History of the New Testament Church

Thank you again, Mr. Blakey, and again to all of you. Happy Sabbath and welcome to services today. In our sermon today, we are going to conclude a three-part series on the history of the New Testament Church. In part one, if you recall, we discussed the only actual history we have of the New Testament Church known as the Book of Acts, written by a Gentile physician named Luke.

After 50 AD, he was the traveling companion with Paul. You then may recall, in part two, we completed the history of the Book of Acts and examined some of Paul's epistles to compare his actual example with the claims of modern scholars regarding his teachings. So today we're going to conclude this series. We're going to begin by looking at the influence of Greek pagan philosophy in the early church and explore the transition that took place after the death of the original apostles and disciples in their generation.

So let's begin. We'll start off, of course, with a scripture. If you'll turn there with me to Colossians chapter 2 and verse 1. Again, that's Colossians chapter 2 and verse 1. We mentioned this in a previous sermon, that obviously there were Gnostic influences going on in the Colossian congregation. So we're going to take a look at these scriptures closely as this was obviously something that Paul was dealing with and struggling with. Colossians chapter 2 beginning in verse 1. He says, "...for I want you to know what a great conflict I have for you and those in Laodicea and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh." He says, I'm struggling internally here.

I have a conflict inside of myself and that is I know things are going on there, things are being said, and I'm helpless to resolve it. I'm so far away and I hear these things are going on in the congregation and aside from write a letter like this, there's absolutely nothing that I can do to help. Verse 2, he says, "...that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love and attaining to all riches of the assurance of understanding to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ." And then he begins to address some of the Gnostic influences that were occurring in this congregation and the idea that knowledge is what it's all about, that there were various levels of knowledge worshipping angels or idolizing angels or rejecting anything that was physical in order to become more righteous and that those things gave you knowledge.

Those things, which were part of the Greek pagan philosophy, was what you needed to do in order to be enlightened, in order to be more educated. So he begins to address that. He says, "...both the Father and of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." He says, "...wisdom and knowledge come from the Father and they come from Christ." They don't come from human philosophy.

They don't come from people's opinions. It comes from God. Verse 4, "...now this I say, lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words..." And again, this was part of the Greek philosophy. Let's reason. Let's debate. Let's discuss this. Let me show you how intellectual I am. Let me give you these persuasive words that I have to convince you to my point of view. "...lest anyone should deceive you with persuasive words.

For though I am absent in flesh, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ, as you therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him." He says, don't let anyone lead you astray. Don't let anyone tell you that they have hidden treasures of wisdom, that there's a philosophy that you need to live by that comes from a different source than the Father and the Son. He says, don't buy into that. Continuing, rooted and build up in Him, referring to Jesus Christ, and established in the faith as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving.

He says, everything you need to know for salvation you've already been taught. There's no additional knowledge. There's no secret wisdom. There's nothing else that you need to learn or understand than what you have already been taught, what you already know. Verse 8, beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.

Verse 9, for in Him, regarding Christ, regarding God, in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. The fullness of everything we need to know doesn't come from the philosophies and opinions and ideas of men. It comes from God. Verse 10, and you are complete in Him. You don't need anything else to become complete. And this is the same problem that occurs sometimes in the Church of God in the 21st century.

People come up with the knee-jerk doctrine of the month club, always coming up with some new attitude or idea or a way to look at scriptures. I gave a sermon on that. Those are called spiritual opiates.

Those usually are from people who do those things to avoid dealing with their real and genuine problems. So to play dodgeball with God, they start focusing on these tangent issues and ideas and try to elevate them as if there's something that has to do with salvation or righteousness. And Paul says here, what you have today, you are complete in Him.

You don't need any other ideas. You don't need additional knowledge. You don't need additional wisdom from the philosophy, the opinions, the ideas of men. Complete in Him who is ahead of all principality and power. As we briefly discussed in the last sermon, Paul was confronting a type of growing Greek philosophy known here as Gnosticism. The philosophy appealed to the Greek fondness for mystery religions, for additional knowledge, for intellectualism. He's telling them that all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge come only from God, not from men and not from angels. Paul is encouraging them to remember what they were originally taught and not allow empty human philosophy to deceive them. Greek philosophy, with its emphasis on knowledge and wisdom and reason and intellectualism, in Paul's opinion, in his mind, was just another tradition of men. A Western tradition, conceived by the basic elements of the world. That is carnal human nature, vain carnal human nature, led astray by Satan the devil.

Now, the other disciples were also aware of these influences. The Apostle John also understood the influence of Greek philosophy. As a matter of fact, his description of Jesus as the Logos in the first chapter of John was also used in Greek philosophy in John's day. But John uses the word in a larger sense that included Hebrew concepts and ideas, going back to the Old Testament. We also see the example in 1 John chapter 4. He referred to those who do not believe in the actual incarnation in Christ and the birth of Jesus. Remember, they were against anything physical.

Anything physical was inferior. He refers to them as the Antichrist. He says, if you don't believe in the birth of Jesus Christ and His incarnation physically, you're the Antichrist, is what John says later on. Let's go to 1 Timothy chapter 6 and verse 17. See another scripture in which Paul warns Timothy to guard very closely the truth that he had and not to be deceived by knowledge that was false and to avoid getting in these intellectual discussions, titillating themselves with these high-minded intellectual discussions about nothing. That's what Paul's opinion was. 1 Timothy chapter 6 and verse 17. He says, command those who are rich in this present age, not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God who gives us richly all things to enjoy, let them do good that they be rich in good works, ready to give, willing to share, storing up for themselves a good foundation for the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life. So he's saying there's a good purpose of being wealthy. You can use that wealth to do good rather than being selfish or greedy. You, if you've been blessed with wealth, riches, you can use that to serve. You can use that to do good things. And then it's just like he throws a switch. Totally changes the discussion which was soft and encouraging to one of caution.

Oh, Timothy! It's like he just thinks of something. He's a lightning bolt. The light bulb goes on in his head. Oh yes, I've got to tell Timothy about this. I've got to caution Timothy about this.

Oh, Timothy, guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge by professing it some have strayed concerning the faith. Grace be to you. Amen. So he was warning him. It's a phrase I use sometimes in people who want to have these discussions. I call it theo-babble. Right? They want to talk about these high-minded things about God, these esoteric thoughts and ideas and doctrines, and I'm interested in how one lives, how you apply Christianity to your life, how you live it, not some esoteric discussion about how many angels you can fit on the head of a pin.

The Cambridge Study Bible says here, regarding this verse, it says, profane chatter, what is falsely called knowledge, it continues, quote, this suggests that the false teaching combated in this letter is a form of Gnosticism, end of quote, and indeed that it was. So Paul's warning Timothy to beware of the velocity of men and the never-ending search for a deep level of knowledge. And some people are just wired that way. They think that salvation or they think that righteousness only comes in some continual effort to use intellectualism to know God, to understand God. 1 Corinthians chapter 2 verses 1 through 10. Let's take a look at another scripture here. 1 Corinthians chapter 2 verses 1 through 10. And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. Yes, I didn't come to you like a Greek philosopher with this great reason, with this charisma, with this intellectual knowledge to dazzle you with how much I knew. He says in verse 2, For I was determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. The central theme of my message was Jesus Christ. Paul says, Jesus Christ, the Savior who forgives sins, all the way through who and what he is to Jesus Christ, the soon-coming King and the Messiah in the kingdom of God.

That who I came to talk about, he says, not to talk about human wisdom and human ideas.

Continuing, I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, and my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom. He says, I didn't come to you like a Greek philosopher. I didn't come here to persuade you of some great, deep intellectual thought, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, which are coming to nothing. So, Paul is saying here that he's rejecting the wisdom of this age. He says, we came to you with God's Spirit and with power to give you spiritual knowledge, spiritual wisdom that can only be discerned by the Spirit. We didn't come to you with the wisdom of the Greek cultural landscape that we live in here today. Continuing here in verse 7, but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery and again this is a take-off on Gnosticism, the mystery religion, only he's talking about the right kind of mystery. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom that God ordained before the ages for our glory. So he says, the mystery that I gave you hasn't been invented by men. Here it is. God is creating a family and from the very beginning, God created human beings as a way for them to develop character so that ultimately they could become part of his family.

He says, that's the message that I came. Jesus Christ, who and what he was, why he died, why he was resurrected, and him crucified. So Paul again is contrasting the wisdom of the world and the so-called mystery religions with the true mystery and that is that God has a plan and it goes back to the beginning and he is methodically working on that plan and one of the stages of that plan was to come to the point in human history to send Jesus Christ to become the Lamb of God to make it possible for the sins of the world to be forgiven. Verse 8, which none of the rulers of this age knew, for had they had known they would not have crucified the Lord of glory, but it is written, I is not seen nor ear heard nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God prepared for those who love him. Verse 10, but God has revealed them to us through his Spirit. The revelation of God in a mystery, that hidden wisdom, doesn't come from human philosophies, it only comes from God as a gift through his Holy Spirit. You can only discern spiritual things through Spirit. So this is the message that Paul is reminding them and bringing to their attention. But God has revealed them to us through his Spirit, for the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God. So again, to recap here, Paul's telling the Corinthians, he did not bring them wisdom through human knowledge or secular philosophy. Instead, he brought them the wisdom of God's mysterious plan of salvation for all humanity through the preaching of the Gospel. Paul states here that wisdom and knowledge doesn't come by human words, it doesn't come by just reasoning, it doesn't come by having a deep intellect, it is revealed by God's Spirit. It comes from God. It comes to the spiritually mature who live by faith, not by the persuasive words of human wisdom. So with that background, let's begin now to take a little bit of time here and talk about the history leading up to what occurred in the Church of God when the Book of Acts came to an end. So we're going to backtrack a little bit.

A powerful military conqueror whose name was Alexander the Great, he was Alexander of Macedon, which was part of Greece. He captured much of the then-known world in the 4th century BCE, or before the common era. Even though he died when he was young, he was only 32 years old when he died in 323 BC. He and his successors desired to unite the world with a single dominant culture, a Greek culture, to be exact, the Athenian culture, the kind of culture that existed in Athens.

And it became known by what we call today Hellenization. This term refers to the historical spread of ancient Greek culture, religion, and to a lesser extent, language over the foreign peoples that had been conquered by Alexander the Great and then controlled by his successors after his death. Greek influence even went as far as India and Afghanistan. That's how much influence Hellenization had in the world. Alexander recruited many Jews to his army, and the contacts between the Jews and their new conqueror deeply influenced Jewish religious thinking.

Judiastic education was penetrated by Hellenistic thought. In a short period of time afterward, for example, there was a high priest named Jason. He lived about 175 BCE, and he is reputed to have established a Greek academy in Jerusalem to promote the study of Homer. Homer was a legendary Greek author. So, Hellenization at an early period of time even came to Judea and influenced the movers and the shakers of Judean culture. Jewish scholars then began to approach the Torah. They even began to approach the Old Testament, and they said, ah, we have a new tool. So, they proceeded to add Greek reason to the original Hebrew revelation. And that's what they began to do.

By the time that Jesus arrives on the scene, much of Judea was Hellenized. We may not realize that. The Sadducees were basically Hellenized. Many of these so-called intellectuals, again, the movers and the shakers in Jesus' time spoke Greek, dressed like Greek culture, and were thoroughly Hellenized, including believing in some pagan concepts like the immortality of the soul. That wasn't originally part of what the Bible taught, but it was brought in to a number of Jewish believers through Hellenization. Eventually, this influence also included ancient Rome as it later grew to become a great power. Philosophy was considered the religion of the intelligent people in the Greco-Roman world, drawing many from the teachings of a particular man named Plato. We'll talk about him in a minute. It took pride and debate and discussion and the acquiring of knowledge and something that they called reason. As it states in Acts 17 and verse 21, when Paul later went to Athens, it says this, and again, and this is Acts chapter 17 and verse 21, it says, quote, and this is from the New International Version, all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing else but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.

That's what they did for entertainment. That's what they considered to be knowledge.

Paul himself was raised in Tarsus and he was very familiar with Greek Hellenized culture. He actually was born in a Hellenized part of the world. He spoke Greek. He understood their philosophy. He understood the Greek language. The Greek language had become the lingua franca of the western world and that's why the New Testament was written in common Greek, known as Koin Greek, so that the largest number of people in the Roman Empire would be able to read it and understand it. In Acts chapter 17, Paul traveled to Athens, as I just mentioned a minute ago, and he cleverly engaged in a conversation with some philosophers about God, referring to the altar that he discovered there that said it was the altar to an unknown God and being a clever orator himself, he said, hey, everyone, I notice you have an altar to an unknown God. I'm here to tell you about that God, who that God is, and what his plan is.

And he engaged in a conversation with them. But it didn't go very far because as soon as he brought up the resurrection, and they believed in the immortality of the soul, what need is there of a resurrection if you already have eternal life? As soon as he brought up the word resurrection, then the conversation was shut down. They no longer had an interest in hearing what Paul had to say.

Going back to Acts chapter 6 verse 1, I want us all to recall the first major issue in the church that led to a problem. What do you think was, if you recall Acts chapter 6, the first major big issue in the church that led to a problem? A question over circumcision?

No. How about, should we observe Sunday instead of the Sabbath?

Nope. Whether the holy days were done away?

Nope. Whether Adam had a belly button or not?

Nope. That wasn't it. That came a little later on.

The intellectuals. That's something they would want to talk about. Let's go to Acts chapter 6 and verse 1. It says, now in those days when the number of disciples were multiplying, that's good news, the church is growing, there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenist. These were those who had been brought up and reared in the adopted Greek culture and language.

Sometimes, I think what we fail to realize is after Judah went into captivity and the edict came out that they could return back to their homeland, only a few people went back to Jerusalem.

Most Jews never went back to Jerusalem. In Persia, in Alexandria, over much of the then-known world, the Jews had scattered and become successful business people and become successful in where they lived and what they did. They had no desire to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild a temple or live there. Only a few Jews did that. The only statistic I ever saw is that there were twice as many Jews who lived outside of Judea as there were who lived in Judea by the time of Jesus Christ.

So the majority of Jews who would come to Jerusalem to visit, maybe for a high day or visit relatives, the majority of Jews were Hellenist. They had been brought up understanding Greek cultural dynamics, and that includes Greek philosophy. So there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenist because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. They said there's prejudice going on here because our widows are not of a Hebrew culture because they're Hellenized. They're being mistreated. They're being treated like they're second-class citizens, and that's not fair. Then the 12 summoned the multitude of the disciples and said, it's not desirable that we should leave the Word of God and serve tables. Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business, but we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the Word. I'm going to stop right there. We covered this a little while back. My point is that the first big problem in the Church of God was cultural. It was this clash between believers who grew up in a Gentile world, a Hellenized culture with a Hellenized rule of thought, and that included Greek philosophy, perhaps dress, other things that distinguished them as being Hellenized in contrast to those who were of the Jewish culture. That's how far it goes back.

The issue that we're going to see that occurs in the Church goes all the way back, very early on in our history, to that time. A positive aspect of Hellenization was that it broke down barriers by unifying cultures and a common language, in this case Greek.

But the negative aspect of Hellenization was that it blended, often overwhelmed, native cultures. It would take them over. It would submerge a native culture and it would dominate it. It also included the Greek love of human philosophy and its inherent paganism.

For the Church, this was a danger, and this was a danger very early on. We just saw, we read some scriptures, that Paul was already dealing with the problems of Greek philosophies, entering the doctrine of the Church regarding the very nature of Jesus Christ, whether he was actually born or not, whether he was divine like the Father or a created being. All of these are being introduced by Greek philosophy. All these questions, all of these issues, and there were lots of different groups within Greek philosophy. There were the Gnostics. They were in the mystical knowledge. There were the Stoics. Well, I'm above being controlled by pleasure or pain.

There were the Aesthetics. They believed in severe self-discipline, that I grow and I gain additional knowledge by denying myself of everything. But there was one individual Greek philosopher who lived before the time of Paul in the early Church who had the greatest impact on Greek philosophy, and that man's name was Plato. Here's what the Encyclopedia Britannico says about Plato. He says he was born in 428 in Athens, Greece, and he died about 348 in Athens. Quote, ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates, teacher of Aristotle, and founder of the Academy, that's capital A. So that was their college of the day where you would study Greek philosophies best known as the author of philosophical works of unparalleled influence.

End of quote. Here's what the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology written by Walter L. Well says.

Ancient Greek philosopher, this is the article under Plato, ancient Greek philosopher, one of the most influential thinkers who ever lived. During his career, Plato wrote more than two dozen philosophical works, which are still extant. Three of the most important contributions Plato made to the philosophy of religion are his theory of forms, his cosmology, and his teaching concerning the immortality of the soul. I'm just going to quickly touch upon two of them. First of all, one of the three was his theory of forms. This was the ideas. He wrote a thesis called The Republic, and in it he discussed the fact that there was a triad or a trinity of eternal existence. He said there are three things, a trinity, a triad of things that are eternal. He says one god, two ideas, and three a world spirit. And later on, it was a Catholic named Augustine who would flush out that understanding because he was into Greek philosophy and helped to solidify the teaching of the trinity. Another thing, one of the three things that I just mentioned, was his teaching concerning the immortality of the soul. I'd like to read to you from the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia under the article Death, Volume 2, page 812. Quote, here's what the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia states, for we are influenced always more or less by the Greek platonic idea that the body dies, yet the soul is immortal. Such an idea is utterly contrary to the Israelite consciousness and is nowhere found in the Old Testament. Continuing. The whole man dies when in death the spirit goes out of a man. Not only his body, but his soul also returns to a state of death and belongs to the nether world. Therefore, the Old Testament can speak of the death of one soul.

End of quote. So here, a very prestigious work, the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, acknowledges these are people who believe in the immortality of the soul, I might add.

They acknowledge that the concept and idea was nowhere found in the Old Testament, but was introduced by the Greek platonic idea that the body dies, yet the soul is immortal.

From the Encyclopedia Britannica, this is their CD version under the article Soul, quote, the early Hebrews apparently had a concept of the soul, but did not separate it from the body, although later Jewish writers developed the idea of the soul further. I'll just stop right there. Of course, they did when they became Hellenized. Then they took the original idea that was taught in the Old Testament and began to blend it with the belief in the immortality of the soul. Picking it up again, quote, Old Testament references to the soul are related to the concept of breath and establish no distinction between the intangible soul and the body. Christian concepts of a body-soul dichotomy, that is two contradictory parts, a spirit and your flesh, originated with the ancient Greeks and were introduced into Christian theology at an early date by Saint Gregory of Nyssa in 375 AD and by Saint Augustine in 390 AD, end of quote. So here, these are secular sources who readily admit the influence of pagan Greek philosophies through a man that was deeply admired, Plato, and how it influenced the church, particularly after 100 AD when we see the death of the original disciples. So understanding the influence of Plato and Greek philosophy, what are the stages? What are some of the things that happened to the church? Unfortunately, there's no historical information. We have to surmise this just through what the scriptures tell us and what scattered historical bits and pieces we can put together.

But here it is. First of all, the conversion of the Gentiles, soon far outnumbered Jewish converts.

Paul was an outstanding missionary and he had a much greater field to harvest. And by 100 AD, around the death of the time of the last disciple or apostle named John, Gentiles with a Hellenistic background dominated the faith at that time that was called Christianity. Overwhelmed by sheer numbers, what was known as Christianity. The next generation of church leaders would have Greco-Roman backgrounds and Greco-Roman names, as we'll shortly see. Another thing that occurred, almost like the perfect storm, these events, the Jewish authorities provoked Rome by instituting a rebellion, and Rome responded during the first Jewish-Roman war. This occurred from 66 to 73 of the common era. The Romans responded by invading Judah, destroying the temple in 70 AD, and as a result of this, various Jewish sects disappeared. The Pharisees evolved in what became known as Rabbinic Judaism, and the Sadducees all had to go out and get a job, because there was no temple anymore. So it shook up Judean culture. Tradition states that the Jerusalem Christians had been miraculously warned to flee north to Pella, which is in modern Jordan, across the Jordan River. But history says nothing else beyond that time about the congregation in Jerusalem. They lost their leadership status. They totally lost their influence in the church in 70 AD, when the Romans came in. Before then, it was Jerusalem that you went to when you had a ministerial conference.

It was James, or the successor of James, that you would go to kind of as the home office, as the mother church. When problems came up and you wanted to discuss issues, you would go to the Jerusalem congregation. Now it's gone! It has been dissembled! It no longer existed, so obviously there was a void in leadership. After 70 AD, the Jews were greatly despised by Rome, and they were persecuted. There would be two more Roman Jewish wars that would soon follow the first Jewish-Roman war that occurred from 66 to 73 AD. This created a deep sense of antisemitism.

Anything related to a Jew, their culture, how they dressed, their language, what they believed, was suddenly pushed out. And people developed hatred towards the Jewish people. Christian communities naturally desired to be distinct from the Jews to avoid persecution. If you lived in that kind of an environment, and there's deep hatred towards a religious group, and you're of a different culture than that religious group, because they're Jewish, and you come from a Hellenized background, you don't want to experience the persecution they experience, so you begin to separate yourself. And by 70 AD, of course, many of the Christians were being uninvited from attending the synagogues that they had for many, many years. In human history, the victorious get the right history and promote their agenda. That's just what human beings do. The victorious are the ones who always get the right history. If I were to talk about the history of the United States, for example, from the viewpoint of someone whose descendants are from Europe, I have one perspective. Eventually, the people from Europe dominated this continent, founded a great nation. But if I were to write that history from the perspective of a Native American Indian, my history might be a little bit different. So, as I said, in human cultures, the victorious get the right history to promote what they achieved and their agenda. And in 313 AD, Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which was an agreement that treated Christians benevolently within the Roman Empire. He himself was baptized on his deathbed in 337 AD. The Catholic Church rose to preeminence, and they wrote the history to promote their agenda. Much of what we know about the so-called heretics that we write about, we don't know what the heretics actually believed because that was all destroyed. The only thing we know is what the Catholic Church says they believed, not necessarily what they actually believed. Why? Because when you win, when you're victorious, you get the right the history. They alone would decide the future course of Christianity would become a monopoly. They would have no rivals. By 100 AD, around 100 AD, the last of the apostles died, and he was John, who was exiled on an island when he wrote the book of Revelation. And most of his generation of leadership, if you ever thought about it, had Hebrew or Aramaic names like Matthew, John, James. Paul himself, his Hebrew name was Saul. He changed it to the Paul, so it would be more acceptable in his mission to the Gentiles. If you look throughout the New Testament, you find people who commonly have Hebrew or Aramaic names that reflect the culture that they grew up in.

They grew up respecting Hebrew heritage. They grew up respecting the scriptures. They were taught the Hebrew scriptures since they were children. The next generation that arose was completely starkly different from all of them. Let's go to 2 Peter, chapter 1 and verse 16, and see where Peter also was concerned about the influence that Greek philosophy would have. 2 Peter, chapter 1 and verse 16. He wrote here, For we did not follow cunningly devised fables, when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. What Peter is saying is, don't give me any philosophical baloney, some reasoning of men, some intellectual hogwash, about who and what Jesus Christ was and whether he was physical and whether he was actually born. He says, don't tell me that. I was there. I was an eyewitness of his majesty. So we don't need to have a discussion on this. Peter is not impressed with the humanistic Greek philosophies. He refers to the intellectual ideas of his day from the new century version, smart stories that someone invented. And to quote, so who replaced the original disciples? As I said, the last died around 100 AD. And we have very little history of what's being said and what's occurring, but we do know this, that those who are the Hellenized Greek culture overwhelm those whose background, like the original disciples, were from a Hebrew perspective, a Hebrew culture deeply immersed in the law of Moses and in the Hebrew Bible, what we today call the Old Testament. I'd like to briefly mention some of the early church fathers, and it's not my goal today to condemn them. I'll let God be anyone's judge.

It's just to mention a little bit about them, and you're welcome to study each of these individuals more deeply, but I just thought I would bring out a few names of those that arise in history as the ones who were leaders and replaced the original disciples.

One of them is Justin Martyr. He lived in the early second century. Before his conversion, he pursued various studies in Greek philosophy, went to a number of schools regarding Greek philosophy. He studied it immensely. He was impressed with the Christian hope of eternal life and humility, even in death. He witnessed Christians being persecuted to death, and he was just impressed by the fact that they would enter the arena or they would go to their death calm and relaxed. They weren't like anyone else. They weren't angry, they weren't violent, they weren't shouting. He said they went to their death with a smile on their face as if they had a hope that was incomprehensible. He says that's what led him to Christianity. He wrote many treatises. He embraced both pagan beliefs and Christianity, and he tried to merge the things together. He believed Plato was right about many things, including the immortality of the soul. He said, quote, God could be known to many people outside of Judaism and Christianity, end of quote. He is the first one to really begin merging philosophical thinking, Greek philosophy into various theological ideas, especially the relationship between Christ and the Father. So these early church fathers see a need to address Greek intellectualism, because the Greeks are coming to them and they're saying, well, is this Christ divine? Is this Christ fully like the Father, or is He a created being? They're asking all these questions, and these individuals like Justin Martyr feel an obligation to engage in this kind of conversation. Whereas Jesus and Paul would have said, who cares? Knowledge is revealed through spirit, not through discussions of people and their own opinions and their own ideas. It is a revealed knowledge that comes through God's spirit. Don't waste your time. Don't get involved in those kind of discussions, because they lead nowhere. But they felt a need to be able to debate with the pagan Greek philosophers. So they used Greek philosophy to combat Greek philosophy, and they blended in some Christian concepts.

Greek philosophy challenged the nature of the relationship between the Father and Christ. Again, it asked, are they equal? Are they actually two gods or one God? And he concluded himself that Christ was not created, but he came out of the Father. So he put Jesus Christ in a subordinate position. He was arrested in 165 AD, and he was martyred. Here's a statement regarding Justin Martyr from Dr. Thomas F. Madden in his class, The Modern Scholar from Jesus to Christianity. This is chapter 7 of his class, The Modern Scholar from Jesus to Christianity. Quote, Justin embraced both pagan philosophy and Christianity. This is important, and this is one of the things that will set many of the early church fathers apart from earlier church leaders. That is, they're not pushing aside pagan learnings along with the pagan beliefs. Instead, they are using the fruits of Greek philosophy to better understand and defend Christianity. End of quote.

Boy, that's putting it tactfully. I'm going to reword that for you. They're using Greek philosophy to distort and pervert the Word of God. That's what they're doing. It reminds me of Deuteronomy chapter 12, where if you came from a Hebrew culture, you would appreciate that God said, take heed to yourself that you were not ensnared to follow the other nations after they are destroyed from before you, and that you do not inquire after their God, saying, how did these nations serve their gods? I will do likewise. Again, that comes from Deuteronomy chapter 12 and verse 30.

In the Hebrew culture, you rejected everything that was contrary to the Word of God. You didn't embrace it and blend it and adopt it so that you could have arguments and discussions with people who hate you and don't believe what you believe anyway. So again, that is a quote from Dr. Thomas F. Madden. Another individual was Clement of Alexandria. He was born about 150 AD.

He was born in Alexandria, which actually was founded by Alexander the Great. In this city was a hotbed of Gnosticism. He wrote treatises that blended Greek philosophy into the Christian faith. He used philosophy and reason to insist that Gnosticism was based on blind faith as it is not rational. So he used the tools of Greek philosophy to combat Greek philosophy and blend it in against some Christian ideas and concepts. He believed Plato and Aristotle and other Greek philosophers saw and understood the truth. He felt they were divinely inspired, and he insisted that Christians should study philosophy because in it is the search for truth, and that truth would lead one to Christianity. This is an early church father. This is the kind of individual that replaced a Peter, a Paul, a John. He died about 215 AD.

There's Origen. Origen was a prolific writer. He wrote almost 6,000 works. Wow! That was before typewriters, word processors. He was born in 184 in Alexandria. He studied Greek philosophy, and he wrote to earn a living. He opened a school of philosophy. He was so enmeshed in it, believed in it so much, he even opened his own school of Greek philosophy. He did not believe the philosophers were divinely inspired, but they were smart men who eventually came to the truth. He also confronted a large Jewish community in Alexandria and studied the Old Testament closely so that he could debate the Jewish scholars. He did something that has influenced Christianity ever since then. He tried to extract what he called allegorical truth from the Old Testament. So he would say, well, it really doesn't mean that. It's an allegory. It doesn't mean what it says. It's an allegory. It just represents something different. He became famous. As a matter of fact, he went on what we would call today the speaker's tour. He traveled around the Roman Empire. He became a celebrity. He would travel everywhere and he would lecture and speak. But this ended in 230 AD. He was ordained a priest in Syria and then the bishop of Alexandria, who now was jealous of him, all the attention he was getting as a celebrity, disfellowshipped him and he moved and he went to Caesarea. He condemned those who believed in the millennium and the rule of Christ. He said, that's just an allegory. There's no real Jesus Christ coming back to earth. That's just representative of the fact that God is good and eventually good overcomes evil. So it's not really true. That's not what it means. So extracting allegorical truth is a technique of interpreting spiritual events and statements as analogies, not literal events. While this may have some value in certain instances, allegorical truth is often applied to the things that are meant to be taken literally because that's what they mean. But some people enjoy using allegorical truth because it allows them to avoid doing what the Bible actually says. And that's with us to this very day. Another individual is Clement of Rome.

He was born about 35 AD. He is listed by Arrhenius and Tertullian as the bishop of Rome, holding office from 88 until his death in 99. He's considered by some to be the first apostolic father of the church. He's most known for writing an epistle to the church at Corinth around 96 AD.

So John was quite elderly. John may have still been alive. He wrote an epistle to the church at Corinth. He was troubled by the Corinthian congregation who had deposed all of the bishops and elders. And in his letter, he tells them to repent and he tells them to reinstate all of those who have been deposed because he asserts apostolic authority. He says they're bishops, they're elders, and therefore they have authority over you. You have no right to depose them.

So that's what he's known for. Aside from that, we don't have a lot of details on what he actually believed. There's an interesting individual named Polycarp of Smyrna. Polycarp seems to have been maybe that transition zone between John and the original generation and what would follow him. He was born in 69 AD. He was the Christian bishop of Smyrna in modern Turkey, and it's recorded that he had been a disciple of John. And there came up a controversy at that time between him and the pope who was in Rome, Pope Anasidus, and Polycarp said that we in the east will continue to observe Passover on the 14th of Nisan and continuing in to the days of Unleavened Bread because I'm the bishop and that's what I was taught by John. That's what the eastern churches were doing.

The pope by this time, the western churches, had stopped observing the Passover and started observing the Sunday after Passover every year. We call that Easter today. So there was a controversy. Those who observed the 14th of Nisan, God's original command, were called quarto decimani, which means, which is Latin, it means the 14th of theirs because they clung to the 14th. It was meant to be a derogatory term because they held on to the celebration of the Passover. Polycarp even visited Rome and they sat down and they discussed it, but they both agreed to disagree and nothing was resolved. Polycarp continued to keep the Passover until he died. Around 155 he was executed for his beliefs as a Christian and he died as a martyr. Another one, Irenius, he was born around 130 AD. As a young man, he heard Polycarp speak. He became a priest, he had a good education, and he used reason to defend Christianity against the Gnostics. Again, he used Greek philosophical intellectualism to debate against Greek philosophers. He wrote in Greek. He challenged a number of Gospels that were arising called Gnostic Gospels and he said they're not authentic, they are not a postolic in origin, therefore he called them a fraud, and that was a good thing.

He mentions the first canon of the New Testament Scriptures and he comes very close to the books that we actually have today. Again, this was Irenius born in 130 AD. Last one I'll talk about is Tertullian. He was born in North Africa, about 160 AD. He was converted in his 30s and he became a priest. He didn't like Greek intellectualism and philosophy. As a matter of fact, he referred to Greek philosophers as, quote, the patriarchs of the heretics. He said all the heretics, quote, Greek philosophers. He was a good debater. He had a sharp wit. By 280, Christians were becoming numerous and were being attacked in writings by pagan religious authors and he responded to them the best way that he could. He discussed how Christians should live in a pagan world. Nothing that approaches idolatry said should be observed. He said you shouldn't take jobs even in the civil service for the government of Rome because it's pagan. He said you shouldn't serve in the military. These were some of the thoughts and beliefs that he had. Near the end of his life, it got a little tricky. By 206 AD, he became part of a movement that was called Montanism and it basically was a movement that encouraged frenzied prophecy. Like we have Pentecostals today, the people in this movement believed that the spirit, a spirit, would take you over and in a frenzied way you would begin uttering prophecies uncontrollably. Near the end of his life, he became involved in that movement and that took a little bit of luster off of his life. Well, we're getting close to the end of the sermon today and I want to ask this question. The question that I've been asked before come on Greg, can a political or religious idea really change in that short a period of time? Say between the death of John and what arises in the fourth century at the time of Constantine, 240, 250 years, things can't really change that much, can they? Well, let me ask this. The United States declared its independence in 1776. It started out as a confederation and became governed by a constitution. It was founded as a republic and it evolved into a democracy. It has 27 amendments to the original constitution. It began as 13 states clinging to the Atlantic coast and it spread across not just a continent but even into the Pacific like the state of Hawaii. It started out as a religious nation with Judeo-Christian God recognized in public schools and government buildings. The Congregational Church was also the established church in the state of Massachusetts until 1833. The USA began by permitting the sin of slavery and had a civil war less than a hundred years after it was founded, costing 620,000 lives. The population in the USA in 1800 was 5.3 million. Today it's 325 million. The Protestant faith was embraced by 95 percent of Americans in the year 1800. Today it is 46 percent and declining. So with some of those facts, do you think that things can change dramatically in a mere 240 years? And all of these things occurred that I just mentioned during a free press when nothing is hidden. Nothing is snuck under the table because the media will report it and always has throughout American history. Everything is exposed to the public through the media. Now contrast what could and did occur between 100 AD and 350-400 AD in a world controlled and dominated by one thought, one culture with no press exposing changes or anything that's going on. Our final scripture today, Isaiah chapter 29 and verse 13. If you'll turn there with me, Isaiah chapter 29 and verse 13.

Final scripture.

Amazingly, this comes from the prophet Isaiah talking about the kingdom of God. I'm going to read it from the new international version and I encourage you to follow along with me with whatever translation you have in your hands. Isaiah chapter 29 and verse 13. He says, the Lord says, these people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.

So God looks down on the earth and says, the way that these people worship me isn't in spirit and truth. It's blended philosophies and ideas and doctrines and rules taught by men. Verse 14.

Therefore, once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder. The wisdom of the wise will perish. And all of the human cultures, not just to pick on the western Greek philosophical culture, but eastern cultures, African cultures, and Native American cultures, all human cultures and philosophies and ideas about God that were created by men will perish. The intelligence of the intelligent will vanish. Those who think they are just so smart, the intellectuals, those who want to sit around all day and talk about gibberish and theo-babble, all of that will vanish because it has no meaning. It serves no real purpose.

So, brethren, the complete change of culture is needed in this world, a complete change of culture, including the western world. And this can only occur by the establishment of the kingdom of God.

Religion, including what's known today as Christianity, has been more greatly influenced by pagan philosophies and teachings than one cares to admit. The only way this change, the kind of change that needs to take place to fulfill Isaiah chapter 29, the only way this change can take place is it is refreshed by God and by his son Jesus Christ. And that time of refreshing is pictured by one of the Holy Days, rejected by those who were influenced by Greek philosophical thought. Those Holy Days, and one in particular known as the Festival of Tabernacles, that pictures the time of the literal return of Jesus Christ symbolized on trumpets and the establishment of a brand new fresh culture, uninhibited by the past with a new language in the world and a purest form of worship and religion. God is going to wipe the slate clean of this world through the day of the Lord and through the great tribulation. He's going to turn this world upside down like digging in your garden. He's literally going to turn it over and he's going to start anew and he's going to start fresh and he's going to do that as pictured to all of us by a Holy Day known as the Feast of Tabernacles. May Godspeed that day. Thy kingdom come.