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Bercot, who is also a lawyer, takes the reader on a very stimulating journey in which we meet Polycarp (who was personally discipled by the apostle John) and other second-century witnesses. -- The Plough, April, 1990
Perhaps the single most important thing the book did for me was to introduce me in an unforgettable way to the early Christian writings. ...However, the author, David Bercot, does more than introduce the reader to the early Christians and their writings he advances a powerful and persuasive argument as to why we should take the early Christians and their writings seriously. This argument is basically similar to saying that the further upstream you go, the purer the waters should be. He makes a convincing case that these early Christian writers were in the best possible position to interpret and understand what the inspired writers had in mind when they wrote the New Testament. After all, some of these early Christian leaders were co-workers with the apostles and knew them personally. It is logical that they had a real advantage over us who read the Bible after nearly 2,000 years. -- Family Life, October, 1989
To say this book packs a jolt is an understatement. Bercot doesn't point fingers; he just tells it like it is, and no book other than Snyder's The Problem of Wineskins has affected my thinking of the church more than this one. This book has my highest recommendations. -- The Obligator, August, 1989
We've heard it all before. The church's decline began when Constantine named Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire. David Bercot recounts all this and more. He is deeply concerned with the church's lack of spirituality. He is upset that the church has adopted worldly standards of success rapid growth and wealth. He is right in feeling and expressing these concerns. And he expresses them well. -- Bookstore Journal, November, 1989
But this is not primarily a history book. It's a fresh, creative look at the problems facing the church today and the solution to those problems. It's a call for today's church to return to the simple holiness, unfailing love, and patient cross-bearing of the early Christians.
Will The Real Heretics Please Stand Up combines sound scholarship with a free-flowing, readable style designed for contemporary laypersons. If you're looking for superficial solutions to today's problems or a restatement of traditional answers, you will need to look elsewhere. This provocative book confronts traditional answers and challenges you to a deeper walk with God the walk of the early Christians.
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What really convicted me was how different my brand of Christianity is from that of the earliest followers of the Apostles and their Spiritual descendants. For instance, Bercot notes how the Early Church believed that Jesus' teachings in the Synoptic gospels were literal. Sure, they understood that Jesus wasn't commanding us to literally pluck out our eyes, but many parts of Jesus' teaching that they understood literally, todays Christian community has watered down or spiritualized to accomodate our 21st century mentality. For example, how many believe that Jesus really wanted us to sell everything that we own and follow Him? I know of no church that teaches such a doctrine and if one were to teach this they would probably be regarded as strange, bizarre and out of their mind. Yet, this is exactly how the Early Church understood Jesus' message and this is what compelled Cyprian, the great 3rd century bishop of Carthage, to liquidate his vast fortune and follow Jesus with everything that he had.
... Read more ›Evangelicals who once prided themselves on being "not conformed to this world" have seemingly replaced the Episcopal Church for being "the Republican party at prayer."
In sum evangelialism is not a church, nor is it even movement anymore. Evangelicalism is now a niche market and a somewhat marginal political constituency (one to be manipulated in biennial crusades against the godless "secular humanist liberals" only to dismissed when the election is over an governing has to take place.)
It is no wonder why Bercot has stirred up such a hornet's nest in some circles.
In addition to the overdue sizing up of evangelicalism, this book is valuable in serving to stimulate interest in Patristics (the study of the church fathers). I am particularly grateful for the space he gives to Origen, the church's most brilliant intellect before Augustine.
Perhaps most importantly he reminds us that Chritian life is not a one-on-one proposition (the usual interpretation of having "a personal relationship with Jesus Christ"), but one done in Community. This cannot be emphasized enough.
This being said several notes of caution must be sounded.
First, reconstructing the church from the early fathers is a little like trying to reconstruct U.S. history with only back issues of the New York Times Op-Ed page to go on.
... Read more ›