Gnosticism in the First Century

Brethren, I wonder if you have ever thought about the time we live in now and then the time the early Christians lived in the early church. And maybe you have considered—I'm not saying you have—but maybe you thought, well, it probably was quite easy then. Well, they had the example of Christ. They had the early apostles. In other words, they had Peter and James and John. Even Paul were there. So it must have been a lot easier to distinguish right from wrong. Whilst today, we have all these varieties of religious ideas. It could be Catholic, it could be Protestant, and there are so many different Protestant versions. There are evangelicals, and there are so many others that you may stop. People have had people asking me, which one is the true church? My purpose today, brethren, is to show you that the situation today is nothing but very similar to the situation in the early New Testament church, because they equally had, let's call it, a smog as wort of ideas affecting them. And indeed, many of today's teachings, although quote-unquote modernized or brought up to 21st century, in some form are varieties of some of the teachings that existed or all the ideas that existed in the early church. There were a large number of groups that competed with one another. They all claimed to have the legitimate religion. Or later on, as the years went by, not many years, but still in the beginning of the second century, a more advanced Christianity, a more spiritual than others. And let's look at some biblical examples. We'll start here in Matthew 24. Matthew 24. And you know these prophetic scriptures pretty well, so let's just remind you of some of them. Matthew 24, verse 4 and 5.

And it says, For many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ, and will deceive many.

You see, in verse 4 it says, Take heed that no one deceives you.

Christ was talking to that generation, but it's equally and even some more applicable today. It's important for us to understand that it was valid then, as it is today. There were many people at that time saying, yes, Christ is Christ, but we're deceiving many people, and we'll show that from the scriptures in a moment. In fact, look at 1 John, chapter 4. 1 John, chapter 4, the first epistle of John was written around about the years, say about 19, somewhere there, AD 90, and knowing, as we know, that Christ died about AD 31, that was about 60 years after Christ had died. And so John was the apostle, that the only surviving apostle, because the others had been martyred and had died. But John had survived for a specific reason to give a certain information, prophetic information at this time, which we have in the Bible, these epistles, but also the book of Revelation. It was revealed to him from the Father through Christ, through an angel to him. So, John, in chapter 4, 1 John, chapter 4, he says, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because there are many prophets that have gone out into the world. And by the same thing, test what people are telling you and what you're hearing, because there are many false prophets out there who have gone into the world at this time. He's not talking about, you know, today, two thousand years later or so. So, false prophets were already there. In fact, if you look in the spiny pistol, in the spiny pistol, just one or two pages back, in chapter 2, verse 18 and 19, chapter 2, verse 18 and 19, he says, Little children, it is the lost hour, and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many Antichrists have come. So, John is saying, today, in year 19, there already are many ideas about who Christ is. False ideas.

By which we know it is the lost hour. And in verse 19, continue, where do these people come from?

They went out from us.

Basically, it says, they were in the Church of God, and they left the Church of God with their own little ideas about who Christ is.

But they were not of us, for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that they might be manifest that none of them were of us. But these frightening prophecies are of things that have happened, and we know things that happened at the end time. As we know, it happened in the late 1990s. You know, things like this happened. Look at Acts chapter 20. That's when Paul is saying goodbye to the elders in Ephesus. In Acts chapter 20, he called the Ephesian elders at the end of his third missionary trip, before going to Jerusalem and becoming a prisoner and then being taken to Rome as a prisoner. So as he sang, looking at verse 17, he says he called the elders of the church in verse 17, and then looking a bit lighter in verse 28, he says, therefore, he's telling the leadership of the church, take heed. Take heed means watch. You know, yeah, we need to watch. This is what we need to watch. We need to watch ourselves. We need to watch that we remain faithful to the truth once given to the saints, as it says in Jude 3. We gotta remain faithful to the gospel that was given to the saints. So he says, watch. Take heed to yourselves. Watch yourselves. Stay careful. And to all the flock, you know, it was protect God's people, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. Jesus Christ himself purchased the church of God with his own blood, with his own life. Verse 29. For I know, now Paul's not saying, well, it might be you. It might happen. He says, I know this, that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock. Also, verse 30, from among yourselves, man will rise up, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after themselves. Brethren, the early church started having splits and divisions and being fractured. It's nothing new. Why? Because we got an enemy. It's Satan. He hates the church. And his tactics there are the same as today. Nothing new.

Looking in the 30th pistol of John, looking in the 30th pistol of John, 3 John 9, 10 10, 3 John 9 and 10.

I wrote to the church, this is John saying, I wrote to the church that diatrophes who left to ethically imminence amongst you does not receive this.

John, an apostle, the apostle that Jesus loved, he wrote to the church and this member in the church would not allow him to be received. Therefore, if I come, says John, I will call to mind these things which he does, pranking against us with malicious words. He is speaking against us with horrible words. Whatever those words were, I do not know, but they were not nice. And not content with that, he himself does not receive the brethren and for with those who wish to putting them out of the church.

Wow! Just look one page back or so in the second epistle of John, verse 7. For many de-stevers have gone out into the world, doesn't say they will go out into the world, they have already gone, says John, who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh.

Now, everybody says Christ came in flesh, so what does it mean? It means where he came from, from the position that he was, they don't confess. Where he came from, how he humbled himself from the form that he was, as we read in Philippians chapter 2 verse 6, and also in John 1, 1, and in Hebrews 1, 3, and others.

Verse is a de-stever and an anti-Christ.

Look at 2 Corinthians chapter 11. 2 Corinthians chapter 11.

Verse 13 through 15. 2 Corinthians chapter 11. Verse 13 through 15. For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder, forsaken himself, transforms himself into an angel of light. Therefore, it is no great thing if these ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be important to their works. So there is a lot of false prophets. There were a lot of false prophets, and they are. Look at the prophecy that John received in the book of Revelation about the early church, which is the church in Ephesus, in Revelation chapter 2. In Revelation chapter 2. In Revelation chapter 2, In Revelation chapter 2, this is Christ talking. If you have a red letter Bible, it clearly shows that it was Christ talking. And it says to the angel of the church of Ephesus, and he says, I know your works, your labor, your patience, that you cannot bear those who are evil, and you have tested those who stay, they are apostles and not, and have found them liars. So there were a number in the church that were standing up and saying, these guys are wrong, they liars out.

Look a little bit further in verse 6.

And he's talking about them, and he says, but this you have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.

So in that early church, they still had that zeal, that first love, that they hated the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which was basically a Gnostic sect. From where we can understand Nicholas as he was one of the seven deacons of Jerusalem, as per Acts 6 verse 5, across the light of Antioch, he apostatized, apostatized from the truth. He then became the founder of an antinomian, in other words, a Gnostic sect against the law of God, that was characterized by sensuality. In other words, seducing Christians to participate in idolatrous feasts of pagans, and encouraging unchastity. The Nicolaitans, in other words, their Gnostic belief, was that in order to master the sensuality, one must know the whole range of it by experience, abandon himself without reserve to lust of the flesh, because lust only affected the body and not the spirit. And this sort of philosophy or idea was filtering into the church to one degree or another, and the Ephesians did not like it. This is the same thing as Baidom. But that sort of spirit started affecting the church later on, if you read in verse 14 of chapter 2.

It's talking about a church, a year that came afterwards, and it says, but I have a few things against you, because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Baidom, who taught Bailak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit sexual immorality. And then we saw in the sermonette, how it was referring to Numbers 25, and you can also read in Numbers 31-16, how Bailam enticed the Israelites through the daughters of Moab and Midian to idolatry and fornication. And continuing in verse 16, thus you also have those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I ate. So it's a variety of that, but similar. And look a bit further in the next generation of year of the church in verse 20. Nevertheless, I have, let's second Revelation chapter 2 verse 20. That's the next year of the church. Nevertheless, I have a few things against you, because you allow that woman, Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants to commit sexual immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. So, sexuality and things like that, it's one of the ways that Satan tries to create problems in the church. How do these steps of beliefs grew in that society? They grew from a cultural and religious background that existed in that era. The culture and the religion that existed at the time of the early church was an Hellenistic culture and religion, in the words of Greek descent. Let's go back to 1st John chapter 4. We read that section a little earlier. 1st John chapter 4. We read verse 1. But now I want to draw your attention to verse 5.

But I want to first draw your attention to the last sentence of verse 1, which you read, which says, many of these false prophets have gone out into the world. So, it's talking about the world. And look at the first part. They are of the world. Therefore, they speak as of the world. And the world hears them. You see, the world is a society. It's a society around us.

And they are of that society. And they speak as if they are part of that society. And that society hears what they say because they ripe to hear that thinking. And we have a version of a similar society, although very modernized, with 21st century technology.

How did this develop? There's an interesting book by a certain gentleman called Adam Knight, called Primitive Christianity in Crisis, that goes into this in great detail. But really how it developed is that in the sixth and second, the sixth and seventh century before Christ, there is in the years about 500 to 700 BC before Christ, something happened that radically changed the world across Europe, all the way from Europe to England. That basic world of the Middle East and Europe and East and West. There was a major change in religion. Now this is very interesting because if this happened after certain prophecies, a number of years after certain prophecies were given to Daniel. So based on those prophecies, Satan realized, I believe, and this is now I'm saying speculative, okay, that certain things were going to happen in certain ways, and therefore he had to change religion to prepare religion in a way so that when Christ would come, that would be able to become a deception to true Christianity. That little bit is my speculation. Okay, so I need to put that in either of the comments. But something happened in that time between 500 to 700 BC, that radically changed religion across Europe, all the way from Europe to India. That change in the Greek religion was from a very materialistic of ritual pagan sacrifices to a new spiritual approach of pagan religion, a matter of the heart. Interesting. And that radical change started developing in those years before Christ came. And an emphasis on the human soul and the fate of the soul and death became more underlined in the pagan religion. There were some philosophers like Orpheus and then later one called Pythagoras that re-emphasized the immortality of the soul and reincarnation. And they, they using science. You see, it was not these changes were not driven by religion itself, but they were driven by science, by knowledge, by technology. Interesting. Interesting parallels. But so that the early Greeks, for instance, through science and the Pythagoras, discovered that the earth is round.

Now, you and I know that that information was lost for over a thousand years because it was declared heresy by the Roman Church and was only rediscovered in medieval Europe many centuries later. But Pythagoras already had this scientific knowledge which led to a philosophy of cosmology.

You know, it was ideas behind that system became formalized much later by what was was known as the Ptolemaic system. And even though that was after Christ was formalized that way, but those ideas came long before. And those ideas were that this earth is the center of the universe and that everything would orbit around the earth. And so then they had a theme called, like, the number seven, where there was the earth, and there was seven planets as they perceived it. And they're not necessarily they were all planets, as we understand them today, but that's how they perceived them. There was the wrong or seven layers of planets. It was the earth and it's seven layers of planets, as they called them. Now, we know the moon's not a planet, but anyway, they called them seven layers of planets. Seven layers of planets. The moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. In, let's call it, in circles in layers one after another. And this philosophy was one of the standing from the stars, which is beyond the seven, the eight, which is the stars. And there was a descent from the stars all the way to the earth. And therefore, the seven became to represent a symbol of the standing into matter and represent evil. We think about the Sabbath, the seventh day, and eight, which was then beyond that, which was the heavens, was good. And you think about the eight, which is the day after the Sabbath, which became Sunday. I know you see how that developed. So the eight was the realm of stars and the goodness of heavens and immortality and peace and harmony. And so, this whole theories of philosophies got developed. The immortality of the soul that had come from a star down through this evil into evil matter and needed to be liberated through this, through these layers. And therefore, people like Plato, many years later, in the fourth and fifth century of the current, fourth and fifth century before Christ, you perpetuate these ideas with what is called the Platonic philosophy. And that became the whole pagan ideas. Ideas that were intermediaries, diamonds and astral gods, that the material creation was done by these diamonds or demusias, as they call them, and so on. The whole thing becomes so confusing, brethren. It's just unbelievable. What happened then is through the conquest of Alexander the Great, run about in 333 BC, those ideas and philosophies spread to the whole world. Then, with the Roman Empire coming in along, run about 31 before Christ, those Hellenistic ideas remained, and that culture continued into the Roman Empire. And this Greek thought was that matter was evil, and it was composed of four major elements, fire, air, water and earth. These basic essential elements became things that were controlled by spirits. And these elements, or essential elements, or rudiments, is what Paul is referring to in scriptures like in Galatians. Turn with me to Galatians chapter 4. Galatians chapter 4 verse 3.

You see, this mess of ideas was affecting the early Christian church. And he says, yeah, even so we, Galatians chapter 4 verse 3, when we were children, we were in bondage under the elements of the world. And the elements in Greek is stoikion, Greek 47, 47, elements of the world, these rudiments, these istatials. People were people were under the bondage of these elements which were not of God. Look at verse 9. But now, after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements to which you decide again to be in bondage? And it's not that the elements fire air, water and earth were bad, but it's that they were controlled by these gods, those spirit beings, and that's what they were turning to. Look in Colossians chapter 2. Colossians chapter 2. What I'm saying, brethren, is there were many philosophies and ideas in the permit of church that were affecting the brethren. Look in Colossians chapter 2 verse 8 through 10. Particularly those people are wearing Greek areas, like in Colossians and other areas. So look at the guy in Colossians chapter 2 verse 8 through 10. This is, beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy. You know, these are things Greek philosophies that they had, an empty deceit according to the tradition of man. That was their society. Those are the ideas, the philosophies that were running in that society, according to the basic principles of the world, of the society that they had, and not according to Christ. For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead, fatherly. In Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead of the vanity. And you are completely him who is the head of all principality and power. Christ is the head. We are complete in Christ. Look at verse a little bit further in verse 18 of the same chapter. Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen. You see, these spirit beings were angels, but in other words, they were demons. Intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, that is this knowledge that, oh, I've got the scientific knowledge, this thing, this great, I know all these things, you know. That's why it was called Gnosticism, which is basic knowledge.

And not holding fast to the head, which is Christ, from whom all the body nourished and then together by joints and ligaments rose with the increase that is from God. Continue. Therefore, if you died to Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations, to those laws that they have, these dogmatizas? Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle.

Gnosticism had these ideas which were what we call aesthetic, which means, don't do this, don't touch that, don't have to, it was aestheticism. There was a variety or a branch of Gnosticism. There are different branches of Gnosticism, different ideas. It's a whole smog aspore of ideas. One of them is aestheticism, another one is gosticism, which I'll talk to you a little bit later. So, Yair is referring to aesthetic ideas of Gnosticism, which is the not touch, not taste, not handle, which all concern things which parents should be using according to the commandments and doctrines of men. It's not talking about the commandments of God, it's talking about these Greek philosophies.

These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom. Oh, yeah, you got this knowledge, this wisdom, you're very intellectual, you got all this, wow, great stuff. It's self-imposed religion, which is false humility and neglect of the body. By aestheticism, do not touch them, do not taste, do not handle, but of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. So, yeah, we have a whole variety of ideas. One of them, for instance, is affecting, therefore, these stars and things like that, affecting your birth date and there's having things like the horoscopes. That all came from those Greek ideas, the stars of the zodiac.

Therefore, depending which birth date, representing which month, therefore, which star you came from, and that affected your personality and what happens to you and your life. And therefore, you don't have free choice and you don't develop your own character because it's all predestined for you. You see, this affected Christianity in the first century, which was living in this Hellenistic world and created, these ideas created a hybrid Christianity. In other words, these ideas infiltrated into Christianity, causing a Christianity which, yes, had the word of Christ, but it had a distortion.

And that's where the term Gnosticism comes from, which has many religious movements. It's got various groups, and I'm referring to in that era, had various groups which differed considerably. So it's not saying, well, Gnosticism was this specific religion. No, it was philosophies and ideas that filtered all over into different areas. And they all claimed to offer salvation from oppression of material existence by knowledge, by Gnosis, knowledge. And so they believed in things like the world is evil. And therefore, when that got mixed with Christianity, they said the Christian transition was one from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant. Therefore, the New Covenant liberates man from the bad Old Covenant. The Hebrew religion is bad before it started ideas against anti-Jew, but it affected the church because in those years was very much seen as a portion or a part of the actual Jewish belief.

Not that it was part, but it had things like primitive Christianity. The early church observed the Sabbath, observed the Holy Days, tithed to the... they do not eat unclean foods. And therefore, they saw that as a continuation of the Old Testament. Therefore, that was bad. And that's why that idea was turning it against the church. You can see how Satan was inspiring that. They also felt that the Old Covenant is false religion based on material sacrifices.

And therefore, they wanted to convert the primitive Christianity to a more advanced spiritual Christianity, which was really based on Hellenistic theology. In other words, they believed in what they called progressive religion, because Paul, they said, had more knowledge revealed to him than the Gospel writers. So we've got to follow what Paul says, the other things now.

You can see how this whole thing ties together in a very confused way, but that's what Satan does, always brings confusion. And so we have a variety of distortions. It's not just one idea, but a spectrum of ideas and philosophies of men. And basically, it's doing away with the authority of the Bible. Because Christ said, when he was turning it against Satan in Matthew 4, when he was being tempted in Matthew 4, verse 4, he said to Satan, It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

So in other words, these people that believe in a progressive religion, only what Paul says, are wrong, because we're going to believe in every word. I'll just stop. Look how Paul told, in 2 Timothy, in the letter he wrote to Timothy in chapter 3, and we know that very well in 2 Timothy, chapter 3, verse 13 through 17. 2 Timothy, chapter 3, verse 13 through 17, says, But evil man and impostors who grow worse and worse, deceiving and be deceived. They deceiving and are deceived. But you must continue in the things you've learned, and in the sure of, knowing from whom you have learned them.

We've learned these things from Christ and from the apostles. It's God's word. It's solid. We've got to stick to the truth, once delivered to the saints. We've got to hold on, brethren. We've got to hold on. And if these exceptions happened in the past, who is to say they will not happen again in the future?

And that from childhood, you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. All scriptures. So it's not just one verse the eye, and you say, well, I'm just reading this verse and taking it out of context. All scripture. You've got to kind of put it all together and get the weight of the scriptures and get the balance. All scriptures, even by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction and righteousness. That the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. So the whole scriptures teaches that we need the need and how to have salvation, but they all together work together. And we know right at the end of the Book of Revelation says, Be careful. Do not add or take away from these words. We've got to be careful. We know how in James said, You break one law, you break them all. And James said, O by the royal law, you'll be judged by the royal law. You see, not Gnosticism had many ideas, many versions, many distortions. And when this Gnosticism got mixed with Christianity, they came beyond philosophies about who Christ is. And they came with the idea, because they had this idea, physical is bad and spiritual is good and the soul and this and that. Therefore, Christ was like two beings. He was a man and there was a spirit. And then just before Christ died, the spirit left and they say, Well, that's why Christ said, Well, why did you leave me? Why haven't you forsaken me? And things like that. So they used all those distortions to one degree or another, to one degree or another. They asked so many varieties of it. It's just unbelievable. And as we read earlier in John, 2nd John, verse 7, they said that Christ came in the flesh. We read that a little early on. I don't have to turn there again. We also read in 1st John chapter 4. I want to read that again, though. 1st John chapter 4. 1st John chapter 4, verse 1 through 3. He says, Beloved, do not believe every spirit. We read that part. But look at in verse 2 and 3, which I will not read. But by this you know the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ is coming the flesh is of God. You see, this was because they were fighting a variety of Gnosticism, which was called Dostatism. Dostatism.

Which, and this is, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and He's now already in the world. Already existed then with different ideas about who Christ was and things like that.

Because of their Gnostic background and their understanding of material versus spiritual and things like that. They could not conceive, for we read in John 1.1, Hebrews 1.3, in Philippians 2 verse 5 through 9, that Christ do not consider robbery when He was the Word to be equal with God. They do not believe in that. And therefore they could not conceive that He had humbled Himself to a human being, and the very being that made us under the guidance and the authority of the Father had died for us. And therefore has that compassion and understanding, He learned compassion, understanding, additional compassion, understanding and feeling for us, and He is our High Priest today. And brethren, it's such a wonderful knowledge that we have of this for the possible. It's such a wonderful knowledge.

But you see, these two Christians that had been affected by Hellenistic things, they started mixing, syncretism, mixing these things, and therefore it spawned an heretical Hellenistic stroke Jewish cults before Christ was born, and therefore it was ripe to deceive people with that. You see how Satan is so clever, so clever. And so they reworked and reinterpret these teachings as so-called new truths or more advanced form of Christianity. And therefore, brethren, there were many false prophets in the New Testament time, and so is today. And so, brethren, there was religious confusion in the early New Testament time, and so there is today. There's nothing different.

Many of Paul's letters, as we looked at some of them, as well as Peter's, and the Book of Jude, and John's letters, epistles, address the theme. Gnosticism has impacted traditional Christianity, which is what is today. Traditional Christianity has versions or components of what came from Gnosticism. And when you think about what they believed in, you can see some of those things in modern, traditional Christianity. Now, here's the warning for us, brethren. It's in Matthew 24, 24. Matthew 24, 24.

Matthew 24, 24. Matthew 24, 24. For false Christ and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive. There will be false versions of who Christ is, many of them, and many prophets or ministers with these ideas to show and show great signs and wonders to deceive. When you put that in context with Acts 20, when we showed and read to you early on, when Paul was saying goodbye to the Church in Ephesus, and he said, from among you needs come. Now, verse 3 brings a fearful and very sober warning to all of us. And that warning does not end there because it says, but verse 24, it says, great signs and wonders to deceive. So we quite often usually think, well, there will be this false prophet, and yes, there will be, and we'll have great signs. But yes, he's talking about many false prophets and many false prophets, not just that one that will come. So to deceive. And he says, if possible to deceive who? Even the elect. And in some versions, puts in even the very elect.

Now, you can read this to mean that some elect will be deceived.

If they're not watching, if they're not staying close to God, they will be deceived.

It is a sobering thought, brethren. It is a sobering thought. If it were possible, we see the very elect. Brethren, we're going to be battling on our needs, battling on our needs in prayer and fasting, then we are not deceived. Look at what Judas, Jude, Jude, I say Judas because that's how we say it in Portuguese, in Jude. So I apologize, but it's Jude, verse 3 of chapter 3, Jude.

Now Jude was also written around about between 80 and 1980, so quite a matter of book. Jude, the bondservant of Jesus Christ and brother of James. In other words, he was Jesus Christ's brother. He was Jesus Christ's brother. So even we even have to courage to say, I was Christ's brother. I was the brother of James, which was Christ's brother. Always called a half-brother. But yeah, look in verse 3, Beloved, while I was diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation, in other words, brethren, I wanted to write to you about our common salvation, but because of what's happening around us, I changed the topic. I changed the theme. I changed the FPS of my speech, of my lecture, of my sermon, of my epistle. I found it necessary to write to you, extorting you to contend earnestly. In all, as Jude said, because of what's happening now around us, I am extorting you. I've changed the theme of what I wanted to write to you, and I am writing to you to say, listen, brethren, contend earnestly. Fight! Contend means fight earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the science. Brethren, hold on to the gospel that has been preached to us. There's no progressive truth. Love the truth. There's only one truth. Hold on, brethren.