The fourteenth day of the fifth month in the 2729th year of our dispersion.

"Pope" Clement's epistle resounds with me. He quotes Scripture often, and applies it contextually. He also shows himself to be very familiar with the Apostolic writings. He reaffirms and upholds the commandments of God and of Messiah. Ignatius, on the other hand, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's hard to believe this man was really a disciple of John. He was a contemporary of Clement but his writings have such a different emphasis and color to them than the Apostolic writings. Paul and Peter touch on the idea of submission to the established authorities, but Ignatius goes so far as to say that Christians should do nothing without the bishop, and should not call anything good except that which the bishop has already called good. He equates the relationship between congregant and bishop to that of Christ and the Father - absolute obedience and total reliance. Where, I ask, is this found in the "New Testament"? Ignatius also spurns the Sabbath day established by יהוה at the beginning of Genesis. He also consistently refers to Jesus Christ as his God (the Apostolic writings universally refer to him instead as the Son of God). It is not difficult to see his disdain for the old Judaism and the implementation of the Catholic system in his writings, which strikes me as being very odd during the first century when the Jerusalem church was still being ruled by a Jewish bishop. There is so much Catholicism in him that my first instinct was to wonder if even his "authentic" letters are really authentic. His works are well known to be adulterated and many are pseudepigrapha. I wondered if we had failed to realize the extent. Catholic scholarship of the past fifteen hundred years has had much to gain by proving Ignatius authentic, as he is in many ways their first voice and earliest advocate... Nevertheless, seven of his epistles are regarded by modern scholarship as authentic, and I know not enough to try to disprove them. As it would seem, he really was the early beginning of a long, painful march away from the faithful practice of the very early Messianics.

At first it seems unthinkable that after Messiah's ascension and the death of the original Apostles, the "Church" would immediately descend into apostasy and rejection of God's law with few exceptions for two thousand years. It should not be surprising, though. Read Genesis. The first recorded human being born on this planet killed his brother. Read Exodus. Almost immediately after the giving of the Torah, the Israelites refused to enter Canaan and had to wander in the wilderness until the cowards and unbelieving were all dead. Read the book of Judges. Immediately after each Judge died, all Israel returned to their idolatrous ways. After a few centuries of that, as recorded in the books of the Kings, יהוה raised up David, a good king who led Israel in the ways of Moses. This lasted for less than eighty years as his son apostatized and the kingdom was split up. A succession of kings, none of whom were as faithful as David, let Israel and Judah to their downfalls. These are only a few of the notable examples. Is it any surprise that after the coming of the Spirit and the writing of some very important books, just as before, the entire operation was immediately sabotaged? It is the way things happened all throughout the Scriptures. It is a pattern we should not be surprised to see repeated.

Our consolation? There has always been a remnant. The vast majority was never truly faithful. Only the few who were chosen by יהוה were ever faithful to the covenant. So it is today. Many are called, but few are chosen. Narrow is the path, and few there are who find it. There aren't even that many truly searching for it. It seems like those who are expecting Christianity to conquer the world and bring in the Kingdom of יהוה were not paying attention to the Scriptural precedent. Nothing good ever happens without the intervention of יהוה Himself. It always just gets worse and worse until judgment comes. Now when the Son of Man returns to pass this next huge judgment, will he find any faithful on the earth? Would he have asked that question if the billions of professing "Christians" counted for anything?