Welcome to the first video in our new series: The Faith of the Early Church.
This series is aimed at 2 groups: First, to all seekers who, by God’s grace, have come across the Church Fathers and are now wondering what the next steps are and how their lives should proceed. And secondly, to Catholics and Orthodox who remain in their institutions because they believe them to be the early church.
No matter what your reason may be, the videos in this series will be long, informative and very detailed. If the salvation of your soul isn’t worth even these slightly longer instructional videos to you… then maybe it’s just not for you.
For everyone else: Stay tuned and listen to my words. We make all these videos to bring people into contact with the Church Fathers and their salvific teaching – the true faith that leads us to communion with Christ.
1. What faith are we talking about?
So that you understand. The Christianity to which we want to lead you back is the oldest existing form of faith.
The Catholic and Orthodox churches – the two largest denominations – claim to represent the kind of church we adhere to. They claim to be the oldest churches. The Catholic Church is the largest denomination with about 1.4 billion members, and the Orthodox Church has about 300 million believers. So taken together, we are talking about a huge number of Christians who claim to believe in what the original church taught.
But in many respects they have strayed. These, we will call them the Cathodox from now on, still resemble the old church in many respects. If you compare them with the free-church sects – which have nothing at all to do with the old faith – you could almost think that they are in broad agreement with the early church. But that is far from the case. These churches are heretical – because they adhere to many false teachings. Doctrines for which the bishops of the first centuries would have excommunicated them without hesitation.
We, on the other hand, strive to be as faithful as possible to what the Church has taught from the beginning.
There are people, including free church members, who sometimes quote the early church fathers and refer to their statements – but they selectively choose only those passages that agree with what they already believe. This also includes the Cathodox. But that’s exactly what we don’t do. We do not simply cherry-pick what happens to fit our own view. Rather, we humbly submit to those men who were taught by the apostles themselves what the Christian faith is. For even the apostles did not receive it from themselves, but from Jesus Christ – and by obeying the successors of the apostles, we obey Jesus Christ himself.
2. Who are the Church Fathers?
The earliest Christian writers after the apostles are called the “Apostolic Fathers”. These are 7 men who had direct contact with the apostles and had them as teachers. Some of them even wrote while the apostles were still alive, for example John and Peter.
These include… [Add small pictures of them on the screen after listing everyone]
Clement of Rome – a name that many people have probably never heard of. And yet he is actually even mentioned in the Holy Scriptures: “Yes, I also ask you, my faithful companion: stand by these women! For they have contended with me for the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my co-workers, whose names are written in the book of life.” (Philippians 4:3)
Isn’t that incredible? Not only do we have a church father who is mentioned by name in the Bible, but we also have the direct testimony of an apostle that this man is written in the book of life. Paul thus testifies that Clement is a true Christian recognized by God and a righteous man. As we have heard here, Clement was a companion and comrade-in-arms of the apostle Paul.
But before that he was a disciple of the apostle Peter – by whom he was personally instructed in the faith for years, whom he accompanied on his way to Rome, and with whom he experienced many things, for example when Peter confronted the first great false teacher in church history, who is also mentioned in the Bible, Simon Magus, the father of all heresies.
As one of many… he was personally entrusted by the apostles with the supreme responsibility of leading the entire city of Rome as bishop, which at the time was not a small village but the largest city in the world at the time, a metropolis with more than a million inhabitants. And he led it in the midst of persecution, riots and growing hostility towards Christians. Until he finally died as a martyr, was tied to an anchor, led out to sea and sunk alive when he did not deny his faith.
But there were other men besides Clement of Rome:
Ignatius of Antioch. He was the bishop of one of the oldest churches of all. Antioch, where the disciples were called Christians for the first time. Ignatius was arrested under Emperor Trajan. He knew that death awaited him and yet, or precisely because of this, he took the opportunity to write 7 letters to 7 churches on his last journey.
In the end, he was thrown to the wild beasts in Rome… who tore him apart. And all he had to do to escape was to deny Christ. A single sacrifice for the emperor – and he could have lived on. But he chose death.
Polycarp of Smyrna. He was a disciple of the apostle John. One of the last people to have spoken to an apostle. Appointed by the apostles, he became bishop of Smyrna. Polycarp wrote a letter to the church in Philippi in which he defended the apostles’ teaching and urged the faithful to remain faithful. He was over 80 years old when he was arrested. When the men came to pick him up, he prepared a meal for them and asked that he be given an hour to pray. And so it was that he prayed for hours for all the people he had ever met. Later, in the arena, he was asked to deny Christ in order to save his life. And Polycarp said: “I have served him for 86 years and he has never done me any harm – how could I deny my King who saved me?”
He was then bound to the stake. But when the fire was lit, a miracle happened: the flames did not touch him. The smoke rose, but his body remained unharmed. God himself glorified his faithful servant Polycarp before the eyes of the people. To bring many more to faith. Only an executioner was able to kill him with the help of a sword. His martyrdom was then written down.
Hermas was a simple Christian, not an apostle, bishop or martyr, at least not that we know of today. He is the author of Scripture – the shepherd of Hermas. A book full of visions, parables and revelations – received by an angel who showed himself to him as a shepherd. And his name even appears in the Bible – in Romans 16:14, Paul mentions him among the believers in Rome: “Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas and the brothers with them.”
The Shepherd of Hermas was extremely influential in the early church. In many churches, it was read publicly alongside the letters of the apostles and other writings.
Then there is the letter to Diognetus, which is one of the oldest apologetic works in church history; the writer, who is known to us as Mathetes, himself testifies that he was taught by the apostles. “I do not speak of things that are strange to me, nor do I aspire to anything contrary to right reason; but since I was a disciple of the apostles, I have become a teacher of the Gentiles.” – Chapter 11
The 6th person is Barnabas, yes, this is the apostle who traveled the world with Paul and planted churches. A man full of faith, attested by the Holy Scriptures themselves as “good and full of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 11:24). It was Barnabas who first brought Paul to the disciples when everyone still feared him. The Bible testifies that he was sent by the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:2) and was a true apostle. (Acts 14:14)
He left us a writing, the Epistle of Barnabas. This letter was also read together with the other writings in the early church.
And the 7th and therefore the last person is Papias, he was the bishop of Hierapolis, a man who learned from John’s disciples and from those who had gone with Peter and Andrew. He didn’t think it was enough just to read books – he wanted to hear from the mouths of men who had been with Christ himself.
Papias wrote a work, five books called “The Words of the Lord”. It was full of details about the life of Jesus, the apostles, the origin of the gospels, their exact intentions – and it contained numerous sayings of the Lord that are lost today. And without digressing too far, this work has unfortunately been lost over time, with only a few fragments remaining.
Another thing that should be mentioned is the Didache. This is a very early writing with special authority. The Church regarded it as having been written by the apostles themselves or at least handed down directly from them.
These were the Apostolic Fathers and works. The 7 earliest writers in Christianity, after the apostles. Of course, there were many more apostolic men who never wrote anything.
This is followed by other important writers such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, who was a student of Polycarp, Hippolytus, who was a student of Irenaeus. Clement of Alexandria, Origen and also Tertullian. Even if they write a little later, many of them are still very close to the apostles – some of them were born in the early 100s.
And the early church is wonderfully connected – for example, if you ask where someone got their teachings from, you can often trace a direct line. Clement of Alexandria, for example, was Origen’s teacher. Origen taught what he had received from Clement of Alexandria. In addition, Clement of Alexandria was taught directly by Pantaenus, who was head of the Christian school and catechumen school in Alexandria when Mark was the evangelist in Egypt and therefore also in Alexandria. And Clement himself was taught for a long time by three men who were direct disciples of the apostles Peter, James, John and Paul – he even mentions them by name and explicitly refers to their authority. Or an Irenaeus who learned from Polycarp, who in turn learned from the apostle John. But in order not to deviate too far from the Church Fathers for now, we will return to this later.
There are, of course, countless other church fathers, the most important of whom you now know, at least by name. But before we go any further, pause for a moment and seriously meditate on the fact that these church fathers were real people. They actually lived on this earth. It’s easy to forget that when you only hear names or read texts and are so far removed in time. But like us, they were alive.
They were men who were true Christians – most of them, without question, more righteous than any man alive today. They proved their faith not by the mere profession of their lips, but by the total dedication of their lives. Origen was tortured day after day, day and night, for 3 years in the worst possible way and never once denied Christ. After 3 years of unimaginable torture, his faithfulness was so unwavering that when there was a new emperor who suspended the persecution of Christians, he soon died of the consequences after his release and thus became a martyr.
These men did not see Christianity as a mere hobby, as many do today. They died for the faith and could have saved their lives if they had denied Jesus just once.
Therefore, when foolish (or stupid), arrogant and self-proclaimed “Christians” today dare to slander, malign or accuse these church fathers of heresy – because they believe their modern interpretation of the Bible is more correct than the unanimous testimony of the whole early church – they are doing a great evil. An evil against men who, as already mentioned, actually lived and did an infinite amount for the faith.
3. The faith everywhere in the world
Most people today live in an absurd historical imagination and practically believe that after the death of the apostles, the Christian faith simply disappeared for over a thousand years. As if no one had spoken about Christ anymore, as if the Holy Spirit had gone into hibernation and the scriptures had been discarded until Martin Luther revived everything 1500 years later.
But that is far from reality. Friends, we have accurate records of what the church believed and practiced for centuries after the apostles. The early Christians were very good chroniclers and we know exactly what they believed. And not just in one place like Israel, but in every city, in every part of the then civilized world.
Let’s just look at the map together.
Here we see the civilized world of the time. And I’m sure you can also see the many churches that existed at the time. And the really interesting thing? Think about it – if we already know so many names of bishops and church fathers, then you can easily work out how many others there were that we don’t even know about! Because most of the early Christians were nameless, even bishops, they never left any writings or their writings have been lost, and yet we already see such a rich number of churches and bishops spread all over the civilized world. Then you can only imagine how permeated every region was with churches!
And that is a completely different picture than most Christians imagine today. Christianity was not a small splinter group or divided into many different groups. No, it was a church that spread across the whole known world, as Jesus instructed the apostles to do! This church had clear leadership, clear doctrine and clear orders. Anyone who wanted to bring in something new was excluded, which meant excommunicated!
4. Unity in faith in the Church
We have the writings of all these people. They lived in all parts of the world, often thousands of kilometers apart, without social media, without the possibility to call each other or anything like that. Separated by hundreds of years. And YET they all kept and maintained unity in faith.
We see so many divisions and different opinions these days. Everyone calls each other heretics. Catholics say Orthodox are heretics and will go to hell if they don’t become Catholic. Orthodox say the same about Catholics. Even among the Orthodox there are different splits, all of which have excommunicated each other. Protestants call Catholics false teachers and idolaters. And among Protestants there are also thousands of schisms – some believe that if you don’t speak in tongues, you are not born again. Others teach that if you have not been baptized with water, you are not saved. Still others say you must be baptized to go to heaven. Some say you only have to believe in Jesus. Others say you have to repent of your sins. And then there are those who say that if you think you have to repent of your sins, you will go to hell because you are trying to mix works with grace, and so on. Everyone contradicts everyone. Everyone claims they have the true doctrine and act like it’s COMPLETELY OFFICIAL and everyone refers to the Holy Spirit and the Bible.
We live in a world of total fragmentation, confusion, and CHAOS! Everyone is building their own form of Christianity. The only firm foundation of the faith is the faith of the early, united Church — the faith that all Christians across the entire world had in common. The doctrine that was believed everywhere, over hundreds of years, by all Christians.
Make sure that the teachings you believe and the things you practice are such that — if you had lived in the early Church — you would have shared the same faith with every Christian across the entire world. Isn’t that a wonderful thought? Don’t you want that? Are you not afraid of the fact that — if you held Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox convictions — you would have been excommunicated in the early Church? You would not have been admitted to the congregation. You would have had no brothers and sisters in the faith. The only people who might have believed something similar to your current faith would have been heretics — and even among the heretics back then, there was no one who believed exactly what any modern denomination teaches. You would have had to found your own sect.
Does that not trouble you?
That the entire Church held complete unity in all important matters — you can very easily verify for yourself: in the writings of the Church Fathers of the first 300 years. You will not find any differences between the teachings of Justin Martyr, who wrote around the year 140 near Rome, and for example Origen, who was still writing in the 250s, in Palestine, Caesarea — even though continents and up to 100 years lay between them. It’s the same with all the others. From very early writings like the Recognitions of Clement or the letters of Ignatius, all the way to Lactantius, who wrote in the year 310.
Listen to what Irenaeus writes about this: “The Catholic Church possesses one and the same faith throughout the whole world.” That is not something I am saying — that is something you see in all the writings. In the teachings they teach. And that is what they testify.
We see continually, from almost all the Church Fathers — like Irenaeus here — that they call the Church Catholic. And the word Catholic has TRULY lost its meaning by now. It does not mean the Roman Catholic group — what the word is known for today — but in the past, it had a very specific and exact meaning, and there is a reason why this Catholic “Church,” which — literally — were the first Protestants, calls itself Catholic. Because Catholic really means nothing other than universal.
As we can gather from the quote by Irenaeus, it was a point of pride in the early Church that their faith was universally practiced — wherever you were in the world and wherever you went, the same was believed, which the Apostles themselves had taught and passed on to their successors.
So, understandably, these groups call themselves Catholic and Orthodox — they like these terms. But since they, as we can prove with ease, deviate from numerous serious teachings of this early Church, they cannot claim that of themselves. They would have been excluded from the early Church with what they believe. If you submit yourself to what the early Church taught and believed throughout the whole world, then you have the true Catholic and Orthodox faith.
Also hear what Tertullian says: “Is it even likely that so many and so great [churches] were in error in one and the same faith? No result among many occurrences is the same unless it is the result of truth: if it had been an error, the doctrine of the churches would have had to be different. But as it is, what proves to be one among many is not error, but tradition. Therefore, no one may dare to say that those who handed it down were in error.” (Prescription against Heretics 28)
I don’t need to add anything to that. There was unity in the Church — and that is a sign of God, a sign that the Holy Spirit was at work and that the bishops fulfilled their task. Or to put it more simply: in combination with the fact that this was the earliest and oldest teaching, and that all, worldwide, were in agreement — apostolic truth. Otherwise, the Church would have fallen into a hundred different doctrines, just as we see today. From the devil comes only confusion — not order and unity, as the Bible says: “And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers” (meaning bishops), “for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith.” (Ephesians 4:11)
What were the smaller differences in the convictions of the early Church Fathers? — Well, there are a few points on which the Church Fathers were not in full agreement. The Rule of Orthodoxy (more on this in the upcoming third video of the series) states that if there are differences in the teachings of various Church Fathers, we hold to the earliest view.
But in reality, we don’t even need that — because the matters on which there are differing opinions concern only a few small things. And it’s not at all the case that — let’s say — half of the Fathers hold one position and the other half the opposite. No, it’s really about topics that practically no one talks about — maybe one Father makes a speculative remark about it, and maybe another as well, but only in passing. And even then, they often admit that it is not something handed down to them by the Apostles.
And that is exactly what is decisive: if it is a topic that hardly anyone addresses, that is only mentioned in passing, and that has not been handed down with apostolic authority, then it is truly not essential for salvation and can be set aside. But what you must not ignore is that which the Church has taught universally — that is, everywhere and in full agreement. That is the standard. That is what you must submit to.
5. Principle 1: Truth comes first
What you need now more than anything else is not simply a collection of individual facts about the early Church or about anything else — but you must understand the fundamental principles of the faith. And the first principle you must grasp about the faith and about truth in general is that truth always comes first. And deception and counterfeit come afterwards.
You cannot have counterfeit money before there is real money — the authentic original. Only once the true thing exists do people begin to try to counterfeit it. And counterfeiting is about creating something that looks similar to the original — but is not the original.
There are so many versions of Christianity, and many people mock those pastors who preach the prosperity gospel, drive sports cars, and so on — but listen: these people are not our main enemies.
The true enemies are not those who are so obviously wrong that even a small child could recognize it. The true enemies are those who get some things right, but then insert terrible lies and teach them — lies that in the end lead people to hell. Good counterfeits.
This principle you must understand and deeply internalize: What comes first is true. What comes later is false. So if the early Church was in perfect unity from the very beginning, if it believed, lived, and taught in complete agreement for hundreds of years, and if only after centuries the Church began to depart from that and deviate — then, brother, there is only one conclusion: to remain with the original faith — the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. (Jude 1:3)
Remember this principle well. Because this was exactly the principle on which the early shepherds and teachers of the Church relied in order to expose heresies and false teachings: They confronted the heretics and said to their faces, “What you are teaching is new. It was not handed down to us from the beginning. You invented it.” They did not get entangled with these heretics in discussions in order to reach some halfway peace — no, they rejected them, and first of all on the basis that their teachings did not come from the Apostles.
And this is precisely why even the Catholics in later councils on the topic of icon veneration (which is an evil heresy) falsified and presented quotations from early Church Fathers — yes, this actually happened — because they themselves knew that they could not establish a doctrine on their own authority alone, but had to prove that this practice was followed from the beginning.
Let me now return from this digression, in order to discuss the priority of truth and the comparatively late arrival of falsehood. I even base my argument on the parable that places first the sowing of the good seed of wheat by the Lord, but only at a later time introduces the corruption of the harvest by His enemy, the devil, with the useless weeds of wild oats. For in this, the difference of teachings is described in a figurative sense, since in other places too, the Word of God is compared to seed. From the sequence, therefore, it becomes clear that what was handed down first is from the Lord and is true, while what was introduced later is foreign and false. This sentence will stand against all later heresies, which contain no enduring quality of related knowledge — to claim the truth for themselves. — Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics, Chapter 31.
6. And this Faith we have to follow
Most people simply don’t know this. They believe it’s up to them to figure out what the true faith is — as if they could just pick up the Bible, read it, and arrive at the truth through their own effort alone. But you’ve seen where that leads. When people try to understand Holy Scripture entirely on their own — without guidance, without teachers, without the help of those who were appointed by the Apostles — countless contradictory interpretations arise. Not one, or two, or three — but hundreds, yes, thousands of versions of “Christianity,” all born out of the attempt to interpret the Word of God independently.
The fairy tale that Scripture interprets itself is a Protestant invention — a deception. Because if that were true, then why does any pastor still preach sermons at all? He should just read from the Bible and say, “Well, that was good, wasn’t it — we all naturally understand everything that was said, right?” But no one does that. It’s completely dishonest. Because in reality, they read a few verses from Paul, a few from Peter or from the Lord Jesus Himself — and then begin to explain in detail “what they just read means.”
So, that’s why we’re here — to tell you with absolute clarity: God does not require you to figure out the Christian faith all on your own. Merely attempting to do so is already explicitly forbidden. You do not have the authority, as a beginner in the faith, to define for yourself what Christianity is. That is not your task.
The truth is not open to your interpretation. The faith was not handed over to you so that you might redefine it, but so that you might accept or reject it. The faith was already fully defined two thousand years ago. “The faith was once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 1:3)
Once for all. Not in pieces. Not gradually. Not through a thousand years of human development, debates, or councils — as the Cathodox claim.
No. The faith was handed down once — completely and unchangeably — and the entire Church agreed on what this faith is. And what was handed down from the beginning is binding for all times.
If you want to ignore that — go ahead, reinvent the foundations of the faith, interpret them according to your own understanding. Reject the authority of God, which He gave through the Apostles to the Church, and exalt yourself above the Apostles — if you think that’s a good idea.
So let’s summarize this once more: when we tell you to read the writings of the early Church Fathers, we are not saying that you should simply read some old texts — by unknown men who merely claimed to have understood the Christian faith better than others.
That is Protestant thinking. That is how sect leaders behave — they quote arbitrarily from other people who judge just as fallibly and arbitrarily as they themselves do.
And by the way, a sect arises when a single person claims that God has given him alone a secret revelation, unknown to everyone else, and that all others are in error. What we are doing is the complete opposite: we do not follow the voice of one man, not even the voice of a single Church Father, but of the entire early Church. Wherever in the world you would have been back then — they believed the things we believe as well, as we have already shown you and will show you even more.
7. Why the Bible alone is not enough
I can almost smell the questions already…
“If these Church Fathers learned from the Apostles — then what’s wrong with learning directly from the writings of the Apostles instead of from the writings of the Church Fathers? The Apostles came earlier! And directly from the Bible!”
First of all, just so you know: some of these men lived at the same time as the Apostles — not just after them. Take for example the so-called Epistle of Barnabas. Many scholars date it to around 65 AD — that is, before the destruction of Jerusalem — and it was read very early on in the churches.
And this is what no Protestant will ever tell you: the writings of the earliest disciples of the Apostles were actually read alongside the New Testament. They were not separated or treated as an add-on, but were simply regarded as apostolic writings — because their authors were helpers and companions of the Apostles, like Barnabas.
But still, why can’t we just read the writings of the Apostles — the Holy Scripture?
Quite simply: the Scriptures are very hard to understand. And this is exactly what Scripture itself tells us. The Apostle Peter writes in 2 Peter 3:
“Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, and consider the patience of our Lord as salvation — just as also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.”
Peter explicitly praises Paul for teaching the truth — the same truth that Peter himself teaches. And yet he clearly warns that many passages are difficult to understand. And precisely these difficult passages are twisted — and by two kinds of people: the unlearned and the unstable. And often, it is one and the same person who is both at once.
The Greek word for “unstable” literally means someone who does not stand on solid ground — like a house built on sand. And that is exactly the image Peter uses — in perfect agreement with the Lord Himself, who used the image first:
“Whoever hears My words and does not do them is like a foolish man who built his house on the sand… and it fell, and great was its fall.” (cf. Matt. 7:26–27)
And what happens to these people? They twist the Scriptures — not just a little, but to such an extent that it leads them to spiritual destruction. Peter says: to their own ruin. That means they go down in the end into Hades and into the fire.
This passage from Peter clearly implies that we need people to teach us the Scriptures. There are also other reasons for that — because we read our own assumptions into the Scriptures. Even if you think you’re reading the Bible completely neutrally. You’re not.
Let’s simply take a look at the obstacles that stand in your way today when you try to understand the Bible:
You don’t know Greek. Nearly all the books were written in Greek. Jesus and the Apostles quoted from the Septuagint. Even if you learn Ancient Greek — which is a dead language — you will never understand the idioms, allusions, and cultural imagery the way a person back then did. As a result, you are only reading a translation. And every translation was made by human beings — human beings with their own theology, preferences, blind spots, and agendas. No translation is neutral.
You are you, and you have a unique upbringing, a unique understanding of the world and of various words. Because of that, you see Scripture with bias — through your own lens. Even if you don’t want to. And that includes the fact that you are surrounded by rebellious people, and shaped by them as well — even if only subconsciously. You already have an interpretation of Scripture — through your church group, your family, your friends, the internet, Martin Luther, Calvin, Augustine, or whoever else has influenced you. And let’s not even talk about TikTok…
And the most important point: you were not taught by the Apostles or by Jesus for days, weeks, or months. The Apostles taught people for years.
Meaning: when you read the Bible, you automatically read your current beliefs out of the Bible — and that is normal; that’s how we humans are. But fine, let’s just suppose… you are special. You really can read the Bible completely without bias, and the fact that you don’t speak Greek, and all of these other points, don’t affect you in the slightest…
Even then — it is still not enough.
Peter continues the thought — the one he shared with us in Scripture — in the Recognitions of Clement. The Recognitions of Clement is a work written by Clement of Rome, the student and travel companion of Peter.
“Inventive people, as I see, draw many plausibilities from the things they read. Therefore, great caution is necessary, that when the law of God is read, it is not interpreted according to the understanding of our own mind. For there are many statements in the divine Scriptures that can be twisted toward the meaning which each person has already preconceived for himself; and this must not happen… Therefore, it is necessary that you learn the meaning of the Scriptures from the one who has preserved them according to the truth, which was handed down to him by his fathers.”
(Recognitions, Book 10, Chapter 42)
And further…
“Such absurd things about God are usually devised by those who do not read the law under the guidance of teachers, but see themselves as teachers and believe they can understand the law — even though it was not explained to them by those who learned it from the Master.”
(Book 2, Chapter 55)
Yes — one can learn much about Christianity by reading Scripture.
And yes, perhaps, perhaps, someone could even be saved if they had only the Bible.
But: the probability is extremely low.
That is why we need the Church Fathers. They are just as indispensable to the faith as parents are to a child. God Himself created these authorities: father, mother, and later established orders — such as the high priests in the Old Covenant, and now the bishops in the New Covenant.
A child needs a father and mother who care for it. I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. And if it has no parents, the child is in great distress. Yes, it is theoretically possible for a child to survive even if its parents are unloving, negligent, or even corrupt — if the child rebels against their false teachings or runs away from them. It is possible — but it almost never ends well. And it’s the same with the Church Fathers.
So don’t play around with your soul.
7.1 Verbal Teaching better than reading the Bible
And now we lay down the next principle that you must understand.
And this is a principle that really everyone has to agree with, because we all know that it is much easier to learn things when you have a teacher. If merely reading a text were the best way for someone to learn anything, then everyone would just go to school, be handed a textbook, and be sent home — “Done.”
But no one does that. Everyone is taught. All are instructed. That is generally the best way to learn.
And it’s not only about the fact that the Church Fathers interpret the Holy Scriptures better — although in the interpretation of the New Testament, they surpass all others. Rather, they themselves had the privilege of hearing the Apostles teach with their own ears.
To give you an example of how much more understanding and how much deeper instruction they received than any other person in history, you need to consider the following:
To read the New Testament in its entirety takes about 18 hours — so less than a day. But it is said that Paul taught in some places for three years — and that was typical for him. In the Acts of the Apostles, it is mentioned that he taught in Ephesus for three years. And he himself says:
“Remember that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish every one of you with tears.” (cf. Acts 20:31)
So he preached all day long. That’s how hard he worked to make sure they understood every single teaching of Christ. Just think about it: three years — that’s over 1,000 days, since one year has 365 days. Now imagine that Paul taught for only eight hours a day — a regular working day. And that’s a conservative estimate, because he himself says: day and night. But let’s just take eight hours per day — that would be roughly 8,760 hours of teaching from the Apostle Paul.
(3 years × 365 days × 8 hours = 8,760 hours)
Now compare that: someone who has read the New Testament once — which means they’ve received 18 hours of “apostolic” teaching — versus 8,760 hours of direct instruction from Paul.
Which would you prefer?
And don’t forget: the Apostles looked at all those who listened to them, who traveled with them, lived with them, were tested by them, and learned from them — and among all those people they said: “You, Ignatius. You, Clement. You surpass all the others. You are fit to carry on the Gospel. We entrust you with the flock of God.”
Think about that: what kind of authority that is.
And now ask yourself honestly:
If you already value the opinion of your pastor — or your favorite YouTubers —
if you knew someone had been personally instructed by the Apostle Paul for just one hour — wouldn’t you automatically ask him about the topics he was taught by Paul, and listen to him?
Of course you would!
You would listen to him.
You would give his words great weight.
How much more then someone who wasn’t taught for just one hour, but for thousands of hours!
In the end, the real question is this:
Do you want to be taught by someone who was instructed for 8,000 hours by the Apostles themselves, who was able to ask them questions, who proved himself worthy, and who — after years — was personally hand-picked by the Apostles to lead entire cities as bishop, to whom all other believers had to submit?
Or would you rather read the Bible on your own and figure everything out by yourself?
What do you think is the better guarantee for arriving at the truth?
And you know what? You get the best of both worlds. Because you don’t only have the teachings of the Apostles themselves — through all the writings of their disciples, all over the world, in the most diverse cultures and languages, all of whom preserved the same faith — which in itself is already incredible. But it goes even further:
You also have the Bible.
And — even more decisively — you also have the interpretation of the Bible by those men who were taught by the Apostles themselves.
You don’t just have the text — you also have the explanation of the text.
That is a great, great privilege. One that people in the past did not have.
The disciples of the Apostles had all the letters of the Bible.
They knew the four Gospels.
They had the entire Old Testament.
And they constantly quoted these Scriptures.
They lived from the Word of God.
And because they preserved it, copied it, and passed it on, we still have these Scriptures today.
Did you know that the New Testament is the most copied book in all of world history?
Just in Greek alone, there are over 5,000 manuscripts — and countless more in Coptic, Syriac, Latin. Why?
Because these men loved the Scripture so much that they kept copying it over and over.
But even if all that weren’t the case — I’ll tell you honestly:
I would still rather be taught by someone who was personally instructed by the Apostles, who was able to ask them questions, who knew what the text really means because he heard it directly — than to sit alone with a Bible and try to figure everything out myself.
And even today’s preachers, who claim to interpret “Scripture alone,” in reality almost always rely on commentaries, study Bibles, and their Bible teachers.
They rarely teach out of their own strength.
Everyone follows some person.
So why not follow those who learned directly from the Apostles?
Why not listen to those who were confirmed, examined, and appointed by the Apostles?
7.2 The holy Spirit is not your teacher
I already see individual comments from people saying,
“I don’t need teachers, the Holy Spirit teaches me.”
Friends, what the Protestants are telling you is a lie.
They say that anyone can just pick up Holy Scripture and automatically — almost magically — understand it, and not fall into any heresy. And they often quote the words of the Lord:
“But when He, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come.” (John 16:13)
And then they claim that this is proof that all believers are infallibly guided into all truth and are free from any error.
But now, let’s look at reality.
Be honest with yourself.
Do you currently understand all of Scripture?
Do we really see that all people are led by the Holy Spirit just because they open the Bible and try to understand it?
By no means.
Be honest with yourself.
There are thousands of contradictory interpretations of Scripture. Hundreds of thousands.
What Jesus spoke here, He spoke to His Apostles.
The promise to be guided into “all truth” was directed at them — not at every individual in all times, regardless of how obedient you are or what “church” you go to.
You cannot simply take every single word that Jesus spoke in the Gospels and apply it directly to yourself.
Christ often spoke to specific individuals — to the Apostles, to His disciples, to enemies, to the sick, or to the entire people — and every word was situational, wise, and targeted.
The Church Fathers give us the exact context and the meaning of ALL the things that Jesus said.
And not just one of them — but as a collective.
But if you don’t care about that and you simply apply the words of Jesus to yourself however you like, you are entering dangerous territory. Because then you would also have to apply this statement of Christ to yourself: “Truly, truly, I say to you: whoever believes in Me will also do the works that I do, and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father.” (John 14:12)
Now be completely honest with yourself: do you really believe that you perform, or could ever perform, greater miracles than Jesus? Do you dare to utter such a blasphemy seriously?
I don’t even directly blame the people who are in charismatic sects or similar movements and believe such things because that is exactly what they are taught — many of them are simply completely blinded, and in fact, it would be the logical consequence if one handles the Bible this way. Because anyone who believes that every word of Jesus is addressed directly to all believers must, in the end, arrive at this blasphemous conclusion.
In reality, other Protestant groups like the Baptists make no sense when they suddenly don’t apply this statement to themselves — but apply all the others. That is absolutely illogical and inconsistent. It is arbitrary selection.
Only apostolic tradition — and thus the writings of the Church Fathers — protects us from such errors, because as already said, they correctly explain and interpret every single statement of Jesus.
What do they tell us? I’ll explain it briefly and skip quotations so that we don’t stray too far from the main topic… but quite simply:
Christ spoke these words to the Apostles. And we see that this very word was fulfilled: for in Scripture we do not read a single time that the shadow of Jesus healed anyone. But of the Apostles it is said: “So that they even carried out the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats, that as Peter came by, at least his shadow might fall on some of them.” (Acts 5:15)
But why did the Lord do this? Why did He allow the Apostles to perform greater signs than He Himself? So that they could spread the Gospel with power throughout the earth and plant churches in great number, since there was an overflow of new believers!
The fact that the Apostles were led into all truth by the Holy Spirit whom Jesus sent them — and that even Scripture proves this — is another reason why we should listen to the bishops who were personally hand-picked by the Apostles to instruct Christians in the faith they had received from the Apostles, and thus from God (the Holy Spirit).
So as we can see, we are not automatically and magically led into all truth just because we have received the Holy Spirit. That is not how it works. One can fall into error — even after receiving the Holy Spirit!
And besides: what guarantee do you even have that you have received the Holy Spirit? Do you even know how one receives the Holy Spirit? There are many who believe they have the Holy Spirit — and in reality, they do not. They deceive themselves.
Holy Scripture shows very clearly what must happen in order to receive the Spirit:
“Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38)
The first thing you must do in order to receive the Holy Spirit is to repent of your sins, turn away from your sins, and then be baptized. The Holy Spirit will not dwell in a vessel that is stained with sin; He will not dwell with a person who is unclean and defiled.
So don’t even try to come up with the excuse that the Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth — that was a promise given to the Apostles, not to all people.
7 (Continuation)
Do not be arrogant, do not be proud. Don’t be a Protestant. Don’t convince yourself that you can just pick up the Scriptures and automatically understand them. You yourself know that this is not true.
If you were to simply take a Bible in your hand and try to understand it completely on your own — and in that way become a Christian — then you would be doing something that no one in the first 300 years of Christianity ever did. No one in the early Church was simply handed a Bible by the Apostles and then left alone with the command: “Figure out Christianity for yourself.” That never happened — and deep down, you know that.
People were instructed orally by the Apostles. As mentioned before, Paul taught the Ephesians day and night for three years — and that is a lot. Just think about it for yourself. We don’t find that much teaching in the New Testament. There is not a single book in the New Testament that starts from zero and lays out every doctrine thoroughly — in full depth, from beginning to end. Not a single one.
When people today quote the New Testament in order to explain or justify a doctrine, they jump from one book to another: first they take a verse from John, then a verse from Ephesians, then they have to ignore verses from Matthew and take one from Revelation to build their teaching. And why? Because there is not a single place in the New Testament where a doctrine like baptism, the Eucharist, repentance, or the Trinity is explained fully and systematically.
The writings of the New Testament, which were authored by the Apostles, were not intended to form the foundation of Christianity.
Because — perhaps with the exception of the Letter to the Hebrews — the letters of the New Testament are addressed to Christians. To Christians who were already in the faith. The letters were not written to teach the Christian faith from the ground up, but to correct specific problems that had arisen in particular, individual communities. So these are admonitions, exhortations, or additions — not first proclamations or introductions to the faith.
And many people are not even aware of this. Yes, many have a completely false view of the Apostles! The Apostles were real human beings who had lives and did so many things. If you already think you’re doing a lot — even though your daily routine probably repeats itself constantly — just try to imagine how much the Apostles experienced and did. So the things we still have today from the Apostles are only a small fraction, a little taste, of all the things they said and taught.
But now, to return to the foundation of Christianity: The Bible is not the foundation of Christianity. The fact that Protestants want to tell us and sell us this is simply false. Because if that were true — if the New Testament really were the foundation of the Christian faith — then how could Christianity have existed before it was even written? And how could it have continued when many communities did not yet possess all the letters and writings of the New Testament?
Christianity existed for a long time solely through oral proclamation — through the preaching of the Apostles. For decades, the believers preserved the teachings of the Apostles that had been handed down to them orally.
You must renew your thinking. You must understand that everything one needs to know about the faith could be learned even without a single book of the New Testament — through oral instruction and through faithful teaching. And that also applies to everyone watching this video. Even when the teachings of Christ are passed on, they do not always have to be repeated in the exact words spoken by Jesus — even though we have those words.
What matters is not the letter of the law. That’s why the Apostles could write to different communities and use different words to explain the same content — because they had understood the Spirit.
“The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” – 2 Corinthians 3:6
Do not become enslaved to the letter. Understand the Spirit — the principles that stand behind everything. Take on the mind of Christ so that you understand how He thinks about so many topics and why He feels the way He does. It is not about memorizing a list of little facts and verses — but about entering into the heart of God.
Because once you’ve understood the principles — such as: “You shall love the Lord your God” and “your neighbor as yourself” — then you no longer need a list of specific commandments about what you’re not supposed to do to your neighbor. Christ Himself taught that the Jews were obsessed with the details, with all the little laws and rules — but that was never how God wanted to deal with them. He wants us to live by principles, from a renewed heart that loves the Spirit of truth.
As for the letters of the New Testament: even though they are divinely inspired — written by the Apostles, all of whom were filled with the Holy Spirit, and everything written in them is true — and although they contain great spiritual depth, such that one can read them for many, many years, as many do, and still draw new insights and spiritual wisdom from them — the following must still be kept in mind: Every single Apostle, when writing these letters, did not even address all the problems he saw in the churches. Paul, for example, often said things like: “I am writing you only one letter now, but I intend to come to you personally and settle the remaining matters then.” Again and again, he emphasizes that he will travel to the churches in order to speak to the brothers personally, to exhort them, or to resolve open questions. Here is one example:
“If anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, so that you do not come together for judgment. The remaining matters I will arrange when I come.” (1 Corinthians 11:34)
Here we see once again that the writings the Apostles left us are only a small heap of fragments. The same applies to Jesus. And don’t just take that from me — take it from the mouth of John himself. John writes at the end of his Gospel:
“There are also many other things which Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” (John 21:25)
There were too many things that Jesus did and too many things that He said.
One example: when the Lord appeared after His resurrection to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, it is said only briefly that He revealed Himself to them — by showing them where He is found in the Scriptures: in the Law, in the Prophets, in the Psalms — throughout the entire Old Testament, He shows them: “That speaks of Me.” But in the Gospel of Luke, where this event is reported (Luke 24), it is not explained in detail. It remains only a brief summary.
But through the Church Fathers, we receive a much more complete understanding of this event, because they explain and unfold these things in detail. They show how Christ is to be found everywhere in Scripture — and how the Apostles passed on this knowledge, which Jesus Himself gave them, not in a single book, but through oral teaching.
Origen — a Church Father highly respected in his lifetime and a greatly esteemed teacher — comes from the third century after Christ. He was born in the second century, but his strongest influence was in the early 200s. It is said of him that he wrote more books than any other person before him in history. Do you see the difference? That cannot be said of Paul. And that is precisely why Origen is such a valuable source: because he explains and unfolds all these things in great detail.
Questions that so many people have today are already found in the Church Fathers — because they wrote so much more, and laid out in far greater depth what the Old and New Testaments teach. They gave us full commentaries, complete interpretations — not just short letters, but systematic presentations of Scripture, flowing from the heart of apostolic tradition.
And in addition to that, they were guardians and faithful stewards of the Holy Scriptures. The only reason you know today that Peter wrote his letter, or why you know which letters truly come from Paul, is the fact that the Church — through the Fathers — preserved this truth. Many do not know this, but even during the time of the Apostles, forged letters were already circulating! Paul himself explicitly mentions this in one of his letters:
“Do not be quickly shaken… either by a spirit or a spoken word or a letter supposedly from us.” — 2 Thessalonians 2:2
Likewise, Luke reports in his Gospel that even back then there were already many attempts to write so-called Gospels — although these people knew nothing, uneducated and without knowledge of the true events:
“Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us… so I too decided… to follow everything carefully from the beginning and to write it down for you in order.” — Luke 1:1–3
Everyone today takes it for granted that the Gospel of Matthew was written by Matthew. But how do you know that? Nowhere in the text does it say that Matthew wrote it. He does not identify himself in the writing. So how can you know that Matthew really wrote it?
The answer is: because the Church Fathers faithfully preserved which writings are genuine and which truly come from the Apostles. They alone handed that down.
You already trust the Church Fathers.
Also consider this: Jesus did not write any books and hand them to the Apostles. He explained everything to them orally — over years, day and night. The Apostles did the same — they explained everything to their disciples face to face. That means: there were many Christians all over the world who understood all the teachings of Christ even though they did not possess a single New Testament writing. Because that is how the faith lived and grew: not through paper, but through people — not through reading, but through hearing. As it is written: “Faith comes by hearing.” – Romans 10:17
And by the way: all the Church Fathers did know the New Testament very well. The Church Fathers quoted the New Testament constantly! Did you know that you can reconstruct almost the entire New Testament from the quotes of the Church Fathers of the first 300 years alone? But that’s how deeply the Church Fathers knew, quoted, and interpreted Scripture — that’s how deeply it was imprinted on their hearts and on their lips, even though they didn’t have the kind of access to the writings that we have today, and most of it they simply knew by heart.
With the Church Fathers, it really feels like every second sentence is a Bible quote. They refer to Scripture more than your average modern pastor who gives a sermon every Sunday. And they quoted the New Testament directly in the original text — in the original language. The Fathers lived in the Greek cultural context — in the Koine Greek of the Septuagint and of the New Testament. For them, it was not a dead language, but their native tongue.
They understood the Scriptures better than anyone today.
8. 2nd Principle: Unlearn and Relearn
The hard truth is that the likelihood is very high that you have been completely brainwashed in your thinking and beliefs — without even realizing it. We don’t want you to stumble because you’re learning too many truths too quickly, which can lead to rejecting the truth. There is an orderly way to learn things, as the Apostle Peter teaches in Recognitions, Book 1. So try not to be too hasty, as we’ve already said, but do everything in order and with self-control. This is a serious matter. Concerning salvation.
There are so many things that you believe must be true — but in reality contradict the doctrine of the early Church. You will be shocked when you begin to read the writings of the first Christians and realize in how many areas you are completely wrong. That’s why you must be ready to unlearn much of what you have so far held as certain! And yes, that is humility. I know it’s hard to admit that you have been in error for years — or perhaps even worse, that you’ve taught these grave errors to others. Many reject the truth for exactly that reason — because they do not want to face the fact that they were wrong. But that is why we are called to be poor in spirit and to humble ourselves.
Question everything. As already said, you will have to unlearn many things and learn anew if you decide to embrace the early faith. It would take far too long to address every heresy that exists in this video. There are too many.
Assume nothing to be true — whatever you may still believe from the past — unless you have tested it against the teaching of the early Church.
Only if it withstands that test is it true.
9. Bible says we should only obey Apostles / `their writings?
That is not true, and we will address this explicitly in the next video of our series. That video will deal exclusively with the topic that the Bible commands us to submit to the bishops. But still, let’s briefly touch on it here.
First of all, even before the Apostles died, they appointed men who were to take over leadership. Because the Apostles could not be everywhere at the same time. They could not constantly instruct every church themselves. That is why they needed others who could teach and lead in their place when they were not present — and especially after their death.
And that is precisely why today we must listen to what the Church has taught from the very beginning and everywhere in agreement. Because these men were the ones appointed and authorized by the Apostles as bearers of the truth.
And furthermore, brothers — it is simply false when Protestants claim that God only wants us to obey the Apostles. Because in 1 and 2 Timothy and in the Letter to Titus, Paul explicitly commands that Timothy and Titus are to teach and govern with full authority. He says:
“Command and teach these things.”
And:
“Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you.” (cf. Titus 2:15)
He grants them not only authority over doctrine, but also the power to exclude people from the congregation — that is, to excommunicate. He even commands them to appoint additional bishops in the cities, who are likewise to possess the same authority.
Understand this: Timothy was in Ephesus — an ancient metropolis with around 200,000 inhabitants, the third-largest city of the Roman Empire. Titus was stationed on Crete, responsible for a region with about 75,000 people, with numerous congregations and house churches. And both were entrusted with the responsibility of appointing presbyters (smaller bishops), who in turn were to teach and lead the people.
That means: Paul himself grants not only the Apostles, but also their appointed successors, the authority to rule and teach in the Church — and to appoint further men who are to do the same. This is nothing other than apostolic succession — and we already see it attested in the New Testament.
9.1 Only Scriptures are divinely inspired
The idea that only the canonical Scriptures are divinely inspired, and that everything the Church Fathers teach is “not inspired,” is a purely Protestant idea — and it is false. Of course the Church Fathers were fallible human beings — no one denies that. But to be fallible does not mean that someone is automatically wrong in everything he says. Likewise, the Apostles were not “infallible” in some absolute metaphysical sense. They too were human. But they were righteous, full of the Holy Spirit, and they understood the teaching of Christ correctly — and they handed down that teaching fully and faithfully. And their disciples likewise passed it on correctly.
In the first centuries, there was no such thing as “the Bible” in the modern sense. Different groups throughout history assembled different collections — depending on their theological leanings and interests. The Protestants, for example, had in the original and best-known Bible — the King James Version — books like Sirach, Tobit, and the Maccabees. They were an integral part. But later, they were removed arbitrarily. Why? Because they didn’t fit the reformers’ agenda.
The Church Fathers, on the other hand, were the ones who reviewed, preserved, and defended the writings against Gnostic and other corruptions. If they say that the Didache has authority — then for me, it has authority. If they regard the Shepherd of Hermas, or the First Letter of Clement, or even the Book of Enoch as inspired by God — then so do I. Period.
People in earlier times simply read all the writings that were available. And if they had a letter from an Apostle, they called it Scripture — without needing some council to tell them so. By the way — if today a genuine letter from an Apostle were discovered, wouldn’t you say it’s Holy Scripture? I most certainly would. I wouldn’t say, “No, the canon is closed, no more letters, no more Scripture.” Seriously? If I found a real letter from an Apostle — of course I would treat it as Scripture. Wouldn’t you?
Today, we are at a great disadvantage when it comes to the writings and teachings of the Apostles — compared to the early Church. Much has been lost. God never handed down to us any kind of list of canonical books. The idea of a closed canon does not come from Scripture. Scripture does not say there is a canon. And it does not give you a list of which books belong in it.
That is one of the greatest problems with the Protestant position of “Scripture alone.” Because Scripture alone — doesn’t work. The Bible itself does not tell you to read only the Bible. The Bible rather tells you to obey the teachers who were appointed after the Apostles.
That is what Scripture actually teaches.
And by the way — in the Old Testament, books are cited or mentioned that we no longer possess. They have been lost — due to poor transmission by people who were actually responsible for preserving them. And even in the New Testament, books are cited that we no longer have today. Paul, for example, quotes a passage:
“What no eye has seen and no ear has heard…” (1 Corinthians 2:9)
Then he writes: “As it is written” — but no one knows where this quote is written. This passage is not found in the Old Testament. Paul was referring to a writing that his audience knew — and which they regarded as Scripture. But today, it is lost.
We respect the authority of the Church — and that means: whatever books the Church Fathers cite and regard as sacred, we also regard as sacred. That is precisely the point at which many people today have a completely false understanding of what “Scripture” is — compared to what the early Church actually believed.
10. Were the Churches of the New Testament not in Heresy?
Do you believe that the Church, at a time when the Apostles were still alive, was teaching false doctrines worldwide? And do you believe it would have even been possible for the Church to hold the same teachings all across the world — and for those teachings to be false — while the Apostles were still living?
Let me bring up the map again. Do you remember the incredible number of churches that existed all over the world? And that is only a small number of the churches that are actually corrected in the Bible. There are only 13 or 14 letters from Paul, if you count the Letter to the Hebrews — and some of those letters are addressed to the same churches twice, like the two letters to the Corinthians and the two to the Thessalonians. We have seven distinct communities to whom he writes. Three of them are rebuked and corrected, and the rest are praised highly by Paul. So if you put that in perspective, it’s a tiny number of churches that actually had problems.
Moreover, the churches that did have problems were rebuked. The Apostles did not reject these churches or say something like, “Oh, these churches have totally fallen away from the faith.” On the contrary, the Apostles corrected and rebuked these churches. They resolved the problem.
And it was the same in the early Church. If the people in a congregation felt that their bishop was teaching heresy, they would write a letter to another bishop, who would then join with other bishops and investigate the matter. And if it turned out that the bishop was in fact teaching heresy, he would be excommunicated, and a new one would be installed — no matter how influential the former bishop had been.
We see this kind of thing in the Bible as well.
“I wish I could be with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.” (Galatians 4:20)
“Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power. What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love and a spirit of gentleness?” (1 Corinthians 4:18–21)
“This is the third time I am coming to you… I have warned those who sinned before… and I warn them now again… that when I come again, I will not spare them.” (1 Corinthians 13:1–2)
“That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord; he will remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church.” (1 Corinthians 4:17)
Paul threatened to come in person to every church that remained stubborn and refused correction.
No church was allowed to persist in its sin — not during the time when the Apostles were alive, and not after. Anyone who truly thinks the Church had completely fallen away during the time of the New Testament, even while the Apostles were still alive — and that no one came to correct it — casts the Apostles in a truly bad light.
11. About people who slander the Church Fathers — Don’t trust the scholars
Many people who write or speak about the Church Fathers are completely insane. Hardly anyone who talks about the Church Fathers has actually read them. If you look, for example, at Wikipedia entries or any similar site, you’ll see it — people today are not really interested in primary sources. They’re only interested in secondary sources. And by that I mean: most of the people who slander the Church Fathers — claiming that Clement of Alexandria was a feminist, or that Origen taught that the devil and all people would go to heaven — have not actually read what the Church Fathers themselves said, what they wrote in their own works.
Instead, they read what other people wrote about the Church Fathers. And when you look at the footnotes — footnote 39, 40, 41 — in my experience, they are almost never real primary sources. You won’t find where that Church Father actually said that, in which book, in which chapter — instead, it’s always some “scholar” from three years ago who said something about it.
That’s why you must always stick to primary sources when you hear rumors or claims about the Church Fathers. These people are always trying to deliberately slander the Fathers and make outrageous claims. They try to lead people astray. They want to say shocking things; that’s how they make their money, or they achieve their goal of misleading others. Whatever the reason… the truth is, these claims are a total distortion of what the Church Fathers really believed.
You should always be skeptical of these so-called scholars, theologians, and biblical academics. If you hear that they claim certain books are forgeries — books that the entire Church historically considered authentic — or that they outright slander individual Fathers and say they believed bizarre things, then remember: these are the same people who teach that certain writings in the Bible were not really written by the authors to whom they are attributed. Yes, really. And I’m showing evidence for this here. These same scholars claim that the letters of Peter were not actually written by the Apostle Peter.
But not only that — today, in theological seminaries — yes, the very seminaries people attend to become pastors — it is taught that 1 and 2 Timothy, as well as Titus, were not actually written by the Apostle Paul.
By the way, Ephesians and 2 Thessalonians are also disputed. So is the Letter of Jude.
And you want to tell me that we should take these people seriously — and just believe everything they say?
But even Catholics and Orthodox don’t really like the Church Fathers of the first three centuries. In the Roman Catholic Church today, there are officially 37 so-called Doctors of the Church — that means officially recognized teachers of the Church, whose teachings are considered especially authoritative. Until just a few years ago — around 2012 — there were 36. And of these 36 — and this is the crucial point — not a single one was a Church Father from the first 300 years after Christ. Not one of the men who lived directly after the Apostles, who received the faith from them and testified to it with clarity, was recognized as an official Doctor Ecclesiae.
Instead, only men who lived centuries later were included — and who often taught very different doctrines from the early Fathers.
This shows just how deep the aversion to the original teaching runs — even within those Sects that call themselves “faithful to tradition.”
12. This life is a test
I know that many of you are hurt and probably also sad to hear these things — your parents and yes, maybe even all your friends believe false doctrines, and you don’t want to judge your parents. You’re afraid that if you say, “I believe this now, and I will obey it,” you are thereby condemning your parents. But you should stay away from such thoughts, because they create hostility and tension between you and God.
Instead, find peace by remembering the truth: God is perfectly just, perfectly merciful, perfectly patient, perfectly fair, and perfect in ALL things. Every good trait you have — God has it in perfect form. So if you have a sense of fairness, mercy, and patience, why do you think God lacks those things?
We are not more fair or more merciful than God — believe me.
When you read the Church Fathers, you will be overwhelmed at how merciful and patient God truly is.
You must understand that this life is a test. For every person, this life is a test. I cannot tell you how God will judge each individual. But people who are truly doing well, living here in Germany — why have they never concerned themselves with these things? What do they do all day? Do they just sit on the couch and watch TV? How do they spend their time?
As already said — this life is a trial. It’s about finding the truth, believing it, and doing what is right.
You cannot be spiritually lazy.
You cannot let yourself be ruled by entertainment and distraction.
Be fruitful with your life.
This life is for labor — the resting place comes in the next one.
So don’t rest now, brother.
Do what is necessary — for your salvation.
For we will be judged by an entirely different standard. We are held to a much higher standard because we have access to all this information. We live in the 21st century — with the internet in our pocket. In just a few seconds you can look things up, verify, translate, compare. And yet most people are too lazy, instead of engaging with the most important subject of their entire life: their salvation, they scroll through TikTok and waste hours every day. For most of us, there is no excuse. And what will you say on the Day of Judgment? What do you plan to argue before the throne of God?
Consider the Queen of Sheba, who undertook a long and dangerous journey just to hear Solomon, because she had heard he was very wise! How much more, then, is expected of you — you who sit on your couch with a thousand editions of the Bible, all the Church Fathers, all truth instantly available — and yet you do nothing?
Jesus refers to this very concept in Scripture: “The Queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon — and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.” “The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah — and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.” (Matthew 12:41–42)
That is exactly what will strike our generation. People from earlier centuries — who did not have the opportunities we have — will rise up against us on the Day of Judgment. People who lived centuries ago — or even just 200 years ago — would have given anything to be in your position. To have so many books and writings of the Church Fathers. To be able to read the writings of the Fathers. They would have longed for access to what you now have access to. And you — you do nothing?
And by the way: when you have something lying directly in front of you and you consciously ignore it — that is not ignorance. That is being willfully ignorant. You ignored it because you did not want to know. Maybe you already knew in advance: if I examine this, I will discover that it contradicts my life. And that is why you did not examine it. Maybe because you hate the truth. Or because you love your family members more than Christ. Maybe because you know: if you accept the truth, you would have to change your life. And you don’t want that.
Stop deceiving yourself. Love your own soul enough to examine these things honestly. Go and examine them. Read, research, ask. And if you think: What if the Fathers contradict each other? — then test it! We did. And we were ready to reject everything if the Fathers contradicted one another. But they do not contradict each other.
13. How should you live now?
There are so many questions you may be asking yourself — and that’s completely natural when you begin to seek the truth. But please: do not act hastily. There is no reason to rush, no reason to think you have to understand or decide everything right now. And if the thought of taking things slowly, of learning step by step, makes you feel inwardly unsettled — if you feel pressured to quickly join a specific group — then take comfort in this truth: there is a proven and venerable tradition in the early Church of slow learning before baptism. In the ancient Church, it was completely normal for someone to be a catechumen — that is, a learner, a prepared student — for about three years of instruction before being baptized. So if you take your time to truly examine the early Church — if you test whether what we’re saying is true, or whether for example Catholics or Orthodox really don’t believe what the early Church taught — then you are doing nothing wrong. On the contrary, you are walking the path of the ancients.
In this video series, we will definitely still address all the topics of the faith. You’re welcome to contact us by email if you want to learn together with us, if you have questions, or want more materials. You can also listen to our audiobooks — but not all at once. It’s best to begin with the video playlist I linked above in the info card. These are the best writings for beginners.
But what I must say explicitly is this: Do NOT join the Catholics or the Orthodox. Even though they use many terms from the early Church, even though they appeal to the Church Fathers — their modern doctrines are full of destructive heresies, yes, of things that directly contradict what the Church of the Apostles believed. They teach things that even a child would recognize as idolatry — all under the guise of tradition and beauty. The Kathodox teach the veneration of Mary, and yes, in this point the Protestants are actually right for once: they teach that you should kneel before images, kiss them, light candles, offer incense, pray in their presence, and give them a “place of honor” in your home — so-called “holy icons.” They teach that the saints have supernatural powers, that you can invoke them for help — just like the old Greek pagan cult, only with Christian names. The Catholics also have the Pope — a Roman absolutism that has led the Church astray. The Orthodox rightly reject the Pope — but they share the same heresies regarding image worship, the cult of saints, and many other things. All of this — and we can prove it on a large scale — was not only never practiced by the early Church Fathers, but was outright condemned by them.
To everyone who simply wants fellowship, and for that reason is considering joining some group: You cannot just walk into a heretical church hoping that God might be gracious with you. These errors — whether from the Kathodox or Protestants — are not small. Do you think you could just walk into a mosque if there were no church in your area and “worship your God” there? Or go to the Jehovah’s Witnesses? Of course not! What fellowship has light with darkness? “How can two walk together, unless they agree?” (cf. Amos 3:3)
I understand your concern, and yes, I too would have liked to stay in my old sect or join the Cathodox if I had acted carnally. The thought that the visible church has fallen away and we now have to hold on to the old faith is painful and uncomfortable! But life is a test… Meditate on all the examples of righteous men in the Old Testament who were in an even worse situation than we are.
You can’t have real fellowship with people who don’t share the same faith as you. And if you meditate on this thought seriously, then you don’t yet understand the seriousness of sin and heresy. More on this in a future video…
But also hear this encouragement at the end: Many people were accepted by God not because they read tons of books, but because they simply obeyed God’s commandments. They lived simple lives, they loved their neighbors. If they were children, they obeyed their parents. If they were wives, they submitted to their husbands, loved their husbands and their children, kept the home, dressed modestly, and were hospitable to strangers. And if they were men, they provided for their families, did good wherever they could, helped the needy, and kept themselves pure and unstained from the world. Not all were highly educated — you don’t even have to know how to read to be a Christian. You simply need to know what Christ taught and obey His words.
So don’t think you have to read all the Church Fathers first. You only need to know what true Christianity is — and live faithfully in it.
If we do this, we make ourselves worthy of an eternal and perfect kingdom, which we will receive through the grace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ toward mankind.
To the Father be glory, power, and honor, together with the Holy Spirit, now and forever, from age to age. Amen.
