Through The Church Age (part 5)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Our Father in heaven, the creator, sustainer of all life, we come before you this morning thankful for who you are and all that you've done for us, all that you continue to do for us and all that you will do for us.

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And Father, even as we think about the Lord Jesus Christ this morning, we think about his finished work, his life, his death, his resurrection, what he did for us on the cross.

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Father, we praise you for that and we praise him for that. Lord, as we look to your word, as we look to church history and we're reminded of really the satanic weapons that have been wielded against your church and how you and your son have prevailed against the forces of darkness.

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And Father, we pray that you would keep us focused on your word, on your revelation of yourself, all the things that you have told us that we need.

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And Father, that we would bring to light the things that are false, that are errant, that are untrue, that we might shun them, that we might even refute them.

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And Lord, I pray that you'd bless each one here this morning in Jesus name. Amen. OK, so we started this quiz.

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How many of you still have a copy of it or how many of you need a copy? I guess it's better. How many of you need a copy of this quiz?

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Becky failed the quiz, obviously, because she doesn't have a copy. Well, OK, so how many did you get right so far?

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That's pretty amazing. No, but she has a note from one of the kids who was in the nursery last week.

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Oh, man. It's a pretty rough crowd this morning.

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OK, that's just Becky. She puts the

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Fenway in Bethlehem Bible Church. And it's going to be an ugly crowd this year.

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OK, with no no mookie. All right, let's just briefly go over the first few here.

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Well, I think we stopped at maybe number 11. So I'll just review them real quickly.

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Number one, and you can just kind of, you know, shout it out. Number one, narcissism is a an alternative view of Christianity, be a thick kind of pasta.

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See a melding of Christianity and Greek philosophy. C would be correct.

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A would be what some heretical. You know.

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Eggheads would say. Number two. True or false.

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There seems to be a difference between the God of the New Testament and the Old Testament. False is correct.

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Why do you suppose somebody would say that, though? OK, some of the laws of the

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Old Testament don't apply to us today, but specifically about the nature of God. Yes, Charlie.

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OK. In the Old Testament, it seemed like I'll just amplify what Charlie said. This is the amplified version.

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It just it seemed like man absorbed more of God's wrath. True. But it also seemed for the unbelief.

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Let's just clarify this a little bit. From the unbelieving perspective, it seems like there's a difference between the

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God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament, because the God of the Old Testament seems really.

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Mean and cranky and angry about things and just judgmental and the

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God of the New Testament, if you listen to unbelievers, who is the God of the New Testament? He's your pal.

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He's your buddy. Jesus just wants to hang out with you. I mean, the the unbelieving view of Jesus is that he must be the loneliest man in the universe because he just wants to hang out with anybody.

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And that's false. You know, I mean, gave the example just briefly of Ananias and Sapphira.

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God is the same God. And he's always been patient with unbelievers.

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And even sinful believers. So number three, the idea that God could become flesh is a.

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Is a incongruent with a Neoplatonic worldview. And again, I just want to say things like Neoplatonic worldview.

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So I throw those things in there. Be historical Christianity. See patent folly or D both

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A and B. Of course, it's

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D because it had to be. It is incongruent with a Neoplatonic worldview, which let's just what is a platonic worldview?

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It means that we can all be friends, right? Like a platonic relationship. Plato, what does

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Plato have to do with anything? Oh, Plato, Plato, Plato, Plato.

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Had a worldview where the physical world was bad and the spiritual world was good.

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So a Neoplatonic worldview, simply put, is this idea of spiritual world, great, perfect, physical world, evil doesn't work.

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Therefore, it is impossible that God, the good God, could come down to earth, take on a human nature and live as a human being.

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That is just incongruent, doesn't go with a Neoplatonic worldview, but it is historical

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Christianity. So it's D. Number four, is it Christianity or Gnosticism, which insists on a class of people who are saved no matter what they do from birth to death?

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Why do you suppose I phrase the question that way to trick you?

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But more importantly, there are people who say, well, if you're one of the elect, you could do whatever you want.

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It doesn't matter what you do, you're going to be saved anyway, because it says so in the Bible. Therefore, sin that grace may abound.

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Is that what the elect do? No, because God changes them, right?

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This idea that, you know, people are elect and non -elect and that that's the only determinative factor.

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In other words, that God doesn't take action and change people is incongruent with biblical

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Christianity. Thank you. I just want to say incongruent again. It's a

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Gnostic idea. They say that there are some people, there's a class of people that no matter what they do are going to be saved.

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Number five, is it Christianity or Gnosticism, which most closely resembles the ancient mythologies of Rome and Greece?

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And if you say Roman Catholicism, you're halfway there. It is

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Gnosticism, of course, it's this, the melding together of the

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Greek world with some Christian ideals and putting them together. And by the way, the reason we're doing this as we're doing this series on church history, the reason we're looking at Gnosticism, for those of you who haven't been here, shame on you, is the idea, first of all, in Matthew 16, 18,

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Jesus says that he's going to build his church and the gates of hell, Hades, death are not going to prevail against his efforts to build the church.

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And in the early church, we have both persecution and we've read some of the accounts of the

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Christians being persecuted. And we had false teaching, and one of the big false teachings that grows and sort of tries to choke

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Christianity out is Gnosticism, and there are people who say that, including

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Bart Ehrman, I think we talked about him a little bit last week, who say that Gnosticism was actually one of the competing ideas in Christianity and Gnosticism lost out because, and I think it's one of the questions that, you know, the victors write history, therefore

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Gnosticism lost, and so it got written out of history, which is not true.

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But anyway, so number five was Gnosticism.

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Number six, biblically speaking, spiritual warfare refers to the behind the scenes battles of angels and demons, which we influence by our prayers and or our sin, which is false.

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That's pretty books, one and two, be the relationships among the eons, the pleroma and the demiurge, which is just a silly summation of Gnosticism or see the truth and error, which is correct.

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We looked at 2nd Corinthians 10, 3 to 5. Here's spiritual warfare is this, that there are false ideas that are raised up against the knowledge of God, and so what we do is we shed light on that.

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We bring scripture to bear and we show that those things are not true. So spiritual warfare has nothing to do with,

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I mean, they are doctrines of demons, but it's the word of God versus doctrines of demons.

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Basically, I guess we could say that number seven and we're going kind of fast because this is all review number seven, true or false.

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Gnosticism means secret knowledge. Masomenos true.

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The word comes from the Greek verb for to know, and so this is just the idea of secret knowledge, and we'll see more of that here.

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Number eight, true or false. Gnosticism is the teaching of the doctrine that things made of spirit is good, but everything fleshly, earthly or material is intrinsically evil or bad.

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True, and I guess we would put it this way, that there is every dosetist has a strain of Gnosticism in them, but not every

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Gnostic is necessarily a dosetist. So anyway, we don't need to go down that road.

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Number, yeah, Bob, number nine, true or false. The early Christian church was chaotic, filled with all manner of opposing beliefs.

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False. I mean, the key there is Christian church. I mean, was it? Were there opposing beliefs?

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Yes. Like Jude says, you know, certain persons crept in, right?

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There are false teachings circulating in there. And so part of the process of the early church was purging these people.

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We even talked about how, I think we've talked about Marcion. Have we? If we haven't, we will.

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Was actually kicked out of churches. Why? Because he was teaching heretical doctrine.

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And it's fairly common. Paul names names, you know, things that are really verboten now.

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We're not supposed to do these things. We're not supposed to criticize people. It's not kind. Well, yes, it is.

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Number 10. I mentioned this earlier. True or false. History is written by the winners.

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And this has implications for the Bible. The first part is true. History is written by the winners.

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The second part is false. And what happens when the first part is true and the second part is false? The whole question is false.

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So it has no implications for the Bible because God wrote the Bible. Therefore, he was always going to win.

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And that didn't change anything. Number 11. True or false.

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The Christians use their power to ensure the various Gnostic groups were relegated to the dustbin of history.

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They just took out the broom. There they went. Those Gnostics. That is false.

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We can put it this way that God used his power to purge the Gnostics and their influence for the most part from the church.

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I mean, they're still trying to get in. Yeah, it's false.

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The question is false. Okay, so new material here. Number 12.

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Number 12. True or false.

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The Council of Nicaea was mostly about eliminating the heresy that Jesus was a created being. It's only mostly true.

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Well, 51 % would be about that. He's only mostly dead. Council of Nicaea was mostly about eliminating the heresy that Jesus was a created being.

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Yeah, there were a lot of things. Okay, is that part of it? Okay. Okay, so the main idea behind it was to refute

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Arianism, which was... Everybody knows what

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Arianism is. A -R -I -A -N -I -S -M.

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Arianism deriving from Aquarius.

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Aries. Who said what? So close,

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Jeremy. Free will, which is Pelagius.

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We're mixing up our heresies, but it's okay, Bob. Okay. That Jesus was a created being.

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And there are many false religions, false cults, false Christian so -called cults, who teach this even today, including our good friends, the

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Mormons, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, as they prefer to be called. But this idea that Jesus is...

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What's a biblical problem with the idea that Jesus is a created being?

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I mean, can you think of a scripture that would say, that's false, cannot be? John 1 .1.

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Why would that prove it? Okay.

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And then we find out a few verses later that Jesus is the Word. And the problem with that is, if we hear in the beginning, we could think, well, okay,

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Jesus was created and then things started. But that's not correct.

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Exactly. By all things, or by him, all things were created. Nothing was created that was not created by him.

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All things exist by him and through him and for him, right?

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So the idea that he could have been the firstborn, it would mean he would... Or the first created being, he would have had to have created himself.

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And that's not possible. So... But the Council of Nicaea, yes, about that.

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And one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about the Council of Nicaea is there's this idea floating around.

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And if you read... Please don't. But if you read Bart Ehrman, and I'm going to say something nice about Bart Ehrman before today is done.

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And it's not even that there's still hope for him because he's alive and God could still save him. That's not even it. But don't read these kind of things because all they ultimately do is just try...

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The whole goal is to undermine your confidence in the Bible. And you'll just get angry as you do it.

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But here's the idea. And even some of the Mormons and others will say this kind of thing. That the

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Council of Nicaea was really about what? What's that? The canon.

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And that it was really about excluding what the Mormons might call some plain and precious parts of scripture.

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It was really about editing. You know, it's like, I mean, honestly, you listen to some of these, it's kind of a conspiracy thing, but you listen to some of them.

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And you think they were all sitting there with laptops going, okay, add or delete, add or delete. Okay, let's all just, you know.

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And then they saved it to the cloud and they all had the same. No. No. The Council of Nicaea was really about the nature of Jesus Christ.

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Other. Yeah, go ahead. Right. No, because it was already done by then.

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You know, so, I mean, we could go back and we can see lists pretty much of the scripture.

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I mean, the Old Testament was pretty much set. It was set. And by the way, the Apocrypha was not in the

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Old Testament. When did the Apocrypha get added to scripture? During the

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Reformation, after the Reformation, right? Sharon? Right, but the church never recognized the church, right?

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See what I did there? The church. They weren't recognized at all.

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They weren't, you wouldn't find them like in a published copy or, you know, attached or referenced or whatever.

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It's after the, actually after the Reformation. Because what happened was there were certain doctrines that the

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Roman Catholic Church taught that they couldn't support except for in the

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Apocrypha. And they do call it, as you were just saying, they call it deuterocanonical.

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Which, by that they mean, okay, here are the canonical books, these 66 books.

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These are the ones that are inspired by God. These deuterocanonical books, they're not really inspired, but they're pretty good.

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I mean, you know, by that standard, I think we could probably add Lord of the Rings and a few other books, but not really inspired, but they're helpful.

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All C .S. Lewis books, you know, I don't know. Can we have like a third canonical status or something?

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The tritocanonical. Okay, so true or false was mostly about, that's true.

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Number 13, Gnostics. Gnostics believe the world is fallen because of its creator, not because of Adam and Eve.

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True. That's a pretty incredible statement, isn't it? Now, how is that compatible?

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You know, this whole idea of, I mentioned the book by Bart Ehrman, I read some of the description of it last week.

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How is that compatible with Christianity, this idea of lost Christianity, is that Gnostics somehow were cut out of, wrongly cut out of the herd, right?

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God, it's God's fault that the world isn't perfect. Are there any scriptures that would teach us that that's false?

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Okay. And it really kind of does, as John says, it really does kind of get back to the problem of evil in some way, right?

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Because how could evil exist? In other words, I mean, you hear this all the time, or maybe you don't.

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Do you have any friends who say, why did God let this happen? I can't believe a good

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God would let bad things happen. It's kind of that, it's sort of an emanation, you know, from this.

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And I think that's what you're getting at. But the Gnostics just flat out say the earth was bad.

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It was fallen. And the reason it was bad and it was fallen is because it wasn't a good

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God who made it. And so what are they essentially saying there? They're undercutting or refuting

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Genesis 1, right? God saw it and said that it was good.

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And when it says good, he wasn't saying, well, it's 72%. He wasn't like, you know, on a scale of one to 100,

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I'd give it 75, I'd give it 80. What was he saying? It was perfect.

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100%. Nothing wrong with it. I mean, even as we talk about the coronavirus, what is the coronavirus all about?

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It's about the fall. Things that do not, would not exist, were it not for sin, illness, disease, deaths, all these things, right?

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It's fallen because it is material. So the whole idea of creating a physical material world was a bad idea, right?

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And it's beyond their capacity to understand how a good God could do it.

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So it had to be a bad God. They call him the Demiurge.

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And it's interesting because, and I think I might've mentioned it last week, but they said that essentially this was a deity of sorts, a lesser

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God, who didn't even know where he came from or anything else. I mean, talk about,

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I don't even know what to call that. What's that?

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Fruitcake. Yeah. I mean, it's bonkers. It's like a bad acid trip. And he created everything, you know, not knowing what he did.

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I don't know. Is there a good acid trip? Nevermind. Don't tell me. It's interesting because I have in my notes here, like Buddhism, Gnosticism begins with the fundamental recognition that earthly life is filled with suffering.

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Well, we would agree with that, right? Life is pain. Anyone who tells you anything else, princess, is trying to sell you something.

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Very well said. We live in a body that is dying, right?

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When babies come into existence, they really are in the process of dying because we're all going to die one day.

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We're all going to suffer. But we don't teach that that is because of God.

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We teach that that is because of Adam and Eve. Gnostics, this is interesting.

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Gnostics say of Adam and Eve, falling, that that interpretation of the creation myth is false.

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The blame for the world's failings lies not with humans, but with the creator. Since in the monotheistic religions, the creator is

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God, this Gnostic position appears blasphemous because it is, right?

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We look at it and we just say, that's not God. Let's go on to the next one here.

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Number 14. I love this one because it just reminds me of... I couldn't resist writing it, actually.

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Number 14, true or false? All human beings have a spark of divinity in them. It's false.

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You ever heard that before? Okay, let's talk about what spark of divinity does and doesn't mean.

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It doesn't mean, as at least one prominent politician said recently, you know, that there is a part of God in us, right?

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What does the Bible say about us in terms of spark of divinity?

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It says this, that we have the breath of life, right? God breathes the breath of life into us.

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That we have an eternal soul, as Bob said. And maybe most importantly, that we are image bearers.

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That is to say that in some way, we reflect God. Now, in what way is that?

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Okay, in some ways, we reflect his attributes. We are creative, right?

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We have the ability to tell good from evil. I mean, here's something, here's a little trick.

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You could try either, you know, if you're a dog or a cat, or let's say you have some reptile or something else.

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Try to get your pet to tell you the difference between good and evil. Sounds kind of dumb, right?

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Well, why would it be dumb? Because they don't have that. The law of God is not written in the hearts of dogs.

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I can promise you that, having had, you know, a few dogs. God's law is not written on the hearts of cats.

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They don't understand this. In fact, they are abominable. Okay, sorry. There is a chasm between us and those animals that God has given us dominion over.

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And that is because they do not have the image of God. They are not image bearers. They are creatures, but they do not reflect him.

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And we don't reflect him in a physical sense. We don't reflect him in a, really, in a perfect sense.

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And because of sin, we don't reflect him well at all, right?

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We fail in innumerable ways to reflect that image. But what's important about image bearing is that each and every person that we meet is an image bearer of God, has a soul, will exist for all of eternity.

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And because of that, we firstly need to treat them with respect.

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But secondly, we need to keep in mind that this person that we're talking to either is a

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Christian, in which case we have to love them as our brother or sister in Christ, or is not a

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Christian, we ought to love them enough to tell them the truth. But this idea of spark of divinity in them is a

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Gnostic idea. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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It speaks of something, you know, that might be fanned into a flame, Pastor Bob said. And I think that's right. You know, the spark of divinity, you know, if we just work on it hard enough.

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Now, let me just read this. It says, humans are generally ignorant. This is a

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Gnostic man writing here. He says, they're generally ignorant of the divine spark resident within them.

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This ignorance is fostered in human nature by the influence of the false creator, the so -called demiurge, and his underlings, who together are intent upon keeping men and women ignorant of their true nature and destiny.

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I mean, why, you know, we sometimes think Gnosticism is arcane and old and has run its course.

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Well, let me ask you this. You have unbelieving friends. Somebody at work dies.

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What do your unbelieving friends say? Okay, at a better place.

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They're at a better place automatically. Or how about this one? You've heard this one. Heaven has gained an angel.

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Why? Because they had that spark of divinity, and now it's in full flower. Whom death just affirmed that it's absolutely false.

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In fact, the writer goes on to say, he says that death releases the divine spark from its lowly prison.

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But here's something to keep in mind. They say, but if there has not been a substantial work of Gnosis, secret knowledge undertaken by the soul prior to death, it becomes likely that the divine spark will be hurled back into and then re -embodied within the pangs and slavery of the physical world.

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What does that mean? It means they didn't have enough secret knowledge. It means they didn't advance enough.

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And so they got thrown back into a body.

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They got reincarnated so they could have another shot at this.

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I mean, what does that sound like? It's Eastern, Eastern religion.

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What did you say about question 15? Exactly. Thank you.

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Sure. False reincarnation is an essential part of Christianity. How? I was just waiting for somebody to say true.

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So, you know, yeah, false is an essential part of Gnosticism.

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Listen to this. Evolutionary forces alone are insufficient to bring about spiritual freedom.

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Humans are caught in a predicament consisting of physical existence combined with the ignorance of their own true origins.

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Yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Number 16, which of the following most closely resembles salvation?

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A, Jesus Christ died to redeem every sinner who would ever believe. B, Jesus teaching and his mysteries are the primary means of salvation.

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C, our consciousness must have sacraments administered to them by the messengers of light, which include

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Jesus. No, I did not think of that all by myself, actually.

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I'm really not that crazy. Okay. Pretty crazy, but not that crazy.

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Listen to this. From the earliest time, messengers of light have come forth from the true God in order to assist humans in their quest for gnosis, for secret knowledge, for spiritual enlightenment.

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I'm on my own spiritual quest. I'm on a journey. I'm a person of faith, and I'm on my journey.

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What does that sound like? It sounds like gnosis, but it also sounds like about 75 % of the unbelievers that if they don't say they're an atheist, they basically will describe themselves, and you'll go, wait a minute.

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It's a Gnostic. This person's a Gnostic. They don't know they're a Gnostic, but they're Gnostics.

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Listen to what he says. Only a few of these salvific figures, now there's a problem with that all by itself, are mentioned in Gnostic scripture.

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Some of the most important are Seth, whom we all know. We have

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Abel, Cain, Cain, Abel, Seth, right?

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Jesus, and the prophet Manny. Manny? Yeah, that's what

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I wondered at first. Manny being Manny, but it's M -A -N -I, and I don't even know who he is.

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The majority of Gnostics always look to Jesus as the principal savior figure.

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They call him the Soter, Soteriology, right?

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But not the savior. Gnostics do not look to salvation from sin, original or other, but rather from the ignorance of which sin is a consequence.

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Really, we could have brought in Oprah this morning and talked to her, and this is the kind of thing that we would hear.

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Salvation comes from knowledge. Knowledge comes from being open to spiritual forces.

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Ignorance is dispelled only by Gnosis. The decisive revelation of Gnosis is brought about by the messengers of light, especially by Christ.

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His suffering and death are denied by them.

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Um, let's see. Let's go on to number 17.

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True or false, for Christians, death represents liberation from the sinful world. True, right?

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It's also true of enlightened Gnostics.

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They believe that too. They just have a different idea. Number 18, true or false, eventually everyone will get to heaven.

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But what about the song, When We All Get to Heaven? When We All Get to Heaven. Okay, it really, that's an

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N -slash -A, not applicable. But they believe eventually everybody will get to heaven, because you just keep coming back until you get it right.

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Endless recycling. You know, how many of you have ever been recycled? What's that?

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Very green of them. When I was in the Sheriff's Academy, if you flunked out of the academy, well for,

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I don't want to say flunked out. I mean, you could be fired. We had a guy, they would never do this now, but we had a guy get fired because he couldn't spell.

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Sad times. But sometimes people would get injured, because we did a lot of running and different things like that.

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So if you got injured, you would get recycled. That is, say you would start the academy again in a month or two months or something like that.

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That's not what they're talking about, of course. They're talking about going back and being sent into another body over and over and over again.

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This is so crazy. The things that they say, I mean, it almost like, some of this is almost sounds like Scientology, which

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I guess, you know, L. Ron Hubbard probably borrowed things from these people.

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It's just Valentinius, the greatest of the Gnostic teachers, taught that Christ and Sophia, Wisdom, awaited the spiritual man at the entrance of the

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Pleroma, their version of heaven, and help him to enter the bride chamber of the final reunion.

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I mean, they just, you know, there's a lot of Christian -ese mixed in there, but ultimately it's an

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Eastern, you know, Hinduistic worldview. Okay.

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I mean, even listen to this. Why is Gnosticism true? This is according to a modern teacher.

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He's known as the Gnostic Bishop. Gnosticism can bring us such truths with a high authority, for it speaks with the voice of the highest part of the human, the spirit.

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Of the spirit, it has been said, listen, it bloweth where it listeth.

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This is the reason why the Gnostic worldview could not be exterminated in spite of many centuries of persecution.

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That's what they think. Okay. Number 18, eventually everyone will get to heaven.

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We said that's false. Number 19, true or false, Gnosticism appeals to our human nature.

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Absolutely. Why? We have to do something, but I think more importantly, it puts man in the center of the universe, basically.

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And it also tells us that nobody will go to hell, right? There's no eternal punishment.

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We like that idea. Okay. Number 20, true or false, the gospel is an offense to our human nature.

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Absolutely true. And it is definitely opposed to Gnosticism now.

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Just a few things. I thought, since I figured we'd have a few extra minutes, I wanted to talk more about the gospel of Thomas.

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I've told you, I should have brought a copy of it, and just read some of the verses.

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But I've told you one of my favorites is, you know, Jesus allegedly saying, that unless a woman becomes like a man, she cannot go to heaven.

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Which says something. I mean, it says something about the nature of the book of Thomas. It's not a, or the so -called gospel of Thomas.

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Not a gospel and not written by Thomas. But it's a book of sayings.

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Allegedly, most of them, allegedly said by Jesus and recorded by Thomas Didymus. Let me just kind of go over some of these things here.

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Was discovered. I mean, this will sound like it's Raiders of the Lost Ark thing. Discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt in December 1945.

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Among a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi Library. Scholars speculate that the works were buried in response to a letter from Bishop Athanasius declaring a strict canon of Christian scripture.

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So why would they bury it? Because it was non -canonical. The text that they found at Nag Hammadi was written in Coptic.

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In other words, in an Egyptian language. Now, why would that be a problem?

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What's that? Thomas went to India. Well, it'd be a problem. It'd be a problem for one, because New Testament books,

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Thomas would have written his in Greek. Right? If he was going to write a book.

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114 sayings attributed to Jesus. Almost half of these sayings resemble those found in, resemble, listen to that, resemble those found in the canonical

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Gospels. While it's speculated the other sayings were added from the

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Gnostic tradition. Its place of origin may have been

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Syria. Again, does this sound like the

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Bible? No. The introduction to the book, listen to this and tell me if this sounds anything like scripture.

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These are the hidden words that the living Jesus spoke and Didymus, Judas Thomas, wrote them down.

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Didymus, Greek and Thomas, Aramaic, both mean twin. So twin,

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Judas twin, wrote these down, these supposed hidden sayings of Jesus.

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And here's the whole idea behind Gnosticism, is that Jesus came and the things in scripture may or may not have happened.

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That's not really important. What's important is the hidden things that he was teaching the disciples on the side.

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That's what we need to know. And that's what this book alleges.

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It's possible that the document originated with possible or with proto -Gnostics.

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In other words, early Gnostics. The name Thomas was also attached to the book of Thomas, the contender.

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I think he was rated in the top five contenders, middleweight crown, which was also a

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Nag Hammadi in that, and also the acts of Thomas. So Thomas was busy. The gospel of Thomas, listen to this, does not directly point to the divinity of Jesus, but it does not directly contradict it.

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See, I think I listed here somewhere else that it says, it does not mention his crucifixion, his resurrection, or the final judgment, nor does it mention a messianic understanding of Jesus.

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Eusebius included it among a book of groups. He believed to not only be spurious, but the fictions of heretics.

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So in other words, the early church fathers said it was heretical. Oh, yeah.

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And now we're back to, I said I would say something nice about Bart Ehrman. Here we go. Bart Ehrman argues that the historical

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Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But here's the good part.

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He says that Ehrman argues the gospel of Thomas was probably composed by a

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Gnostic and sometime in the early second century. So what would that tell us?

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Early second century. So somewhere, and I think this is right, somewhere between 110 and 130

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AD. What would that tell us? Sharon? Thomas is dead.

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So Thomas didn't write it. So when I say, you know, a gospel, no, it's not. Written by Thomas, no, it's not.

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So we have a spurious book there. And even Bart Ehrman, heretic, agrees with that.

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And T. Wright, whom we also don't quote very often, in a positive sense, said this, said it was written in the second or third century.

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Again, way after Thomas is dead. And he says, the

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Thomas Christians are told the truth about their divine origins and given the secret passwords that will prove effective in the return journey to their heavenly home.

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This is Gnosticism writ large, right? So again, this idea that they're somehow competing

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Christianities, they were competing religious systems, but it's like saying that, I mean, it's actually further apart than Roman Catholicism and Biblical Christianity.

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You know, are the two compatible? No. Do they share some similarities? Yes. And it's the same that's true of Gnosticism and Christianity.

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Do they share some similarities? A few. Not very many.

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But they're not the same religion. These weren't different sects within this, you know, this isn't like Presbyterians and Baptists.

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This is a vast difference. So, thus concludes our sojourn into Gnosticism.

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Questions, concerns, comments? Anybody have the

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Gospel of Thomas? Raise your hand, shameless. Okay. But again, here's the summation.

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Gnosticism is a false religion, teaching that the physical world is bad, the spiritual world is good.

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And ultimately, it denies the deity of Christ. It denies the God of the Bible. It denies everything that the

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Bible says about us and about God. So why should we reject it? Because it is a completely different and spurious religion.

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Okay. And if there are no questions, then we'll just close in prayer. Father, we thank you for your word and for the surety of it.

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Thank you that you are powerful enough to superintend not only the writing of Scripture, but the compilation of the canon, the superintending of those books that would go into our

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Scripture, that we might have it today, that we might know you. And even as we think about Deuteronomy 29, 29, the secret things belong to you.

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But you have revealed the other things, your word, that we might study them, that we might know them.

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And that by knowing your word, we might know you, that we might come to love you and worship you the way that you have designed and commanded that we worship you.

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Father, we thank you for the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, that you would send him in our place to die, that you would send him to take on a physical body as difficult as that was, to live a perfect life, die on the third day, or die and be raised on the third day, that all our sins might be forgiven, that we might have eternal life, that is to say, we might spend eternity with him.

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Father, we thank you for opening our eyes to the truth. We pray that we would be willing and eager messengers for those who are stumbling in darkness, who have convinced themselves that they are seeking spiritual truths and higher knowledge outside of Scripture.

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Lead us to bring your word against these kind of ideas that many would come to a faith in Christ.