The Day Christianity Changed - David Bercot - The Historic Faith Encounter

Lesson Transcript

Things can look a certain way and be absolutely of Satan. So always stick to the Scriptures. What did the Scripture say? You know, Jesus said, "You will be hated, not that you will be loved." And it's fine. There will be a time when the kings of this world will bow their knees to Jesus, but that's when He returns. Boy, if it starts happening before He returns, watch out. O Lord, restore Your ancient ways and make Your people new.

So last night we talked about how, in the beginning, Christianity—very simple theology—it was about living the Christian life, having an obedient, love, faith relationship with Jesus Christ. Not just you believe a certain doctrine. There were essential doctrines, but it was mainly your walk with Christ. And we talked about the creeds. They were so basic and simple. What today we call the Apostles' Creed, and that was the fullest version of it. Most of them were even simpler than that.

72 words was the totality of the creed that they used in Tertullian's day in his area. Those were the things that were essential. Didn't mean they didn't believe more than that, but that was as a Christian sitting in the pews. They didn't have pews, but I mean, that's all you had to believe. They were concerned with your walk beyond that. Okay, so all of that, though, ended with Nicaea. And I mentioned last night, when I say Nicaea, I don't just mean the council.

I'm talking about an era that began with Constantine legalizing Christianity and then beginning to get involved in the churches. Legalizing Christianity, of course, was a good thing. His trying to bless the churches by helping them was not a good thing. Now, that's not his fault. He wasn't a Christian. He didn't know I shouldn't be involved in the churches. That was on the bishops, the elders. They should have said, "Whoa, hey, thank you.

We appreciate your good intentions, but no, our kingdom is not of this world." I mean, that was Jesus' answer to Pilate. They should have known that. Now, what went wrong? And it's a good lesson for us today because I hear it so much today. People look and they depend on signs, and they think, "Oh, this is God telling me something because something interesting has happened." It could even be an answer to prayer that you think it's God's answer to your prayer.

And it looks so good while we've been persecuted for over two centuries. And just to be a Christian, people were being put to death horribly, tortured. And suddenly we went from being a banned, illegal church religion to now, hey, we want to be your friends. And what I'll be saying is critical of them, but I do keep in mind, if I had lived in that day, I don't know that I wouldn't have fallen into the same trap. I'm not judging them. It would have looked like, could this be an answer to prayer?

Now, we will talk about where they went wrong, where they should have seen it. But again, you know, I can't judge when I haven't been in their shoes. I could just say they made the wrong decision. But like I say, I may have fallen into the same trap. It looked so good. Revelation says there's going to be a time when all the kings, everyone will bow their knee to Jesus. And they thought, hey, maybe this is that. It was prophesied. Look at this. The king is saying, hey, Christians are right.

That's why, woo, be careful. Things can look a certain way and be absolutely of Satan. So always stick to the Scriptures. What did the Scripture say? Jesus said, "You will be hated, not that you will be loved." And it's fine. There will be a time when the kings of this world will bow their knees to Jesus, but that's when He returns. Boy, if it starts happening before He returns, watch out. This is not of God. But yeah, they fell into that. All right, so the Council of Nicaea was the big turning point.

So I'm going to explain some of the background of it. This gets a bit into theology, and I hate having to talk about it because if you lived in the second-century church, this would have been largely irrelevant, that they would not have been all so upset about it. So I'm having to talk about theology, even though, as I've told you, complex theology was not at the center of Christianity. But it became that, and it changed everything.

It's why the early Christians are hardly read anymore today, why people aren't even aware of what they taught in the beginning. All right, so the background of Nicaea. We're going to start getting into some theological because this is what happened. I mean, you got to understand at least the basics. I'm going to try to make it simple. Okay, how many of you have heard of Arius? Is that okay? Wow, he's been so vilified, I think, rightfully. But yeah, so people have heard his name.

If you haven't, yeah, he's somebody you can forget. But see, the odd thing is he thought he was doing God a favor. I think everybody who's messed up the church has done it with the right intent. So one of the things that kept cropping up over and over, and it's still here with us today, is this idea that Jesus and the Father are one and the same. Because John 1:1, in the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Okay?

And in Greek, there's a little differentiation there, but in most languages, it sounds like it's, oh, he's saying Jesus is God, the Father. And when you read the whole New Testament, I don't know how you can keep believing that because he's praying to his Father. He says, "I do my Father's will," and all that. But this teaching kept coming up, you know, well, Jesus is the Father, etc. So Arius is trying to combat that. It had come up, like I say, every century, and the church didn't go bananas over it. Okay?

It was like, hey, this is wrong. There's several treaties written by different people. Tertullian wrote an excellent one. Novation wrote an excellent one. They explained the relationship of the Father and the Son and how the Son can be God. That is, he can be divine, but he is not the Father. He is the Son of the Father. He's the same nature, just like my son who's here today. He's the same nature. He's human, just like I'm human, but he is not me.

And the Son of God is divine like his Father, but he is not the Father. Okay? So sometimes it's just going to keep cropping up. God can take care of that. You explain it, and you have to go on. Now, the ones who were teaching that were removed from their position of teaching. Most of them were not excommunicated. The church, like I say, they knew theology wasn't the main thing. They didn't want wrong teachers in the pulpits. But okay, they didn't go ballistic about it.

All right, so Arius sees things, okay, this has come up so many times. All right, let me see if I can come up with a better way to defeat this. And it's the worst thing you can do is to mess with the historic faith in an attempt to silence a heretic. And so he was trying to silence the people saying, we call it today oneness, you know, Jesus and the Father, one and the same. All right, so he's saying, no, there's such a difference that Jesus, his nature is there.

He's subordinate in nature to the Father, and he was created by the Father. The Scriptures say he was begotten, and there is a difference. I begot my Son. I didn't create him. Okay? There's a difference there. So Arius thought he was defeating this one heresy by creating a new one. Again, terrible thing. But the funny thing is it's the response to his error that blew everything apart. So what did the Nicene Council? It was convened because of the error that Arius was teaching. Okay?

This would have been handled so differently in the second century. But yeah, this is the fourth century now. What did they do wrong? Well, I don't have this on the slide. The first thing is they shouldn't have been there in the first place. The council was convened by Constantine. I mean, what's wrong with these bishops? The Roman Emperor says, hey, I want all of you to come together, and we're going to have a council. I mean, why didn't they say, wow, well, thank you, but that's not how the church works.

You're not even a Christian. No, thank you, but no thank you. No, they did what he said. Now, of course, it's terrible that the Roman Emperor is concerned because the church is tearing his empire apart with all their fighting and bickering. I mean, yeah, I mean, again, it's not Constantine wasn't trying to do something wrong. I mean, here are these Christians because Arius was so upset, okay, leave them alone. Excommunicate and be done with it.

But no, I mean, again, in the second century, that's, yeah, people wouldn't have gone ballistic. But now it's like, nope. And when they came to the council, it was with this judgmental, vindictive spirit. We want to condemn you. We don't want to help you to see where you're wrong. Now, like I say, errors about the Trinity kept coming up all through the history of the church. It wasn't something new with Arius. What was new was the response that the church made. Like I say, I'm going to just give you an example.

I'm getting way off of my slides here, so just bear with me, and I'll stop when I'm supposed to stop, so don't worry. So less than a century before the Council of Nicaea, there was, I mean, like I say, so many people, and none of them had bad hearts. They just were not understanding what the Scriptures teach about the Father and the Son, that the church had a very good explanation. I don't know why they just didn't stick with what the church was teaching, but they didn't.

So there was this guy named Heraclitus, a name you can forget. I mean, nothing important about him. But yeah, he was teaching something. I don't even remember what his error was. It was about the Trinity. He had things wrong. Okay? This was in, I think, 245, something like that. Okay? Now, such a difference between the time period. Okay? So this guy's teaching wrong about the Trinity. He was some kind of leader in the church. All right? So they have a local council.

The whole church worldwide doesn't get together and say, we got to shut this guy down. All right? But they realize this is a problem. So they asked Origen if he could come in and help. Okay? Origen was the most well-known Christian teacher of that time. The difference was Origen didn't go there to condemn him. He went there to win his brother. Okay? That was the difference in spirit, and that's what everyone else wanted. So they had a council. They met for several days.

And by the end of that council, Origen was able to help Heraclitus see where he was wrong and why. He approached it in love and just sat down, hey, let's talk about this. Now, you believe this, right? And he went through it, and just little by little, he helped him to see, you see where you're wrong on this. And by the end of it, yeah, he had won his brother. Yeah, end of the matter. If they had approached it in that kind of spirit, yeah, the history of the church would probably be different.

But oh, no, it was like, we want to catch him and condemn him. I mean, just they're just like the scribes and Pharisees. It was that kind of spirit. So, all right, what do they do? Well, you know, the creed of the church, you know, we read it last night, basically the Apostles' Creed. I believe in one Father, one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and his Son, Jesus Christ. Okay? Well, see, Arius believed that. Okay? All right. So, you know, sometimes you got to just let heretics go.

You remove them from their office. If you have to excommunicate them, fine. But like I say, with the oneness error that was there in the second century, it's with us today. It's going to go on. Okay? Just, hey, God's in charge. Errors are going to happen. And it doesn't mean it's good, but, you know, let God take care of some of those things. Your power ends with trying to persuade somebody. And if you need to remove them from leadership, then do so. Okay?

So at the council, several bishops said, all right, you know, here's the creed that we believe. And Arius says, yes, I believe that too. It's like, oh, boy. See, they're there to condemn him. Okay? All right. So then they start changing. All right, well, we'll put it this way. They're trying to stick with the Scriptures. And every time, Arius, okay, I can agree to that creed. And they're sitting there. We don't want him to agree with it. We want to condemn him, you know?

And so finally, I mean, they keep going through these things. And instead of thinking, well, okay, maybe, you know, he's coming at least to terms. We found a way we can stick with the Scriptures, and everyone agrees. No, they're frustrated, the so-called Orthodox one, because they can't trap him. Okay? So finally, Constantine, this is, he shouldn't have even been there. He wasn't baptized. He wasn't even a professing Christian. And they have him letting him lead the council of all things.

He wasn't there through all of it, but at the end, when they made their decision. So he comes up with this, quote, brilliant idea for somebody who's not a Christian. It's like, okay, we can't trap this guy. And so let me come up with a word that he won't be able to say I agree with. So he proposes the wording of the creed. And I'm just taking the one section that was a change from the earlier creeds. And I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. That's the part that all the early creeds had.

Begotten from the Father before all ages. That was totally agreed upon. The early Christians taught that. Light from light. They used that expression. It's in Scripture. True God from true God. That's John 1:1. They're still staying with Scripture. They're staying with the historic faith. Begotten, not made. Historic faith. It's the language of Scripture. And then they stick in this word. In Greek, it's homo osean. In English, it's translated of the same substance with the Father. Arius can't say that. Homo osean.

It's not a word in Scripture. Okay? He wasn't comfortable with the word. And yeah, I don't know if I can say he's of the same substance. See, now, what does that mean? God isn't. We're in the material world. We have substance. What is God? I mean, what are we talking about? The same substance. I mean, we're not only going beyond Scripture. We're going beyond human knowledge.

We're talking about things we shouldn't even be talking about, which was before the council was convened, Constantine got with the most respected bishop at that time. His name was Hosius. He was bishop in, I forget what city, in Spain. And he got with him. He said, well, what's all this about? And he said, you know, they just need to drop this. They're arguing about things that they don't even know what they're talking about. They just need to drop it. Constantine, okay, said, that's good advice.

He goes there with Hosius to Alexandria, where all this is going. Tells him, look, just drop it. Arius, you've said things you should have never said. Just stop saying them. And Alexander, the other side, you asked a bunch of questions. You got this whole thing going. You should have never even asked these questions. So both sides just drop it, you know? No, they weren't going to drop it. So like I say, Constantine, he gave, it wasn't his advice. It was from this other brother. So homo osean. All right.

It's never used in Scripture. It's not used any of the, you know, last night I mentioned they all had their own creed. They're very similar to the Apostles' Creed, but every church, every region had its own creed. Now he's wanting every church to have the exact same creed. Now we're going to have a central authority controlling every church instead of this independence. It's not what God wanted. He didn't set up his church with some head that you have this organization controlling everything.

There was, the church worked together as one, but every congregation was independent. And that word, homo osean, some scholars say Origen might have used that word or something. I'm not sure that's true, but if so, it was rarely used. So you're coming up with something that ended up being a very big problem. Now, the word isn't inaccurate. I mean, in the sense they meant it, I would agree. Okay, he's of the same nature. The Son is the same nature as the Father. I don't disagree with it.

I disagree with what they were doing. And this is what the significance was. By adding the word homo osean, which does not appear anywhere in Scripture, the Nicene Creed stands for the proposition that Scripture is inadequate. 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. By adding the word homo osean, which does not appear anywhere in Scripture, the Nicene Creed stands for the proposition that Scripture is inadequate. If we just stick with Scripture, we're going to have heretics that we can't shut up, you know? So we better go beyond Scripture so we can shut these people up. That isn't the Christian way. If Scripture won't silence someone, well, so be it. You don't start changing Scripture.

You don't start adding things to it. So be it. There's going to be heretics. They didn't eliminate. Well, the only way they eliminated that was burn people at the stake and behead them and put them in prison and all of that. And in the end, it was usually the faithful Christians, the real Christians who ended up being the ones burned at the stake. It wasn't the genuine heretics. So, I mean, that was a terrible solution. Well, okay, they'd gone beyond Scripture. So what do you do now?

Now we've gone beyond Scripture to settle something. Well, the next logical step, Constantine says, oh, our decision is inspired by the Holy Spirit. I mean, how could you have 300 bishops all agree to this and it not be from the Holy Spirit? So the council is inspired just like the Bible. Dumb reasoning. I'll tell you what happens when you get 300 people together. You get a herd mentality.

You know, a few strong voices are going to control and everybody else, yeah, they're just sheep who are going to go along with every. They're going to see how the, what the flow's going. And yeah, they're going to go along with that. And when you have the emperor saying, let's go with this, and a few bishops say, okay, let's do that. Well, yeah, you're going to get everyone. That doesn't mean anything. You could have had 1,000 bishops. It's the same thing.

The fact that they were even there shows to me what kind of bishops they were. And then, yeah, they're going to go along with the way things are. Now, here's five huge things the Nicene Council introduced, and they were all bad. Okay. It made Orthodoxy turn on a word not found in Scripture. Now, this word kept coming up during this whole Nicene era and thereafter. If you would not say homo osean, then you are a heretic. It didn't matter that you believed the Scripture. It didn't matter.

You believed the same thing that was the historic faith that had been taught all those centuries. You won't say this word. You are a heretic. And it wasn't like they treated you nicely. It wasn't like, okay, I'm sorry, brother, but you're, it was like, blasphemer. You know, it was, I mean, wow, they went ballistic over it. Like I say, they went beyond the historic creeds. Now they have a new creed. For all those centuries, it was fine. It had worked just fine.

The creeds they had that were just a simple, would you say, just concise statement of the New Testament as far as doctrine. The emperor made the final decision. What is wrong with these brothers? You're letting a non-Christian sit here chairing the council, and then you follow his decision. He's going beyond Scripture. He doesn't realize this is something terrible. I'm going beyond Scripture. You can't blame him. He's just trying to help. He doesn't understand, but you bishops should have understood. All right.

Now, this gets a lot worse. So again, Constantine, he just thinks the way a pagan Roman emperor thinks. So, okay, we've settled this. We don't want any more trouble. So he puts forth a decree. Okay. If anyone's got any of the writings of Arius, you bring them forward and we're going to burn them. And if anyone is caught harboring his writings, if you've got some and you've got it stuck, you know, in a drawer under your bed, you will be put to death if we find any of his writings in your possession.

So you've got book burning. You've got now people being put to death for being heretics or just reading the writings of a heretic. Now, this is, I mean, I sit and read this and it's some of this, I can't believe this happened. None of the bishops protested. I mean, it goes from bad to worse. It's like, what are, what kind of shepherds were you that, huh, Christians don't put people to death? That was something they stated for years. We don't persecute other people.

Of course, they weren't in a position to, but it was a principle. Look, all we do is put somebody out of the church. Beyond that, they're in God's hands. We don't, we don't do like the Jews and the pagans and all that. We don't persecute people. Now it's like, oh, he says, we're going to put these people to death. Oh, okay, fine. That'll silence them. I mean, to me, these are such false shepherds. I mean, ooh, it was time to leave the church if you hadn't left it at that point.

Not the true church, but I'm saying the institutional church. Wow. When you make those kind of compromises with the world, where was their knowledge of Scripture? What did Jesus say? My kingdom is not of this world. Now, if you fell for the first part where it looked like God was blessing things and Constantine is doing that, at this point, you should have realized, whoa, okay, we were misled. I mean, now we're talking about killing people because they're heretics.

Just 20 years ago or less, they were killing people for being a Christian. Now we're going to kill someone because they're a heretic. Yeah. And it keeps getting worse. Oh, this is just the start. That's why I say this is the major turning point. Christianity has joined itself with the world, and now it's all ready to put, not just persecute people, but actually put them to death for being a heretic or for being accused of being a heretic. And that's what happened pretty soon.

They weren't real heretics being put to death. Okay. So after the council, after it was over, well, this didn't settle well. I mean, fortunately, there were enough Christians who knew better than their bishops, thankfully. And when these bishops got back home, it's like, what? Were you going to throw out our creed that we've used for 200 years here in our church and you've stuck in a word? This isn't in the Bible. What were you guys thinking? I mean, there was this big pushback on homo osean.

It's like, whoa, whoa, we've never used that in the creed. It's not in Scripture. We don't want to say that. Let's just stick to the language of Scripture. So yeah, it didn't end things because they didn't, they didn't handle it right. And so it did not end the matter. So then who becomes the leader of Athanasius? You may or may not have heard of him. He's pretty famous in church history. So. Became the bishop of Alexandria.

Alexandria was the second largest city in the Roman Empire, and it took the lead in all these theological disputes that went on for centuries. At this time in Rome, most people could no longer speak Greek, and all of the discussions were in Greek. So the Pope is not the one taking the lead here. It's the bishop of Alexandria. So Athanasius, at the time of the council, he was a deacon. He was there, but he was just a deacon. He was not one of the leaders.

But a few years after the council, or maybe within a year, the bishop died. He was made bishop. Okay. Almost the same spirit of Arius. Okay. I'm going to correct things, and I'm going to go beyond Scripture. I'm going to go beyond the historic faith to do it. All right. So Arius, his error was saying the Son is subordinate in nature to the Father, okay, which is not true. He's the same nature, just like, again, you're children of the same nature as you. You're all human. Okay.

Well, some of the Scriptures Arius was using, misunderstanding, were ones like Jesus' words, the Father is greater than I. Okay. And there's a lot of Scriptures like that, at least 12. I'm just going off the top of my head. Throughout the New Testament, Jesus continually makes a distinction between himself and the Father, but not a distinction of nature. It's a distinction of order, of headship. All right. So the Arians have been quoting these verses incorrectly, not on purpose.

I mean, they were, they thought they were, you know, defending the faith. But if they just humbled themselves and gone back what was being taught in the beginning, it would have been fine. So now Athanasius realized, okay, they're using these verses. Guess what? I know more than everyone who lived before me. And Jesus, when he says the Father is greater than I, and some of these other verses, all he means is, right now I'm a human. So the Father is greater than I. Well, that is not the historic faith.

That is not what the church taught. But he started teaching that, and he was the most powerful person in the church, the bishop of Alexandria. Yeah, he was a, is in a position of authority. And because it was now a state church, I think arguably Athanasius was probably the second most powerful person in the empire next to the emperor himself. So don't think of some, you know, meet Christian here. This is a guy in power, a very headstrong person. One person described him as a bully, probably is correct.

So like I say, he said, oh, this is only talking about Jesus' humanity. All right. John 14:28, if you love me, you would rejoice because I said, I am going to the Father, for my Father is greater than I. Now, everybody from the beginning and anyone reading that would understand, okay, the Father is head. He is greater than Jesus. He's not saying he's a greater deity, but he is greater in headship. He is my head. Okay. It's a very similar one.

Moses, surely I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father do, for whatever he does, the Son also does in like manner. And like I say, you can probably think of a bunch of other verses. Jesus says this over and over again. I do what my Father says. My Father sent me. My Father said what I was to preach, etc. I mean, he is so subject to his Father out of love. Ten minutes. We are not going to get any worse close to the end of these lines. All right.

I've got one session left after this. And he says, well, he just meant as a human. You know, he doesn't really mean the Father sent him. He's using these words. Okay. It's a clever way to counter the Arians, and it's still being taught today. Most churches still say that today. He was willing to throw out the historic faith to out-argue the Arians. Terrible mistake. If the only way you can silence a heretic is to change the historic faith, then just forget it. You know, let the heretic go.

You don't change the faith in order to counter an error. I mean, that is about the dumbest thing you can do. But people have kept doing it all through the ages. And yet he insisted, oh, I'm the defender of the historic faith. You're changing the historic faith. You're denying it. But yeah, you presented yourself as the one who was defending it. Well, what's the consequences? He made heretics out of virtually all the pre-Nicene Christians because they all taught the Father is greater than the Son.

The Father is the head. All the New Testament teaches that Jesus is subject to his Father. The Father is the head. Now you've made them heretics for saying that. So wow, you're shutting down Arius, but now you've made everybody before you a heretic. And that's one reason today people don't read. They read the pre-Nicene writings and it's like, wait a minute, this isn't, this isn't right, because they've been taught what Arius said. I mean, what Athanasius said. Wow. Yeah, he did more damage than Arius.

Again, his heart, I mean, he was trying to do the right thing. None of these people were wicked people trying to corrupt the church. But that's the problem. You don't save the church by changing the historic faith. You just stick with Scripture. You stick with what was taught in the beginning. And something even worse, if Athanasius is right, it means I can't pick up my Bible and believe what it says.

If I read there and Jesus says, no one knows the day and the hour except the Father, not even the Son, only the Father. And see, according to Athanasius, if I believe that, if I believe that the Son doesn't know the day and the hour, then I'm a heretic. I'm saying something terrible. That's blasphemy. He's like, what? I mean, I can't just pick up my Bible and believe it. I mean, he created a situation where, wow, this is a dangerous book.

And when the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, you know, was banning the Bible being translated to common languages, it wasn't because they thought, well, we know we're teaching error and we don't want people to find it out. No, they thought these people, if they start reading the Bible, they're going to read statements like that, the Father is greater and they're denying, they're going to believe it.

And these poor people are going to go to hell because, yeah, they're going to read those things and be, they're not trained theologians. They're not going to understand it. So, yeah, it's better to let people don't touch the Bible. See, Athanasius, because of what he did, that's what he created. And it's still that way today. I mean, and you're not going to get burned at the stake today. So, I mean, when I read the Bible, I see everywhere in the New Testament that, yeah, we are saved by faith.

I see there's two phases of salvation. Yeah, we are saved by faith, but we have to live obediently or we will not get eternal life on Judgment Day. I mean, that is so clear to me when I read the Bible. Oh, you say that in so many Protestant churches. That's work salvation, you know? And next thing, well, you're not a Christian. I've been told so many times by people, I'm not a Christian. Why? Oh, because I believe in work salvation.

I've never used that term, but yeah, they put that term on you, unconditional eternal security. Everywhere I read in the Bible, if you're unfaithful, yeah, you're going to be lopped off the vine if you're not producing fruit. You're questioning eternal security. It happened to the church I was in. One Sunday night, a preacher was preaching, and he knew that the doctrine of that church was eternal security. You can't lose your salvation. One saved, always saves.

He was just reading some of the Scriptures and not denying it, but he wasn't. He wasn't preaching it. And in the middle of the service, you know, one woman got up, are you down on eternal security? And I said, yeah, maybe we're all. I guess you never read about women being silenced in church, but it's like, oh, you, you know, boy, you dare down something that's just clear. All he was reading was the Scripture. Five minutes and not saying, now, of course, don't believe what it says.

They say that shouldn't be our problem. Yeah, you can misread the Scripture. I'm not saying that that everything you take at face value, there might not be something you're misunderstanding because you got to take the whole thing. You don't just take one verse. But the Bible shouldn't be a dangerous book that, oh, we can't pick this up unless we're a theologian. You know, same on baptism. How many times I've been criticized on just believing what the Scripture says on baptism.

And I don't try to force that down anyone's throat. But it's the same thing. You know, we all should be able to just pick up this book and read it. And we get some things wrong. Even the whole thing with Arius and Athanasius. And I'll close on this. What was the mind of Jesus? Do you remember what he said about people who might blaspheme? These words aren't as famous. For some reason, people seem to forget this. They forgot it during Nicaea. He said, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven.

Any word spoken against the Son of Man will be forgiven. The only thing that's not going to be forgiven is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit when you're denied an obvious work of the Holy Spirit. He said, every blasphemy against the Son will be forgiven. You see, the Spirit at Nicaea was, Jesus, you better not forgive those people. Man, they've got things wrong. Don't you dare forgive them. He's already said it in advance. God's going to forgive people. They're going to get some of this stuff wrong.

And I remember these people weren't even trying to last thing. They were just trying to explain the trending. Got it mixed up. Jesus said, yeah, I'll forgive them. He's so much. He and his Father are so much bigger that they're not going to get bent out of shape because we humans. Do I get upset if some three-year-old doesn't understand my relationship with my wife? They might think she's the head of the family. Am I going to care what a three-year-old believes? God.

Do we think we're that important that God is going to get upset because we humans don't understand everything correctly? We're making ourselves way too important. I'm not saying it's okay to go around and just teach all the heresy you can. I'm just saying, look at it in the light of Jesus. He said, look, before it's even started, I'm already, I'm telling you, I'm going to forgive all of that. All right. I think how much time do I have, Chris? Three minutes. Three minutes. Okay. We'll see what we'll do.

Three minutes. Okay. So this is what happened next. So they keep making these changes. Well, pretty soon they can't argue why we're just going by Scripture because you've already made so many changes. So then they began claiming the Holy Spirit is giving the church new revelation and we have a better understanding than even the apostles had, a better understanding of those people back there in the second century. This is a national quote, Gregory of Nazianzus.

Again, he's considered one of the key teachers in the Orthodox Church. I think the three fathers they look at the most. He's one of the three. He said the New Testament manifested the Son and suggested the deity of the Spirit. Now the Spirit himself dwells among us and supplies us with a clearer demonstration of itself. That's horrible. You're saying now we know more than they knew even back in the days of the apostles. The Holy Spirit is giving us all this clearer understanding.

Well, the problem is you're changing things. And instead of admitting we're changing the historic faith, oh, no, we have a better understanding. And that's one of the big dangers of the Catholic Orthodox Churches, this teaching. They have more understanding than was in the New Testament. And their creeds, you know, Constantine put the Nicene creeds that he was inspired, yet it just kept going. The creeds and all of these are supposed to be inspired by God.

When you think about it, what it's saying is the further you get from the apostles, the clearer and clearer understanding you're going to have of the Scriptures. That's absurd. That is absurd. But that's what it came down to. People even imagine it today. New doctrines pop up that no one heard about for 1800 years, and suddenly it becomes the doctrine of the day. I'm not going to get into it just to not create some new issues. But if it wasn't there in the beginning, it's not the historic faith.

When I said last night, if it wasn't before 200, I don't mean that the church went apostate right after 200. I'm just saying if you can't find, if it's not clear in the Scriptures and you can't find any evidence in the zero minutes. Okay. So we will stop there Sunday morning. We will pick up from here. O Lord, restore your ancient ways and make your people new.