Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about "Were the Apostles Failures?" Now, the title of this message probably strikes you as rather strange. You might be thinking, "Well, who thinks that?" Well, unfortunately, the answer is just about everyone. Officially, of course, no church teaches that.
And if you ask that question to any Christian, I'm sure every Christian would say, "No, the Apostles weren't failures." But when it comes down to what people actually believe, just about everyone thinks that, even though they would never acknowledge that. So let me explain. Let me just start with the sect that I grew up in, Jehovah's Witnesses. Now, they teach that almost as soon as the Apostles died, the church went apostate. Well, you might wonder, why would anyone think that?
Well, the reason is because a number of their distinctive doctrines you can't find in the writings of anybody in the second-century church. When I say the second-century church, I'm talking about the church from the year 100 to 200. The Apostle John died about the year 100, so I'm talking about the church that continued as soon as he died. And we have early Christian works that were written within five years after he died, or even while he was still living, and continuing on.
So I'm talking about the first and second generation, third generation, perhaps, that followed the work of the Apostles. In other words, if the doctrines of Jehovah's Witnesses are correct, then by the second century, Christians had already lost these doctrinal truths. They had already gone apostate. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses teach that only 144,000 Christians will actually go to heaven. Now, you will not find anybody in the second-century church, or in the centuries after that, who teach that.
As far as I'm aware, nobody taught that until Jehovah's Witnesses taught it. So they're in a situation of either saying, "Hey, we're wrong. We've come up with an innovation that goes against the historical faith, and we're wrong," or they have to say, "The church went astray just shortly after the Apostles died." Let's take another of their somewhat unique doctrine. They say that humans have no soul, that we would be no different than animals when we die. That's it. We go into nonexistence.
Now, they would believe there's an extremely important difference, and that is that our entire makeup, our composition, is known entirely to God, that He knows every single molecule of our body, and that in the resurrection, we will essentially be recreated, the same person, the same memories, everything else, which would not be true of animals. But they would not believe that we have a soul inside of us that lives on after we die.
Unfortunately, everyone that I found in the second-century church believed that man has a soul that lives on after he dies. In other words, that was the established teaching of the church just within a decade or two after the Apostles died. So again, they have to say, "Well, the church went astray almost as soon as the last Apostle John died." Okay, another one of their unique teachings is that Christians should refer to God as Jehovah. Not that it's wrong to use the term God or Lord. They use those terms a lot.
But that God wants us to refer to Him by His personal name, Jehovah, by which He's identified in the Old Testament, and they're very correct about that in the Old Testament. That name appears more than any other name in the Bible. But you don't find it in the New Testament. Anyway, they say that it is a sin. It's a rebellion against God to refuse to use His personal name, Jehovah, which is what He wants us to still refer to Him as. Unfortunately, nobody in the second-century church taught that.
It's entirely unknown to them. They know God simply as God. So again, the Witnesses have to say, church went astray." Well, I could go on and on. They believe that Jesus didn't die on a cross, that He died on an upright stake that had no crossbeam on it. And as most people know, they don't hold to the Nicene definition of the divinity of Christ. They would believe in the deity of Christ, but not in the sense that would be considered orthodox.
Now, most people, when I lay that out, their response would be, "Well, the situation is obvious. It's not that the Apostles' teaching didn't continue on. It's that Jehovah's Witnesses are wrong. They've come up with a lot of innovations, and those are not the historical faith, and they should just admit that rather than saying the church went apostate.
And that's why you can't find these teachings even within just a few decades after the Apostles." But of course, that's not the position the Witnesses are going to take. Now, they would never, never acknowledge this or say this in print. But what they're really saying is that the Apostles were failures because they're saying that just within a decade or two after they died, that already the church had lost it. The church of the second century does not sound like Jehovah's Witnesses.
When you read their writings, it doesn't sound like you're reading the Watchtower. And yet the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, Charles Russell, he's been dead nearly a century, and they still hold to most of his basic teachings. So now, if this mere man, and that's all they would think of him as, was able to, quote, "restore the church," and it has stayed on course now for a century after he died, why couldn't the Apostles do that? Now, these were 12 men that Jesus had personally handpicked.
Not only that, they were inspired teachers. And yet the Witnesses are saying that they were such poor church planters. They did such a poor job that what they established fell apart almost as soon as they died. I mean, that's what the Witnesses would have to acknowledge if they would face up to what they're saying. And they're not the only group with that problem. Take, for example, the Seventh-day Adventists and other churches that would hold to a Seventh-day Sabbath.
Now, they are absolutely correct that the Jewish Sabbath was Saturday, and it still is Saturday. Jews still keep Saturday as the Sabbath. But they're teaching that Christians are supposed to keep a Saturday Sabbath. Again, you will not find any evidence of that in the second-century writings. Now, sometimes these groups and Jehovah's Witnesses do the same thing.
They will pull quotes here and there from the early Christians sometimes to try to show that, "Oh, see, they really taught this." But anybody who read the early Christian writings for themselves would never come to that conclusion. Again, they can't find that in the second-century writings. And so they say, "See, the church went apostate." Now, in all fairness to Jehovah's Witnesses, I want to mention that many of their teachings for which they are attacked are actually the historic teachings of the church.
Two examples I can give are their embracing the doctrine of the two kingdoms and their refusal to participate in war. Conventional churches criticize them for their stand in these areas. Yet it's the Witnesses who are holding to the original faith on those matters. And it's the conventional churches who have embraced false teaching in those situations.
Now, I don't know very much about the teachings of the Seventh-day Adventists, but I suspect the same situation is true for them, that although they're wrong about Christians needing to keep the Jewish Sabbath, they're probably right in other areas where they differ from today's conventional Christianity.
Okay, you might be saying, "Well, those are fringe groups." I mean, you are probably not someone who belongs to one of those churches, so you might be thinking, "Well, what does that have to do with me and most of the conventional churches?" We don't teach things like only 144,000 go to heaven or that Christians have to keep the Jewish Sabbath. Well, for the past 20 years, I've been sharing with people about what the early Christians believed based on an objective reading of their writings.
Now, what I share certainly does not fit what I grew up believing or what I had come to believe by the time I began reading their writings. There was a lot of surprises for me, and there is for just about everybody else. But this is what I run into, that the same people who would laugh at Jehovah's Witnesses or Seventh-day Adventists or someone and say, "Why don't they just get honest? I mean, the evidence isn't there. You look at the early Christian writings.
This isn't what the church believed." Oh, when it comes to their doctrines, they suddenly change their story. Now, they take the exact same position as Jehovah's Witnesses, and they say, "Well, the church went apostate as soon as the apostles died." And this doesn't just affect this particular group or that one. That's just about everybody today who professes to be a Christian. I mean, look at the general evangelical world.
They would hold to Luther's teaching on salvation by faith alone or grace alone, that our conduct does not affect our salvation, although it may be evidence of whether we've truly been saved or not. But whether we live a life of godly works or ungodly works, if we have been truly saved, that has no effect on our salvation. Now, you will not find Luther's doctrine of salvation in any of the writings of the second-century Christians.
You'll find that in the writings of some of the second-century Gnostics, but not in anyone that we would consider an orthodox Christian. So guess what? When I began writing about the early church and sharing what they believed, "Oh, now evangelicals who had laughed at Jehovah's Witnesses and chided them for not holding to the historic faith, now suddenly it's, 'Oh, well, the church went apostate as soon as the apostles died.
If they didn't teach Luther's doctrine, then they were apostate.'" You won't find the teachings of Zwingli there. Calvin, his famous teaching on predestination, among many other things, the church state, etc. You won't find that in the second-century church. Now, again, to be fair to the reformers, many, many of their reforms were a genuine return to historic Christianity.
Some examples would be their rejection of Mariolatry and veneration and prayers to saints and indulgences and the authority of church councils over the scriptures. They were right about a lot of things. Now, moving to more recent times, we have the fairly modern doctrine of dispensationalism, not a drop of that in the writings of the early church. And then as far as the orthodox and Roman Catholic, you don't find any veneration of Mary like it is in the Roman Catholic church.
No teachings that Mary was sinless, no immaculate conception, no use of images, icons, anything like that, no prayers to saints, no teaching about purgatory. Now, the Catholics are a little different. They wouldn't say, "Oh, well, the church went apostate." They would just say, "Well, the church has grown, that it didn't have a full understanding, and it has grown into greater and greater light." Now, I'm not going to address that claim tonight.
I addressed that in a message I gave years ago entitled, Faith Once For All Delivered to the Saints." All I can say is if the church was going to grow in knowledge, the second-century Christians didn't know anything about that. They understood the faith to be complete and that anything new was apostasy from the apostolic faith. But let's not dwell on that. We're dealing now with non-Catholics and their claim.
And what they end up having to say is the same thing as I said, that Jehovah's Witnesses and virtually every other sect has to say, that the church went apostate as soon as the apostles died. And that makes the apostles failures. Why do I say that? Well, just look at the men that I've just mentioned, the different types of doctrine. Luther, he's been dead for well over 400 years. In fact, it's nearly 500 years since the beginning of the Reformation.
And yet virtually all Protestants, all evangelicals hold to his doctrine of salvation by faith alone. Now, somehow he, a mere man, was able to have his teaching on salvation last all of these centuries. And yet the apostles couldn't preach that and have it last past their deaths, that it disappeared totally from the record. No one even knew about it. It wasn't even an issue people were debating just 10 years after John had passed away.
Calvin and his various tenets, including predestination, well, there are tens of thousands, I think hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people today who would hold to the basic tenets of John Calvin. His writings are still published. His commentaries are still read and studied. Again, he's been dead for over 400 years. And so he was able to start churches and have his doctrines perpetuated for centuries. And yet the apostles, they couldn't even keep it going one generation.
Dispensationalism, well, that's actually a rather new doctrine that didn't come out until the 1800s. Normally associate that with John Darby and it was Scofield who made it particularly popular. Well, those men have been dead now about a century, and yet that teaching is going on strong. You see, if the apostles couldn't keep original Christianity going for even a decade after they died, what kind of church planters were they? I mean, all kinds of people. Mary Baker Eddy, who started the Christian Scientists.
I mean, you could go down a whole list of people. Their doctrines are still taught centuries and centuries after they died. So what was it with the apostles who were inspired by the Holy Spirit, who had been picked to start the church and to spread the gospel, that they weren't able to establish churches who could hold on to the faith? I mean, they were absolute failures for the job that was given them. Or they were very successful. They did exactly what they were assigned to do.
And the problem isn't that the church went apostate. The problem is we don't like it that the early Christians don't teach the same things we do. And somehow what I have seen for, I would say, easily 98% of Christians, if it comes down to what they believe, even if you can only trace their belief back 150 years or even 500 years, or in some cases even less than those, it's always, "Well, the early Christians were wrong." The men who learned from the apostles, they got it wrong.
They either misunderstood it or they went astray immediately after the apostles left the scene. The idea that I could be wrong, that now that's absurd. It's not me who could be wrong. It's got to be those funny people who live way back there. And they were in the, you know, had dim light and stuff. I mean, they only received the gospel from the apostles themselves. I mean, today we've got people who've gone to seminary, and we've got all of these books and all of that. Obviously, we understand it better than them.
I'm obviously being facetious, but I mean, that's what the response that I get from nearly everybody. So what we end up with is almost every church group has to paint the following picture: that obviously the gospel started off correctly, the apostles were teaching the truth, it's recorded there in the New Testament, but that the church immediately went off course just as soon as the apostles died and the original gospel was lost.
But then centuries and centuries later, the founder of their group, whether it's Martin Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Charles Russell, Mary Baker Eddy, you name it, the person who founded their group restored the original gospel. And this time it's remained pure. Once Luther restored it, it stayed pure thereafter. Once Calvin restored it, it remained pure, at least by the people who have followed Calvin as a teacher.
So as I said, they're saying the apostles were not able to accomplish what mere humans have been able to do since then. But this scenario of the church starting and then just immediately collapsing and then being resurrected centuries and centuries later, is that the scene that's portrayed in the New Testament? Did Jesus ever prophesy that that's what would happen with his kingdom?
Well, when I read the scriptures, when I look at, say, the teachings of Jesus and his parables about the kingdom, what I see is that there would be a continuation. There's no hint of the kingdom being lost, the pure gospel being lost, and then later resurrected and flourishing again. Let's just look at some of the parables in Matthew 13. Probably most of you are familiar with these. We'll start with the one, the wheat and the tares, or the wheat and the weeds, depending how you know it.
It says, "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field." Okay, this is Jesus and his apostles planting the true gospel. But it says, "While men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way." All right, people might say, "Well, see, when the apostles died, that's when men slept. Then the enemy came in and sowed these tares or weeds." Perhaps so. Let's keep reading. Jesus went on, "But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.
So the servants of the owner came and said to him, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?' He said to them, 'An enemy has done this.' The servant said to him, 'Do you want us to go out and gather them up?' But he said, 'No, lest while you gather up the tares, you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest.
And at the time of the harvest, I will say to the reapers, 'First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.'" And he explains it, "Therefore, as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all things that offend and those who practice lawlessness, and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Then the righteous will shine forth as a sun in the kingdom of their father." All right, so he didn't say anything about his kingdom starting and then collapsing and that someone would come along centuries later and restore the kingdom. No, he shows that the kingdom would continue on unabated, but weeds would be sown among the good seed. So yes, there would be apostasy, but not that the entire church would go apostate. He shows the two would grow up together, the wheat and the weeds.
The wheat would always be there, and there would be a kingdom at the end of the age. It doesn't have to get restarted sometime along the line, but that there are going to be people who offend within the kingdom that will be pulled out at the end of the age, he says. Okay, another parable. These are all from Matthew 13. He said, "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds.
But when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches." Actually, tomorrow night, I'm going to be continuing a message on how the early Christians understood the kingdom parables of Jesus, and we'll be looking at some of these same parables, but in an entirely different dimension. Tonight, I just want to talk about, does Jesus indicate that his kingdom would just falter and have to be resurrected? And the answer is clearly no.
The parable of the mustard seed. It grows up. It keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Nothing about it withers and dies, and then later it comes back to life again. He didn't say that. Or again, the kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal until it was all leavened. Very similar to the mustard seed parable, that his kingdom was like leaven that would go out in the earth until it was all leavened, that the influence of his kingdom would be everywhere.
And another one from Matthew 13. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind, which when it was full, they drew to shore. And they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away. So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, and cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
So again, nothing about the kingdom of heaven failing, having to get jump-started again centuries, centuries later. No, he indicates there would be a continuity, but it does show that apostasy, wickedness would come in, and again, at the end of the age, that problem would be taken care of. The wicked would be separated from among the just. In fact, in his last words to the apostles, as recorded in Matthew, Jesus told them this. It says, Matthew 28, verses 18 through 20.
And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And look, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen." Notice that last part. I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
No, Jesus didn't say that his church was going to collapse as soon as the apostles died, that they would do such a poor job of making disciples that their disciples couldn't keep the flame going even one additional generation. No, he said, "I am with you always." His kingdom would be planted, and it would continue on. There would be no break, but there would be weeds among the wheat. There would be unclean fish among the clean fish. And that is indeed exactly what history shows happened.
The apostles weren't failures at all. There in Revelation, New Jerusalem is described as having 12 foundation stones who are the 12 apostles. You know, I'd have to say that the view that everyone wants to take of the apostles' work, that it collapsed as soon as they died, well, some foundation stones Jesus picked. The whole building fell apart, and then it took Martin Luther to get it going again, or it took John Calvin, or it took Charles Russell, or whoever you want to put in there to get the thing built right.
No, it wasn't that way. New Jerusalem was built right, and Jesus chose his foundation stones carefully, and they fulfilled the commission that Jesus gave to them. They did a fine job of it. They were not failures at all. Well, obviously, the model that the true gospel disappeared right after the apostles died doesn't fit the picture Jesus gave us of his kingdom. So people desperately cling to an alternative model. Now, they still want to claim that the church as a whole went apostate as soon as the apostles died.
However, now they allege that there were a small body of pure Christians who steadfastly held to the original faith. The original faith, of course, means the teachings of whatever church that person belongs to. And this is what Jehovah's Witnesses claim in practically every group outside of the large established state churches like the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. See, this way, people can avoid seeing that the apostles were failures. No, the gospel the apostles preached continued on unbroken, they can say.
They claim that there has been an unbroken chain of descending groups from the very beginning that held to the same teachings as Jehovah's Witnesses, or the Seventh-day Adventists, or the Calvinists, or the Baptists, or the Charismatics. You can just plug in whatever group you want to.
I remember that when I was still a Jehovah's Witness, someone wrote into the Watchtower, their official magazine, and asked, "If the Witnesses have the correct gospel, how is it that no one preached it before the late 1800s?" Well, the Watchtower's answer was that there was a pilgrim church who did hold to the same beliefs as Jehovah's Witnesses that stretches all the way back to the year 100 AD when the apostle John died. Well, and who was this pilgrim church?
Well, there were different groups during various centuries stretching back 1900 years. They said there were the Waldensians, the Lollards, the Albigenses, the Bogomils, the Paulicians, the Priscillian, the Donatists, and the Quartodecimans. Well, I accepted that answer without question when I was a Jehovah's Witness. That made sense, and it took care of that problem. How could this be the true gospel if it just suddenly first started being preached in 1870 or something?
But after I left the Witnesses and began reading the literature of other churches, well, I soon found that these other churches were claiming this same lineage. The Waldensians, the Lollards, the Albigenses, the Paulicians, the Donatists, and so on. The Anabaptists were claiming this list. The Adventists were. The Baptists were. The Plymouth Brethren, the Holiness Churches. I mean, it went on and on. Somehow everybody had the same lineage that held to their beliefs all the way back to the beginning.
But that didn't make sense since all of these churches had very differing beliefs. So I began to search for the literature of these different groups who supposedly made up this pilgrim church to see what they really believed. Well, what I discovered is that for the most part, we have extremely little information about what they believed. We do have a few writings of the Waldensians, plus things that were said about them by the Catholics. We have one document of the Lollards.
But generally speaking, what little we know about these groups is usually from what their persecutors said about them, which may or may not have entirely accurate. Well, the irony is that most of these groups taught the exact opposite of the churches who claimed them. As I said, we do have some writings of the Waldensians, so we do know a little bit more about their beliefs than we do some of the others. And the Waldensians taught the exact opposite of what Luther and today's evangelicals teach about salvation.
They taught that we must live by Jesus's teachings if we're going to inherit his kingdom at the end of our lives. The Waldensians were opposed to war and to Christians being involved in the state. Now, this is before they joined the Reformation. When the Reformation came, after a good bit of discussion and dissent and conflict back and forth, the Waldensians decided to just drop what they had held to and join in with the reformers. They were tired of being this small persecuted group.
So in many ways, the Waldensians were a forerunner to the Anabaptists. I think that would be a fair statement. On the other hand, they practiced infant baptism, something the Anabaptists were extremely opposed to. The Waldensians did hold to the same teachings as Jehovah's Witnesses and the Anabaptists on war and the two kingdoms. But again, they practiced infant baptism, which Jehovah's Witnesses would call an extreme heresy.
Not only that, the Waldensians believed in the Trinity, and they held to none of the distinctive teachings of the Witnesses on the 144,000, the soul, and things like that. Well, as you go down the list from the Waldensians and back in time, well, these groups that are included in everyone's list of spiritual ancestry end up having even less similarity to the churches who claim them. I mean, several of the groups, like the Albigenses, the Bogomils, and the Paulicians, were ascetic Gnostics.
At least all of the information we have about them identifies them as such. Now, to be sure, the information we have comes from their persecutors, so it may not be entirely accurate. On the other hand, we have no other information about them, so either we have to say we don't know anything about them at all or accept what their persecutors say. But to claim that, oh, they believe just like the evangelicals, or they believe like Jehovah's Witnesses or Anabaptists, that's being very dishonest.
Well, and then when you go even further back in time to earlier groups like the Donatists and the Quartodecimans, well, you basically have groups that believed essentially the same thing as the early Christians did, the Christians of the second century. And the people wanting to claim this pilgrim church are wanting to get past the church of the second century and say it was apostate. But then they're claiming groups that believed no differently.
Now, what's interesting is that there were several very lengthy works that were written in the second century and in the early third century by Christians of that day who talk about all of the heretical or dissenting groups that were around at that time. Well, one thing we learned from that is that nearly all of the dissident groups were Gnostic. A few of them weren't, but none of them come anywhere close to the beliefs of the churches who hold to this myth of the pilgrim church.
In other words, if you don't like the early church, you're not going to like the dissident groups from that day because they're going to be even further from what you believe. So I'm sorry, but the pilgrim church claim just doesn't work.
We're back to either having to acknowledge that the apostles did an excellent job of founding the church and that they built the church with durable stones, not with wood, hay, and stubble, or else we're going to have to claim that they were failures and that the true gospel disappeared at their deaths. There's no way around that.
Now, actually, there is a true story about what we could call a pilgrim church or the kingdom church, and that is this: that the kingdom gospel that Jesus proclaimed and that his apostles spread throughout the world, that gospel continued to be preached by the church for centuries after the apostles died. It didn't change until the time of Constantine when the church was trying to join with the state and, in fact, did join with the state, and they had to change the gospel to make that possible.
After that time, the established institutional church pretty much dropped the kingdom gospel or they obscured it at least, but there were always Christians who continued to live it out and to preach it. Some of these Christians were inside the institutional church, like Francis of Assisi. Many of them were outside the church in groups like the Lollards and the Waldensians.
But there was no theological uniformity among these kingdom Christians other than that they all held to the theological doctrines set forth in the rather simple Apostles' Creed. They all believed that, and they all lived by Jesus's kingdom teachings through the grace of God. So the kingdom gospel never disappeared. There were always wheat along with the weeds. There were clean fish along with the unclean. So if you want to call that the pilgrim church, yes, that part is true.
But this myth that you can pick any church today and trace groups that believed just like it all the way back to the apostles, that's being dishonest. If your marks of true Christianity are the theological doctrines and church ordinances practiced by your particular brand of Christianity, you're not going to find any pilgrim church.
If you're going to be spiritually and intellectually honest with yourself, you're either going to have to claim that the whole church went apostate around the year 100 and that your particular church reestablished true Christianity many centuries later, or else perhaps you're going to have to acknowledge that maybe some of your cherished beliefs could possibly be wrong. Isn't that astounding? Or at least that they're open to question.
You know, I had to face that choice at one time in my life, and I finally came to the conclusion, you know, most of what I believed was wrong. I would challenge you to make the same honest examination. Well, you may be thinking, but doesn't the New Testament prophesy that apostasy would come into the church? Definitely so. The New Testament is very clear about that.
1 Timothy 4:1-3, Paul prophesied, "Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies and hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth." Now, the fulfillment of that prophecy did begin, I think, during the time of the apostles and in the first and
second century beyond there.
But the people he's talking about are the Gnostic groups. This certainly doesn't describe the orthodox church of early Christians. No one would claim that they had their conscience seared with a hot iron as though they were living in wickedness. They didn't forbid to marry. They didn't command anyone to abstain from foods. Some of the Gnostic sects did that. And then there have been groups all through the centuries that have done that. But none of this fits a description of the early church.
So it's not honest to quote that verse and then try to say, "Well, see, it shows that the second-century church had already gone apostate," because that doesn't fit them. Okay, 2 Thessalonians 2:3, Paul goes into quite a bit of detail there about the coming apostasy.
He said, "Now brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him, we ask you not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come.
Let no one deceive you by any means, for that day will not come unless the falling away comes first and the man of sin is revealed." Okay, so he's saying if people are giving you the impression that this is already happening, that Christ's return is imminent, don't be bothered by that because it's not true. He says that day isn't going to come until the falling away or the apostasy comes first and the man of sin is revealed. Okay, so the apostasy is connected with the man of sin.
Now, once again, I don't think there is anybody who would have the moral courage to say, "Oh, that fits the second-century church, the man of sin," that there is anybody in that church who would fit that description. For Paul calls him, continuing on, the son of perdition who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Now, there is nobody in the second-century church that that could possibly apply to.
So this is something that would come much later. The apostasy he's talking about is further down the road. He says, "Do you not remember that when I was still with you, I told you these things? And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way.
And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming." Okay, he talks about the mystery of lawlessness. Again, this is the opposite of the early church. People don't accuse them of lawlessness, of just the opposite. Now, who did teach lawlessness? Who did teach that Christians are not under any kind of law? That was Martin Luther. Now, I'm not saying that he's the man of sin here that is talked about.
I don't have any opinion on who this is. I think my personal thought would be this person has not even come yet. This is still something in the future. But he is connected with lawlessness, not with Christians who teach obedience to Jesus's commandments. But whoever this lawless one is, it says is being restrained. Now, some say, "Well, that was the apostles. Jehovah's Witnesses taught that, for example.
And as soon as the apostles left, then he came forth." Well, I guess I'd have to say, "Who was that then?" You might say the Gnostics as a group, yes, they taught lawlessness, most of them, that what we do in the flesh doesn't matter, except that Paul's prophecy says that the Lord will consume this lawless one with the breath of his mouth and destroy with the brightness of his coming. So it sounds like this lawless one is going to be around when Christ returns and he will be destroyed.
So I don't see how that could apply to anyone in the second century. But if it did, it was talking about the Gnostics, okay? He continues, "The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan with all powers, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved.
And for this reason, God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness." Okay, so however this prophecy is fulfilled, and it certainly is still somewhat a mystery, I think, to all of us, it's going to be connected with lawlessness, and he is going to deceive people who have pleasure in unrighteousness.
This is certainly not talking about people who are preaching that we need to live obediently to Jesus's commandments, who are teaching that we do have law, we do have commandments even in the new covenant.
What we need to be aware of are people who are saying, "We are not under any law, that we can live unrighteous lives and can still be guaranteed of heaven if our theology is correct." But people tell me, "Yeah, David, but there's evidence when you read the New Testament that Christians were already losing the gospel during the days of the apostles." Well, I guess my reply would be, "Huh? You and I must be reading different New Testaments because I don't see that in the New Testament.
I certainly see evidence of an imperfect church, and I see evidence of slowness to accept new revelation, but apostasizing from the gospel? No, I don't see that. I mean, start with what Jesus Christ preached. His gospel of the kingdom is pretty clear. We can become attached as a branch to his vine through grace, but to stay on it, we have to bear fruit. And that theme is all throughout his parables. It's in the Sermon on the Mount. It's everywhere you go in the four gospels. And the church never lost that.
But there was one issue that became a hanging point. Jesus preached his gospel in the setting of the Mosaic law. He even said, "I was sent to none but the lost sheep of Israel." Now, he did indicate that there would be a time when this other flock he had would be united, but he didn't explain what the conditions would be. And I'm not sure that very many of his disciples even understood that he was referring to the Gentiles.
As he told the apostles, "There are things that I want to tell you, but that you're not ready to receive yet." And obviously, this was the big one, that the Mosaic law was going to be fulfilled and that Gentiles would be able to come into the kingdom without having to become Jewish proselytes. But that was not the situation when Jesus ended his life. The first disciples were all Jews or Jewish proselytes. So the issue that came up in the early church was, had God subsequently changed what Jesus preached?
And it's actually encouraging to see that the New Testament Christians were very reluctant to accept change. They weren't people who were quickly changing the gospel. They were people who were very suspicious of someone saying that God had taken the gospel further. I mean, you can read the whole situation in Acts. I'm not going to recount it in full, but how Peter was given a special vision where God had to explain to him that he was no longer to consider unclean what God was now calling clean.
And that applied not just to food, but as he realized, to Gentiles like Cornelius. But even when Peter went to Cornelius, his fellow elders were real upset. What were you doing going into the home of an uncircumcised Gentile? And so Peter had to explain to them this special revelation, this vision he had from God. Well, and they believed Peter, at least those ones that he spoke to in person, but not everybody did.
When rumor got out that Gentiles were coming into the church and not practicing the law of Moses, many were upset. The setting is set out for us, it's in Acts 15:1-6. It says, this is talking about Paul's journeys and the disciples he made from among the Gentiles.
It says, "And certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren, 'Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.'" Therefore, when Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and dispute with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas and certain others of them should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders about this question.
So being sent on their way by the church, they passed through Phoenicia and Samaria, describing the conversion of the Gentiles, and they caused great joy to all the brethren. And when they had come to Jerusalem, they were received by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all things that God had done with them.
But some of the sect of the Pharisees who believed rose up saying, "It is necessary to circumcise them and to command them to keep the law of Moses." So now the apostles and elders came together to consider this matter. This was the issue. It wasn't a matter of losing the gospel that had been preached. It was a matter of resisting new revelation. And that's not a bad thing. We should be very reluctant to someone saying they have a revelation that goes beyond what Jesus taught.
Now, I think we can go back and look at Jesus's teachings and see that he foretold all of this, that it's hidden there in his teachings. But I don't think anyone understood it who actually heard Jesus preached. It's like the prophecies about the Messiah. They had been there for centuries, but nobody fully understood how they would be fulfilled until they actually came to fruition in Jesus Christ.
So Paul's epistles that Luther interpreted to mean that we don't have to bear fruit, that we can live ungodly lives, that as Christians we're under any kind of law, that we're saved just by believing, that's not what Paul was talking about. That wasn't the issue that was there. His letters make it very clear. Go to Galatians. Now, when you read the introductory chapter, chapter one of Galatians, you see that the situation was exactly the same situation that's described there in Acts 15.
Paul had made converts of the Gentiles. They did not have to become Jews. They didn't have to be circumcised or live by the law. And then Christians from Jerusalem came, Jewish Christians, that is, and started preaching, "You have to live by the teachings of Moses." It's not clear if Galatians was written before or after Acts 15. It doesn't really make any difference.
The point is the issue he was dealing with were Judaizers saying that Gentiles had to live by the law, and Paul saying, "No, the law was nailed to the cross." Nowhere in any of those letters, you read every one of them, Galatians, Ephesians, Romans, Colossians. Nowhere is the issue that there were Christians saying, "Hey, we have to live by Jesus's teachings if we are going to inherit his kingdom." And Paul is saying, "No, that's heresy. You've departed from the gospel. Just believe. That's all you have to do.
Now, it's good if you live a godly life, but you don't have to to be saved." Paul never says that. In fact, he says, "Don't be misled that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God." So it's not a matter of the first-century Christians losing the original gospel, but the resistance of the Jews to a new revelation that opened up the gospel to the Gentiles without having to come under the law of Moses, which had been something established by God. The law of Moses wasn't some human tradition.
God had established that, and now God was changing his way. Now, the final question I want to address, and it's a legitimate question, is, well, don't some of the books of the New Testament indicate that there was already apostasy in the church while the apostles were still living? And there are some references, like in 2 Peter chapter 2 in the book of Jude. And perhaps the principal one would be in John's letters.
For example, in 1 John chapter 2, verses 18 through 23, we read, "Little children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many Antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us, but they went out that they might be made manifest that none of them were of us. But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things.
I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth. Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is Antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either. He who acknowledges the Son has the Father also." And then in his second letter, 2 John, verse 7, it says, "For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh.
This is a deceiver and an Antichrist." Okay, so there was a serious apostasy going on that he addresses in his letters. Now, there are two important points here. Number one, we don't have to guess what this was all about. We know all about it. He's discussing the group that became known as the Gnostics. And the early Christian writings are full of references to them. In fact, there are many writings that are devoted to simply disproving the errors of the Gnostics.
They denied that Jesus had come in the flesh, and that's who he's calling the Antichrist. Okay, so it's no mystery. It wasn't that the whole church was losing it, but there was a major apostasy going on that denied that Jesus came in the flesh. And the early church battled with them, and the early church was successful. Gnosticism did not conquer the church. The church prevailed. Okay, so that was the first point.
Number two, you notice that he says, "But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it." So see, there was still the pure church. They were still the majority, and he said that they knew the truth. And this is written right shortly before John died. We're talking around the year 100, and the church is still on course. There's no apostasy in the church itself.
It's just these Antichrists who he says they went out from among us. So they weren't running the church. They had already left the church and continued to be put out of the church when they reared their head in the second and third centuries. They never were able to get control of the church. Nobody who would read the writings of the early Christians, I think, would ever make the claim that they were Gnostics or influenced by them. They were just the opposite, in fact.
Well, others say, "What about the letters to the seven churches in Revelation? It sounds like Christianity was already falling apart then." No, not really. If you read again what those letters say, none of the issues to the churches had anything to do with theology. Jesus never claims that they have abandoned the gospel of the kingdom that he had preached. The issues he addresses were moral issues and losing their first love.
Now, again, I don't know of anybody who would look at the second-century church and say that as a church, they lacked zeal or love or commitment, or that they were immoral. Again, everybody says they were legalistic. I mean, that is everyone who doesn't like them. Even their enemies can't say, "Oh, well, they were immoral and lax and didn't have any love or zeal for Jesus Christ." Now, of the seven churches, two of them, he had no counsel to give them at all, no rebuke whatsoever.
The other five, it shows what a demanding Lord that we have. He does expect full devotion to him. Now, when he writes the church at Pergamus, and it's also true of one or two of the other churches, he says, "I have a few things against you because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit sexual immorality.
Thus, you also have those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which things I hate. Repent, or else I will come to you quickly and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth." So Jesus is still preaching the same gospel in Revelation that he did back there in Matthew. It's not salvation by belief alone. Because you invited Jesus in your heart, now you can commit sexual immorality, and it's okay. Maybe some were thinking that.
Peter had said some people were twisting Paul's letters to make him say something that Paul had not intended for them to say. Now, we know who these Nicolaitans were. The early Christians talk about them. In fact, I've given an entire message just on the topic of the Gnostics and the Nicolaitans that you might want to listen to that goes into more detail on this.
But the two things they were teaching is that, one, it was okay to eat meat sacrificed to idols, which is very interesting because that's what most churches today teach. I mean, not that it's an issue in our society, but most churches think Paul was saying it's okay to eat meat sacrificed to idols, even though the 12 apostles had forbid that in the council at Acts 15. And people were teaching that the Nicolaitans were, and Jesus is very upset about that, number one.
And also, they were saying it was okay to commit sexual immorality. Again, what do churches today teach? Not that it's okay, but that it won't affect your salvation. And what do we have in our churches? Well, in many churches, nearly half of the married couples there are divorced and remarried, living in adultery. So if you think there were problems in the churches back there, imagine what he would say to any of our churches today.
I mean, don't think in your mind that when he wrote to the church in Ephesus that he's talking about one congregation. What we can see from Paul's letters is that the churches met in houses. In a city the size of Ephesus, you would have had many different congregations meeting in many different houses. So he's talking about all of the believers in Ephesus, or all of the believers in Pergamus, or the other cities that he addresses.
It would be like today if he wrote a letter addressing the church in Dallas or Pittsburgh or San Francisco, something like that, not one congregation, but all of the professing Christians in that city. Boy, imagine what rebuke he would have. None of us would come out looking as good as those seven churches did. But again, he says nothing about any theological apostasy, that they had abandoned the gospel he had preached. His concern is for their works.
And again, like I say, the criticism against the early Christians is people say they preached a work salvation or they were too works-oriented. So don't label them with the problems mentioned to those churches in Revelation. Well, in conclusion, the answer is the apostles were not failures. They were preaching the same gospel that Jesus preached. Paul didn't have a new gospel.
He had the same gospel, and the church that they founded was built with precious stones, with firm building materials, not with wood, hay, and stubble. The church didn't disappear when they died. It overcame the huge challenge from the Gnostic heresy and from the persecution from the Roman Empire, and it prevailed. They had done their job quite well. And yet, we can see from Jesus' prophecies that in his kingdom, weeds would be sown, and they would grow along with the wheat.
There would be unclean fish that his kingdom dragnet would bring in along with the clean fish. So there never was a perfect church from day one. And as time progressed, the church got more and more weeds, where it would appear that in most ages, the weeds or the unclean fish outnumbered the wheat or the clean fish. And yet, there was always a kingdom line. There were always those who bore the kingdom fruit, who were on the vine producing fruit from the very first century when the apostles lived down to our day.
In fact, the whole situation is something that is faith-strengthening, that Jesus predicted 2,000 years in advance exactly what the history of the church would be. He didn't say it would start up and then collapse, and then someone like Martin Luther would later rescue it and bring it all back to life again and restore the gospel. No, he showed it would be one continuum from the time he preached through the apostles and thereon. But he showed that corruption would come into the church.
And yet, the church would fill the world, or at least the kingdom would fill the world, and that the gospel of the kingdom would be preached throughout all the world. So it would reach a wide number of people.
And yet, as he said, it would be a narrow road that few would find because it would be a mixture always in his kingdom, and it would be a minority who would end up living the pure gospel, producing the kingdom fruit, remaining on the kingdom vine, remaining united with Jesus Christ faithfully up until their death.