I am on a change.
All right, ready? Yeah, one. Welcome back to, oh I thought I know you're awesome.
“Yeah, this is my show. Yeah, you're one, three, four. I'm Friday.”
All right, so welcome back to the unashamed podcast. This is our Friday Unashamed for Hillsdale. And you guys can actually sign up. You can take this course for free with us at Unashamed for Hillsdale.com. And here's the deal. Check this out. We're going to pick one listener to come down to West Monroe, Louisiana, and to watch a library recording of Unashamed. We're going to pay for travel and lodging for you and a guest up to $1,000. All you got to do is take the course we're on right now.
It's called ancient Christianity course. You take it with us. You got to finish all the quizzes and then you send us your certificate of completion. Very simple. And you can upload that certificate at WatchUnashamed.com. And you'll be entered into the drawing and we're going to pick a winner in June. So we're in that course. We're all going to complete it. Hopefully. And all the quizzes have to be passed for it to count. What you just have to have this certificate of completion? So I don't know. I guess you have to take the,
I mean, I take the quizzes. So I'm assuming you have to take them. I'm not sure. Yeah. But do these found a little trickier to you? Yeah. It doesn't happen. I've been missing a few questions. I don't know when we miss questions because I'll take it right up for the lecture. But they've been a little trickier. They have been trickier. Yeah. That must have been a real house. We're getting out of our wheelhouse now because we know the Bible, but this is like church history, some things like that,
“you know, and we're kind of shredding the new waters here. So I think that's why. But it's been”
really interesting. But yes, I did what we're kind of we were discussing where do we go with the beginning because typically we have what we call the cold opening just kind of break through the fourth wall here and we don't know which way to go. We were going one direction that Alice has something about a pedicure. And so we kind of stopped the conversation. Everybody passed. So I'm secure enough in my masculinity. I do love a good pedicure. But I usually get one if it's like satian bites me.
Yeah, I don't usually go like seek after it myself. Well, I never go with Alice either.
That was never I would be weird for me to go by myself. Plus you don't want to be like the one creepy guy in there, unless you're with your wife. And actually yesterday it was lead Lisa and two granddaughters. It was actually for us. The problem with that was they only have four people working. So they would straight to my feet because I needed the most work, I guess. So then I had to wait like a long time. And I don't do well waiting. So it was a bit of an issue. But I did take my book with
me and I did some study for you. Do you laugh? I laugh whenever they get the scrubber thing out. The little cheese grater. Oh, I don't. Yeah. I'm like cackling. Oh, it's like underneath mine. It's like a little alpine village down there with what they're getting off my feet. Defina. What was what was your? You gave us the rationale, although what's I didn't see coming? What? What's that? That was well, why did you start? Actually, it was kind of ironic because I'm going on a cruise next week.
A carable cruise next week. And the first one I ever got was on a carable cruise because getting a pedicure is ironic because you're going out of cruise. Well, it's not ironic because I'm going again this week. Yeah, we're having this. But you want your feet to look good for the cruise. What you're saying? No, not really. It was just time to clip them. So now what happens is when it's time to clip. That's when it's like, okay, when are we when are we doing the feet? Because
either I'm going to have to do it myself or we're going to have to find one of these lovely
ladies to do it. Yeah, I'm noticed they always go women to men and men to women. They never go
dude to dude on your feet. I don't know if that's just a thing. If that's a cultural thing that that's me. I'm sure more of our listeners will let me know. But Frank, right now. Yeah, he
“right now. And so it was time. And so in that's what she said, she said, she said, you want me to”
clip these nails and I said, oh, that's why I'm here. Because that when I used to be heavier version of myself, it was hard to clip my toenails without and by had you mean, I mean, oh, I know what was the word, uh, viscerly. Oh, be visceral fat, visceral fat. That's what, that's what, which just makes the sound worse. Yeah, you're not just obese. You're viscerly. Yeah. And so it makes it difficult. It's a potential back injury every time you clip your toenails or tie your shoes. So I went,
like, most men do at my age. I went sketchers. And then I went to pedicure. It's like this, like this, the shape of safety. Yeah, yeah, you gotta have the slip bones and the, uh, so that's what you do. Until you lose weight, of course, which I did, there are good friends at Ph.D.
Whiteballs. And now I can do it myself, but I prefer it because my feet never have felt better than
post pedicure. So there you go. But you choose no nail color. No nail color. I mean, I have limits.
Like, I won't go by myself.
and I can't do the, they try to get you to put like the clear. And I said, I don't, I don't, I don't
“not shiny. I just can't. For the crews, you should get a color. Yeah. She get like a baby”
blue to match the water. Well, that was funny because my granddaughter's yesterday. They had like which took longer, by the way. They had them draw a little designs on theirs. Yeah. You know, they're like, Pat, you should get one of these as I, I mean, there's just so many so far. I can go. Are you taking the quiz now? Yeah. Yeah, I like taking the quiz, I like taking the quiz. You want to use the code out of it. Hey, that's just quit us. Yeah, you're, you're, you're,
yeah, you don't have to submit. You don't have to submit. You're, you can, it was hills on your left feet and then Dale on your right with like an exclamation. Yeah, that's what they did. Well, we didn't have new hillsdale march on. Can we say that? Matty, can we break down the fourth wall? Okay. Yeah. So they did send us some new march, which is really comfortable. It's very nice. Yeah. Then John Luke. I should get this because my last name's Huff. So I could, yeah.
Yeah, you could rock. I do have a, I do have a, I do have a, I'll wear on the next episode. Okay.
Smart. Yeah. So Zach, have you never had a petting? Never, I'm not going to do it. I,
the, you said you had limits. That my limit is a little bit before your limit. Your limits, though, nail polish, minus no pedicure. Well, you would enjoy that. I don't think it would. Some people are like people messing with their feet. I don't even like the, the whole, I'll be, honestly, even the massage thing. I'm like, it's, I mean, I had one, but I'm like,
“if you do like the hot stones, it, it feels good. Oh, yeah. Now, if you want to get into massage”
too. That's why I don't, yeah. Well, when you're, when your, when your muscular like Christian and, uh, you know, the, it feels like better. It's, yeah. I understand if you're kind of money. I'm not, I'm, I'm on the other end of the spectrum. I'm a little fat. Yeah. I mean,
but, uh, but I used to, I used to be in shape. I was never like Christian, you know, you're,
you're, you're becoming a beast, man. I'm like watching your Instagram videos and I'm like, this guy, I appreciate that. This guy, I never now, then you'll put some one there. I got to I got to make a comment on. And then you, I'll, I'll let it sit with you for a little bit. Then you'll call me six hours later. You, you leave me a quasi confusing emoji. Well, yeah, that was great discussion. And then, and then John, Luke sends me a text the other day, which I thought was
a kind of the deeper question about, hey, what do you think about this? And that's something back that I thought, I, I took time to respond. It wasn't like it was, and then crickets, never response. Yes, I was going to call you after because your response was so deep. I was like, I'm not going to write another book after you just wrote me a book. So this response, I was like, I feel like
to explain why I asked this question. I needed, it needed to be a phone call. And that has never
had time for the phone call. And I was like, when you get it, yeah, we get a chance call me. Yeah. Yeah. And as soon as you do, as you're starting into your point, he'll say, oh, I got to take this out of the call. So I just got to be right here. I got to happen to that. Well, as I liked about your response is it was so deep and so thorough to end with yes. Like, as I was reading, I thought you were going to say, no, like you're disagreeing with me. Yeah, agree with you. Yeah, I agree with you.
Yeah, it was, I was, it was basically yes, but here's the caveats above. Yeah, but now that we've talked about it, they always asked the question here. But because it kind of will kind of get into, yeah, it's about Jesus' life. And the my question was, we see in, in the world that we live in. Right now, a, uh, I would say reservation of God to intervene in a way that we know is him or in world-wide events. Like, he's not coming through the clouds speaking with the physical voice,
telling us stuff. There, it's a, I want to use, I don't like to use words hidden because I don't think
“I think God wants us to know him and he's revealing himself to him. But there is a slow, quiet”
revelation of God, not this like out loud thing we see. And I was thinking about that as it relates to Jesus because we see the same thing with Jesus. It was a slow revelation like he did. In your sand, like his teaching and it was like Jesus didn't come out, but he could have overwhelmed everybody. He could have just like, he could have said that 12 years old I'm the Messiah and started it from there. But he waited till he was 30. Because you're right, he said in my
father, that's obviously new. Yeah, some level there. Right. But at 30, he started gathering his disciples. He often he would do a miracle and he would tell everyone like, don't tell anyone about this. Like, the time is not right, the time is not right. And all the way up to the very end,
He didn't have this big reveal of who he was.
he lived. And I think we see that same thing with God now. And so to me, that's not that's what I would
expect to see from God in the world. And the reason I thought about this in the first place is because
there was, I was just to this guy's atheist talking about like why he doesn't believe in God. And
“one of the things he said was, if God was real to God, the Bible, I think he would have revealed”
himself more openly. Like, we would see him in the sky or whatever in an open way. And I was like, actually, we wouldn't because that's not how Jesus was. That's so interesting. I was just reading this book, talking about the same thing. It was just two like early historians like first and second century. And they were saying they don't believe the like the gospel in Jesus because they're like after the resurrection, why would he appear to women and depessants? They're like, why would he
not appear to Caesar and pilot and like all these powerful people? And so they literally discredit
the Bible because of who he chose not to appear to it, which I don't think we technically, I don't think we really know who he'd, you know. I don't know if you can say he did not appear to someone like that, but they their whole basis was on discrediting that because of who they don't think he appeared to. So it's interesting that there were moments in his in the three year ministry at least where you had a voice or you know, at the transfiguration, at his baptism. But even then, you know,
I'm not sure what they were hearing because you're getting that says, you know, they heard thunder
“or, you know, like it wasn't even meant for everybody in the moments of that, which I think the”
whole thing with the his moment with the baptism was as much for John the Baptist, you know,
recognition as anything. Oh, this is the guy, you know, because after this point, he's baptizing people. They're related, so he knew he was special, but until that moment, I don't think he knew he was the one, until God told him, you know, in the moment. So there was a little direct, but it like you say, it wasn't even meant for the masses then because it would kind of be covered, right? You know, or even like the when Paul and the road to Damascus, you know, there was a group there,
but like they didn't understand what it had. They didn't hear what he was hearing either. I don't guess. I mean, it's what it says. So it is interesting that he chose the subtle and I think it was in the last episode when we were talking about that. I had not thought about all the other people claiming to be Messiahs of that century. So there was something definitely unique about it being when it was under Roman rule, a prophecy fulfillment from Daniel, which we talked about a lot in the
son of man that had been pointed to 600 years earlier. So in that moment, there were a lot of people claiming to be the Messiah. Well, you see that in Acts when when when the Pharisees are talking and they're saying, you know, like if this is from God, you won't be able to oppose it. So yes, kind of giving credence to the fact that there were many people that time claiming divinity and claiming to be Messiahs, but obviously Jesus is the one that it's still carrying along. If it's not from God,
it'll it'll die out, which all those other false Messiahs did. We don't even know their name. So I mean, like we'd have to like, I mean, we could go research, but we can't even say them on top of our head, or the whole world just about those to name a Jesus. And so it's certainly Christianity did not die out. And so we're doing this episode on ancient Christianity. This is lecture five. So I thought this was really good. I'll give a couple caveats though. And again, just for,
you know, Frank and so the guys out there, you gotta remember like we're getting different perspectives.
“And so, you know, this course is obviously taught. I think Dr. Calvert may be Catholic. So you”
can definitely sense some of the Catholic men on some of the teaching of this. And I think that's healthy for us to like listen to other perspectives and other things. As we move through this, I found this to be helpful. What's weird is because we're now going into this is about the apostles, the creeds, and then the scripture. It's essentially the history of the church from the ancient documents up to 80, I think that 337, so that's this particular lecture. You know, we grew up in a
denomination that was, I think that we would have probably said, at least the way I grew up hearing this, we were a non-credile. Since then, I've come to really appreciate a lot of the creeds. And when you understand them in their proper order, the creeds were written essentially to preserve some of the doctor of the church, but it's just like simple ways of just understanding you know how to teach this and move it on. What I found to be so interesting about this lecture
and I listened to it and it's so funny because I've been on another, I've been on this same exact
Discussion before I even listened to it for probably the last week.
podcast recently. I don't know if it'll air before this one or not. Melissa, Dorian, yeah, she had
“talked about coming out of the new age movement and the new thought movement, which a lot of”
people in the church I go to have come out of that. And one of the things that she has said was kind of like, I'm kind of paraphrasing, but like one of the dividing lines between what she would call like a version of Christianity that's not actually Christianity that's just borrowing from the language and real Christianity kind of that dividing line was this idea that Christ came in the flesh. And I was really appreciative of Dr. Calvert's emphasis on showing how that one thing
seemed to be the dividing line even in the early church, like all the heresies that really kind of entered in that were most of those heresies that were dressed. It's some former fashion, they had something to do with they've Christ actually have a body and was there a physical resurrection. And I thought, man, that's an interesting, it seems to be simple, but he read second John, y'all have that by the way, that's second John, I've been on a read that.
Are you looking that up? Let me remind you guys, we want you to take the course with us for a free at unashained for Hillsdale.com. And that meant in this earlier, we're going to pick one listener to come down to West Monroe, watch a live recording of unashained. We're going to pay for
“your travel, your lodging and a guest up to a thousand dollars each. All you have to do is take”
ancient Christianity. All you have to do is take the ancient Christianity course with us,
finish all the quiz as send us your certificate of completion. As I always print mine out,
so I can show Christon. You can upload your certificate at watch_unashained.com and you'll be in for the drawing. We're going to pick a winner in June. Are you going to come in time for this? Oh yeah, I'll be better. I'll be better. You can't be virtual for that. No, no, no, we'll come in town, we'll hang out. And yeah, we'll have a good time. And then we'll find the text in a second. I'm going to read two texts here. I think he read the second
John, but I'm going to read a first on four and then I'll move the second John. I literally just had this conversation with our House Church, few nights ago. This is in first John four. Peter Teele right now is traveling across the world, doing lectures on the antichrist, which I haven't got to listen to any of them yet. Very curious to what he's going to say on that. We is saying probably not an agreement with what we would believe, but there's a whole lot of
talk about what is the antichrist, who is the antichrist. Listen to what John says in first John,
he says that by this, you know, because a lot of, he says a lot of false prophets have gone out to the world. But here's how you know, you got to test the spirits to see where they're from. By this, you know the spirit of God. That's the Holy Spirit. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is
in the world already. So according to the Apostle John, the spirit of the antichrist is to literally say that Christ has come in the flesh. So then you go to the second John and second John says something very similar. He says for many deceivers have gone out into our world, into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. So you think about like, what is the most central thing about Christ about
“Jesus? And I've sat there and wrestle with that. And I think the answer is is a body.”
You know, a body because when you think about Jesus, Jesus was not in the Old Testament. You have the Son, but when Jesus comes on the scene, Jesus is the incarnation of the Son. It literally, it's God, He is God in flesh. And so when you think about it to be anti-Christ, it really just means that you don't really believe that Jesus came in the flesh. You don't believe that God came in flesh. That is literally what Christ is. That is the Messiah that God
came in the flesh. And so I just found that to be so, what's the word I'm looking for? It's just confirmed everything that I've been looking out that see that, and this was kind of the core argument of the church at the very beginning. And any heresy that would try to drip into the church. And some capacity it was trying to diminish either the deity of Christ or the humanity or the body of Christ. One of the two is trying to separate that out. I don't know if you guys picked
up on that at all. Yeah, I did have a quick question. I was talking to John look about this last night because it made me think of it while studying this and talking about, you know, the incarnate and Jesus coming flesh and all this things. So my question was, and this might lead to a deeper
Discussion.
from heaven. With that, because I was also talking about Genesis one where it's, you know, God's walking in the garden and the coolity with Adam and Eve, would that be like Jesus in his form that he has now, outside of time and space, in Genesis one, and like when he saw Satan fall like lightning,
“or that be the deity of Christ before he's incarnated as a human. Yeah, I think that's the”
Bill Smith helped me with this years ago that when you talk about Jesus, you are talking about the one who is born into a baby. Right. And so Jesus doesn't come on the scene until Mary has a immaculate conception and gives birth to the Christ. Well, who is the Christ? Isn't that the question? Who is the Christ? Oh, well, he's the incarnated person of the God that you just mentioned in Genesis, who saw Satan fall like lightning, you know, who was there in the whole world was
created. That's kind of John's teaching, right? John in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was got and then the word became flesh. So Jesus is the word becoming flesh. And so the idea of flesh is very earthy and it's very meaty, and that was the center of the teaching of who Christ was. And it's just funny that these ancient heresies have reformed and
“repackaged in different ways, but we're still dealing with the same basic four heresies that he mentioned”
in this lecture and just different forms, but you know, still dealing with that. Here's some 2,000 years later. It is interesting, Zach, in my notes, here, my handwritten notes that I like to tell you, I wrote Melissa Dordio, known as Shame New Age, New Thought. Does that exactly the same thought you had with that? And she's, you know, I don't know, within the last few years, a convert from this mindset. And I thought just like Zach did, I was like, wow, this this thing just keeps coming back
and back and back. I mean, it's, I, and I guess it'll never end. And I don't know what that's
just because the, how powerful Zach, the Greek thought was, because that seemed to be the birthplace of this idea. Maybe not, maybe it's even before that. But it's so, it's so permeated, even 2000 years later, the same concept that it's about, it's about your thoughts and it's about, you know,
“energy and, you know, the flesh is no good and it's got to be above that. But what we came to”
the discussion with Melissa about when she was explaining it, because I never everybody really explained what they believed and she did. And it, immediately, I went to this idolatry. I mean, what she's describing as idolatry and she said, yes, that's it, because it's all about you there. It's all about you, your experiences, you know, you're, you're the God, you look in the mirror and all this positive stuff that people do, all this like Ale Carnegie, she mentioned, all this stuff. It's built around
this idea that it's all about you and Christianity exact opposite, because it's all about Christ. And so it's just another form about, and that has been around since the beginning. I mean, no doubt about it before the Greeks move wherever. Well, you have the, it'd be a night that denied that Jesus was divine and, and they claimed that he was only a, like, a human prophet, you had the nostics that denied that we talk a lot about narcissism, but mainly because we're
in verse John right now on the, on the broader landscape of the podcast, they denied that God became man and so they rejected the material world, the material world is bad. And we need to escape that, you know, this world's going to hell in a handmasker that's evil. And we got to get out of the meat suit and get into our spiritual states that we can be made one, and somebody been claimed that Jesus did not across, which is, again, you see that over and over in scripture. I mean, Paul talks
about that. So I'm saying that, you know, there's no resurrection of the dead and he makes this
incredible argument. And first Corinthians 15, you know, hey, look, if there's no resurrection from
the dead, Paul says, they guess what? The Christ wasn't raised from the dead. And if Christ wasn't raised from the dead, then you're dead in your sins. And if you're still dead in your sins, then those who have fallen asleep, they're just dead. And if only, if we only have hope for this life, he says where to be pityed more than all men. So the center of the whole thing is one that Christ took on a body, too, that then that body actually walks on earth for 33 years, walks a Roman road
and is crucified on a Roman cross. And then that body is resurrected from the dead three days later and that body of sins. And now is sitting at the right hand at the Father mediating for us. So Christianity alone has a very, very high view of the body and Dr. Calvert pointed this out.
He's, I mean, what does it say? What does it basically say about God's view of the material universe
If Christ, if God himself took on the nature of that material universe and th...
It actually says that God has a very high view of the body. And it is one of the things, by the way, I do appreciate about some of the, some of the other faith traditions, you know, outside the Protestant Reformation. We're, we're byproducts. And that's certainly a Protestant. But I do
“appreciate a very earthy view of the kingdom. I think it's helpful. And I think that we've lost some of”
that in the church of the year. So some of that, some of this lecture was very helpful for me. You brought up about the creeds in your right. I chose this hat on purpose today because of that because in essence, I mean, these were little symbols, higher graphics we call them, the Bill Smith came up with. But it was a creed to describe the story of Jesus. I mean, this is a creed. I mean, that's one of ours. You know, and you mentioned about the the group we grew up in,
Zach, they claimed to be no creeds. And then there was a list after the list after a list of stuff you can do. Right. Right. This was a written down. It's just right. I mean, but everybody understands, if you're going to be in this group, here's, you got to do this, you got to do this, you got to do this, you got to do this, you got to do this. So the creeds were there, you know, whether you, whether you had them written out and everybody memorized them, trust me, everybody.
Well, our creed was, we have no creed. But that's a creed. Yeah. That's a creed. Yeah. It's the first rule of fight club. I wrote that down to you. I know it's about the creeds, because whenever I married Mary Kate, my wife, she grew up Presbyterian, and they had creeds, they have about creeds on creeds on creeds. They've got the whole book, the Greater Lesser Catechisms. And when I read that, I was like, oh, wow, this is awesome. It's just like a list of
“years where we believe, simplified. And I think that that's so good. And it's so good. Like,”
and I read them to my kids. And they learned like the, the Greater Lest Catechisms and all the different things. But I think the problem that I think the church Christ and that people who are
anti-cred, the problem is I say, it's too simple. And when I first started reading them, I'd be like,
oh, wow, that's the little simplified. Like, oh, it's like more than that. And there is a problem with that. Yeah. But that's understanding it for what it is. And I think that's the problem that you saw, they talked about in that early church. What would happen is they started making these creeds because people need to learn the basics. And they weren't learning them. So there's heresy. But then people started believing the creed over the scripture over the story. And they got them
mixed up. Well, and look, I mean, he gave a great example on, I thought he was our own target when he went to the first Corinthians 15, which the whole Corinthian letter. And then he, he made a great mention about even the second generation. They were still having trouble with the Corinthian church with who's a Clement over on his head to send letters. But he, but Paul is going along describing the problems they're having and tell him how to live better. And then he just has a
little creed in there. And first, going to this 15, you know, one through eight, he's like, now look,
all this stuff I'm telling him, but here's the firm, don't forget the most important thing.
And then he just goes through the Gospel with him. You know, and so that was, it wasn't early creed. I mean, really. Yeah. Yeah. The verse and that text in verse 15, we're Paul says, what I received that passed on you as a first imported the Christ that for our sense, he was buried. He was raised from the third day. That is a oral tradition that a lot of scholars
“believe that Paul received, I think, within like 15 months of the actual resurrection of Jesus.”
So Christ raises from the dead, then Paul saw has the radical encounter with Christ, there risen Christ on the road to Damascus, then he goes to meet with Mark and I forget, so who the other apostle was and the first basically training. And then during that training period, he received what the oral tradition. So when you hear that cadence that Christ died, that he was buried, that he was raised, it almost has a cadence to it, right? And that was a tradition
that was passed down early. And it's hard for us to imagine that because we don't remember anything, because we have everything on our iPhone. And now that we have chat, GPT and Grok and and plot, plot, all the different bots, we don't remember anything. But there was a time in history with a particular Jewish culture where they would remember these things were for word and then passed them down hundreds and thousands of years. So Paul received from that oral tradition
the early, earliest creed in the gospel, which is the Christ died. He was buried and he was
raised on the third day. So in the reason, well, in the reason that they had those creeds was because
most of the population at the time was a literate, which I thought he did a good job explaining, because I was not, I knew that, but I didn't fully understand, giving creedants, no pun intended, to the creeds of why it was the way it was, was because most of the population at the time was
A literate.
describe probably some of the issues that got into in the second century he mentioned with
bishops and because like anything else, if everybody's not on board for what we're doing here, a lot of times an authority can have their way of you and things and then take it off course and you'll farm right off the cliff. So you can see where that would begin to happen and it's still happened to me. Was that his point when he was talking about what people started making their own
“canons in kind of changing? Right, exactly. And again, that's human nature, right? I mean, that's what”
people tend to do. We want you to sign up and take the course with us for free at unashamedforhealsdail.com. Go ahead, is that? Yeah, I mean, I think that we're outland on this and this is, I mean, like, we're open for a lot of diversity on this and a diversity of thought. I think we're outland on it is that the creeds are very helpful. I don't think they supplant the authority of scripture. Obviously, I'm a Protestant sub-eleven soloscriptor or that's your final authority.
But I do think that the creeds are helpful. I mean, even then I see and creed the apostles creed. I mean, all of these are, and then move an end to the reformation and you have, like you mentioned, John, like the greater and shorter catechisms, which are simplified versions of the Westminster confession and then you got the Heidelberg. I think all these are helpful and I don't, I think we can take them, but they're not scripture. You know, one of the things that I thought was interesting
too in the early church, I don't know if you guys picked up on the whole concept of apostolic cessation. That was interesting as well to see how that, because I've had lots of conversations on that recently with different people from different traditions, whether it be Eastern Orthodox or Catholic or even, like, what's called the New Apostolic Reformation. So there's a lot of,
like, thought around apostolic cessation, which is basically that the authority the apostles had,
that they laid hands on people and then they transferred that authority. And so that authority, where does that end and what, how does that work and all that? That was, you know, that's certainly
“debate. Well, I think in the early church, though, you clearly do see in scripture that at least”
from the apostles and that second generation that you do see an apostolic cessation beyond that, I mean, I don't know, I didn't if you guys had thoughts on that. Yeah, and you mentioned that on the other, on the regular own of shame, podcast recently, Zach, and I didn't have a chance to that day, but I agree with what you said that I think there was something unique about the apostles, especially in relationship to miracles and the purpose of them and, you know, why they did what
they did. And it seems to be that that was, I think, limited to that era versus today. Now, I know a lot of people disagree with that because they think that still goes on, but it seemed like it had its purpose. There was something unique about the time when Jesus came, demonic activity was, it was probably from what you read in the scriptures. It was so much more than we could ever even imagine, not saying that still doesn't go on. Yeah, it certainly had a different effect when he was
here, even the, even the other realm knew something big was happening because of what was going on. So I do think there were some unique things about that. I do think some of the practical things, you know, when you get into tongues and languages and you're looking at acts because he kind of went through acts quickly, but man, there's so much there when you think about the idea of the
“apostles and who they were. And so I think part of that's related to this idea that, you know,”
it was taking the people down a simple message of salvation. So when you see that first sermon that
Peter preached, and then you see him later repeat that and act's tend for the Gentiles, you do see a simple path for people to find Jesus. But as you were saying earlier, I think that it has to be seekers, right? I mean, it has to be people that want it, which is why I think I did it the way it did it, in that more subtle vein. It's not out there to beat you over the head with it. You know, it's out there for you to find if you have the art willing to look. And so I,
I think that continues on with this very day. Is that a quick question? Because I was kind of confused that way you said so with the creeds because of the creed and first Corinthians 15, when you're talking about the cellulinscriptura. So is that creed because it's in the the scripture that creed is different than other creeds would have been at a time because they're not in scripture? Yeah, I mean, I may not call it a creed technically. I'm not think of scripture, right? And so
the creeds would have the technically the creeds would have came after. It is kind of a teaching though. It's a teaching method. Particularly that thing that was a oral tradition that was passed on that made it into the canon. But the actual creeds themselves would have been not inspired. If you hold the position I hold, they're not inspired in the way that the scripture is inspired.
They're very helpful.
when I took this lecture, I thought, this is what encouraged me that it was like our faith is ancient. The Holy Spirit is real. And I think he did use these councils and these creeds to preserve the truth of the church. And I do believe that there's a continual deconsolidation. Because
“you do, I mean, you have to see the deconsolidation even from the first century, you know, the”
first 300 years. You see the church is greatly deconsolidating. Over time on some of this stuff,
like an apostolic succession even, I mean, it's hard to trace that back in my opinion. I could be wrong. So nobody could have been on a shape here. But it's hard for me to, I don't know who, who can truly claim to be the true, I guess, lineage of apostolic succession. Because you have, I know at least of three groups that claim to have like a direct lineage all the way back to the apostles. You have to Catholics. You have Eastern orthodoxy. And you have Oriental orthodox church as well.
And so I, I don't know the answer how they, how they parse that out. The new apostolic reformation guys, they're claiming that they get like private apostleship. I don't believe that.
I don't think, I don't think, I don't know, that, that, that, that when I would certainly be out
on because I think that's the whole point. Like we're not getting private revelation that supersedes
“scripture. You know what I mean? I think you have to be careful of that. But I think what's interesting”
now, when would encourage me in this course, is that if you think of the center of heresy being some kind of denial of Christ having a body or some kind of denial of Jesus in flesh being deity, you can kind of see how that goes both ways, right? That literally the way we would understand who the Christ is, he would be God incarnate. So all heresy is it seems like at some, at the, at the base level of them, they either deny the deity of Christ or they deny the humanity of Christ.
And that's encouraging because I think what we've seen is, is the Holy Spirit has actually preserved that truth. And you see that, that seems to be the centerpiece of the whole Christian world, Protestant, Catholic Orthodox, all of it, like the real Christians in the world. What do they, what do they have in common? They believe that God came in the flesh. And then his flesh was crucified on the cross and his flesh went into a tomb and his flesh was raised from
the dead three days later and ascended to sit at the right end of the father where he mediates for us and he's going to come back and resurrect our bodies and we're going to, we're going to live in unity with him. That seems to be like the core, like the very core of the Christian faith. And so it's very, very encouraging to see that that's an ancient truth that the Holy Spirit was using all of these different methods to preserve. That's the thing, the thing to me that
made no sense. And you talked about the nostics earlier. But when he was talking about, there was like a group of them that that believed that it was actually Simon of Serene that was crucified and that Jesus projected his face onto him. And to me, that doesn't make any, it makes no sense to me. I'm like, how do you, like, how would you believe that? Because I feel like that would, that would just be so disproven early on through any historian, whether it's Josephus, whoever,
I thought that was interesting. Like, so you talked about the nostics. They did not believe in the, the crucifixion of Jesus. But they also a group of them thought that if, if the crucifixion was true, it wasn't Jesus that was actually crucified. It was Simon. But somehow Jesus just projected his face
on to Simon convincing the people that it was him being crucified, which I've never heard of.
But then there's no way you can read the gospel narratives. Yeah, come to that conclusion. Because he's set over and over again. I will go there. I will be killed. Well, my point is like, my point is, the thing that's so crazy about Jesus being crucified is that if, if he wasn't who he said he was, nobody would go through with the torture of doing that. If it was just a hook, something. No matter what you say, if you're being nailed to a cross and it's not legitimate,
every other person in human history bit, okay, look, I was not being serious about this. You know, so I'm like, it's not possible to fake that, which to me is, to me, it gives full proof of who Jesus was because how do you go through that and not, and I'm saying like, not revile those who are who are doing that to you and not,
“you know, go back on your word. How do you go through with with with the pain and the torture of that?”
If like to me, there's no denial that he is who he said he was because of how he took the crucifixion.
Well, and it's also the culmination.
ancient Judaism. I mean, all the way back to the garden, we know that the whole point was that the
“son of God became man, which then made him the son of man, because that was the two references to”
him, to then be the new Adam, the way Paul describes it in Romans 5 through 8. And so that's the whole idea. That's exactly why he came. That's exactly why I died. That's exactly why I was resurrected. So you're right. That has to be at the core of who we are as Christians, as who we fall. And so I last now, I'm kind of rolling now. But he briefly mentioned this and we were talking about Alex or Connor last time and he had said this too. But why do people, he briefly mentioned
this in the lecture. I can't remember who he was referring to, but how some people thought that
some people believe that the serpent in Genesis 1 was actually Jesus. I don't understand, yeah, he was
the good guy. Yeah, I don't understand that. Have you heard him talk about that? He talked about that. The God that created the material world was actually evil, because material world is bad. So therefore the real change agent, which was in the form of the serpent, you know, what could yeah, or it makes no sense. Yeah, exactly. And so therefore the death, the fake death, yeah, you know. Man, they're all of all of that type of thinking. Like when it talked about the
the group who said Jesus wasn't God, because God wouldn't do that. Any type of thinking like that,
“I think is like that is us projecting our own morality and philosophy on to God and scripture.”
And we, I've heard this in my life before people would say, God, Jesus didn't turn the water into wine in John 2, because Jesus wouldn't do that. Like the wine wasn't wine, because Jesus wouldn't guys against druck in this. And like, buddy did. Like, like, you're better than way more country, if it would turn wind into water, right? Exactly. Yeah, like that even that type of thinking is you projecting your morality on to God. Whenever I think as Christians, what God's
called to do is, and I'm all about finding the truth in scripture. Like I think you can interpret something one way and you find out, oh, that's not what that meant. I'm totally proud of that. I'm saying we should be doing that, but when we get to the point where like, I think this is what it says, even if it disagrees with our own morality, we have to say, well, God did it. That's just that's who he is. Which, by the way, that's the danger of any creed, whether marked or unmarked,
because then when you start building the case like that, then you'll come up with, well, you know, drunkenness is bad. So therefore, no one can ever drink anything, because that way you can ever get drunk. So there you go. There's a new creed. That's not scripture. It's danger. It is dangerous. I mean, to read the creed to try to read the scripture through the lens of your creed, you probably want to construct your creed through the lens of scripture. Hey, go.
And to the point, I mean, particularly with some of the confessions that we hold, you know, the church is held, they haven't really prevented the church from moving into liberalism or heresies or things like that. I mean, you know, I mean, you could look at, you know, maybe I shouldn't say this, I'll say it. I mean, you look at the Westminster confession. I mean, I don't think did it preserve the Presbyterian church from moving into liberalism. I mean, the PCUSA is
very liberal. And, you know, I know there's parts of that that the people that are in that
“that aren't. But I mean, as a whole, the denomination is, and that's why you have PCA churches.”
Now, that's why you have, you know, EPC churches. And so the creed weren't enough to sustain or to preserve the church. And so to me, like, I mean, maybe this makes people uncomfortable, but the Holy Spirit preserves his church. I mean, I truly believe that he will preserve his church. And the way, because there's a lot of different spirits that are coming at us, right? So clearly, the spirit preserves the church, because that's the whole point of what he's saying
in first and second John as you test the spirits. And the, and these spirit is the one that will
protect the church. And well, how do you know if it's this spirit and not a spirit? And the way that you know that it's a, it's a, it's the spirit is that the teaching and the testimony and the, the word is Christ came in the flesh that he had a body, and it's not just a verbal confirmation of that, it's the reality of the Christ came in a body. And the reason why that matters is, because when you read a verse like verse, Timothy, three, six, about our confession,
verse Timothy, three, six has great indeed. We confess is the mystery of Godliness. He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by the angels proclaimed among the nations, believed
On in the world and then taken up the glory.
we just tested out and we see as though when Paul kind of talks about this again and Colossians, he says that the, the mystery is that Christ is not in you, in what, in me, what do you mean in me? He's in your body. Like literally, your body, verse 15, six, is a temple of the Holy Spirit. And so you start to see how all this plays out. So to actually be anti-Christ is to disassociate Christ with a body. I mean, that literally is the core of the whole thing. And so, I mean,
I know this is a much broader scope and there's probably a lot more to it than I'm saying. I don't mean to oversimplify it. But I do think that that's the core of it at least. And so the Spirit's going to preserve his church. We are, you know, we just got to test the spirits to see which ones are anti-Christ and which ones are pro-Christ or which one is pro-Christ.
“Well, and you have to realize that these things were established. I do appreciate the fact of”
him going into obviously into this lecture in second, third century and then we're going to
in the next lecture talk about the persecutions that came about as a result of it. But I do, well, I do love the idea that the God put forth the system about which generationally we could still know this two thousand years later. You do need church leadership. You do need bishops and, you know, all the different names that there are for church leaders. You do need mentors like like Paul was a Timothy. And so all these things you see from the first century still need to be
going on today because a lot of people now come along in the modern era and they just want to throw
the baby out with the bathwater. There's always all bad, you know, because people hadn't always
loved or this church believes that or this group does this. And so they want to just burn it all down. It's like a wait a minute. God put a system in place for a reason. Now we have to find it and we have to be fair with it. But as long as we're, you know, preaching this and stay out of the
“word of God, that's what it's all about. So be sure and sign up to take the course with us for free.”
It heals down for at unashamed for heals.com. And I'm a little funny story. Can I say something before you say that? Yeah, just really, really quick. I was, you're talking about what you tell away from the lecture. And I was, the whole time I was thinking it's so interesting how these things that were happening two thousand years ago, you're seeing it still today, whether it's narcissism, he was talking about the, the mountainists who taught that you should actively pursue martyrdom. And I was
thinking about even now in social media, like you see, because you was talking about how you should not actively pursue martyrdom and persecution. Like, yes, this is going to happen and you welcome it when it does and you rejoice in it. But that's not something you actively pursue. And I think sometimes we see people that actively pursue that from a stance of boldness. I'm going to be bold because I want to be persecuted because I was something that they know they'll get hate on because
they'll get hate on. Yeah. And it's like, to me, that's just in genuine. And it's like, but you're pursuing that because of, this is what boldness looks like. But I thought, but it was just interesting and it was like, that was two thousand years ago because they all thought he was Jesus was coming
“back and like, you know, the hundred years that's what they were talking about. But you still see”
that today. It's like people actively pursue in that. You see the narcissism and you see people denying the deity of Christ. And yes, I thought it was interesting learning that the things we're seeing today kind of resurface in a sense. It's things they were dealing with two thousand years ago. Well, that's a good point. It let's all, you saw this all now. It's a great point Christian.
Yeah. Christian, we always love seeing you on fire. So you bring this to the next lecture.
You don't bring it with you. All right. We'll see you next time on under Jane Brieldale. Join us every Friday for Unashamed Academy Power by Hillsdale College. Make sure to go to Unashamed for Hillsdale.com and sign up. It's no cost to you. That's Unashamed for Hillsdale.com and don't miss an episode of the Unashamed Podcast by subscribing on YouTube and be sure to click the little bell and choose all notifications to watch every episode.
