The Church Did NOT Fall Apart After the Apostles | David Bercot

If you think those guys are heroes, all I can say is I'm sorry. You need to go back to the beginning, because people who think they're glorifying Christ by putting other believers to death because they got something a little wrong, you don't understand Jesus Christ. That is all I can say. You have missed somewhere the boat. If you read the Gospels and you think that's the Jesus you see in the Gospels, you're reading out of some different translation than what I'm reading, because I don't see that kind of Jesus at all.

Lord, restore your ancient way and make your people new. See, you guys keep getting lied to as to what I'm going to be speaking about, which is my fault. So we will talk a little bit about what hills to die on before this is over, but I'm still going to be talking about what happened at Nicaea. I do I'm blessed that I've had three times to try to get this done, because it's given me an opportunity to have input, interaction with all of you. And I've been asked a lot of things that have been very helpful for me to realize, okay, some things I need to explain better, and I definitely need to clarify. And usually you don't get that opportunity as a speaker, so I'm very grateful for that.

Okay, so I made the well, the first topic, the early church was not dogmatic. And so a lot of people have asked me, so does that mean they didn't stand for anything kind of like the liberals are today? And no, no, not at all. Okay, so they understood what the essentials of the faith were, which are basically the matters in the Apostles' Creed. Okay, if you don't believe that, as I've said before, it's because you don't believe the New Testament. Now, they stood firmly for those things, and most of their battles were dealing with just those basic things. They weren't dealing with all this complicated theology. It was the basic things. But no, those were not negotiable, that there's one Father, one God, the Father Almighty, and His Son Jesus Christ, that Christ died for us, He was resurrected, sits at the right hand of the Father.

Those weren't negotiable things, that there's going to be a resurrection of the flesh and a judgment day. So yeah, no, they were dogmatic about the essentials, but they weren't fussy about the wording of things. Particularly when you get beyond that basic, simple creed, then there weren't spiritual policemen out there going to grab you because, wait, now you said this, and you're supposed to say it this way.

As long as you got the basic concept that and again, if you believed the Apostles' Creed, unless you were a bishop or something, okay, you're fine. You're not going to get in any problems. Now, if you're a teacher, they expected a little bit more. And yeah, they would talk to you if you had something really, really way off. But it was such a different world. I'm going to go back again to the quotation I used on the first day in case you weren't here. And this is not about the early church, but it so exactly fits the spirit. When I say they were not dogmatic, this is what I'm talking about. There wasn't this critical, judgmental, "I'm going to get you," kind of attitude.

God is no nitpicking sophist. That means somebody's just big on argumentation, wants to argue everything. He's not eager to trip us up whenever we say something amiss. But a courteous tutor ready to amend what? In our weakness or our ignorance, we say in error and to make the most of what we say correctly. That was the spirit that was there. Hey, if you say something in error, I don't assume you've got a wicked heart and that I need to start yelling, blaspheming, or that kind of thing. I assume you're trying to say the right thing. You're just saying it a bit incorrectly. Now, I will try to help you see a more accurate understanding, but it's in the sense of, I love you as a brother, and maybe it's not that important, but I want to help you to understand it.

Or if you're a teacher, yeah, I want you to see it a little bit more correctly, but I'm going to do this in a spirit of winning you over out of love. That's not the spirit after Nicaea. It's, can I catch you in something amiss? Aha, I got you. You said this.

Out of the church. And before very long, it wasn't out of the church. It was put to death, put in prison, put to death, whatever. And then it went from just being put to death in a humane way, if there is such a thing, to being burned alive at the stake, the most painful death we can put on you. And supposedly this brings honor to Jesus Christ. That's how perverted things got after Nicaea.

If you think those guys are heroes, all I can say is I'm sorry. You need to go back to the beginning, because people who think they're glorifying Christ by putting other believers to death because they got something a little wrong, you don't understand Jesus Christ. That is all I can say. You have missed somewhere the boat. If you read the Gospels and you think that's the Jesus you see in the Gospels, you're reading out of some different translation than what I'm reading, because I don't see that kind of Jesus at all. Unfortunately, all of you, everyone, including myself, we have grown up in a post-Nicene world, and it affects the way people think. They think in a post-Nicene way of thinking, and they think that is great.

You get everything nailed down exactly. And let me find somebody I can condemn who doesn't have it right. That wasn't the spirit in the beginning. It's not the spirit you see in the New Testament, but it's what people have learned from childhood. And it is hard to get that out of your system when you have been raised in that. I was just thinking half the night. I didn't sleep well last night because I kept thinking of what I wanted to change in my message today. And I thought, it's funny how things that seem bad can turn out so good. Growing up at Jehovah's Witness, it would seem like an awfully bad way to get started on trying to find Christ.

But I realized there was a very good aspect of it, and that was because they are off on so many points, I had to just throw the whole thing out and start over with a blank slate. Okay, everything I've learned, okay, just start over, David, because yeah, you're not going to fit the early church into the framework you got raised in. And that was a blessing. I realize now I am so glad that and I grew up in a church that was not Nicene. And so yeah, I was used to having all that condemnation rain down on me. And hey, good and fine.

I saw what was deserved and what wasn't. But yeah, I realize it's different when you've been raised and that is what you think is important. And so you look at the early church and you think, well, these guys just yeah, they're struggling to try to get it right.

No, they had it right. It's people today who are struggling and they don't realize it. I'm going to give you just an example. I thought about my childhood. So boy, there was a blessing being 76. Well, I'm not quite 76. I'm at six weeks ago.

And I guess Chuck and just a couple of people, Deborah, who have had the same experience of growing up in the 1950s. That was your childhood, Chuck, I assume. A terrible time to live? No, not at all. I don't know anybody. Of course, there's not that many people around who grew up in the '50s. But when I was younger and there were a lot more people who grew up in the '50s, I never met anyone who thought it was a terrible time. Now, in your history books, you're going to read that it is.

Boy, for most of us, wow, it was a cherished time. We wish we could have those days back. There were some things wrong that needed to get corrected, but wow, did they ever get overcorrected? And the world that we've created is nothing like the world that I grew up in. When I was five, my dad was in the Air Force, and he was transferred to England for three years. So we took a ship out of New York and went over on a military, I guess I don't know, it was a former battleship made into maybe it was a troop transport ship, whatever. It was now a passenger ship. And we took that. It was the General Patch.

I still remember the name of it. I looked up somewhere who he was. He was an actual general, I think, in World War II, but not one of the more famous ones. Anyway, so on our way over, one set of my grandparents lived in Pennsylvania, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania. So we were going to spend a weekend with them and then get on our ship in New York and go to England. Well, something went wrong with the orders. They didn't come through. So we ended up spending like six weeks here in Pennsylvania. And so it was time for school to start, and so we had to go to school. So my first school was here in Pennsylvania, of all things, in Wellsboro.

I was in kindergarten. Now, here was the interesting thing. So this is the '50s. You wouldn't see this today. All right, the school wasn't real far. I've been back there and rewalked what I did as a child. It was like a block this way, and then you went around a corner and then went another block, and there was the school. Okay, our parents showed us where the school was. And then we three children, me, I was five, my older brother was seven, and my sister who was grown up, she was eight. And I thought, yeah, they were real grown up. We walked to school. Our parents didn't go with us. It wasn't real far, but they couldn't see us when we went around the corner.

They weren't afraid of something bad happening to us. It was just a different world. We walked to school. But here was the interesting thing. Now, they didn't get out until 3:00. I got out at noon in kindergarten. And so I walked home with a five-year-old all by myself. I guarantee you today, nobody would do that.

I mean, we live way yes, way out in the country in a little mountain valley. And when the school bus is taking people home, often I'm coming in from town, and often these are big kids, and there's their mama out there in a car, so they don't have to walk a quarter of a mile to their house. And I don't know if it's required by the school district or what it is. It's like, wow, it's such a coddled world because you're so afraid, and with good reason. I'm not putting that down. It's such a different world.

And I remember one of the days I got out for 12, and I didn't have any big important things to do as a five-year-old. I walked downtown and went past. I remember looking in the store windows, and no one came out and said, "Hey, little boy, are you lost or anything?" No one thought that was unusual. I was just walking around downtown, looking at things. I did that quite a few days. My parents didn't say, "Wait, you got off at 12. Where have you been?" They didn't worry. When I was 11, we lived in a large city, Abilene, Texas. It was, I mean, a medium-sized city that day. It was 100,000 people. When I was 11 years old in the summertime, I'd get on my bike.

They had summer recreation. The schools, different schools were open, and young people could go there. And I love playing Foursquare. I'm glad men and I still play it. And I was pretty good at it as a kid. I'd get on my bike at like 8:00 in the morning, and my parents wouldn't see me again until suppertime. And they didn't worry the least bit. I drove all across town. I went through the downtown. I went wherever because I liked to go to different schools and play with different kids. And that was my summer. I mean, they didn't worry.

Something bad did you want to happen? I'm not talking about my parents being different than any other parents. It was just a different world. It was so much safer. And we live in a different world today. People don't understand. No one ever heard of political correctness. What was drummed in us in school couldn't remember if I had a slide on it or not. It was a quote from Voltaire. I mean, we heard this all the time in school. Probably every single year, at least one of your teachers would quote this. And Voltaire said, "I don't agree with a single word you're saying, but I'll fight to the death for your right to say it."

And that's what we heard over and over. Freedom of speech meant people could say things you disagreed with, and that was fine. And there was no such thing. I remember when political correctness came in around 1970. But I realized people, even who are 60 years old, they've grown up in a different world. That's all they've known. They grew up in a feminist world, in a politically correct world, in a lot of things. That those of us who I was born in 1950, yeah, I remember when those things came in. Life didn't used to be that way. It's the same thing with Nicaea. Life didn't used to be that way in the church where there were creed after creed after creed, and you had to get your wording exactly right, and you better say this right or that right.

And there was one church because they were united in love. You had one church after Nicaea because there was the Roman army there, and you better do what was said, or you were going to be put to death, put in jail, or exiled, or the soldiers would force you to be there in the Catholic Church. You could not legally meet in other churches. And then they want to talk about, yeah, the one church that's always been here. Yeah, you were one church because you always had the army there to make everybody be in one church. In the beginning, it was one church held together by love, and that's a totally different kind of church. Now, I like A.W. Tozer a lot.

I've read a lot of his books. Most of them are not actually books he wrote. They're sermons he gave that they've put into book form. But he actually grew up right around this area as a boy. But he's famous when he was the pastor of a large church in Chicago. And I remember one of his books, and I'm just quoting by memory, he said the church councils either define what Christians believed or define the Trinity with precision. And he thought that was great. They defined it with precision. And he was saying how great the creeds were.

Well, guess what? Did the Scriptures define the Trinity with precision? No, the Scriptures do not. And that was the whole problem. Now, that didn't bother the early church. Okay, they realized, man, there's a lot of things that aren't clear. Somebody asked the question yesterday, and we read the Psalm today.

Today you have begotten me. You've become my son. Well, wait, I thought he was eternally the son. What does that mean? There's a lot of things in Scripture that aren't clear. The pre-Nicene Christians didn't get bent out of shape about that. But the nice thing is they had an explanation. I'm sure that came from the Apostles because they all give the same one of the Trinity. We're not going to have time to go into it today. If you're interested in, in fact, if you have not heard it, I really encourage you get on the Historic Faith. I've got a message there on what the early Christians believed on the Trinity, also what they believed on the Father and the Son.

They're very similar messages that explain how the early Christians understood it. That, for me, made so much sense. It put all these Scriptures together. Hey, it all makes sense. How can he become the Son, and how can he be eternal, and all of that? Yeah, they got these complex things, and they laid them out in a simple way. Well, yeah, after Nicaea, you got these creeds, and they got everything with precision. And do Christians better understand the Trinity today than they did in the pre-Nicene era? Absolutely not. You try to get someone to explain the Trinity. I don't mean in this room necessarily, but I mean just out there, go to a church and ask someone to explain the Trinity.

And I guarantee you, you're going to hear a very mixed-up explanation, and it's probably not going to be scriptural. As I told you, I grew up with Jehovah's Witnesses. I can't tell you how many discussions I had on the Trinity. Okay, now, I had a wrong view. I had an Arian view of the Trinity, and that's definitely wrong and everything else. But it is built based on a lot of Scriptures that were misunderstood. Okay, and so I was in a lot of discussions all of those years. And I started going door to door when I was eight, but I probably wasn't until I was 14 that I was getting into discussions. And I left when I was 26.

So that was 12 years of talking with people. And when I was 14, I was very ready and very eager and got into a lot of discussions about the Trinity, often with pastors, with very knowledgeable Christians. And guess what? All of those discussions, I never once heard an Orthodox presentation of the Trinity. Now that I know what the Orthodox—and I don't mean the Orthodox Church—I mean the correct presentation of the Trinity. Never once did anyone present that. I might have been persuaded if they had. No, I heard all kinds of things. All right, when I left Jehovah's Witnesses, I knew that was the big barrier, the Trinity, and I wanted to understand the Trinity. And so it was like within a week after I left, I called up the local Presbyterian minister.

I knew him. I was delivering newspapers. He was one of my subscribers, and I had had conversations with him. So I called him up. I said, "Look, I've just left Jehovah's Witnesses. I want to believe in the Trinity. I want to understand it. It makes no sense to me. Would you be willing to come over and just explain it to me?" He said, "Sure." We were in a small town. So he came over one evening, and this was his explanation of the Trinity. How can Jesus and the Father be one, be different? He said, "Okay, now, David, you're a father, aren't you? Our oldest son, Pierre Andre.

Pierre's my oldest grandson. This happens when you're in your 70s. I think what I'm telling you up here is correct. But if you start—when I get in the names of my children, yeah, anyway." So he said, "Now, David, you're a father, aren't you?" "Yes, but you're also a son, aren't you, because you have a father?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Well, that's the Trinity." Well, I was being polite. I said, "Oh, okay. Well, thank you for explaining that." But I'm thinking it's, well, I'm not my own father, and I'm not my own son. You've explained nothing.

And how can that be the Trinity? But it's like, and this is an educated guy going to seminary. It's why I picked him. The Presbyterians, they don't just get anyone to be a minister. It may not be godly, but he's going to have gone through seminary. You'd think he would understand the Trinity. But I mean, and that is the explanation we heard most of the time as Jehovah's Witnesses. It's called modalism, oneness today, confuse the Father and the Son. And people think they're explaining the Trinity.

And I find other people, when they don't give that explanation, they start going, and they get so confused. I hear people in their prayers. I think God, again, what Richard Hooker said, I think he forgives us in our ignorance and all of that. None of these people are trying to be wicked or anything, but they'll start praying to the Father, and the next thing they're saying, "Thank you for coming and dying on the cross." And it's like, what are you saying? It's not the Father who came down and died on the cross. But it's so confused in their minds, the whole thing on the Trinity. And it was so simple to the early Christians. Now, maybe they didn't get this word quite right or that word in light of post-Nicene precision, but in light of the Scriptures and in light of a kind, loving God, I think they got everything right.

But they got the main thing. You can understand the Trinity when you read the early Christians. After all of those councils, all they did was make it confusing. So yeah, when I say the early Christians weren't dogmatic, don't read them in a post-Nicene mindset.

Yeah, you'll find expressions. They'll say that, yeah, if you read later on, well, they didn't mean it in that sense. And it was okay. There were no spiritual policemen, as I said, that was going to get them in trouble. And to me, it was such a much beautiful world because it was reflecting the way Jesus was. He didn't worry about precise theology. Now, what the early Christians were precise on were loving their enemies, loving their brethren, living a holy life, living separate from the world. Now, they did that with precision to such a degree. Tertullian says in one of his writings, one of his apologetic writings to the Romans, he said, "You yourself say when you talk about the Christians, you say, 'Look at how they love one another.'" That stood out to the pagans.

They thought it was a silly superstition, but they would say, "Look at how those Christians love one another." Now, how many of you raise your hand if you think that's what the world says about Christians today? Yeah, I don't see a hand, and I don't think that's what the world says about us today. But they said that in the beginning. Welcome back, children. So we talked Thursday and Friday about some of the theological changes Nicaea introduced, such that by the time they got through, the pre-Nicene Christians were essentially heretics.

And it's why pre-Nicene Christianity is not well known today. That's the terrible job they did in trying to get things right about the Trinity. They got it so precise that they made heretics out of everyone who lived before them. And then they were what is real heresy is when Christians start killing each other, and somehow they thought they were honoring God in doing that. And Jesus said, "You know, there will be a time that comes when they think they've done a—" It's saying this just loosely from memory. "When they think they've done an act of service to God, when they put you to death." Now, you will put people to death, but they, those outside the kingdom, are the ones who do that.

All right, I want to talk a little bit about lifestyle changes. And the big thing that happened to Nicaea at Nicaea was not just the theology changed, but loss of the kingdom lifestyle. As I mentioned the other day, primitive Christianity pretty well ends there with Nicaea, while the church was distracted with complex theological brawls. So, I mean, they're just arguing over and over and over. Councils are being called, and then another council, and then another council, and another council. And no, you got to say it this way. No, you can't say it this way. And back and forth and all of that. They're so concerned about that. These are the bishops, the shepherds of the church, and the whole church is falling apart spiritually.

It's losing the kingdom teachings of Jesus. Holiness is disappearing. And the shepherds did little or nothing to stop this because they're so worried about people saying this word or that word or refusing to say this word, and they've missed the whole big picture. The whole ship is sinking. A quick announcement: no more paywall. The Historic Faith is now free for everyone. Explore over 2,500 Bible translations in over 2,200 languages. There are also 39 courses and over 600 lessons, and David has answered 164 Q&A so far. Freely listen to 11 of David's most popular audiobooks and also Dean Taylor's audiobook. Listen to the early Christians through modernized anti-Nicene writings and study the Bible and early Christians with strong tools.

Every lesson and audiobook includes discussion questions designed for personal study, families, and church groups. Click on any verse and discover what the early Christians believed. Build playlists, join discussions, chat with others, and go deeper with guided questions. Donations keep it running, but access and sign up are free. Visit thehistoricfaith.com. The whole ship is sinking, and these shepherds are worrying about something that I don't think God was that concerned about, particularly once Arianism was out of the way. Shortly after the Nicene council, these are all the changes. I mean, this is just within a decade or so. They accepted war.

For so long, Christians did not go to war because they loved their enemies. They accepted persecuting other people. Again, in the beginning, Christians understood, no, we do not persecute people. We put them out of the church if we need to, if they're unrepentant, serious sinners. But we do not persecute people. You have mob violence, Christians just going in frenzies, murdering other Christians, murdering government officials, murdering pagans. You have monk violence. Often, these mobs were monks. You think of monks as these godly people, and some of them certainly were. But boy, a whole bunch of them were holy terrors. I mean, literally. Boy, I mean, you know they're all these monks and so godly. But wow, when they got upset about something, they were coming after you to kill you.

And they tore people apart and drug them down the street, beat them to death, that kind of thing. It was ridiculous that these people were allowed in the church. One of the silliest ones—this wasn't in my outline. I'm sorry. I'm going to just share from my heart. I mean, it is so silly that this could even happen. So you origin in one of his writings, he explained that when it talks about God coming down, you know, at the Tower of Babel to look, or about God's arm, or something like that, that that's not literal. God's not a big human in heaven with arms and legs, and he doesn't have to come down to see what's happening here on the earth.

Those are just symbolic things to help us as humans picture things. Well, these ignorant monks in Egypt, they thought that was terrible, not in his lifetime, long after he's dead. This is towards the late 300s that origin said this horrible thing that God doesn't have arms and hands and legs and all of that. And oh, they rose up in a frenzy. And the bishop in Alexandria, well, he knew origin was right, and he starts defending origin.

And pretty soon he realizes, not that these guys are maybe going to get me kicked out of my office. These monks are going to kill me. They're going to literally kill me if I don't say, okay, you guys are right. And so he did. He said, yeah, you're right. Origin was a heretic. Yeah, he was saying that God isn't literal with a big body and arms and legs and a head and all of that. And then that spread through a bunch of churches, and origin gets called a heretic. And anyway, yeah. And then, of course, they're reading his writings, and he's a pre-Nicene Christian. He doesn't use the terms that came up at Nicaea and all of that.

And so guess what? He gets labeled a heretic. The one guy that they did appreciate that they were still reading from the early church by the late 300s, he gets labeled a heretic. And then later it got even worse. And he's long dead. And yeah, they thought they knew so much, and they were so wise, and it was such ignorance. But the thing is, it was mob monk violence. The early Christians said, hey, we can't serve as jailers or any of these things because, among other things, we can't torture somebody else. I mean, it is so contrary to the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, that's how ancient governments worked, was with torture. You know, it's how they found out who the criminals were, or at least they thought they did.

You know, you'd torture someone until he confessed who the Confederates were, and they'd get them and torture them and so on. And of course, you might incriminate an innocent person. I mean, what are you going to do under torture? And it's terrible. I'm glad it's disappeared.

And the Christians realized long before the modern governments that this is wrong. You can't do this. But yeah, after Nicaea, it's like, hey, we're going to be part of the government. We can go along with torture, swearing oaths, lawsuits, Christians suing Christians, all caught up in the worldly entertainment. I mean, at least Carson did. Teen did away with a few things. He did end the Gladiator Games, or he tried to. He ended abortion, tried to stamp out prostitution. He tried to make some changes, and that was good. But on the other hand, he corrupted the church. And so some of Christianity got into the world, and a whole bunch of the world got into Christianity as a result.

And so yeah, Christians, yeah, pretty soon they were costly clothing, jewelry, all the things the New Testament says Christian women should not adorn themselves with. Yeah, they ignored all of that. So this is what happened in Nicaea. And this was within a few decades. This didn't just happen over centuries. It was almost overnight because every Roman wanted to be a Christian. The emperor was friendly to the Christians. He wasn't baptized Constantine until he was on his deathbed. But yeah, he favored the Christians. He wanted Christians in his high places in government. So if you wanted to climb the social ladder, you better become a Christian. And when the whole pagan world wants to be Christian, well, you know something's wrong, number one.

And number two, yeah, you aren't going to be able to live by the teachings of Jesus when the whole world is coming in the church. And so yeah, the whole church is collapsing. And where are the shepherds? Oh, they're in these councils arguing about, well, you're saying homolusian, and we should say this. And God must have been so disgusted at what he was seeing down here to begin, as I said, persecuting those it labeled as heretics, authorized Christians. At first, it was okay. You can use the sword against pagans, you know, because they're, you know, they're pagans. They're wrong. So it's okay to go to war if you're fighting against pagans.

And bishops would go out there and accompany the Roman army and bless, you know, the army, which was mainly made up of pagans, but now some Christians were in it. But before that century was over, Christians were warring, literally warring with swords against the so-called Arians. By then, people were being labeled Arian who were not Arians. They just would not use the term homolusian. So then they got stuck, a label put on them. By 400, it's Christians killing other Christians, the so-called Catholic and Orthodox. Yeah, you're on the wrong side of something. And Augustine teaches, he said, you know, even if the emperor is wrong and even if he is evil and his cause is wrong, you, as a Christian, it's okay for you to be in his army and going out and killing the righteous because he bears the blame.

You don't. You know, you're just following, you know, the government. The Bible says obey Caesar, and so you're just obeying Caesar. That's horrible. And that's why you can have something like the Nazis, where most of those soldiers were professing Christians, were probably actually believing, quote, Christians.

And they were doing what Augustine and Luther said. Well, as long as you obey your government, it doesn't matter if the ruler is wrong because he accepts all the blame and you're innocent. No, you're not innocent. You are not innocent. And of course, even if he was somehow in the right on a specific cause, it's equally wrong because in Christianity, it's not the end that counts so much as it is the means. The means count just as much as the end. It doesn't matter if your cause is righteous. If you prevail because of the sword, you've already lost the most important battle. The Sermon on the Mount was reduced to something intended only for the, quote, perfect, because Jesus said, if you want to be perfect like my heavenly Father, then, you know, love your enemies.

And so they came up with this interesting little division. And Chuck, I think you can verify still the teaching of the Catholic Church, as far as I know, that, okay, so the perfect, yeah, there's, yeah, they should live by the Sermon on the Mount. These would be monks and priests, things like that. Most aren't perfect, but yeah. But for the ordinary Christian, no, Jesus didn't expect you to live by these teachings on the Sermon on the Mount.

Now, this is Eusebius, a guy I usually like. And Chuck, I hate to tell you this. This is from the Proof of the Gospel. And Andre found this quote for me. I was like, what? Because normally Eusebius is good. You know, you can read him, and most of what he says would reflect pre-Nicene Christianity.

And I don't know what year this, the Proof of the Gospel, the paper scholars, they say 311. No way anyone was teaching this in 311. It's because they're post-Nicene that, yeah, when they read something like this, they're comfortable with it because their thinking is post-Nicene. They don't realize this is not how people thought in the beginning and before Nicaea. So I'm guessing this work probably dates to about the time of the Nicene Council. So Eusebius says, there are two ways of life given by the law of Christ. At least recognize there is a law of Christ to his church. I won't read the whole thing. The first way, though, he describes are basically the monks and nuns who don't marry.

They live very literally by Jesus' teachings on wealth. They live in absolute poverty, that kind of thing. Hey, good and fine. Jesus did say there are those who can be eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven, but not everyone can make room for that. So he did give there it's a legitimate separation. But this is what Eusebius says next. And I don't think Eusebius originated this. Most of his stuff, he's not someone who introduced a lot of new things into the church. He just gives us a nice record of the history of the church and was a very good apologist in presenting the Gospel.

He says, okay, so the first way of life were those who were celibate, never married, and that kind of thing. He says, and the other, the second way, more humble, more human way of life permits men to join in pure marriages and to produce children. Yes, that's right. If he stopped there, it's like, yep, exactly. That's the way it is. He didn't stop there.

To undertake government? Really? Jesus said we can undertake government and to give orders to soldiers fighting for what is right? I mean, I can't believe this. I mean, this is like, this is horrible. I didn't. I was always blaming Augustine for bringing this in. I didn't know it had come in this early, long before Augustine. I mean, he said this as well. But yeah, I've been blaming him as the culprit.

He's guilty for still teaching it. And I don't think Eusebius introduced it. I still understand by Eusebius, but, but wow, he got pulled into a lot of things that were happening that were not good teaching. And this is still Eusebius. I'm still quoting from him.

A secondary grade of holiness is allowed to them. No, there aren't two grades of holiness. There is one grade, and it doesn't matter if you're a minister, if you live a celibate life, whatever. We all have the same grade of holiness that God requires of us. But this is what happened at Nicaea. Why the church went to pot with Nicaea.

So focus on minute things of theology, of getting theology defined, as Tozer put it, with precision. Like, that is something so wonderful. And this is what was happening otherwise in the church. Oh, well, a second degree of holiness is allowed to you. And yeah, whatever you need to do to have an enjoyable life, go ahead.

So what do we have by the end of the Nicene era? The lifestyle teachings of Jesus have been largely lost. The, quote, Christians of AD 380, I had said that I'm using that as the end of that era. It just kept getting worse. It didn't get better after that. Are a little different from the pagans of AD 280. You go back 100 years, it's like, I don't know if you could tell the difference between a Christian of 380 and a pagan of 280, except that they worshiped a different God. And they probably said, oh, we believe that Jesus is homolusian with the Father. And see how wonderful that made them.

Other than that, we're no different than the pagans. But boy, we know how to say homolusian. And so that makes us wonderful. They imagined in God's eyes. Now, don't think Christianity disappeared. I mentioned this earlier. There were still plenty of individual Christians who were godly.

Many of them were outside the church in small, little illegal meetings. Some of them were inside the church who decided, I'm going to try to make it, you know, within here. And they didn't even realize how corrupt things were. And I don't judge them. You know, I would I would say it was time to get out of the state church. But yeah, not everyone saw that. And so you had people out of it who were godly. You had some inside of it who were godly. And God can sort all of that out. But godly Christians never disappeared. They just became a very small minority of Christians.

But because they thought they understood the faith better, virtually the entire post-Nicene Church paid no heed to the pre-Nicene Christians and their writings. Like I say, for maybe it's my next line. Yeah, but the only pre-Nicene Christian they read a lot was Origen. In the West, they still read Cyprian a lot. He's quoted. I mean, they had the writings. I mean, I don't want to imply no one read Justin Martyr and Irenaeus and all that. They did, but they all thought they knew more. And those writings started getting read less and less and less. And then, like I say, Origen, the one that they did appreciate, they finally he got labeled as a heretic by many.

It wasn't a worldwide council at that time. Now, in the days of Justinian, he got condemned again. This was just a local council headed up by Jerome, who was a he was an excellent biblical expositor. But boy, was he an arrogant hothead and yeah, went out looking for who he could label as a heretic and get them kicked out of the church. And then he became he did more to corrupt the church or as much as probably anybody in taking out the Septuagint and bringing in the Masoretic text, changing the whole scriptures that the church had used from the beginning. But he was so arrogant, he thought, oh, I'm getting the church back in, you know, where it needs to be.

And yeah, Nicaea bred arrogant heretic after. And when I say heretic, I'm not he's in God's hands. I'm not I mean, Jerome was trying to do right. He's just arrogant. And if he had humbled himself, he would have realized he was corrupting the church and changing their Bible. But anyway, that's another matter. Now, there are two silver linings to the fourth century, to the Nicene era, which I can smile about. There were two silver linings.

One of them, because the fourth century leaders were so obsessed with defining the Trinity in minute terms with precision, most other theological doctrines were left alone. And that's why most of what, like John Chrysostom and other fourth century Christians teach, is consistent with the pre-Nicene Christians. As long as you stay away from the Trinity and war and things like that. Yeah, when they talk about salvation, eternal security, the resurrection, all of that, yeah, they're usually teaching the same thing because, like I say, they were all focused on the Trinity. And so they left the other doctrines alone. Now, later on, the other ones got corrupted, but not in the fourth century. So that's nice. Like I say, you can read Chrysostom and use him as a source.

And usually he's right on. Just don't use him as a source on the Trinity. Second, the second silver lining is because the fourth century Christians changed the basic teachings on the Trinity. As I said, they pretty well made heretics out of all the pre-Nicene Christians. It's easy to distinguish an authentic pre-Nicene Christian writing. I mean, all the time people say, whoops.

They say, David, how do we know these writings weren't corrupted? How do we know this is really what those people said, that the Catholic Church didn't get in there and change things? Well, it's real easy to tell because what the pre-Nicene Christians taught on the Trinity changed with Nicaea. No one would, if they were trying to fake these writings, that's not how they would explain the Trinity after Nicaea. So that's the silver lining. It's really easy to spot a fake one. Yeah, there are fake ones that somebody tried to put some, you know, an early Christian name on it. And you start reading it and there's this precise language about the Trinity and they're all, you know, the same mentality of condemnation and all of that.

It stands out like a sore thumb. Yeah, when you read the pre-Nicene Christians, it's a different spirit. And the way they explain the Trinity is biblical and it's not based on human creeds. And so, like I say, there is a silver lining that, yeah, it's very easy to tell which ones are authentic. You couldn't read Justin Martyr and think a post-Nicene Christian wrote that work or any of his works.

Okay, so I was supposed to talk about what hills do we die on. So I am going to be obedient to what I was asked to do. All right. Yeah. So what hills are worth dying on? Well, the essentials in the Nicene, in the Apostles' Creed, yeah, those are non-negotiable. Those are forever settled. Okay. I think we all know that. You're not going to get into any arguments about that. That's the nice thing. So the thing that is important theologically, yeah, you're not going to have to die on any hill because everyone's going to agree with you. So that's kind of nice. As I say, it's rarely contested.

Okay. The lifestyle teachings of Jesus, particularly those on the Sermon on the Mount. Yeah, we don't compromise those. And those might be contested depending where you fellowship. And certainly they're contested by most professing Christians. Now, we're not going to you don't want to go out of here and start being judgmental towards everyone who don't see everything correctly. Yeah.

If you leave with one thing, it's leave with the spirit of the early Christians and their view of God that, okay, he's not trying to catch somebody in an error. He will try to lovingly correct us if our hearts are open. But yeah, there's so much that people don't understand because they've grown up in a post-Nicene world. They've been taught war is okay. They've been taught this and that are okay. All right. We can try to reach them with love, but yeah, yeah, we don't have to go and try to cram all this down their throat because they're just going to resist it. A very wise pastor who really helped me a lot in my Christian walk.

And when I was first writing the book, Will the Real Heretics, Please Stand Up, the first book I wrote and what I thought was going to be the only book I would write, I had a list. I sat down with him. I said, now, here's all the different things the early Christians taught. It was a pretty long list that's, you know, most there was a list of the things that were different than what evangelicals were teaching. I said, okay, so what's my approach? And he said, David, this is what I have learned in life. You can stretch people a little bit. Most people, you can stretch them a little bit. But if you try to stretch them too far, they put their shields up and that's it.