Welcome to another episode of Engage the Faith here at the historicfaith.com. My name is Clark Ray. I'm the director of the program here at Sattler College. And today, once again, we have Brother David Bercot joining us. His ministry at Scroll Publishing has been a key backbone to promoting the historic faith and has partnered here with Sattler College. Recently, David Bercot has been released a commentary on the gospel according to Matthew, the historic faith commentary series.
And along with that, we've begun publishing course videos that go along with that material that you can check out. And he's also now in development of a commentary on an early Christian commentary on the Book of Romans. So we're looking forward to that as well. Today we have an Ask David Anything session. So this is an opportunity for anybody that's been blessed or challenged by David Bercot's material to simply ask what's on your hearts and minds.
And we've got a lot of good questions, and we're excited to go through some of these today. Hopefully we can get through all of them. David, are you ready to get started? I'm ready, yes, Clark. All right. So well, one more little item is that if you have any follow-up questions to these questions or what David shares today, feel free to post them in the chat, just send them to me, and then we'll hopefully have a little bit of time at the end to do some follow-up questions.
We're going to try to stick close to an hour with this session, so we might not have time for too many, but we'd love to take as many as we can. All right, the first question we have here is from Errol Amy. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. Let me put it up here on the screen. Can you clarify how your views regarding the authority of the apostolic traditions changed between the composition of common sense and reflections on common sense?
There are some here who have gotten the impression that, in effect, you shifted from Prima Scriptura to Sola Scriptura. Is that accurate? Do you still hold to the same view now as you did when you recorded your reflections? And is this the same view which the early Christians held on the matter? Yeah, I wanted to start with this question because it colors everything that we discuss here on all of these sessions. Why do we even bother to go back and look at the historic faith, look at the early Christian writings?
Now, I have not, when I recorded, Eric mentions a tape I made in the late 1990s entitled Reflections on Common Sense. And there had been a lot of, there had been a lot of people who liked common sense and there were a lot of people who really disliked it. And so, you know, hearing some of the criticisms, I felt like I did need to explain some things that I obviously could have said better in the book. And so we started when somebody would order a copy of common sense.
Raise your hand if you know what I'm even talking about when I say common sense. Okay, so we would send out this tape with it. And then later, I guess it was a CD so I could clarify those things and clear up some of these misunderstandings that had happened. And yeah, say things better in some respects than what I did in the book. Now, I haven't re-listened to that, so I don't remember everything I said in there, but my views have not changed since then.
They've changed very little from even when I wrote common sense. I would just say a few things, I think, differently. But one of the big arguments of common sense was there's not really, there's no such thing as sola Scriptura. Meaning that all of us add something to the scriptures. Now, for some people, that may be nothing but their own mind, how they interpret the scriptures and put it together.
But if they're not looking at anything else, if it's just their own mind and all of that, it's not likely that everyone else who just picks up the scriptures and read them are going to interpret everything exactly the same way. And that's why I'm saying it's never just sola scripture. I mean, you are going to add something. Now you can add a whole lot or you can add just a little. But like I say, at a minimum, you're adding your own personal interpretation of things.
But generally it goes beyond that, that most people hold to or are part of some kind of faith tradition. They're part of some church that has some official positions or some common positions on different doctrines. And they read the scriptures through the eyes of their church or their faith tradition. And in their own mind, they very often perhaps most of the time think I'm only using the Bible. I don't use anything but the Bible.
But they don't realize that everything that they are reading in scripture is being colored by the faith tradition that they are part of. So my argument in common sense, and it would still be what I would generally argue, is that since we do lean on other things, why don't we lean on the early Christian writings, use them as a guide. Now, what I would say in fact, I hope to rewrite that book next year or revise it.
And you know what I want to say very clearly is the early Christian writings are our most valuable commentary on Scripture. But I don't think they should be used as a source of authority in themselves if we don't have the scriptures behind that. I did not say that clearly in common sense. And I think I can be rightfully criticized in that respect.
But because the argument I made in common sense, if I remember, again, I haven't reread that book and that was written nearly 30 years ago, was on things that the scriptures don't state clearly like baptism. Okay, how should we baptize? We could argue from the Greek, from the Greek word that it should be immersed. But I think if we're honest, we should acknowledge that Greek words can have an original meaning, just like English words. And then over time, they change their meaning as they acquire a special meaning.
I mean, an example would be the word mouse, which you know meant a little animal, okay? Well, now when we think of mouse, you know we would think of this just as often an electronic, you know, pointing device. The original word has taken on a totally new meaning. And so you can't always just go back to what is the original meaning of that word. But even if we are going to acknowledge, okay, baptism is the mode, does that mean it has to be? Or is that just the preferred mode?
And if so, it's in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Is that three immersions? Is that one immersion? Is it forward, backward? I mean, there's still a lot of questions. And so another argument I made in that book was, okay, some of these things that the Scriptures do command, but they don't give us specific instructions, we should look at how they did it in the early church, particularly in the second century. And I still think that only makes sense to look at that.
I don't know that we make it an absolute law, but I think we should at least, it should carry a lot of weight. But what I ran into after common sense, how a number of people were taking it, whether or not it's what I intended, was that somehow the early Christian writings, they weren't on the same level of scripture, but they were a source of authority in themselves. And so I ran into a lot of people who would then pull quotes.
I found out very quickly, you can proof text the early Christians just like you can the scriptures. In fact, you can probably do it easier because you've got 10 volumes to pick and choose from. And you don't have Holy Spirit inspired writing. So there are errors in there. So you can pick things that are just definite errors or that might be errors. Sometimes we don't necessarily know. And people were, yeah, throwing quotes in my face. Well, Irenaeus said, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, fine.
I mean, number one, they were taking his quote out of context. But number two, he was saying something that wasn't in Scripture. Now, it might have been an astute observation. Or maybe it wasn't. I don't know. But it's not in Scripture.
So to start using that as some basis of authority that this person, Irenaeus or whoever Tertullian said something and there's not even a scripture that it's interpreting, I saw it leads to very dangerous ground because then once you cross that bridge, okay, we have another source of authority other than scripture, then pretty soon it comes to the later church, you know, so-called church fathers and to the councils and all of that.
And once you go that route, a very high percentage of people are going to end up just becoming Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. It becomes the logical end of that journey. And so I saw how this was turning out and I realized, yeah, either things I was saying were being misinterpreted or I did not state them clearly enough.
And so that's why I put out that tape reflections on common sense and why we took it when it sold out, we have not reprinted it because I did want to revise it before it went back into print again. Like I said, I hope I can do that next year. So on the historic faith, what we're doing is using the early Christians as our best commentary on Scripture. They are fallible people. And what an individual early Christian happens to say may or may not be that important. What we want to look for is a consensus.
What are they saying as a group? And on the major doctrines like the Trinity, Salvation, Life After Death, they all say, I mean, every writer you get says practically the same thing. So we can call baptism. I mean, there'd be a number of topics. We can confidently say that's the historic faith. Other things, they give us some valuable insight from a period very close to the apostles. But often you don't have, you have only a couple of writers who address it. So you don't really know. Did they all view it this way?
But it's still valuable. If that's all we have are two writers and no one contradicts them. It has value. But at the same time, I think we don't want to press it and just say, well, this is definitely the historic faith because we don't know. Now, you know the last several years, I've been working on early Christian commentaries or historic faith commentaries. Matthew came out last year, the first half of it. Right now I'm working on Romans. And then the plan is to go back and finish Matthew.
But one of the things I've learned from doing this, now I'm not somebody who can translate or read and write Greek. I can intelligently use a Greek lexicon, a Greek interlinear, and, you know, research a word and that. And that's what I've been doing. And I have realized in working on these commentaries how much we are affected by our English translations. I mean, they do, they sometimes absolutely ignore what the Greek says.
And even new translations who say, you know, an original translation from the Greek, not a revision of this or that. Well, wait a minute, you've gone and you've translated this word in a way that it never means that. In the Matthew commentary, I use the example of Jesus saying my yoke is easy. And the Greek word he uses means good. I mean, that's how it's nearly always translated. I think there's a time or two it's translated kind, but never easy. And it was Tyndale, William Tyndale who decided to put easy there.
And maybe that word meant something different in his day. But you still will find then a translation done in the late 20th century. And they put easy. Now, why would you pick that to translate that Greek word? I mean, it's, you know, you are following a tradition that has been set and unfortunately a wrong tradition. And I'm seeing this even more in going through Romans that, yeah, translators have just decided we don't, this doesn't make sense. We're just going to have it say something different.
I don't remember Romans 8. I can't give you the verse right now. This is just off the top of my head where Paul is quoting from the Old Testament and it says he will make a short word on earth. Something to that effect. And the King James translators for, I mean, there's no explanation. They decided to change that from word. And the Greek word there is Logos. It always, I mean, it means word. There's no question. They changed it to work. He will do a short work on the earth.
Well, that makes more sense, but it's not what it says. I mean, and no one had translated it that way before the King James translators. But once they did it, then you see it all over the place. You know So another valuable thing we get from the early church is, yeah, how were they reading when they didn't, when they were just reading the Greek? What were they saying? We get to have a commentary on the Greek itself and the Greek texts from people who were close to the time of the apostles.
So to me, they are extremely valuable. Obviously, if we had nothing but the scriptures by themselves, everything we need is in there for salvation. Everything we need is in their period. It's just that we aren't necessarily going to understand everything correctly. And we're going to be more than likely influenced by our faith tradition. So that's a long answer. And I knew that's why I wanted to start with that one. I knew it'd be a bit lengthy.
So hopefully that didn't ramble too much and everyone was able to follow my logic a bit on that. So Clark, if you want to go to the next one then. Yeah, I have to say I really appreciate it. I think it lays a lot of foundational gives a lot of insight into how you think and view early Christians, and I appreciate that.
Especially delineating between unified perspectives and early church versus individual perspectives and that they're our most valuable commentary versus necessarily automatically taking what they have as the de facto truth itself, I guess, but more reflecting that. All right, so the next question we have here is from Joanna Veneer. Sorry if I butcher anybody's names here. Let me go ahead and put this up. Is there evidence for Jesus having actually died on a Thursday and not on Friday as most churches teach?
The timely question. Yes. And I've been asked this many times. In fact, these were all good questions. So many of them I've been asked multiple times over the last 30 years. And I wanted to do this one second. I think it was maybe the second question that came in, but it to me illustrates why the early Christian writings are important.
Now why the question comes up, or I assume why she's asking it, because this is the context that's usually asked to me is the scriptures say Jesus said that he would be in the earth three days and three nights. And so if he was resurrected on the first day of the week, which is clear and no one disputes, then if he was there three days and three nights, then he had to have died on a Thursday, not on a Friday. So that's got to be some Roman Catholic corruption or something like that. It's a valid question.
Now, when you read the early Christian writings, I mean the earliest writing we have is the Didache. And, you know, right off the bat, it mentions that the early Christians fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays. And some of the other writings mentioned the reason why Friday was a fast day was because it was the day in which Jesus died. So this is very early on and it's universal.
I mean, it's, you know, throughout all of the writings, everyone who talks about it, no one has a different calendar than that, that Jesus died on Friday and was resurrected on Sunday. And they commemorated those days very early in church history to remember what Jesus did for us and what made our whole salvation possible. So what do we do then with the three days and three nights? Well, when we can see how they understood things early on, then the next step is to go back to scripture. I made some notes here.
Let me see if I can find them real quick. I was trying to get everything set up for this while I would have everything at my fingertips. Okay, so we have the scripture in Mark. We're talking about his death. It's Mark chapter 15. And verse 42, it's talked about him dying. It says he cried out and breathes last. And then right after that, it says, now when evening had come, because it was the preparation day, that is the day before the Sabbath. So the Sabbath is Saturday. I don't think anyone would dispute that.
Certainly no Jew would. And it says he died on the preparation day. It was the day before the Sabbath. So it had to be Friday. I mean, it's clear there in scripture. So the early Christians haven't invented anything. And in fact, that term, the preparation, the early Christians use that a lot. It was perhaps it appears to have been a Jewish term to refer to Friday. They wouldn't have called it Friday. They called it preparation. And the early Christians use that a lot as well.
So what do we do then with three days and three nights? Well, then the answer to me became obvious that it was a figure of speech. We say so many things in English that if somebody 2,000 years later were reading it, they would totally misunderstand what we were saying. You know, if I told one of you, if we were having a discussion and I said, well, hold your horses. Well, you would know what I meant.
Someone 2,000 years later reading this, okay, David's talking to somebody who had apparently got there on horseback and the horses were getting loose or something jumping about and he has to tell the guy to, you know, hold his horses. I mean, you know, what else could they conclude unless they had some stuff to know that that was an idiom? But idioms often only have a short lifespan. You know, they're used for like 50 years or something. And then they're not used that way anymore.
And so somebody reading, you know, a century or, you know, thousands of years later are not going to realize, you know, that something is a figure of speech. And that's what it really helps when you have people who are speaking that language and none of them are bothered by the three days and three nights. I mean, yeah, they understand, okay, that's a figure of speech. Jesus said that he would rise on the third day.
When you read the account in Luke on the road to Emmaus, when he was talking to the disciples, they say, this is the third day since these things happened. Okay, so the third day. So if he was in literally three days and three nights, then he would have risen on the fourth day, not the third day. So yeah, it's a figure of speech. And that's the value of looking at the early, early Christians instead of, okay, I know more than everyone else. It says three days and three nights. So everybody has it wrong.
And, you know, me as an English Westerner living in the 21st century, I can just read this and know. Well, like I say, it's not just the early church. If they were saying it and it contradicted the rest of scripture, but you have it clearly stated there in Mark, and I think in Luke as well, that he died on the preparation day the day before the Sabbath. So scripture is clear. The witness of the early church is clear. So no, your question was, is there any evidence he died on Thursday? No.
And no one was even claiming that until I don't know when, maybe the 1800s or something like that. Great. Thank you for that. Yeah, the whole concept of idioms is something that's I don't know if it's a completely new discovery for me, but I was doing research on God's anger, and God describes himself as long of nose. And it's a Hebrew idiom for having a long temper or doesn't get angry quickly. Long suffering is the word we use with King James. But anyways, I appreciate that.
It makes me think about being long of nose, which is a completely different idiom today because it's a liar having a long nose, but in English. All right, so from Colleen Barnhart here next, as an artist, do you think it is okay for me to paint a picture of Jesus, not as an icon, but as a historic scene? My answer would be, I think it's fine. Now, if you're uncomfortable, then, you know, follow your conscience. Don't do anything that would violate your own conscience.
Looking at the practice of the early Christians in the catacombs, in the earliest sections of it. Now, the catacombs are in different sections, but the sections that date back to like the 200s, yeah, there are pictures of Jesus. There are quite a few pictures, in fact, not portraits. They just, they depict him in scenes, like talking to the woman at the well. That is one of them. I'm trying to think of some of the others. Maybe the loaves and fishes. I'm just having to go off the top of my head.
But the Good Shepherd, you see that a couple times in the catacombs. So yeah, they didn't feel it was wrong to depict him. Now, you don't have anything that purports to be a portrait, you know, a face that's, oh, this is clearly Jesus. It's from the scene that you can tell who this is supposed to represent. Otherwise, you wouldn't know. All right. Next up is a question from Sean Richard. What percentage of Christianity do the early church writings account for?
I know some groups like the Essenes went a different path, Ebionites, Gnostics. Okay, yeah. So when you said the essence or scenes, I didn't know if you meant them or you meant to say Gnostics. I'm not sure. Maybe you were pointing to the fact that Judaism had its, you know, own little sects within it. And what about Christianity? We couldn't give, no one could give an exact percentage because we don't know how many adherents the Gnostics had.
It was obviously large enough that the early Christians talk about them quite a lot. But we don't know what that percentage is. Maybe they had 10% as many people as the Orthodox Church. I don't know. You know, no one really knows that. We just know they were a sizable group. And then there were some little groups, the Montanists, the Ebionites, some things like that. What is wonderful is we have several works like Irenaeus wrote, you know, refutation of Heresies or Against Heresies.
And he, I mean, he goes into such detail in listing every little group. We pretty well know all of the groups that are out there. And yeah, some people who don't like what the early Christians teach, they want to imagine, oh, there was a group just like their church, whatever that might be, you know, Southern Baptist or this group, Jehovah's Witnesses, whatever. But yeah, we just don't have their writings.
Well, we may not have their writings, but we would know about them because, like you say, they are discussed by numerous writers, the different heretical groups. So when we're reading what I call the early Christian writings, I'm talking about the writings from people who were viewed as part of the church, who were Orthodox in the sense of having correct doctrine. They were Catholic in the sense of being part of the universal church.
And so the writings that are in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, except for large parts of volume eight, are from people who were considered orthodox. And not only because they often refer to each other, but also Eusebius in his church history, he talks about these different writers, tells us, you know, where they lived, what church position they held, that sort of thing. So we're not having to guess. These aren't just names out of the blue. I thank you for that. All right.
The next question we have is a rather long question, but I'm going to try to get to it because I think it's important to discuss. Clark, did I somehow, let me interrupt you. Did we leave out the question about Ignatius? Maybe we did. By who? Ricky Wall. I thought it was the second question or third question. You're right. I overlooked that on accident. We'll go ahead and go there next. I'm not marking them off right. Oh, nope. There we go. All right.
Ricky Wall, what is your explanation for the view Ignatius had about church leadership, for example, being in the place of Christ? Yeah, I wanted to address that because I've been asked that, oh, I would estimate at least 30 times over the last 30 years. It's something that I wondered when I, you know, read Ignatius, because he's, you know, right at the early part of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. And it's like, whoa, he uses some exalted language there.
And I didn't know what to, you know, make of it and didn't know what I was going to find from the other writers. I can't think of anyone else who uses quite his language. So it's not particularly representative of how most of them speak. I will say that. I've come to peace with what he says. I think the key is understanding his context. Okay, so here's the bishop of Antioch. He's been arrested by the Roman authorities. He's been taken to Rome to either be imprisoned or executed, and he prefers to be executed.
And as he's being taken to Rome, where they stop, he's allowed to write. And so he writes letters to various churches. Now, he doesn't claim or in any way imagine himself to be an apostle. He's just writing as a fellow bishop to these other churches. But he was writing probably only about five years after the apostle John died.
So the big issue that was facing the church in John's day, and it would have been the same in the days of Ignatius, were the Gnostics who became even more bold once John died and there were no more apostles on the scene. And they would worm their way into churches and say, Hey, we're having a Bible study over at my house. Yeah, you know, hey, come over to my house and yeah, we'll have communion there or maybe a love feast, whatever.
And Ignatius is very concerned that, you know, people are being drawn away by the Gnostics who John calls the Antichrist. This isn't just a matter of a systematic group. It's a group that you can't even call Christian. I mean, their doctrine is so perverted. It falls outside any boundary of real Christianity. And like you say, they were very bold. They were making heavy inroads.
So the men who were in church leadership at that point in time when he wrote would have been men appointed by the apostles or by men like Timothy or men that Timothy had appointed. You were very close to the time of the apostles. The bishops and presbyters or elders and deacons would have been Orthodox people at that time. So he really emphasizes the people, don't do anything without your bishop, without your church, don't have little private meetings, don't listen to other teachers.
I think at Sound Counsel, this man has no idea that 2,000 years later, people are going to be reading his letter. As a writer myself, I know how easy it is to say something a little too strongly and it gets misinterpreted or maybe it's not misinterpreted. Maybe like in common sense, I said some things a little too strongly that I need to take that back. Well, Ignatius doesn't get to do that.
I mean, you know, he was writing a letter to one church and he had no idea that those would be preserved and be read, you know, years later in an entirely different setting. I was going to read just like what he said to the Ephesians, for those of you who aren't aware of what Rick is talking about. And I've got it here in front of me. So I'm going to just read this. Ignatius writes, " For if I in this brief space of time have enjoyed such fellowship with your bishop.
" This is the bishop of the Ephesians who was Onesimus. Maybe we don't know the same Onesimus that is mentioned in Paul's letter to Philemon. We don't know for certain on that, but there's a pretty good likelihood. Anyway, he says, how much more, I mean, not of a mere human, but of a spiritual nature. How much more do I reckon you happy who are so joined to him as the church is to Jesus Christ and as Jesus Christ is to the Father, so that all things may agree in unity. Let no man deceive himself.
If anyone is not within the altar, he is deprived of the bread of God. For if the prayer, he's talking about communion. For if the prayer of one or two possesses such power, how much more that of the bishop and the whole church? He therefore that does not assemble with the church has even by this manifested his pride and condemned himself. For it is written, God resists the proud. Let us be careful then not to set ourselves in opposition to the bishop in order that we may be subject to God.
Now, the more anyone sees the bishop keeping silent, the more he ought to revere him. For we ought to receive everyone whom the master of the house sends to be over his household, as we would do him that sent him. In other words, receive the one who was sent the way you would receive the sender. It is manifest, therefore, that we should look upon the bishop even as we would upon the Lord Himself.
And indeed, Onesimus himself greatly commends your good order in God that you all live according to the truth and that no sect has any dwelling place among you. Nor indeed do you listen to anyone rather than to Jesus Christ speaking in truth? So yeah, his context, I would say that's a little over the top the way he says it. But when you look at his whole context, he's not trying to elevate the bishop and oh, we need to give all this glory to the bishop.
He's trying to tell people, look, stick with your church leaders. Don't go off on these private meetings having communion with someone who says that they knew the apostles or they're a traveling teacher who's come around and that sort of thing. Stick together with the leadership of the church. But it goes back to the first question about how we should read the early Christians. They are fallible people. And so do the Scripture say to view the bishop as we would Christ?
No, it tells us to honor him, honor the church leaders. But Ignatius uses language a little stronger than Scripture. So I would say, okay, we don't follow Ignatius in using that language. He went a little over the top. I think it's excusable, understandable. But yeah, that's why we don't treat these writings as scripture, because their writers are fallible. Thanks, I appreciate that. All right, next up, we have a question from Wolfgang Tatchel. And Wolfgang, I shortened this to smidge, not much.
It's a pretty long question, so I wanted to shorten it a little bit. Hopefully I left everything that's relevant here. So I'm going to put this up. I'm not sure if it'll even show. Yeah, it's pretty long. I might separate out the quote here. So he says, " My question concerns this excerpt from the Letter to Diognetus, " which I heard while listening to THF's Bible and Early Church History Course. The difference between Christians and the rest of mankind is not a matter of nationality or language or customs.
They do not live apart in separate cities of their own. They pass their lives in whatever township, Greek or Foreign each man's lot has determined, and they conform to ordinary local usage in their clothing, diet, and other habits. Nevertheless, the organization of their community does exhibit some features that are remarkable and even surprising. And then this is Wolfgang's question.
Although I didn't come from an Anabaptist background, I have certainly come to respect their devotion to kingdom Christianity that I observed from afar, in large part due to discovering the works and preaching of those in THF. So thank you for that.
But to me, the witness of the unknown author of the letter to Diognetus is interesting and that according to him, it sounds like the early Christians, for all the differences they did exhibit in life, conduct, speech, morality, et cetera, did not noticeably differ in the way they dressed in everyday life. Am I understanding that right? And if so, are we doing a disservice to the spreading of the gospel of the kingdom by overregulating standards of dress?
I think of Paul's evangelist and how he wrote, " I have come to all things. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. " This obviously cannot mean compromising in modesty or Paul's instruction for head covering for women or not covering for men when praying and prophesying.
But out of the desire to spread as far as possible the beautiful gospel of the kingdom, shouldn't we try to try as far as possible to be all things to all men in the same way that a Christian woman's beauty should not come from outward adornment but from the beauty of good works? Shouldn't the church limit, get rid of unnecessary outward peculiarities and dress, again, with a heart to display to as many unbelievers as possible in our beauty of the kingdom Christianity.
Okay, so that quote, I think probably everyone who comes across that who has had any connection with the Anabaptist world, we always noticed it. I mean, I noticed it. And I've had many discussions about that quote. And your point is totally valid. Now, yeah, what it comes down to, at least how I've sorted this out in my mind, how I have analyzed it, is there's this tension between outreach and preservation. Ideally, you want both.
You want to keep the kingdom faith, and yet you want to have effective outreaches as well. And obviously the New Testament church, the early Christians were able to do this. Even without that quote, you would have to know that the Christians didn't stand out by their dress because in the Roman Empire, and I think it was the same in the Persian Empire, it was a capital crime just to be a Christian. So, you know, if the authorities could just look at you, ah, there's a Christian, you know, it wouldn't work.
When you're living under that kind of persecution, you obviously can't just stand out where everyone can recognize you as a Christian. On the other hand, they lived in a world where you could dress very modestly, you could cover your head in public, and that in no way would make people think you are a Christian, because there would have been so many people groups who would have done that within the Roman Empire that, like the Jews, yeah, it would not have had any particular significance that way.
Today, it's, yes, very hard. Just to dress modestly at all often makes you stand out. I mean, I've noticed I've been in public places and I'll see a woman in a dress, you know, a fairly long dress, not Anabaptist. But I immediately assume that this is probably someone who's Pentecostal or a homeschooler or something like that. I mean, it is hard in our society just to dress modestly, you know, without it standing out somewhat differently.
And if you wear a head covering in public, then that makes it even more difficult. Now, what the Anabaptists chose to do at some point in their history, and it was different in different places, was to sort of, well, let's just stick with this particular pattern of dress that we have right now and not change. And that has helped them to preserve what the Anabaptists have for which I am grateful.
I mean, when I started on this journey, if the Anabaptist hadn't been in existence, I would have had to wonder if I was barking up the wrong tree. It's like, if this is true, how come nobody teaches these things anymore? But the fact the Anabaptists were here teaching almost the exact same lifestyle teachings, most of the doctrines. Yeah, that helped me to know, okay, I am on the right, right track. I mean, this isn't just some dream of mine that this is the historic faith.
I mean, there are people who don't even look at the early Christian writings who teach and practice the same things. So I think those of us who are not from an Anabaptist background do have a huge debt that we owe the Anabaptists for preserving what they have. And I would say their biggest focus today, I say they, I am one. So I'm a kingdom, I'm a Christian first, a kingdom Christian second, an Anabaptist, I guess third.
But I'd say the biggest focus is to not lose what they have, that the next generation doesn't lose it. And their method has been to adopt a countercultural, unique culture of their own, particularly in dress, sometimes in other things like mode of transportation. And it's been fairly effective as far as preservation. But it does create a wall that makes it very hard for those of us who didn't grow up Anabaptists to come in.
And for Anabaptists who are very concerned about witnessing and reaching the lost, yeah, they realize that wall is there and it makes it hard. So the nice thing today as we talk is that there are other choices. The Anabaptists are still the largest group of kingdom Christians. But yeah, there's a lot of other people now who have seen the kingdom message. There's groups like followers of the way. There's lots of independent house churches in different places. So the Anabaptists are not the only choice.
If that, if that is something you feel like, yeah, that's more further than I can go, then yes, there are other choices. I would just say, I'm not sure it's right to say, okay, I want to take advantage that you Anabaptists have preserved this for 500 years, but now I want you to change it and do things different. I don't know if that's necessarily a fair request. I mean, it's like, well, let's the rest of us do something different and show that it can be done without losing the kingdom gospel.
And if we can successfully do that, then, okay, then we've got something. But I'd say, let's first prove that we can successfully do it. There's no reason we shouldn't be able to. I mean, they did it in the first, you know, number of centuries. So it is doable. But I know in like in the last 300 years, there have been a lot of groups that have taught what the Bible presents on holiness and on modest dress and on entertainment, all of those things.
They taught that in the 1800s, the same groups are still around today, but they don't even remotely teach it today. I mean, other groups have not been successful in keeping these things. And until I think a lot of us have shown, okay, we can successfully do this. I don't think we can expect that the Anabaptists are going to change and say, yeah, okay, it got us this far, but let's throw that away now and do something different. So that's my take on it, okay? That no one is obligated to join the Anabaptists.
Now, if they were claiming they were the one true church, then I would have a big issue. But very few Anabaptists would claim that. They would just claim they are a church. They're a choice. But yeah, if the means they've used to preserve what they have is too great a barrier, then yeah, there are other choices. They're not as easy. But yeah, hopefully, like I say, it's a different world than it was 30 years ago when I was first looking into these things.
There's a lot of more choices now, a lot of things like Kingdom Fellowship Weekend, which is not a church, but it's where a lot of kingdom Christians get together from all kinds of flavors and that sort of thing. So yeah, we live in a very blessed time in that sense. And hopefully it's going to keep growing that way. I think the two worlds can coexist. We can both witness to the kingdom in those different respects. Yeah, thank you for that. I appreciate the challenge. It's good.
Oftentimes, it's easier to criticize than it is to do something ourselves. And why not, yeah, work towards building? All right. So it's 2:21. I think we'll do maybe two more questions here. Unfortunately, we're just not going to be able to get through all of them. But maybe we'll do a rapid fire. Try to do as quick an answer as you can in the next few questions, and then we'll do what we can here for the next five minutes. We only have one follow-up question so far, so. Okay.
From Mark Derek, " Is a baptism from another denomination still acceptable to the historic faith teachers? " Another way to ask the question is, " Who wouldn't you accept an adult baptism from? " Here in Western Australia, we only have, I believe, the mainline traditions. I'm in contact with an Anabaptist group, but they're on the other side of the country in the eastern states. Okay, the historic faith is simply a teaching project. It's a joint venture between Scroll Publishing and Sattler College.
We don't represent a church per se. So, I mean, we would have no answer to that. Although I think we are, most of us involved in this are of the same mind. But I can tell you my own perspective. I would accept any adult baptism where the person was baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. And he believed in Jesus Christ at the time that he was baptized. So that's my perspective. And I don't think too many people, but I don't know. I'm not part of followers of the way.
I'm, you know, good friends with so many people there, but I don't know if they have a particular standard that they apply. But none of us would require, and the Anabaptists don't normally require that you had to have been baptized by an Anabaptist pastor. Some groups do. I mean, there's lots of flavors of Anabaptist. Some do, but most don't. I mean, as long as you were baptized as an adult, as a believer.
But so yeah, where you are, what I would do personally, if you haven't been validly baptized, if there's any church of Christ or, you know, restoration movement churches that have at least the correct teaching on what baptism means, that would probably be my first choice of who to have baptized me. But if that isn't a choice, then I guess my next one would be a church that teaches believers baptism. And I guess I'd kind of go down from there, but it's not the minister who makes it valid. It's Jesus Christ.
If it turned on the validity of the minister, then, wow, what would you do with all these people who got baptized by someone? And then after their death, you find out the person was an adulter or something like that. If that made all of their baptisms invalid, I mean, you know, none of us could be sure of our baptism. It doesn't work that way.
And the early Christians, their general policy was, if you were baptized in the name of the Trinity, baptized in water, that they accepted your baptism, even if it was done by heretics. Some groups would not accept Gnostic baptisms. I think I would have been uninclined to accept a Gnostic baptism, but something accepted that as long as it was done in the name of the Trinity. And their general belief was, Jesus is the minister of baptism, not the human who might pour water on you or dunk you in water.
He's not the one who makes it valid. It's Jesus Christ. And now that the church is splintered, we can see the wisdom of that policy. Otherwise, wow, no one could know if their baptism was valid or not, if it worked that way. So that was a little bit longer than what Clark had asked for. No, that's all right. Yeah. And I think I can confidently say there wouldn't be anybody involved with historic faith that would reject a baptism, just the fact that it was done in a different denomination.
I couldn't see anybody saying that. All right. So we'll do one more question here, and then we'll do the follow-up question. Boaz Harmson asked, " Is it possible that David's commentary in Matthew volume one printed be made available for sale in the European Union? For example, in Amazon.nl or bol. com in the Netherlands? Yeah, the answer to that is up to now we have not sold it through Amazon. The question prompted me, made me realize we probably should open that up.
But now as far as being sold in Europe, that is Amazon's, they make that call which warehouses they want to stock a book in and whether they're going to do it in Europe. So I don't know. I wouldn't have high hopes that they would sell it in Europe, but I honestly, I don't know. But it's not something we ourselves have control over. Sounds good.
All right, I'm going to ask the follow-up question, but I just want to say that the remainder of these questions, they were very good questions, and we'd love to be able to get to them, but we're just out of time. We're going to be doing more of these open Ask David Anything Q&As. So I encourage you to try again. And the sooner we, generally speaking, answer the questions in order that we receive them unless there was a question that prefaces a bunch of others that helps answer a bunch of questions.
So the sooner you get your question in, the higher likelihood that we'll be able to get to it in the Q&A time. So take that in mind next time. And I hope some of you reask the questions that we weren't able to get to in the next time we do this. All right, so the one follow-up question that we had was from Phil Baker. Let me put it up here. What do you think about the use of instruments in the church? The early Christians mostly leaned against their use in gatherings, but to the New Testament.
But the New Testament doesn't seem to speak the issue one way or the other. However, their use is obviously allowed in the Old Testament. So this is in reference to, I think, the question that was brought up by Wolfgang about dress. I think it's just practice related. Yeah, so this sort of goes back to the first question, you know, how I try to look at the and make use of the early Christian writings. There is a general negativity towards musical instruments. They aren't absolutely forbidden in private use.
It does not appear they used them in the church, although I don't have just lots of quotes that proves that. But to me, yeah, in the New Testament, you don't have anything that says they did use them. You don't have anything that expressly forbids them. And it's in things like that that I like to look at the early church. What has been the historic practice? It does seem like a capella singing has been the historic practice until, I don't know, maybe the 1600s or something like that. Yeah.
So it definitely, to me, it's the wisest course. Again, I can't point to a scripture and I don't like personally to forbid something if it's not clearly forbidden in the scriptures. But yeah, when it comes to my own practice, the church I belong to, you know, we do a cappella singing. And I'm comfortable that that is the best in historic practice. Thank you very much, David. All right, I think that's going to wrap up our time here. Thank you, David. And also thank you everybody that submitted questions.
We really, really appreciate your engagement here. And we hope that this session has strengthened your love faith relationship, obedient love faith relationship with Jesus and His kingdom. We have a mobile app in development still. I just want to keep putting that out there. Our goal is to launch it by this summer. That'll allow for offline syncing of lessons and things like that and more on-the-go usability of the platform.
On the 26th, the next section of the Historic Faith Commentary Matthew commentary course lessons will get released. I think another three or four lessons. We're just releasing them as we produce them so you can get them sooner than a couple of months from now and start going through them. So you'll get them as soon as we get them as we finish them. Go ahead and check out the April giveaway. We're doing another Kindle giveaway and share the word about the historic faith that helps us out a lot.
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