Welcome to another episode of Hax.

I'm your host, Steven Boyce.

Today I'm going to do an episode on my history a little bit, but also how it is relevant to the subject of the old time religion.

Growing up, we sang songs about the old time religion.

We spent many, many discussions and classes and seminars and special revival meetings discussing how it is better to stay on the old paths, not to forsake those old paths, but remain on them.

And not that I'm against this idea.

The problem is that I came to realize in my journey of faith is that the old time religion in the old paths in the fundamentalist movement wasn't old enough.

In fact, it was about 1900 years later from the older paths that we should all be walking on.

And So what I want to do is I want to take this episode, kind of discuss some of that journey, discuss the importance of it.

Now, if I explain it in this way, I was told that we were practicing the faith of the apostles like what we're doing is from the early church.

We are practicing in this independent fundamental Bible believing, Satan hating, God fearing movement that we are facing one of the great opportunities to be a part of the 1st century church.

In fact, one of the churches I was in growing up used to have this statement at the bottom of bulletins and things like that.

A 1st century church in a 21st century world.

Now I will say that this church specifically that I just listed was not a major part of the problem as it related this, although it had its issues.

But when you look at that slogan, 1st century church in a 21st century world, you are assuming that that church has 1st century practices in it.

Now what you come to realize is most of the 1st century practices, they're saying that they are practicing.

It's just that they believe the word of God because we believe the word of God.

We're 1st century church.

Well, it's not that simple.

It's not that easy.

In fact, there's much complexity that comes into play here.

Now in my background, just kind of giving you a vivid picture of what's going on here.

You would have this idea, church culture, this this culture comes into play that involved preaching as king, music as queen.

I mean, these are terminologies that were used in relation to what the church was doing that that the preaching is the king and that you're preaching time should exceed the queen time, long, long hours beyond that, the queen.

So I, I never really understood that lingo.

It sounds great, but, you know, preaching is king, music is queen.

Also, there was a big emphasis on altar calls.

You know, it didn't matter if it was in, you know, undergrad, you had Chapel five days a week.

There was always an altar call at the end of Chapel or on Sunday there was an altar call.

At revival meetings, there was an altar call.

What that means is they're inviting you to walk out of your seat in your Pew, to go forward to the bottom and and pray at the feet of the preacher or to go ask for prayer from the preacher.

Or maybe sometimes there was an assigned person that was there to pray with you.

So come on forward, come to the altar and receive some sort of spiritual something.

So that was kind of the invitation.

That was a big deal in there too.

Another thing was soul winning.

The idea of soul winning could involve constantly sharing your faith, not against that door to door big big thing, door to door knocking on doors.

You had soul winning nights, usually a Thursday night or sometimes churches would do it on Wednesday before the Wednesday evening service.

You would go out soul winning like this was, this is a big cultural thing and fundamentalism is we got to share our faith to everybody and anybody.

And even at the expense of inconveniencing and making people extremely uncomfortable at their own door.

We're going to do it.

We're going to, you know, use the we're just inviting people to church.

Meanwhile, you're, you're trying to convert them in a single conversation.

And the, and I did it for years.

I mean, listen, I mean, I, I, I got people to make the sinner's prayer probably just to get me off their porch dozens of times in my 20 years or so doing it.

And again, I'm not saying it's all bad.

I'm not saying people aren't being converted.

But the fruit of that is quite intriguing at how many of those people come to church afterward, how many of those people following in baptism, how many of those people become, I'm not saying that there weren't people that, that that didn't happen.

Listen, my, my family, my dad, my uncle, they're twins.

They were converted off of a man who picked up my uncle as a hitchhiker who stayed faithful to bringing the gospel to them in their home or in their trailer for for a couple of years before they finally converted.

Now that man showed interest not just in a single moment, but in a in a lifetime of pursuit.

I'm not saying that there's not positives that come from soul winning.

I am a product of someone who is persistently giving his life to soul winning.

I'm just saying these were these were things that were highly emphasized, no matter the technique, OK, this, this, this was win them all at all costs.

You know, they, they would misuse versus to even perpetuate such an idea.

And so these things were major emphasis.

We're majorly emphasized in these churches, in these Bible colleges, in fundamentalism.

Another thing that that is a part of a lot of fundamentalist groups is the King James, especially those that are King James only.

This is a major talking point.

There's no other translation that should be used.

The King James is perfect and fallible without error.

These are major talking points and debate points and my we had an entire class in undergrad on why you should use the King James Version.

It it downplayed all other English translations.

It downplayed all Greek text except for the Texas Receptus, which is in fact the Scrivener text.

We finally came to realize that after college because we weren't told there was more than one Texas Receptus, there were over 20, maybe even as much as 30.

If you want to be picky about the different Beza renditions and and revisions, you could say there's up to 30.

I would lower that number a little bit just on the basis of the fact that some of them are pretty much the same.

There's just a few nuances and some of those Beza revisions, but to each his own.

If you want to go up to 35, there are multiple revisions of the Texas Receptus and most people are using the Scrivener revision.

So these were major talking points in Bible college.

We had entire classes about it, didn't even learn anything other than this is it, There is no other.

This is the perfect preserved word of God from the 1st century to today, and we shouldn't use anything else.

And the King James perfectly mysteriously translated that Texas receptive, which of course I didn't use Scrivener because Scrivener wasn't even alive yet.

But somehow, some way, they perfectly use what Scribner later came up with, who preserved intentionally the King James translation from Beza, Stefanus, and Erasmus.

But, you know, don't let details get in the way of a good perfect Bible, and don't let the semantics get in the way of telling the truth.

These were major talking points in these fundamentalist groups.

And if it was Catholic, God forbid it was Catholic.

Unless it's Erasmus, first edition of creating what would become the TR.

That one's OK.

Even though he was a Catholic monk fighting against a different ideas that, you know, in the traditional sense, the Latin Vulgate was king.

How dare you challenge that Erasmus.

But he was, and to the day he died, a Roman Catholic monk.

OK, he's a Roman Catholic monk.

That's what he was.

So outside of him, if it's Catholic, it smells, feels, sounds, appears, anything Roman Catholic.

It is evil, it is Pagan.

It's another gospel that is the major mantra against Apostolic traditions, which leads to many of the other problems.

So where did I find the holes in many of these arguments?

When did it start becoming a reality to me that I'm being fed 1 liners and I'm being fed 1/2 truth?

Or a partial truth, or just a flat out false assertion?

Maybe a lot of it's out of ignorance, and honestly, I really believe that.

I I just want to backtrack here.

I want to get the benefit of the doubt.

A lot of this stuff, I do believe was out of blatant willful ignorance of people who just didn't know better.

Now, I do believe there are people on the other end of that that are doing the major teaching.

They do know better, and they are intentionally steering people in the wrong direction for propaganda and for their purpose.

I'm not going to call names because I can't prove, but it wouldn't surprise me if that is the case.

So where do things are falling apart from me?

Well, I had some honest moments with my own self, with history, with God, with family, with friends.

That led me to discuss a couple things.

One, who decided the Canon of scripture.

Naturally, I went into a PhD program at a Baptist school that is not independent fundamental Baptist.

They started out that way, but they're not anymore.

When I was at Louisiana Baptist Theological Seminary doing PhD work under Doctor Brock, one of the things that I had to do was study canonicity because the emphasis of my degree was in canonicity and textual criticism as it relates to 1st and 2nd century Christianity.

So it involved majorly those two points and even went into the 3rd century if you want to count Irenaeus of Leone's.

So one of the things that I started dealing with is who decided what was Canon and what was not.

We have 66 books.

Historically, they're broke down differently than how we have them.

The order, the number, some of that is insignificant.

For example, first Second Kings is the book of Kings, not 2 separate books.

Same thing with Chronicles.

A lot of times see Ezra, Nehemiah together.

But Jeremiah, it's like, well, yeah, we all agree Jeremiah, but some have shorter versions of Jeremiah and some have the Epistle of Jeremiah with it and some of the works of Baruch, and they're kind of seen together.

So these became problematic for me, too.

It's like, OK, so this is a little bit more in depth and not so simplistic as the way that I was taught.

Another question that came into mind is why did church history always start and end in Baptist history when I was in these schools?

Why was everything around Baptist history, particularly in the United States?

Why wasn't I given the full story outside of this myth of the Trail of Blood, which I've done an entire series?

If you're on YouTube, you can find that condensed and put into its own folder of series that have been done on here.

Tyler West and I went through that.

If you're listening on the podcast, go back about a year, you'll start finding the Baptist Trail of Blood myth series.

We did and we demonstrated that what this heritage that goes back beyond the Reformation period is a lie and never existed, and that these groups that are supposedly Baptist or Baptistic as some would correct me on, are not baptistic at all.

In fact, they don't hold any of the fundamental portions of the Baptist faith.

So we were given this idea that everything surrounded by Baptist history and the Baptist history was the true church, kept true throughout all the ages against corruptions, paganism and Romanism.

You start studying 2nd century Christianity the way that I had to do and you find out none of these groups sound anything like the Baptist Church.

None of them talk like a Baptist Church.

None of them believe like a Baptist Church.

None of them practice like a Baptist Church.

Where is this Baptist Church of being told exists?

Another question I had to wrestle with is what were sacraments and why do people call them sacraments?

What are they?

We didn't talk about that in school.

We didn't talk about them in any way, shape or form as they relate to sacraments.

Anything to do with communion, term they use, or Lord's Supper.

Nothing to do with baptism is connected to the word sacrament.

The one time I can think of, the one single time I can think of a professor mentioning it was actually during my master's degree.

I was listening to a lecture and the lecture went on and, and, and the professor went on and talked about how sacraments are sacrilegious.

And then they became a later invention by the church.

That's not what they were ever seen by in the New Testament.

And that the word isn't even used in the New Testament.

And then you go to Ephesians 5 and you see Paul talk about the marriage and how it is the moustery on the mystery of Christ in the church.

And then you go to the Latin Vulgate and go, oh, there's the word sacramentum right there.

There's the word sacrament.

And then you realize this is ridiculous.

I can't believe this guy just said that.

So these were things that became questions in my mind.

Why don't we use the word sacrament?

What did the church believe in sacrament?

How late is the invention?

Another issue was when you start getting into what is the final authority of all things?

Well Solascriptora of course.

I was in a church that didn't like Reformation theology and I was in a school that didn't like Reformation theology and undergrad.

So Solascriptora was held, but not with the terminology and the association with Luther or any of the Calvinistic reformers because the school I was in was definitely anti Calvinistic.

And so when we talked about Sola Scriptura, they did agree that the Bible is the only infallible authority and should be the only authority at all.

In fact, I would say that they weren't just Sola Scriptura, they are what people would call solo scriptura.

It is the only authority in the church.

It hypocritically because they had other authorities that were not that.

But let's just go on and say solo scriptora, issues of ecclesiology.

Who's in charge?

Who has the final authority in a church?

Things like history.

Why don't we study the Middle Ages in history?

Except to criticize him.

Like looking at Thomas Aquinas just to criticize him.

Or Saint Augustine of Hippo, except to criticize him for something Calvin corrupted about him later.

That's the only reason he ever came up.

So he's a bad guy too.

These are the only times these things were ever brought up.

So they become problematic for all of us.

They become problematic for what we do and what we think.

These became questions that I had in my mind.

So what was the turning point for me as it related to these things?

Well, my first encounter, as I stated, was really with the Apostolic Fathers, my PhD work.

I was introduced to a lot of the early texts like the dedicate 1st century or first Clement of Rome, the writing from Rome to the Corinthians, studying the life of Clement of Rome, what little we do have and what he said in that letter.

Then looking at things like the other epistle designated damn, like Second Clement, which I just released an article on on Academia Edu.

You can find that or Ignatius of Antioch, which I also two months ago released an article on him as well and the research and the work I did on his original letters.

So I'm sitting here studying these letters in Codex Age and I'm studying Ignatius of Antioch, and he's saying things that are just radical to what I'm in.

Clement is making assertions I've never heard before.

Then I'm reading other things in addition to that.

I'm going into the Shepherd of Hermes and it does not sound like once saved, only saved in there.

And it sounds exactly like baptismal regeneration.

And if you misunderstood in the first time, he repeats it about 6 more times in the book.

This vision that this person has is also after the age of the apostles.

So we are since cessation list, we believe the gifts ended.

And then I read the Shepherd of Hermit.

It's like these missions go against what I was taught.

What's up?

And the churches are using this letter and distributing it everywhere.

This started shaking my world.

Polycarp's letter to the Philippians.

He's a disciple of John.

He's saying things that don't jive with what I believe.

I was shaking at the core, studying these texts, studying the depths to the level of taking their Greek structure in some places of polycarp, for example, Latin, the epistle to Diagnetus.

Diagnetus from the Theats, this disciple, the apostle, reading how he defended the Christian faith in the 2nd century against paganism, Judaism and other forms of criticism.

I'm reading these letters and I'm going This doesn't sound, feel, look, or act like the church I've been raised in and trained in.

It was shattering.

I went into a state of crisis.

Their Christianity did not sound or look like my church.

Honestly, the shock of all of this didn't end because then I was posed with questions.

What am I going to do with these tests?

What am I going to do with the statement about the bishops?

What am I going to do with the hierarchy in the Church of ecclesiology?

What am I going to do with baptism and sacraments?

What am I going to do with the Real Presence in the Eucharist that I read right and clearly in multiple places of Ignatius of Antioch statements in just and Martyr talking about this liturgical setup of Church, looking at how the church practice things in relation to their their orthopraxy, not just their orthodoxy and looking at our orthopraxy and we're sitting there saying we're a 1st century church in a 21st century world.

Meanwhile, I'm reading the end of the 1st century in some of these documents at the beginning of the 2nd and I'm like, wait, not even close.

I'm not talking about the the decorations.

I'm not talking about the AC and the heating unit.

I'm not talking about modern clothing.

I'm not even getting into that.

I'm just speaking to that orthopraxy, very, very different.

And then I had to ask this one question that I ask people all the time.

I have been contacted by hundreds.

We have documented now every time somebody reaches out to me, it is documented on questions of church history and their current practice and their struggle.

We're over 350 something I believe last time I checked direct conversations with men and women who have reached out to this program in crisis.

And every single time and those that still listen to this program who have made transitions as a result of facts or you stayed the same but strengthened your understanding of things are really sure up some areas of weakness.

And we're so glad you continue to listen to us, even though you disagree with maybe some final conclusions.

We appreciate you.

We're glad to keep having you as an audience and, and your feedback and even disagreements.

There's nothing wrong with that.

But I always ask any of you, and I've always asked this, if these writings were by people like Patheus of Hariopolis, like Polycarpa Smyrna, like Clement of Rome, like the writers of the Ditake, like the writers that are going into possibly the Epistle of Barnabas.

If these men lived, breathed, talked, travelled with the apostles themselves, Ignatius with John appointed by Peter himself, if they knew the apostles, why don't we trust them?

How did they universally get it all wrong?

It's it's almost conspiratorial to assume that somehow, someway these men got together, corroborated a plan, and behind the scenes while everybody else is dying off in the apostle group, once John died around one O 2 during the time of trade and now boom, all of a sudden, guess what ends up happening?

Guess what ends up taking place in the middle of all of this?

Well, they get together, They have this meeting without airplanes, e-mail, Zoom calls, and they decide we're going to take over the system and change everything.

Peter, James, John, Paul, Bartholomew, Andrew, you know, all the way down the line of the apostles and go, you know, you know, we're not, we're not going to do that.

We're going to change everything that they did.

We're going to do our own thing.

We're going to create our own system and that there was some major form of apostasy by all of their students and the ones that didn't fall into this disappeared.

We don't know who they are.

They just individually, individually and invisibly existed apart from record, apart from historicity, and then just reappear in other forms in the middle of North Africa in the 5th century, like the Donatus or or some of these other groups like the Montanist.

No, see, I couldn't buy that.

In fact, that is the very thing that the Mormon Church teaches.

That is the very thing that J WS and New Age groups teach, that that the truth disappeared in the time after John died and everybody else went to the state of apostasy and then the New Age recaptured the old truth.

It is a dangerous thing, my Baptist friends, and I know, I know not all of you are like this, and I thank God for you.

But those that do not do this.

It is a dangerous thing to believe that the Apostolic age went into immediate apostasy by the direct descendants of the apostle students and that they universally conspired a plan to radically change the church.

And that in doing that they fell into a state of apostasy that was never recaptured again until the rise of if you want to say the Baptist Church, go even further.

That's where the JWS and Mormons are in a post enlightenment world.

That's where things recaptured.

We have now created a system of new age thinking that God failed to do what He sent his Son to do, that is to redeem his people.

And as Jesus said, I will build my church in the gates of Hadas will not prevail against it.

He failed to do that thing for 1600 or 1500 or 1800 depending which group you associate with.

All of those years when missing just completely disappeared and nobody knows what happened to the truth.

It just showed back up again.

Give me a break.

Give me a break folks.

That is conspiracy and dangerous, I may add.

So what what I took with me, that was good.

So let's let's kind of all right, so that these are the questions.

These are the things that I asked myself.

And then I had to then I had to struggle with some bitterness and resentment and things that were really just irritating me and causing me anger and frustration and bitterness.

And I really had to work through that.

And honestly, some people, you're still working through that five and seven years later.

Whatever you're doing didn't help.

It doesn't take this long.

I understand there's victims of abuse that will take longer.

I'm just talking about people who are surrounded by this nonsensical teaching.

I'm not talking about people who experience some sort of abuse.

I'm talking about people who are just taught wrong, given false information, or misled intentionally or ignorantly.

Recovering from this doesn't take that long as much as it does.

I'm changing directions.

I'm starting on a new path and I'm not going to let that affect the way I think anymore.

Ask these questions, work yourself out of them, study deeply, start your journey because you're going to ever be learning just as I am ever learning.

And we're going to constantly be developing more and more in our thought process, in our mind.

So again, none of those things are bad in themselves When it comes to shifting directions and making a change.

All of us need to make that change.

But but don't sit there and depression in a corner in a fetal position, sucking your thumb for five to seven years.

Don't do that.

But we all did struggle with some resentment, maybe some ideas.

And like, where was this 20 years ago?

Why am I just learning this now at 30 years old?

Why am I not, you know, me at 35, like I didn't know that I'm 35 years old and I'm just now learning this for the first time.

Why didn't I know that at 25?

These questions are going to come into your mind.

Yes.

And you, you relate with them and you deal with them accordingly.

But there are good things I don't want you to miss out on because not everything we were taught and fundamentalism was bad.

Let's take some positives.

Let's just pause here in the middle of negativity and jump into a positivity, OK?

What are some good things I took with me #1 things you still should cherish are things like a love for church.

Look, we were in church so much.

It was probably excessive and burning our families out.

We were there for Sunday school, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, soul winning and any other activities that came with it.

It felt like we lived at church.

Not a bad thing, and some people really benefited from that, but it also killed a lot of family time too.

But my parents are actually really good with this.

My parents were very, very balanced.

I will say this in the middle of criticizing a lot of this stuff, my parents have even come further out of some of that stuff than what they were 20 years ago.

And, and they were never bad.

Like we still went to movie theaters and got criticized for it.

We still listen to music we probably shouldn't have.

We still dress certain ways that was probably not permissible by other people in the church.

So I mean, I, I kudos to my parents for not buying into the full system.

But but really thinking through some of these things, there was a love and appreciation for being a church and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that and we should celebrate that.

Another thing is there was a love for the Bible.

I will say this, they did a heck of a job of teaching us the word of God and spending a lot of time in verse memorization, meditation and and Bible plan reading and then also study guides giving us good exegesis tools to do it.

I I cannot criticize that I can't criticize.

I can criticize some of the methodology, but I can't criticize the emphasis to rightly divide the word of truth as it was commonly said.

So a love for the Bible and a love for the church.

2 really big things.

Another thing was passion for holiness.

Like, I mean, fundamentalism to a fault teaches holy living.

The problem is, is they've wrongly defined it and practiced it in a way that was never heard of before and abused the term to the point where it lost all meaning.

And people hear it now and they just turn on a deaf, they just turn a deaf ear to it.

And then they turn on to a mindset of bitterness and resentment.

Holiness is not bad and it was rightly preached and rightly taught.

It was wrongly applied in many of circumstances and but I cannot fault them for their teaching of that also.

Traditional family values traditional church.

I am what's considered a traditionalist even in the movement I am a part of and in the Apostolic churches.

Traditionalism is a valuable thing, but the problem is, is the traditionalism in that world is detached from the ecclesiastical and really the theological means that gives us traditionalism that is fitting and right unto God.

It is completely disconnected from the Apostolic age.

It is completely separated from the purpose and meaning and identity that it was always intended to be at the beginning of the Church.

But I can't fault them for the emphasis again on holiness and the teaching of holiness.

Another positive was evangelical urgency, going in and evangelizing.

These were very positive things.

I'm trying to see sinners come and change their life.

There was a heavy emphasis on this.

A lot of repentance, sometimes to the point of guilt, but a lot of things that were in in mind for the teaching to instruct, equip and challenge and change.

These things were not bad in and of themselves, and we should walk away with positive mindsets toward those things.

So what I had to leave behind though.

So those are things I took with me that I think are very, very positive.

But what did I have to leave behind?

All right, the biggest one.

They reduced the sacraments to symbols.

Baptism has no spiritual ability.

It is just an outward symbol of an inward change.

Says no one until maybe Zwingli and the only other groups that de emphasized the sacraments of putting water on a person that does something spiritual and grace filled.

Or to take somebody and bring them before the altar of God who is baptized in Christ Jesus and offer them the body and blood of Christ through the bread and the wine.

The only people that devalued and put that down, we're Gnostics.

We're Dosatism and sarinthianism and other forms of the Gnostic sex.

Now I'm not saying Baptist or Gnostics.

I mean let's not be extreme here.

They don't believe what the Gnostics fundamental belief system is.

However, I will say in this instance that position takes on the form that only spiritual things can be used by God to do spiritual things, and that He would not use physical means to instill grace.

Like water, like bread, like wine, like oil, like frankincense.

These things cannot be used in a way to radically change a person's spiritual condition, even though it's all in the New Testament.

I mean, people are being healed through shadows and handkerchiefs.

I mean, forget all that, right?

Dead bones falling into graves, raising people from the dead off of another dead bone.

You know, these things that we see in Scripture, that those were only working then, that they don't work that way now.

Now it's all spiritual, only spiritual baptisms, only spiritual identity.

There is no physical change that's coming from water being on your body or anything like that.

You read the first second century fathers, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th.

Nowhere.

Only heretics.

Only heretics ever even suggested such a thing.

So the rejection of the sacraments that God would use physical means instituted by His teaching and His Word to do spiritual change and spiritual grace on a person, that became a part of my identity moving forward as a Christian because I realized that that is what Christians had practiced from day one.

And it is all in the New Testament.

It's not just even church history.

It's in the New Testament, if you're willing to see it as those who were taught by the apostles explained it and as they interpreted what Paul and Peter meant.

Like what did Peter mean when he says baptism now saves you?

What did it mean when Peter said repent and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ, and that this promise is for you and your children?

What did it mean when Jesus said this is my body, this is my blood?

What did that mean?

How did they interpret John 6?

How did they interpret Paul who repeats us in First Corinthians?

How did they repeat it and understand it?

Those that were with Jesus followers, his disciples, what did they say it meant?

That was what changed.

That was a radical change for me because if they got it wrong, we may have lost translation and we none of us know what it really means.

So what I took with me, what I left behind, I left behind the reduction of sacraments to symbols #2 I left behind the rejection of Church authority beyond the local level.

Local church autonomy is a made-up myth that only keeps one man in charge of everybody.

The church was always on hierarchy.

There were always bishops.

That's why we have letters from Polycarp out of his jurisdiction to another church, another letter from Clement of Rome to the Church of Corinth sending instruction and command, because this was the methodology.

The church was ran by bishops.

There was no single pastor who is both Bishop, pastor, elder, all the above.

It didn't exist.

You won't find it.

Do the labels get used interchangeably at times?

Sure.

I mention this all the time because anytime you look at the Bishop, a Bishop will always be a Deacon and a presbyter.

Always.

All bishops are elders and presbyters and Deacon for the rest of their life.

But not all deacons are elders, and not all elders are bishops.

You can be a Bishop and you're all three of those things because you always be identified of those things.

But just because you're a Deacon didn't mean you're a Presbyterian.

Just because you're a Presbyterian doesn't mean you're a Bishop.

So yeah, they use them interchangeably all the time, but we also see them use very distinguished and different and changed and functionally different in the church.

You don't have to read any earlier Indignations of Antioch.

You don't have to read any earlier than.

And then looking into Clement of Roman said, oh, no, no, he used them.

Yeah, read the whole context, study it, right.

I did an entire episode on that.

I've been on multiple podcasts talking about with other people.

So I had to leave behind.

I had to let go of these things.

I had to remove these things from me saying, wait, the local church autonomy, that never existed.

It it it never existed.

And it was never the congregation who acted like a democracy that followed the footsteps of democracy to govern a church.

There's no such thing as congregationalism.

It never existed.

That that was an instant, obvious throw away for me, one of the first things I threw away.

It was not hard to figure that one out.

OK, so how about other things?

Disregard for historical continuity.

Like I said, that giant gap of the apostles to maybe the Baptist throwing all that away.

Can't do it.

Can't do it, won't do it.

Emotional manipulation in places of sacraments of grace, manipulating an opportunity.

Let me give you a perfect example.

What I found the Apostolic Church that wasn't in these was really substance.

Sacraments with substance.

Oh, we have altar.

We go to kneeling rails in the Apostolic liturgies.

Orthodox Catholic, Anglo Catholic, whatever.

We go to a kneeling rail.

We're going to an altar.

There's actually something tangible at that altar, not just a feeling, not just an emotional response over the seventh verse of just as I am, we are actually going to receive the physical body and blood of Christ and we are going to be abiding in Him and He and us, just as he promised.

I don't have to walk away and go.

I wonder if it worked.

I wonder if I can be changed.

I wonder if Christ heard my prayer.

I am given the guarantees of promise in the sacrament of the Eucharist.

If I go to confession and receive absolution, I am guaranteed that what has been bound on earth has been bound in heaven.

And I don't have to keep saying I'm sorry for the same thing.

I am guilty over 7 years later when Christ has already freed me from it.

See, you're given absolution, you're giving guarantees.

Sacraments with substance, not just spiritual concepts that are manipulated by emotional pulls and guilt.

That radically changed for me.

Also, a faith that's not just reinvented every generation, that has to constantly change Kept, kept here through all ages is a comment that's been talked about for the King James and the TR and all this other stuff.

It's like, wait a minute, What's truly been kept here through all ages is the church and its teachings, its doctrine that are, yes, including the Scripture.

But more than that, that's what we found in the depths of history.

Also, unity.

That's not just spiritual, but Sacramento and historical, That there is one holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

That there really is something bigger than your congregation.

That we are not just finding ourselves to a church on earth and its congregants in that room, but a church that is also abiding by the same doctrine down the road and another country and another county in another state.

Or if you would, even heaven and earth coming together in that room where all the Saints and angels throughout all ages singing worthy as a lamb that was slain.

Agnes Day, right there in the middle of that room in your city and town, you are joining angels and archangels and all the hosts of heaven sang Agnes Day that we are in the giant liturgy of eternity that'll never, never get emphasized in these groups.

And it is now a significant and meaningful unity, the communion of Saints, as we see in the Apostles Creed that goes beyond even this world.

And just the very four doors that are in that church, four corners of that church.

So here's some closing reflections.

Here's questions I would encourage you to ask yourself in light of the historical claims and statements.

You're a Baptist or your fundamentalist.

And you are not in agreement with anything that I'm saying.

That's fine.

That's fine.

Here's some questions I want to leave with you.

One, what do the earliest Christians believe about the Eucharist?

Answer that question.

Answer that question at the very, very beginning.

Start with the earliest sources, from Ignatius to the Dickey.

Work your way all the way to Irenaeus of Leone's, Clement of Alexandria origin, Tertullian, all the way through Basil Gregory, down the line down to Thomas Aquinas.

I'll go to Luther if you'd like.

Luther and Galvin even believe in real presence to a level.

So what did the early church believe about the Eucharist?

2 Was there a visible authoritative church in the first few centuries?

Was there a visible and authoritative church in the first few cent?

Was there hierarchy?

Question 3 What did the Christians immediately after the apostles believe in practice?

That is going to connect with the first few questions.

What did the first generation of the apostles believe?

Because what you decide there is either they all went into apostasy or they maintain something that they were taught #4 Why do we trust the early church to preserve the New Testament but not its theology and structure?

Why not?

Why do we believe that they preserve the text, but didn't preserve the doctrine and the theology and the ecclesiology with it?

I have a hard time believing.

I guess I, I cannot emphasize enough to ask that question #5 if fundamentalism is the old time religion, why can't we find it in the first 500 years of the church?

Let me even Fast forward that.

Why can't we find what fundamentalism is in the Baptist world today until the 1900s?

Let me let me just take it that step further.

Where is it?

Where is it without manipulating history and all the myths that we see in the the whole thing on the trail of blood, Where is it?

So here, here's a final word to my fundamentalist friends, This is what I say.

So I was raised on what we call that old time religion, the old paths.

And for that, again, I'm grateful for certain things.

As I discussed, it gave me a love for scripture, a eal for truth, to care deeply about people, to care deeply about souls, to care deeply about the church.

I'm not going to even like refute that and, and, and go down and put my thumbs down on that or anything like that.

I'm not saying that at all, but eventually I realized I really wanted not just the old time religion, but an older one, the true old faith that was once delivered to the Saints, the one handed down by the apostles to their successors.

And that was preached before pulpits and, and printed Bibles and, and all the things that get debated in modern fundamentalism today.

Things that people died for, things that people went to a Coliseum for, people that were beheaded and crucified for.

See, I had to go back farther than revival tents and altar calls and 20th century traditions.

The old time religion just wasn't old enough for me.

It wasn't old enough for me.

The Apostolic Church was already there, older than that old time religion waiting for me with open arms to just accept what history is taught and really what the scripture itself is taught.

So I want to give just a couple of quotes from the Church Fathers real quick.

I just want to share these to kind of springboard this.

In conclusion, Bishop Ignatius of Antioch at the end of the 1st century into the second said flee from schism.

He said to the Smyrnans, flee from schism as the source of mischief.

You shall all follow the Bishop as Jesus Christ did the Father.

OK follow to the presbytery is you would the apostles notice the difference?

Bishops and presbyters are not the same.

Following the Bishop is like Jesus following the Father.

Following the Presbyterians is like the apostles following Jesus.

This is the hierarchy.

Look at it.

Respect to the deacons as you would God's law.

So look at the hierarchy here, OK?

Nobody must do anything that is to do with the church without the Bishop's approval, meaning there is not the ability to even operate a church without a hierarchy.

This defeats local autonomy.

OK.

You should regard that Eucharist as valid, with it celebrated either by the Bishop or by someone he authorized.

You should regard that the Eucharist as valid and it's celebrated either by the Bishop or somebody authorized.

I mean, you cannot serve communion without the authority of the Bishop, which is why all of these other forms of communion and lunch box communion things with wafers and flip it over and drink something are invalid.

I'm so sorry to be the one to say that they're not valid.

They're not under the authority of the bishops that are in succession, the apostles.

They're not valid.

Where the Bishop is present, there led the congregation gathered, just as where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.

Where there's a Bishop, there is Christ that is in persona Christie, that he is a representative of Christ on earth in the midst of those people.

And there is where a church is not a building, not a cathedral, that is where the church is.

OK, without the Bishop supervision, no baptism or love feasts are permitted.

On the other hand, whatever he approves pleases God as well.

So what he is doing on earth, God in heaven is fall.

That is the whole idea of binding, loosing earth.

That is the whole idea.

And that way everything you will do will be safe and valid.

There's the Word right there and against heresies.

Irenaeus of Lyons in the 2nd century, late 2nd century, says it is impossible then for everyone in every church who may wish to know the truth to contemplate the tradition of the apostles, which has been made known throughout the world.

And we can enumerate those who are established by the apostles as bishops in the churches and their successors down to our time.

Did you hear that?

Down to our SO folks, we have the Apostolic teaching, we have the Apostolic doctrines.

The old time religion, the old paths that is taught in fundamentalism is not old enough.

There's older, better, and more succinct to the ages of history showing and proving that Jesus truly did build His Church and that the gates of hell have not prevailed against it.

And it is alive and well today with arms open for you, waiting for you to drop the ninety 1900s fundamentalism that is crept in and swayed many into a mindset that's toxic or sent people out into atheism and skepticism.

Rather, study and evaluate these questions.

You may have to go back and watch this more than once.

You may have to go back and listen to this more than once and go back over the questions I asked and the statements I made and do your own personal research in them.

Folks, this is a tough episode sometimes I have, but I think it's important, especially when I know a lot of the people that listen to this and where they stand on on things and what their struggle is.

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As always, thanks for joining this episode of Fax.

Grace and peace to you.

God bless.