I think one of the challenges as a local pastor that I've run into over the years is a number of people that I meet who say something like I tried Christianity and it didn't work. You know I did what I was told to do. I took the steps, I made the choices, I did the things and nothing changed. And so now I'm looking for something else where I've tried these other things and I still haven't found something that works. It is a point of frustration, I guess maybe is the best way to put it for me.
They didn't try Christianity. You know They tried the version that many are calling Christianity now. And it doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. You can't have natural things produce supernatural results. And so if you were to say a simple gospel message, a simple gospel explanation of this is what a Christian life can and should look like. Could you, as succinctly as you're able to, would you be able to describe that based on you know what the early church lived, what they believed, what they taught. Yeah.
So yeah, this was one of the things that both impressed and amazed me when they were explaining Christianity to the Romans, to the, you know, the pagans, they didn't go to the book of Romans like, you know, modern day, you know, the Romans road to salvation and that people go there. And that's from Luther. Luther said that Romans was the chief book of the New Testament. And even though people don't say that in those words today, that's how they treat it and they ignore Matthew.
And Luther said, you know, if you never read Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as long as you read the book of Romans, you've got the gospel. Well, I'm sorry. There was a reason why the early Christians called the first four books. The Gospels. Yeah, that was a reason for it because, yeah, they had the teachings of Jesus. And so that's where they started with Jesus. But the early Christians would go to the Sermon on the Mount and say, " This is what Christianity, this is what we believe.
" That was amazing to me ' cause I was, you know, I'd been an evangelical now for a number of years when I read them and I was used to, yeah, we go to Romans, and this is what Christianity is all about. No, they went to the Sermon on the Mount. This is what Christianity is all about. Now, you can't live the Sermon on the Mount by yourself, but this is the center. In other words, this is what our Lord has given us, and He gives us the power to be able to live this radical life.
And so, as I said, that was the center of their Christianity. And it was this obedient love faith relationship with Jesus Christ, you know, from that point on. And there was, like I say, a little bit of defined theology that you had to believe that's in the Apostles ' Creed. There was a lot of theology that they all believed that they did not make a dogmatic requirement, which I thought was very interesting.
The uniformity, there is differences among them because, yeah, you were allowed to speculate on things without anyone getting upset. No executions necessary. Yeah. But yeah, they realize this isn't what's going to save you that you owe to this doctrine or that doctrine. It's, yeah, what does your life consist of? And it's amazing. There was no state church. And yet for 320, or maybe let's say 300 years from the time of Pentecost, you have one church, one church.
I mean, without any state forcing that, yeah, it's easy to have one church when you have a state saying you've got to be in it or you're going to be put to death or that. But when there's no pressure, you can do what you want, that they had such a commitment to each other, they weren't going to divide the body of Christ over these different issues.
If it wasn't, yeah, denying the incarnation or something like that, they recognized you can't define all of these dogmas and expect that you're going to still be one church because you're not. You're going to split into a bunch of different churches, or you're going to need the state making everybody believe that way, which is an artificial unity. It's not the unity of the Holy Spirit. Yeah. It seems like the main focus really of one of their hills that they would commit to is who is Jesus and what is Jesus.
And outside of that, there really wasn't a ton of, ' cause most of the heresies that came in, he was adopted, you know, he was such a good guy that God made him, you know, this, that he was just spirit, he wasn't, you know, really physical. And so who is Jesus and what is Jesus really seemed very important to them to defend and to come against. But like you said, a lot of the other origins over here saying, " Have you thought about this?
" Or you know this other person you know asking these questions, there was no uproar over those things, which is so contrary to, you know... Yeah. ' Cause even you spoke about Luther that if I remember correctly, he even kind of had some qualms with the Book of James because of its, it's seeming contrast to a lot of his teaching from Romans and his belief that not just the gospels aren't central to what we need to know that even the Book of James itself you know in the New Testament was a problem. Right.
Well, something, now I didn't even know this when I wrote my first book and something very few Christians know is Luther actually tried to come up with a new canon for the New Testament, and he did for the Old Testament as well, for that matter. But the New Testament, he wanted to take out James, Hebrews, 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation, which are all books that step on his teachings. And when you read the introductions in his first Bible, he had introductions to all the books. He calls James a gospel of straw.
And he says, " Hebrews was obviously not written by any apostles. It's a mixture of hay, wood and stubbles. It's got some good things in it and a bunch of bad and all of that. " Because these books contradicted him. Fortunately, he didn't get away with it. They stayed in the New Testament, but he did create kind of a second class. So people do not or I should say, Protestants, evangelicals, they do not equate James with Romans. Romans is always much higher.
If James seems to contradict Romans, then you're misunderstanding. You better change James. You know, you don't touch with Romans. Defer to Romans if you have any questions or controversies. Yeah. And we get that from Luther. So in a way, he did win, or like Hebrews. Again, Hebrews is so clear. You can't go on sinning and think you're going to get away with it, you know? But see, people read that, " Well, that's Hebrewsy, " you know? And no, Romans says, you know, this or that.
And so, like I said, he got away with it. And then when you try to quote Jesus, people say, oh, well, that was a different dispensation. Jesus was talking you know about the future Kingdom Age or something like that. So yeah, Luther succeeded in, like you say, downgrading Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and downgrading James Hebrews in those books. So part of getting back to the early church is ironic. It gets you more into the Bible. You know, people have said, well, why are you adding something to the Bible?
Well, I'm not adding anything. These writings got me back into the Bible, the whole Bible, instead of, yeah, just focusing on Romans and Ephesians, Galatians, a few books like that, and proof texts from John that you look at the whole teaching of Jesus, and you can't serve Him as a Lord if you're going to reject His teachings and say, " Well, this man's teachings don't apply.
" I mean, now that they would have called as indulgent as the early Christians were, for someone to say that Jesus ' teachings on the Sermon on Mount do not apply to Christians, they would have called that flat heresy as terrible heresy. I mean, wow, that would have been shocking to them. And no one was saying that. Well, maybe the Gnostics. The Gnostics were the big heretics, and they were so far off. It's hard to even call them Christian.
I mean, I'm sure you know about them, but for any listeners who aren't real familiar, just in a nutshell, the Gnostics claim that the God of the Old Testament is a different God than the God of the New Testament. He's not the Father of Jesus, the one who created us, the one who gave the Mosaic law. That's a different God. And so as a result, everything connected with physical creation is inherently ruined. Man has an inherently ruined nature, they taught.
And so there's no way Jesus could have actually become a man because we're too corrupt we're from this other God. So that was this teaching that he only appeared to be a man that John talks about in his letters, you know, in 1 and 2 John. He says these are the Antichrist. And like I say, it is such a far out heresy. It's not like a few little points are off. I mean, you're denying the whole Old Testament. You're saying that's a different God. And they didn't accept most of Jesus ' teachings either.
They liked the Book of Romans. I mean, their gospel, their Bible was, you know, Romans, Ephesians, some of these same books that Luther liked so much. Yeah, that's what they built on, grabbing proof text from them.
So if you're sitting down with, let's say, you know a young person who maybe grew up in the church, they've got some questions that what's real, what's not, or maybe someone who, I don't know how much you've heard the deconstruction that many are doing in this day where because of hurt, because of, you know, failed leadership in the church or maybe even their own family, there's, you know, Christianity is on trial for them, so to speak. You know Is there something good there to keep? Do I keep it all?
Do I keep none of it? Do I take, you know, pieces? And you're sitting down with them and saying, " Okay, if you wanna, if you wanna see what did the church coming out of the time of the New Testament, what did they do? What did they live? Start there and see what you find rather than trying to remove.
" It's one of the realizations for me kind of in my own journey for finding myself at many of these writings was just the simple math realization that the time between today and the Reformation is a third as long as from the time of the Reformation to the time of the early church. And 500 years ago seems like an eternity to me from now.
And so how much further they were, and when I would hear about, you know, you gotta go to the early church, you gotta go to the church fathers, those are the people that often those were speaking of, is that you gotta go back to Calvin and Luther, and you know these are the guys that you gotta come back to what they say.
And that felt, okay, yeah, that's hundreds of years ago, then that certainly can't be tainted like the stuff that I'm learning now, but they're three times further away from the time of these guys than I am from them. So how much had transpired during that time, so to speak? And so you're sharing with someone, go to this place. Read these. Check out these areas. Keep an ear open for an eye open for these, you know, couple things in here. What's kind of the, what's the advice that you give to them?
Maybe somebody who's listening today, and what's the starting journey that you give to them? What's the starting advice that you give to them to help them in that discovery? So probably the starting point is the New Testament. Some people read the early Christians and they go off on the wrong path because they lose sight of the New Testament. So make sure that is your anchor, you know, because that's the only inspired apostolic authority we have is the New Testament.
So I would say the starting point is particularly Jesus. You know, read Matthew and Luke. I mean, Mark is fine too. There's not any teaching in Mark that's not in either Matthew or Luke. There's a lot of historical facts, though. I mean, he does a good job of filling in a lot of the history. But yeah, really know Jesus through those books. And of course, John. But don't make John the chief gospel. Matthew is the book the early Christians quoted the most because it has the Sermon on the Mount.
That to them was the ultimate teaching. So, yeah, once you understand Christ's teaching, if you can do that with a blank slate, what I tell people is you've got to have a blank slate. And that's really hard because we've all been indoctrinated. Oh, for sure. For me, it's interesting how God can use things that seem bad in our life for good. So you think growing up a Jehovah's Witness would be, wow, you're so far in the hole. How do you get out?
But what was nice is I had to throw away everything that I grew up with. I mean, you know if I'd grown up more Orthodox, it would have been harder I would have wanted to. But yeah, it's like, okay, I got to start over from scratch. And not that Jehovah's witnesses are wrong on everything. I mean, a lot of what they taught is gospel truth. Unfortunately, there's a lot of error in it too. But yeah, you've got to be willing to lay down all these things you've been indoctrinated with.
Now, you may find, hey, that's in the early church, that's fine. You know And you'll get to take them back again, but at least start with a read them with a blank slate. You know Instead of reading them like, " Oh, I already know everything, and these are the dumb guys. " Yeah, just after you read the New Testament, yeah, see how it was understood by the people who were taught by the apostles. Some of the first writers, Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycarp, they were personally discipled by the apostles.
I mean, if they didn't understand the gospel when they got it firsthand and they were ordained you know by the apostles. So it's not like they were some kind of guys off left field. I mean, yeah, they were church leaders, you know highly respected. And then other ones are, like I say, closely associated with them or lived in that same era. So they had the advantage of being able to say the apostles handed this down. Number one, number two, they spoke Koine Greek as their first language.
That was their native language. There is such a difference between a native speaker and someone who learns a language secondhand. Like just as an example, the book, " Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up, " got translated into Spanish a few years after it was written. And the brother who did it, I mean, he was, you know, a very fine Christian brother and a friend of mine. He had been a missionary for a long time in Central America. And so he spoke fluent Spanish. So, you know, he translated and all that.
Well, years later, I gave the book to a Mexican pastor. He was in the United States, but he was from Mexico. And his congregation were mainly immigrants from Mexico. And so he read the book and I said, " Yeah, I'd like to hear what your thoughts are. " So when I got back with him, he said, " That's a really good book, " but he said, " That's a terrible translation. " And he's like, " What? " He said, " Oh, you can tell the person who translated this was not a native speaker. " He said, " Really?
" He said, " You're right, he wasn't, " you know? And it wasn't that he did a poor job. It's just when you're not a native speaker, you know, they knew what he was saying. He just didn't say it the way a native speaker would. So these people could grasp all the idioms. Like Imagine today, somebody 2,000 years from now reading something that was written today, and they think they know English, you know what it meant in the year 2023, because they've got these lexicons and all that.
So, you know, they're reading and someone says, boy, he's really a bad player. Now, see, that could mean he's a really good player. Yeah. Or it could mean he's lousy. I mean, in our language today, now maybe it's changed, but I mean, I don't keep up with all the slang. But, you know, there's been a time where bad actually meant good, you know? Yeah, yeah. And it's like, you're not going to get that 2,000 years from now.
These people, yeah, they're reading the New Testament, and I realize so often they're understanding it completely different. And they're the native speakers. This is their language. Likewise, they lived in the culture. They could understand the culture because nothing changed from the year 100 to the year you know 200 or from AD1 to you know 200. I mean, there's same Roman Empire, same languages or spoke. I mean, you know life went on the same way.
So they could really grasp the culture that Paul is speaking in, that Jesus is, and all of that. So like I say, you don't have to read everything. Some of the works I found for me, like Irenaeus, a great teacher, but his work is so long against his entitled Against Heresies. Yeah. And he goes through every Gnostic heresy and that'll kill you. I mean, trying to read that. So yeah, I want to be there. Yeah, I have to stop and I've got to go read some of Julia's works and some other ones that aren't quite so long.
So yeah, I've made up lists. I don't have it in front of me of some works that I recommend people start with that are not as long and are very representative as good ones to read you know at the start. But I would just say you could pick some of the shorter ones. If you have a set of the Ante-Nicene fathers or you have them online, the first three volumes, which, you know, go up to the year 200, you have pretty much any of the writers in those first three volumes, they're saying the same things the other ones do.
And yeah, you'll find a very exciting journey. You have to get into their way of speaking and all of that, but it's what you need to do because that's the way people thought back then. We read the New Testament as if Paul would have been comfortable in the year 2023, that, yeah, he could come to our churches and he would think just like we think. And he would realize our knowledge of Greek is just like his, and we're just kidding ourselves.
You know Yeah, these people spoke the same Greek Paul spoke, you know and they lived in his era. They attended churches similar to the ones that he established. And in fact, often they attended a church that he did establish. In fact, established, yeah. Yeah. So, but use them as a commentary. Don't ever make the early church an authority in themselves. They're a commentary on the New Testament. And if you use them as a commentary to shed light on the New Testament, they are extremely valuable, invaluable.
There is no better commentary a person could get. But if you start using them as an authority apart from scripture, yeah, that's when you can start going down some wrong roads from there. So in addition to kind of what you're saying for you know where to start, you know starting in the New Testament and then seeing the early church as a commentary. I love that. If someone's gonna invest in a book or two of yours, where do you start?
Which would you recommend as a good starting point for someone who's maybe jumping into this kind of study? Okay, so probably my first book would be a good one to start with. Will the real heretics please stand up? The second book that has been equally popular is entitled The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down. And it explains life in the kingdom, what it means to be a citizen of God's kingdom. There's another one that it is entitled, will the theologians please sit down?
It's kind of a counterpart to will the real heretics please stand up. But it addresses this theme that we've talked about a little bit today, that Christianity is not there is essential theology for sure, but it's not all these fine points of theology. And the theologians have messed up Christianity a lot. That's the theme of that book. And it goes in with those other two. Probably the fourth book, well, the dictionary of early Christian beliefs, you have shown that, obviously, as a reference tool.
And then I wrote one called Secrets of the Kingdom Life that's more about kingdom living. It's not so much about the early Christians, although it's based on their kind of thinking. But it quotes people through the ages from all kinds of denominations on the kingdom life. I mean, that's the beautiful thing. People who really grasp the kingdom of God, they might be Calvinists. They might be Arminians. They might be sometimes Roman Catholics, whatever.
But it's amazing how they will end up saying almost the same thing about how we should be living, how we get close to God, and all of that. And there have been some great teachers through the centuries. So that book pulls the wisdom from different thinkers through the centuries. And of course, a person can check out our website, Scroll Publishing.
We also have one called thehistoricfaith.com that you yourself, Dan, might find interesting where, yeah, people can access all of my teaching over the last 30 years about the early church. So those would be some resources. That's great. That's great. Well, David, thank you so much just for the opportunity to, and I know we've just kind of skimmed the surface of so much of what you've studied and written about and taught on. And I know it's hard to fit that into a couple episodes of a podcast.
And I so appreciate the time that you've taken. And I believe this is gonna produce fruit for many people. It certainly is gonna produce fruit for me. I feel like as we've been speaking, I'm making a list of the places that I want to go, the things that I want to read, the things I want to go back and reread. And I just really appreciate all the wisdom that you're sharing and really the fruit of countless hours of labor that you went through to make it consumable.
You know I really think that's the heart of the biblical definition of the gift of teaching. It's not knowing complicated things. It's taking potentially complicated things and making it where the whole church can learn. And so I so appreciate that gift that you have and that you've shared. And just thank you, honor you for your time and for all that you shared today. So thank you so much for being with us. Thank you, Dan. And it's been a pleasure.
There's nothing I enjoy more than talking about the Kingdom of God and the early Christians, how they lived it out.
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