THE HISTORY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH

Lecture 1: "Apostolic Fathers"

Now this is the first lecture in a series of studies on

Church History. And, at the Pensacola Bible Institute here in

Pensacola, we consider church history to be second only to the

Bible in importance, when it comes to the Christian knowing

what's going on, and what's been going on, and what's going to go

on.

You and I are living in the great unhinged, disjointed,

uprooted generation. And we put an emphasis on Church History

here at the Institute, because we believe it's second only to the

Bible itself. Church history can give the modern-day Christian

stability in his growth and grace, and his service for the Lord.

Now, let me explain that for just a minute. I realize

history is a rather dull subject, and those of you who studied it

in high school and college have probably had enough, and have

probably had enough of it to stuff your gizzard full of it. But

you and I are living in a generation that doesn't know its roots.

It doesn't know where it's been. A man said one time, "The only

thing that men learn from history is that men never learn from

history." And the truth of the matter is, those who forget

history must be condemned to repeat it.

The briefest study of the United Nations and the League of

Nations should show the student what this matter means. And if

you want to know why we have a generation that doesn't know where

they're going, or how to get there, a generation that produces

almost one bible per year without any revival, a generation that

hops and skips from fad to fad at a maddening rate of a

psychopathic maniac, without knowing what's going to happen, it's

because they don't know what has happened.

Now the briefest study of the word of God will reveal that

there is a gap between the Bible type of Christianity and modern-

day Christianity, which is so great that nobody who failed to

study church history could possibly understand the difference. If

you contrast modern-day Christianity to what you find in the

Bible, you'll find a gap so great that efforts must be made to

make the Bible conform to the twentieth century.

And these new "bibles," of course, are attempts to make the

Bible do that. There is no way on earth that a new Christian can

look at the religious situation around him and connect it with

the word of God. There isn't any connection. Now, we'll show you

what we mean here in just a very few minutes.

But the Christian needs roots. The Christians I am talking

to, many of them don't know their genealogy. They don't know

their lineage. They don't know their forefathers. They don't now

what kind of people they are, and what kind of people they are

supposed to be.

Somebody said, "Well, we just follow Christ."

No chance at all!

The people who talk the most about "following Christ" are

the liberals who don't even know Christ, the "Jesus people" and

"Children of God" who reject three-quarters of the Old Testament

and half of the New Testament, and the hippie communes and the

rest of them whose conception of Christ is what the Bible calls

an "unclean spirit." In plainer words, knowledge of the Bible by

itself is not sufficient for the modern-day Christian, unless

he's going to absolutely go across the grain of nearly everything

he finds in religion today.

You say, "If he does this, he'll become a revolutionary."

No, I didn't mean that. None of Christ's followers broke into

stores and stole television sets. And if there is one thing that

was not characteristic of Christ's followers, it was never

characteristic of them to claim civil rights, or demonstrate for

rights. That's one thing they just didn't fool with.

What I'm saying is, you cannot possibly adjust yourself to

this modern present-day setup with peace of mind and peace of

heart, and find what God wants you to do, and do it in the

Biblical fashion God intends for you to do it, unless you have

some understanding of what happened between when that Bible was

written and when you got saved. And a lot has happened since that

Bible was written and when you got saved. And it is the purpose

of Church History to bring these matters where the Christian can

understand them.

When the Beatles made the recording, "The Nowhere Man," they

were simply giving the credal statement of the average person in

western Europe and America today. The average American has no

roots, no anchor, no moorings. He's like a ship in a gale. And

that is the average Christian. If you want to know why the

contemporary situation doesn't yield one soul-winner per 500

Christians, it's because the average Christian has no moorings,

no anchorage; he doesn't know what he's supposed to be, not even

from the word of God.

And when he goes to the word of God, he's got 50 men to

interpret for him differently, and 50 versions with 50 different

interpretations. And, finally, he just gives up. If he knew

history, he wouldn't give up.

And so we teach our students Church History as secondary

only to the Bible in matters of importance for the child of God.

The modern philosophies are all what we call "existential

philosophies." To show how this works among the young people, we

have the famous "Do your thing!" or the "Now!" or the

"happening." Now, to the uneducated layman who doesn't understand

the philosophical or psychological background behind these words,

we'll be as brief as possible. Those who refuse to study history

must repeat the lessons history teaches. And, as someone has once

said, the only thing that men learn from history is that men

never learn from history. And those who refuse to heed its

lessons are condemned to repeat them.

The accent on the existential "now" or the "happening," the

"moment-by-moment experience" that changes with the situation,

leading to what we call "situation ethics," is merely the result

of scientists and philosophers casting off the moorings and

lashings, and saying, "There's no beginning of time, for time is

relative. There's no distance to be traveled, because distance is

relative. And there's no known speed, because speed is relative."

From this they have gathered that truth is relative. And from

this they have gathered that the only reality is this second.

That's the background of the modern "hippie" movement. And, if

you want to know where it comes from, it comes from left-wing

philosophical professors in universities.

You must never forget that Communism was not started by a

day laborer or by a farmer. It was started by a newspaper

reporter. That's what Karl Marx did for a living; he was a

journalist. We must never forget that modern Communism is not a

laborer's movement at all. It is a college movement.

Now, as I have said before, those who refuse to study

history just have to repeat the mistakes. And this emphasis on

evolution, gradually going up and yet not being sure now of

whether we're going up or not, and consequently concentrating on

the moment-by-monent experience as the only reality, has produced

a whole generation of Christians who don't know their own people

when they see them. This has produced a hybrid or bastard

Christianity.

Back in the Old Testament, the Book of Hosea, the Lord spoke

of it when he said, "They've brought forth strange children." We

remember a couple of strange children, of course, from Lot. And a

peculiar new birth produces a peculiar child. And a peculiar

godfather produces a peculiar set of orphans.

There is no way in the world to root and ground the

Christian properly, at least the Christian who reads, unless he

understands where he came from, who his line of people are, how

they got off the Scripture like they've gotten off, and how to

get back. And, of course, in these things, we're talking about

the mature Christian. We're not talking about the mass of babies

who are fed milk by one or two Christian celebrities.

After all, our purpose is not to act as celebrity to train

the babies. Our purpose is to raise up men the stature of Bob

Jones Sr. and Billy Sunday--the normal Christian stature, the

fullness of the stature of Jesus Christ. And, to do this, Church

History is an absolute essential.

For example, did you ever pick up a Bible and read very

carefully the New Testament, and then try to somehow or another

make that thing line up or adjust itself to what you see in your

town where you live? Hasn't it ever struck you kind of funny

there isn't any way under God's Heaven to reconcile the New

Testament with what you find in the town where you live? And,

when I say you, I mean everyone reading this book anywhere in the

world. Doesn't it ever occur to you that it's rather strange that

in the New Testament you find the church supporting widows over

60 years old? Does your church support widows? Doesn't it occur

to you that it's rather strange that you can't find a church

building anywhere in the New Testament? Aren't there some in your

town?

Did you ever actually just sit down and really try to figure

out whether or not you're a Bible believer or just an infidel?

Did you ever stop to think about this? I mean, figure on these

things. Look at it carefully. The greatest Christian in the New

Testament didn't have any Sunday school. He didn't have any

buses. And when he died, he didn't have any property and didn't

have any holdings. And never reported his conversions!

Now, we're not knocking anybody who does these things. What

we're saying is, have you ever stopped just for a minute to think

that if that Book is the word of God, like some of you profess to

believe, that you don't know anything about it in the modern-day

America in which you live? Nor does anybody else. Did you ever

wonder how things got into the condition they got into?

For example, do you realize that the majority of professing

Christians in America, at the time I'm writing this, are Roman

Catholic? Did you ever find the word "Catholic" in any Bible you

ever picked up? Where did it come from?

Did you ever read about a "nun" in the Bible? Did you ever

find the word "purgatory" in any Bible? Doesn't it ever occur to

you rather strange that there are in America pretty close to

14,000,000 people who pray to Mary as the "Mother of God"? And

you couldn't find it in any New Testament ever printed--not even

a Catholic New Testament.

In plainer words, the trouble we have today is the Christian

gets saved, and he gets his milk. And then his leaders rush him

right into the maddening business of stripping fruit off the vine

as quick as you can get it, without any regard to the truth. And

many of the people who pick on Billy Graham and criticize him for

his compromising are a great deal worse than he is when it comes

to these matters.

Now, I'll give you one more example. Did you ever wonder how

peculiar it is to pick up a book like Faith Magazine from Bob

Jones University, where you read about a new book by one of their

faculty members called The Inspiration of the Bible by Dr.

Custer. And the advertisement says Custer says that Christians

should use the inspired word of God. Do you realize that Dr.

Custer never believed that he had a copy of the inspired word of

God? Doesn't believe he has it now? Doesn't believe it you have

it, and doesn't believe you get it. Did you know that?

Do you realize that when John R. Rice says in his newspaper

it's wicked for Christians not to read the word of God, and it's

bad for them not to read the word of God, because the word of God

is the infallible, inspired word of God from heaven, that he no

more believes it than he believes he has 14 toes. Did you know

that?

Hasn't it ever struck you as kind of strange that, when you

pick up that Book, that Book nowhere says the "original

manuscripts" were inspired? It said, "All scripture is given by

inspiration." It didn't say the "original manuscripts." The verse

right about 1 Timothy 3:16 said that Timothy knew the Scriptures.

Do you think Timothy had the original manuscripts?

Now this points out what we're talking about. It's very

important for the child of God, if he's educated--we're not

saying you can't by without knowing church history--what we're

saying is, if you spend any time at all buying anybody's books to

read them, you'd better know church history before you read

anybody's books.

Now, what happened between the time Acts 28 shut down and

J.C. Penney and K-Mart and Woolco opened up? Do you know? Don't

you think you should know?

No public school indicates what happens. If you go to public

school for years, you could never figure it out. The public

schools are not allowed to teach Foxe's Book of Martyrs. They're

not allowed to teach the history of great revival. They'll

mention the Great Awakening in passing, or the Cumberland-Berry

revival in passing, but they won't tell you about the issues.

They won't tell you about what was preached, more than one sermon

by Edwards that's now put in a past tense, Calvinistic setting,

where people make fun of it and laugh at it and think, "My,

weren't those preachers stupid?"

A Christian needs roots. He needs roots. A Christian needs

to know not only where he's going, which he can get from the

Bible, what he is to do now, which he can get from the Bible, but

where his gang has been, and how they got into the condition they

got into. And, when we study church history, we're going to

clearly find three lines of people: Biblical people, anti-

Biblical people, and compromising people.

Compromise in church history can always be spotted by a

Roman bible with an equal authority to the Bible, while

professing to believe in the fundamentals. When we get to

studying church history, we'll find the compromisers are always

spotted by the fact that they will not tolerate any absolute

authority. They want two or more authorities. And this, of

course, is the Roman position.

Then we find an anti-Biblical line coming clear through

history, which is a study of the lives of the great philosophers

and scientists in the main--although, of course, we have

exceptions, that prove the rule. But history takes a peculiar

direction, and racial and political theories never affect the

determined course of God or Satan.

When we begin to study church history in a few lectures,

we'll begin to study the movements of the Holy Spirit through

history as contrasted with the movements of Satan through

history. And, as I've said before, no racial or political

theories will alter or affect either of these courses.

For example, the Bible clearly tells you how it's going to

wind up. And, if you know any Bible at all, by studying the Book

of Revelation, you know how it's going to wind up. The question

is, what went wrong after Acts 28 that made it wind up that way?

And that's what church history is about.

In our studies we're going to trace the movements of God and

Satan throughout history. Secular histories omit the spiritual

conflicts. And for this reason, when you study secular history,

the histories by Bulward, Gibbons, Wells, Ridpath, Churchill and

the rest of them, you're not really learning history. And this is

why nations continue to make the same mistakes over and over

again. Because they never pay any attention to the spiritual

conflicts that occur throughout history. The present situation

comes from pretending that history didn't take place. But history

did take place.

For example, history shows that all fascist systems are just

alike. Now, history shows that. The Communists have concentration

camps, just like the Fascists. The Communists will torture and

murder you to obtain their ends. So will the Roman Catholic

Church. Now that is the judgment and the witness of history. What

you or your friends think about it really couldn't amount to

anything.

Facts are stubborn things. Truth is a stubborn thing. And

the truth of the matter is, the concentration camps in Germany

were operated under the auspices of Adolf Hitler, Heidrich,

Himmler, Eichmann, Hess, Kurt Franz over Treblinka--and every one

of these men was a Roman Catholic. And none of them were

excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.

Now, it is true that you or your friends may not like that.

But, after all, in the search for truth and fact, where the Holy

Spirit has come to guide us into all truth, we're not interested

in what you think about it--or your friends.

Now, that type of rough orientation is necessary because

you're never going to find out what happened to Christianity

until you start facing facts. And if you wonder today why we have

a blind, compromising, soft, effeminite, ineffectual Christianity

is because people respond to it like some of you responded just

then when you heard what I said. You're just as blind as a bat

coming in backwards. You don't know your roots. You don't know

your backgrounds. You don't know the lessons of history. You

don't know that the way you feel is exactly the way any demon-

possessed person felt when their favorite god was attacked. And

you don't know that, in past times and past history, certain

things speak for themselves, regardless of your feelings about

it. People like you, who think that Roman Catholicism is not a

fascist system for torture and murder, we call bigots. A bigot is

somebody who refuses to face the facts. And, when it comes to

bigotry, I suppose evolutionists and Roman Catholics are some of

the most prejudiced bigots on the face of this earth.

You say, "Well, that's just your opinion." No, the Second

Law of Thermodynamics, one of the three laws upon which all

physics are founded, teaches there's entropy in a closed system,

and, as entropy increases, randomness increases. That is, to be

an evolutionist, you have to be just a little bit "touched" in

the head. As Burgon used to put it, you have to take an excursion

into Cloudland. I believe that's the way it was put.

The facts are, the sun is burning out. The facts are, the

earth is cooling off. The facts are, the vegetation is smaller

than it was back yonder. The facts are, you're dying. The facts,

according to uranium breakdown and carbon 14, is things are

degenerating and falling apart. Now those are facts proved

eventually by a coffin, a shovel, and a pile of dirt.

But a bigot won't accept a fact.

If the Lord didn't slap 'em finally shut and shut their

mouths and bury them, they'd rise up from the grave and tell him,

"There is no death"--like Mary Baker Eddy tried to do.

Now, all fascist systems are alike. Every system to improve

the world and bring in "peace on earth" is a fascist system that

will kill the good. That's the lesson of history. The lesson of

history is, the only way you can have peace is by killing. That's

the lesson. You want peace in China? You exterminate 14 million

Chinese who disagree with you. You want peace in Russia? You

exterminate 8 million. You want peace in Germany? You exterminate

6 million. Those things happened. The people were exterminated.

How you feel about the system is immaterial.

If you subscribe to socialism or Communism or fascism or

Catholicism, that's your business. One road to hell is just as

good as another. But the facts of history show that any system

set up to bring in peace on earth without Jesus Christ coming

back is a system that will torture and murder to obtain its ends.

That includes your system and the system of all your friends.

All right, church history concentrates on the progress of

Christianity from Acts 28 up to 1991. And it is the focal point

of western civilization. There won't be time in a study of church

history to cover all the sidelights and random effects of

missionary work in Asia and Asia Minor and Africa. We're

concentrating primarily on the Western world. But, in

concentrating on the Western world, of course, eventually we'll

get into the great missionary activities of the Western

Christians who evangelized the East.

Not knowing the influence of the Catholic Church on the

world empires causes continual repetition of the same errors.

Anybody not familiar with the history of the Roman Catholic

Church is condemned to die for a false cause on this earth. And

I'm not a Communist. If you want the documented evidence on the

past history of the Catholic Church, you'll find it in the works

of John Carrera, or especially Avro Manhattan, or the highly

documented scientific work of Paul Blanshard--all documented,

Xeroxed, photostatic copy, name, date, line, verse, chapter,

heading, publishing company, page number. We don't deal with

folklore and superstition in these lectures. Anybody who doesn't

know the influence of the Roman Catholic Church on the Western

world empires must continually repeat the same errors. And, when

we study church history, we're going to run into Rome in all of

her ghoulish glory every time we turn a page.

And, if you don't like this, I suggest you cancel this

class. Once a bigot, always a bigot. There has been no cure known

to God or man for a man who is wise in his own conceit. The Holy

Spirit who came, came here to guide and lead the Christian to all

truth. And He'll testify of the truth, not a lie.

A good example is in Vietnam. In Saigon, a couple of decades

ago or so ago, a Buddhist monk sat down on the streets and burned

himself to death, after sending one of Kennedy's Roman Catholic

friends, the archbishop and head of the secret police, plus the

president--they all belonged to the same church--a note saying,

"Enforce a policy of religious equality." This was done after the

Buddhist flag was torn down, the Buddhist temple was closed on

Buddha's birthday, while the Pope's flag flew around and the

Catholics celebrated the Mass, and everybody observed Christmas.

In Ireland, the newspaper reporters were told, "Our job is

to fight for our rights, and overthrow Ulster. And we have the

right to do it, according to their principles. Once we're the

majority, they have no right to rise against us, because our

principles teach nobody can rise against us." That's the official

statement of Ingolls, Trotsky, and the Communist Party. The

official statement is, "We have the right to revolt, but once

we've established a government, nobody has the right to revolt

against us." All fascist systems are the same. Some of them are

called Communism; some of them are called Socialism; some of them

are called Catholicism. They're all the same black cat.

And, if you study history, you know that. And if you don't,

you don't. Christians refuse to face the facts because of

accusations of being a bigot or being prejudiced. With the

tremendous pressure of the modern left-wing Communist press on

Christians all over the country, they're so afraid of those two

terms, bigotry and prejudice, they are afraid to take a negative

attitude toward anything the world takes a positive attitude

towards. If you want to see how wild it can get, you watch all

the world mourning the destruction of Babylon (Revelation 17),

and crying and casting dust on their heads and weeping and

wailing and gnashing their teeth, while the saints up in Heaven

are rejoicing and saying, "Hallelujah!"

Did you ever read those passages in Revelation 17, 18, and

19, about the city built on the seven hills, whose cup was a

golden cup and whose colors were purple and scarlet?

Now, the reason why the modern Christian is afraid of the

words "bigotry" and "prejudice" is because he is ignorant. He

doesn't know the matter of Rome. If you studied church history

and knew church history, you would never worry about anybody

calling you a "bigot," when you made a statement like, "The most

damnable influence on this earth outside of atheistic Communism

is the Vatican State." And you wouldn't worry about what people

thought. Backgrounds in church history equip you to face a

hostile world that is still against God. They let you get your

bearings, to know your moorings and your lashings and your

anchor, so that you can take the stand that a Christian should

take.

The people of Martin Luther's day said, "The whole world's

against you."

He said, "All right, then I'm against it!"

John said, "Love not the world, neither the things in the

world." Paul said, "Be not conformed to this world." Christ said,

"I pray not for this world." Paul said, "Christ came to deliver

you from this present evil world"--the one you're living in! And

there's nothing in the world that will give you a spiritual,

divine hatred for the world system which you should have, like

knowing what it has done to Biblical Christianity between Acts 28

and where you're now listening.

Now, when I said "hate," some of you Christians almost had a

heart attack. Because, in the first place, you rejected the

statements of your Saviour when He said, "If any man come after

me, and hate not his mother, father, brother, sister, daughter,

or son, wife, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."

And, in the second place, you rejected your Saviour's warning,

that "That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in

the sight of God." And, in the third place, you rejected the

Biblical statement that said, "These six things doth the Lord

hate, a lying tongue, a false witness,..." and then he listed a

whole bunch of them.

Now, you see, it's already getting "hairy," as they say out

in the world. You know why it is? Because this last generation of

Christians who came up since 1940 are Bible-rejecting Christians

who profess to believe it--but where it crosses the world system,

they won't take any of it.

Now another good reason why the Christian should learn

something about church history is because the conditions of both

the Second Coming and First Coming of Christ are very much alike.

Consequently, the corrupting influences that are at work at the

Second Coming of Christ, have already been at work before the

First Coming of Christ.

For example, when the Lord Jesus Christ came the first time,

Rome was in power. If you studied Daniel 2, you know that Rome is

in power at the Second Advent of Jesus Christ. The first time

Christ came, His forerunner was John the Baptist. The second time

He comes, His forerunner is Elijah. The first time He came, He

appeared secretly in private to believers only in the manger, and

thirty years later, publicly at the ministry of John the Baptist

to His enemies. At the Second Coming, He comes privately, first

of all, to believers only, at the Rapture; and then, seven years

or more later, publicly to His enemies, when every eye shall see

Him. At His first coming, there was one universal spoken

language--Greek. At His second coming, there will be one

universal spoken language--English. At His First Coming, He was

preceded by 400 years of corrupt pagan philosophy, which was

written down as the greatest advancements in civilization known

to man--Greek culture. At the Second Coming, He will be preceded

by 400 years of pagan philosophy and nonsense, which will be

interpreted as the highest point man has reached--evolution.

In plainer words, if you know history, you're prepared for

history. No better preparation could be made for the Judgment

Seat of Christ than for a Christian to get himself in tune to

what a Christian should be, according to what God Himself has

determined Christians are through 19 centuries.

If there is one thing the Bible teaches, it teaches that all

dispensations end in collapse. That should be clear to any

student of the word of God. Yet, strangely enough, without a

knowledge of church history, a student who believes the Bible and

studies the Bible can often come out with the wild idea that this

age is going to end in a great revival. You'll hear John R. Rice

often writing books called We Can Have Revival Now. John R. Rice

has not seen a revival since 1940. And, before then, he saw some

little ones located in one or two small towns. He's not telling

the truth. When John R. Rice points about having revival now, you

know what he points to? He points to the bus ministry of pastors.

John R. Rice has no bus ministry, and he's not a pastor. He'd

better write about something else.

Two men who speak a great deal about revival are Vance

Havner and Leonard Ravenhill. There isn't any indication in the

last 50 years of history in America that either man has ever had

a revival, or that there is any coming.

Nor am I here to put a wet blanket on you and tell you that

you can't have revival in your own heart or in your own

community. What I'm saying is, God's word in history is not going

to be overthrown just because somebody wants to make a living off

publicizing their work, evangelism.

Every dispensation in the Bible ends in collapse. The law of

entropy works throughout the Bible like it works anyplace else,

and if you want a great study in the law of human collapse, you

ought to read the Book of Judges. The Second Law of

Thermodynamics, the law of entropy the deals with the randomness

that occurs through a passage of time is the only scientific law

that's provable and demonstrable anywhere, that absolutely

overthrows the theory of evolution without any other proofs being

produced. That's the only one you need.

You say, "What about the fossil evidence?" You don't need

any of it. You don't have to refer to the embryology or anything,

or the genetic code. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is a

universal law which shows conclusively there never has been the

evolution of anything, except temporarily in local spots.

And the same may be said of revival.

Now, if we talk about the great revivals of the Philadelphia

church period, Revelation 3:8, we're talking about something

else. When we begin to study church history, we'll talk about

that very extensively. But we must always be careful to believe

what God as He said it, where He said it. And, in studying the

messages of the seven churches in the Book of Revelation, chapter

2 to chapter 3, which I hope you have, you will observe the early

church did not keep the word of God; entropy set in. You will

observe the only church that kept the word of God was the

Reformation church of Martin Luther and the King James

translators--Revelation 3:8. And, at that time, due to a sudden

rise of worldwide revival, thousands of Christians who never

studied history or didn't believe it, thought the Kingdom was

coming, and became postmillennial evolutionists in theological

matters. You notice that, to this day, Bob Jones University has

never taken a stand for premillennialism--and it never will.

Because at least half the money that is donated to Bob Jones

comes from people who reject three-quarters of the Old Testament.

We call them amillennial and postmillennial people. And that's

why the creed at Bob Jones, recited every morning at 10 o'clock

in the chapel, there is never a statement made on the

premillennial coming of Christ. It is not considered to be one of

the fundamentals by Bob Jones University. Some of you Baptists

were tricked on that one, too, weren't you?

You better study history! Above all things, you better study

church history! Church history is the most valuable discipline I

know, of the literary disciplines, outside of the Bible itself.

History follows the laws of thermodynamics--not the theories of

idealists and socialists. History doesn't follow the thesis,

antithesis, synthesis of Heckel. It follows a course straight

down to hell, with temporary refreshment and revival in local

areas.

Now, wouldn't you know that somebody who read the Bible

would believe that? How could any man who read Genesis not know

that the end of Adam and Eve's testing ended in the fall, the end

of Noah's generation ended in the flood, the end of Abraham's

generation ended in the tower of Babel, the end of Abraham's

progeny, Isaac and Jacob, became slave laborers in Egypt. And,

when they were called out of the land of Egypt, they ended in

apostasy in the wilderness. And, after they were taken to the

Promised Land, they went back to Ashtoreth and Baal and had to be

delivered. And when they finally got the king God wanted them to

have, Saul and Solomon, Solomon apostasized, and the kingdom

split in two--and Nebuchadnezzar tore it up.

Who, who read the Bible, would believe in evolution? Or who,

who believe in the Bible, would believe what the political and

racial theorists are telling us about history? What man who

believes truth and fact would think that international socialists

had enough sense to come in out of the rain on a windy night? The

Church Age doesn't end in revival. Do you think the Laodicean

Church, the last of the seven churches in Revelation 3, is having

revival? Do you think the Tribulation ends in revival? It ends in

Armageddon. Do you think the Millennium ends in revival? It ends

with Satan coming up with Gog and Magog, and fire coming down

from heaven.

Now, church history runs no differently. Church history

teaches certain absolute true facts that are in line with the

Second Law of Thermodynamics. And what a socialist or philosopher

thinks about history doesn't ever enter the problem, really. It

has no effect upon it. What somebody like Haegel or Spinoza or

Liebnitz or Marx or Young or Pavlov of Nietsche or Carlyle or

Tupestrake or Hemingway or Steinbeck or the United Nations or the

CIA or the HEW or the National Education Association--what they

think about the lessons of history isn't worth studying. History

teaches its own lessons. And, along these lines, we should be

careful never to reject what God says about history. Because the

Bible is an historical Book that it took longer to write than any

textbook on history you can get your hands on.

Now, these matters are all summarized in a book we used to

have in print that went out of print called The Sure Word of

Prophecy, which is a very, very, extremely brief study of church

history. And, in these lectures, we're going into a great deal

more detail than we went into in The Sure Word of Prophecy. But

in The Sure Word of Prophecy, formerly called The Kingdom of

Heaven and the Kingdom of God, we went into these matters and

showed how history is absolutely consistent in following certain

fixed cycles of patterns. These patterns run in this way--

downward. Evangelism, education, culture, apostasy. Ecumenicism,

Romanism of paganism, then communism. Evangelicalism or

evangelization, education. That pattern is discernible in church

history from the New Testament to where you're seated.

Evangelism or revival, followed by education, followed by

culture, followed by apostasy, followed by ecumenical movements

toward Rome, followed by either paganism or communism, which are

nearly identical, followed by evangelization or revival, followed

by education, followed by culture, followed by apostasy. And we

see this thing going right on down through the ages. We can get

the forecast ahead of time.

History follows the law of thermodynamics. It is a downward

movement, with a loss of entropy and randomness and confusion

increasing at the end of any dispensation. And this can be proved

in the test tube, in the factory, in the science laboratory, in

the Bible, out of the Bible, or anyplace else.

Now, in studying church history, we need to talk for awhile

about sources. When we talk about sources, we talk about the

books that men have written about church history that we're going

to have to study in order to find out where we're at and what's

going on. Fortunately, there are scores of these available. There

are so many, as a matter of fact, that I won't take time out on

these studies to list more than about 20 works. There are several

hundred major works, and there are several thousand minor works,

covering particular areas and certain small incidentals and

incidences in part. The autobiographies and biographies, of

course, are without number.

But the main sources for church history are as follows: --

First of all, the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious

Knowledge, published in 1908.

--The Catholic Encyclopedia, published in 1907.

--Documents of the Christian Church by Bettenson, published in

1917.

--Ayer's book called Source Book for Ancient Church History,

published in 1913.

--Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History.

--The work by Philip Schaff called The Creeds of Christendom,

published in 1905.

--And, of course, the standard eight-volume by Philip Schaff,

called History of the Christian Church.

--Then we have Dargan, two volumes on A History of Preaching.

--We have two volumes by The Baptist Historian on Church History,

by the Baptist historian Newman.

--We have a book called A History of Christian Doctrine, by

Fisher.

--Then we have two famous historians, Dollinger, who is a Roman

Catholic historian; and Neander.

--Then we have a work by Neve called A History of Christian

Thought.

--A large set of works by LaTourette called A History of the

Expansion of Christianity.

--Then we have The History of the Reformation by D'Aubigene.

And, of course, we have many others. A modern history of

fundamentalism you should get is The History of Fundamentalism by

George Dollar. A good book is The History of Christian Thought by

McGiffert. And, of course, the works by Baten, Hoitzinger, Vader,

and other works. There are many, many of these kinds. But these

are the main ones, and these will do.

Halley's Bible Handbook is a very excellent little

abbreviated account of church history. Very abbreviated, but very

good. And you might like to make some references to that.

Then, in addition to this, of course, there are invaluable

biographies and autobiographies, which need to be studied, about

particular men which will yield a gold mine and a wealth of

information--particularly The Journal of John Wesley, for

example, and The Letters and Writings of Martin Luther, and

scores of others.

And these will be our sources in our study of church

history.

 

BREAK

 

 

 

Now, we've finished our first volume here, Volume 1 on the

study of Church History. In this first volume, we dealt with the

need for a study of Church History, and we also dealt with the

sources and material. In our next volume, Volume Number 2, we'll

take up an actual study of the life and times of the Lord Jesus

Christ in the New Testament that precedes what we call Church

History proper; that is, the history that begins to deal with the

history of the Christians following the completion of the Book of

Acts.

I believe you all know that the writings of John take place

after the completion of the Book of Acts, and many of the Pauline

epistles are written at a later date. But the actual history

itself of New Testament Christianity, history as such, written in

both times, discussing what took place, ends in Acts chapter 28.

And our purpose in this series of studies will be to find out

what happened between Acts 28 and, say, 1991. And, as we said on

the first volume--this is very important to learn--because the

new Christian who is born again is immediately led astray from

his belief in the authority of the word of God and the power of

the word of God, almost as soon as he gets saved, because it will

not line up with what he sees around him. Consequently the

Christian leaders, and scholars in particular, have been trying

to make the Bible adjust itself to the contemporary situation.

This is what we call apostasy.

Now, I realize the Scofield notes have led people to believe

that apostasy is only possible among unsaved people. And the

peculiar teachings of C.I. Scofield and his board, that apostasy

is a falling away from the faith by men who never really were in

the faith, is interesting--but certainly not Scriptural. Apostasy

can be applied to any number of things. And a "falling away from"

something--apohitamie, the Greek reading on it--occurs very often

among saved people along many lines. Many Christians apostasize

from their duties. Many Christians apostasize from their belief

in the word of God. Many Christians apostasize from their love

for Christ. The term is a very broad term, and by no means can be

limited to unsaved people who profess something.

Now, Scofield and his board got into this jam by rejecting

the King James Bible in such passages as Hebrews and James and 1

and 2 Peter. And in order to explain the apparent contradictions

there that dealt with a Christian losing his salvation, as some

people believe--and that contradicting with the Pauline epistles-

-he applied this term "apostasy" to professors of Christianity,

rather than possessors. This has done untold damage to the body

of Christ, and a deathly amount of destruction, in that it has

led the modern Christian to believe two things that are not true.

It has led him to believe that if a man believes the fundamentals

and lives a godly life, you can trust him in matters of Bible

revision--which you can't. And it has led him to believe that

demon possession is entirely limited to unsaved people--which it

is not. And so, because of this, it is very essential that the

child of God, if he inclines to readings and educator and

literature and culture, be acquainted with Church History before

he's acquainted with any other discipline of the literary arts.

I'd say that outside of the Bible itself, a knowledge of

church history is the most valuable asset that the educated

Christian can have. We realize, of course, that many people are

not able to comprehend these things and get into them and dig

into them and work with them. And, of course, the Lord has His

way of protecting them. As a matter of fact, they're much better

protected than the reading and educated type of Christian. You

will quickly find in the mountains of North and South Carolina

and Virginia and Tennessee much greater fidelity to the word of

God than you will with the faculty members of Arlington and

Springfield and Fort Worth and Pensacola Christian College. The

ignorant of the wrong material always have more faith in the

right material, than those who are acquainted with the wrong

material.

Now, here we begin our study of Church History. Church

History being a study of the events that took place in regards to

the Christians from the Book of Acts onward. As we said before,

there are three lines that can be clearly discerned in Church

History from the Book of Acts to the present time:

A Biblical line. Now, this Biblical line may not always have

their Bible interpretation right. But they believe it.

We then have an anti-Biblical line, a line that is set in

opposition and opposed to the word of God, and fights the word of

God, and opposes the word of God with a desperate hatred.

Then we have in between these two lines a compromising line.

And the compromising line is always a line that professes to

believe in what we call "the fundamentals of the faith," although

belief in the fundamentals of the faith will vary from time to

time.

Now, to show you how confused the issue is, for example,

take the present day. George Dollar wrote a book called The

History of Fundamentalism. When he wrote that history of

fundamentalism, he included in it many people who were

amillennial and postmillennial. There is no man who was ever

connected with the ministry of W.B. Riley or J. Frank Norris who

ever believed that a fundamentalist could deny the premillennial

coming of Christ. But, again, it only goes to show the Christian

how screwed up things are, and how he needs to study history.

Bob Jones University was founded by a Methodist. Bob Jones

Sr. got his creed from a lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia, Sam Small,

who was a good friend of Sam Jones, who was converted under his

ministry--who was not a premillennialist. Hence the doctrines of

eternal security, baptism by immersion, and premillennialism were

never considered to be fundamentals by any of that group.

Recently, Bob Jones University has been hard up for students

from amillennial and postmillennial churches. So they've been

courting the premillennialists, and making doctors out of them to

get their kids.

It's wise that you understand what's going on. And, without

a knowledge of church history, without a knowledge of what

Christians profess to believe, you don't know where you're at.

And you're liable to get very upset and in a rage by statements

like what I just made because of your love for falsehood, and

your lack of love for the truth.

The Bible said when the Holy Spirit was going to come, He

was going to guide the Christians, the apostles, into all truth,

and show them things to come. Jesus Christ said, "Thy word is

truth." And the Holy Spirit would teach you all things.

That is, what we're saying is, the constant deception of the

modern-day Christian, his constant preoccupation with lies, his

bigotry and prejudice and unbelief of the truth, his hatred for

the King James Bible, is due to pure, sheer, unadulterated

ignorance. And this ignorance is found mainly in the educated

class of Christians, who have been brainwashed by a Christian

education. You should know church history.

The compromisers believe in fundamentals, or profess to

believe in a certain number of things taken from the Bible. They

do not believe the Bible.

So we have these three lines coming through.

Now, next, we have--and, of course, you can easily see this

from a study of the word of God--we have, of course, through

church history the movement of the Holy Spirit, taking the church

on through to the Rapture--through over 19 centuries of church

history.

Then we have, of course, the movement of the devil. The

devil did not go out of business in Acts 28--not by any means.

The devil is still very active. He's still an accuser, as Job 1.

He's still a deceiver, as Revelation 12. He is still a hinderer,

as 1 Thessalonians chapter 2. And he is also still a slanderer,

and a tempter, as in Luke chapter 4 and Genesis chapter 3. He did

not go out of business with the new bibles. He's still at work.

So we're going to trace the work of the unclean spirit, the

satanic spirit, throughout 19 centuries. And we're not going to

ignore his work. We're not going to pretend, for example, that

the devil doesn't have an active interest in Bibles. That would

be very foolish. We're not going to pretend for a minute that the

devil isn't actively involved in the lives of every godly man who

ever lived. We're not going to be that foolish. We're not going

to suppose that because a man is godly, like Jeremiah or Moses or

David or Daniel or Peter, that he is above reproach. We're not

going to imagine that for a minute. Simply because a man like

Benjamin Warfield or J. Gresham Machen or A.T. Robertson or John

R. Rice has taken a stand against the liberal, we're not going to

take this as proof of their infallibility, or proof of their

common sense. We're going to say, "Thank God they did at least

part what they should have done, and did it correctly within a

limited sphere."

We're not ignorant of the devil's devices nor ignorant of

his wiles. We're going to keep our eyes open, and our hearts and

ears tuned to the word of God as the infallible authority in all

matters of faith and practice. And it is not merely our

profession, but it is going to be our operating basis.

Now, starting our study of church history, still speaking

broadly, we cannot help but be impressed by the change in first

century Christianity as compared with twentieth century

Christianity. It is obvious that the Christians have apostasized.

That's perfectly clear. And, in dealing with Scofield's

definition of apostasy, we do best just to simply ignore it and

compare our modern-day Christianity with the New Testament.

And let us make ourselves very clear on this. We're not

going to be so wild and so foolish as to say that all of these

monstrous big works that are running 8,000 and 10,000 in Sunday

school are of the devil. I wouldn't think such a thing.

Furthermore, I wouldn't question the motives of those who set

them up. I know several of these men personally. I know them

personally. And personally, they're sincere and have as fine a

motive as any Christian you ever met in your life. I'm not going

to question what they do; to their own Master they stand or fall.

That's God's business.

And we're not going to say that simply because what you see

does not check with the New Testament, that it's all of the

devil. That is, our approach is going to be level-headed

conservative always, no matter how radical some punks think we

are.

We all recognize the fact that in the Book of Acts somebody

has to wait on the tables, and there was no stipulation made for

it from Genesis to Malachi. Therefore, a new practice had to be

initiated after prayer over the matter--which one could not find

a Scriptural basis for in the Old Testament. We understand that.

We understand that, when you have a thousand people meeting,

you can't meet in somebody's living room, you see. We're not as

crackpot as some people think we are or say we are. We recognize

that, simply because you can't find a verse to match everything

going on today, that everything going on today is unscriptural.

We're not saying that. The Campbellites said, "You have no

Scripture for pianos or organs in your church." I told them, "You

have no Scripture for light bulbs."

A very zealous premillennial, independent, fundamental,

etc., brother said to me one time, "You have no business having a

prayer altar in your church. The Bible doesn't speak about a

'prayer altar.'"

I asked him what he was doing driving a car. I don't find

where the Scripture authorizes automobiles anywhere, do you?

But aside from this, there is something about the character

and tone of Peter, James, John, Paul, Barnabas, Silas, Timotheus,

and the early Christian martyrs that doesn't match the character

and tone of what you see in the city where you live. And you know

it, and I know it. There has been apostasy in the body of Christ.

You say, "Well, this was all done by modernists." I don't

believe it for a minute! John R. Rice and these people who take

these bold, brave stands against an enemy who never shows up, to

deal with them--they're operating in another circle altogether,

and don't even run into them any more--to take this "bold and

brave stand," they're trying to kid you into thinking that

apostasy in the body of Christ is all due to the work of unsaved

people. That isn't even New Testament doctrine.

You get over there in those Pauline epistles, and you'll

find there's many a man in there, like Demas, and Diotrephes, who

loved to have the preeminence, and others, and Ananias and

Sapphira, who were saved people, who were raising Cain in the

body of Christ! Somebody said, "They were professors and not

possessors." You don't know that! And the testimony of Scripture

would indicate otherwise.

You see, this is the attempt of the Pharisee, the modern

Pharisee, to say that if a man doesn't live like he thinks he

should live, or the Scriptures say he should live, the man is

unsaved. That is not the testimony of the New Testament. There is

a born again, saved, Bible-believing Christian in the New

Testament who is going to bed with his father's wife. And there

are two teachers in the New Testament, Bible teachers, who are

teaching was J. Gresham Machen and Benjamin Warfield and A.T.

Robertson taught, and for teaching what these three gentlemen

taught, these teachers are turned over to the devil for the

destruction of the flesh. Now you see what we mean when we talk

about a gap between what's going on now and what that Bible says.

There has been apostasy among the born again believers

themselves, a continual falling away from the faith for 19

centuries.

Now what were the causes of this apostasy? We're going to

study them in detail, as we get into the study of the matter of

Church History. Generally, they fall under five headings:

1. First of all, the first danger we'll learn about when we

begin to study church history, which you should know, is,

Christians lean towards apostasy when they begin to use heathen

vocabulary that comes from heathen universities. Now, it's very

important that you understand what I just said. That's one of the

causes for apostasy in the body of Christ, according to the

testimony of church history. And we'll document that statement in

this volume and the next one.

A good example is Ignatius, a great, godly, good, dedicated,

humble, Spirit-filled, soul-winning martyr--who, once upon a

time, when he made a remark about the Christian faith, made the

blunder of not using the Bible term but said "Catholic"--a term

borrowed from the Greek literary cultures of 300 b.c.

Somebody said, "You mean to tell me you're going to hang a

man for that?" No! I'm saying there's a danger in using terms

from heathen vocabulary out of heathen universities to defend the

faith with.

If you want to know where that term "Catholic" came from,

the answer is it didn't come from any Bible that was ever

printed. It came from Plato and Aristotle and Socrates, and that

bunch. And Ignatius, in trying to speak about the faith being

spread abroad through the Roman Empire, made the mistake of

saying "Catholic" faith instead of "Biblical." That cost

40,000,000 people something, didn't it? Or, to be more accurate,

maybe 400,000,000 people?

2. Apostasy is always just around the corner when the born

again, saved, soul-winning, premillennial, fundamental, etc.,

alters the word in order to defend it. A good example is Origen,

who spent his life changing the Bible so he could impress heathen

philosophers with how true the Bible was. That's a bad mistake.

That's the habitual practice of Wilbur Smith and Archer Weniger

and Gleason Archer and E. Schuyler English and Reuben Olson and

Custer and Neal, and, in particular, A.T. Robertson, who changes

more than 2,000 words in the New Testament.

Once you begin to alter that word in order to defend it, you

have told the heathen that you are the judge, and the Book is

under your judgment, and you control the Book and are able to sit

in judgment on the Book. That is how to convince the heathen that

the Book is not the authority. That's how you do it. And that's

how he loses his respect for the Book.

3. The third cause of apostasy is refusal to accept the Old

Testament literally. A good example is a man named Augustine,

whom we'll study later. Don't be in a hurry about these; we'll

give you their names, addresses, and dates in a while, what they

did and what they didn't do, in our study. Right now, we're

talking about the general trends throughout church history from

the first century.

Where there's a refusal to accept the Old Testament

literally--that is, when God told Eve not to eat of it, He meant,

"Don't eat of it!"--when the Old Testament is refused to be

accepted literally; for example, where Christ said, "If you

believe not Moses and his writings, how shall you believe my

words?" when you don't accept the Old Testament literally; for

example, Christ said, "O fools and slow of heart, not to believe

all that the prophets have spoken,"--when any born again,

dedicated, premillennial, fundamental, soul-winning etc., who has

a godly, dedicated, consecrated, spiritual life, doesn't accept

the Old Testament literally; for example, Paul said he believed

all things written in the law and the prophets--where that takes

place, apostasy immediately sets in. Because three quarters of

the Old Testament deals with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

And if you don't get your doctrine straight on that, you

don't get your doctrine straight on the most often mentioned

subject in the entire Bible.

4. We'll find in our study of church history that one of the

causes of the apostasy is emphasis on ritual and organization. A

good example is Cyprian, whom we'll discuss later--Cyprian's

attitude toward the bishop in the local church. Where there is an

undue emphasis on organization and ritual, apostasy sets in. You

say, "Among who?" Among the Christians! Not the liberals. We're

not discussing the liberals. We're talking about apostate, born

again people. We're talking about born again people who cling to

the profession of faith in the fundamentals, while they

apostasize from the orders and commandments of God Almighty.

All right, emphasis on ritual and organization can cause

apostasy. When we get to studying the early foundations of the

Roman Church, for example, we'll run into this matter over and

over again.

5. Fifthly and finally, and perhaps most important, the

desire to sit as an authority on the word of God is perhaps the

prime cause and source of apostasy in the body of Christ. And,

unfortunately, this particular gimmick is true of conservative

scholarship in every age of the church history--just about. The

only exception that is given is the Reformation, the Philadelphia

church, that "kept his word," Revelation 3, verse 8.

Somehow or another, when a Christian gets educated, he

cannot resist the temptation to set himself up as God, when he is

dealing with the Bible. A good example is John R. Rice playing

God in Revelation 22:14, or John R. Rice playing God on Acts

chapter 8, verse 37--or any other passage, or any other scholar.

Rice, of course, was deceived and led astray by Dr. A.T.

Robertson, Benjamin Warfield, J. Gresham Machen, and the rest of

the "good, godly, dedicated people" who sat in judgment on the

word of God. R.A. Torrey has been guilty of it at times. As a

matter of fact, Dr. DeHaan, Charles Fuller, and Theodore Epp have

been guilty of it at times.

Now, strangely enough, the attitude of the modern

conservative toward this is this--and a more peculiar attitude

you couldn't get if you went to Zen Buddhism and went there on

cocaine. When these men sit in judgment on the word of God and

correct, do you know what their alibi is? You'd never guess. I

mean, just as surely as they change that word of God and alter

it, do you know what they give you as an alibi for doing it? They

give the alibi that every unsaved man in your town gives for

rejecting Jesus Christ. You know what they say? They say, "Well,

So-and-So, and he's godly." That's what they say!

Now, I've dealt with these men all across this country, in

every type of imaginable situation. And, when you pin them right

down, you know what their alibi is for sitting in judgment on the

word of God? That other godly, dedicated men did it, so that's

proof that they can do it, because they're godly and dedicated,

too! You know what they call that in psychiatric pathology? They

call that a psychosis! That's madness!

There isn't a man listening to my voice who doesn't know, no

matter how godly and dedicated a man is, he has two natures. When

God wanted to pick a man after his own heart, he picked David.

And he let David write more of the Old Testament than any man

outside of Moses. David and Moses were both murderers. Does that

prove you should murder?

You see, like I said before, the gap between what that Book

says and what you're dealing with is so great that unless you

know the progress of apostasy from Acts 28 to now, you don't know

what's going on. As a matter of fact, you Christian people can't

even think straight any longer, many of you. The processes are in

line with the age. They're not in line with the word of God.

Now you say, "What made these men sit in authority on the

word of God and judge it and correct it?" Well, that's easy.

Their old nature! The old nature is a rebel. The devil said to

Eve, "I'll tell you what you do. You just pretend God didn't say

that, and go ahead and eat it, and you'll be like a god, knowing

good and evil." KNOWLEDGE! The tree of the knowledge of good and

evil.

So she bit. You reckon that was a manifestation of her

godliness or humility? That was a manifestation of the fact that

she was able to sin. So, when these godly, dedicated--I use that

term over and over again because that's the term they use in

describing themselves; they're very humble; or describing the

other people who correct the word of God, so people will think

they're all the same bunch; they think that's a manifestion of

their godliness. That's a manifestion of their wickedness!

But don't you see, the modern Christian leader or Christian

celebrity or educator is a Pharisee, and he's gotten the idea

that if the man he's talking about was never caught drunk or

shacking up with somebody's wife or spitting tobacco juice, that

he's sinless when he corrects the word of God! Why it should

never occur to the modern educator that that might be a

manifestation of his old nature, is a mystery to me. After all,

the basic roots of the old nature don't hinge primarily in such

things as fornication and adultery and drunkenness. They hinge in

pride. Why, pride and envy were working in this universe in

Isaiah 14 and Genesis 1:1 before Adam and Eve even showed up!

Now, you see what we mean? You see what we mean when we say

that the modern Christian is not Biblically oriented? The mind

and the thinking processes and the reasoning processes are in

tune with the age. And that's exactly what Paul warned against

when he said, "Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed

by the renewing of your mind." So we say for the fifth or sixth

time, and say justifiably, a knowledge of church history is

almost indispensable to the Christian, and it is to the educated

Christian.

Now, two other general trends are found throughout church

history, which we'll run into again and again as we study. And

these trends have to do with three warnings in the New Testament.

Before church history proper begins, and before we begin to study

the actual working out of history following the completion of the

New Testament in Acts 28, we find a couple of well-placed

warnings right in the New Testament for us, so we don't lose our

footing. The first of these is in Colossians chapter 2, verse 8,

which warns against tradition and philosophy. The second warning

is 1 Timothy 6:20, which warns against science.

You will be careful to note that every new translation on

the market has changed both of these verses, and both of these

verses were changed by born again, saved people. Because the body

of Christ is the leader in the apostasy. Now, you need to get

that. When Paul wrote that thing, he warned against philosophy,

tradition, and science. The King James translators in 1611 were

perfectly aware of that, and perfectly aware of the fact that the

magicians and astrologers of Chaldea, Daniel 1 and 2, were

acquainted with science. They were perfectly aware of the fact

that the word was "science," according to the Greek gnostics and

agnostics, and that Plato and Aristotle used that term. And they

gave a clearcut warning about those three things.

The modern Christian whose mind is in tune with the world

and who worships science and education must change that word to

go to sleep at night with a clear conscience. So the word has

been changed in all the new translations. You know what you call

that? That's a falling away from the faith. That is apostasy. By

who? By saved, born again, premillennial, fundamental, soul-

winning people, who object to the Bible.

So, when we say "apostasize," we know exactly what we're

talking about. It can be proved with no trouble. If you're

talking about a "falling away from," apohistomie, that's what the

word means, it goes on all the time among Christians--not unsaved

people. As a matter of fact, in our discussion so far, we're not

even discussing unsaved people. We're talking about saved people.

Two principles are observed throughout church history that

lead to apostasy in the body of Christ and cause the Christians

to accept philosophy, tradition and science in place of the word

of God. The first of these movements is what we call an

"ecumenical" movement. It is a movement of unsaved people to get

into the body of Christ--that is, at least where they meet,

worship, teach, and pray, and sing--especially the schools and

the faculty. And get in there under the pretense of being the

same crowd. These ecumenical principles are found in the Book of

Nehemiah and Ezra. And, if you want to learn how they work, you

study the Book of Ezra and Nehemiah. And, when you get in there,

you find that the enemies of the Lord show up, and when they come

up there, the first thing they want to do is join. And when they

come up there, they say, "Why, we're of God, and we're building

too, and we're just like you are!"

Do you remember what happened to the young prophet in 1

Kings 13 who was told that by an older prophet? Well, if you

don't, you have no business talking about bibles or revisions,

and you ought to get out of the pulpit for about 35 years. You

say, "Ruckman, you're overstating!" No, I'm not overstating in

the least! What are you doing taking the advice of "godly,

dedicated" men who perverted the word of God, when you were told

in 1 Kings chapter 13 that when God said something, He said it,

and no matter who tells you it wasn't that way, you're to ignore

them! Or get killed by a lion (1 Kings 13)!

Do you remember when the ambassadors came to Joshua and

pretended to be from a far country. And Joshua, all he did was

check their bread and their clothes and looked at the dirt on

them and figured they were telling the truth, when they weren't?

That's the ecumenical principle.

Folks say, "We believe the Bible is the sole authority in

all matters of faith and practice." No! I don't know 15 faculty

members at Bob Jones who believe that. As a matter of fact, I

don't know five who do. When I went to Bob Jones University, they

had an advertisement that said, "We believe in the absolute

authority of the Bible." I hadn't been there three months before

I found out that no faculty had a Bible. All they had was what

they called "reliable translations" that they sat in judgment on,

and changed when they felt like changing it. They believe in the

absolute authority of Christian education. Their god was their

belly. They were their own god. They weren't in subjection to any

authority. The authority of God was in subjection to them.

You better learn the ecumenical principle of Ezra, Nehemiah,

and 1 Kings 13, where the enemy, sometimes saved (1 Kings 13,

speaking by the Holy Spirit), sometimes lost (Ezra and Nehemiah),

moves in and professes to be a Bible believer when they're not.

Or, when they are, perverts it to test you to see if you believe

it.

You see where we're going, don't you? We're dealing with the

satanic principles and the work of the god of this world in the

field of authority. And, when we're in here, we're on ground that

98 percent of the Christians can no longer follow. Because, on

these grounds, when it comes to being in subjection to authority,

the average Christian is an apostate, as we have defined the

word. He has fallen away from complete obedience and surrender to

God.

All right, the ecumenical principle will be found throughout

church history. And then, what we call the "revision" principle,

which is found in Jeremiah. In Jeremiah, this matter is outlined

and outlined very thoroughly where you couldn't possibly miss it,

in Jeremiah 36. And, if you're not thoroughly familiar with the

material in Jeremiah 36, you may have some business pastoring a

church or teaching a class, you may have some business as an

evangelist or a soul-winner or a missionary or rescue mission

superintendent. But you have no business talking about the

authority of the word of God in regards to inspiration. You

better leave that alone. Because in Jeremiah 37 you were told

that when a certain class of people get hold of the original,

inspired words, they cut it up and burn it. And where they do,

God does a double act of inspiration that inspires a new set that

are different from the originals! And you'd better get that

before you go writing books on inspiration, like these poor

superstitious people like Dr. Rice and Dr. Custer and Gaussen,

where they're spending the whole book trying to prove the

inspiration of the Greek manuscript by quoting King James. You

see?

There isn't a way on God's earth you're going to be a real

Bible-believing Christian unless, number one, you're so ignorant

and stupid you just believe it from cover to cover, and the Holy

Spirit guides you, or unless, if you're educated, you understand

how the word of God interprets church history. And, of course,

when it comes to church history, we accept the Bible as the final

interpreter and teacher.

All right, now we're ready for a beginning of the actual

study of church history itself. And, in the actual study of

church history, we begin with the Roman Empire. When the Lord

Jesus Christ shows up on this earth and is born in Bethlehem in

the days of Herod the king and Augustus Caesar, when He is born

there, the world is under the domination of the iron legs of

Daniel 2, Rome. The Caesars, the Roman emperors, are considered

to be offspring of the gods--the Roman always having confused the

political with the religious, as they do at Xavier University and

Loyola today and Dartmouth. And the Caesar was looked upon as

God.

There are endless lists of the Caesars. The material on

their lives is legend and just about infinite. Anybody who reads

the classic work on the fall of Rome by Gibbon can get the

material. So we're not going to waste a great deal of time

studying the lives of the Caesars. The term is also "Kaiser" and

"Tsar" in other languages. It indicates a divinely chosen ruler.

And these Caesars are in charge of things; their lives are

corrupt beyond belief. And, when you get to reading the material

published by Josephus and other writers and Gibbons, and study

the private life of the Caesars, their lives are just as corrupt

as the lives of the Popes. And, in this study, of course, we'll

find Popes who were women parading as men, Popes who were caught

in the act of adultery and killed, and Popes who had as many as

40 illegitimate children running around Rome. Rome doesn't change

very much. One thing you can say about it; "The Eternal City"

abides forever as the fount and sink of corruption, and probably

won't change in the next 450,000 years--at least not until the

new heavens and new earth.

Now the Lord Jesus Christ comes in. Rome is in power. The

Roman Empire has spread a vast network of highways and roads all

over the northern part of Africa and the northwestern part of

Europe. They've been able to get up to the Rhine and get across

the Rhine and not much further. And, when they to the Toortenberg

Forest, Shaman gives them a fit and kills them out, Septimus

Severus, and he lies up there frozen up in the snow. And they get

up there in the north end of England and have terrible trouble

with the Scots. So they build a wall across between Scotland and

England, which is still there today. And, to this day, they have

the worst trouble in dealing with people from central Germany and

the Scotsmen.

If you want to know what's going on in North Ireland, it's

Scotch Presbyterians in Ulster, who have been there for years and

years, who are Bible believers. And, if you want to know what's

wrong there, it's very simple. The Pope will never intervene to

stop a war, if there's a possibility it will come out in his

favor.

And so we have the Roman Empire trying to take over Europe

and having taken a great deal of it at the time that Christ

comes. And when Christ comes, He comes into a Greek-speaking

world in the main. Aramaic and Biblical Hebrew, of course, are

still spoken, and when the Lord Jesus Christ is on there, you

have Biblical Hebrew spoken in the synagogues. Which is apparent

by the fact that Paul reads it when he travels around Asia Minor,

and teaches and preaches in it to Jews in the synagogues.

The fickle fancy that only Aramaic is spoken, of course, is

Graff-Wellhausen nonsense. We don't have time to talk about Graff

and Wellhausen right now; we'll talk about them later.

When Christ comes in, there are some political parties

active in Palestine. These parties, of course, are the Sadducees

and Pharisees spoken of in your New Testament. The Sadducees are

spoken of in the Book of Acts, where Paul is making his defense

before the Council. And when Paul tears up this Council, he tears

them up by pointing out the fact that the Pharisee believes in a

resurrection, and the Sadducee doesn't (Acts 23). In Acts 23 you

will find the Sadducee; in Matthew 23, you will find the

Pharisee. If you study all the verses of the New Testament that

deal with the Sadducee and the Pharisee, you will come up with

the logical conclusion that the Sadducee represents the modern-

day liberal in the National Council of Christian Churches, and

the Pharisee, beyond any shadow of a doubt, represents the Roman

Catholic.

The points by comparison and similitude are too many to

ignore. For one thing, the Pharisee wanted to be called "Father,"

as the Catholic priest; he wore long robes, as the Catholic

priest; he compassed land and sea to make one, Catholic, whole,

universal proselyte, as the Catholic priest; his converts were

unconverted, as the Catholic people's converts are unconverted.

And, if you will study rabbinical literal, especially in the

literature by Eerdmans and Josephus and the Talmud, you'll find

the doctrines of limbo and purgatory come from rabbinical

tradition. And the greatest rabbinical traditionists in the world

were the Pharisees. See Matthew 20, 21, 22, and 23.

In addition to the active work of the Sadducees and the

Pharisees in the time of Christ was the work of the Essene group.

This group has received much undue publicity and overdue

publicity by the people who talk about the Dead Sea Scrolls. This

was a Communist group of Bible-rejecting Jews who lived out near

the Dead Sea, and their rules and regulations are contrary to the

Old Testament. They reject the sacrifice God told them to offer,

and the interest in the Essenes is very apparent by the fact that

such writers as Burrows and Allbright and the rest of them work

at it day and night to try to convince you that Christ borrowed

His religion from them--or at least that John the Baptist

borrowed his religion from them--which of course he didn't.

What you're up against in church history is always these

archaeologists and paleontologists and ethnologists always

digging around and trying to find some human, natural explanation

to explain why this stuff pops up in the New Testament. And hell

will freeze over, I guess, before they will stop looking for a

natural explanation so they can kick God the Holy Spirit out of

their lives and out of history. So the best thing to do is

classify them "4F."

Then we have the Zealots. The Zealots were a group of

minutemen, right-wing extremists. And these right-wing extremists

were largely responsible for the terrible debacle that took place

in 70 a.d. at the destruction of Jerusalem. The Zealots were

extremely anti-Roman; they were extremely pro-Jewish; they were

Bible literalists who believed in the coming of the Messiah.

However, since they did not believe the Old Testament literally

where it spoke of Christ's first coming, but only believed the

Old Testament literally where it spoke of His Second Coming, they

were responsible for His death on the cross and, as a

consequence, they were crucified at the rate of 500 a day outside

the city walls of Jerusalem during the siege by Titus in 70 a.d.

Now 70 a.d. is one of the dates we should first learn in our

study of Christian church history. We should learn 33 a.d. (for

the death of Christ), often given as 30 with the adjustment in

the calendar time, which we'll ignore. We'll make it 33 a.d. for

the death of Christ, and 70 a.d. for the destruction of

Jerusalem. The destruction of Jerusalem is mentioned in all the

ancient writing, with a detailed description by Josephus and many

others. And in the destruction of Jerusalem, the Zealots stood

the people up to resist the Roman army on the grounds that the

Messiah was about to appear. And, of course, they just had

crucified Him; in the Book of John they said, "We have no king

but Caesar," and in 70 a.d. the Lord graciously answered their

prayer for damnation and transferred their authority from their

King, the Lord Jesus Christ, to a drunken, depraved sadist--Nero

Caesar.

The Jew had said, "We have no king but Caesar." He gave them

Caesar.

Now the Zealots were not saying, "We have no king but

Caesar." That was the chief priest, scribes, and Pharisees, and

the Herodians. But the Zealots, on the grounds of expecting the

Messiah to come after rejecting the first One, kept all this

bunch in line until they were slaughtered to where there were

bodies in the ground so thick, you couldn't walk from the bottom

of Zion to the top of the Temple without stepping on a body. At

one time the blood was falling so fast it put out portions of the

fire that were kindled in the Temple.

These were the minutemen, the Zealots. Simon Zealotes, one

of the disciples, was from this group.

Last of all, we have the Herodians, who sided with the Roman

government. And some of the Pharisees were Herodians, in that

they were very concerned and upset when Christ began to teach,

and went around to Herod accusing Him, and went around to Pilate

and accused Him, and accused Him of sedition, and not paying His

taxes. The Herodians were a pro-government, pro-Roman group. As

such, of course, they were fascists, as Rome has always been a

fascist state. The fashish is the symbol of the Roman government;

the bound rods to whip the man with, and the axe in the middle to

cut off his head with. It is a fascist state, and of course,

Hitler, being a good Roman, and Goebbels and Himmler and Eichmann

and Heidrich, being good Romans, adopted this symbol too after

Mussolini taught them how to use it.

Then we have some odd groups that show up in the first

couple of centuries, which we'll talk about in detail later. And

among these are the Ebionites, people who believe in salvation by

faith and works by misquoting the New Testament; and Montanists,

a sort of "holiness" group which we'll talk about later; and the

Gnostics, the great learners from Alexandria who professed to

have a higher knowledge than anybody because they thought they

were smarter than anybody else. And we'll deal with these three

classes later.

In church history, we have also what we call "Councils," and

these Councils begin, of course, in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and

John. You should heed the warnings of Jesus Christ about Councils

in Matthew 10. You will notice that Jesus Christ is brought

before a Council; you will notice in the Book of Acts, the word

"Council" never refers to any group but a bunch of Bible-

rejecting people who are trying to stop the proclamation of the

Gospel. It is very important that you understand this, because

there are many, many Councils in church history. And you must

understand at the very start that God isn't the Author or

Convener of a single one of them. You better look out for that

word "Council." That word "Council" occurs only one time in the

Book of Matthew in a good sense. And that "Council" is a

reference to a council that will be set up at the Second Advent

of Jesus Christ. Everywhere else the term occurs in the New

Testament, it is always a reference to a bunch of Bible-rejecting

people who are out to stop the word of God. There are many

Councils in church history, but in the Book of Acts at the very

start we're warned about these matters.

So, when we find the Council of Nicea in 325, the Council in

Arles in 314, the Council, say, of Chalcedon in 451, the Council

of Constantine in 381, the Council of Elvira in 313, the Council

of Ephesus in 431, or the Councils of Clement, Constance, Lyons,

Piza, Toledo, Trent, or Veyeney, we know what to think of them--

nothing! They're not productive and conducive of good works or

good fruit, and so when we study them we shall study them in view

of mind of watching the progress of Satan through church history.

All right, now we're ready for a study of church history

proper. And, to begin with, we begin with a bunch of people

called "fathers." These people are called the "church fathers."

And these are the main characters in the history of the Christian

church after the demise, the decease, of Paul, Peter, James,

John, Matthew, and the rest of them in the New Testament.

The lives of some of these church fathers overlap apostolic

times. That is, some of these church fathers live or are alive at

the same time that Paul and John are alive. So, because of this,

we call the first set in church history, Apostolic Fathers.

They're called "apostolic" because their lives overlap the lives

of the apostles. Church fathers come in three sizes: Apostolic,

Ante-Nicene and Post-Nicene. They are called Ante-Nicene and

Post-Nicene because some of them lived before the Council of

Nicea, 325 a.d. Some of them approximately after the Council of

Nicea, 325 a.d. The word "Nicea" is spelled variably N-I-C-A-E-A

(the ancient spelling) or N-I-C-E-A (the modern spelling). You

say, "Why the difference in spelling?" Oh, it's confusion, to

make you pay for the education. I think you understand that.

So we have Apostolic Fathers, and we have Ante-Nicene

Fathers, and Post (After)-Nicene Fathers.

And, in the study of church history, we begin, of course,

with the lives of these men. These men are the Apostolic Fathers.

The Apostolic Church Fathers, are, first of all, a certain--

--Clement, called Clement of Rome. Clement's dates are

approximately 30 a.d. to 100 a.d. There are some variations in

some sources of church history.

--Ignatius, who is 50 a.d. to 115 a.d. Some variations in

some church histories. They're not all nailed right down.

--Papius (60 a.d. to 130 a.d.).

--Polycarp (69-155 a.d.).

--And, sometimes included, Tatian, sometimes not.

--Sometimes included, Justin Martyr, 100-165 a.d. And again,

there are variations.

These are the Apostolic Fathers whose lives overlap the

lives of the Apostles. And we'll study these lives in detail more

in our next lecture, which deals with the Apostolic Fathers and

the Ante-Nicene Fathers.

This concludes Volume 2 in our study of church history. In

volume 3, we'll take up the study of the church fathers, and in

particular the lives of the Apostolic Fathers, the saints or

leaders in the church whose lives overlap the lives of the

Apostles, and the lives of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. And

throughout we'll trace the course of the Christian's apostasy to

philosophy, science, and tradition--the work of the devil; and

the soul-winning and propagation of the word of God, and the

martyrdom of Christians for the cause of Christ, following the

progress and line of the Holy Spirit.

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Index of Preacher's Help and Notes

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