(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Hello everybody, it's me Mr. Tall23 back there video, I just want to do a quick sound check first to make sure the sound is working. So the sound is working. So in this video I want to talk about a tactic, I want to address the tactic which is commonly used by various different sects and denominations of Christianity who claim to be right, who claim to be the true church, who claim to have true doctrines and that's the tactic of trying to use quotes from historical Christian theologians and thinkers in order to prove that what they believe is ancient, particularly they quote from the theologians and church leaders known to the Catholics, Orthodox and mainstream Protestants as the church fathers which are basically a collection of various Christian writers from the second, third, fourth and fifth centuries, the period of the early church, the period in which Christianity was just beginning. Now many groups who believe in certain doctrines and practices will point back to these so-called church fathers and look at them as authorities on these subjects, on different doctrines of the Bible. Now the claim is that because they're closer to the first century believers that means that they're closer to the truth. Now the logic behind this is the older you get the more right you are. Roman Catholics are especially guilty of this way of thinking. If you attack their church they'll just blindly claim well the Roman Catholic Church was founded by Jesus in the first century which is wrong because there's no record of that in the Bible but what they'll do is often quote from certain epistles from the second and third centuries from different theologians outside of the Bible in an attempt to show that they have been viewed as the supreme church for a long time. Now the Hebrew roots movement attempts this as well and so does other Sabbath keeping movements like the Seventh-day Adventists. They'll show that many early Christians continued to keep the Sabbath and I personally am guilty of using this tactic. I've done it in the past and I tried to get rid of some of my older videos where I use this tactic because it's not really effective and sometimes I've also used something similar but in a different way. In the past I've used quotations from early church writers but the main difference is that these quotes have often been showing that the Roman Catholics and others don't do enough of reading their own personal saints. They'll claim that the doctrine of faith alone was something invented by the reformers for example yet there are a lot of quotes from early Christians including saints of the Roman Catholic Church who say that we're saved by faith alone and I made a video about that over a year and a half ago. So it is useful sometimes to defend a pseudo-historical or to defend yourself against pseudo-historical attempts to refute the doctrines that are clearly outlined in the Bible. That could be useful but using it as a way to establish the truth, as a way to teach doctrine to say this is what the early church believed, this is what the early Christians believed, that's ridiculous, it's absurd. To say our church is right, our doctrine is true because most ancient believers believed it is ignorant and fallacious and I'll explain why. And by the way it's the same thing that people who subscribe to the Alexandrian text type do which is not the main focus of this video but the concept still applies because they'll say that the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus are more accurate simply because they're older even though they contradict each other, even though they have a lot of missing verses, they contradict themselves, they have empty spaces, places where things have been erased and rewritten and they've been buried for over a millennium despite God's promise to preserve his word for all generations. And even though there are thousands of manuscripts Byzantine text type, the majority text which disagrees with these two particular manuscripts, they'll go with the two just because they're slightly older. But the principle which I'm about to talk about applies to that as well as the quoting church fathers thing which a lot of Christians will do. That claiming it's accurate just because it's older, it means absolutely nothing. Whether it's a quote from a church father or an early version of the Bible, just because it's older, that doesn't mean anything. So here I'm going to talk about the uselessness of historical research and examination of writings of the church fathers as they're called and by the way I should just talk about this now that Jesus said it called no man fathers. So that's what they call them. I don't call them the church fathers, they're just Christians. And some of them weren't even Christians. Some of them were false prophets, but some of them were true Christians. They're just early Christians from the second, third, fourth, fifth centuries, et cetera. So I think it's absurd to use these to determine what true believers of the Bible believe. I mean why don't we just use the Bible to see what Paul and then the apostles believed because they actually wrote it instead of, you know, seeing what people said 200 years later why don't we see what the apostles said. So it's a faulty methodology of investigation for several reasons. First of all, undoubtedly there are a lot of texts which have not survived. Only a handful of writings survived from the first and second centuries outside of the Bible itself, despite there being thousands of Christians throughout the world. I seriously doubt that only a dozen people in the period of a century wrote anything about what Christians believed at this time. If texts were not copied or stored away to prevent decay, then the likelihood of their survival is much smaller. The only reason that we know what people like Justin Martyr or Arrhenius of Lyon said is because their texts are quoted by either later authors or their writings were copied and preserved through the following centuries. That's the only reason why we have their texts today. So there's no way to know the whole picture because unlike the word of God itself, there was no divine preservation at work with these writings. God promised to preserve his own word, to preserve the Bible, but not the later theological works which are not inspired scripture. So the improbability that these church fathers represent an accurate depiction of what the apostles believed is further bolstered by the fact that there were a lot of heretics at that time. And that's the main point that I want to make in this video. For some odd reason, textual critics believe that the older manuscript is, and now I'm going into the Alexandria text subject, they believe that the older the manuscript is, the more right it must be. Now in the same way cults and different religious movements out there, they claim to restore ancient teachings, they have the idea that the older the church father or the older the writing is, the more right they are. Now that attitude is, or the attitude of these people is seemingly that churches and the Bible evolve over time. Now that's ridiculous. Changes over time did not need to take place in order for heresies to creep in. Only one copy of the Bible was necessary to change what the Bible says, and only one church had to go off the rails into false doctrine to create a new religious movement which preached heresies. It didn't have to evolve over centuries. If you have the original text of the Bible, somebody can produce a first generation copy with errors in it. It's possible. It's not like you just can't have a bunch of errors in it just one generation afterwards. Makes no sense. Now if you have an original church, which like the church is mentioned in the New Testament, the church of Ephesus or the church at Corinth or the church at Smyrna, etc., it only took one heretic to come in to start leading people away into false doctrine. A little leaveneth the whole lump, the Bible says. And that's not just speculation by the way because the scriptures tell us that even in the days of the apostles, heresies were widespread in common. Consider the following passages and verses in Acts 20 verse 28 to 31. It says take heed therefore unto yourselves and to all the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers to feed the church of God which he hath purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own self shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch and remember that by the space of three years I cease not to warn every one night and day with tears. That concurred the chapter 2 verse 17 says for we are not as many which corrupt the word of God but as of sincerity but as of God in the sight of God's bequeen Christ. Galatians chapter 1 verse 6 to 7 says I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that I called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel which is not another but there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. Galatians chapter 2 verse 4 says and that because of false brethren, unawares brought in who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus that they might bring us again into bondage. 2 Peter chapter 2 verse 1 but there are false prophets also among the people even as there shall be false teachers among you who privily shall bring in damnable heresies even denying the Lord that bought them and bring upon themselves swift destruction. First John chapter 4 verse 1 says beloved believe not every spirit but try the spirits whether they are of God because many false prophets are gone out into the world. 2 chapter 1 verse 3 to 4 beloved when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation it was needful for me to write unto you and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints for there are certain men crept in unawares who are before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. There are a lot of passages in the New Testament which warn churches and warn believers of false prophets and false teachers. It's not like there's just a minority of false teachers either but rather even in the first century apostolic age there were many false teachers. Paul, Peter, John, and Jude all write about these false teachers and warn the brethren of them. It's written many false prophets are gone out into the world and we are not as many which corrupt the word of God. The simple fact is that heretics and false prophets were more common than those who adhered to the truth even in the time of the first century. Now notice that these verses that I just read also state that these ungodly men and false brethren have crept in unawares or unawares brought in. In 2 Peter 2 it says they privily shall bring in damnable heresies. Now this is not an open practice. Freely means in secret. False prophets conceal themselves and come in as wolves in sheep's clothing. Hourly they appear as a prophet of God. They appear as a teacher of the Bible but inwardly they're ravening wolves. The false doctrine and heresies brought into the churches was done so in secret and it deceived many so that the gospel of Christ was perverted. The word of God was corrupted and people learned false doctrine. Jesus taught when speaking of false prophets that a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. It said that it cannot bring forth good fruit. So the false prophets only created more false prophets and heretics who did not believe the truth. They didn't lead anybody to the Lord. They only multiplied and led more people astray. Therefore if even in the first century there were warnings about many false teachers and heretics creeping into churches, what use is it to quote from something 100 or 200 years later to prove what early Christians believe like the modern groups do? Just because somebody believed the same false doctrine 1900 years ago doesn't make it any more correct. All it does is just proves the point being made by the verses that I just read. The Hebrew roots movement and Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians, they like to search for ancient mentions of their doctrines and practices. If we talk about the Hebrew roots movement for example, there was indeed a sect known as the Nazarenes which prevailed into the fourth century that looks very similar to the modern day Messianic or Hebrew roots movement. However, there were also other churches which believed different things. There were Gnostics since at least the late first century, records of false teachers like a guy named Ositheos and Corinthos and Menander and Ebion, all these Gnostics that taught false doctrine from the time of the apostles' lives. So just because they're old, just because it dates back to the first or the second century doesn't mean it's right. There were a lot of heretics in the first century. So quoting from Tertullian in the third century or Augustine in the fourth and fifth centuries doesn't prove anything. Don't expect me to believe tradition over the word of God. It makes no sense. So if anybody ever comes to me saying, well, here's what the church fathers said so we should believe it, I don't care because the church fathers are not my authority. God is my authority. The scriptures are our source of doctrine and practice. If what you say contradicts the clear testimony of the word of God, I could care less what Ignatius or Cyprian or any of these other so-called church fathers say. And it goes the same thing with Baptists too, because a lot of Baptists make the same mistake, but they don't go back to the church fathers. They just go back 100 or 200 years. They go back to pastors of the past and they appeal to the historical people who call themselves Baptists. Well, you know what, just because Charles Spurgeon called himself a Baptist doesn't mean he is. He was a Calvinist. And I could care less what Charles Spurgeon or D.L. Moody or Lester Roloff or Charles Wesley or any of these other guys said. If what they say goes against what the Bible says, I'm going to believe the Bible over them. I don't care about tradition. The Bible is our source of authority if we are Christians. Now another stupid thing that I keep hearing is that you need to understand the historical context, which more often than not is wrong when people talk about the historical context. When somebody starts using that phrase, unless they go into what the Bible says, you can almost guarantee that what they'll say is factually incorrect. First of all, Jesus said that the Holy Ghost will teach us of all things in John 14, 26. And it says in 1 John 2, 27 that we need not that a man teach us. Now that shows us that if you need something more than the word of God and the Spirit as your teacher to understand what the Bible says, it's false doctrine. It's written forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. The word of God is timeless when it comes to doctrinal truths. There's no such thing as a historical context. If you need to go to read another book, something other than the Bible in order to understand the Bible or have somebody teach you about the historical context, which as I pointed out most of the time when people say that they're wrong, a lot of people really don't really do deep research into history. They just find it off some website somewhere. They just quote Alexander Hislop or some person from like the 1800s who was writing a history book before they'd even done most of the modern archeology. They'll go and quote some history book and claim that that is our authority and use that to interpret the Bible. But it's not a spiritual thing that they're learning. This is a spiritual book. It's spiritually discerned, the Bible says. So you're learning man's wisdom, not the word of God, if you're doing it that way. Now, the only use historical research has is not for understanding doctrine nor for knowing what early Christians believe, because both of those things are just nonsensical as I just explained. But to learn things which are out of the scope of what the Bible teaches, for example, knowing who wrote certain gospels, like the book of Matthew, the book itself does not have a claimed author. There's nowhere in the book of Matthew where it says this is written by Matthew. But there are early sources that say it was written by Matthew. Now let's say it wasn't written by Matthew, okay, who cares? It doesn't affect doctrine at all. Whether or not it was written by Matthew makes no difference. It's still the word of God, whether or not it has Matthew at the beginning of the book or not. It's a lot easier, though, when everybody knows what the book of Matthew is to say Matthew 1 or Matthew 2 or Matthew 3, verse whatever. So it could have been written by another apostle or another disciple, but it's the word of God and that's the point. It doesn't matter what the title of the book is. Another thing that we can see is the historical persecution of Christians beyond what is written in the book of Acts. The New Testament only goes up to a few decades following the time of Christ up to the 50s or 60s AD, but it doesn't go into detail about much beyond that, beyond the time of the destruction of the temple and into the Roman persecutions of the Christians such as by Nero and by Domitian who reigned in the late first century. So from historical sources we can know how certain apostles died and examples of how Christianity continued to spread, but again, it doesn't affect doctrine. If we're going to establish a doctrinal truth, again, I'm not saying that there's no use for history, but when it comes to interpreting the Bible, no, we shouldn't base our doctrines on what we think Christians believed back then unless the Bible shows us that that's what they believe. So it's interesting knowledge to know about how the apostles died and where they went off into the world beyond what the Bible says after the time that the New Testament was written, but it's not really important. We can't really learn spiritual truths from those things. Now another thing that historical research can help us with is learning the fulfillment of Bible prophecy because there are several things which are fulfilled in the intertestamental period between the New Testament and the Old Testament, approximately 400 year period between Malachi and Matthew. We can see that little intertestamental period, however, one mistake, and also after that as well after the New Testament, but one mistake people often do is getting that backward. They look at modern events or events throughout history and they try to fit it into what the Bible says rather than letting the Spirit teach them what a prophecy means and then seeing how it was fulfilled throughout history. Again, it doesn't affect doctrine because whether or not you agree with what has been fulfilled or what has not been fulfilled does not change what the Scriptures actually say. The Holy Spirit teaches you what the prophecy means, what will happen. Now we don't need to know exactly when it was fulfilled or what period of time that took place or anything like that in order to understand what the prophecy is. We believe that the Bible is God's Word and that it was either fulfilled in the past or it will be fulfilled in the future, but not everybody needs to absolutely know the exact time when it was fulfilled and every single little detail of the event and everything like that. So the point I'm trying to make in this video is not ignorantly try to use what the Church Fathers say or what historians say about Christianity in an attempt to prove that their beliefs are right. It makes no difference what early Christians believed if it was not those Christians who wrote by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost in the New Testament. My source of doctrine is the Bible, not the world. And even during the time the Bible was still being written, so when the book of Galatians was being written, that was written after there were already heretics creeping into the Galatian church. So if 200 years later we find some guy from Galatia or around that area in Asia Minor, we find somebody who is a church historian or theologian or whatever, we say, see look, this guy from 180 AD or something or 230 AD, it's way back then, it's a long time ago, so therefore it must be right. That makes no sense. If there were people lying about what the Bible teaches, teaching false doctrine like 20 years after Jesus died, then of course you're going to find a lot of false prophets 200 years later. So quoting from Justin Martyr or all these other guys, I don't care what they say. What they say contradicts what the Holy Ghost says in the Bible, it doesn't matter at all. It doesn't matter what they say, it matters what the Bible says. There's false prophets today. Even some saved people today, they're not necessarily false prophets, but they do teach wrong things. They've been deceived. They'll teach false doctrine because they don't understand the Bible or they don't read the Bible rather or they're being led astray by somebody who taught them some false doctrine or whatever. And it's just how false doctrine spreads. Somebody hears it and then they repeat it and then more people hear it and they repeat it, et cetera. So just because in the year 200 or 300 or whatever somebody mentioned the Catholic Church or something, that doesn't mean that the Bible teaches the Catholic Church because you'll never find that word in the Bible anywhere or anything about the universal church in the Bible. You'll never find that in the scriptures. It's all just man-made doctrine which came later. So that's it for this video. Thank you everybody for watching and goodbye. God bless you.