 Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. We're here with David Burceau, and I think pretty much everybody knows who you are because you've written a whole lot of books about early church history and the Nicene Fathers and so forth. So today I'd like to dive into why did you even begin studying early church history to begin with? Like what got you started in that whole process? So what got me started? We did an episode last year or the year before on my life's history, and I grew up at Jehovah's Witness. I left when I was 26 years old and then began this long journey, okay, what is true? If they're not true, not that they are false on every point by any means, but they certainly have quite a number of errors. I was going to school during that time and I didn't have a lot of time to devote to it. I finished with college and law school. I had a little bit more time. My wife and I started attending an evangelical church, a fantastic pastor and his wife who really played a huge role in my life. In fact, the commentary, the Matthew commentary that just came out, he and his wife were the ones I dedicated it to. Oh really? Okay. Anyway, during my years in the evangelical church, particularly after he and his wife, they ended up going to Haiti to pastor a church down there, but I was fairly happy in the church. We had a lot of friends, an awful lot of things I did agree with and supported, but there were questions like, of course, they were big on war and patriotism, which is one of the things Jehovah's Witnesses got right, that war is not appropriate for Christians. The pastor I dedicated the commentary to, okay, he was really open and I would bring up some of these things. He was open to look into them, let's see what the scriptures have to say, and he had no problem saying, yeah, I think we're wrong on this point, and stuff like that. That was a wonderful experience. That's one of the things that really helped me to climb back on the road spiritually, but the next pastor was just a straight seminary guy, nice guy in everything, but everything by the seminary book. And all those things, yeah, he didn't budge an inch, and one of the issues with the eternal security is like, everything I read in the New Testament just seems to say the opposite as well as the Old Testament, that we can't just disobey Christ and still we're going to be in heaven. You know, it's not that, oh, you lose your salvation every time you sin or anything like that, but there has to be some kind of an obedient walk. Our church thought, no, if you were genuinely saved, you can go out and murder someone and you're still saved. It doesn't change anything. And I was doing a radio interview about Jehovah's Witnesses, and it was on a Christian radio station. And at the end of it, the interviewer, he said, now, our radio station, we're non-denominational, and we try not to slam any denomination or church or anything like that. He said, but the fact is Jehovah's Witnesses have departed in a major way from the historic faith. And that's kind of how it concluded, okay? And I was driving home, I was thinking, the historic faith, yeah, what is the historic faith? Yeah, we have a measuring guide that we can then judge, yeah, when we read the scriptures, yeah, how does the historic faith understand this passage? So then I was interested, what is the historic faith? Well, I wasn't going to read a commentary or something like that. I realized I would go read the writings of the early Christians. So that's how it all started. So probably just a few weeks after that interview, I ordered a set of the Antionising Fathers. In fact, this is my original one I would have bought back in 1984. It's been taped up a bit and all of that. But I've gone all these underlining, so I haven't kept replacing it because the underlinings are more valuable than the book. So I got that set. It took me a year, just every night. I'd come home from work, just start reading. I just poured into it. At first I didn't like what they were saying because I assumed on any given issue either Jehovah's Witnesses were right or the Evangelicals. I didn't think there was any middle ground. If Evangelicals and Witnesses agreed, which maybe 40% of the things they would both teach the same things, then I assumed there's no question on that. So here I'm finding all this stuff that to me I never even had a question about. It's like, they believed this back then, and it's like, I don't know if I want to read this. Several times I'd just put it back on the shelf and I told Deborah, I said, I don't think I can handle that. It's too weird. And then that lasts maybe one day and I think, I don't have to believe what they said, but I don't know until I go back and start reading again and I get discouraged. After a while you do get inside their mindset and then it starts making a lot of sense. And I also had switched from some of the Greek writers to Tertullian who's Latin. He was a little easier to follow. After a while, yeah, things started making sense and like I said, when I got on the trinity it was like, wow, this is the best explanation of the trinity I've ever heard. Now, yeah, I can fully not only just say I believe in the trinity, but I can grasp it. I mean it to others and yeah, it went from kind of consternation and all that to this is exciting. I mean, I couldn't put it down. It was like reading a mystery novel. I mean, I could not wait to, man, when five o'clock came and I was out of the office and I could get home and I'd just start reading and I'd read till midnight. That's how I got into reading. Now, I wasn't planning on writing a book or anything. I just was trying to find out for myself, what is the historic faith? Well, of course, I was sharing this with Deborah as I was going along. At one point, after I'd read about six months, I thought, but is this in the Bible? And so I just stopped one night and I just took off and I just read the New Testament without it. Well, I didn't read all four Gospels. I think I read Matthew, John, and then Acts and on and I just read all night till I was done. And I was just seeing all this stuff in the New Testament that I had never seen is I mean, I'd read it. I mean, I'd read the Bible, you know, a trillion times through, you know, particularly the New Testament. It's like, how did I not notice that verse? It's right there, black and white. How did I not notice it? That's why they're saying this because that's what it, they're just saying what it says. You know what I mean? It was the most exciting experience to read the New Testament to suddenly realize I had blinders on my eyes all these times, just the words of it is like, yeah, they're just saying exactly what it says. So after that night of reading the New Testament, well, then when I got back, it was even more exciting because now I'm realizing, you know, when I was all through, yeah, I was so excited about this. Then I remember calling some of our close friends in the church and we all got together and I told them what I'd been doing the past year and I said, yeah, I'm just going to share with you some of the stuff. I said, it's kind of weird stuff. I mean, you know, it's going to blow your mind, you know. These were real open people. I knew, you know, some of them were the children of the pastor, the one who had been, you know, really open and stuff. And then anyway, all my friends started saying, David, you've got to write a book about this. You know, and at first it was like, yeah, right. Yeah, sure. It was like a joke, you know, and then I don't know, after several months of them saying that, I remember talking to Debra one night and I said, you know, well, what if I go to my grave having seen all this and I never tell a soul, you know, because no one else is writing about this. I mean, it's in the scholarly books, but no one reads that, you know. Yeah, what, I stand before Christ and it's like, so you saw all this stuff and you never told anybody, you know. You know, I'm going to be really culpable. So I felt like, yeah, I got to write a book. I mean, probably don't want to read it, but at least if I write it, I can, you know, stand before Christ with a clear conscience and say, I tried to tell people and that's, you know, no one was interested. And, you know, so, so that's, you know, I wrote the book, Will of Real Heretics, you know, please stand up and, and shared, you know, some of the things I had discovered. I actually called up the pastor friend that I was telling you about and I had shared with him when he would be back visiting because his adult children still, still live there. And, and so I said, now, what are some of the things, I went down a list of all the kind of things that they believed, what can I get away with and what's going to be too weird, you know, for everyone, you know. So, you know, I had this big long list. So he went down and, yeah, you can do this, you know. Now, some of them were pretty like salvation stuff. I mean, it was going to be stepping on toes, but he said, yeah, you can get, you can get bound with this. Yeah, you can get by. So the topics in the Will of Real Heretics are the ones that, that he, you know, picked out for me. Interesting. I did not know that. So there's, so theoretically speaking, there's a whole another heretics book of material that maybe got scratched off the list. Oh, five or six heretics books. But that's what the CDs I've been doing through the years are a lot of these other ones that, yeah, they're in there. So most of those I've covered. Yeah. And it's up on your YouTube channel, right? Or online? Yeah, boy, Tanner of the key ones are up on the YouTube channel for people to see, then the rest are available. People can purchase the download or the CD or that sort of thing. That's how it all started. And, yeah, what ended up, you know, changing my entire life that I wasn't, wasn't expecting when, when I started on the venture, you know, well, and because the next question I had in mind was, was this quest that you started on was successful? It kind of seems like it might have been. Yeah, very successful. But, you know, when I started it, I was after theological knowledge. Okay. What's the correct teaching on eternal security? What's the correct teaching about the trinity or something like that? Now, I wasn't looking, should ladies today wear a head covering? I mean, in fact, I never even, you know, I'd read that verse and it was always explained some other way. I mean, that wasn't even on my radar. I noticed it in their writings. When Tertullian, he has a whole thing about it, you know? And I'm reading this and I was like, that's what it's talking about in First Corinthians. How come no one ever told me? I mean, you know, I mean, it was all kinds of stuff like that. So the big challenge for me when I read them, I saw all of these lifestyle issues, you know, I looked at, I mean, you know, I was a conservative person. I was a good evangelical, you know, I realized, boy, in the early church, they would have looked at me as so spiritually weak, so backslidden, you know? And that was like, if this is all true, and I had already seen this is the New Testament, I'm in bad shape, you know? I mean, I stood before my Lord right now. Yeah, I don't know if I would be accepted or rejected, you know? And looking back now, I don't think I would be accepted. I mean, I was other than a plea of ignorance, maybe, or, you know, well, I got misled by my teachers. I don't know. But, you know, television and just all this stuff, you know? And I remember talking to my wife, you know, and modest trance. I mean, these things we'd never even thought about. I said, man, we got to make changes. I mean, this, our lifestyle is not acceptable to Christ. You know, unfortunately, I mean, my wife from day one has been totally supportive. I mean, that's isn't always the case either, you know, one way or the other. I mean, sometimes, you know, it's this spouse, but not this one, you know? So that was nice that she was very supportive. And my children were, I thought, well, man, this is going to be a big issue with them. We went real slow as a family, you know? I made the decision, OK, we're going to start, we're going to give up television. But dad, who I used to be at night, I'd be at the office a lot and all that, you know, dad's going to be home every night. We're going to start doing a lot more as a family, you know? So so everything the children lost, they gained more. So for them, I remember a couple of years after we started the whole thing, our daughter, Heather, saying to one of her friends about when life really got fun in our in our home, you know? And it was when all of this started, that made me feel really good. OK, you know? So that was, I think the big thing is realizing my lifestyle was not acceptable to Jesus Christ and needed to change and that it's not a burden to do. I mean, it seemed a little bit intimidating. But yeah, in the end, it's I mean, I've had not only no regrets. I mean, it's been a happy turn in my life. It's brought a lot of challenges for sure, but far more blessings than anything that I would have lost, you know, in the way of this world. So we've been looking at kind of the big picture of how you started studying early church history and the effects it had on your life. Could you narrow it down to the most important thing you you feel that you learn from studying early church history? OK, and you you were kind enough to prepare me. So you sent me this question and I do have the one, but I've got two, then two seconds and thirds. If that's OK, that's fine. That's fine by me. Yeah. Definitely, I would say the first one was I can read the Bible and what it says is what it means. This is how the first Christians understood it just at face value. I don't have to worry about grabbing a commentary and, you know, oh, it doesn't mean anything like what it says here. No, if Jesus said gave a commandment, he meant that to be obeyed just like that. So that was the thing because I was used to someone always explaining, you know, well, see, it says this, but, you know, really, you know, and if you get into the Greek, you know, and that kind of stuff, you know, or some kind of fake history. Well, yeah, it says this, but, you know, back in the days of Jesus, you know, there was this custom and all of this stuff that I saw. All of that was mostly made up stuff. But yeah, I can read the Bible for myself. Just just pick it up and read it and follow it. You know, it doesn't take a seminary degree. It's something anybody can can do. And it is what the historic faith is. Just exactly the New Testament for itself. Now, you've got to get away your blinders first. I mean, we've all been indoctrinated. So you got to get back to a blank slate. Just read it at face value. So that was the big thing. And if I never got anything else, that's enough. I mean, that that is a life changer. That would be my message, you know, to the whole world, you know, take it at face value. No, I'm not talking about revelation or apocalyptic. You know, I'm talking about, you know, the epistles in Jesus's teachings and, you know, things that aren't clear parables and that. The second thing that really was exciting to me on the early church, you know, when I was a Jehovah's Witness, we had all of these proof texts for you take whatever topic it was on the Trinity or on this, you know. And when you knocked on someone's door and they wanted to start an argument on A, B or C, you know, I had them all memorized and boy, I could pull out. Yeah. But over here, it says this, you know, and and then, of course, that person would have their proof texts, you know. And I I wondered, I thought, is this really how it's supposed to be done? Whoever ends up with the most you have four, but see, I've got five and my five be your four or whatever. Or it would come down to, well, well, your Bible translates it this way, but it should be translated this way. And I wondered that even when I was Jehovah's Witness, I thought this seems odd that this would be what eternal life turns on, you know. But and then when I left the witnesses, it was really the same thing with the evangelicals, it was just, you know, switching sides. But now it was the same thing, you know, you grab this text here and you grab this verse here and you ignore this verse. But and they're a Christian, their understanding of you name it, salvation, life after death, Trinity, whatever. It's the whole New Testament. You look at every verse. You don't throw any of them in the closet somewhere. You look at them all and your explanation better take into account every one of those verses. And if it doesn't fit all of them, you're not understanding it correctly. You know, and sometimes it does mean, yeah, there's not going to be a one simple little one sentence answer to it to a question. It's a little bit more involved. That was very new to me because no one was doing that. I mean, everyone would probably say, well, yeah, of course you have to do that. But yeah, it's always just grabbing proof text. Now, once you have the whole New Testament, what it teaches on salvation or whatever, sure, you're going to quote some of the key representative verses, but they have to be representative. You can't just grab the ones that present this side and ignore this side. You know, it's got to, you know, it has to represent the whole thing. So that for me was like, well, of course. And that was one reason I knew I'd found the truth in reading the early church because it's like, OK, this fits everything. I don't have any problem verses anymore. You know, as a Jehovah's Witness, there's always these problem verses, you know, and then as an evangelical, yeah, there's these problem verses. Well, suddenly, yeah, there's no problem verses. You know, I think that was a second thing that was very, very big to me and has, you know, impacted my life. And again, something I preach, you know, to other people, you know, no matter who they are, Catholic, Protestant, evangelical, Anabaptist, Church of Christ, whatever, you know, look at the totality of the New Testament, the totality of the Bible. But I'm saying particularly the New Testament because that's where most of our theology is, you know, is coming from and our lifestyle commandments are out of the New Testament. OK, so the third thing that this isn't from so much the early church. It was your question was on church history. OK. Now, once I'd read the pre-Nicene Christians, the writers before the Council of Nicaea, before Constantine, before Christianity, became a state religion. OK, I saw everything they taught and that within the big question. I saw that this was quite different from the church I was attending from Jehovah's Witnesses, from the liberals, from, I mean, you name it. You know, I didn't know any church that this this fit. And so the big question in my mind then was what happened? How did this get changed? Why don't why doesn't everyone still believe this? So then I started reading on, you know, in the next century in the in the century after that to to try to figure out what happened. And and what I saw through that is that doctrine has developed. In other words, the doctrine that we know today. People think, oh, well, yeah, I just got this out of the Bible. Well, if you just got out of the Bible, then why weren't Christians always teaching that? I mean, Jehovah's Witnesses say that. We just go by the Bible. I mean, I must have said that at least a thousand times when I was Jehovah's Witness. We just go by the Bible, you know, just what whatever the Bible says. Well, OK, but how come before the year 1872, not a single soul ever understood this verse to mean this? You know, did Jesus establish his church, have the apostles go on and preach, and yet no one understood what he meant until 1800 and something that all those centuries and everyone was in ignorance. I mean, that makes no sense. Oh, wow. Or that they got it right, you know, theoretically, you know. And then as soon as the twelve apostles died, boom, everyone forgot it. And when it's like, no, I mean, right after the apostles died, you have these people who are taking the New Testament very literally and following it so closely and dying for the faith. And and of course, these are the ones who put together the New Testament canon, you know, and it's like, you know, you can look and see, until this event, this is what the Christians believe that then it changed because of this person, you know, Athanasius. He changed this. Augustine changed this. Jerome, he changed this. Luther, he changed this, this, this and this, you know. Calvin changed this. I mean, you know, you can see where these different doctrines came in. And I have to ask the same question. If it's absurd that something wasn't understood until Charles Russell, the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, you know, in 1872. Well, then it's just as absurd that no one understood it until 1519 or 1517 with Luther, you know. I mean, it's like people understood this from the beginning. It was given for people to understand, you know. And so if you can't trace this back and demonstrate that this is the historic faith, then yeah, this is a manmade addition. You know, we've got to get back to the historic faith. So realizing, yeah, where this came from. And yeah, everyone believes this, but they don't realize no one believed it until this person came along. He's the first one to teach this. You can't find anyone teaching this until this this man came along. You know, he taught it, it caught on. And now everybody thinks, oh, that's even though, yeah, there's nothing in the Bible that specifically says that, you know. It's like plotting, plotting the threads through history. Yeah. And then kind of working in reverse back. Except I actually started at the beginning. And then I was a title attorney, which my whole job as a title attorney was to start with when Texas or sometimes back when Mexico owned the land and then track it every single transaction, every death, every deed until the present owner, you know, is kind of the same thing. OK, this is what they believed in the year 125. OK, you know, and then you just keep tracing and where did something change? So you've been studying early church history for quite a while in several decades. Over time, you obviously become well acquainted with these writings, with these different authors. How or what particular opinions about them have changed for you over time, you know, as you've continued to study. Generally speaking, nothing. I mean, I started off. I wanted to see what the historic faith was, as I said, you know, the first few weeks or a month or so, it seemed real weird. But once I got past that, particularly when I saw, yeah, this is this is all right. The most literal reading of scripture. Yeah, I don't think anything has changed. I still see them as a witness to what the historic faith is. Probably what has changed? OK, what do I do with this information? You know, it at first it was just my own life and then, you know, sharing it with others. And then there was a point in time. This would have been in the early 1990s that I would have had the view. OK, if the early church did this, then we should do it too. Even if it's a custom that's not witnessed to in the New Testament. And there's not any big things here. I'll just give you a few illustrations. One of them before Easter, they would fast for 40 days, OK, where we get the modern practice of Len. Of course, I thought that was a Roman Catholic convention. So I was very surprised. It's like, wow, this goes all the way back to the at least the early 200s, maybe even before then. OK, so there would have been a time that, yeah, there's no New Testament commandment. But if they did it, then we should do the the the same thing. And there's nothing wrong with doing it. I'm certainly not in the least bit of post to it. After kind of pushing that for a few years and seeing the journey that kind of took me and Dean Taylor and some others, that the journey we went down, we kept adding traditions that that necessarily weren't from, you know, before the year 200 or so. Well, this is the earliest witness is 375. But OK, let's let's go ahead and do that. And pretty soon you start getting pulled from the Bible. And so after just seeing the fruit of that, I came to the conclusion the safest thing is just stay with the scriptures, use the early church as a witness to how the the church understood the scriptures from the beginning. And like I said, there's not a lot of their stuff that's not just the most literal, you know, clear thing from the scriptures or customs are like how they baptized. You're going to have a way of baptizing. You're going to pour, you're going to immerse, you're going to pour three times. You're going to pour one time. I mean, you're going to have a way of doing it. So why not practice the way that we have a witness of how they were doing it way back, you know, in the year 150 or something like that? I would still feel strongly about that. But if it's something that, yeah, it's not unscriptural, but it's not commanded in scripture, there's no witness in scripture. Then I'd say, yeah, it's just better not to worry about it. Keep closely anchored to scripture. You know, if you get very far from scripture, it's easy to wander down the wrong path. So that's where maybe it's not anything, a different view of them. It's just a different view of, yeah, applying things that you see from there. But like I said, that is not very much stuff. I mean, I could probably give a list of 10 things. And that's as far as I could go with things that, yeah, there's not a clear thing in scripture about it. So that's really about all I've changed. I mean, it's not that I haven't reexamined this in question and, wow, have I ever been cross-examined by people and, you know, criticized and attacked, which is all fine. I mean, you know, hey, I need to hear. I mean, if I'm on the wrong path, yeah, let me know, you know. And so I'm glad I've been challenged that way to, you know, yeah, go back and reexamine these premises and all of that. But yeah, after 40 years, yeah, it stands out even stronger now than it would have even, you know, way back then, you know, in the 1980s.