Since last Sunday's post ("Because church history says 'Eww' to us Paulicians") continues to receive very high readership, I thought I'd write up a portion of Pastor Bryan Ross' actual seminar on the Paulicians (a "dissenting sect" dating from 653 A.D.) that was given at the 2018 Soldiers Training Conference in Chicago. Here's the outtake:
The Paulicians were Pauline dispensationalists. I've come to believe as a result of my studies and research into these things that the Byzantine text type, which contains the multiplicity of Greek manuscript copies that support the King James Bible, was actually preserved by Pauline dispensationalists.
This is a big deal because what this means is, not only were these brothers in line with us to a large degree doctrinally, but they also did one of the most important things in church history and that's preserve the correct text of the Bible and thereby spreading into Europe the seeds of the Reformation and supporting the Bible that we've come to know, love, use and appreciate.
If you go through church history, you'll see any time that the organized church possessed the power of the state it spelled disaster for groups of true Bible-believing Christians because the state church was able to use their power to persecute those with whom they disagreed.
When the church had the power of the state it was able to command and use its force to the suppression of any who dissented from its system or in any way refused to comply with their demands.
For those who know anything about the history of the Middle Ages, you know that the Catholic Church was the state for well over a thousand years of European history and they did not hesitate in any way to use their power to persecute groups of Believers that disagreed with them.
The true histories of these groups are very hard to discern in some cases because the organized church not only was persecuting them but was persecuting their writings. When they would execute the heretics, as they called them, they would also to seek to destroy and obliterate their writings.
To a large degree groups like the Paulicians have not been allowed to speak for themselves in church history because of the systematic way the organized church tried to erase any witness of them in church history.
Not only do they try to erase their writings, but then they ascribe names and beliefs to them that they did not take or would not have used for themselves.
They're not able to speak for themselves and strange doctrines ascribed to them, in the idea of them being "new" or "aberrant" or "strange" or "weird" or "heretical", is information put upon them by their enemies.
Now you understand this, right? Do people say all kinds of things about us that aren't true? Have you ever heard somebody say that you cut out Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? That you don't believe the whole Bible? That you think there's a different God in the Old Testament than in the New Testament?
These types of false charges, things that are frankly lazy charges from people who don't really care to hear about what we have to say or look into it, these are not new; they've been made all throughout church history by the adversaries of the truth who've sought to suppress it; who've sought to lord over Bible-believing Christians as a result.
Think about the word Paulician. Why would you call somebody a Paulician? Because of what they believed about Paul, right?
If you know anything about church history in general you've probably heard of Philip Schaff, who wrote what is still viewed today, over a hundred years later, as the sort of quintessential church history volume or set on the matter.
Schaff, in chapter 12 of volume four of his six-volume church history, devotes an entire section of the chapter to discussing the quote "heretical beliefs of the Paulicians."
He says, "There were radical heretical sects which mixed Christianity with heathen notions, disavowed all connection with the historic church and set themselves up against it as rival communities."
No. 1, Schaff is judging who is heretical and who is not based upon where they stand in light of quote "Catholic orthodoxy." So, the organized sacerdotal system of the Roman Church is viewed as orthodoxy and anybody that was deviated from that is therefore a heretic.
Schaff says he considers Catholic orthodoxy "historic Christianity." I don't think there's anybody in this room who would advocate that we judge who's heretical and who isn't based upon the standard of Rome. If that's the standard of who's heretical, then everyone who disagrees with Rome is heretical, right?
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Here's an outtake from the same conference of a seminar led by Richard Jordan:
The problem people have with II Timothy 3:16 is the verb tense "is" because that says all scripture IS (present tense) given by inspiration.
II Timothy 3: [16] All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
People have a problem with that verse because they do not understand inspiration in the Bible sense. There's not a definition of inspiration in any book of theology or book about inspiration that I've ever read that is what the Scripture says.
They always talk about the process of how things came about. The word inspiration (in-spirit-ation) means God took His spirit and put it in some words.
People say "God-breathed." What does that mean? He breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.
God breathed His life into some words. The recording of them on the page, the in-script-uration was really the preservation.
It's an interesting thing. He spoke some words that had His life in them and then He caused them to be written down, and that writing them down was the act of preservation, and when people have a doctrine of inspiration and no doctrine of preservation, well, you didn't have a doctrine of in-script-uration.
So there's this total confusion about all that stuff, and because they don't understand the Bible meaning of it, they go off into hysterics.
When you understand inspiration and preservation, then you can look at history and identify it working in history.
You got a whole big old pile of manuscripts. You pile them up one way, you get the Critical Text. Pile them up another way, you get the Received Text. Which way should you organize them?
Well, if you've got a doctrine in the Bible that tells you which way to organize it, the question is answered. Convictions answer a lot of questions before they're asked.
So if you get the doctrine of preservation, you know the way to organize the Bible is this way and not that way, and you see it in history. Well, that's what we're talking about in ministry. Here's what God says to do.
Here's what God says is happening, so I look at the culture around me and I see it happening and I understand that that's the confirmation of what God's Word says and then it tells me how to operate in it.
In II Timothy, Paul talks about the "perilous times" and people "every learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth," and then he talks about verse 13: "But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived."
In the next verse he says "But continue thou": [14] But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them;
You see that? You're going to live in a world that's like verse 13, but verse 14 is what you do in that world. So, what do you first have to do? Learn them.