If you remember last week though, I said it was this big umbrella of Gnosticism and we're gonna see, you can't just define that to one area. Gnosticism encompassed a lot of different ideas and views and stuff and we're gonna hit an actual named. We've been going over the heresies, now we're gonna go over some of the heretics and Marcion is this week probably the most recognizable name during the first century. And so we look at the persons involved because I want to show this kind of like a handing off of doctrine from the apostles to the early church fathers, as we call them, and where Marcion plays into this. And during week one, I mentioned that me not having been saved, I didn't know that I had the same beliefs as Marcion, where the Old Testament God could not be the same as the New Testament God. So we have this vengeful, wrathful creator, and then we have peace, love, love your neighbor. I couldn't reconcile those, so I kind of understand how hearing somebody who's knowledgeable in the faith, or of the faith, not in the faith, but knowledgeable of faith-like wording, it's enticing to the ears. We're going to look at Marcion's beliefs, the dangers of these beliefs, and then because of this though, we're going to go over, and I always try to throw out the canon of scripture anyways, it's just to get us to remember, you don't have to memorize the order of all the books because even that's changed with some of them, but to understand what's included in scripture and at least a basic numbering, how we have 39 Old Testament, 27 New Testament books, so that you can at least attest to your Bible aligning up with that or not. And then some contemporary relevance. So I use, again, I like the Lexham Bible Dictionary for a lot of things. This has God on Marcy on there, a second century AD teacher, and I agree with him, perhaps the most infamous heretic in the early Christian church. You can see that he started his own distinct theology, and in fact his own Bible will get into that as well, and then had other churches. So he was actually propagating this heresy in churches. So it wasn't just an idea. He was infiltrating them. And my notes start down there. I see 85 to 165 AD. I see 10 years earlier. Some of it's hard to get an exact date on him, but he was during this time, and he was the son of a Christian bishop. So again, he had or should have had proper teaching, but the ears like what the ears like. So just give you some of the other players there. I've got polycarp up there. We will be revisiting some of these at some point as well, but the focus of this class is the heretics. But again, since we're looking at that first century to the second century crossover, Polycarp is actually attributed to being, if not one of John's disciples or close to John's teachings, Paul's another one, but his If you look at his time there 69 to 155 or 81 to 167 80 that still is when John was writing his letters So we do see this overlap. So if nothing else polycarp can be tied back to early apostolic fathers Okay to the Apostles and then he is one of the known He was martyred as well. So I'm not trying to go over him so much, but just to show this handoff. And in fact, Marcian went to Polycarp one time and was like, do you remember me? And Polycarp said, of course I remember you. You're the firstborn of Satan, because of these heresies. So again, going back to that, it's OK to call out somebody who is an heir, and especially this type of heresy. Then just going down the line there, I've got Justin Martyr there. Again, he was born into a pagan family and experimented with different things and then came to Christianity. Fell in love with Christianity, very passionate about his faith, started his school. We see some of that there. And then Irenaeus, I used him last week as well. There's a lot of writings of Irenaeus. So here's where we get a lot of that early history, though. We have scripture, which is our ultimate authority. But these writings from these early church fathers is important for us to see what happened in that developmental right after the age of the apostles, the apostolic age. So Irenaeus was a church father and a bishop. Again, he defended a lot of the Orthodox Christian doctrines. And then, and I have my asterisk up here for Tertullian. Again, he's at the later part of this, but he battled a lot of the heresies of Marcion. And you'll see, if you look into the early church writing, you'll see that Tertullian has a lot of works on theology. And we'll go over some of what his counterpoints to Marcion were. And again, I love the way that they interacted with each other. Not brutal like I would, but still enough. He's not holding back punches here. Let's look at some of the beliefs of Marcion. He embraced a form of Gnosticism. And if you remember from last week, Gnosticism, and especially that dualism is what we're gonna look at here, that duality. All right, where material is corrupt and evil and of no use other than right now. Spirit is what is being redeemed. Spirit is what's important. Well, he took that and applied that dualism to the Old Testament and the New Testament. So here's where, like I say, Probably this would have tickled my ears with my understanding as a young man But the Old Testament was a different God. So this creator according to the Hebrew canon this in his mind I'm using his words. It's not don't take it as me saying this this Hebrew canon this God is created creation created material bad Jews following this God evil bad then the true supreme God gives us this revelation in Jesus so Jesus is the son of the Father, who's a supreme being, who's not the same as Yahweh in the Old Testament. This is Marcion's understanding. Okay, so he uses some scripture even to back this up. For example, in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve sin, and God comes into the garden, what does He say? Where are you? Well, if he's an omniscient God, why would he be asking that? Who told you this? If he's an omniscient God, why does he have this limited knowledge? Whereas Jesus says, I knew your thoughts before you said them. So in his head, and possibly, again, whether that's intentional or just what he derived from the scriptures, Old Testament God is not all-knowing. New Testament is. So he contrasted them. And again, this material creating with immaterial. We're going to look at some of this as Tertullians. We want to get to the dangers of the beliefs of Marcion here. We're going to answer with some of the Tertullian responses, and I want us to look at Scripture as well. One of the first ones, though, is salvation. So he had this disconnect. And again, you're going to start hearing how that pertains to some modern stuff, some modern ideas and theologians. But there's no law. Since we're unhitched from the Old Testament, there is no law. There's only the gospel. And Tertullian brought this up as well as others. Well, if there's no law to be saved from, then the gospel is not needed. What's the point of salvation if you don't need it? First of all, it's only spiritual. Who cares? Just do whatever you want right now. And second of all, if there is no punishment for your doing wrong, what does it matter? But even Marcion was like, no, we have, there's a right thing to do and a wrong thing to do because that's what's commanded. So by that, then you are saying there is some kind of law. So Tertullian was very much battling him that. Even going back to, this is a form of antinomianism. And then of course, universalism, either nobody's saved or everybody's saved. And the Gnostics had a lot of different flavors than that. So this is just Marcion's particular flavor. So if we can go to Galatians 3.21 and have somebody to read that, please. Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not. For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. So again, we're gonna see this idea, and it's important that I'm using one of Pauline's letters for this because we're gonna see what Marcion believed was authoritative in scripture here. Okay, but here we see if the law is contrary to the promise of God, Paul's got a problem with that, so he's saying it's not. So right there, Paul, an apostle, one who'd been enlightened by Christ is saying these things, then why does Marcion have a problem with this? All right, well he had a lot of problems, even on the creation. I think one of Tertullian's things was these insects that you think are so disgusting, they can do things that you can't even do, so you're worse than a bug. One of the things Tertullian said. Or his... His followers were very much into astronomy, so he'd bust them out on that. If created matter is wicked and evil, most of your followers are looking into the stars, this created thing. So he had some problems with a lot of his followers as well. As I said, because of his age, Tertullian was mostly dealing with the fallout from these churches that were created by Marcion. And because of this separation of the Testaments, this antisemitism, All right, so according to Marcion, the God of the Jews was evil and in opposition to the God of Christianity. So therefore the Jews were evil and in opposition to the true God. All right, so again, how did he reconcile this? We'll get to that in a minute, but if we can look at John 4.22, actually read John 4.19-22 if I can get a volunteer. Yeah, you can't just use the paper, I only put one verse on there. Yes, please. The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you're a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know. For salvation is from the Jews. So again, this is Christ's words here. So how can Marcion deal with this? Dot, dot, dot. We'll get to that. Then going to this one God and, uh, I don't have a Tertullian quote on there. Basically, God is one or he is not at all is the quote. So in Marcion's view, you have this God who is obviously powerful enough to create this evil matter and rule for these thousands of years before the Supreme God sent Christ to give this message. So if God has an equal, he cannot be God. If God is not one, if He is not the ultimate, and He has this counter-God, then He is not God, because He has no equal, according to Tertullian and according to Scripture. We see that over and over again in the Old Testament, and then, of course, I see it revisited in the New Testament. So how does Marcion deal with the Old Testament quotes in the New Testament? We'll get to that. So, and if God is, has an equal, he's not sovereign overall because he didn't have anything to do with the creation. All right. And Neo-Marxianism birthed good versus evil. So again, we get to this Gnostic understanding of duality. So this yin and yang, this good versus evil. And today we don't so much see that in Christianity where it's two gods, but we do give Satan this equal playing floor with God. So here's God, but then he has his equal counterpart, the devil, and they're on equal terms. That's a form of what we're seeing here, what Marcion had going on with the Old Testament God and the New Testament God. All right, some more scriptures from the Old Testament here, Deuteronomy 6, 4. And I pulled these from the catechism question, are there more than one God? So these are the scriptural proofs for that catechism question. And Jeremiah 10, 10. But the Lord is the true God, He is the living God, and the everlasting King. Okay, and again, some of these Old Testament quotes are used in the New Testament, so how did Marcion deal with these scriptures? Very easy. I'm gonna create my own Bible. I don't like any of this stuff. I'm gonna create my own Bible. The Marcionites were still using that, which is where Tertullian had to deal with them, but he created his own Bible. And his Bible contained, because, well, what about what Jesus spoke of? What about Christ's own words? Well, he used the Gospel of Luke. How does the Gospel of Luke start off? Not to be exact, just give me a generalization. We talk about it around Advent season. We picture little Linus with his blanket going off on the people about the true meaning of Christmas. And there were shepherds watching over their flocks by night. The birth of Jesus. I'm not talking down to you guys. I'm trying to make this fun and also to help us have an understanding of this because That's very important. Luke, we read Luke every year during Advent. It's the announcing of Christ's birth. How does Marcion deal with that? We're not gonna include that. Cutting out that entire part. Christ doesn't come on the scene until he appears from heaven at the wedding. None of that stuff prior to that is in there. So yes, well that part's not in Luke, yes. But if you cut out the first part, you can write in your own introduction. All right, so the Gospel of Luke, but it is a very butchered. All right, so there's no reference to being born of a woman because then that would be materialistic. And again, it's this lineage going back to the Jews. Well, if you're against the Jews, you can't have that lineage. So what about that quote from Christ and John? Well, we're not going to put John in here. One Gospel, it's divided into two parts, his Bible. One Gospel, the butchered version of Luke and his rewriting revisions. And then he uses 10 of Paul's letters. I've got them written there for you. He uses Galatians, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Romans, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, and Philippians. All right, he keeps out the pastor letters, the epistles to Timothy and Titus. And again, we read Galatians. Well, how does he reconcile that? Again, if you have an eraser and a magic marker, you can change it to what you want. So these were revised by Marcion to fit his understanding. Again, Tertullian is going to bust them out. By what authority do you have this? Here's what I have from this person who got it from this person who got it from this person who got it from the apostles. You're getting your authority. Remember that special revelation we talked about in Gnosticism? Where are you getting this from? Because it's not in line with the rest of Scripture. The good thing to come out of this is the early church father's like, you know what? We need to battle against this. First of all, we need to start identifying some doctrine that he's got churches around the Christianity as it's growing there. We need to battle this. Let's verify what books are scripture. The Old Testament we have is identical to what Christ had. Okay, it's in a different order, but it's identical to what Christ had. I believe they might've had some of the, the Apocrypha is not, what was the other one? The Pseudo-Apocrypha. Pseudo-Apocrypha. That wasn't included, though, in the Old Testament canon. None of that was. The Jews recognized only the Ketubim, the Tanakh, the Torah, the Prophets, and the writings. And we break it down at 39, but they had some of theirs were combined. So again, it's not that there were less books. So we're like, no, there's a discrepancy. They ordered them differently. And I didn't have a first and second, for example. So they combined some different books there, but they're all, what we have in our old Testament is. their Old Testament. Of course, the New Testament, a lot of these letters, like we even see that now in some of the, you know, we found this gospel of Jim, you know, okay, you found one page that somebody wrote named Jim to the church. That doesn't make it authoritative. Okay, I really do believe in the closed canon of scripture. That's a whole nother class that we would love to go over too, how we got the Bible. But this man did force some early church fathers to get together, like we need to close this in, we need to reign this in because you can't just pick and choose what books you want. All right, so those two books, so the authority and sufficiency of scripture. Which writings of the Bible are of God and which are not, and then modifying text. That's really bad. It's bad enough that even today, well, I don't interpret it that way. Okay. That's bad enough. If you're looking at the entirety of scripture, but to completely say, I'm just going to erase this and reword it. I don't like that anymore. Now I'm going to change it to this. He didn't even come in the form of man. He wasn't born under a woman. He just miraculously appeared at this wedding. Chapter and verse, please. That's not yours because that's ridiculous. But that's what happened. And then again, the special revelation. You see that this is not new. We still have, you know, prophets today. I got this special revelation. Here's the new word from God. If it's not lining up with what's already in here, it's not a new revelation. It's blasphemy and heresy. And again, that's two weeks now, I was able to use it, and she's not here, she's gonna be upset, but John 1.1, I just put this on there again, one for our sister, and two because it is speaking of, yes, Marcion didn't care because it's from the Gospel of John, but John 1.1, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. You can't have that in your Bible if you don't believe that he helped with the creation. So, we're just not even gonna include this. Plus, again, that timing, depending on where you believe a lot of these letters were written and where Marcion was, some of them were a little bit more accessible than others. We have a lot more scripts now than were being passed around on some of these letters. Like, again, the Corinthians, we have two. There were at least one, probably two more, But here's what we have, so. And on the back, just so you can look at it, I do have the Canon of Scripture there. And it is important to know that even if you don't remember them all, all the time, or in order, there are 39 Old Testament books and 27 New Testament books. Easy way to remember it is three times nine is 27. Okay? It's just because I feel like I'm talking down, and that's not my point, but I even try to do this with the children, so you know you have how many books in the Bible? 66. And then you can see how they're broken down. In fact, I had to show that to Zoe was going through her class. It's like, I don't know where these are at. I'm like, let me show you how it's broken down. Here's the New Testament. Here's the Gospels. Here's the Acts of the Apostles. Then these next ones are all Paul's letters. Because she was looking all over the place. Where's Paul's? Is it before this or that? I'm like, they organized them so they're all right there. And Hebrews is in a convenient spot, depending on if you believe that Paul is the author of Hebrews or not. So it's just wonderfully how it's done. But there is no more special revelation. This is what we call the closed canon. And that's not to say that these other writings are not profitable. They're just not authoritative. Okay, there is some good history. Like I say, I like in the Maccabees seeing what happened during the intertestamental period. So there's some history in there. I have a collection in the office over there talking about the different things. Like, where did you see synagogues in the Old Testament? Because they're all over the place in the New Testament. So I'm not going to see that in scripture. I'm going to have to go to a flawed version of man's telling, but at least I can see historically what happened to get to this point. Why are these certain customs done this way now when they weren't before? And then they, you know, I have this new version now. Well, something happened. There were different revolts. There were different leaders. So going to history for that purpose only for history is great. They are not authoritative. They have no, inspiration as our scripture does, but that does not mean to throw them all out. Like we said before, a sola scriptura is not the same as solo scriptura. The Bible is of final authority, but if you're like people, the Bible alone, well, I need you to elaborate on that because there are some things that you need to look outside of that. Even Marcion, it had to be literal. So if it had an allegory or a non-literal understanding, it was nonsense to him, which is why, again, Tertullian battled a lot of his things. Well, what you said right here is very allegory and not literal, so you're even contradicting yourself. All right, so we're going to spend the rest of this time, though, and I know I did a lot of lecturing on that, and I tried not to get too much. I really wanted to go more, and that was going to end up being four pages of Marcion. And we are probably going to do one heretic a week. But the joy I'm getting from this is because we're seeing what happened in history, and now we're getting to this part, the today part. Why was this important to battle then? Because it's not new. What we're seeing today is not something new. It's a different version of this. I even called his dualism 2.0, because we were seeing the Gnostics in the early church. Well, he just ran with it a whole different direction, and we're going to split up the Testaments. But some of the contemporary examples today, and we're gonna get this a lot, it's Jesus versus the Word of God. Jesus versus Paul, which is, again, looking at Marcion, the father of this understanding, loved Paul. He was big on Paul's letters. That's why the New Testament was mainly Paul's writings, as he reworded them. But even today, those who are similar to this, they don't like the Pauling letters because he's chauvinistic. Again, it's an improper understanding of Paul's writings, so they want to get rid of all Paul's letters altogether. So I've got a few, and then even Jesus versus Jesus, which is, again, him taking out the other Gospels and just using Luke. But I'm going to go over a couple here, and this first one I got, though, I joke all the time when people like, you know, like say red letter, and I, we even joked with the secretary here when she was doing scriptures and doing, just put it all in black. It's easier to read. And technically from start to finish, it's all, it's all Christ. So just put it all red then. But there are red letter Christians. And what I mean by this is it's a particular movement. It really gained ground in the past 15, 20 years. But you're going to see, they just put a title on this now, and the red letter Bible, that's the words of Christ. So, you know, what did Christ say? How did Christ act? That's all we're going to worry about in scripture. All right, what would Jesus do? That kind of an attitude. And while that's not bad, I wanna show you some of where it got to the point of it's not good for Christianity, because it's a liberal movement, and it was meant to battle conservative Christianity, and especially the disassociation that some felt with the church system and even politics. So this whole, which I agree with some of what they're saying, the worshiping of the country, All right, that's unbiblical. Yes, I love my country, but it's not on the same level as my relationship with God. Okay, it's not, you know, you're a better Christian because you're American, the more patriotic you are. So I understand some of that, but then they didn't all believe this. And I've got just two of the co-founders here. And one of them is Shane Claiborne. He even wears like an Obi-Wan Kenobi robe, which is cool, but not for preaching. So I don't know if he's trying to go John the Baptist route or something. And listen to this quote here, though. This is what Jesus had in mind. Folks coming together, forming close-knit communities, and meeting each other's needs. No kings, no major welfare systems, no presidents necessary. That sounds good, though. I'm not going all hippie commune kind of thing, but that still sounds good. We should not be relying on big brother, Uncle Sam to take care of us. That should be the church's responsibility, which we have failed, we collectively. We have failed in that a lot of times. So that sounds good, though. Nothing too wrong with that other than the hippie commune part. But then he says, we do need to be born again, since Jesus said that to a guy named Nicodemus. But if you tell me I have to be born again to enter the kingdom of God, I can tell you that you have to sell everything you have and give it to the poor, because Jesus said that to one guy too. But I guess that's why God invented highlighters, so we can highlight the parts we like and ignore the rest. He has a point that I'm gonna point back at him, because what would Jesus do? Well, he wouldn't be mean to people. You sons of Satan. You have your father, the devil. Get away from me. I never knew you. We were talking earlier, flipping tables. No, he was never mean. It was a righteous rebuking, but you say the highlighter is only for what you like. Well, you guys aren't doing that part. Here's another co-founder, Jim Wallace. Jesus didn't speak at all about homosexuality. There are about 12 verses in the Bible that touch on that question. Most of them are very contextual. There are thousands of verses on poverty. I don't hear a lot of that conversation. I actually get that more from non-Christians. Well, what are you guys doing to take care of all these needs? You're not a member of a church, so you don't actually see what is being given out by these churches that are helping disaster relief, feeding children, all these different ministries. They don't want to hear that. But even within the church, though, okay, yes, some denominations and some even individual churches put a focus on more political things, or this is their one point, you know, one or two point Christians. and to the neglect of the poor. But to forsake everything else and then you start inventing a new God is where this becomes problematic. All right, I say yes, what did Christ show us? All right, and we're gonna go to Andy Stanley on this one. And if you're not familiar, Andy Stanley said we need to unhitch from the Old Testament that the law is of no use to us, that part is irrelevant, only the New Testament which teaches all about this good and happy stuff. And he said, so when Paul talked about relationships, he said stuff like this, and your relationships to one another have the same attitude as Christ Jesus. Any questions? Huh, that kind of covers it, doesn't it? It means I gotta put people before me. Yeah. I'm glad he went there because two advents ago, we went over Philippians. And let's look at that example. What did Christ say? What was the same attitude? Somebody mind reading from 5 to 11? Have this one among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus. who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God for him to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth. and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. I see it as a little bit different than their approach to it. And again, I'm all about caring for the needy, all right? We, as you'll see, different needs that need to be met with the tornado that went through, we need to do something. As we're able to, we try to help where we can. That's, I believe, majority of churches are that way. I'm sure there are some that are very hard isolationists. But what is Jesus saying there? I mean, is this the same attitude that the, The organization, the liberal organization, or even Andy Stanley say, what do we see in Christ here that's different from that attitude? I'm not writing the answers up here. It was obedience. Go on, if you have more. Obedient, humble himself, but to the glory of God the Father, not to the glory of anyone else. Yeah, I like that. Put other people before yourself. Yeah, who was Christ obedient to? To the point of death on the cross. And again, I understand some that will make, for example, the sexual immorality against the LGBT, especially as their flag, their banner to raise. But I'm not going to defend the Word of God here to say that Jesus never spoke on it. I'm going to refer to my brother, Votie Baucham, who apparently got nominated by somebody for the SBC president. So he's being dragged to the mud right now. If you're praying, pray for him. He's being really dragged to the mud. Christ did speak on homosexuality, sexual immorality. One, he spoke on it incarnate. Did you not know in the beginning he made them male and female? And then quotes Genesis, for this reason a man shall leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife. Well, he's not saying, okay, he's telling you the order. He's telling you God's plan. If that's God's plan, anything outside of that is wrong. So, just by default, he did speak on it and said it's wrong. But okay, let's go back to these other ones. Well, that's Paul's writing. Paul, who was instructed by our Lord, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to write these. Well, what about the Old Testament? That's a different God. Okay, now you're getting into this area. You can't have it both ways. That's why we need to unhitch from the Old Testament. And I love that we do the Old Testament reading and the New Testament reading here. There are many who don't like to go over the Old Testament unless it's particular parts. All right, I love obviously, some of it's hard reading Leviticus, but as you're reading Hebrews, Man, Leviticus is awesome because you have an understanding now of what that shadow was pointing to in the substance of Christ. Some of the stuff, yes, what do you call them, the chicken verses, all the baguettes, a lot of baguettes. There's a reason for that and it is profitable. But to totally unhitch from the Old Testament, Christ quotes it, the apostles quote it. It's there. We're now seeing a further revelation from what they only saw in glimpses and shadows and types in the Old Testament. We get to see that fulfilled in these promises. So what is Christ's example? Obedience. And ultimately, that every knee is going to bow and confess Christ. What are some other examples today of this idea? Like I said, it's very liberal. It is very liberal. And we saw some examples of that with the co-gay pastors pastoring a church. Because Jesus is okay with that. Because he accepts us where we're at. Yeah, I think the problem, particularly when you start talking about this idea of homosexuality, is that it is such a It's such a hot button, right? And most Christians don't know their Old Testament, but when Jesus says, I didn't come here to abolish the law, I came here to fulfill the law, he pretty much just says everything that God has said in the Old Testament, God has said, I'm here to fulfill. And when the law is given, it's Jesus speaking, because he's part of the, or the Son of God is speaking, because he's part of that trinity anyways, right? But when you go to Leviticus 18, when people, want to really debate this issue. I think I'm usually talking about Ludwigus 18, because if you're OK with homosexuality, then you have to be OK with everything that comes before that, which is sleeping with close relatives, your mother, stepmother, aunts, whatever. And if you're OK with that, then you have to also be OK with bestiality, because it's covered there as well. That's because I've seen so many Christians flounder on that because they don't know their Old Testament. If you say you're okay with this and God forbade it with all of this, then you gotta take it off because it's all given under that moral code. As to people doing that today, Marcion, one of our presidents was Marcion and I, like Abraham, I mean Jefferson. The Jeffersonian Bible is only this thick. It doesn't have any miracles. Just the parts I like. No miracles. He's a naturalist. I think the way also they don't do, which is a cult, they don't do anything with the Old Testament. There's quite a few actually. To hear something like Stanley though, because I get Marcion, he just is going to throw it all out. But you don't hear that from the Andy Stanleys or even from the red letter movement there. No, we believe it's all God's work, but we're only gonna focus on this part. Well, that's hypocrisy at its finest there because you can't. We're only gonna do what Jesus said here. And even, that's why I liked that quote there. He talks about what the highlight, I'm like, you guys literally highlighted only the happy parts that you wanted and neglected everything else that Christ said and did. With Andy Stanley, we actually, there was an article that I printed out where he actually says, just forget the OCD. The problem with that is, if you don't have the Old Testament, you have no Creator God, you have no rebelling against God, so you have no sin, you have no proto-evangelical, you've got no Antony, who's Jesus? I mean, it's just, it's so weird. That part's not in the Marcionic Bible. The birth, that part, and there's one other area that was completely just erased and, like I say, modified. He would either reword what he wanted to or just completely take it out. What was really cool about Justin Martyr is he didn't have the New Testament. He came to the knowledge of the Triune God through the Old Testament. That's pretty cool, actually. Yeah, he was a pagan, so all these different things he tried and sees this, like, wait a minute, yes, so that's awesome that God and His effectual calling, going back to all the stuff we talked about before, His people are not going to have to worry about how you're going to get this. But, well, if we throw away the Old Testament, Did he go further then? Basically the accuracy doesn't matter that everything is just I was even looking today, some people were arguing over some of the Old Testament prophecies, probably in Daniel then. But if you look at Nicodemus and others, they had an idea of when Messiah was supposed to come. So there was something in these Old Testaments that had them looking forward to this hope. They had a misunderstanding of what that hope was going to look like, but they had a timing down. So yeah, let's just get rid of all the scriptures. Yeah, I don't need theology. I just need Jesus. Where are you gonna get that from? Who is he? He's God. Where do you get that from? How is that different than Jesus? You know, when we were joking in there. How is that different now? I think that the problem is that I'm just Christians, most Christians tend to be lazy about reading their Bibles. They just are. I mean, I think one survey said 24% of evangelicals read their Bible every day. That's 76% that don't. That's a lot. And it's not even, I think we've talked about that before. Yeah, some, well, how many times have you read the Bible through? I'm not even a fan of that. I'm doing my yearly Bible reading through because sometimes I'm like, ooh, I got sidetracked. I used to tell people, just read the first epistle of John. That's a short letter. Just read that. All right? You're reading your scripture. Well, I'm done with that. Well, read it again. And then when you think you finally got an understanding of that, go ahead and read a second one. Even a shorter one, read this third one. Now go and read the gospel. So you can collectively start reading all scripture, but read something. So yeah, so I'm doing four Old Testament verses in the morning and 12 New Testament verses in the evening, and I'm like, what are you getting out of that though? So I'd rather have you chew on something than just cram it all down. But no, don't get me wrong, sometimes I'll eat really quick, but it's usually not good for you. And it's in the entirety of Scripture though. That's my biggest problem, which is I get some of the misunderstandings that we see. This is a deliberate, this is not I'm trying to identify Christ and his divinity and his humanity. This is, I'm doing away with this authority here. And again, remember when I was giving his biography, he was the son of a believer. Well, he was the son of a Christian Bishop. I don't know anything recorded on his father, but he was obviously getting teaching from early in the church. He was one of the first century to the second century, you know, people alive during this time there. So, Mute that for a minute. So how can we battle this, though? I mean, this is, yes, reading your Bible, having an understanding, but this is, it's not new, and yes, how do you battle that? Well, you're just not loving, you know? They have a different definition of love, more of a, I don't know, cater to your feelings kind of love, not a love you have to tell you the truth, they don't want. Don't hurt my feelings, bro. How do you feel about it? The part that bothers me, especially, like I say, I get the patriotism, but the part that bothers me is that the blanket statement thrown against Christianity, unless you're part of the liberal movements that are all just about felt needs, is that you're a monster or you're clinging on to something else. Well, you can do both. You can have a high appreciation and reverence for God and his word and be helping others. Because just because they're out there doing all these great things, we're helping all these people, we're giving to the poor, Are you sharing the truth of God with them, like you said, the truth? Well, no, they're not. All right, so what are you gonna do then when you come face to face with your creator and say, did I not give to the poor in your name? Did I not do all these good deeds in your name? Go and go to the word of Jesus there, get away from me, I never ever knew you. So it is all for nothing if you don't have the truth. And that truth starts with the Holy Spirit. And we're going to find all these revelations of Christ, not in special revelations, but in his word, the entirety from Genesis. And again, you even look at the New Testament writers. John is all over Moses. You just see all of these different visions, different writing styles. He loves Moses. His second favorite author, I'm going to say, is Ezekiel because of all the Son of Mans and everything on that. But he had a high appreciation for the Old Testament and how it was revealed to him through God and the Spirit to write it. He is, you know, repitulating a lot of what Moses said with a further revelation of Christ. Paul, we can go to Peter's, I say Paul because he wrote a lot, but Peter in his sermon in Acts, he's using Psalms and further explaining them. Like David said this and wrote this Psalm. He was talking about the resurrection of Christ. I go back and read that Psalm. I don't see that in there. Not as a literal reading, but with a further understanding. Like, wow, that is beautiful. How do you see all these things that point to Christ if you're taking out 39 books of scripture? That's not counting the other books that are missing in the New Testament from some. But that is a thing today, is I'm just going to read the words of Christ, except the parts that I don't like, and make my own Bible. So, Marcion is alive and well today. The liberal movement. Anything else you guys can think of? I know I hated missing the Masons and our Gnostic last week, so we can also rehash that though. But again, this is the umbrella of Gnosticism. This is that duality, that material versus immaterial, or the good versus evil, or the Old Testament versus the New Testament. People like to have this mystical understanding. They say his followers were all into astrology, astronomy, astrology, whichever. They were looking at the stars, and that's material though, so already you're a hypocrite. Again, we looked at the Gnosticism last week, and like I said, we forgot the Masons, but again, that's an all-inclusive. And some of them, they have their own Bible, and some of them have different understandings that lead to a Marcionistic kind of understanding. I just couldn't believe that I was in line with a heretic for most of my understanding of... No, yes, of course there's two different gods. It can't be the same god. You're a heretic, no? Yes? Yes, I am. I am a heretic. Thank you, God, for saving me. Well, there are a few times when we'll do topical preaching here. We do it for Advent and we'll do it like the first start of the years. But even in that, like I said, we're doing an Old Testament. New Testament and I'm hoping and if we're not you guys are obligated to tell us Doing a good job of showing that continuity from Scripture. All right, if it's not clear or misspeaking on something that goes for anybody that's up there In the classes here if something's not making sense or it's causing you to question you need to ask somebody, you know bring it to us because we're fallible, but we're hoping to show that God, His Word, is the same. It's the continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament, and the message is the same, and it's all about God. So even that's another problem, though, is what the Bible's about. You mentioned feelings. Well, the Bible's about me. If you have that understanding, of course, everything you read in this is going to be about you. No, it's not about you. But what about? No. But maybe, no. You're not David. You're not David. You're also Jesus. I'm the rock in that one. But I appreciate you guys. And like I said, I know these classes are probably going to be a little bit shorter. Some of them might be longer. I know when we get into the Christology, Heresies, and on the Trinity and the Incarnation, it's going to be a lot more to talk about. But even some of that, it's going to be difficult. I do love going to the Lutheran satire for those, so I'll have to brush up on it again. But any other questions or comments? And let's say some of these movements are settling down now because they're incorporating, whereas they were upset, look at that red letter Christian, where they were upset at Christianity embracing itself into, if you didn't also have your American flag right next to your Bible, you weren't a true Christian. Well, now they're going the other way. If your Bible's not right next to that rainbow flag, you're not a true Christian. So the pendulum has swung the other way. Like I said, I hate that. I am conservative in my beliefs. I believe in the authority of God as well, but you're automatically marked as being in error and you're not inclusive. I'm as inclusive as God commands me to be here. You can do that without being hateful, so we can be loving in our rebuking, but again, I'm gonna look at some of the early fathers, as well as Paul, and I'm gonna keep going back to that. When somebody's wrong, you tell them they're wrong. How you do that is not throwing something at them all the time. No, that's my go-to. Anybody else? Last comments, any other questions? I have a question for you after. I have a feeling the answer is no, but that's OK. Then I'll have a question for him if your answer is no. For him, I'm sure. For you. First I'm going to have said, then I'm going to ask you. I'll say yes. It's that easy. Oh, boy. Any final parting shots, then? Read on these men here. They're not authoritative like scripture, but read on Polycarp. Irenaeus, Tertullian has lots of stuff, read on them. They have some great insight into what the early church was going through, and you'll see it again today. So yeah, some of it's not easy to read. It is, it's first century, so there have been some good translations of people to get it to us though, but you know, read on them. And that's why I appreciate it. Does somebody mind closing us in prayer?