Okay. Good. Alright, so his largest, most famous, and arguably most important work was titled on the detection and overthrow of the so-called knowledge, more commonly known as Against Heresies. And his goals for the book were two-fold. When he wrote this book, Against Heresies, he really wanted to do two things with it. One is he wanted to make it impossible for anyone to confuse Gnosticism and Christianity. So he didn't want anyone to say, oh, I've heard of that Gnosticism. That's a sect of Christianity, isn't it? Isn't that kind of what the Christians believe? Irenaeus wanted to say, no, this is not Christian. There's nothing about it that's Christian. It's completely opposed to all Christian tenets. He didn't want anyone who'd ever read his book to ever think that Gnosticism and Christianity could be confused. And secondly, and maybe more importantly, he wanted to make it impossible for such a monstrous system to survive or ever revive again. He wanted to kill it. He wanted everyone to be able to see from both logic and scripture that what the Gnostics were teaching and believing and writing was absurd and biblical and godly. And so today we have it broken down into five books. His book Against Heresy is broken down into five sections, five books. Book one outlined the beliefs of the Gnostics. And he did a pretty fair job at simply describing what they believed without being too polemic or attacking in nature. For years and years, really, the only thing we knew about systematic Gnosticism was from Irenaeus' book, Against Heresies. And in 1945, I think, they discovered a library in Egypt that had belonged to a Gnostic community. And there was all kinds of writings from the Gnostics there in that library. And people were able to compare it to what Irenaeus had said, and it turns out, oh, he was actually really fair in the way that he represented what they believed. So it's not like he was misrepresenting their position in order to get his point across. Book I, he just lays it out. And there's some commentary in there along the way about why this is wrong or why this doesn't make sense. But generally, the idea of Book I is outlying what they believed. Book 2 refutes their beliefs with logic. So all of Book 2 he's saying, here's why this doesn't make sense, here's where they contradict themselves, here's why if they believe this and then they say they believe this, it can't work together that way. And in Books 3 through 5 he goes through all the scriptures and refutes Gnosticism from the Old and New Testaments and gives a scriptural rebuttal for it. So he does a thorough, thorough work on refuting what the Gnostics believed. In these books, he quotes from the Scriptures over a thousand times. Over a thousand references to Scripture in this book. Did you want to say something, folks? The Hellenistic Jews, were they considered Gnostics? I don't think at large they were, but I think Gnosticism had an influence in that community as well. It was creeping into all the different He's the first person that we know of, that we have in extant writing, that explicitly defends all four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, as being canonical, as being inspired and part of the Bible, and refuting all the other Gospels. So, you'll hear someone say, you know, well, this Gospel of Barnabas, this Gospel of Judas, it's been around for, you know, 1900 years. Well, that's true. In 150 A.D., Irenaeus was saying those books aren't inspired. Those books aren't part of the Scriptures. But Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are. So, he's one of the first ones who explicitly said that. He quotes from every book in the New Testament, except for Philemon, 3rd John, and Jude. So when you think about that, there's 27 books in the New Testament. He quotes from 24 of them. I mean, that's really astounding when you think about it. I don't know of many modern books, that if you picked up a book by John MacArthur or John Piper or someone like that, that you could get quotes from 24 of the 27 books of the New Testament. But that's the kind of comprehensive, thorough job that he was doing in refuting what they believed. He says, it doesn't compute with anything that you find anywhere in Scripture. He had another extant work. He wrote lots of books, but only two that we have in their entirety today. And that's Against Heresies, and the second one, The Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching. That's the second book that we have extant today. There are references to and quotes from half a dozen other books from him by other old writers. But as far as actually being able to get the book and read it, we have Against Heresies and The Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching are the two books that we have today from Irenaeus. In that book, in The Demonstration of Apostolic Preaching, He writes it, it's a letter basically written to a close friend of his who wasn't there with him at the time. And basically he says in the beginning, I'm writing you this so that you'll have a I should have written down the exact wording he used, but it was something like, you'll have a handbook for your faith, or something like that. It's basically just a summary of the Christian faith that he's writing to encourage this Christian friend of his with. And so in that, he gives us a foundational overview of the Christian faith. And he starts in Genesis, and he works all the way through. He reminds him of everything that we believe. about the Scriptures and the doctrines contained in it. He deals particularly with doctrines like Trinitarianism, the creation of the world, the contrast of Adam's disobedience with Christ's obedience, the incarnation of Christ and His saving work, salvation by faith, the pre-existence of Christ before creation. So you can kind of hear how a lot of these topics are dealing particularly with Gnosticism because I'm sure that was all fresh on his mind. and the missionary activity of the Apostles. He also demonstrates how the promises made to Abraham and David were fulfilled in Christ. So, I mean, just thorough in the kind of things that he covers in that little book. And it closes with an appeal for preachers to vehemently defend the truth against heretics. Again, his life work seems to be built around this idea of defending Christianity against heresies, and he does it in a systematic and conclusive way. And so we have references to and fragments from many of his other works, but no others do we have in their full extant form. Again, on Esword, in that book, The Antonicene Fathers, you can read all the fragments that we have. They have them all compiled in a list, and you can read all the little quotes that we have that other people have quoted him from those other books. So there's his life and his writings. Let's talk for a few minutes now about what we learned from him and his life and his writings and then we'll close. One of the important things on a historical note, and also a spiritual note, that we learn from Irenaeus' life and as recorded in his writings, is that the bishop in Rome, at this point in time, was in no way seen by the other churches as being infallible. This became a dogma of the Roman Catholic Church in the years to come. That the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, was infallible. That anything he said was true. But remember what Irenaeus found when he went to Rome? The Bishop there was dabbling in heresy. Was defending heresy. And Irenaeus was disturbed by that. And Irenaeus wrote against that. And the next bishop after that one was causing division in the church at large over the topic of when Easter was celebrated. And Irenaeus wrote him about that and said, hey, this isn't worth causing a division over. Let's not become too antagonistic about this issue. So Irenaeus didn't look at the bishop of the church in Rome and think, that man's infallible. He has all authority. So when the Catholic Church makes this claim that the universal church has always looked up to the Bishop in Rome as this authoritative, infallible figure, well Irenaeus proves otherwise. He was a pastor from another church in another place and when he saw the Bishop in Rome in error, he called him out on it. So that's an important note to learn from his life and his writings. Secondly, we learn that the New Testament was widely known, used, and recognized as inspired by this point. Remember, I said over 1,000 quotations from scripture, including almost every book in the New Testament. So people who tell you that the New Testament was a Roman Catholic invention over years, and it can't be trusted, and all of these natures, well, history proves otherwise. Just a few decades after the close of the canon, it was already being recognized in Europe, in Asia Minor, across the world. the known world, wherever you found a church, basically, you could find people who were recognizing these as inspired scriptures. It's not only important because Irenaeus recognized them as scripture, but evidently everyone who he expected to read his book, he figured they would also recognize them as inspired and authoritative, and therefore he could use them as his ground. So that's a good reminder for us. And thirdly, a theme of his writings in both of his books is that there is one God in Trinity and he is in control of all creation. So, while the doctrines of grace, per se, Calvinism, if you want to call it that, weren't really being delineated at this point, this one point, that God is in control of everything, was being argued strongly by Irenaeus, because the Gnostics were teaching, well, there's lots of gods, and this lesser god created the world on accident, and the Supreme Being is now trying to give the secret knowledge to bring up... And Irenaeus was saying, that's all a joke. That's all a lie. That's all heresy. There's one God. He's in control of everything. He created everything from the beginning. He's been in control of it ever since. That's a main theme in His book, and it's something that can be helpful to us even today. Now, there are some things to watch out for. in Irenaeus' writings. The further that we go along through time, we're going to begin to see there are some errors, and begin creeping in the assumptions and worldviews that these men have. Just because we want to fight the pendulum swinging too far to one side, but in so doing we don't want the pendulum to swing to the other side. I'm trying to fight against the notion that all of these early church fathers were, you know, in the Roman Catholic tradition, and right away there was no biblical Christianity. We don't believe that. We believe there were some faithful men in the beginning. But we also believe they were men. We're not talking about inspired apostles here. We're talking about men who had error, who were susceptible to error based on when they lived, and what they were hearing, and how they grew up, and all of these things. And there are some things to watch out for in Irenaeus' writings that maybe, if you contextualize them properly, he's not wrong, but later on became a foundation for the Roman Catholics to say, this is why we believe that. Look, even Irenaeus taught it as early back as 150. And maybe that's not what Irenaeus meant, but he maybe didn't word it very well or something of that nature. Here's one. He compared, he contrasted, Eve's disobedience with Mary's obedience. And he says, so as Eve, through her disobedience, brought sin into the world, so Mary, through her obedience, brought salvation into the world. Okay, well can you contextualize that and see where he's coming from, what he's saying? Yeah, I can. But once you look at that in the light of what the Roman Catholics believe about Mary, and being the mother of God, and being the Savioress, and all of these heretical terms that they use, They're probably going to point back to Irenaeus at some point if you talk to one who's really historically versed and say, well, Irenaeus said, just as Eve through her disobedience brought sin, so Mary through her obedience brought salvation to the world. So, just be aware of that. The second is that he establishes apostolic succession as a ground of authority. Now, here's the problem with this form of arguing. We see it a lot of times in politics. A Republican's in office and he says, well, I'm going to use executive order to get what I want across. And the Democrats say, well, that's unconstitutional. You can't use executive order. But all the other Republicans, it's something they want to. And so they say, yeah, use executive order. Well, then when a Democrat comes in office, the Democrat says, well, then I'm going to use executive order. And all the Republicans say, no, you can't do that. That's unconstitutional. But all the Democrats like it. So they say, yeah, use the executive order. Well, now a precedent has been set. Thinking along those lines, maybe, he establishes apostolic succession as a grounds of authority. And here's what I mean by that. He says to his opponents, who he's writing to, the Gnostics, he says, John trained Polycarp, and Polycarp trained me. And therefore, my way of interpreting Scripture has a basis in orthodoxy, in truth. And yours doesn't. It came from outside of the apostles. Now once again, can we contextualize that? Can we say, there's actually a decent argument. You know, he learned from the man who learned from the man who learned from Christ. But eventually, learning from the man who learned from the man who learned from the man who learned from the man, allows error to creep in. And that's not our ground of authority. The Word of God is our ground of authority. Not whether you can trace your lineage back. And so, once again, this became a ground for the Roman Catholic Church to say, see, this is why the papacy is true. Because we can trace it all the way back. Unfortunately, there have been some Baptists who think they can do the same thing. We trace our lineage all the way back to John the Baptist. That's not the ground of authority. It's not being able to trace your lineage back. It's what you're saying in line with what the Word of God says. So, he uses that claim, and in his case, maybe it was an okay argument, but it laid the groundwork for some error later on down the road. And thirdly, he claims, And all three of these, I mean, I'm not arguing with what he's saying, I just see how it became a problem later on. He argued that God had established the church as the holder and the guard of truth. And that's true. The Scriptures describe it in a similar way. You know, the pillar and the ground of the truth. We understand that we don't look for revelation to come from some political party or from some angel in the sky, but that it comes through His Church, through faithful preaching. But again, what did the Roman Catholics do with that? Anyone outside of the Church can't have the truth. And this is what happened with the Waldensians. The Waldensians, much like Martin Luther early on, They weren't looking to leave the Catholic Church. They wanted to stay in the Catholic Church and just practice it. But the Catholic Church said, the problem we have is you're preaching without a license and training from the church. And you can't do that. And so it began to create this hotbed of the opportunity for corruption and heresy and error and all these things to creep in because no one can call their hand on it as long as they're the church. Because I'm a cardinal, because I wear the funny hat, because I'm a bishop or a priest or the pope or whatever it is. I represent the church. You can't argue with me. God gave the truth to the church. I will know God gave us the truth through His Word. Yes, it's the church that preaches that Word, that uses that to evangelize the world. So those are three things that Irenaeus wrote that I'm not saying I disagree with him on, but they ended up becoming a little bit more convoluted as time went on, and more errors came in, and they became problematic as time went on. That's all I've got for this evening, if there's not any other questions or comments on that. I'm sorry that Pastor Michael's not here. I'm looking forward to him getting back next week and continuing through the One Baptist Confession. Yes, sir? It's very interesting. You mentioned that they have 30 levels in the Gnostics. In the Bases, they have 33 levels.