These kingdom values seem upside down to most people. Can a person be a follower of Christ without following Christ? Jesus ' teachings are so revolutionary. What if Jesus really meant every word he said? Hi, I'm Dean and this is Dave Bercot. And we're here with Historic Faith. We're going to answer some questions that readers give to us and then have a dialogue where Brother David and I discuss this. So for our first one, we come off right to a challenging one. And I have here from Kevin Kane.
And he's speaking of King Agbar and the supposedly letter from Jesus to King Agbar. But his question has, I think, a little more to do with two kingdoms and that type of thing. His question is this. In Eusebius ' ecclesiastical history, he seems to allude that the idea that Agbar was a Christian king. He says that Agbar was a Christian king. He also mentions the idea that Christians were enlisted in the Roman army. Does this negate the idea that the early Christians were universally non-resistant?
And that's the question. First of all, why don't, Brother David, you tell us a little bit about the whole letter of Eusebius and give us a little context of what he's talking about, and then we can get into a little bit maybe about just the idea of some of the Far Eastern Christians and different things like that, perhaps. So let's see where this goes. So why don't you start us off with that? Okay, so this is in Eusebius ' Ecclesiastical History, which is also in the Nicene Father's set.
And according to this, this King Agbar, he's king of Edessa, which was a city-state right at the eastern edge of the Roman Empire between it and the Persian Empire. Anyway, he had some kind of disease. I don't know if he states what it is, I'm looking here, but it's something like leprosy.
According to this, and we don't know if any of this is genuine, but according to what Eusebius writes, he wrote a letter and sent it by messengers to Jesus saying, " I've heard that you can cure lepers, that you cast out demons and all of this, and wondering if he could come and heal him because he was suffering from some kind of disease, leprosy or something like that. " And then according to the account, nothing is particularly strange there. I think that's totally believable that that could have happened.
Jesus supposedly replies writing a letter, and that's the part that sounds strange to us. Maybe it shouldn't. I mean, obviously Jesus knew how to read and write, you know. So he writes a letter saying that he's not able to go there, but that later he would send one of his disciples. After Jesus dies then, according to this account, Thaddeus, who was, I think, considered to be one of the 70, Thaddeus is sent and he heals the king. And then the king wants him to assemble all of the citizens of the city.
And Thaddeus preaches to them and many of them are converted. Thaddeus, I mean, the king Agbar wants to give him money and he doesn't accept it. And that's basically it, what we have in the account. Yeah, that's great. I did a little reading up just, you know, to answer this question. It's interesting, as I was looking at the different scholarly material of it, not just there's some interesting popular accounts of it. I mean, there's everything from the Shroud of what's that called? Turin.
Yeah, yeah, it's out of Turin. I think that maybe that could be it. There's all kinds of medieval, you know, stories surrounding it. But from what I looked into, it's kind of fascinating that so the oldest record and even the oldest ancient document we have of the record is from Eusebius. Eusebius himself mentions that he did translate from the Syriac. So we have it from him. Later, there was a pilgrimage to the area.
So after sort of around, this is around three, I don't know whenever Eusebius went there, three, I don't know, whenever ten, fifteen, twenty, who knows? But then when the pilgrim went on a pilgrimage there, she visited that city and already it was becoming kind of a popular place to go. I mean, this was becoming a famous story. People were going there. You know, tourists were coming from along, you know, around everywhere, religious tourists, and it was beginning to develop.
And she mentions, interestingly enough, of the fish that was there. And still to this day, I went online to that site in Turkey. It's in like almost in Iraq, in eastern Turkey. They even showed those fish in the water today. So I guess that's a kind of gets up. She mentions it. She mentions she adds a little bit of stuff on there of she mentions and this city will never be, you know, taken ever, you know, mentions that this is something that she adds to that.
But in both those accounts, one of the things that comes out, not necessarily in Kevin, I think it was Kevin's question, was about the idea of a Christian king, but yet the idea it's usually brought up in discussions surrounding icons. But neither one of those, the Eusebius account or the later Pilgrim mentions the image.
Later on, in 500 or the fifth century, late 400s, there's a story that's then added where somebody is brought to there and they come with an actual image of Jesus that was, you know, painted when Jesus, He turned His head and then He didn't have all these kinds of things and how that painting was created. They go there and they have this image. This image then becomes famous. This image is used to light a fire in a mine.
This image is used to prevent a war, a Persian attack on Edessa, and they were able to resist the attack because of this image was there. And I found some interesting pictures online and everything with that. And so it just keeps developing and that kind of a thing. So like you just gave us, what are the facts? The oldest one we have is just there with Eusebius. And we don't know. Yeah.
So, yeah, the thing we have to keep in mind is Eusebius, he said he went to the public records in Edessa and saw, I don't know, the actual letter. The way it's written, he doesn't say he saw the actual letter from Jesus, but he saw what was in the public records, the archives, which could be a transcript, a supposed transcript. But like you say, this was sometime in the 300s that Eusebius saw this. So we're talking about three centuries, 300 years after the event supposedly happened.
Now, if Eusebius is writing this after Constantine embraced Christianity, and there's a high probability he was, well, sure, if you're in this little city of Edessa, and you don't want the Roman Empire to swallow you up, and you've got Constantine as the emperor, well, sure, you're going to make yourself Christian and all of that. I mean, it's totally to your advantage.
And then, of course, later on, it was particularly to your advantage to get Christian pilgrims coming, bringing money, you know, spending money there, buying fried fish, whatever it was. That seems to be a big part of the later additions that were added to it. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, you can see they keep adding. So the whole thing may be totally myth, not that Eusebius wrote incorrectly. I believe Eusebius, that he went there and saw this in the records.
But that doesn't mean the records are genuine because there's so many centuries after the event. Now, there is a little bit of credibility as to the possibility. Dean, you and I both, we had interactions with the Church of the East, what, 30-something years ago. And this was the church that grew up in the Persian Empire in the first century and later on. I mean, they're still around today, so they've been around since the first century. Their records say that Thaddeus brought the gospel to them.
So independent of Eusebius ' letter, so it does sound like Thaddeus, that that was the area of his ministry was just east of the Roman Empire. So, of course, again, if this is a fake account, they could be playing on that to make the account sound plausible. Who knows? But let's say it's true that Thaddeus preach to this King Agbar, that King Agbar accepts the gospel, okay? That's where the account ends, okay? So we are exactly where we are with the account of Cornelius in Acts.
Peter preaches to him, it says he's a centurion, and he becomes a Christian. The account ends there. And everyone, not everyone, but you know so many say, " See, he was in the army, he became a Christian, he went to war. " You don't know what happened after that. When Jesus converted Matthew, he didn't continue on as a tax collector. He gave it up. When he converted the prostitutes, did they continue on as prostitutes? Did we make that assumption that, well, prostitutes? So prostitution is okay.
No, we assume they gave up whatever was in conflict. So anyway. No, it's excellent. And I've always pondered with the Cornelius ', you know, thing is being a Centurion would have required him to do, you know, many things, like, for instance, you know, giving sacrifice to the genius of the emperor. It would have, you know, he would have most likely had to have given in his area, you know, governance over chariot racing or gladiator racing or who knows what.
But we obviously assume that he would have stopped all those if he'd become a Christian. But also, another thing we don't know is, do these people stay Christians? I mean, Simon Magus, you know, became a Christian. It seemed legitimate at least. And yet the early church sees him as the chief heretic, the father of all heresies. Yeah. And so, a man who has needing a healing and, you know, and getting this healing, you know, can be genuine of its own.
But this brings, it does bring up, though, as to go ahead and tease out this last point that I think Kevin is getting, and which I have pondered through my, as I've, you know, started off as a conscious objector and introduced to early Christianity through your writings and everything, and then kept growing through that, is looking at that place of how the church dealt with Christians that were in the military. And so, hey, my wife and I, we got to become conscious objectors. That was nice and handy.
Thank you very much, United States of America. But that wasn't the case in their time. And so seeing the way they tried to work with these people that converted is interesting. Maybe you can touch on that, like some of the stories of the Lightning Brigade or Hippolytus ', you know, statement on baptism, that type of a thing, you know?
Yeah, so someone, everyone assumes, and sometimes even Anabaptists, they say, " Well, see, the early Christians went astray because you read about soldiers who became Christians and they stayed in the army. " And it's like, " Whoa, whoa, wow wow look at all the facts on both sides. " The ones using it to justify military, Christians being in the military, and the ones criticizing the early church. So like you say, you had no choice. You could not get out. You couldn't say, " Look, hey, I realized war is wrong.
" And, you know, Caesar would say, " Oh, okay, well, sure. We've got some forms here. It didn't work that way. " It's like, " All right, we'll just cut your head off and fine. " I mean, you know, the early Christians, I think in God's mercy, made a provision, and we read about it in the apostolic tradition of Hippolytus, that when they came to get baptized, if they were a soldier, they had to agree never to use the sword again, to not swear any oaths. And is that it? I'd like to wear the purple. Yeah. Yeah.
So, yeah, I wonder how long they lasted before they were martyred with, you know, but yeah, so just the fact you were a soldier, they at least allowed you to come in. And during that period, like Hippolytus wrote around the year 200. So during that time is what's called the Pax Romana and the Roman peace. The average soldier would not have been involved in bloodshed. He would have been doing building walls, building roads, bridges, things like that. Maybe policemen.
So there would have been, you know, some gray areas where, like I say, they couldn't use the sword. So even without war, there was, you know, some issues they would have dealt with, but it would have been entirely possible to be a soldier and never use the sword. And so I am glad they were merciful, that these people weren't just shut out of the kingdom of God, because they didn't voluntarily normally become a soldier. It was hereditary. They didn't have a conscription at that time, but it was hereditary.
So if your father was a soldier, then you were a soldier, and so on. I mean, you didn't choose to be one. Go ahead. Sorry. When I was in the Army, one time I was in the Army band and we did a concert in Wales. And I was there and coming to the concert once was what they called a Bobby, I guess, you know, the UK policeman, you know. Okay. What do they call them? Oh, Bobby? Uh-huh. Yeah. At a club. And at that time, I don't know if it's different now. That was what, the late ' 80s, early ' 90s.
They didn't carry any weapons except for this club. They would have a special forces there in the United Kingdom, but they would not have the average policeman on the ground. As a matter of fact, I was in London and I remember watching policemen chase a criminal, you know, down the street. And I was thinking, wow, in America, they would just blow this guy away, you know. But so I was asking this guy in Wales, and I said, " Just curious, I think I saw that scene and I was mentioning it to him.
" And I said, " You know, I mean, like, would you what would you feel if you had to if you got guns like we had in America? " He said, " The moment they start making us have guns as a policeman here in Wales is the day I quit. " And I just thought that was profound. He said, " Even to use my club, " he said, with this funny Welsh accent. He said, " I have to fill out so much paperwork it hardly makes it worth it. " Wow. Which is an interesting difference of culture and everything. Yeah, yeah.
So I think Kevin had another question that he sent us. Oh, one more on that point. Okay. The lightning brigade. Okay. So I remember when I was looking at some of the material to prepare for this question, the area to where that scene occurred. And Euclid mentions it as well. I can't remember. The Danube? Yeah. Close to where this whole part of the world was, or at least the region or something. I remember one of the guys that I read was saying that.
Now, if I recall the account, the whole point is they didn't have to use force to win the battle, that God acted on this. And so I've always thought it was odd. Again, I think it's from people who are surprised that there's even any Christians in the military in the first place. But yet, you know, here's another scene where you see people trying to work with these convictions.
No, in fact, Justin Martyr includes it with his apology because it illustrates the very thing that he's saying that Christians do not use the sword. And this was apparently, you know, assuming it's all true, that it was a favorable witness of the Christians that I think it was Marcus Aurelius, who he was very upset that there were Christians there in the army, ' cause he didn't want them there. But then the battle was about to take place, whatever, and that the Christians knelt and prayed.
And I think, no, the letter is supposed to be from Marcus Aurelius, yeah. Scholars question the genuineness, but I don't know that they have a reason to. It's just that they don't like miracles. So, you know, they question it. You know, but he says, yeah, that, you know, it's loathsome to them to use weapons. You know, their weapon is to pray. I mean, I'm paraphrasing it. But yeah, he himself knows that Christians, yes, it's against their religion to use weapons of war.
Instead, they prayed and then this hailstorm came on the enemy, saved. I mean, they were about to die of thirst. They were surrounded by the enemy. And so it drove the enemy away. It brought rain on them. And so it saved their lives. So instead of showing that Christians went to war, yeah, you're seeing people who were already in the army, just what we see in Apollos. They did not use the sword. God preserved them, you know, through a miracle. So it's an interesting letter anyway. And one more thing on that.
I just remembered. Years ago, I read a book called On Killing, and it was written by a special forces person on just the oh, how it kind of messes with the military to the way they trained for killing and that practicing thing. And he had sort of some very insightful things on how that harms human beings and everything. Anyway, he mentions, I believe it's in that book, where he mentioned that in Gettysburg, they found several of the rifles that had multiple loads in the rifle, several of them around there.
And he speculates, and he quotes some other scholars who speculate the same thing, is that in those days, you can't just fake shoot. You know, they had this whole thing, you know, all this stuff that they would have done in concert and then shoot. And as they went through that, they did that and then didn't shoot and did it all and didn't shoot. And it could be they just didn't fire. They just kept doing it over and over again. They could be.
But it's an interesting point that he brought out that maybe in those days, he brings it as a possible place where conscious objectors were forced to be in the Battle of Gettysburg and then didn't want to kill and that human beings don't like killing. So anyway, it's a fascinating story again about what we have, what little we do have, what happened to King Agbar afterward. But we do know where Jesus is King and He gives us the ways that He wants His people to behave.
All right, so Kevin gave us the next nice one and that will be on Ignatius. So let's switch over now to Ignatius. Ignatius of Antioch in all of his letters stresses the church do nothing without its bishop. Yet, we often stress the polarity of elders. Ignatius in one of his letters claimed God revealed this to him about the bishop. How are we to view this comment? So I'll let you start and maybe give us a little introduction on Ignatius letters and your thoughts on Kevin's question.
Okay, this is probably a question I have been asked since I wrote the book, Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up. I mean, as soon as people got interested in reading the early Christians, and of course, Ignatius is at the beginning because he's just, you know, a decade after the apostle John died, maybe even less, when he was writing his letters. So you come across his letters pretty quickly in the Ante-Nicene Fathers. He's not the very first, but he's, I don't know, 40 pages in, something like that.
And he has this really exalted language about the bishop that, you know, I remember when I first read it, I was like, whoa. Now, surprisingly, you don't read that language from anyone else in the pre-Nicene church that I can think of. I don't know if anyone comes to your mind, Dean, but I can't think of anyone. To that degree, at least, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not very representative. So yeah, I was worried when I saw that, wow, what am I going to get into as I keep reading?
And instead, yeah, you don't see that sort of language. So it's made me go back and re-analyze what he was really saying, what the situation was, and all of that. Now, I just pulled some of the kinds of quotes. Okay, I'll just read, this is from his letter to the church in Magnesia. He says, this is in chapter six.
" I exhort you to study to do all things with the divine harmony while your bishop presides in the place of God, and your presbyters or elders in the place of the assembly of the apostles, along with your deacons who are most dear to me, and are entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ. Let nothing exist among you that may divide you, but be united with your bishop and those who preside over you. " Now, unless you found something, Dean, I didn't find any reference where he said, " God told me.
" No, I was curious of that too. Now, there are different versions, and the majority of them are considered spurious, even by Orthodox and Catholic scholars of today. And so, but I didn't remember that statement either. I was, yeah, that seems a little further than even actually he said. He says, no. And you brought up a good point. So we should mention this to all of our listeners. So when you go to the letters of Ignatius, there's only seven letters that are genuine.
Because he was so close to the apostles, yeah, later on, if you wanted to slip in, you know, these teachings about Mary and all that, then you make a fake letter from Ignatius, you know, but no one, like I say, even the Catholics and Orthodox, they recognize those are fake. But then you have a short version of his letters and a longer version. And I'm not a textual scholar or anything like that, but it seems like all of them that I have seen feel like the shorter version is the authentic one.
The longer version is based on the shorter, they just tease it out a little bit. But sometimes they do add sentences and things that change things a bit. So make sure you're reading the shorter ones and you're getting the actual words of Ignatius. Right. But yeah, I mean, that's quite a statement while your bishop presides in the place of God. Now, it sounds like, wow, he's putting the bishop on up there. But I think he's just saying that, okay, God set this order in the churches in place.
This order is from God with the bishop at the top, but along with the elders, he does not leave the elders out of it. It's not just a bishop by himself. In nearly all of his letters, he mentions the elders, and then quite often the deacons as well. And when he writes to Rome, do you want to comment on that when he writes to Rome? It's interesting. It's the only one that he did not mention the bishops in. Yeah, a lot of debate back and forth of what were the reason between that over that was.
It usually has to come over the whole idea that it's thought that in the early church, bishops were over their own local congregations and maybe the groups of ones that they're evangelizing too. But not a sort of out of my region patriarch district outside of that was something that I think even honest Orthodox and Roman Catholic scholars would admit that as a post-Nicene dogma, at the very least, and even in a development from there on.
And so the whole concept there then of Rome gets brought up is that in a lot of these smaller areas, there would have just been one bishop of that area that he's writing a letter to. But in Rome, there was several mature communities already by the time that he wrote. And so this is some of the speculation of why he he did not write that. But of course, there's different debates and different ways of that. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, one of them, now this comes from a Catholic scholar.
He takes that as strong evidence that there was no bishop of Rome, that the model of bishop, elders and deacons started in the area where the apostle John had his final ministry and then grew from there so that let's say in the year 100, many churches would have had this model. It's not a falling away from the faith. It seems to be something John would have instituted since it's in his sphere of influence where you have it. Yeah. But that it had not yet spread to Rome. That Rome just has elders.
And in fact, when they write the letter when Clement writes the letter to the church in Corinth, it's from the elders of Rome, not from a bishop. And later on, they make Clement a bishop. I mean, later on the later writers, but he never even mentions his name, which if he was actually a bishop at that time, it would seem like he would say this is from Clement Bishop. You know, yeah, he just stays anonymous. It's from the elders of Rome.
So I'm thinking that since he mentions a bishop in every other place, that there just wasn't one and he knew that there wasn't, and that was fine. Either way, you follow the leaders that the apostles put in place. His concern is that you don't have division and you don't have Gnostics coming in and pulling people away and saying, " Hey, we're having a Bible study over here at you know Andronica's house. " And hey, come on over and got some new revelations and things like that.
You know, stay with your bishop, stay with your elders. Don't go off to, you know, Bible studies that are not under their direction. Okay, that scene right there. Let's park that. Let's park there just a little bit because I think that scene is like really important to all the apostolic fathers and all the way up to Irenaeus in their discussions of lines of bishops and things like that.
And so the idea that there is the church with the truth and that these Gnostic groups are coming around and trying to pull out people from their church to go to their Secret Services, their secret apostles, their secret teachings, and get that from the true Church is what's circulating a lot of the concern in the Apostolic Fathers and all the way up through even the apologist era. And so you get that and that perfectly makes sense of the frame of why Ignatius is so concerned.
He's like, " Don't go to those crazy meetings. Stay there with your bishops where we have this truth that's handed to them from Jesus Christ and from the apostles. " And I think that seems to be an emphasis. And it's interesting. And again, I agree with you. It seems like pretty over the top to hear like, you know, follow your bishop as unto God. But think about the way the Apostle Paul uses for husbands, you know, so that the women should submit to their husband as to what? As unto the Lord.
And so obviously he is not saying that what your husband says is God and that he can speak and give a revelation and give new truth and that kind of a thing, that would be anathema to the Apostle Paul. But he's just giving a system of order and that type of a thing that's to be respected. I think that's the light that we have to look at this.
One very important point along that line is what's kind of tries to get teased out of this language is that it's sort of somehow proof that the church had this authority to literally come up with doctrine or to, you know, make the Scriptures and make the church. It's not usually the Orthodox apologists come pretty close to saying that the Roman Catholic apologists certainly do as well. And usually you kind of get this idea, well, the church gave you the Bible. You better listen to the church and the church.
What is the church? Well, the church has bishops. And oh yeah, well, look at the bishops and they show Ignatius. And then somehow that's thrown back on this whole line of thinking to making them think that there is some kind of authority given to them like God, like the apostles, which is really blasphemous in many ways. Yeah, it's interesting in chapter 3 of that letter to the Ephesians, Ignatius says this, " I do not issue orders to you as if I were some great person. Thank you.
For though I am bound, and he means in chains, for the name of Christ, I am not yet perfect in Jesus Christ. For now I begin to be a disciple and I speak to you as fellow disciples with me. That's perfect. I'm going to quote that too. That's the excellent quote to get that point across. Yeah, so he's a bishop and he's saying, look, you know, I'm not any great person. I'm not giving you orders or anything like that. So his concern is for the lives of the flock.
You see a very concerned shepherd here, not for his own congregation, but for all the congregations. And that he sees that the Gnostics, now that the apostles are gone, they are trying to take over. And this is a crucial time. In chapter 11 of that same letter to the Ephesians, he says this, " The last times have come upon us. Let us therefore be of reverent spirit. " And I know we say, " Well, the last days began with Jesus and we're still in them.
" And that's true, but he seems to be using it in the sense of the end times, the way people use it today. When I read that, I'm seeing a bishop who's thinking the end is close. The Antichrist, who John calls the Gnostics the Antichrist, they're here, they're trying to deceive the flock. He is very concerned about the eternal life of these Christians. And yeah, he's writing with a lot of emotion. And he has no idea. 2,000 years later, anyone would be reading these letters.
I mean, you know, when I write an email to someone or a letter, of course, nowadays we hardly write letters. I mean, come on, I don't even expect anyone outside of that person to read it, let alone a whole audience 2000 years from now. What would they think? I mean, I may say all kinds of stupid things over the top. You know, I'm not saying what he says is stupid, but it's a little over the top. But yeah, he is worked up. He is very concerned with the life of the church.
And yeah, he's not thinking that, okay, this is 2,000 years later. He's not thinking he's writing Scripture. He's just writing a personal letter that he assumes will be gone in 20 years, you know, or if not less. So, yeah, we got to keep that in mind. Yeah, that's great. You know, when I was getting ready for this question, I just, I looked through and I was trying to see what I had that talked about it in general.
I found a really interesting quote by Orthodox scholar John Behr, and it was in his introduction to Irenaeus ' on apostolic preaching. And his point, which I thought was very honest for an Orthodox scholar, was that the bishops and the later apostolic Christians did not think that they had the ability to give revelation, that they saw a clear indication that what they had was different from what was given to them from the apostles.
And I loved his honesty in that because this is from the apologists actually a lot of times what's actually not said is this is kind of kind of make a sloppy understanding that, well, somehow these guys, you know, continued this thing. But let me read you his quote here. Okay. He says, " Jesus Christ, His passion and resurrection is for Ignatius the only complete revelation of God. " This alone is salvific.
Hence, it is only through this door, Jesus Christ, that the prophets, apostles, and the whole church enter to the Father. When Ignatius states that, quote, " To me, the archives are Jesus Christ, " referring to the Old Testament. He is not implying that Jesus Christ is a different, higher authority than Scripture. Rather, for Ignatius, the Old Testament simply is Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh.
And then he says, " For Ignatius and the other apostolic fathers, the Christian gospel, the revelation of Jesus Christ, was essentially a Christocentric reading of Scripture, as it has been delivered by the apostles, although the writings were never cited to substantiate this teaching, nor were they ever cited as Scriptures. " And so he's saying in the earliest people, it was merely referring to the gospels, the teaching of Jesus Christ, the Christocentric.
And I'm just really loving that answer and describing the apostolic fathers and the emphasis on the simple teaching of Jesus Christ. Yeah, and I appreciate his honesty. Like you say, it's a little harder to find among the Orthodox scholars. My experience has been compared to the Roman Catholic. I've noted the Roman Catholic scholars because their doctrine is there's continuing revelation.
So they don't mind saying, oh yeah, back then, you know, that they didn't have a pope, they didn't have that because they can say, but now we have better revelation or, you know, further revelation, where the Orthodox say, no, we're doing it just like they did it back then. So it kind of forces them into often a spiritual dishonesty, in my opinion, not to slam them here. That's not our point. But it is interesting to see that admission from an Orthodox writer. And what he's saying is true.
I mean, like I said, I had that shock when I read Ignatius. I'm going back now 40 years when I was first reading the early church and I thought, ooh, I'm not sure what I'm going to see here. But then when I kept going, reading Justin Martyr and Irenaeus and, you know, Clement and Tertullian, you realize these guys are, they're sticking to Scripture. I mean, wow, their understanding of Christianity is the most literal interpretation of Scripture.
No one is claiming special revelation, further revelation beyond the apostles. It is, what did the apostles say? And we believe it just like they said it. Even Montanus, which came later, the Montanist prophecies, so-called, were things on... Discipline. Discipline. Yeah, never some sort of theological point or new revelation or new apostle or anything like that. And so, yeah, that was, I also find that very refreshing.
A few of the quotes that he lists to support his case, I'll give you, because they're kind of beautiful. One was, okay, here's one that I guess people were arguing to the Ephesians letter, the same one that you were reading, that the Old Testament was, you know, that this kind of Marcion idea that the Old Testament was not part of the New Testament.
And Ignatius writes, " I have learned, however, that some from elsewhere have stayed with you who have evil doctrine, but you did not suffer them to sow it among you and stopped your ears so that you might not receive what they sow.
" Then he says, " Seeing that you are as stones of the temple of the Father made ready for the building of God our Father, carried up to the heights by the engine of Jesus Christ, that is the cross, and using as a rope the Holy Spirit as your faith is the windlass or I guess the anchor, whatever, of love is the road which leads up to God. You are then a fellow traveler and carrying with you God and the temple and Christ and holiness, you are in all ways adorned by the commandments of Jesus Christ.
Isn't that beautiful? That the fulfillment of this is them, that they're adorned by being obedient to what? The teachings of Jesus Christ. And joy with it, for it has been granted to me to speak to you through my writings and to rejoice with you that you love nothing according to human life but God alone. And that's beautiful. Another one to the... And that's from Ignatius. That's from Ignatius. Yeah. The Magnesians.
" Be diligent therefore to be confirmed in the ordinances of the Lord and the apostles, in order that you may prosper in all things whatsoever you do. " That's from chapter 13 to the Romans, Ignatius to the Romans. I do not order you as did Peter and Paul. They were apostles. This is like Ephesians one. I am a convict. They were free. I am even until now a slave. But if I suffer, I shall be Jesus Christ Freedman. That is the one you read. No, it's not. I didn't read that. And in him, I shall rise free.
Now I'm learning in my bonds to give up all desires. And then, oh yeah, this is the one, then the Ephesians. I do not give you commands if I were someone great, for though I am a prisoner for the name, I am not yet perfect in Jesus Christ. So, yeah. And then one last one I'll give you on, this is from the translation that Alistair Stewart did on Ignatius, and he has this idea about the harmony. Again, the problem was these Gnostics were ruining the church by causing all these factious ideas.
And to the Ephesians, He says this, " Seek then to come together more frequently to give thanks and glory to God. For when you gather together frequently, the power of Satan are destroyed. The powers of Satan are destroyed. And his mischief is brought to nothing by the Concord of Your Faith. There is nothing better than peace by which every war in heaven and on earth is abolished. And so I just think that's really a neat, some neat quotes from Ignatius of the kind of quality.
We kind of get hung up in his bishop talk and it kind of obscures this incredible Christocentric message that he's telling us and how to stay faithful to Christ by letting us be adorned with these commandments of Christ. Yeah, I'll give you another one along the same line, and this is from the letter to the Ephesians chapter five. He says, this is Ignatius talking.
He says, " For if the prayer of one or two possesses such power that Christ stands in the midst of them, " he's, you know, quoting Jesus, " How much more will the prayer of the bishop and of the whole church or congregation ascending up in harmony to God, prevail for the granting of all their petitions in Christ. " So it's never the bishop by himself. It's the bishop, but the whole congregation, and he's just saying, " Look at the power. You have the whole church praying together.
" And he's saying this in conjured distinction of a few individuals getting off, doing their own little thing, meeting with some Gnostic teacher, or something like that. You know, he's saying assemble with the whole body, and that's where the power is. So, yeah, and you like to say at first, I did not like Ignatius. I even tell people, " Well, hey, you know, you can just skip over him and stuff.
" But when I put it all into perspective, after reading him, you know, numerous times, yeah, I actually came to really appreciate Ignatius and his tremendous love of Christ and his willingness to die as a martyr, even his desire, which at first, I thought, " Okay, this guy's a fanatic, " you know? Yeah. But, you know, I realized later, it was that very kind of spirit that, look, I'm ready to die for Christ. He didn't want the Romans to try to get it, what, ameliorated to a life sentence?
I mean, who would want to spend their life in prison? You know, you're a Christian, you're ready to go on to paradise. He says, you know, I'm ready to be ground into, you know, the teeth of the animals and all that. What do you do as a Roman? You're trying to intimidate this guy and say, " Look, we're going to throw you to the lions and all that. " He says, " Man, bring it on. I can't wait, " you know? Amen. What do you do? You can't defeat that, you know?
And so I realized it was that kind of faith that among not just Ignatius, among so many of the early Christians, that, yeah, they finally, the Romans threw up their hands after a couple centuries, like, we can't beat the Christians, you know? Hallelujah. Yeah. One of the quick note I thought was interesting, and I didn't really study it out, but Alistair Stewart and his, he did the translation of Ignatius, a modern one.
He brings out a point that looking at the letter to Polycarp and some of the bishops, he says there is a, he's trying to warn them not to be scholastic bishops.
And he says that in their day, kind of like the, I guess, the days of philosophers and that kind of a thing, that you would get money paid to you for just being like a teacher and that kind of a thing, and that they're exhorting them to distribute to the poor, to regulate the marriages, to be there, to be pastors, and not to have this elevated scholastic sense. So I thought it was also a word to the bishops to make sure you continue to be pastoral to your flock and keeping them holy before the Lord in that way.
So I thought that was great too. Yeah. Yeah, very good point. Well, I want to thank Kevin for sending in these questions and all of the others of you who are sending them in. We really appreciate it because we're getting very good questions and I'm glad people are reading the early Christian writings. And yeah, you're going to have questions when you read them. So yeah, and Dean and I, there's nothing we love more than to talk about this. So yeah, thank you, Kevin. Thank you very much.