Earlier in the book, David Bercot impressed upon us the importance of going to the primary sources, so now I'm going to list a few of those as well as some other resources for follow-up reading. "The Ante-Nicene Fathers" is a 10-volume set of the early Christian writings that is available online for around $100. Scroll Publishing also sells several other early Christian works and a version of the early Church writings on a CD-ROM for about $10.
This cheaper version of the writings of the early Christians is particularly convenient as it takes up less space, is searchable, and you can cut and paste from it. A secondary source that is a helpful reference when using the writings of the early Christians is "A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs," edited by David Bercot and published by Hendrickson. In it, David has objectively and topically organized thousands of quotes on 700 different subjects discussed by the early Christians.
I found it very convenient to look up a subject and then find relevant quotes with the author, region, time, and volume and page number from which the quotes were taken, so that I can reference them in the Ante-Nicene set. In Common Sense, David pointed out that the Septuagint was used by the early Christians, the Apostles, and Jesus.
For more information on this topic, I highly recommend a lecture entitled "Why Don't We Use the Same Bible as the Apostles." In this talk, David provides conclusive evidence from the Scriptures and history of the Roman Catholic and later Protestant man-made tradition of abandoning the Septuagint, the Scriptures used by Jesus and his original saints, and he also explains how and why this happened.
I also recommend the Septuagint resources available at www.scrollpublishing.com/store/septuagint/html, or you can just search the word "Septuagint" or "LXX" at scrollpublishing.com. Additionally, Scroll Publishing offers many teaching CDs on radical Christian discipleship and what the early Christians believed about just about every topic related to Christianity and the Scriptures. You also might want to check out the other two books that make up this trilogy.
Common Sense, the book you just heard, is the middle book. "Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up" is the first book, and "Will the Theologians Please Sit Down" is the last. "Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up" provides a fascinating overview of the early Christians from AD 90 to year 299: who they were, how they lived, what they believed, and how the Christianity of that era was lost.
Penned in a free-flowing readable style, combined with sound scholarship, this eye-opening book challenges Christians today to return to the simple holiness, unfailing love, and patient crossbearing of the early Christians.
The book's main value to me was to say, hey, if the New Testament's original recipients understood the Apostles literally, like a child, and then gave themselves in life and in death to Jesus's absolute call to follow Him and serve others, even when it meant becoming poor or facing torture and martyrdom, then why don't I take the Scriptures seriously with a childlike faith? Another benefit was that David didn't use the early Christians to proof-text for this or that denomination or preference.
There's no push to any brand or branch of Christianity here. Instead, he lets the early Christians speak for themselves with an abundance of quotes directly from their writings.
It includes a challenging comparison between the early Christians and today's evangelicals, which is extremely relevant because so many issues faced by today's Christians and the early Christians are exactly the same: divorce and remarriage, abortion, modest clothing, evolution, caring for the poor, church leadership, gender roles, worldly entertainment, conforming to Jesus instead of your culture's practices and philosophy, arbitrary predestination, total depravity, unconditional eternal security, those who
profess Christ with the lip yet deny Him by their actions, and more.
This book forces the question: who are the real heretics? The early Christians, who knew the Apostles personally, spoke and thought in Greek, didn't have hundreds of years of time in man's tradition to filter through, and most importantly, lived holy lives according to a serious and literal reading of the Scriptures, or are modern teachers who follow those past theologians who focused on their theology alone and murdered those who disagreed with them?
The last book in this trilogy, "Will the Theologians Please Sit Down," is particularly insightful to any Bible reader. You know, one of the points of Common Sense was that you don't need to go off looking for some learned theologian or commentary to tell you what the Bible "really" means.
Well, in "The Theologian's Book," David proves that not only do the children of God's kingdom not need theologians and pastors to explain Jesus's teachings away with their creative and fanciful interpretations, he throws down the gauntlet and exposes the blindness of the religious leaders and the games that theologians play: copycat commentaries, pseudo-history, unprovable speculations as dogma, inaccurate cultural distractors, language bullying, and murdering those who've disagreed with them—all in God's name, of
course.
But it doesn't stop there. This book uncovers how Christianity became doctrine, and in the end, we are faced with a choice: what will our religion be? Knowing a whole bunch of man's fancy doctrines, which in actuality are mere speculations and myths, or following Jesus in an obedient love-faith relationship? Lastly, I'd like to recommend to you two books written by separate authors.
I mention these because they follow rather closely this Common Sense approach to understanding the Scriptures, and they embody Jesus's summary of the Scriptures, that is, treating others the way you want to be treated. The first one is "The Gospel According to Jesus," unwrapping centuries of confusion, by Marc Carrier. Unlike the patchwork of out-of-context verses from Romans that we so often hear in the modern gospel presentations of easy believerism, Marc actually presents the gospel from the Gospels.
Refreshingly, he presents the message of Jesus directly from the words of Jesus, and what you end up with is a challenging, life-changing, no-compromising, repent-and-follow-me book. Finally, "Through the Eye of a Needle," "The Doctrine of Non-Accumulation," by Roger Hertzler, has been the book that, besides the Scriptures, has most challenged me, focused me on God's kingdom, and empowered me to actually live out the gospel by loving others in actions and in truth.
As mentioned in Common Sense, Roger addresses the Scriptures relevant to money and works through each objection until he comes to an interpretation that harmonizes all of Scripture on the subject. For a free catalog of early Christian writings, books, and messages about the early Christians and radical Christian living and discipleship today, visit www.scrollpublishing.com or call 717-349-7033.