I'm gonna force some interaction today, so... I don't know what that was. Is that mine? Is that somebody else's? Anyways, I'm going to force some interaction this time. The big umbrella we looked at the second week was Gnosticism. So can I get some characteristics of Gnosticism before we look at this week? Because, again, I said Gnosticism wasn't fine-tuned. You can say, you know, Arianism denied the divinity of Christ. That can be narrowed. But Gnosticism is kind of a big umbrella that encompassed a lot of different areas. So who remembers anything from Gnosticism's umbrella? That's sort of like secret knowledge. Secret knowledge is one of them. The Nazis claim to have a special revelation. The continued or special, I'll put continued there because As we looked at last week, the canon of scripture, the closed canon, and why, especially with Marcion, picking and choosing, not just the books, but he even edited the Gospel of Luke to take out anything about Christ being born of a virgin. What are some other characteristics? You can cheat and look at your page though, there's one on there. Yep, call that the duality. specifically this thing of the physical, the material being corrupted and evil, and then the spiritual being good or righteous or beautiful or different flavors. So again, whereas Gnosticism, I'd say it's a big umbrella that covered a lot of different areas, the duality was definitely one. And again, remember that Gnosticism is Knowing so whereas you have agnostic versus Gnostic. Gnostic knows something so you have a Gnostic atheist which is a lot more hard-nosed than an agnostic atheist who says I can't know for sure if there's not a God so at least I can work with that. So an agnostic is positive view if you're a Atheist, but if you're a Christian that's agnostic like I believe there might be a God but I can't know for sure That's a bad place to be as well. But this is you know, not covering that So again, just going over the terms but Gnostics secret knowledge this special revelation this duality. We looked at Marcion who had a different understanding of even the duality where he completely separated the Old Testament and the New Testament and created two gods in opposition to each other and And we looked at the importance of the canon being verified. It's not that there was a canon created, and you'll hear different people who, everybody's a history major when it fits their view. You'll find it's like everybody's a political major on Eastern European politics right now. But I'm gonna focus specifically this week on the duality, this material being corrupt, the physical being corrupt, and the immaterial or the spiritual being enlightened or good, because of the heresy of docetism we're gonna look at this week. But before we get into that though, I wanted to look at how we defend our orthodoxy. And a couple weeks back I used the, C.S. Lewis, he talks about chronological snobbery, and I do like that the author of this series did use that. Chronological snobbery being that, well, here we are in 2022. I'm a lot more advanced in my knowledge than somebody in the first century, so why am I going to listen to them about what they had to battle? I'm smarter than them. We know more today. I don't have to look at the historical battles they had to make a response to this kind of a heresy. Well, if the heresy is continuing to evolve and recapitulate itself, yes, we need to look at how they battled it. And so how we defend orthodoxy, a good place to start is in history. And I know a lot of people don't like history because it can get bogged down and boring, unless you're a geek. Yes, I'm being called a geek. I've been called worse. I'll take geek. But looking at the church fathers, And as I said, docetism just means to seem. That's the Greek word, to seem or to appear. So it's not a specific person we're going to attribute this to, but it is a philosophy that continued from the early church into the second century. We're going to see some defenses against it by some of these church fathers. But just to give the rundown, so we have the apostles and how we can Trust what the apostles say is in the revealed word of God. So we have our New Testament, all right? The apostles and others who were led by the spirit were given this word to reveal to us in God's holy scripture. So New Testament, we have the apostles, all right? Now, not every apostle has a book form. And then we have like Luke who was just with the apostles. So he was a disciple of Christ during this time, saw these things, witnessed them. So he can be trusted as well as the Holy Spirit testifying to that. But the apostles also had their disciples. I'm not saying that they were having disciples as replacing Christ, but we have those who went with them and their missionaries and we call them the church fathers. All right, so as the apostles were being martyred, they had their students, I'm gonna call them students for the sake of not confusing, so they had their students who they were teaching these things, this orthodoxy, this truth of God. Some of them had more of the New Testament letters, some of them didn't. We looked at Justin Martyr last week, but I put a couple on your page here. Again, how we defend our orthodoxy, and this is what they did. So I've got Ignatius of Antioch. And again, history is hard because there are going to be some names that the Catholic Church gives all these as saints. So you'll see that not just in the Catholic Church, but others have called these saints. But even Ignatius, there's another Ignatius who's, I believe it was Ignatius of the Jesuits. Am I correct on that, John? I think it was a different Ignatius, you know, centuries later that founded the Jesuits. But Ignatius of Antioch here was one of John, the beloved disciple, one of his students, one of his disciples, and Polycarp. So those two are two of the church fathers that we can look at their writings. Is it inspired by God, their writings, their letters? No. But you're going to see a lot of them, and we're going to look at one section here in a little bit, that they're repeating what was taught to them by these apostles. So they are using the Word of God in their continued defense of orthodoxy. So Ignatius of Antioch, and then Polycarp. I've got just some little bios for them there so you can get to know them. Justin Martyr, he was a pagan. And again, these are first century, so you can see some of the dates there. These are first century, where they didn't have a, you know, go to the store and buy whatever translation of the Bible you wanted. All right, so this was not something that was just readily available, but they were taught by either oral tradition or there were some letters that were being disseminated that they had. And Irenaeus was a little bit later coming into that. And there's Clement. If you look up history, there's going to be two Clements. One of them is who they say was given the popehood directly from Peter. So that's one that I thought, I think that's Clement of Rome, but there was another Clement. church father who had some writings that again was battling a lot of the unorthodoxy coming into the church. So again, just to give some background on some of these church fathers, because we're going to focus on two of them, John's disciples, John's students, how they had to counter this docetism. So looking at page two, and I love the Lexham Bible Dictionary. You're gonna see that referenced a lot in the handouts that I use. I don't agree with everything they do, but they give a pretty good definition about everything out there. So anything I've been looking for, the Lexham Bible Dictionary has had something for me to reference. But docetism, as I said, comes from the Greek word, the verb meaning to seem or to appear. It's difficult to delineate the key ideas. As I said, there was not a distinct sect, whereas we saw with the Marcion, he created churches and was planting these churches. We don't see that with docetism. It was permeating, it was growing, and it says, the Christological ideas and theological underpinnings that are common to almost all variations of Docetism in the early church period. And perhaps most foundationally, Docetic theology rejects the notion that Jesus Christ actually lived in a physical human body. Instead, they assert that Jesus only appeared to be in human form. He only seemed to be in human form. That's where this word Docetism, that's where this idea comes from. And that goes right back to the Gnostics. It is a form of Gnosticism here. So historically though, we looked at the Judaizers, but that's not the only Jewish sects that were coming out of the first century. And the Ebionites is one I have here. So if you remember Jews in the first century, we saw them battling Christ. So they were trying to grab a hold of him to murder him, which they eventually succeeded in God's providence according to his decree. So the Jews had no problem believing that this was a real physical man, truly man. All right, and then the Ebionites, they are also going to hold on to that. They were early heretical sect. They had the ascetic lifestyle. They observed the Mosaic law, and they argued that God adopted Christ at his baptism. So again, here's a physical man, that Jesus was a physical man who existed, but they attribute no deity to him. And this is not the same that we're going to see coming forward in the future to the Arianism, where they reject the divinity of Christ. But this is something going to this duality. We're going to see the flip side here. Docetism is not doubting the divinity of Christ. What they're doubting is Him being truly man. So they have no problem with the truly God, that He is spiritually divine. They're denying His divinity. Manhood his physicalness and again that goes back to the the second week of teaching on Gnosticism where creation is bad So how can we have this sinless? Savior if he was also born in this corrupt flesh this material is their understanding and also It was appealing to pagan communities So pagans had this idea of well if this is your God and he is able to suffer and go through this humiliation What kind of a God is that? So in their watering down of Christianity, well, of course, okay, well, no, he just appeared to do that, so I could relate to him, because he only appeared to be suffering and stuff, but he's still a powerful God. So even the pagan communities were a little bit more sympathetic to that. Okay, all right, he didn't suffer like a man, it just appeared that he did because he was compassionate for me. So again, we're gonna see that, and go ahead. I was gonna say, I remember a long time ago, I watched this movie, He was going to a martial arts tournament or something. And he was walking through the desert, and he met all these people. And he met this one guy who was like sitting in a pot. Y'all remember? Yeah. And he was sitting in a pot, right? And he wanted to reach a level of spirituality. So he was sitting over here. That was the Bruce Lee movie that he never did. That's the one. Yeah, he was sitting in a pot. That's exactly what it was. He had me a kung fu. And he was supposed to gain some sort of spirituality. It is Eastern mysticism, but also remember the Hellenistic understanding. They had this idea too that the flesh was evil and wicked. So they wanted to attain this enlightenment state. And my higher enlightenment is not necessarily the same as yours. And if you don't get where I'm coming from, it's because you haven't reached that level yet. So yeah, the same thing with this level of secret knowledge. The Eastern mysticism just adds in Kung Fu, which makes it a little bit more appealing to If you don't know, then I'm not going to tell you. Yeah, but it appealed to them. So Christ's only appearing to be human. And like I said, that's suffering. So we're going to look at some scripture, though, because that's my first question. How do we defend against this? My first go to is not looking at the church fathers, but I just wanted to bring them up because I like the history and we're going to see how they did use scripture to refute these heresies and the teachings. And Anyways, I'm going to get ahead of myself. So, the early church appealed to the apostles' teachings in the New Testament. That's why I've got this hierarchy here. So, you have the apostles, you have the church fathers, and then of course we'll have other theologians that we'll see picked up on a lot of these ideas and that's where we're going to get our creeds are going to come from what these men were teaching and how they looked at scripture and then trying to you know, finalize the right and left perimeters for, no, this is what we're supposed to believe. You start going to this other area. Yes, we want them pagans to, you know, accept Christ. Okay, well, let's water him down so that he's not all that the scripture says he is, so that he's appealing to them. That's not... That's not doing anybody any good, so it's even, again, the best intentions, and we're gonna see that, and if we do get rabbit trail, which I hope we do later, just some conversations come up, and that caused accidental heresies, or somebody trying to defend a certain property of God, attribute of God, and they end up going down the heretical path. It's not always an intentional, we're gonna spit at God. I said there was some, yes, we believe Jesus was a man, but he wasn't divine. All right, this isn't that type of thing. This is the opposite. Yes, he was divine, but spiritual. And I don't have the whole thing here. This is only a part of that creed. But Ignatius, and like I said, the author of this Know the Heretics study, he provides some interesting areas for me to dive into. But I have approached it a little bit differently. But this is one area where I like that he hit up Ignatius and Polycarp, like I said, two of John's students. And they're looking at this docetic infiltration there a little bit differently. Ignatius, and this is in the Greek, so the translation is going to look a little bit... If you hear on Sunday morning, reading like this, it's somebody who is translating on the fly. They're reading it from their Greek or Hebrew and translating on the fly, so it ends up sounding a little bit like this, which I think is awesome, but just so you understand, this is Ignatius, and basically you're going to see in this right here elements that are going to later be found in the Apostles' Creed. His whole creed is longer than the Apostles' Creed, but it includes God the Father, creation, Christ, the Holy Spirit, resurrection, but we're focusing on this part right here. Ignatius writes, Be deaf, therefore, when any would speak to you apart from, or at variance with, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. who was descended from the family of David, born of Mary, who truly was born both of God and of the Virgin, truly took a body, for the Word became flesh and dwelt among us without sin, ate and drank truly, truly suffered persecution under Pontius Pilate, and was truly, and not in appearance, crucified and died. who was also truly raised from the dead and rose after three days, his father raising him up. And after having spent 40 days with the apostles, was received up to the father and sits on his right hand, waiting till his enemies are put under his feet." You notice he says truly a lot in this. What he's trying to battle is, and his approach is what we believe, the positiveness to this. Here's what we positively agree with. Here is Orthodox rule of faith for us. Christ, Jesus, descended from the lineage of David, truly born, yes, of God and of Mary. And again, we're going to see when people start trying to look at the hypostatic union, the two natures of Christ, incidentally coming up with their own heresies, trying to find this. But here's just a quick creed of what that looks like and he truly suffered he truly dealt among us the word became flesh he's using this language to battle against this you know material being bad so christ was not material he could have been physical he only appeared to be physical all right whereas polycarp went to the negative aspect where he's actually saying no here's what we don't do we don't go into this docetic understanding And he uses his instructor's words. So as I said, he was also a disciple of John. And he, you're going to see, I have the reference down there what he's using, but Polycarp writes, for whosoever does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is Antichrist. And whosoever does not confess the testimony of the cross is of the devil. And whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lust and says that there is neither a resurrection nor a judgment, he is the firstborn of Satan. And as you study polycarp, that's one of his favorite insults. Like I say, last week when Marcian was like, hey, do you remember me? Of course I remember you. You're the firstborn of Satan. So that seems to be his, hey, brother. Hey, firstborn of Satan. Those are his two areas. So I can appreciate that. But you notice the words there, and I have below that 1 John 4, 1-3, if somebody will read that, and we'll see the teaching that influenced Polycarp, the spirit leading that influenced Polycarp in his defense of Orthodox Christianity. Beloved, do not believe every spirit. Attest the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out to the world. By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard is coming and now is in the world already. So see, polycarp is not coming up with something that's contrary to scriptures. So right off the bat, anybody who's, I don't need to study the early church fathers, Well, it's a good example. They're not authoritative, but it's a good example. They were battling something that went against what the apostles were teaching, what was revealed to them through Christ and His Spirit, and he's using that same thing. You can go up and look at Ignatius, and if you were to refer where he got his scripture references from, it's all from scripture. Now Polycarp, no, this, and he's using one of John's letters. Here's my defense. So we can see how what they're attacking is not just a blind. And again, I say attacking, and I want to just so we have an understanding. When we are dealing with somebody who might be an heir, we're not militantly attacking. So when I say attacking, I'm not talking about that. There is this what we call ironic conversation. So we have a disagreement here, especially when we are trying to defend our understanding of the reverence we have for God and his word. But I say attacking just in opposition, so when I say attacking, don't think I'm like, yeah, you are the firstborn of Satan, which I am gonna start using that, though. But. No, I got in a conversation with one of my friends, I think it was last week or this weekend, and we was talking about that, and I said, you know, sometimes, you know, we Christians, we try to reinvent the wheel. We got 2,000 years of And Jesus said that in Matthew, I don't know what chapter he said, I'm sending you teachers. You got 2,000 years of teachers and pastors that went through all kinds of things and learned from the Bible, learned from God, and shared that. And then today we have people, they become Christians and they don't want to hear about You know, confessions or you don't want to learn doctrine or anything like that. It's just Jesus. And that's probably where the church is failing in the United States. You don't look to the ones before us. Yeah, I need Jesus. Where do you find Jesus? Well, in the Bible, but I also don't believe in the Bible, so... So that's what we looked at with Marcion last week. He didn't have a, he had a faith. I'm not gonna say it was the faith because the way he just totally eviscerated scripture. But yeah, we do look at that. Well, I only need Jesus or I only need the Bible. I don't need somebody else to tell me the right and left parameters. Okay, well then you end up with this. Yeah, of course Jesus was real spiritual savior. You end up sitting in a pot of water. Yes, waiting for enlightenment. I saw your sisters the other day. I do the camera from time to time, and Zoe was teaching them how to get into the meditation stance, and I was like, stop that now. What? Yes, just stop it now. I know you're watching on bubble guppies or something, but stop. Poor Joseph, he couldn't cross his legs though, so I had to watch it and laugh a little bit. But anyways, no, you're absolutely right, and that's why I love the history of it because, even going to the confession, I know some friends that say that, you know, I don't like that you refer to the confession. It helps me formulate thoughts. If I want to give you a doctrine, I have to go through a bunch of books and stuff to give the entire thought. Look up Trinity. Where are you going to see Trinity in here? Where do you go to to show me Trinity in Scripture? And it's right, well, but you have to go here. Okay, so I'm just gonna use what godly men before me have done. They've already summarized it and came up with the scripture references. That's what I'm using it as to point me to the final authority. It's smart. When you need to figure out a big math number, you can get a stretch pad and a pencil, or some of us use calculators, which I did see something funny, because I like the memes anyways. Like, you know, all those teachers that said you weren't gonna walk around with a calculator in your pocket, ha ha, and everybody's got their phones now. The teachers were all wrong, but anyways, use the resources, and you don't have to agree with everything in these, but there's good stuff. I say if you read all of Ignatius' Creed, it is wordy, but again, they're translating it from the Greek over to, that's a Philip Schaff does that one, but, and if you look at the bottom of the pages, I do have the references where I get that, so Philip Schaff, the creeds of Christendom is where I get a lot of these early creeds and confessions, and we have in the library. And the Polycarp I took from the Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians. But yes, the Apostolic Fathers and the Early Church Fathers and then the Heresies. recirculate. And in the third century, we're having to get some of the bishops that are having to fight this stuff. Third and fourth century, we're now having to get together with councils like, wait a minute, this is bigger than just, you know, Jim over here. This is now Jim, Thomas, and John in different areas. We need to get collectively the leaders of these areas now and formulate something and defend our faith. Then we get the councils. So again, I'm not saying that everybody should like history, but having at least a general understanding of the history of church, of God's church, how he preserved it. Because there is going to be some times when you see that it's like, well, how did all this stuff happen? Well, it happened, but God has preserved his people. He has his remnant. God has preserved, his word is preserved. God has not failed. Contrary to what we see in history and where we get the naysayers and stuff, well, what about all this? We still have his preserved word. We still have his spirit. And he has, as you're always saying, nothing's gonna prevail against the church. I love that you bring up that scripture often. I'm like, yes, we see it. Well, what's happening now? Well, yes, the church is being attacked, Nothing's going to prevail against it. Even if we're all martyred, it's not going to prevail against it because we're going to be in glory with Christ. Coming down through history, the creeds, and then I've got the confession here. Again, this is not my final authority, but the 8th chapter, which we went over, of Christ the Mediator, and they're going to use some of this language that we see in the 4th century councils and creeds, same language that we see in the 1st century creeds and words of the church fathers, and the same scripture that we have in our New Testament. And specifically in paragraph 2 of chapter 8, this is from the modern confession, the Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, is truly and eternally God. He is the brightness of the Father's glory, the same in substance and equal with Him. He made the world and sustains and governs everything He has made. When the fullness of time came, he took upon himself human nature, with all the essential properties and common weaknesses of it, but without sin. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The Holy Spirit came down upon her, and the power of the Most High overshadowed her. Thus he was born of a woman from the tribe of Judah, a descendant of Abraham and David, in fulfillment of the Scriptures. Two whole, perfect, and distinct natures were inseparably joined together in one person without converting one into the other or mixing them together to produce a different or blended nature. This person is truly God and truly man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and humanity." Again, that's a mouthful, but what's awesome about the confession, and I've got it on the next page for you, is the scripture references. So, well, how do I know what the confession says is true? Well, you don't have to take the confession at its word, but it has done an awesome job of summarizing and giving you the scripture references. So speaking of Christ and his humanity, John 1, 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. Glory is of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Okay, well, he seemed to be this way. No, no, the word became flesh. Not the word appeared to become flesh. So you're having to stretch it as it is to have a docetic understanding. Somebody read Galatians 4.4. Born. I don't know how you could appear to be born without being born. Having been in a hospital, that would be unimaginable. Again, you see that language? That's where the confession comes up in the language. Same place that these early defenders of the faith came up with it from Scripture. I get that. Sometimes it's easier to defend against somebody with your own words, but go to Scripture. All right, and sometimes that's difficult. I don't believe any of scripture. Okay, well, if you're not gonna take what I say from scripture, then I really can't have a conversation with you because this is gonna be my authority. You're gonna appeal to whatever higher power and continue on with that for your final authority, and I've already landed on mine, and we just can't go on with that. All right, go to, somebody read Hebrews 2.14. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil. And Hebrews is awesome, because it starts getting into the reason that Christ had to also have this truly man nature. Alright, and that one right there, to share in the flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook the same things, that through death he might destroy the one. Okay, so we start seeing this, well, And I go back to Joseph again. He just got some crazy questions, but he, during one of John's sermons there mentioned Jesus dying on the cross. And he just stopped and looked at me and told me, God can't die. So you're correct. Jesus is God. You're also correct, son. Jesus died on the cross. Once again, you are correct. But God can't die. You got it, buddy. And as you, I pray, grow and are called and grow in His faith, you're going to start understanding and be able to hopefully articulate that better than I ever could. So, Yes, there is this understanding that God became flesh and that was necessary for our salvation. To restore and reclaim and redeem what we are, He became what we are. That's a necessity. Of course, we can get into that whole doctrine and side trail as well. Hebrews 2.17 Therefore, he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. And here in Hebrews 4.15 is where a lot of them try to come up with this understanding. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Well, no, he only appeared to be that so he can sympathize with us. That's not what sympathy means. That's not how you do that. So even at a basic... logical, common sense, you know, rendering that's false. And again, they're going to use some, this is why the canon is important to understand, and it wasn't something arbitrary, but there is the, I think it's the Gospel of Peter, that talks about how Christ died on the cross without saying a word, and the Doctrine and Covenants, we'll see, he didn't even speak, he didn't give any indication that he was suffering at all, so he only appeared to be flesh. Well, that goes contrary to what we read in the other accounts of the crucifixion. Or, they say that it was who carried the cross, Simon. So the one who carried the cross for Christ was actually the one who was crucified while Christ stood behind laughing at the ignorance of the people. Like, you can't kill me, I'm God. Like, okay, but again, that goes against the rest of Scripture. It goes against the intention and the necessary means for our salvation. But this is the teaching of the Docetist. It's interesting because I just had this conversation last week with somebody about the canon, and particularly like when we are talking about the apostolic fathers, you know, they didn't have a closed canon officially, but the Gospel of John was written in 90 AD, which is within 30 years of Christ being dead. So, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Thomas, those are like 2, 3, 400 AD. you're talking about Gnosticism is alive and well. So they're not even, there's no verifiable stuff to that. So when somebody says, well, what about the gospel of Mary Magdalene? What about it? It's not a real gospel. And that's the thing with that is when we, because we use the word gospel and all of a sudden we go, well, it must be real. But it's not for reals, it's for fakes. So, yeah, knowing that is important. Like, by the time the apostolic fathers, you know, or the church fathers come after the apostles, that canon, all the books that were scripture, were done. Period. And that's important. And as I said, even when you're looking at their writings, because they did write letters. The polycarp is a letter to the Philippi believers. So this is a church that we already know was spoken to by Paul in his letter. This is a real church. These are real believers. Polycarp's writing a letter, but it's not under inspiration and that kind of authority. It's a different kind of authority. It's appealing to brothers like we do now. But again, looking at it, he is using scripture to you know, re-educate, or... And that's where you get, like, so we have deep fakes today, which are really, really cool, but they had fakes back then, too. It's called the pseudepigrapha. In other words, I would write a letter, but I want people to take me seriously, so I would say, by the Apostle Paul. fake back then to get my theology out there. So they have fakes just like us. Name drop to give it some authenticity. I'm glad that Schaff has this because a lot of it is in Greek, so that first century especially, you're not going to find English. In fact, you're not going to find English until many centuries later because we're going to get into the different languages and you're going to get into Latin. So excluding those languages from being studied is a detriment to us because we see the heresies that were battled. All right, even looking at today, everybody, well, everybody speaks English. Well, one, no, and that's not, yet again, I love the King James, it's a fantastic book, but Paul was not writing to these churches in the King James English. He was speaking in Greek. I still remember somebody said that if your pastor is trying to correct the King James of the Greek, leave that church and find a real church. Baffles me. But, anyways, let's look at some more scriptures here. Matthew 1.23 says, Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which means God with us. These are just a lot of scriptures that the Confession used to show this idea of truly God and truly man. Yeah, Luke, we have the account of Luke. And again, like I said, remember last week, Marcion, to keep his belief from being questioned, he just edited the book of Luke. So Christ wasn't born a woman. He just appeared magically from the air at the wedding. All right, and then later on, what about this? No, he edited these books to fit what he wanted to. And he used the 10 letters of Paul, again, to give him some authority, but he edited those as well. Galatians, speaking of these different things, because he had animosity towards the Jews. So yes, like where even Christ, you know, salvation is of the Jews. Well, nope, cut that part out. And, Romans 9.5, to them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ. So we have this understanding of this physicality of Christ. You can ask somebody to explain the hypostatic union, which is just the two natures of Christ. And that's what we're going to get into in the upcoming weeks with, OK, I'll explain it. Well, no, that's heresy, Patrick. I'm going to explain it. That's also heresy, Patrick. So it gets very difficult in trying to be faithful. This is the problem too, is to try to be faithful and you end up stepping in heresy. So it's not an intentional thing all the time. We're going to do like I like to do here now, looking into some of the contemporary examples of what we see in this docetic understanding. I'm going to keep that there for a second. And I believe that this is the problem from everything else. This I totally disagree with, but the reason for it, appeal to unbelievers. We have to make the word of God palatable. It has to taste good. If we start saying things that people don't like or sharing those hard verses there that might make them feel bad because they're living that sin, now let's not talk about that. All right, so it's not just recreating Christ in an image that they want, it's trying to appeal. I'm sorry, God does not need you to water down his scripture to get somebody to believe in him. That is the work of God, that is the Holy Spirit. We can be the means, but... Most of the time it's us having to get out of the way kind of a thing there. Understanding what we went over, let's get some contemporary examples of what we are looking at. Last week we looked at them throwing out the Old Testament, which again is just a reinvention. As I said, that Gnostic umbrella covers a lot, but this Dostoevsky understanding, Christ wasn't physical. And even to the extreme where we had Christ was physical but not God, then we went to Christ was God spiritually but not man, and now we have those, well Christ didn't even exist, prove he existed. We have historical accounts from not just scripture, since you want to throw that out. We have secular historians who have accounted for the realistic existence of Jesus. If you want to say he wasn't divine, that's a different argument, but he existed. Try to even take that out. So let's go a step further and just completely eradicate an existence of Jesus at all. Any examples, contemporary? I'm not going to try doing all the designs. One of the most mass-marketed, docetic teaching tools that we use today, and you see it all the time, and we've all probably looked at it, is the picture of Jesus walking on the beach with the man or the woman, and then one set of footprints. And that's where Jesus carried it. That's not the intent of that. Originally it was intended to say, Jesus appeared to be a man, and that's why there are no footprints on the beach. But the man was real. And so it's been changed, but that's the original intent of that. It was a docenic way of teaching. Yes, the floating spiritual body. As you start seeing, a lot of these beliefs blend in together, so they are stealing from each other, they are borrowing. That's another thing of the Gnostics, they would borrow from different areas. We like this Eastern man sitting in his kettle on the beach, getting enlightenment. Ooh, we like this over here, it's got the prayer beads going. Alright, why? Because it's mystical, and if you do it enough times and go through the circle, and there are a lot of religions, so I know a lot of people automatically think of prayer beads. They either go to a rosary, but the Eastern, you look at India especially, there are lots of prayer beads that they have for their different sacraments as well in these different religions. So, it's global. Alright, I know someone, yeah, I believe in Jesus. You know, he was a good man. He was a good teacher. Okay, well that's, again, that flip side of it, so you're giving credit to him being physical, but not divine. Sometimes the emphasis on God is love. If God is love, why would he disagree with two men who truly love each other? You know? They kind of throw that in there, you know, God is love. Get the wrath part. Get the holy part, get the love part. Yeah, we see it. Again, I'm going back, I like the way he builds onto it, but Marcion with his, let's get rid of scripture. First of all, let's get rid of the Old Testament, and then let's get rid of the parts of the New Testament we don't like. So if God truly, well, because God said, well, I don't believe in that stuff. Well, we're having a hard time here then, because if you're not appealing to the authority of scripture in its entirety, we already have a problem there. I use last week they said it's a good thing God created highlighters and then they go on to show the hypocrisy and how they highlighted the parts of the Bible that they liked and ignored the other stuff. You did exactly what you accused conservative Christians of doing. There is that though. We do get caught up in that. I've been guilty of that. I know others have where you get dogmatic in something and you lose that witness because you're so focused on this that you are missing that other part. All right, yes, we need to be reverent of God and his word, but I promise you that if you fail, God's not gonna tumble because, oh, I didn't do this right. That's arrogant on our part. We should be diligent in our study, we should be diligent in how we speak to others, but God has preserved his word and his spirit is continuing on without or in spite of our actions a lot of times. You never can let God down because you were never holding him up. Really, I've got some tough shoulders, though. I thought that was me. I definitely know that's kept people, even earlier on in my Christian walk, as far as evangelizing to other people, because I felt like I didn't know enough. And so at that point, I'm thinking, man, I don't want to tell the gospel wrong to somebody, because I might screw up somebody's salvation. And then when you start to realize help somebody get saved, I'm like an instrument of God's mercy, but myself, my own actions, is not what saves somebody. I can't, you know, if I tell somebody and share the gospel with them, you know, I mean, I'm planting a seed, but, you know, God gets the water and growth, or the growth, that's what it was, yeah. Your bumbled mumbling might have been the means that he used to effectually call that saint into his repentance and faith, yeah. I remember that too. We had our outreach and we had celebration afterwards. People come back, yeah, went to 10 houses, all 10 of them got saved. I've been doing this for three years now and I haven't seen one single person get converted, so I am terrible at this. They're up to 500 over here, but we went to one couple and it was just a great fellowship time. They went on to join a church and serve in the church. And so thinking about John, this is what makes me so happy, seeing my children continue on in the faith. I'm not saying they're my children, but I was like, that's what it was about. It wasn't all these numbers or anything. It was a true being used of God and not thinking that it was up to us, because we did. We were always discouraged. Man, they're up to 500. What are we doing wrong here? I need to work on my delivery here, my sales pitch. No, no, no, no. That's the problem. You're not selling God. And that is another contemporary thing. We need to sell God. So to make him palatable to who we're selling him to, let's change it up. Oh, you like the LGBT? Well, yeah, God does love, so let's not worry about that. And you said, no, it's wrong. That's what scripture says. Well, I don't like this part of it. OK, well, we won't talk about that. So don't worry about that. That was written by a misogynistic Paul. Don't worry about that. Yeah, I think misogynistic Paul. 2 Timothy, when he charges him and says, you know, preach the word, be ready in season, out of season, to reprove, rebuke, and thwart with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths. But you be sober in all things and go hard since through the work of evangelists, fulfill your ministry. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that went to a rally a while back at Freedom Biker Church, and Daniel Aiken was speaking, and Dr. Randy White was speaking, everyone was introducing him. And I love Randy, but he made a really big mistake. He goes, this is Dr. Aitken, professor of theology, and what theology and preaching have to do with one another, I don't know. And I'm sitting there, and I'm like, because I had Aitken as a professor. I know where Aitken stands. And about a third way through the sermon, he goes, and oh, by the way, theology and preaching always go together. I mean, he just, like, off the top rope. So, if you're going to a place where you're not hearing sound doctrine, if you're going to a place where you're not being confronted with a holy God, you really have to ask yourself, what am I doing? this is the issue, and you have God is love. Yeah, God is love, but God is righteous, God is just, God is perfect, God is immutable, God is impassable, He's God. So that's what happens is if you really think about it, most of the time you're hearing the same sermon over and over again, an altar call at the end of it, but it's the same sermon. You never really get confronted with a holy God. If you never get confronted with a holy God, you never really get confronted and you think you're okay, but you're not. And so, I mean, it's interesting, because that's what Paul was teaching. Well, and like what you just said there, too, that's why last week we looked at that, where they were looking at it, and it was ironical. It's like, how can you disassociate salvation from the law, when that's how your sins are brought to light? That's how your need for the Savior comes up. If it doesn't matter, then why do you even have a right or wrong? You know, speaking with Marcion and Marcionism, But yeah, and I like Paul saying that, so people think, oh, that's what's coming in the future. No, that wasn't too long after he wrote that, that started happening. People needed their ears tickled. And I get that, even with the best intention, and we probably will get sidetracked a little bit, which is fine, because that's the purpose of this class. But the best of intentions, trying to, you know, I don't want to, especially with family, I don't want to hurt my family's relationship with me. So I know how they feel about this. I'm not going to mention that part. We're going to keep that part about God from them as we're talking to them. That's the hardest area where I've had too. You know what? I don't want to do this. I know they're going to be offended. No, no, no. I'm sorry. The gospel is offensive to those that aren't of God and it's going to call the ones who are of God. So you need to be bold in that proclamation. Yes. Um, but best intentions because John was, I was saying John was talking to him. Go ahead. And then I'll hit you off of what you were saying. Like I kind of had, And I was trying to tell him about God, and he's like, man, I think I want to learn more about this. I don't want to hear any of this anti-homosexual stuff. I don't want to hear anything about abortion." And I'm like, it's not build a god. You don't get to pick what parts you want. You don't just get to have the parts you like and put that together and say, that's God. You have to take it in its entirety. Well, if you're building the god, you're basically just worshiping yourself. Yeah, exactly. I think a lot of it today with this is the unity part, you know? Yeah, I agree. When you have, when you have, Christians tell you, well, you know, talking about that and, you know, saying that's wrong, something that's hurtful and, you know, and you're like, well, I'm not trying to hurt you, but, you know, I'm going to tell you the truth, you know? And it's sort of like, sort of like a resistance to that. I don't know. I was watching a YouTube channel where they were debating, I was watching a debate, and it's like a liberal, liberal theologian. And the guy asked him, he said, if God told you homosexuality is wrong, would you believe him? And the guy wouldn't answer the question. And I said, well, do you believe in the Bible? He said, yeah. I said, well, then if God said homosexuality, he wouldn't answer the question. He's like, stay away from that. Yeah, I think you had to turn the other doors there, so. Yeah, had to put that up there because we get in here and I'm like, you know what, we don't have a way of monitoring up front anymore there, so if somebody comes in, but. You guys do know there's a buzzer on that door, right? So I know some people come in and I forget to leave practice on time and unlock the door, so just buzz the buzzer, we'll at least hear that. Knocking, we don't always hear, but. Yeah, um, we're gonna go into it anyways, just because I like the idea. And John, he was talking earlier about person and Oh, I'm getting arguments with people back there. He likes to bring up something. I guess he was looking up a doctrine he hadn't heard of before, and a 10-year-old post from my Theology Word of the Days came up with traduci-ism. And, like, what is that? Has anybody heard of that? Traduci-ism? Yeah. I haven't heard of that, so I don't know what it is. Well, that's what I'm talking about. I'm not going to go back and remember what word it was. Wait a minute, this is... Okay, so... And again, it's trying to battle Gnosticism. When... is your spirit given to you. They believe that man is a body and a soul. When does that soul come in? There was the creationist understanding that God creates the soul out of nothing and then at conception gives the soul. And the traditionalism is no, it's much like your physical is being from your parents, the soul is also from your parents. And to say otherwise is being Gnostic, where you believe that the spirit and the body are two separate things. So again, trying to defend a doctrinal belief, an orthodox belief that no, you are body and soul. It gets into this argument of brothers arguing over what's really, they're both orthodox positions really. What is it? I don't know. I'm not there at conception. I can only look at what the word of God says and it's silent on a lot more than we like to, you know, make battles for. So who's right? Well, what's the Bible say to that? Does either of those go against orthodox understanding the rule of faith? No. Then Why are you guys so heated in it? Not saying you were, but when you brought it up, I'm like, I don't know. I just get accused. I put a theology word up there and people are like, well, why'd you put that up there? Yeah, Grudem's got a good chapter on that, actually. On traditionism? He speaks on Linda's soul and all that. Yes, created at that time. Which is how they explain the passage of the fallen nature. Because what they're saying is that God wouldn't create a sinful soul, like a fallen soul, so that that's why, because everything God creates is perfect, so therefore... Can't be of God. So nature is another word for soul. Well, like, if you have a fallen world, a fallen nature... They're saying that that fallen nature is, yes, because of your being created, not that God had anything to do with that. So after God, like I said, after God created Adam, breathed into Adam, there was no more breathing of spirit in anybody. That's all from the fallen parents. And again, not that I wanted to get into all that, but showing that brothers are trying to define what they believe Scripture teaches, and neither of them is a heresy. In fact, I lean the creation side, but I'm going to have to look up what you said on Grudem there now, John. Yes, and it's like and I go back to John Dagg at the beginning of his biblical theology is like people get so caught up in all the Agricultural how does this seed react in this temperature with this soil with this type of water? How many times a day they get so caught up in the behind the scenes on that they never plant the seed? And now you starve because you didn't plant your crop because you were so busy on trying to figure out all these different minute details. And that's how people in theology get, especially in certain circles. I'm like, yes, you dove into something that was irrelevant. Now I'm curious. I want to go read this stuff, but it's, it's irrelevant. And yeah, cause that's, I mean, the guy that I was talking to online, I was like, I don't know what this is or where you heard it or where it's from or anything. And he's like, Oh, well it's, you know, foundational. reform Protestants ought to believe this. And I was just like, well, what is it called? And he's like, yeah, Christianism. And that's when I looked up in the search bar on Facebook, I was like, posts from, you know, things I was talking about, the first name I was Jim. Jim Schnepp. And it was a post of yours from 10 years ago, giving the definition of it. So basically, you had a group of seminary students in a library, and they were thinking to themselves, wow, I'm a Christian. Which, as I said, I like that conversation, because we're going to see coming up in some of the heresies. Well, how do we define this now? Here's what the Creed says. Here's what Scripture says about the two natures of Christ. What does that look like? Well, it's like this heresy. No, see, you made a heresy. I'm going to defend it now. It's like this heresy. We're like a heresy. So somewhere intentional, we get into Arianism, which is a lot different than just a misspeaking of we're trying to define this and I did it wrong. It's a no, I'm going to take away this divinity and go into this other area. We get into your secret revelation and different ideas there. Anybody else have something there? And like I said, I know docetism again is another broad one. We will get into some more specific heretics, but this is just another philosophy. And again, you see it, the making it palatable is a part that I really wanted to focus on there. Making the gospel palatable. I don't want to be offensive. God even says in his word that his truth is offensive and foolish to the wise. Anything else to add? Any questions? That's why I like the right and left parameters. Again, it's not my authority, but it helps keep you from, and maybe you want to, well, why? Let me go over. Oh, okay. I see what's nasty on that side. Oh, that's even worse. Let me come back into the lanes here. And you know, why do you want to drive in a ditch when you have this nice paved road right here? That's going to get you, you know, as it were. Anything else? I appreciate everybody coming tonight, the input. I hope you see the new setup there, and we'll try to get to, you know, some, well, we have the clipboard there if you want to write on it, but just a way to class this up here. Something out there again? All right. All right, well, does somebody want to volunteer to close us in prayer?