacy, you'd know that because it's on the map, sorry, just an aside. But what would happen is, and it happened in Smyrna, what would happen is, it wasn't so much always the government persecuting the church, it was the people.

People would get upset because something would go wrong. Somebody wrote something like, you know, the crops fail, a volcano goes off, you know, there's a storm, there's a drought, whatever it is, who do you blame?

The Christians, because they are denying the gods. They are displeasing the gods.

So when something bad happened, you blame the Christians and when the Christians got blamed, mobs would form and they'd go get the

Christians. So they're worked up in Smyrna, they're executing

Christians. They wanna find the pastor, they're looking for Abendroth. They can't find him, so they grab

Cooley. They start torturing him. And Steve's like, he's over there, man.

Go get him. Okay, those weren't the exact words, but you know, it was close to that.

They take somebody that Polycarp knows and they torture him. He gives up Polycarp's location.

Polycarp surrenders, he's taken before the Roman governor. The governor says,

I love this, he says, have respect for your old age, in other words, come on, man, let's just not play any games.

Just tell us the truth, dude, you know, show some respect here. The governor tells me, he says, say away with the atheists.

In other words, I don't wanna put you to death. Polycarp's 86 years old. I mean, it's just like, you know, sometimes you're just like, you were probably never a policeman, but there are sometimes you just go, come on, man.

Well, I'll give you an example. I was just a kid. I was in the army, we were over in,

I was over in Okinawa, and I was on loan at Kadena Air Base, working with the

SPs, the Air Force guys. And we were out one night and this guy, we get a call of a guy ditching a cab.

So we go and we talk to the cab driver and he says, you know, he's over there in the bushes, this Navy guy.

What had happened is, Navy guy came in, you know, from being overseas, came in, got drunk, took a cab back to the base and had spent all his money at the bar.

So now he didn't, he couldn't pay the cab, so he was hiding in the bushes. So we get the guy out, you know, apologize to the cab driver.

We take this guy, now this sailor, I'm not kidding, he was probably like five, six, 125 pounds, just a little guy.

And we go to put him in the cell. And we have to uncuff him. And we go now, just don't do anything, you know.

And he just started fighting us. And, you know, it was like, it was like, please, we don't want to hurt you. And I think the same way, he's like, look,

I don't want to kill you. You're pathetic, you're 86 years old. Respect your old age, just kind of, you know, live out the rest of your life in peace.

Says, stay away with the atheists. Because if he does that, effectively denying

Christ, you know, away with the atheists, meaning the Christians, then we'll spare your life.

Polycarp, again, keep in mind that we're talking about a mob that's brought him to the governor. Polycarp points to the mob, and he says, away with the atheists.

Then he says his famous line. He says, 86 years I have served Christ, and he has done me no wrong.

How can I blaspheme my king, the one who has saved me? Then they burn him alive, but that doesn't quite do the trick, so they wind up running him through.

Now, some years earlier, obviously, had to be earlier, otherwise Polycarp couldn't have done this. He sends a man named

Pothinius, Pothinus, sorry, to establish a church in Lyon, France.

When Pothinus was 92, another old guy, he was arrested, tortured, and imprisoned in a cell the size of a small refrigerator.

Now, I don't think it was one of these, you know, the little mini, mini things, but a small refrigerator, 92 years old.

Two days later, he died. And I spared you all the worst of the things.

I mean, they did horrific things to these Christians to get them to try to get them to deny Christ, and they wouldn't.

And so they were put to death in horrible ways. And so I guess in the bigger question, keeping

Matthew 16, 18 in mind, looking at this persecution and the gruesome deaths that people were experiencing, how did the church grow?

And I couldn't help but think about the contrast, because if you know anything about the beginning of Islam, Islam grew by the point of the sword.

Once Muhammad had a dedicated group of followers, they went from Medina to Mecca, and they conquered

Mecca, and then they spread, you know, over the decades, really by the force of arms.

It was, you know, believe in Allah or die. Christianity, on the other hand, grew by preaching and by persecution.

Now, given and keeping in mind some of the ways that people died, I mean, the least of them, like I said, being burned alive, run through by a sword, or put in a tiny little box and dying that way.

Why would somebody wanna be a Christian, Gary?

Okay, I think there is something to that, right? I mean, you have to be impressed by the fact that people are willing to die for Christianity.

They will not deny the faith, even though it would be easy, right, just utter these words and you're free.

But they won't do it. I think that has to impress people, right? I mean, it would be impressive to me.

Why else do you suppose that Christianity grew, Mark?

That's a good answer. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, listen. I put it this way.

The first, the answer to that, I think ultimately, is why would somebody wanna be a Christian in light of everything that's happening here? No one wants to be a

Christian. It's not natural, right?

Let's look at Acts 13, 48 for a moment. I mean, we could go through the whole depravity thing, you know, we're all dead in our sins and trespasses, and that's all true, and I'm not denying any of that.

When I say nobody wants to be a Christian, I mean nobody wants to be a Christian. It's not something we think, oh, you know, that sounds reasonable and good, you know.

That's not what happens, Acts 13, 48. And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the

Lord. Listen, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.

It's this whole sovereignty of God and salvation. When I say nobody wants to be a

Christian, it's true. Nobody wants to be a Christian, and then the Holy Spirit quickens them and they want to be a Christian. And then when they're persecuted and, you know, death is upon them and horrible tortures and everything else, how do they keep the faith?

The Holy Spirit enables them. I mean, do people ever deny it?

I'm sure they did. And in fact, you know, that was a big thing during the Reformation.

People would recant and become like outcasts because of the persecution.

And then they would, you know, they have to undergo some tests to be let back in, basically, into the church.

But what are some of the earthly reasons why Christianity was attractive?

We know that God is sovereign. He appoints people to eternal life. He draws them, he gives them new hearts, new affections, everything else.

But what are some of the earthly reasons that people would want, Gary? Okay, they see the love that Christians have for one another.

I think that was definitely true. I'm gonna reframe that because it kind of fits into a category

I wanna talk about, and that's this. Christianity offered equality.

It didn't matter who you were, right? If you were poor, you were welcome, which was countercultural, right?

If you were a slave, you were welcome. If you were rich, you were welcome.

If you're a woman, you're welcome. Again, all these things go against the culture, and I'm gonna develop that some more.

Can you think of any other reasons why this might be attractive, Brian? Okay, people believed in some kind of afterlife, some kind of existence, or some kind of power beyond us.

But Christianity is the only one that gave an example of resurrection and that was one of the things

I had here too, which was, I mean, I'm kind of extending it like I did with Bob, but it offered a personal relationship with God, and we'll develop that in a moment.

There's one other reason, which might not be so apparent, but I thought it's very timely given the world that we live in now.

Christianity provided moral guidelines, things that were acceptable and not acceptable.

And I think it's interesting to me because we think about what

Christians are doing these days. There's a group of Presbyterians who are hosting these conferences called

Revoice, where they're giving platforms to homosexuals and they're promoting homosexual marriage and this kind of thing.

And then there are other issues where, other denominations where people are, or alleged

Christians are promoting this idea of women in ministry or whatever the issues are concerning morality, if it's homosexuality, homosexual marriage.

I mean, I remember when the Anglican Church, the Episcopal Church, ordained its first homosexual bishop and you just think, how could they do that?

Well, it's because they reinterpret things. And ultimately, let's look at Matthew 5 for a moment.

And again, talking about reasons that the church would be attractive to unbelievers just from an earthly perspective.

Matthew 5, verses 11 through 16. This is a

Sermon on the Mount. Jesus says, blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

You are the salt of the earth. But if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?

It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world, a city set on a hill cannot be hidden.

Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket but on a stand and it gives light to all in the house.

In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your

Father who is in heaven. And I thought, what is the church writ large now?

What is it trying to do? It's trying to get acceptance from the world. It's trying to say, look, we can accept homosexual marriage.

We can accept all these different things, polyamory, whatever it is that's coming down the road, whatever sexual perversity they want to promote.

We can accept all those things, why? Because we're not so bad, we're not so different from you. What does

Jesus say? He says, you're supposed to be different. And if you're not different, what good are you?

And the answer is, you're no good. So to the Roman world, the

Roman world looks at the church and goes, you know what? Those people are really weird. They live morally clean lives.

That's kind of cool. And I say, you know, these days it is true, right?

If you think about it, what's the most rebellious thing you can do these days? Get married, have kids, go to church.

That's crazy. That's like as anti -establishment as you can get.

That's how crazy the world is, right? I mean, there was a time where if you didn't do these things you were weird, now it's like, hey, we've got a guy.

You notice in this whole, I don't know, anybody watching the democratic debates? Am I the only one depraved enough to watch any part of this?

It's interesting to me because, you know, just think maybe, I mean, just imagine the man from South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete.

If he was running for president 50 years ago, the ads against him would have said something like, well, no, the advertisements against him.

Are you really gonna elect a homosexual president of the United States? And now it's just like, nobody even talks about it.

It's just a little secret. Or, you know, I did see this picture on Time Magazine of him and his husband.

So it's either promoted or it's not talked about at all. Because you can't, we're not supposed to point out the fact that that is really weird.

But this idea that there's to be a difference between people in the church and outside of it is clear in scripture.

Jesus talked about it in Matthew five. But the depravity that was on display in the

Roman empire, it repulsed Jews, Christians, you know, people who understood what the

Bible said, but also even Gentiles, some who were ignorant of the word.

I mean, have you ever known somebody? I mean, I have a friend, I'm trying to get him to go, Janet and I are going to a

Ligonier conference in April in California. And this guy was just talking about how sick he is of the things that he's dealing with on a daily basis.

And he's been asking me questions from time to time in the Bible. And I said, well, why don't you come to the

Ligonier conference with us in California? He's not going yet, but I'm hoping he will.

But I think people just get so put off by things that they see going on in the world. And they're just like, I need some answers.

I need some sanity. I found this interesting.

What do you think the number one thing that people thought, okay, I know what

Judaism is about, right? I know what the Old Testament is about. And the one reason I can't convert to Judaism, and it kind of even scares me a little bit about Christianity is circumcision.

Yeah, I mean, it's one thing if it happens on the eighth day of your life. It's another thing if it happens later.

And a lot of guys are just like, God, I've heard about that. They didn't really have shots for it in those days where you could just go, okay,

I don't wanna feel anything. No, that didn't happen. But that kept a lot of people who had this idea that there was something wrong with their society.

Maybe they even believed in God. They were called God fearers, right? But they weren't willing to convert because of circumcision.

But anyway, okay. So moral guidelines was one thing.

Second one was equality as we mentioned earlier when Bob was talking about it.

Listen to this. Listen to how one pagan writer spoke of women. This is of the same era here.

We have courtesans, prostitutes, for pleasurable sex, young female slaves for day -to -day physical usage, and wives to produce legitimate children and to serve us faithfully by managing our houses.

Could you have a lower view of women? I don't think so. Our wives will be faithful.

That's not our thing though, right? So the idea of men and women being image bearers, being equal, made

Christianity a target for the larger pagan world.

It made it attractive to some, made it a target to others. Listen to what another anti -Christian writer said.

His name was Celsus. He said, because Christians admit that ignorant people are worthy of their

God, Christians show that they want and can convert only foolish, dishonorable, stupid people, and only slaves, women, and little children.

Nobody important would want to become a Christian. But now, who might that make

Christianity attractive to? I think it probably appealed to maybe some women, especially given the worldview of the

Roman world, I think it would logically be attractive to women. The other reason, the third reason that it was attractive to the world is it, as Brian said, it offered a personal relationship with God.

If we think about the Roman pantheon of gods, if you've ever, anybody ever read mythology? I mean,

I was a little weirdo. I used to go when I was like in the third grade, go to the library and just read mythology.

I don't know why. Some people like that stuff. What's true about the

Roman or the Greek gods, either one, because there's a one -for -one correspondence. What's really kind of unique about them and different besides the fact that they don't exist, but what's really different about them if we think about the

God of the Bible and Jupiter or Mercury or any of these other gods?

Yes, Gary. Yes, human -like failings. Okay, human -like failings. Nathan, they're sinful and perverse, right?

Sharon? They're not omniscient. They're not omniscient at all. Yeah. They make stupid decisions.

I mean, they're really like, if you read this kind of mythology, it's really almost like more like a soap opera, right?

I mean, these, I wanna call them people. These mythological characters are really kind of pathetic in a lot of ways.

The one difference between them and people is when they get mad, really bad things happen.

But they're nothing like the God of the Bible. And I would say maybe the one thing that is most true of them,

I mean, given they're given to emotion, all these things, they are so unlike God. They're capricious.

They make random arbitrary decisions. This is not like the God of the

Bible at all. In fact, the Christians proclaimed a God who voluntarily took on a body of flesh and entered human history.

He not only embraced human flesh, that is to say, took on a human body, but he also experienced human suffering.

We'd see that in Isaiah 53 and also in Hebrews 2, 17 and 18. Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

For because he himself has suffered and when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

We would see nothing like this in this Roman pantheon of gods.

They had nothing like this. So again, a reason that Christianity was attractive. Okay, we'll just start on this.

A few significant people and writings. You heard, and I'm sure you've heard this phrase before, apostolic fathers, apostolic fathers.

You can get books called the apostolic fathers. Well, what are they? Well, they are people.

And it also kind of refers to some of the books that they wrote. But when we think about the time period that we're looking at, all the apostles are dead.

So we're talking post 95 AD, post 100 AD, basically. Jerusalem and the temple are destroyed.

And by 130 AD, if you've studied history, what happened in 130 AD? In 70

AD, Jerusalem was sacked, the temple's destroyed. But there are further rebellions because the

Jews really don't like being ruled by other people. There are further rebellions.

And in 130 AD, the Roman empire says enough is enough.

Send several legions down there and they move most of the Jews out of there. And guess what they did after that?

They renamed the area. They named it Palestine. And created all the problems that we have over there right now.

Okay, sorry. But these men and writings are important for us to understand the early church in the time immediately after the apostles left the earth.

So the first one we're gonna talk about this morning is Papias, who was the bishop or pastor of Heriopolis in Asia Minor, again,

Turkey. And according to tradition, he was the one, he was the secretary of the scribe who wrote down the gospel of John as John told him.

He wrote a five -volume work of his own, an exposition of the sayings of the

Lord. Now, this was what I find interesting, how they know we have five volumes,

I don't know. I haven't figured that one out yet. Because we only have fragments of what he wrote. But during the second century, in other words, a period from 100 to 280, he was held in high regard as a writer, as a source.

And he fell out of favor. And I found this very interesting because of some of the debates I've been in, discussions,

I guess I should say. He fell out of favor for one reason, his writings fell out of favor. And that was because Papias believed in a literal future 1 ,000 -year reign of Jesus Christ, the millennium, between 100 and 200.

This is the man who received, presumably, the book of John as John dictated it to him.

And he believed in a literal millennium. I find that interesting. It is clear from what survives of his work that an enormous number of oral traditions were in circulation concerning the life and sayings of Jesus and the apostles.

These sayings were valued because they could be checked. Think about it. We're like, for most of the

New Testament, we're within about 50 or 60 years. When we start talking about 100 to 200, probably 50 years of the

New Testament being written, we're within maybe 70 or 80 years at the beginning of the, well, 70 years of when

Jesus was on the earth and the ministry of the apostles and whatnot.

So some of the things that were oral traditions, then it would be fairly easy to check, right?

Let's put it this way. Let's say that your, and we'll close here in a minute. Let's say that your grandmother told you a story about your grandfather, that he won the bronze star.

We'll just give him a bronze star in World War II or something like that. How could you find out if that was true?

Or could you find out that it was true? And you could find out.

So, and here's my point. The closer we are in time to when these kind of, these legends, these stories, these word of mouth sayings are put out, the easier it is to verify them, right?

And so Papias recorded a bunch of those things and some of them can be verified.

For example, Papias records that John and Philip went to evangelize

Asia Minor. Philip settled in Heriopolis. According to Papias.

Now, how would Papias know that? He grew up in Heriopolis. So he probably knew about that.

He also records that John went on to Ephesus. He was, and he settled there.

He says that John was subsequently exiled to Patmos from about 96 to 98

AD, which would fit in with the whole revelation thing. 95, 96 there.

Then he's brought to Rome by the emperor and then sent back to Ephesus where he is killed.

The last of the apostles to be put to death. He also reports,

Papias does, that Peter was Mark's source for the gospel of Mark, right?

Mark interviewed Peter as it were, and that's where he got the information for the gospel of Mark.

And it seems likely, listen to, we'll close on this, 1 Peter 5, verse 13, as just evidence of what

Papias is saying. Says, this is Peter writing, and he says, she who is at Babylon, probably

Rome, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings, and so does

Mark, my son. Mark was a close companion, so close that Peter called him his son.

And so it's very likely that what Papias is saying there is true. And so it's just interesting, here we have somebody who was not an eyewitness to Jesus, but somebody who worked alongside

John, and had a lot of inside scoop and recorded a bunch of it.

And sadly, we don't have all of it, but some of the things he wrote down were able to verify. And it's just kind of interesting from that standpoint.

Anyway, we need to close. We'll talk more about the apostolic fathers, and some of the other foundations of the early church here next week.

Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the way even historical documents, some of them have been preserved, that we might look and compare and just kind of see the veracity of scripture, not that we need that sort of proof, but it certainly bolsters what we already believe.

Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ, for his work in building the church. Thank you for your spirit, attending those just as he attends us today.

Father, give us the faith to be bold, to declare Christ and him crucified.

And just to be thankful, as we think about the long legacy of faithful ones that you have raised up and sustained.