"Walk the Talk: Spotlight on Kingdom Work #8" by 4 brothers

Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

This is Strength to Strength, and we welcome you back here with us for this talk today that's not as normal as some of them. Um, every maybe about twice a year, um, here at Strength to Strength, we um bring on brothers who are working in different projects in the kingdom. It might be a ministry, uh, it might be uh some kind of online teaching tool.

Um, many different, many different um presentations we've had here um over the last five years. And actually, I think this is episode eight um in this series called Walk the Talk, Spotlight on Kingdom Work. And I thought I'd just read just the description we have here um of of this talk. Um, we welcome four brothers to discuss what their lives look like being a disciple of Jesus.

The unsung heroes of Jesus' kingdom are the faithful disciples who serve their Lord without fanfare or applause. Whether you are a warrior in secret prayer, a widow who casts in the last two mites, or a worker advancing the bleeding edge of the kingdom, you can rest assured that the deeds of service do not escape the eyes of our benevolent King.

And then we have a quote there by Aristotle that says this: "Where your talents and the needs of the world cross, there lies your vocation." And I've always been just inspired um as brothers share about different things they're involved in and different platforms they're creating so others can minister or learn or use their gifts. Um, it's always inspiring just to see people answering God's call and stepping forward and and blessing others uh in the kingdom. And this morning we have three different initiatives we've been hearing from, um, the historic faith and particularly uh an encounter they have coming up, their first one, um, a teaching weekend. We'll hear all about that shortly. Uh, also we have two brothers from Boston, um, on church writings and um, a brother from Anabaptist Perspectives talking specifically about Anabaptist origins.

So I welcome you here with us, and let's just pause for prayer before we jump in here. Let's let's pray. Father, we thank you for your mercies that are new every day. We thank you for the opportunity to be together here um as brothers. Uh, we Father, we ask that you would bless each brother and sister who listens to this later. And Father, we know that uh you've taught us, your Son has taught us to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness in all these things will be added on to us. And so Father, uh, I want to just thank you that you've given us not only a vision and a a big purpose, but you've given us a task to do.

And that task is to be your hands and feet to the world. That task is to grow in in in in emulating you in more faithful ways. And Father, we pray that through this talk this this morning, um, that we could be inspired, be better equipped um to serve you and to be your hands and your feet to and to collectively be a brighter light, a brighter city on a hill for your kingdom. So Father, I pray a special blessing on this time and these brothers and to those who listen, and we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen. All right, so first up this morning is Kevin Breckbill. Um, Kevin is an elder at the Chambersburg Christian Fellowship Congregation uh in Chambersburg. Kevin, it's good to have you here. And I thought I would just read off the description that you so nicely got for us uh on what you plan to share about here this morning. So I'll read that. Um, Kevin Breckbill will be joining us to represent the historic faith. The historic faith is an online course focusing Christianity through the eyes of the early church.

And then the historic faith encounter is a four-day event planned for February 26 through March 1, 2026. If you want challenging, informative messages and plenty of opportunities for Q&A and fellowship, be sure to come. And so Kevin, um, we'll let you tell us all about some of the things that you all have going there with the historic faith. It's all yours.

Okay, thank you, Bryant. Really appreciate the opportunity. So I would like to just start with our welcome and purpose. I want to personally give my heartfelt thanks to the Strength to Strength podcast, to Bryant and the amazing team there. I think, uh, I'm not sure how many years you guys have been going there, but, um, you definitely have created a platform that has impacted the kingdom, and that's a very amazing thing. Praise God. Just thank you for the gracious invitation you've given us and the opportunity to share about an event that is, that we believe is close to our hearts. Um, there's many other kingdom projects going on, so everyone has to pick and choose what they can have the opportunity to put their, put their heart into it.

Bryant, has only given me 18 minutes, and so my presentation, I'll probably stay fairly focused and concise to get through it in time and then give opportunity for Q&A later. So this event is called the Historic Faith Encounter. You may ask, what will we be encountering? We would like to invite you on a journey together with us to the encounter, the same faith that has transformed us, shaped our convictions, strengthened our courage, and filled our hearts with hope.

Together on this journey, we've seen minds renewed, spirits revived, deep questions answered, and complicated lives transformed by the power that comes from walking in the truth. So what is the historic faith? This is a question that we get asked a lot, and we're all, I'm going to make an evaluation attempt to answer that question for each of you today.

Jude 1:3 says this: "Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints."

The phrase "the faith once delivered" describes a faith that was given, not invented, complete, not evolving, holy, not humanly modified. We call it the historic Christian faith, or the ancient faith, the apostolic faith, or simply, as Jude says, the faith that was given to us. It is the foundation upon which all true discipleship, virtue, and community are built. And the question naturally flows: who gave us this faith? Once delivered. The word "once" here carries a sense of finality and sufficiency. What was given needs no updating or expansion or correction. "Once delivered" highlights the event's completeness and enduring authority.

It was Christ and his apostles who delivered this faith to the church. The apostles were eyewitnesses of his life, death, and resurrection. What they handed down was complete, authoritative, and final, not an unfinished draft waiting for modern improvement. The faith was given once for all, and our task is not to rewrite it, but to return to it. The danger of drift. Drift is never sudden. It's slow, silent, and seductive.

When we add or subtract from the faith, we lose the heartbeat of what was entrusted to us. Each generation must resist the urge to bend truth to fit its times. Truth is not elastic. It is eternal. Renewal does not come by rewriting the story, but by remembering. Remember the children of Israel's greatest sin? They forgot God.

It is by returning to the foundation that still holds firm, our modern illusion. Many today believe we've advanced beyond the early believers, that we now understand the faith far better than those who first received it. But this isn't progress. It's hubris and pride disguised as wisdom. The call of Scripture is not to outgrow our roots, but to abide in them. The future church will rise or fall on the strength of its connection to the ancient faith that first gave it breath, the Constitution analogy. Think of the United States Constitution.

The founding fathers delivered a document that defined a nation's identity and purpose. Over time, many have come to believe the interpretations have changed, and the nation began to drift from its founding vision. The Reformers' cry became, "Return to the Constitution, return to our founding fathers." Likewise, when the church drifts, our cry must be, "Return to the faith once delivered."

Let's rediscover together the kingdom's constitution. The kingdom of God has its own founding charter, the faith once delivered by Christ and his apostles. It is our spiritual constitution defining who we are and how we live. Our loyalty as citizens of his kingdom means studying, guarding, and embodying that faith in every generation, returning to the primary source.

To truly understand Christ, it is important that we consider primary sources, those closest to him. The Anabaptists are a rich heritage, but they are not an original source. The early church fathers like Justin Martyr, Polycope, Irenaeus, and many, many others who were taught by the apostles link us back directly to the apostolic foundation. We can look back and see they're not perfect, but they are priceless witnesses to what the first Christians believed, practiced, and valued.

Why the early church fathers matter? These early Christians lived within a generation or two of Christ. Their writings show a church marked by unity, holiness, courage, and virtue. They demonstrate what faith looks like when it is lived, not just professed like we hear so much today.

Their witness is a bridge connecting us to the heart of the apostolic church, learning from the Anabaptist heritage. The Anabaptists, centuries later, rekindled the same desire to return to Scripture, purity, and genuine discipleship. They modeled community, obedience, and sacrificial living.

We honor their courage and conviction. And like them, we are called to continue to go back to Christ, to his apostles, to the original faith, the posture of humility. Renewal begins with humility. The church doesn't need a new revelation. It needs faithful restoration.

We must be humble enough to admit where we've drifted, courageous enough to return, and united enough to walk together the historic faith encounter. Out of this longing to return and rediscover was born the historic faith encounter. It's an in-person gathering. It's not online.

Everyone's online these days. It's located, it will be located in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, very close to my house, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. This is not a conference for experts, but a fellowship of believers. It is open to Anabaptists and to non-Anabaptists, to church leaders, elders, bishops, deacons, and teachers.

It's especially open to our current generation of youth and young married couples, open to fathers and mothers and families, to anyone hungry to rediscover the faith with us. The encounter is an invitation, not an announcement, a call to rediscover together the faith that once changed the world.

The purpose of the encounter is to rediscover the faith once delivered, to learn from the wisdom of the early church fathers, and to remember their Anabaptist leaders so valued that same faith that they faced persecution and death rather than deny it, to relearn how they lived, worshipped, discipled, and loved, to rekindle a faith that is clear, courageous, and alive in our generation, the cry of this generation.

The younger generation isn't drawn to what is shallow or effortless. They long for a faith that costs something, a faith worthy of their energy, their conviction, and their lives, a faith worth living for, suffering for, and more importantly, a faith worth dying for. They want a purpose bigger than themselves, a church that is alive with conviction, not convenience.

The historic faith offers exactly that, a closing invitation. The historic faith encounter is a call to return and rediscover, not backward in time, but back to the foundation that never changes. It's a call to courage, conviction, and unity, to humble ourselves before the faith of Christ and his apostles, to live it out boldly, purely, and joyfully in our generation.

May we be known as people who stood firm, who returned, who built again upon the rock. May our hearts declare together, we will not drift, we will return to the faith once delivered. Some of our speakers at this event are Jason Willis, Kyle Yole, David Verso, Zach Morgan, Bill Shelley, Daniel Willis, Lynn Martin, and Kevin Breckbill. I'm just going to give three examples. Some of you may not know these brothers. Jason Willis, I met him four and a half years ago. He's a 40-year-old single brother whose life was transformed through the historic faith, bringing him victory over past complicated life and releasing his God-given gifts for powerful service in God's eternal kingdom. And if you come to this encounter, if you've heard him speak, you will recognize his amazing gifts.

Kyle Yole, a 26-year-old young husband and father whose deep study of the historic faith has shaped remarkable character, spiritual maturity, and a solid foundation for his young family, an amazing brother at such a young age to have such an impact on the kingdom. I don't have to introduce David Verso.

Daniel Willis raised an evangelical setting with a sincere desire to follow Christ. Daniel's search for the true meaning of Scripture led him beyond the modern teachings to the early Christians whose faith transformed his understanding and life, equipping him to serve powerfully in ministry and in evangelism.

When? Thursday evening, February 26th, through Sunday afternoon, March 1st, where? Joyelle Camp and Retreats in Greencastle, PA. You're welcome to sign up now at thesortfaith.com encounter. Continuing the journey beyond the encounter, the historic encounter is not the end of the journey. It's the beginning of a lifelong pursuit. For those who want to keep learning, growing, and diving deeper into the faith once delivered, there's a powerful next step, thesortfaith.com. This is an online learning platform designed to help believers continue their study of the historic Christian faith through rich learning, discussion, and personal discovery, right from your home, your car, or wherever you are.

It's a place where you can move from encounter to endurance, from inspiration to understanding at your own pace and at your own time, a treasure of teaching and transformation. Thesortfaith.com is built upon more than 30 years of work by David Verso, who recorded over 2,000 hours of teaching, authored over 10 books, and devoted his life to uncovering the wisdom of the early Christians. The platforms also include respected voices such as Dean Taylor and Chuck Plate, who continue to guide believers into practical discipleship rooted in early church conviction.

Also, it now features an incredible addition, Jason Willis' modern audio translation of the Antonicene Fathers. Jason has completed the first volume translating the early Christian writings into clear modern English. These are also available in audio format, perfect for listening while driving or working or studying. His goal is to complete all volumes, making these treasures accessible and understandable to the modern believer.

The impact has already been profound. The young men and women in our church, listening during their Bible studies and daily life, are reporting that it's revolutionizing their understanding of the Scripture and Christ. By hearing the voices of the early Christian in modern language, they're learning to see Scripture through the lens of the original faith, and it's reshaping their depth and quality of their discipleship, building the future from learners to leaders.

Our vision doesn't stop with learning. It continues with multiplying teachers and leaders. Through the encounter and the online platform, our goal is to raise up a new generation of teachers and leaders, men and women who understand, embody, and can clearly communicate the historic faith and live it. Those who experience the encounter can continue their journey through thesortfaith.com, gaining the training, resources, and mentorship needed to teach others.

This is how we continue the work. The encounter ignites passion. Thesortfaith.com builds understanding, and together they form a growing network of disciples, teachers, and leaders carrying forward the faith once delivered. The heart of it all remains the same: to know Christ deeply, to live faithfully, and to teach others courageously.

Thank you, Kevin. And that's it. Okay. Thank you so much. That was inspiring to hear that. And you know, probably, I mean, I'm certain that all of us on here this morning, and probably many of our listeners, have read or listened to Brother David Verso.

He impacted me greatly about 20 years ago when I started reading his material. And then I think in 2015 or in that range, there was a YouTube channel created called Scroll Publishing, where you could listen online to a number of his talks.

And I wondered who was going to pick up the mantle and carry on his work. And it's exciting to see the historic faith and you all there at Chambersburg in many ways rallying around his teaching and helping spread it out through the impact of others who've been impacted by it. And really, really exciting to see that. And so, yes, so the historic faith, you know, largely has a lot of his teaching on it. And then this historic faith encounter, I understand that Brother David Verso actually be there teaching.

That's a wonderful opportunity to connect directly with David. So if you've never met David, here's an opportunity to spend a couple of days there with him. So yeah, yeah, so thank you for sharing all that. And yeah, there's the information is on the website, thesortfaith.com.

If you go to the encounter, it's on the website there. You can see information. There's a brochure, a really nice little brochure there. We have it actually linked right off of our web page here for this talk. Okay. One of the things you talked about, Kevin, is, and I'm just going to open up here right shortly for any other questions that anyone would have here. So be quick to the, be quick to it if you have it.

Oh, we also see another one, another email that just came in here from one of the brothers who's listening from Historic Faith there. And that is Dale. Martin. A little easier to spell than Breckbill, Kevin. Dale. Martin, dale.martin@thesortfaith.com. All right.

That's another thing we want to do. We want to get more last names that people don't recognize. That's why I like Maxie Core and Tom Gruber and Jason and Daniel Willis. And we got Terry and Adam Clifton and Yul Kyle Yole. So we're going to change that name. Yeah. Yeah. I see Stephen Taylor on here. That's a different last name. So yeah, we're going to expand our, you know. Yeah, beside time. Our last names. Mm-hmm. So Kevin, one of the things that excites me too about the historic faith is the need for us to be rooted more than just, you know, we'll be hearing about the Anabaptist here movement here shortly by Martin Summers, the Anabaptist Origins documentary.

Wonderful. What a heritage we have going back 500 years. But the early Anabaptists, they were digging into the Greek, you know, the early church fathers and reading it. And that was a lot of their inspiration as well. And so we need to, in our day, be rooted as well, following in the footsteps of our Anabaptist heritage.

Being rooted into the faith once we're all delivered to the saints is really important. And I just, as you were talking, I just, in my mind, I saw yesterday what happened at our cafe yesterday. And that was about 20 young people packed around a table from the Catholic Student Society here at Penn State.

And they're having a lot of converts. And one of the young ladies told me she's getting confirmed here in a couple of weeks. She grew up Christian, but she's joining the Catholics, you know, the historic. There's a lot of people who are interested in some of these ancient faiths because they want to be rooted, you know, in something more than just, you know, some church on the street corner that's around some, you know, celebrity speaker. They want to see some history here. They want to see some tradition. And you know, and these are places that I go to get equipped so I can actually have those conversations with people like that to help them see that, you know, even though you're part of a quote ancient church, you're not being faithful to that faith once we're all delivered to the saints, whether in the New Testament or in the first couple hundred years of the church.

I mean, in many ways, it's been a, the church of the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church of today is drastically different. And so these kind of teachings enable us, equip us to have those conversations. So, but yeah, you also mentioned how about a podcast where you can listen to the Antonicene Fathers, which we'll be hearing about that shortly by church writings here.

And how do you access? Is that free or must you be a subscriber to the historic faith to actually get that?

Oh, Jason's audio? Yes. Yeah. So you need to be a subscriber. Okay. And that's inside the subscription. Gotcha. He just got the first one completed and it's getting a lot of traction. Sure. Okay. That sounds good. It's under library. We're going to make it a little bit easier to find. It's in library. So you have to be subscribed in or signed in, go to library and then click on, okay, I think it's called Audio Antonicene Fathers. Okay. Sure. All right. I'm just going to pause for a moment here. Any questions for Kevin?

Just going to ask practically about the encounter and children. Yeah. What kind of setup you'd have for families? And then also like the content itself, how much of that might be accessible for, say, a 13-year-old? So families are welcome.

We have facilities that we can accommodate that. You know, depending on their age, we have, you know, when they're older, we have places where we're going to have older people there with them so they can, but they're going to be sleeping like in a bunk-style place. So depending, but if they're younger, we have places that they can be with you guys. So yeah, youth, families are all welcome. You know, as far as, you know, a 13-year-old understanding it, is that your question? That was the second part of my question. Yeah.

I mean, we're going to have some, you know, games and a few things there, poor stuff, but yeah, I don't know. I think a 13-year-old actually would understand it. That sounds good. And it's being hosted there to campground in your area, right? Yes. Yep. Yep. We went to a bigger facility because we had so much interest in it.

So good. Hope to fill it up. All right. Thank you, Kevin. All right. So we better keep moving along here. So next up, we have two brothers here from Boston representing church writings. And I'm just going to read the description here. Tom and Max will join us to discuss church writings.

This project aims to bring to life centuries of Christocentric writings by modernizing our access to Antonicene, Nicene, and Post-Nicene connections across these texts so that we can better know, serve, and follow Christ. All right. Go ahead, Max. Awesome. Awesome, Brian. Can you hear me? I can hear you well. Excellent. Yeah. So thank you for that introduction. And thank you for everyone's attention and time to be able to share about this website that Tom and I have been working on. So church writings, it's going to be, it is a full reader with a modern user experience interface that also has search and cross-referencing and some AI toolkits across currently all of the Antonicene Fathers. So those are all of the Christian writers before the time of Constantine.

And our team right now is Tom. He's a software engineer and does product design. I am, this is me. I'm Max, a machine learning engineer and also a scientist. And Stephen Taylor has been helping us as well. He's a software engineer and an overall awesome dude. So we appreciate his contributions as well.

So Kevin already went over a lot of this, but I'll quickly reiterate that the early Christians are just such a wealth of knowledge and encouragement. As you read them, you see their application and also the doctrines that they taught and followed are very plain and simple from Scripture. And it's a great sanity check when you're reading Scripture and you hear all the voices in modern Christianity telling you, "Oh, it means this. Oh, it means that. It means this other thing." And you see a unity in the early church of understanding the Scriptures in a very simple, straightforward way. It's very encouraging and it's a great sanity check for our own life and doctrine as we see them in their unity and simplicity.

We also get to see a lot of apostolic application. Remember, these guys knew the apostles or they knew people who knew the apostles, and we see how they lived. And that application is directly from the faith that was handed directly down to them.

And that's a really powerful encouragement as well. I think also just reading them helps us understand a sort of, I call it drift protection. But this also goes into what I think Kevin already kind of stated is these guys weren't Catholic. And Brian, you were mentioning this as well. You know, these guys weren't Catholic. They weren't Orthodox. These were very simple, plain believing people. There were not any gold cathedrals, gold hats, you know, big candles. That's not the faith that these guys had. These guys had a very sacrificial Sermon on the Mount-focused faith that I think all of us can relate to and have a powerful connection to. And again, some of the things that were said earlier about how the Anabaptists looked back and tried to restore a faith that was there, there are a ton of similarities, whether it's non-resistance, not swearing oaths, a separation between government and church.

All of these things are very, very much shined forth in the early church. And so there's a strong motivation to go out and look at them and read them and treat them as a treasure. I think that going back and looking at them, we can find a lot of unity and encouragement. Here are just two of some of my favorite quotes. I'll just read the highlighted part in red. On the left is about non-resistance, Tertullian quotes, Sermon on the Mount. And then in red, he's talking about the blow that someone gives you. That's the it. So he says, "The blow shall receive a heavier one from the Lord." So you don't have to resist the person and strike them back.

The Lord at some point will be the justice giver. You wound that outrageous one, the one who hit you, more by enduring. So when you endure, you wound them more by doing anything. For he will be beaten by him that is Christ, for whose sake you endure. And then on remarriage, which is such a contentious and difficult topic in our modern age where the divorce rate is so high, the remarriage rate is so high. A lot of Protestant churches are very much struggling with this issue. They don't even know how to handle basic, simple, straightforward passages from Sermon on the Mount. But Justin Martyr would say something like, "So that all who by human law are twice married are in the eye of our Master sinners."

I don't know how much more obvious and straightforward the early Christian witness can be on this. And those who look upon a woman to lust after her. Amen. So we find strong unity within them. It helps us build strong unity with ourselves. They read Scripture simply, and it was obvious what they were trying to say and what they thought and how they lived it out. And this also can be a strong evangelistic tool, you know, as we speak to our neighbors and they're like, "Hey, well, what is this? Why does Jesus say this? Or what is it about that? Or how does that say?" And also, as we talk to people who, you know, profess Christianity and they might have a misunderstanding, I think this is also a powerful tool to try to guide them to the proper faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

So Tom and I found a lot of encouragement. Tom and I found a lot of encouragement in the early church. But as we tried to find resources on the early church online, we found a lot of websites that had poor usability. They had lack of functionality, like they didn't have search. They were a stale digital ecosystem. It was a lot of 1.0, web 1.0. So just text on a screen. It was kind of hard and clunky. And none of them had robust cross-referencing. So if you're reading Genesis 1, you can't just find where the early church quoted Genesis 1. Or if you're in Sermon on the Mount, you can't just find where they quoted Sermon on the Mount.

It would be quite challenging at times. And then also having a modern AI toolkit. So just some of the sort of usability and improvement of life that has happened through some of the tools that have come about in a more modern sense. So what Tom and I would like to provide is a beautiful user experience that's nice to look at and easy to use, that offers connections at scale, so lots of references and has a large library, but also brings text to life through an easy search and also an easy-to-use dictionary. So great reader. That's what we want. Cross-referencing, great search, and a great topical dictionary.

And with that, I also have this QR code that brings you straight to the website and specifically the page to sign up for our newsletter. And so with that, I'll hand it over to Tom, who will show you the great reader, the great functionality, the great cross-referencing, the great search, and the great dictionary. Or hopefully, hopefully in the eyes of the beholder, great.

So with that, I'll hand it over to Tom. Sounds great, Max. Thanks, Max. Appreciate it. Awesome job. Hopefully everyone here that's on the call can see my screen. So as Max said, there's really three core pillars. Of that pillar, the first thing I want to show here is hopefully great user experience. So this is the site, Church Writings. We launched almost exactly two months ago. And in the two months we've gone live, we've had visitors, many, many visitors from over 45 countries have found our site. And that's just through a soft launch. So we haven't really promoted it much. We've really been working out some issues and kinks, and we really call it a beta test because that really is where we are today, which is kind of the first version of it and hopefully only getting better from here.

But it's been a blessing to work on. And Max and I put a lot of time to get it to where it is today and more to come. But when you're on the site, this is churchwritings.com. You first get brought to our library. And on our homepage, our library is shown. And at the moment, we have Scripture. So we're using the King James. We have the Antonicene Writers, and then the Nicene and Post-Nicene Writers. And from the homepage, from the library, the first thing that you can do is click on any category. So if I click on the Holy Bible category, we have in order all the books of the Bible. And you can scroll down.

You can find a book that you might want to read. If I go back to the library, we also have categories like the Antonicene Writers. This would be really the post-apostolic or the first and the earliest Christian writings that we have outside of Scripture.

And so many of these people, like the apostolic fathers, were with the apostles. Some of them came a little bit later. But we have the full list of the Antonicene Writers. So you can scroll down, see the full list. We break these out into different categories. And then you can view authors, for example, like Justin Martyr. And if I click on Justin Martyr, we have all the works of Justin Martyr here that you can click in and read. So one of my favorites is the first apology. So you can click the first apology. And then you can either select a specific chapter that you know you want to read or just start reading and go to chapter one.

What we do is on the reader itself. So now that I'm reading the first apology, you'll see I have some information about the book. I can see different layout modes. So if I want to change, let's go to another maybe chapter here. If I want to change from more of a paragraph layout, a standard book reader to something that's a little bit more sentence by sentence, if I'm in some deep study, I can do that. We also have functionality built in for things like dark mode, hopefully to make it a little bit easier to read, especially late night, early morning sessions. And then as you're reading it, we also have some other information like the page counts if you've ever read the paper copy of the Antonicene Fathers.

And so we bring a lot of that data in here. Now, if I go back, the other cool thing that we've done is we wanted to bring to life the text. You know, reading the Church Fathers can be very dense. It can be a lot to take in and a lot to read. And so to make it a little bit easier, we also wanted to include what we're calling AI cross-referencing. So let's say that I'm reading the book of Genesis. So right now I'm in Genesis. I'm in Genesis 1. And in Genesis 1, verse 2, it says, "And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

What I can do is within the site, I can actually click on that verse. And when I click on that verse, it's going to open up what we call our side panel. And it's going to show a list of related resources. So this is broken out into categories. So you have all of the connections first that we found between Genesis 1, 2, and all of the other books in the Bible. The first example that shows up is Jeremiah 4:23. And that says, "I beheld the earth and lo, it was without form and void in the heavens, and they had no light."

I can open that up. And now I can read both Genesis and Jeremiah side by side. But then I can also look at cross-references to the early church. And so as I'm pulling this up, I can see Tertullian. I can see Hippotalus. I can see so many other writers that have actually quoted and referenced Genesis in their own writings. And then just like I open up a book of the Bible, I can also open up here one of the writers. And this is Tertullian on baptism. And as I open that up, I now have three different readers, three different books open on the same screen. I have Genesis, I have Jeremiah, and then I have Tertullian on baptism.

And just the ability to engage, open up, and kind of see as you read Scripture, what the early church was saying about that topic or that verse really hopefully brings to life Scripture in a new way for you and kind of brings you back, as Kevin and Max alluded to, to the early church, some of the earliest voices of our Christian faith. Now, what you can also do, I'll show you another example of that is if I'm in here Scripture, or I can search, I can search the book of Matthew. I can open up the book of Matthew.

And one of our favorites, of course, Sermon on the Mount. As I'm reading the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, verse 8, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." If I click on that, just as another example, just a plethora of quotes that we find, 99 in Scripture, 54 in the Antonicene Writings, 29 references to Matthew 5:8 in the Nicene Post-Nicene Writers, guys like John Chrysostom. But if I click the Antonicene Writings, so many of the early Christians here are directly quoting from and speaking about and teaching from the Sermon on the Mount.

One of my origin here is talking about Matthew 5:8. It says, "For according to the declaration of our Jesus, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." And then a cool quote here that I found, Irenaeus in his writings on against heresies, he says, "The prophets then indicated beforehand that God should be seen by men, as the Lord also says, Jesus, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." And of course, I can open that up and now read Matthew along with Irenaeus side by side and engage both texts as I seek to know and follow Christ more. So that's the reader portion. That's kind of the first big pillar.

The next thing that I'll show you is something that we just launched last week, which is going to be our dictionary. And our dictionary is a more curated view. So we have to date about 109 topics across almost 3,000 passages that we found. And if you want to look up a very quick topic, you know, we have some examples here.

You can find any topic that you want. If you wanted to look up, for example, maybe non-resistance or oaths or parables, peacemakers, all of that you can very quickly find on the site. And I'll give one example that I love, which is almsgiving, giving to the poor and needy. You can click on that topic. And then in chronological order, we show all of the passages that our AI has found that are similar to that topic or where a writer is speaking about at length about that topic. And so for giving to the poor and needy, the first one that we see here in our dictionary is from Psalm 82. And this is a very famous one, but defend the poor and the fatherless, do justice to the afflicted and needy, deliver the poor and needy.

And then if you keep going down, Matthew 6, another great one, "But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth." Very famous. And then if you keep going, you have passages from the Didache, the Clement of Alexandria, or Clement of Rome, apologies, and Clement of Alexandria. And then one of my favorites from the Shepherd of Hermes, which says, and this is a very early Christian first-century writing, says, "Put on a holiness in which there is no wicked cause of offense, but all deeds that are equitable and joyful. Practice goodness and from the rewards of your labors, which God gives you, give to all the needy in simplicity, not hesitating as to whom you are to give or not give.

Give to all, for God wishes his gifts to be shared amongst all." And so more of a curated view. And then, of course, you can click this and open up that reference here in Shepherd of Hermes directly and read the book and that passage in its entirety here in the site. So check out our dictionary. That's the second great pillar here. And then last but not least, we also have search. This is an early beta trial, so please give it a go. But you can search across our entire library. And so an example here would be, "Can a Christian serve in war?"

And as you type in that query, it's going to search all 300 books across 80-plus authors that we have on our site. And one of the first things that comes up here is Tertullian. And this is his writings on idolatry. And I'll just very quickly read this, but he says, "But how will a Christian man war? Nay, how will he serve even in peace without a sword, which the Lord has taken away?" And so a pretty cool search result that our search has found directly from that simple query. And then you can also on the right here, as you click, you can filter. So if you want to look at just the Antonicene Writers or a specific book from a writer, you can filter by category, date, time, and then also books as well.

So all there on the site. And with that, the last thing I'll show you before I hand it back to Brian here is going to be our roadmap. And so this is, like I mentioned, a free and open reader. Please check it out at churchwritings.com. We also have on the site listed our upcoming roadmap. So a lot of cool things we want to do. One of the first things that we really want to get in is more Bible translations. I think everyone has their preferred translation, hope to go beyond just the KJV, but from adding lots of different writers to adding things like bookmarking and highlighting to building out a mobile app and then even adding original language support.

There's a whole lot that we want to do. And really, Max and I hope that it's a blessing, not just for this group, but really for Christians around the world to just explore and know the historic faith better and better. So with that, that's the site. Check it out at churchwritings.com. And Brian, I'll hand it back to you.

Wow, that is very interesting. And Tom and Max, I've gotten to know you all at Kingdom Fellowship Weekend over the last couple of years. And I think the last two years, you had a little table there just talking about it. And you know, two years ago at KFW, it was kind of a dream.

Pretty, I'm not even sure if your website was totally working yet. Or when you asked about your website, you kind of hang your head and say, "It's coming." So here we are. Wow, that is impressive. And I was really looking forward to this because I'm not one to go exploring and trying to figure out on my own websites. And so I couldn't wait to get an introduction to how this all works. And that is incredible. You got the Bible there. And then those cross-references is powerful. And so you're saying that there's no other website like this. Like I think of like Logos software, which is a really expensive, you know, expensive Bible study software, very popular, prominent among anyone who's serious about study.

They don't have anything like that? I would say, yeah, Logos definitely can do everything that our website can do. It might be harder to do than our website. And it's certainly going to cost. Yeah, sure. I don't know, probably to the order of hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, I would guess, Tom.

Yeah. Yeah, it's expensive. Yeah. And the websites, they're just not very user-friendly. They're pretty hard to get around, I would say. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. This is very intuitive. And the genius of this is it's focused on just that one thing, right? You're not trying to incorporate tons of other commentaries and stuff like that. This is church writings. Yeah.

Very interesting. And then my second question was like, I'm looking here, I'm not seeing a donate button or a subscription button. So how are you guys? How are you making this happen? Just passion and trusting the Lord to provide? Or like, how do you make this all happen?

You know, I think still a work in progress to figure out long-term what the plan is. I'll say that Max and I have been very blessed in our own careers. And God has given us many gifts. And this is just one of the labor of love. And so we put a lot of time and a lot of sweat equity into the site and building that out. But at the moment, no, it's free. It's open. Might have some paid features in the future for some more advanced AI stuff that we have come into line. But at the moment, check it out. It's free. Really just ask people, engage the site, give us your feedback, and share it with others.

Sure. Yeah, fantastic. I think that the common eye this really was something though, Brian, that like it really impacted our lives, the historic faith has. And I say the historic faith, not as far as our camp, but in a more in the broader sense of the early Christians, like what is that absolute faith has impacted the common eye a lot. And we want other people to have access to that. Sure. Yeah, you all have been around, you know, teachers like Chuck Pike and Rousseau and them and impacted by that. And then making this more accessible. Yeah. Yeah. Because otherwise, it means a lot of big books, you know? Right, right. And also just because we have our own careers that are independent of this, there are weeks where we don't work on this.