We are just about to wrap up our series on the heresies that threatened to compromise the witness of the early church. Today, we tackle two heresies in one episode. The first is Montanism. In the mid-100s, a guy named Montanus claimed that the Age of the Spirit had arrived, and new revelation was coming through him and his two female prophetesses, Priscilla and Maximilla. This new revelation was to stir up what had become a morally compromised and complacent church. This new revelation was not just to support or affirm the Scriptures. It was equivalent to Scripture! It was a wave that swept through the church, threatening to undermine the Gospel itself! Then, almost 200 years later, another movement sprang up. Donatus, a clergyman in North Africa, took offense to the reinstatement of priests and bishops who had buckled under intense persecution. He said they were contaminated, and all of their work was invalidated! This view split the ancient church in two and triggered our old friend Augustine, who spent the last years of his life fighting against it. Successfully, I might add. What do these two heretical movements have in common? Each one claimed to be the true church. The pure church. They were in, and everyone else was out. How did the early church fathers rally against these Christian renegades? That's what we're going to find out! Join us!

Have you ever heard phrases like this? You have everything you need already inside you. God helps those who help themselves. Your breakthrough is just one decision away. If you have, you have just heard America's favorite heresy. It's called Pelagianism, and it's everywhere! In the early 5th century, two men went to war over this question. Can humans save themselves, or do we need God's grace? One was a British monk who wanted Christians to stop making excuses and take holiness seriously. The other was a North African bishop who'd lived a wild life and knew from experience that willpower wasn't enough. Their names: Pelagius and Augustine. The church had to decide: Is salvation something we achieve, or something we receive? The church is still wrestling with that issue today!

We talked about Arianism, which said Jesus was purely a created being. We talked about Gnosticism, which said that everything material is corrupt, and Jesus was a divine created being sent to bring us special knowledge. Last time we talked about Marcionism, which said there were two Gods: the Old Testament God, who was evil, and the New Testament God, who was kind and merciful. Jesus was a created being sent from heaven to overthrow the evil God and introduce us to the good God! Today, we talk about Docetism! In this episode, we discover that there was a faction that abhorred the idea that Jesus could possess any human element at all! He just seemed or appeared to be human! They could not fathom or stomach the idea that Jesus had normal bodily functions, or that He could have been tempted by all the things humans are tempted by! The early Church jumped all over this, because it had huge theological implications, but not before it took off - for several centuries! Was Jesus an illusion? A mystical hologram? Most importantly, did Jesus fart? We answer all of these questions and much more!

Today, we meet Marcion! He was an insanely rich ship owner who waltzed into Rome one day with a boatload of money and a new take on Christianity. He had long been troubled by the messiness in the Scriptures. He was bothered by things like the blood of Jesus and the gruesomeness of the cross. What most bothered him was the extreme violence and barbaric atmosphere of the Old Testament! Surely the God of the New Testament, expressed in Jesus, who taught love, compassion, forgiveness, and mercy, was not capable of decreeing and approving of the mess in the Old Testament! Therefore, there must be two different Gods! Completely separate from one another, and completely autonomous! Jesus came to overthrow the Creator God, who created all the chaos, and to reveal this new God. A kinder God. A God worth following! It escalated quickly, and he was ultimately rejected. But not before he started many of his own churches, which grew rapidly! He started a movement! Not so dissimilar to a number of movements we see in the church world today! Is Marcion and his wild idea still alive today? Let's find out!

Let's take a trip back in time. Let's go back to the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, when early Christians were trying to figure out and codify what Christianity really was! The apostles defined it pretty clearly. It was all about Jesus! He was the Son of God - God incarnate - God come in human flesh! He lived - died - rose again bodily from the dead, and rules the world through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit! That narrative was offensive to the modern, sophisticated Greco-Roman philosophical mind. The image of the blood and the humiliating execution of an innocent God-man was barbaric and simplistic. Here come the heresies! Gnosticism led the way! There was not just one God, there were two! There was a good God who was distant and unapproachable, and there was a 2nd God, who was flawed and rebellious. He created a messed-up world - the one we live in. Jesus was a created being, sent by the good God to fix everything. Are you confused yet? It just gets more mind-bending! But this Gnostic thought persisted then, and it persists today! Let's get into this twisted theology and find out why it continues to be so attractive!

Maybe you've heard of it. Maybe you have it memorized. Maybe you have no idea what the Nicene Creed is, or any other creed for that matter! Creeds are statements of faith, but they are so much more! A creed is a line in the sand, a standard of beliefs that are agreed upon, abided by, and ferociously guarded. The Nicene Creed is perhaps the most famous. It arose from a Council called by none other than Constantine himself! It was a crazy time, driven by controversy and fueled by intense debate. In this episode, we look at the content of the creed, but mostly dig deep into the heresy that caused it, and the bizarre events surrounding it!

When we read the Gospel of Matthew, we immediately get bogged down in all of the begets and begottens, so we skip over that part and get to the good stuff! Likewise, when we read the Gospel of Luke, we love to read about Zechariah, Mary, Joseph, and all the magnificence that comes with the Christmas narrative. Then we run into this boring list of who's who and what's what, so we skip over that and run ahead into the action! Not so fast! What if we told you there is a matrix of theology, intentional messaging, and mathematical brilliance lying just under the surface of these mysterious ancestral lists? Trust us! There is so much more than meets the eye! Join us as we plunge through the portal and enter the cryptic world of the genealogy of the Son of God! You don't want to miss this one!

You say you want a revolution, well you know. We all want to change the world! That's the tone of Zecharia's prophetic song! After 9 months of being unable to speak, he names his child John, his mouth is opened, his tongue is loosed, and this incredible song erupts from the depths of his soul! It is a song of revolution, of overthrow, of a coming Messiah who will free them from the oppression of their enemy and restore their land! But the song takes a turn about two-thirds through. It's a different kind of revolution, triggered not by military might, but by the forgiveness of sins! The Sunrise will come, ushering in a wave of peace! What is he prophesying about? That's what we're getting into today. The Sunrise. The branch. The anatole! You're going to have your mind blown at what is revealed in this incredible song!

This is a well-worn passage in the Christmas story found in the Gospel of Luke. Mary is visited by an angel who tells her some amazing and disturbing news. She is going to conceive a child by God and from God who will be the Savior of the world! She is unsettled at first, but her tone changes when she realizes what she's been chosen to do! She breaks out in song! We often see this as a sweet little song sung by a teenage girl who is obedient to the Lord. But there is deep theology in this song. Prophetic truth! These are hardly the words of a 14-year old! Where does she get this language and knowledge that is clearly beyond her years? And what is this song really conveying? This is the Magnificat, and when you dig deeper, your mind will be blown!

Here we go again! This is another conversation that arose out of an intersection between faith and culture. We've talked about the antichrist before. We had a whole episode on it in our Revelation series. But just a few weeks ago, multi-billionaire Peter Thiel gave a series of lectures in an exclusive setting in San Francisco. He fancies himself to be a sort of modern-day futurist. I guess if you have a bazillion dollars, you can call yourself anything you want! He claims to be a person of faith, and in his talks, he referenced the antichrist numerous times! He seems to be low-key obsessed with this idea! This sparked a renewed interest in the public sector, with a barrage of talks, articles, and random social media videos. So, let's get into it! Where did this idea of the antichrist come from? How many times is it referenced in Scripture? Is it a person, or an ideology? When will this antichrist show up? What will he/it do? Who is the antichrist?