Skip to content

Add your phone number?

Optional. Nothing is sent unless you choose it.
The Historic Faith
Sign in
All Questions
Question 9
The hosts frame Ignatius’s urgency around a specific threat: Gnostics drawing people into rival meetings with “new revelations,” and they connect bishop/elder unity to guarding the flock—what would be the closest modern equivalents to those “Andronica’s house” gatherings (para-church movements, influencer-led online churches, private “revelation” circles), and what would it cost you to stay loyally accountable to your local church?
Another way to ask: What are today’s versions of secret or rival Christian meetings led by someone with “new revelations” (online influencers, parachurch groups, private prophecy circles)? What might you have to give up to stay accountable to your local church?

Direct Answer The transcript doesn’t list modern examples, but it clearly describes the pattern: alternative gatherings that promise “new revelations” outside recognized church leadership; staying accountable would cost the allure of independence and novelty.

Support from Transcript:

  • David imagines the Gnostic pull: “Hey, we’re having a Bible study over here at… Andronica’s house… got some new revelations.”
  • Ignatius’s repeated charge is communal loyalty: “Stay with your bishop, stay with your elders. Don’t go off to… Bible studies that are not under their direction.”
  • Dean explains the wider early-church issue: rival groups “trying to pull out people from their church to go to their Secret Services… secret teachings.”
  • They link unity and safety: gathering “frequently” destroys “the powers of Satan,” while private splintering creates vulnerability.
  • The goal is guarding apostolic truth, not mere institutionalism: “truth… handed… from Jesus Christ and from the apostles.”
Discussion Follow-ups Where are you tempted by ‘outside’ spiritual authority that isn’t accountable to your local elders? What would you have to give up—platforms, friendships, the thrill of “new”—to remain loyally rooted?

Jumpstarter 9 of 10
Back Questions Next