So I trust that this teaching will be beneficial to folks and they can watch it at their own leisure as they have time. So as we get going this morning, I'd like to open us up in prayer. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your church. We thank you that you established your church and your covenant with your people. And that despite all of the difficulties that ensued throughout the centuries, people being persecuted for serving you, false doctrine, unfaithful teachers, that you have upheld these people, your people, throughout the centuries. We thank you for the witness, and we thank you for the opportunity to learn about you, your covenant, and as that covenant unfolds throughout the centuries as you work through your people. Grant that what we study today may be edifying to us also, and that we may be inspired as we go forward by this witness, that we may leave also a witness. To your name's honor and glory, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so yesterday I was with my daughter, my oldest daughter, and we had gone out for lunch, and we got to talking about family history. And that's something that we're both kind of interested in. And so we have family history that has been written down and recorded on both sides of my family. And so we can look back through the centuries, and we can see where our ancestors came from, and who they were, and kind of how they lived. We know where they lived. My father's side, they came from what was called the Weinstraße in Germany, where it was kind of the wine region, which is now part of France. My mom's side was from the northern part of the Netherlands, and we knew that they were reformed, and we can see that. And so looking back through the centuries, standing here today, I know that who those people were and how they lived and what they believed had an impact on me today. And it's part of the reason that I'm standing here today. That's how God has worked through his covenant. But what fascinated us is that, you know, we're scratching the surface here. Somebody bothered to start writing things down a few hundred years ago so that we could see what was going on. But there's so much that we don't know. Nowadays, of course, you have these DNA tests that will allow you to look back not only centuries but even thousands of years and kind of see where your family originated, where they came from, where they lived, what they were like. And I think, Fred, you're even able to gain some medical insights as to problems that you might have based upon your own historical DNA. And so this has become a thriving industry because people are so fascinated with it because For one thing, who those people were, and how they lived, and their own makeup, that has something to do, much to do, with how we are today, and what we think, and how we live. This is also true of the church. So when we think about church history, I think the group here, and maybe some of those watching or listening, will be somewhat familiar with a little bit of church history. We'll be familiar with the Book of Acts. We might know something about some of the church fathers. Something about Constantine came along at some point, Roman Empire, something about the empire adopting Christianity, invasion of the Goths, the fall of Rome, Dark Ages, out pops Martin Luther with his 95 Theses, and we have the Reformation, along came Calvin and Knox and the rest of these gentlemen, and here we are today. with a little bit of John Edwards and a few others thrown in the mix along the way. But what happened in between all of that time? What was the early church like? Does it have anything to do with who we are and how we think? The answer, I think, is absolutely. And we're going to see that as we go forward here. So again, we're going to spend the first few minutes here recapping some of the stuff that we started talking about about six months ago, because it's been a long time. And then we're going to move on. So we've got a lot to cover today. Don't know if we're going to get to all of it. But I have entitled my lesson today as, I think it's on your sheets, Monsters and Martyrs. Monsters, martyrs, and Martians, excuse me. So if you're looking at that and you're starting to think about little green men, stop. It's not what it's about, and we're going to learn more about that in a little bit. We will get to the monsters, and we'll get a little bit to the martyrs, I think, too. I don't know if we'll get to the Martians, but we'll see. All right. So as we think about where we were six months ago, we were talking about the ancient church at the time of Christ. What were things like? How did people worship? And we know at that time, Judaism existed in a couple of different forms. It existed in the form of those Jews that live in Palestine, and we can think about those folks as kind of the conservative Hebraic Jews, right? And there was another group, the diaspora. These people were living all over the empire, okay? They had been spread throughout the empire. And these Jews were more Hellenistic. They moved away from Palestine. They became more influenced by the outside culture. And of course, that had an impact on how they thought and how they lived. But they still maintained, of course, the Jewish faith and traditions. I have to tell you, when I was researching this, I learned a lot myself. And some of the things that I learned really fascinated me. If you think about the Roman Empire and how people acted traditionally, today we have religious freedom, and so we have various beliefs, we have various doctrines being taught in different churches, and somehow we all live together. It wasn't always the case, of course. Now, the Romans were not monotheists. They were polytheists, and so they had their whole pantheon of Roman gods. And if you were a group that was subjugated by the Roman Empire, Well, they wouldn't try to remove everything that you believe. They wouldn't try to make you stop worshiping your own gods. You could still worship Anubis or whatever god it was, the sun god, perhaps, that you worship. But hey, in addition to those gods, you can also worship the gods of the Roman pantheon. You can worship the Roman emperor. You can burn incense in his name. You can worship him and pray for him and to him. And as long as you did that, And as long as you paid your taxes, you were okay. Of course, if we know anything about the Jews, we know that the theme that rings out throughout the Jewish service would be hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord he is one, right? There is no mixing of different faiths and different doctrines with the Jews. They maintain their own faith in God. And so that was a problem for them. But here's the thing. You have any idea how many Jews there were at the time? Millions. So if we think about how big the Roman Empire was at this point, the Roman Empire consisted of about 60 million people, as my research tells me. There were probably about 8 million Jews at the time living in the Roman world. And so somewhere between 10 and 20% is what historians tell us was the percentage of Jews within the Roman Empire. That's astonishing to me. You think about how many Jews there are out there today. There are about 15 million according to my own research. So it's somehow doubled in number more or less. and at a point where the world went from maybe 180 million people to billions and billions, right? And of course, we are still very familiar with Jews today. We have some idea about their beliefs, and they're very well known. But you can imagine, so many Jewish people living within the Roman Empire. Well, the Roman Empire can't very well be very extreme in dealing with these people. Number one, because they remain faithful no matter what you do to them, to this one God. And number two, there are just so many of them. So what do you do? Long story short here is that they had special privileges. So if you were Jewish, you can maintain your own beliefs. As long as you paid your taxes, you got away with it. And that's pretty much. the beginning of the Christian church. In the beginning days, when the Romans looked at Christians, what did they see? They saw Jews, okay? And so, coming in through that historical context, the Christians originally were not persecuted by the state. We read about persecutions that came later, but originally, we read in the book of Acts about persecution by the Jews and by the Jewish leaders of Christians. They were turned out of the synagogues, they were beaten, and things like this. But that always came from the Jews and not from the Gentiles. Okay, one thing I wanted to add in addition to this is how the Jews worshiped. How did the Jews worship? I know not everybody can hear this, but somebody, where did the Jews go if they wanted to worship? Where did Paul go if he wanted to worship, or he wanted to teach? Synagogue, if you look up Acts 17 verses 1 and 2, you read the first couple of verses, which I won't take the time to do right now because we've got a lot to cover. He went to the synagogues, and he would teach in the synagogues. And what did they do in the synagogues? They read the scriptures, and they contemplated the scriptures together. They would teach. They would pray. And so this was the background of the Christian believers at the time. They went to the synagogue. These Christian believers, of course, if you asked a Christian believer, are you worshiping a new faith or a new God, and what would the answer be? No. I believe in the Messiah. The scriptures tell me that the Messiah was coming in the fullness of time. That time has come, the Messiah has come. I believe in the Messiah. This is nothing new. So what is that Christian going to do? Where is that Christian going to worship, and how? He's going to continue to go to the synagogue where he's always gone, and why not? This is a continuation of what they had always held to be true. A series of things happened that made that impossible, and so let's talk about that a few minutes. Christians, through time, became a very distinct group. So a few things we can focus in on that really had a significant impact. Around the year 51 AD, the Emperor Claudius expelled the Jews from Rome due to disorderly conduct because of Crestus. So we can imagine who that Crestus was, according to the Roman historian, Suetonius. I hope I've got that name right. Suetonius. So if you read Acts verse 2, you read about the same thing happening from the scripture. So we have the scriptural references to this. We have the Roman historian reference to this as well. So these people were being thrown out of where they'd lived. They had to go and live elsewhere. Around 70 AD, we know what happened then. That was the first Jewish holocaust, right? Or a previous Jewish holocaust. Millions of Jews were killed in the siege of Jerusalem. and so many, many people were killed there. That eliminated Central Place of Worship and Gathering. Then, later, around 130, there was somebody else that came along that was declared to be the Messiah by Jewish leaders, and his name was Simeon Pinchosiba, and that guy actually gained quite a following, and he established an independent Jewish state that lasted for a few years until They could no longer hold out against the Roman Empire. So a lot of things happened, and over time, it became clear, these Christians, they're not really Jews, okay? And so, early on already, we see this separation taking place. So, what is difficult about that for the Christians? If you are now identified as a different faith from one that is protected by the state, what are you now? Something of an outlaw. Something of somebody who is easy prey on anybody that doesn't like them. When we think about early persecutions, we're not at a loss for prime examples. But probably one of the first examples that comes to mind here is the example of Nero. But before we get into talking about Nero a little bit, I would like to just think about why is it that people in those times might have taken it into their minds to persecute Christians? And we already talked about the kind of the legal reasons. So now let's think a little bit about the people themselves. How were Christians different? Well, they abstained from worshiping any visible gods. You might have heard the story about Polycarp, the early Christian leader and bishop who was brought before the authorities because of his Christian teachings. And he was a very old man at the time. And the people who were presiding over him had pity on him because of his age and because he was just a very well-known and very loved character. And so they said, look, all you have to do is say, down with the atheists or away with the atheists. and we can't, and we will let you live. And so Polycarp pointed out to, instead of himself, he pointed out to everybody else that was sitting around him, and he said, down with the atheists. In other words, he's saying, I'm not an atheist. I don't worship and bow down to the physical God that you've made that you can see, but that doesn't mean I'm an atheist. So that was an idea that people had. Christians were somehow atheists because they didn't worship the gods that people could see. They were reputed to eat the flesh of Christ. Of course, we know what that means. It's the holy sacrament. But you can imagine how that may have been perverted in the speech and minds of people who were gossiping. Eating somebody's flesh, it sounds like cannibalism. It sounds very strange. What is that all about? And when they would do that, when they would have the sacraments, of course, it was not something where just anybody could partake. It was those people who had been baptized and were accepted into the church, they would partake. So it was a little bit of a secret thing. It was not available to just anybody. And so that helped fan the flames of these rumors being spread and people gossiping. They often called each other brother and sister, including husbands, wives, and family members. So that was a little bit odd. Calling your wife sister, you can imagine what the uninitiated might think about that. So we talked about the secret meetings. They were known to pick up abandoned infants who were unclaimed and left exposed by their parents, and some pagans speculated that these infants were somehow being maltreated or somehow being involved with these love feasts that people were having, and we won't go more into that, but you can imagine what people might have said. Some Christians refused to serve in the military. And so that made them unpopular. By the way, if you look into this history a little bit, you'll find that those who did serve in the military were at one point kicked out of the military or they were just killed. So it was difficult because you didn't want to serve, you didn't want to not serve in a way. So there are a lot of things that made them very distinct. They're also regarded as obstinate. So some of the Romans just despised them because, you know what, no matter what you did to these people, they wouldn't recant. They're just obstinate. Why are they so obstinate? And so all of these things kind of came together to make people, Christian people, kind of the odd man out. And one final thing I'll mention here, many Christians refuse to take part and watch the games of the day. like gladiators or chariot racing. You can imagine why they would have had problems with certain of those games that normal people watched. And so, again, they were different than other people. And we know with human nature that if you're different, you can become an easy target. It's true from our children from their youngest days on. And it doesn't change when you get to be an adult. And it was just as true in those days as it is today. So now we have Christians being persecuted by the Jews and by Rome. So we talked about Nero being the prime example of this. Due to their unpopularity among the pagans and Jews, the Christians were terribly persecuted by both. One horrible example of this occurred as a result of the Great Fire of Rome, which started in June 1864 AD. You have probably heard the stories about Nero and how Nero perhaps even started this fire. A lot of people blamed him, and he didn't know what to do. Now, Nero became emperor in 54 AD, and he held himself to be something of an intellectual. He held himself to be something of an artist and a poet. Everybody else thought he was crazy, and not without reason. Nero was horribly cruel. We won't go into all his various types of behavior that led people to believe this, but we know among other things concerning Christians, what did he do? He tied them to stakes and set them on fire in the Pantheon, and he used them as human torches to illuminate the Colosseum. And so you can imagine the people watching that, what they would think. And he didn't just do this to Christians. He was a equal opportunity abuser. He abused many other people, including many members of his own family. We won't get into all of that, but just suffice it to say that he was a very cruel man. He was very well known for this. And so when the fire started in Rome, that eventually took something like 70% of the city down. People looked at Nero and said, This is your doing. And so Nero didn't know where to look. How could he deflect this blame that he was getting? Well, one easy target is, of course, the Christians. So who did he blame? The Christians. And what did he do? We have already talked about the example of the human torches. He did other things like taking Christians, throwing the skins of animals on them, and setting dogs upon the Christians. So this is the type of things that he would do. And so this persecution really wasn't full force by the time of Nero. You may know from your own reading about the history of the Christian church that when persecution comes, what happens as a result? Does the Christian church tend to die out? Is that what we know? That's not the case, right? Christians tend to spread and go other places and bring the message, right? And they often withstand this abuse. And so it was the case in these days. The Christians withstood this terrible persecution from both inside the Jewish community and by the Roman authorities. Some of them, of course, recanted, but many of them did not. Many of them bore a faithful testimony. We've already talked about Polycarp. Polycarp said, away with the atheists or down with the atheists. That was the end of his life. He was killed then for that. When the persecution started, the church grew stronger and stronger, and eventually the church became the dominant force within the Roman Empire, partly because of that. Okay, so you have the church growing and growing and growing, but they're beset with all these problems. They were persecuted by the Jews first, they were persecuted by the Romans next. In addition to this outward persecution, they had inward struggles. We read about some of those inward struggles in the Bible. You may have some examples in your head about when Paul is teaching and preaching, and he's giving one example after the other. Don't fall into this sin, don't fall into that sin. And so Christians were facing not only external persecution, but also internal bad teaching, what we would call heresy. So what do we do? when we're confronted with heresy today. If somebody confronts you and says something that is unbiblical or says something that is against the doctrine and teaching of our church, well, you might grab this, the Bible. Maybe you, like I, have a nice leather-bound Bible, even has a built-in concordance with comments, and that's very handy. We can go right to the Bible and we can show people what we believe and why, right? We can show people the Word of God. These people did not have that. The Bible, in the form that we have today, did not exist at that time. That is not to say they didn't have different scriptures. They had, certainly, different scriptures. Those scriptures were read in the synagogues early on. They were read among the Christian believers. But they didn't have the nice leather bound with all of the books together that we had. And so that was a little bit of a challenge for them. And that eventually resulted in the development of the canon of scripture that we have today. But the earliest Christians, they had these different writings, these different scriptures. They didn't have quite the resources that we have today. What else do we have today? How do we lay the Bible out and understand how different parts of the Bible come together to speak on important topics? Doctrine, where are these doctrines held? What are they called? The confessions and the creeds, right? So every once in a while, we recite different creeds here, don't we? The Apostles' Creed, we know that one. certain other creeds that we adhere to. We also have the Westminster Confession. We have the Heidelberg Catechism. And I think, Fred, you're going to be teaching next month about some of these doctrines. These people didn't have all these things worked out. So that resulted in the need to answer these false teachers and to answer the Roman authorities and the Jewish people who were accusing him of all of these things. Out of this came the great apologists and great teachers of the early church. And so we're going to be talking about some of these key apologists and key church leaders as we go forward. It is 10 o'clock. I think we started five minutes late. So can we go five minutes more? Yeah, I'm getting a thumbs up. OK. When we read in the scriptures, we read about different false beliefs, and one of them in particular, and I'm looking inside of my notes here, and I know I have it, but I don't see it, so I'm just going to grab my Bible. I do have it marked out. All right, I'm gonna read from Timothy, 1 Timothy 6, and I'm gonna read verse 20, which says, O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge, for by professing it, some have swerved from the faith. I think I have one more example here. If you'll bear with me one second. Here we are. I'm going to look now at 1 John 4, verses 1 and 2. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. For many false prophets have gone out into 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 Christ is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming and now is in the world already. I'm gonna read a note. My particular Bible is a Reformation Study Bible. There's an interesting note here that applies to this verse that I wanna share with you. John distinguishes the gospel from the error of the Docetists who said that Jesus Christ was not truly human. The humanity of Christ was essential if he was to die for our sins. So we read about Docetists. One of the key antagonists or one of the key enemies of the church early on were called the Gnostics. These Gnostics, they were a heretical group in the early church, and they claimed to possess a special superior knowledge of the apostolic message. The word Gnosticism, you might recognize the word itself. It's actually derived from the Greek word for knowledge, which is gnosis. It was not a single movement, so you could have different Gnostics that believed in different things. They weren't all necessarily agreed on the same points, but it all had to do with his special knowledge, right? So when we read Timothy, when we read John and other passages that talk about avoiding the special knowledge, it's talking about this, okay? So what do they hold in common? They had a special mystical knowledge reserved for those with a true understanding, which was key to salvation. They boasted that they possessed a special knowledge distinct and superior to the message of the early church. So let's get into, and this is gonna be kind of the last thing that we look at today, the key belief of the Gnostics, and then next week we'll get into the response of the Christian church to these Gnostics. Key beliefs of the Gnostics, which once again varied. There was the supreme being, right? There's a supreme being who created spirit beings. And these spirit beings had no physical bodies, all right? He had this, meaning this supreme being had no intention of creating physical beings. One of these beings that he created wanted to create something which resulted in the material world. So the material world, you, me, you, I, everybody else, We were all created, in this view, by some aberrant God-like creature, not by the supreme being himself. Since the world was created by a spirit, there are sparks of spirit in it. Guess who that is? That's us. We are those sparks of spirit. We are trapped in human bodies and need to be liberated. A spiritual messenger must come into this world and liberate us through gnosis to remind us who we are and to lead us to the struggle against our incarceration. Guess who that messenger is according to this gospel? Who is the Messiah? Jesus, Christ. Christ is the Messiah, but Christ's purpose is to liberate us in the way that's described here. Since matter is evil, Christ didn't really have a physical body, or if he did, it wasn't like ours, it only seemed to be like ours, and so we get back to the Dossetist, which we just read about in the Bible. And what does the word docetism mean? It means to seem. So it seemed like Jesus had a body, but he didn't really. That's a problem because we know that Jesus' work made the fact that he really had a body very important. What he accomplished made the fact that he had a body very important. We're going to get into that more next week. So, if you're in this school of thought, how do you live? Well, there's two basic ideas. One way was to try to control the body and its passions and to live a certain way. That was kind of door number one. And the other option was to let the body do whatever it wants and follow its own passions. And that was kind of the other option. And there were people that did both. So bringing it all together here, matter is evil or it's unreal. Human beings are actually eternal spirits. Our physical bodies imprison and mislead us. The goal of the Gnostic is to escape this body and escape this material world. So we already kind of read the text. I would love to keep going, but we've kind of gone beyond our time. So in our next message, we will talk about the advent or the coming of Martian. who was one of the key teachers of this early Gnostic movement. We're going to talk about what he believed, and we're going to talk about how the Christian church answered Marcion. And we'll find that these teachings, both from Marcion and obviously the response of the Christian church, are very much alive and with us today. So with that, I'm going to close. And we will continue on next week. Our Father in heaven, we thank you once again for the witness of your early church. When we read about the terrible persecutions which your people endured, we can only look to you and recognize that this was possible only by your guiding and sustaining hand. The age in which we live is not an age in which we, at this point, have to endure such difficulties. But Lord, we have difficulties of our own. We would ask also that you would reach down with your guiding and sustaining hand and also be with us today so that we may leave a witness, just as these people did, that glorifies your name. In Jesus' name, amen.