Rubel Shelly: 1
John
Sin Isn't What It Used to Be (1 John 1:5-2:2)
Rubel Shelly: "John clearly was horrified by the sort of reinterpretations of the person and work of Jesus that would come from STRAINING the gospel through the SIEVE of Greek PHILOSOPHY.
He knew it would have both doctrinal and moral consequences for anyone who bought into such a HERESY.
In another sermon Rubel Shelly seems to assign to the Apostles what he calls heresy of the Marcionites:
Rubel Shelly: Yet I'm not sure anybody thinks the Spirit of God woke up John or Matthew one morning and told him to sit down and write out an account of Jesus' life and ministry, death and resurrection.
Rubel Shelly: I think they were responding to time and place by writing what they wrote. They had their own personal, theological, pastoral, and evangelistic purposes in mind when they planned and wrote these documents that survive to us in the New Testament.
In the interplay of their free wills and the direction of the Holy Spirit, they came up with an answer to their version of the question to put to you a few minutes ago:
Rubel Shelly: How would you tell the most important story ever told in human history?
The decision was not to write a huge tome of abstract theory and theological principles but to record anecdotal information about the One who ushered in the kingdom of heaven and founded the Christian religion. Their strategy was to tell the big story through the little stories.
Doctor Roger R. Chambers notes:
The soul of neo-orthodoxy is not the radical conclusions reached by open advocates of the system, but rather its epistemology, according to which the Bible is not, in its essence, the Word of God;
it is a human witness to revelatory "events." Since the Bible is not the touchstone of revelation,
the believer's faith does not depend on it. Scripture is sifted by the historical-critical methodto discover what the believer might choose to regard as "authoritative."
Rubel Shelly: In today's text, we begin to grasp how seriously John took the matter. We hear him inveighing against the ELITISM, arrogance, and DIVISIVENESS these people have introduced into the community of faith. [They still do]
And we hear him clarifying an orthodox Christian position over against these PSEUDO-intellectuals
who cannot find it in themselves to remain with "the word of life" delivered to them earlier.
Paul autorized the Pastor Teachers or elders teach the church using THAT WHICH HAD BEEN TAUGHT." Sermonizing IS NOT remaining with the WORD OF LIFE delivered, taught, certified by SIGNS and surviving 2,000 years of CULTURAL INFECTION.
Here is a review 2 Peter 1:20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.
That word has a huge body of literature pointing to rhetoricians, actors, singers, dancers and instrument players.
What it proves is that you cannot cut N paste Scripture or enhance it with whiney-piney singers and instrument players. That would be to deny the power of the Holy Spirit whose name is Jesus Christ the Righteous.
John 3:31 He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly,
and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all.
John 3:32 And what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth;
and no man receiveth his testimony.
That means that NO MAN can receive the testimony He came to deliver. Otherwise, you say he wasted his life.
Rev. 19:10 And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant,He that received the testimony is the Word Incarnate to SEAL that God is true: That is Jesus as The Christ.
and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God:
for the testimony of Jesus IS the spirit of prophecy.
John 3:33 He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true.
John 3:34 For he whom God hath sent
speaketh the words of God:
for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him.
It is a fact that the word as most often used means "God giveth not the Spirit to him by METER." That is why if you SING it you have to pretend that YOU were sent by God and YOU have to REWRITE IT.
Jesus was SENT: Jesus spoke the Words of God because God GAVE Him the SPIRIT. Jesus said My Words are Spirit and Life (John 6:63)
John 3:35 The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand.
John 3:36 He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life:
and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life;
but the wrath of God abideth on him.
This is not a "one step plan of salvation." The CONTEXT is that if you don't believe that Jesus as the SON spoke what the FATHER gave to Him in WORDS then you SHALL NOT see life: the Wrath of God abides on you.
If in the words of Shelly, the Spirit couldn't fit all of the words into the Bible and we can now hear them audibly then the wrath of God abideth on you.
John 12:45 And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me. [Father, not the invisible Deity]
John 12:46 I am come a light into the world,
that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.
John 12:47 And if any man hear my words, and believe not,
I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.
John 12:48 He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him:
the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.
John 12:49 For I have not spoken of myself;
but the Father which sent me,
he gave me a commandment,
what I should say, and what I should speak.
John 12:50 And I know that his commandment is life everlasting:
whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.
When I read the second chapter of 1 John, I always think of the most DIVISIVE, SOWING OF DISCORD in the history of the church. One tenet was Gnostic: that the Musical minister can help LEAD YOU INTO THE PRESENCE OF GOD. Then I remember Isaiah 59 which said that God saw that THERE WAS NO MAN or woman who could mediate or intercede. So, God sent His own ARM or HAND which was Messiah. God and His HAND are not two people. John confirms that NO HUMAN can mediate the FREE WORD (Isa 55:1) or SONGS. In fact, the direct command was to TEACH and ADMONISH and with ONE MIND and ONE VOICE glorify God by speaking THAT WHICH IS WRITTEN. And this was by the Spirit of Christ (1 Pet 1:11)
MY little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: 1 Jn 1:1
And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. 1 Jn 1: 2
And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. 1 Jn 1: 3
He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 1 Jn 1: 4
There is a lot of denying that we are bound to direct commands. This was supposedly one of the inventions of the non-instrumental church of Christ. However, the Bible and all of church history teaches that command, examples and even inferences which come for God are to be obeyed.
Again, Rubel Shelly in an earlier sermon: Yet I'm not sure anybody thinks the Spirit of God woke up John or Matthew one morning and told him to sit down and write out an account of Jesus' life and ministry, death and resurrection.
He assuredly told John to write: why not Matthew?
Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand. Re.1:3
UNTO the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; Re.2:1
Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter; Re.1:19
You will notice that various features of Jesus Christ command John to write and each letter is ended as what the HOLY SPIRIT saith.
ON THE ONE HAND TODAY
Rubel Shelly: "John clearly was horrified by the sort of reinterpretations of the person and work of Jesus that would come from STRAINING the gospel through the SIEVE of Greek PHILOSOPHY.
ON AN EARLIER HAND
On an older hand: You have to select and copy this sermon QUICKLY before it is YANKED OFF THE PAGE.
THE MOTIVE AND DRIVING FORCE OF JOHN
Rubel Shelly: I think they were responding to time and place by writing what they wrote.
They had their own personal, theological, pastoral, and evangelistic purposes in mind
when they planned and wrote these documents that survive to us in the New Testament.
THE BIBLE DOES NOT DO THEOLOGY. Peter outlawed PRIVATE INTERPRETATION or further expounding because, he said, Truth had been revealed by God, validated by eye-witnesses with supernatural signs: no person without SUPERNATURAL AUTHORITY has any right to INTERPRET Scripture in a CULTURAL SETTING because Christianity is COUNTER CULTURAL whatever that culture is. This was to PREVENT false teachers form modifying the supernaturally revealed Word.
Notions such as the trinity of three PERSONS came out of philosophy. Therefore, as applied to the Bible, theology IS philosophy or trying to make the documents GOOD for specific times. Preachers were philosophers, rhetoricians, sophists (OPHIS= SERPENT) or ACTORS. Paul condemned them as the THE MANY because they were disturbing the churches and making true preaching and evangelism impossible. He implies that they were TRAINED IN THE THEATER and were RHETORICIANS. Therefore, the Apostasy came out of philosophers and therefore they STRAINED the truth to make it into a now beloved NARRATIVE for their times.
Philosophy at any given time puts knowledge through the same philosophical sieves as the Gnostics. ALL of the writers understood that their first person WITNESSING was to be passed on to following generations: it was prophesied to be this way.
The name of the SPIRIT LORD who appeared to Paul was Jesus of Nazareth Who promised to be with Him as he, like the original 12, was guided into all truth. Peter knew this:
Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth. 2Pe.1:12
Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance; 2Pe.1:13
I suspect that if he NEEDED waking up, Peter confessed that LORD JESUS CHRIST (full Deity) actually DID wake him up:
Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me. 2 Pet 1:14
If Jesus told Peter it was time to take his leave, Peter got the WORD that he had better finish his EYE WITNESS ACCOUNT to be held in memory so that they could be taught to the people, their children and their children's children forever.
Moreover I will endeavour that ye may be able after my decease to have these things alway in remembrance. 2Pe.1:15
Jude concurred:
I will therefore put you in remembrance, though ye once knew this, how that the Lord, having saved the people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed them that believed not. Ju.1:5
For we have not followed cunningly devised fables (ANECDOTES), when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 2 Peter 1:16
Fables are myths which are revealed for a TUITION.
For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. 2 Peter 1:17
And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount. 2 Peter 1:18
We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: 2 Peter 1:19
Paul's unique WORSHIP word means to GIVE HEED to the Word or "give attendance to the public reading of the word..." Like the Synagogue, the word was to be taught by the elders AS IT HAS BEEN TAUGHT." There is no hint of a STAFF and secular institution of clergy ordained to PERFORM the giving heed:
Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. 2 Peter 1:20
Private interpretatin OUTLAWS both philosophers or theologians:
Epilusis (g1955) ep-il'-oo-sis; from 1956; explanation, i.e. application: - interpretation.
Epiluo (g1956) ep-ee-loo'-o; from 1909 and 3089; to solve further, i.e. (fig.) to explain, decide: - determine, expound.
h3089 means to "loosen" or melt the Scriptures.
Jesus deliberately HID the truth from the philosophers and Theologians (Mt 13) when HE as God came to FURTHER EXPOUND the prophecies personally and through His Apostle-Prophets.
Jesus spend most of His ministry instructing the 12 and at times the other disciples. He wrote nothing. Did God come to earth to redeem mankind, teach, suffer and die WITHOUT "leading them into all truth" as HE PROMISED? TO DENY THIS IS HERESY.
And with many such parables spake he the word unto them, as they were able to hear it. Mk 4:33
But without a parable spake he not unto them: and when they were alone, he expounded all things to his disciples. Mk.4:34
If God in Christ EXPOUNDED the prophecies so completely (not recorded) by Him and failed to WAKE UP the Bible writers to write what GOD wanted put into words then we have NOTHING to rely on but a PERSONAL EXPERIENCE which is most likely a charismati fit of madness. Why must we repudiate the philosophers who are now our theologians:
For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. 2 Peter 1:21
This was the SPIRIT OF CHRIST (there is only ONE Spirit) (1 Pe 1:11; Rev 1910)
BUT there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you,
who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. 2 Peter 2:1
Here is the SUPERNATURAL SIGN which Peter intended to MARK so that we could comprehend his WARNING:
And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the WAY OF TRUTH shall be evil spoken of. 2 Pet 2:2
And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not. 2 Pet 2:3
Paul commanded the Corinthians to LAY BY THEMSELVES sums of money so that they might have more when it was collected AT ONE TIME. There is no LAW OF GIVING and to command it is EXTORTION.
Covetousness is:
Plenoecia (g4124) pleh-on-ex-ee'-ah; from 4123; avarice, i.e. (by impl.) fraudulency, extortion: - covetous (-ness) practices, greediness.
Paul might winter (3 months) in Corinth and he did not wanty ANY COLLECTIONS while he was there. This would put PRESSURE on the people and while saying THIS IS NOT A COMMAND he knew that his very presence would EXTORT money who had little to give.
Therefore I thought it necessary to exhort the brethren, that they would go before unto you, and make up beforehand your bounty, whereof ye had notice before, that the same might be ready, as a matter of bounty, and not as of covetousness. 2Co.9:5
Bounty means ELEGANCE, adoration, concreation, blessing.
Let us hear it again:
Rubel Shelly: I think they were responding to time and place by writing what they wrote.
They had their own personal, theological, pastoral, and evangelistic purposes in mind
when they planned and wrote these documents that survive to us in the New Testament.
THAT SOUNDS LIKE THE HERESY OF THE GNOSTICS.
We repeat: the Holy Spirit has a NAME which is Jesus, Joshua or Jehovah- Saves. Jesus HAD COME as "Son" to speak ONLY what He heard from the "Father" Whom Jesus said was WITHIN along with the Holy Spirit or the Mind of Christ (1 Cor 2).
The Apostles and CULTURE had nothing to offer: you CANNOT assist a Holy Spirit God with INTERPLAY (which sounds as bad as if it intended sexual play). Such a view is unredeemable arrogance. The Holy Spirit directed John to define the END-TIME harlot church by the use of the well-known CIRCE who was the holy whore. She used MUSIC and drugged the people to engage in all kinds of sexuality. Then, just like most religions, she turned them into SWINE and other animals.
She FED (taught) them by spending most of her time making DUNG pattycakes to feed them. But Jesus Cast out the Musical teams as violently as one ejects DUNG. The Greek world could grasp it instantly.
Rubel Shelly: In the interplay of their free wills and the direction of the Holy Spirit,
they came up with an answer to their version of the question to put to you a few minutes ago: How would you tell the most important story ever told in human history?
The decision was not to write a huge tome of abstract theory and theological principles
but to record anecdotal information about the One who ushered in the kingdom of heaven and founded the Christian religion. Their strategy was to tell the big story through the little stories.
[Anecdotal means unrecorded, interesting tidbits. In the case of John apparently had given up on the return of Christ and justified himself by writing from poorely remembered events. Therefore, we are told that JOHN TOOK LIBERTIES.]
That is what the Gnostics did so why isn't that still HERESY?
This method may have been as inspired as its execution. I'm not sure that purely human effort would not have attempted to tell the story of God in the flesh by some means that would have obscured the message for all of us.
Jesus says that the message isn't obscured except for those still BEHIND THE VEIL: for those who have TURNED to Christ, been given A holy spirit or A clear conscience or consiousness.
Rubel Shelly in another sermon: Eusebius of Caesarea was a church historian who claimed in the early fourth century that the apostle John wrote his Gospel
only at the insistence
of his disciples and fellow presbyters at Ephesus.Eusebius, Church History, 6. 14. 7.
The Fact:
Origen's teacher, Clement of Alexandria (d. before 215-6), relates as " the tradition of the old presbyters", that the Apostle John, the last of the Evangelists,
"filled with the Holy Ghost, had written a spiritual Gospel" (Eusebius, op. cit., VI, xiv, 7).
THE MOTIVE AND DRIVING FORCE OF THE GNOSTICS (Most modern religions)
Marcion: "rejected attempts to harmonize Jewish biblical traditions with Christian ones as impossible. He accepted as AUTHENTIC ALL of the Pauline Letters and the Gospel According to Luke. They admitted women to the priesthood and bishopric. (That means preachers and elders)
Just like the new TRITHEISM seeing God as THREE SEPARATED PERSON, the Marcionite saw the GOD Father of the Old Testament as different from the GOD Son of the New Testament.
Rubel Shelly (9/07/03): Indeed, when heretics like the Gnostics or Marcionites took the message of Jesus in hand to redefine its essential content, their project suffered for the sake of its complexity.
They had to strain the story of Jesus through philosophical sieves. They had to create and clarify special terms. They made entrance into their circles a matter of "enlightenment" as reflected in peculiar vocabulary and interpretations.
Rubel Shelly thinks that John was influenced by Greek philosophy and then revealed the true LOGOS. However, the DABAR was the personification of God as WORD in the Old Testament.
HOW IS JOHN'S MOTIVES AND METHODS ANY DIFFERENT FROM GNOSTICISM?
In the meanwhile, the core gospel has survived two millennia now in its narrative form of telling the big story through collections of little ones about Jesus.
That is a most powerful SIEVE.
Taking liberties to write a NARRATIVE FORM of the Gospel still means that long after the EYEWITNESS event, people took old accounts and poor memories--with a littel help from the Spirit. The WHOLE STORY has no meaning: only the LITTLE anecdotes survived from which the Bible Writers wrote THEIR OWN NARRATIVE to fit
Rubel Shelly again: I think they were responding to time and place by writing what they wrote.
They had their own personal, theological, pastoral, and evangelistic purposes in mind
when they planned and wrote these documents that survive to us in the New Testament.
They were NOT then the memory of eyewitnesses to whom Jesus promised to GUIDE THEM INTO ALL TRUTH.
They were, according to Shelly, written within the "supposed inspired writer's" OWN culture to fit their OWN AGENDAS.
The CORE GOSPEL is seven facts ABOUT Jesus. The rest, according to Leroy Garret is up for debate.
This insists that OUR Bible has been just as sifted as that of the Gnostics
WORKING OUT ONE'S SALVATION IS AUTHORITY FOR US TO "WORK OUT" OUR RELIGION BASED ON TODAY'S CULTURE?
EARLIER DISCUSSION OF NARRATIVE THEOLOGY WHICH ALLOWS YOU TO "TAKE LIBERTIES" WITH SCRIPTURE Rubel Shelly and John York:
FIRST PREMISE:
John: Every scene in that story has been set in some historical human context.
Those cultural settings always have been changing and changeable.
Then the Apostles also strained or sifted their views through the CULTURE.
Here is the falsely qoted SECOND PREMISE.
Rubel Shelly and John York:
John: In the first century, the community of faith -- the body of Christ -- was, to use Paul's phrase to the Philippians, "working out their salvation" as God himself was working and willing his good pleasure through them (Phil. 2:12-13).
This is interpreted to mean that WE must work out things for OUR culture.
The conclusion which you DEPRIVED YOUR BUDGET to receive directly from humans helping divinity to reveal:
Therefore, because the WORD was based on the Culture.
Cultures are still changing.
You must allow US to help God define the NEW TRUTH. That is confessed by the words postmodern or narrative theology.
Rubel Shelly and John York: John: We find ourselves engaged in the same divine-human effort, only our cultural circumstances are clearly not the same as those of the first-century world.
John: Male and female in the Hellenistic world of the first century has both similarities to and differences from our own time. The question is, how do we hear the texts --
specifically the words written by Paul to the Corinthians and his words written to Timothy and the church in Ephesus? Do we assume Paul is issuing unilateral rules that have no specific relationship to the cultural setting of people in Corinth and Ephesus?
The issue was eternally cultural: The word AUTHORITY is the Greek Authentia. It means both EROTIC and MURDEROUS. It is utterly impossible for women to speak up and stand up in violation of the command to be SEDENTARY without exercising SEXUAL AUTHORITY. That has not changed from the garden of Eden and it assuredly is reaching a fever pitch today when leaders LUST to have women or effeminate males PERFORM before an "audience." The church had no PERFORMANCE roles, people are grasping that, and false teachers NEED the woman as in ALL RELIGIONS to prop up failing preaching.
Carrol D. Osburn, ACU: "There is major disagreement on whether one should use the Bible to undergird doctrines in a "proof-texting way,
or whether one should allow doctrine to emerge from understand texts in their literary and historical contexts. Certainly these differing views of Scripture lie behind differing views of women in the church" (p. 90)
Rubel Shelly and John York: Rubel: I'm not happy with where this sermon series has ended. There are too many unanswered questions! But perhaps that's why I am happy with where it has ended.
We are able to claim that we are continuous with the very first Christians who were trying to figure things out -- under the guidance of the Holy Spirit who tabernacled in them -- as they went along!
Poor Spirit!
The ONE and ONLY Spirit is the Spirit of Christ from beginning to end. God sent His ARM into the world because THERE WAS NO Man to intercede. Just why is it that NOW the Holy Spirit even with the help of the CULTURE were still struggling to FIGURE THINGS OUT in the first churches.
Well, all of the evidence is that God KNEW that no philosopher or theologian could FIGURE IT OUT. Therefore, He looked at the problems of ARROGANT mankind and FIGURED OUT (all by Himself) what the eternal PROBLEMS were and the eternal SOLUTIONS were. The INTERPLAY ceased and one CANNOT be a Christian without TEACHING what has been EXPOUNDED or figured out by the Spirit in the first century.
If you fall for MODERN figuring out with a little help from the Holy Spirit then you are suckered into Peter's warning that the ONLY way to MARK false teachers, philosophers or theologians is to LOOK at how they treate Scripture.
DOSEN'T THAT MEAN THAT EVEN IN CORINTH THEY WERE STRAINING THE SCRIPTURES BASED ON THEIR CULTURE? Why is that any different from the CLAIM of being Postmodern and confessing to TAKING LIBERTIES to create OUR narrative for OUR culture?
An early Pope repudiated the right to rewrite Scripture but he was trumped by an Emperor. The Church of England tried the same thing in order to get rid of INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC which has been added WITHOUT AUTHORITY. Queen Elizabeth TRUMPED the church authorities because she NEEDED the POMP and ceremony of music.
The Church of England NEVER signed into "law" the church's right to use NARRATIVE THEOLOGY or TAKE LIBERTIES. Therefore, the best we can do for modern "authority" comes from buddies of Rubel Shelly: the Disciples of Christ which says that SCRIPTURE IS NOT THE HIGHEST AUTHORITY.
"Liberal literary criticism allows each community the right to re-write Scripture. The canon (not necessarily of biblical texts, but at least in the meanings of those texts) is not closed. [We believe that this is the meaning of being Post-Modern or Post-Denominational]
"It is difficult to know whether Fish intended this as a by-product, but the idea of authority resting in the interpretive community gave rise to narrative theology -- a theology which simply affirms a given community's right to come up with its own interpretation, or to "write" its own new biblical text. Narrative theology gave rise to various narrative communities-- hence, the arrival of liberation and feminist theologies.
"Narrative theology does not recognize any absolute truth or meaning in a text. Because Buber is the founder, most narrative theology, especially in Jewish circles, is related to Auschwitz."
"And, what is the purpose of reading texts, for narrative theologians? Why, of course, to affirm the self. Hazards in the Mainline.
Liberation Theology: A movement that attempts to unite theology with social and religious concerns about oppression. It finds expressions among blacks, feminists, Asians, Hispanics, and Native Americans, but it is most closely identified with the shift toward Marxism among Roman Catholic theologians and priests in Latin America.
Most traditional doctrines of Christianity are de-emphasized or reinterpreted. Jesus and the Bible are defined and interpreted in light of a class struggle,
with the gospel seen as a radical call to activism (or even revolution) promoting political and social answers usually in the form of classic Communism.
That defines Gnosticism: not Christianity which has no STAFF or the pyramidal "ministry system" which God heaped on the Monarchy and the Kings when the ELDERS repudiated God and demanded a king LIKE THE NATIONS. God knew that this was so that they could worship like the nations. And God PROMISED them that they would be destroyed like the nations.
The church wasn't. Jesus promised to build HIS Ekklesia which is a Synagogue or SCHOOL OF THE BIBLE. In the Synagogue someone would have read the passage of this sermon and more. It would have "given attendance to the reading of the Word, to exhortation (of what was read) and Doctrine (contained in that passage.)
Sermonizing rather than teaching the WORD "as it has been taught" was one of the earliest APOSTACIES of the church. Clergy musicians was also one of the "first heresies widely pervading the church."
Therefore, this sermon is proof of GNOSTICISM and not of a love for the Words of Christ in song and sermon.
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