Live Q&A Ask David Anything - Live Stream - The Historic Faith

Hey, welcome back to another, uh, The Historic Faith, Engage the Faith, live question and answer with, uh, David Berceau. And, um, you all know him; I will introduce him here. Can everybody hear me okay? Could you give me a thumbs up if you can hear me? Okay, good.

So, um, today's a little bit different. We have Sound Faith on as well. Um, and we had a bunch of the Sound Faith YouTube channel people ask; we're giving them a little taste of what the historic faith is like. And for the Sound Faith subscribers, uh, this is—we do this; we're going to be doing this every month with David or some other of the, um, teachers from the historic faith and some teachers from Saddle Air College. And, uh, so this will not be available on the Sound Faith channel after this one, maybe once a year or so. But if you want to join us every month, uh, there's 23 courses, and it's growing, and there's over 200 lessons, and most of them by David Berceau and other great teachers like Finney Kuravilla, Chuck Pike, and Dean Taylor.

And, um, it's $10 a month, and it's a very fair rate for, um, first-class teachings and, uh, really life-changing teachings. And you can join them with your church. Um, so my name is Daniel Willis. Uh, I'm the host, and, um, David Berceau has been, uh, teaching—has been learning, uh, from church history, especially for the first three centuries, uh, the Anti-Nicene Fathers. And this set back here, the, um, the 12—the 10-volume set behind us. And, uh, I don't know if there's anybody else in the world who's as knowledgeable about these books as him. And, uh, so we get the privilege to ask him all kinds of questions about what the early Christians believed and, um, all a bunch of other types of questions.

So, uh, we're going to—I'm not going to talk too much because we have lots of questions to go through, and we have so many we're probably not going to get through them all. And they're really great, great questions, but we're going to, uh, try our best today. Um, and yep, let me hand—let me get the questions up.

Our first question is from Roger Ciders. Hi, David. Will you be doing any audio messages or possibly writing a book regarding the current very unbiblical ideologies running rampant in our society and even in our churches today? Things such as cancel culture, LGBTQ, more than two genders, and progressive left racism toward white people. Thank you very much, Roger.

Well, Roger, we decided to start with your question, mainly because I could answer it very quickly. The answer is no, I don't have any plans to write on those subjects. Um, the niche that I've basically carved out as far as writing is concerning the early Christians. And no, I'm not the most knowledgeable person in the world about the early church, but, um, most of the patristic scholars write to a more academic audience. And I guess from day one, I've been focusing on reaching just the everyday Christian, uh, who doesn't necessarily have a seminary degree or that, because for too long these works have just remained in the, uh, realm of academics, and they haven't filtered down to the Christians who need to know this information.

But for that reason, no, I'm not going to tackle those subjects. There are people out there, uh, in the Christian world who are already writing books on those subjects who can probably discuss them with more knowledge and certainly more up-to-date information than I could. But anyway, thank you for your question.

Great. Our second question here is, uh, by Herbert Frank. Are there references where the early Christian fathers teach that Jesus was the Son of the Old Testament Jehovah? In other words, did the early Christians believe Jesus was the Son of Jehovah, or did they believe that Jesus was Jehovah come in the flesh? Or alternately, how did the early Christians relate Jesus and Jehovah?

Okay, a timely question. I don't know if my message that I recorded last week about Jehovah's Witnesses is what prompted the question or not, but, um, it would be one that, um, very relevant for anyone leaving Jehovah's Witnesses, and also relevant for all Christians, and particularly anyone interacting with Jehovah's Witnesses, because so often, um, people from other persuasions have this totally mixed up, and so they end up giving a terrible witness, and they end up, when someone leaves Jehovah's Witnesses, they run into this stone wall because they've left one false teaching about Jesus, and then they get switched over to an equally false one. So the answer to your question is the early Christians, um, you would find it all throughout their writings.

Uh, they clearly viewed Jesus as the Son of the Jehovah of the Old Testament, although the question probably needs a little bit more explanation or the answer because they don't use Jehovah. Um, that's, um, I don't know when that, uh, transliteration came in of the Old Testament, YHWH, but because the early Christians were using the Septuagint for their Old Testament, the same as the apostles did, well, the Septuagint doesn't use either Yahweh or Jehovah or YHWH, however you want to say it. Uh, it's always God or Lord. So they don't have any familiarity at all, just for the same reason why you don't see Jehovah or Yahweh in the New Testament, because it's not there and because it's not in the Septuagint.

And so the early Christians, you know, just referred to him as God or Lord or the Father, and Jesus is clearly the Son of God. Now, uh, and I'll just give you a few quotes. I'm going to start with one from Scripture that, to me, makes it clear. I mean, to me, what did Jesus himself say about this? John 8:41 and 42, Jesus said, um, "Then they said to him, 'We were not born of fornication. We have one Father, God.'" Okay, so they're viewing God, the Father, as God. These are the Jewish, uh, leaders, and I think other Jews there are saying this. Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me."

Why? Because I am God? No, for I proceeded forth and came from God, nor have I come of myself, but he sent me. So Jesus always referred to himself as the Son of God, not that I am the God you have been worshiping him. Now, the confusion comes in from John 1:1 that we know that Jesus is also divine. His nature is that of God. And so it gets very, very confusing when you go back and forth. So if we're talking about his nature, it's proper to say Jesus is God, that that is his nature. But if we're talking about the God of the Old Testament, that is the Father. And usually in the New Testament, when it's talking about God, it's almost always talking about the Father.

But there are several verses where it mentions God and is talking about Jesus.

And then in verse 54 of John 8, Jesus says, it says, "Jesus answered, 'If I honor myself, my honor is nothing. It is my Father who honors me, of whom you say that he is your God.'" So Jesus identified the God of the Old Testament, the one the Jews were worshiping.

He said, "That's my Father you say is your God." He didn't say, "I'm the one that you say is God." He said, "My Father is the one." So that's from Jesus himself. And not surprisingly, we see that then mirrored in the early Christian writings. I'll read you just, uh, three here I've got. The first one is from Justin Martyr.

He said, "He who has but the smallest intelligence will not venture to assert that the Maker and Father of all things, having left all supercelestial matters, was visible on a little portion of the earth." Now there he's talking about the angel of the Lord mentioned in the Old Testament, who is the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ. And he's saying that's not the Father who came down and was visible on the earth. That was Jesus. That's from, I believe, um, his, uh, dialogue with Trypho, the Jew, if you want to read that sometime.

Okay, another one. This is from Irenaeus about the year 180. He said, "He whom the law proclaimed as God," the law meaning the, um, Mosaic law, "the same did Christ point out as the Father." So the one the Mosaic law refers to as God, Jesus pointed out as being the Father.

And then Tertullian writing about the year 200, "So far as a human being can form a definition of God, I present one that the conscience of all men will also acknowledge that God is the great supreme existing in eternity, unbegotten, unmade, without beginning, without end."

Now, most of those terms would apply to Jesus as well, but one of them does not, and that is unbegotten. Jesus is begotten of the Father. And so he says, "When we think of God, we think of the unbegotten." Again, not denying the divinity of Christ, but that the ultimate God that the Bible normally talks about is the Father.

So this is just a cursory, uh, answer to your question. I would refer to anyone who would like to learn more just about what the early Christians taught about Jesus and the Father, their inner relationship. Um, I have a message up on the Scroll Publishing YouTube channel on what the early Christians believed about the Trinity. And, uh, I would I would really recommend you listen to that. Uh, also on this Sound Faith, on the Sound Faith channel, there's a—no, I take that back. Have we—we haven't recorded one. Okay. So yeah, there's the one on the Trinity there on the Scroll SCROLL Publishing, uh, YouTube channel that'll give you a lot deeper answer. And the Historic Faith will have one or two probably as well.

Yes, on the Historic Faith for certain.

Are we on the next question? Yeah. Okay, Jonathan asked, "I would love to hear David's take on the canon of Scripture." I think this will just take half a minute to answer probably. "Do the Anabaptists include broader canon in what they consider Scripture? What books should I use in my study?"

Okay, um, when we talk about the canon, what comes as such a surprise to most Christians, unless they've grown up Catholic or Orthodox, something like that, um, is we are used—well, even Catholics should be used to the Old Testament, uh, being translated from the Masoretic text. But the apostles, when they quote the Old Testament, they nearly always quote from the Septuagint, and likewise the early Christians.

Now, why this is important, I've already mentioned how it comes up with Jehovah, but the canon of the Septuagint was slightly different than the canon of the Masoretic text, because the—well, the canon of the Masoretic text, I don't know what it would have been in the early centuries, but when it was formed by the Jewish leaders around the year 100, the Jewish religious leaders, um, they narrowed the canon down and eliminated certain books that they didn't particularly like or that maybe had not been accepted by some of the rabbis in Palestine. So their canon was missing some of the books in the larger canon of the Septuagint. But because the early Christians used the Septuagint as their Old Testament, their canon—their Old Testament canon was was a little bit different than than what Protestants have grown up being used to.

Now, usually when you—if you ask a Protestant, certainly a Catholic, "Okay, what is the canon of the Scripture?" Most reference books go to the Third Council of Carthage. I have AD 419 up there. I think it's actually three something, uh, 390 or something like that. But, uh, um, it starts off saying that besides the canonical scriptures, nothing be read in church under the name of divine scripture. And the canonical scriptures are as follows. Now, this is a council, like I say, it was actually in the late 300s, and this is the canon that they listed. Okay, the New Testament, the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of Paul, and they include Hebrews in that, the Epistles of Peter, the Epistles of John the Apostle, and there's two of Peter, three of John, Epistle of James, of Jude, and of—and then the book of Revelation. 27 books.

And, you know, Protestants all point to that. Yep, we follow the historic canon. But look at what the historic canon is for the Old Testament.

It says the canonical scriptures talking about the Old Testament are as follows: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, all what we would expect. Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Kings, that's four books because what we know as First and Second Samuel in English Bibles was—it was First and Second and Third and Fourth Kings.

And then two books of the Chronicles.

Okay, the Psalms or Psalter. Five books of Solomon. Those would be the three we know: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, but also the Wisdom of Solomon, and then the Wisdom of Sirach, which was not even remotely attributed to Solomon, but it was grouped with the Wisdom books, which were under the heading of Solomon. And then the 12 books that we would know as the Minor Prophets. Then Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Tobit, Judith, Esther, Ezra, two books of Ezra.

And then I can't see the screen there. Malachi. Maccabees. Maccabees. I'm sorry. And two books of the Maccabees. So yeah, this shocks most Christians. They think they're using what the historic canon is. And this would be what the historic canon was. What we just saw on the screen is what the early Christians used as their canon. Now, there wasn't perfect uniformity among the early Christians, uh, either on the New Testament canon or the Old Testament. The apostles never handed down a list to the church and said, "Okay, here's the canon of Scripture." You would think that they would have done that, but they didn't. Maybe they figured they had been on earth long enough, uh, that people knew what scriptures they used, or they died—many of them died unexpectedly soon.

They got arrested, were martyred, and they didn't have time to do that. But even John, who was alive at the end, uh, did not leave a a canon of Scripture. So there wasn't uniformity among all the churches, but, um, I'd say there was general agreement. And so in the 300s, when they started having councils, and let's decide this or that, let's nail this down, they looked at the books that the church had been using for the previous, uh, two or three hundred years, and that's the canon that they came up with. So, I mean, that is the historic canon.

It came as a great surprise to me because I had grown up, you know, being taught that the, uh, books of the so-called Apocrypha, uh, this is something the Catholic Church added to the Bible. Well, actually, if there's anything, it's the other way around, that these were the books the early Christians used. It was actually Jerome, who had been commissioned by the Pope to do the, uh, a new Latin translation of the Bible, who gave them the name Apocrypha. And yeah, he he didn't want them in the Scripture. So the Catholic Church actually kind of downplayed those books rather than inventing them. It was, like I say, the opposite.

Okay, so we have another one from Road FM. I don't know how to say his name. One of my questions would be, did the early Christians proclaim the Gospel like many Christians do today? Christ died for our sins, and if you believe and repent of your sins, you'll be saved and have eternal life. Or did they point to the whole Gospel as we have in our Bibles today?

Okay, so you know, we don't have a lot of, like, there's no tracts on here's how to present the Gospel. We don't have a recording of, you know, somebody witnessing on the street, and this is how they they shared the Gospel. Now, we have a lot of apologetic writings. These are writings from the early Christians explaining Christianity to the pagan Romans or to the Jews sometimes. So we can see how they presented the Gospel to these people. And in those instances, they very much go into the Gospels. In fact, one of the things I noted when I first read the early Christian writings was that when they were explaining Christianity to the Romans, they went to the Sermon on the Mount.

This is what the essence of Christianity is. And they start quoting the Sermon on the Mount, the various teachings in it. So the teachings of Jesus were at the center of Christianity. It wasn't just his death. They certainly taught his death, the forgiveness of sins that we get through his death, uh, cleansing through his blood. And you find that in in their presentations of the Gospel. But they also talk a lot about the teachings of Jesus. To them, to just present, believe on Jesus and, uh, have faith in in his death and resurrection would only be half of the Gospel. They certainly taught that, but yeah, they went they went much fuller. Now, I was going to mention, um, one another work you can look at that gives you an illustration of a Christian witnessing to somebody, and that is the work by Justin Martyr.

I've already mentioned it once, Dialogue with Trypho the Jew. And in there, Justin relates how he became a Christian from a he was a had been a pagan philosopher. And it was through this Christian, uh, man who who just came up and started witnessing to him. And so we have a dialogue there, or at least, um, a recollection of of what this Christian had shared with him. So you may find that interesting. And then there's a work called Octavius, is written by a man named Mark Minutius Felix.

And it's a dialogue it's between a Christian and a pagan, almost like a debate between them. And it gives you a lot of insight on the questions that Christians got asked back in those early centuries, and then how they presented the Gospel to the Romans. And again, it's it's quite a bit different than the real simple, uh, watered-down, um, Gospel that is often presented today.

As I mentioned, also in the Scriptures, um, if you go to the second chapter of Acts, there you have Peter presenting the Gospel. This would have been to some Jews there on the day of Pentecost. You can see the kind of things that he talked about. Uh, also Acts 26, where Paul is talking before the Roman governor, and he shares a witness there. Acts 10:34 through, uh, 43, I believe that's where Peter is sharing the Gospel with Cornelius and the, uh, group that was assembled with him. So those are some examples in Scriptures where you can see the apostles presenting the Gospel and and how they shared it. And again, it wasn't quite the the same way that it's often presented today, although it would contain those same essential elements that I think are part of, uh, any Gospel presentation.

Great. So we had numerous questions on baptism. And, uh, it's a very daunting task to answer all those. And I want to just, um, we didn't put all the questions on here because, uh, David will explain why.

This afternoon, I was reviewing these questions. My original plan was to answer each one of them in quite a bit of detail, but I thought a lot of them would evoke maybe some strong feelings. And I thought if I'm going to delve into them, I want to do it in detail. And I think to give a fair answer to, uh, the various questions, I'd really need to write a book to to cover all of the ins and outs. And so I thought, uh, if I answer this in 10 minutes or something, I'm going to get myself into a lot of trouble because there's going to be so much I'm going to leave unsaid. So hopefully, perhaps the next Q&A that we do, the one in March, we can address some of those questions on baptism in more detail.

I will say a few things tonight, but first, again, let me direct you to, um, the, uh, Scroll Publishing YouTube channel. I gave a message on that, uh, many years ago, recorded a message on what the early Christians believed about baptism. And I quote extensively from the early Christian writings and also from the Scriptures what they were basing their teachings on. And I think that'll help answer a lot of the questions, or at least give you a basis if you understand what baptism is.

And there's also a message on the Sound Faith channel, a, uh, sermon I gave on baptism, I think a couple of years ago, that's that's there that you you might find that edifying as well and help you to grasp how the early Christians understood baptism and the biblical basis for it. Okay, so having said that, a lot of the questions pertain to the age of baptism and what did the early Christians say about that.

Of course, the ultimate place we go for authority is the New Testament. We look at the early Christians only as a commentary on the Scriptures. If we start using them ever for an authority in their own right, then I think it becomes dangerous. But as a commentary on the New Testament, how was the New Testament understood by those who received the Christian faith either directly from the apostles or from disciples of the apostles or maybe just a generation or two removed from them? And then they're invaluable when we use them as that kind of tool for Bible study.

So let me just ask you the question, those of you listening to this. In the New Testament, we do read about thousands of people being baptized, and all the ones that are mentioned by name, they're all adults. Although we do read about a lot of baptisms of households, we don't know how how old the people were in the households. But now we'll we'll just talk about the adults for now. Now, presumably, since there were thousands of them who got baptized, that those adult Christians who were newly baptized, that they, many of them had children. So let me ask you, at what age in the New Testament did Christian families have their children baptized? At what age did the children go to baptism?

Well, if you know the answer to that, please email me because I don't. I mean, as far as I know, we don't even have a clue in the New Testament. I mean, the baptisms had to have been taking place, but nowhere does it ever talk about the children, when they got baptized, how old were they? So since we don't know from the New Testament, when we are trying to apply it today, what age should our children be baptized? It's not like we can go to the Bible and say, well, yeah, we've got it right here. It's it's crystal clear because it's it's not. We don't know what the New Testament practice was. Like I say, making new converts, yeah, they didn't go out and witness the children that we know of.

They were making converts of adults. But what about the children of those converts? When were they baptized? So it shouldn't come as any surprise that when you get into the early Christian writings, you have a variety of opinions on it, uh, from ages below where I would personally be comfortable, uh, with my own children getting baptized to, like Tertullian saying, yeah, you ought to wait till you're married, uh, before you you get baptized. And then you have everything in in between that. So there's a variety there, and it, I guess, should come as no surprise that we would find a variety of practices, uh, today. I don't mean that they're all necessarily on the same level, but, um, I would approach the subject, and like I say, maybe next month we can discuss in a little bit more detail, but I would encourage you to approach it not with the dogmatic frame of mind, but with the frame of mind, you know, the we don't have any record of what they did in the New Testament times.

So maybe we can approach our neighbor with a little bit more mercy or tolerance, uh, and not have an intolerant attitude of, uh, this is the minimum age, this is the minimum age, etc. I maybe personally have a minimum age in my mind, but that's not necessarily the same one in someone else's mind.

Okay. Okay, so one thing I forgot to mention is we're going to do it a little different today. We're not going to, please do send your follow-up questions, uh, to Clark Gray. We're probably not going to get to them this time. We will be, uh, doing that next time we have, um, the live question and answers. We will be getting to the the follow-up questions. But if there's something really good or something that we think we should go back and look at of the questions today, um, we might hit it today. But based on how many questions we have, we probably won't get to them today. So the next question is, how do we deal with the early church fathers practicing laying on of hands, confirmation for the Holy Spirit?

Many Anabaptists and separation churches today do not have this practice. And the Bible says, if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. Okay, so the first part of the question, or I should say the first question, the normal practice in the early church that you see is testified to many times would be after someone was baptized, then it would usually be the bishop or certainly a minister who would then lay hands on them to receive the Holy Spirit.

And that was the normal practice. And to me, and it's the practice you see generally in Acts as well. Someone's baptized and hands are laid on them to receive the Holy Spirit. So to me, we have the testimony of history. We have the New Testament. There's no good reason to depart from that. So certainly in our congregation, which is an Anabaptist congregation, that's how we practice baptism. We, we, after the person comes out of the water, we lay hands on them to receive the Holy Spirit.

But now, does that mean if someone did not have hands laid on them, that they haven't received the Spirit of God? Well, think about in the book of Acts. You know, everything didn't always follow the exact same pattern. We have to be careful not to put God into a box. It's good to do things the right way, but it's not good to then start judging other people who maybe don't do it right by the book. Because when we look at the baptism of Cornelius, uh, they received the Holy Spirit before they were baptized. I mean, it was reversed there. Now, God had a reason for pouring out His Spirit before they were baptized is because Peter probably wouldn't have baptized them.

I mean, that's what clinched the, uh, subject to him was, wow, these uncircumcised Gentiles are receiving the Holy Spirit just like we did. How can we prevent them being baptized? But that's the only instance we have in the New Testament of that order being reversed. But it does, God, it does show that God's not in a box. And like I say, no hands were laid on them.

They're in this, uh, on the day of Pentecost. Um, 3,000 were baptized. We don't know. It doesn't describe whether each person had hands laid on them after they were baptized. It would be, uh, I think, a reasonable assumption, but we don't know that for for certain. I'm thinking of the Ethiopian eunuch. I don't know that it mentions that hands were laid on him. Um, so yeah, I think, I guess my philosophy is do everything by the book if you possibly can.

But be careful in judging other people who maybe haven't done it the right way. I mean, I would encourage Anabaptist churches to, you know, go to the practice in Acts of baptism and then laying hands on them. Um, I feel fairly certain the Anabaptists would have done that in the beginning, but don't quote me on that. But, um, let's not use it as a basis for judging others, particularly when you see the evidence of the Holy Spirit in someone's life, then I would be very slow to say, oh, you haven't received the Holy Spirit because this wasn't done right. And there, you know, you can see the fruit of the Spirit in their lives. Very good.

Moving on to the next question.

Mike Humphrey, do the Sabbath year and Jubilee year still hold any spiritual lessons of life applications for today's Christians?

Okay, I, uh, oh, you know, apology, Mike, because I don't know what the early Christians taught on that. I looked today to see if I could find anything. I don't remember reading anything about that other than general references that the Jubilee would have would have pointed to the gospel age when we are all set free.

But as far as any life applications from either the Jubilee or the Sabbath year, I am not aware of any. Um, I'm sure the early Christians would have said that they symbolize things, like I say, the gospel age, etc. But as far as us applying those principles other than in a general way, I don't think they they taught anything on that. Um, nothing comes to my recollection at all, and I couldn't find anything trying to find it through a word search and that kind of thing.

Uh, as far as the Jubilee, it certainly should teach us, however, to be merciful and forgiving. It was a time when, uh, Jewish slaves were set free and debts were forgiven. And I think that's a principle that we should always apply in our life, being merciful and forgiving. And Jesus said, you know, when you loan out money to, uh, do so without expecting it back in return. So that's maybe the ultimate application of the Jubilee principle. Amen.

Moving on. Sorry about the banner in the way. John asked, what does David think about Christian aid ministries? Okay. Um, normally I'm trying to address questions dealing with the early church, uh, but we said ask David anything, so we should maybe be more careful next time. So I guess, you know, fair enough. Um, I'm not sure if you were looking for something in particular. I've been a fan of Christian aid ministries since before it was even called that. I first became aware of them back in the mid-1980s. It was called Christian Aid to Romania. And they were only, uh, helping orphans in Romania, which was still a communist country at that time. And then later they expanded to Haiti and then, uh, on from from there.

So it's been a ministry I've supported and recommended to a lot of people from the very beginning. Uh, I'm impressed with how little of the money that's donated to them goes to overhead, to salaries and things like that. So when you give to Christian aid ministries, um, you know, at least 90%, 95% of what you're giving is going to go to the actual people you're trying to to help.

So, yeah, in my book, maybe they've made a few mistakes, uh, here and there over the years, but in in my book, they're just a top-class ministry. Great. Um, this is a well-known YouTube commenter, John Plain. If David lived in Nazi Germany during Hitler's rule, would he pay his taxes and obey the government, his government? Okay, well, let me ask you the question. If Paul had lived under the government of Nero, would he have paid his taxes and obeyed Nero?

Well, the answer is yes. Because when he wrote Romans 13, that's who the emperor was, was Nero. Uh, as wicked a man as you can find, the very first Roman emperor to persecute Christians. And, uh, oh, just murdered so many innocent people, um, that even the pagan Romans, he was the epitome of evil even to them. So I think God planned it that way, that Paul would write those words in Romans 13 about obeying the government, uh, when you had the most wicked ruler, uh, in world history probably up to that time, uh, sitting there on the emperor's throne. So no one could ever say later, well, yeah, because they had a godly emperor or a, you know, a good, an emperor who had a good will towards his subjects.

And no, you had a monster there sitting on the emperor's chair. So if we're supposed to respect him and obey his laws, then yeah, that would apply to Hitler as well. Now, of course, there's always the principle we obey God as ruler rather than men. So it doesn't matter if it's a benevolent ruler, a ruler who calls himself a Christian.

Um, if they pass a law or try to push a law that would require us to violate God's laws, then we obey God as ruler rather than men. That's always been a principle that Christians have followed. The early Christians certainly did. You know, they were, um, the most loyal subjects as far as they're not going to, as they told the emperor, you know, none of us are ever going to try to overthrow the emperor. There's no trace going to be ever traced to us. Uh, we pay our taxes better than, you know, your own subjects, your own, you know, non-Christian subjects do.

But we're not going to worship the emperor. We're not going to call him divine. We're not going to worship idols. And it doesn't matter what he threatens us with. We're not going to do those things because they violate the laws of Christ.

But other than that, they obeyed the law of the land, even when the ruler was persecuting Christians in horrible ways, worse than Hitler ever did to Christians. Um, so yeah, if they obeyed, then we would have no reason, even if we have a ruler like Hitler, of course, we wouldn't do wicked things that he would want us to do. And so if you were a Christian living under Nazi rule, um, sooner or later, you were almost certain going to, we're going to end up in a concentration camp or prison or something like that, because it would have been hard, particularly for a man to obey all the laws, because, for example, a Christian wouldn't be going to war.

So yeah, you would end up in the concentration camp. Great.

Keith asked, um, what was the early Christians' understanding of the end times, the return of Christ, and how did this understanding develop through the subsequent centuries? Okay, I'm going to answer this very briefly. I've actually never done a message on this subject. I'm not sure. I have done one on what they believed on the millennial rule, the millennium and the rapture that would, uh, answer the the part about this, about the coming of Christ, what what they believed about the rapture. And I also have several messages I've done about dispensationalism where I would go into more detail. Tonight, I'm just going to briefly answer, uh, the question.

They certainly didn't have any of the things you hear today that all of these people who think they have the end times all mapped out and they know everything that's going to happen. And this is where we are in the middle of the end times and, you know, this many years left and this and that and who the beast is and what 666 means and all of that.

The early Christians didn't know any of those things. That is, these are just people's pious imaginations today.

What you generally find is they repeat what's right there in the script, in the scriptures, in the New Testament about the end, what Jesus said about his return, what Paul says and and Peter and, you know, some of the other writers.

I think it's fair to say that probably most of the pre-Nicene Christians assumed that the end would be coming soon, but not necessarily in their lifetime. They didn't think, oh, yeah, we're just 10 years away from it or something like that. And some of them from their writings, it looks like they're assuming it's several centuries away. So you would have different feelings among them where they were in the scheme of time.

And so no one was laying down things, well, this is it and this prophecy is being fulfilled and all that concerning the end times, what we think of end time prophecies. They talk about the prophecies being fulfilled in Christ and being fulfilled in the Gentiles coming in to God's kingdom.

And now how it developed through the centuries, I'm not even qualified to answer that. I've never studied through the Middle Ages. I can't tell you this. The one thing I have studied is in just about every century, people have been convinced that the end was very close. I don't mean that the whole church felt that way because I've just told you they didn't in the early centuries. But there were some Christians who always thought, yep, it's a decade away, a few years away, something like that. All through the Middle Ages, like when the Black Plague came and a lot of other things, then people started thinking, oh, the end must be right around the corner.

And it's good for us to be alert and be looking for the end and expecting Christ's return. There's nothing, I'm not ridiculing that. But I'm also saying, let's be real careful when we're making prophecies and predictions because people have been doing that for nearly 2000 years now and they've been wrong every time. And so putting a lot of stock in that is certainly not the course of wisdom. Instead, let's concentrate on walking with Christ and spreading the good news of his kingdom and, um, yeah, helping people to see what Christ is like by their being able to observe our lives. And then whenever Christ returns, we're going to be in the right place doing the right thing.

Very good. Okay, we have one from Timothy.

He asks, is there any information about how prayer for healing for Christians was practiced, especially how was their understanding of James 5, the prayer of faith by the church elders? And are there records of exorcisms practiced on Christians who fell into sin, maybe, or any exorcisms for that matter? Length of, what was the length of the process, method involved, renouncing sin, and idolatrous practice, oil, etc.?

Okay, so I'll answer it, uh, just, you know, very briefly, Timothy. Um, the Christians, oh, there's so many records of references to praying for the sick and seeing people being healed as a result of their prayers. Uh, nearly all of the apologists mention this. It's mentioned in quite a few writings.

Uh, I don't mean healing services, uh, healing conventions, come here and get healed, anything like that, just a simple, um, we believe that Christ can heal diseases and they prayed for healing. Did Christ always heal someone when they prayed for them? No, they talk about that too, that no, uh, Christ is under no obligation and he doesn't always heal, but they would pray nevertheless in faith because often he did. And even if he chose not to on a particular occasion, it's still right to turn to him, to the great physician for our illnesses. And this often would lead to the conversion of a neighbor when they prayed for a neighbor who was sick or somebody they met in the marketplace and the person was healed, then that person would, would, uh, normally become a Christian.

So it was one of their methods of evangelism. And the same with casting out demons. They talk about that a lot. I'd say the two spiritual miraculous gifts that they discuss the most are healing the sick and casting out demons. Again, not someone having a healing ministry or a deliverance ministry, just people doing this. If there was somebody who was evidently demon-possessed, they would pray for them and in the name of Jesus cast out demons. And it worked. I mean, the name of Jesus is powerful. It worked then. It works today.

Now, normally Christians wouldn't be demon-possessed, you know, once they were a Christian. Tertullian mentions one situation. It may have been in one of his montanist writings. I don't remember. So I don't know if the church, if this would be, it would not have been a very common thing. I'm not going to say it would be impossible. It would certainly be uncommon. A Christian would have to be delving into something they shouldn't be delving in. Otherwise, we would all be possessed by demons. I mean, you know, Satan would try to control every one of us and possess us. But God gives us that protection and gives us power over the demons so that they're the ones fleeing from us, not the other way around.

But now when Christians were baptized or when a believer was baptized, then before they went into the water, they would renounce Satan, his pomp, and his angels. So this was done before they ever went into the water, uh, that they would, you know, publicly renounce Satan. So any ties they had with him, uh, any possession, everything would be gone once they entered the water of baptism and and that would be behind them. So we don't, like I say, it's the reason we wouldn't read a lot about, uh, exorcism of Christians themselves.

I can't think of any specific directions. There might be in some later centuries. I can't think of anything in the pre-Nicene writings. Uh, my memory might be overlooking something, but I can't think of anything right now that goes into any more detail than what I've just shared with you.

Timothy has one more and he asks, uh, can we say we have three stages in the salvation process? Yes, absolutely. Um, and for those of you who, uh, have seen the questions, if you look at his question, he goes into detail what he means by those three stages.

And to some degree, he answers his own question. I think what you shared there was was excellent, uh, Timothy. I would agree, I think, with everything that you said. So, um, there are three stages of salvation. Sometimes I'll say there's two stages. It depends how you're counting them. Uh, the first stage is coming into baptism. Okay. When we're an unbeliever, then, um, normally, uh, the salvation process, you know, we hear about Christ. We hear the Kingdom Gospel.

We believe. We have faith in Christ. We repent of our sins. And then we're baptized, um, at the end of that process. And that's normally in the early church where they would think of as when you got saved, when you entered into salvation was when you came out from baptism and then had hands laid on you to receive the Holy Spirit. So the first stage coming into baptism, you don't have to have any works coming into salvation. Now, it certainly does not hurt to have them. Uh, not that it's going to add anything to your salvation, but like in the case of Cornelius, I mean, God reached out to him, sent an angel, um, and then sent Peter to Cornelius's house because Cornelius had such good works.

And why Peter says that, you know, God is not partial but to, uh, him who works righteousness that God reaches out to, doesn't matter if they're Jew or Gentile. So there's certainly nothing wrong with that, but we're saved through faith in the blood of Jesus Christ. And we don't have to earn that forgiveness that we receive in our initial salvation. We don't have to earn it at any time. But after we are saved, then it's like the Israelites when they crossed the Red Sea, they were saved out of Egypt. Egypt would represent the world, but then they were in the wilderness. Uh, they weren't in paradise yet. Uh, they were then having to journey to the promised land.

And as we know, Paul points out in First Corinthians how most of them didn't make it. And he uses analogies to the Christian life there, to baptism, to communion, and gives warnings of what happened to those who didn't obey, uh, there in the wilderness. So, yeah, we're in a trial period right now. Once we're saved, we become fruit on the vine that Jesus uses the illustration in John 15. But he says we have to produce fruit or we'll be cut off the vine. Now, he gives us the power. We're not on our own. We don't have to, uh, produce the power. We would be unable to do so. But we do have to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in our lives.

We have to surrender our lives and let the Spirit control us or we're not going to produce fruit. So we do play a major role in that. Um, it's we play a major role in obeying God. Again, he will give us power, but he is not going to do our obeying for us. He expects us to obey. And so, yeah, we're in a period of probation now, just like the Israelites were. How are we going to respond? We talk about loving Jesus. Okay. Jesus says, show me with your life. If you love me, you will obey my commandments, Jesus said. So that's what we, uh, God is going to be looking at. That's the second stage of of salvation.