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Could the truth have been lost?

The purpose of this website is to promote awareness of the individuals throughout the history of Christianity who were motivated to search for biblical truth. But why would such searching be necessary within the Christian realm? Didn't they already have the truth in the churches of their day? During his earthly ministry, Jesus prophesied that the good "wheat" that he had planted would be overrun with "weeds", and that a separation of these two classes of people would only be accomplished at "the conclusion of the system of things." (Matthew 13:24-30; 36-43) So when did these "weeds" take over?

The weeds take root
The apostle Paul reiterated this prophecy and then gave further insight on its beginning when he wrote to Christians saying that the end "will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness gets revealed, the son of destruction. . . . And now you know what is acting as a restraint, so that he will be revealed in his own due time. True, the mystery of this lawlessness is already at work, but only until the one who is right now acting as a restraint is out of the way. Then, indeed, the lawless one will be revealed." (2 Thessalonians 2:3, 6-8) So a certain "restraint" had to be taken away before the flood of apostasy overran the congregation. What was this?

Without restraint...
Notice what Paul warned Christian elders, "after my going away oppressive wolves will enter in among you and will not treat the flock with tenderness, and from among you yourselves men will rise and speak twisted things to draw away the disciples after themselves." (Acts 20:29-30) Indeed Paul and the rest of the appointed apostles were a restraining influence on such apostasy. At the close of the first century, the aged apostle John, the last of the apostles still living, wrote Christians about the imminent threat of the overgrowing 'weeds' within the Christian congregation: "Young children, it is the last hour, and just as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared, from which fact we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of our sort; for if they had been of our sort, they would have remained with us." (1 John 2:18-19)

Light in the darkness
The intervening period then, from the end of the first century until the last days of this system, would be a time of relative spiritual darkness without that strong apostolic leadership and guidance. Yet this does not mean that there weren't plenty of sincere ones striving to hold to the original teachings of Jesus and his apostles against the strong current of apostasy. Though they were not living in the harvesting time of the end that Jesus had spoken about, many of these ones—through much prayer and study—obtained an impressive grasp of important teachings contained in the Bible that had been distorted by the prevailing "lawless" influence.

A great cloud for a great crowd
It is these ones that we can look to in the spirit of Hebrews chapter 11 as "a great cloud of witnesses" for their searching and studying the scriptures to learn what the Bible really teaches. They were not perfect or infallible in their conclusions and they didn't pretend to be. But they had learned enough to realize that the popular Christian beliefs surrounding them did not match up with the Bible. Some got closer to the truth than others; some took a stronger stand for that truth than others. But we can learn from their weaknesses as well as their strengths and be encouraged to see that the scriptural truths that are now being discerned by millions around the world are not any new teachings, but have been found, often independently, by sincere truth-seekers down through history. This is the spiritual heritage of millions today.

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