Act 17:11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
Act 17:12 Therefore many of them believed; also of honorable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few.
This refers to the Bereans who used the Old Testament to confirm the oral teachings about the Messiah. The verses do not say the Bereans searched the Scriptures alone. Moreover, the Bereans accepted the oral teaching from Paul as God's word before searching the Scriptures, which disproves the Berean's use of sola Scriptura.
Here's another gem found in Mark 7:7 Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
Bob, this is the same as Matt. 15:3. There is a distinction between human tradition (that we should reject) and apostolic tradition (that we must accept).
I do not know how else to say it but that the Bible has to be the standard, and not any church made up of people who are by our very nature sinful.
Bob, look at Mark 16:15 - Jesus commands the apostles to preach the Gospel to every creature. But Jesus did not want this preaching to stop after the apostles died, and yet the Bible was not compiled until four centuries later. The word of God was transferred orally. There were no printed Bibles in the first centuries. Please bear with me on the following description of life in the early Church.
Consider that in 50AD, Imperial Rome was at the peak of its political, economic and military might - a "superpower". Romans of the 1st century were surprisingly modern - they had running water and flushing toilets in their homes. They also had social ills - crime, unemployment, slums, high taxes, political corruption, class and race divisions, pornography and prostitution. Religion for the Romans was predominantly pagan. Cults began to emerge. The old-fashioned harvest gods once worshipped with sheaves of wheat and jugs of wine degenerated steadily into fashionable sex gods to be worshipped with acts of perversion and infant sacrifice.
Between 50 and 60AD, the Apostles came. Word spread that there had arisen in distant Judea a group of Jewish wise men preaching in the name of a mysterious new deity called Christus. They were the very first "Christians" in Rome, Jewish expatriates returning to their adopted city after being converted by Peter's Spirit filled preaching at Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost. The Bible explicity mentions that present in the crowd that day were "visitors from Rome" (Acts 2:10). But these early Roman converts would truly have been sheep without a shepherd, returning to face the prospect of life as the only believers in a pagan metropolis of half a million souls. They probably met together in their homes for prayer - two or three gathered in Christ's name - but entirely without leadership. Several years later, however, when Paul addressed his most profound epistle to "all God's beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints", we find a much different situation.
Written about 57AD, the Epistle to the Romans speaks to a church large and well organized, consisting of several house congregations knit together in complete unity under the oversight of seasoned elders (presbyters). Who accomplished this work? It was Peter who preached orally.
Elsewhere in Rome, another person had also been working tirelessly among God's lost sheep. Like Peter, his given name was Simon. To most Roman minds, he was much like Peter. Both men refered to themselves as "apostles". Both had been associated with miracles. Both had come to Rome preaching in the name of Jesus the Nazarene. Though Simon of Gitto is technically a Samaritan rather than a Jew, the majority of the pagans regard him as simply another Semitic prophet from the same part of the world. Simon of Gitto was Simon Magus, founder of the ancient heresy called Gnosticism. Former disciple of Philip the evangelist, Simon apostatized to become the first person in recorded history to teach falsehood in the holy name of Jesus. He was the original fulfillment of Matthew 7:15.
The Gnostics passed themselves off as Christians and the average Roman could not tell the difference. Right from the start of Christianity, Satan was already muddying the waters. If the shepherds look like angels, how were the sheep to choose between them? How on earth could the common Roman in 50AD - only just hearing of Jesus for the first time - suppose to know which are His true disciples and which the false?
From our position in time, we might casually imagine that these early believers had only to pull out their pocket New Testaments. In reality, this was completely impossible because the New Testament did not yet exist. It is a neglected fact and often forgotten that the Church had been preaching the gospel, saving souls and founding congregations all over the Near East for at least 10 years before a single line of the NT was written. Back then, a new believer might possibly have been introduced to Matthew's Gospel and perhaps one or two letters from Paul - but even these would have been circulating loose as individual works. Over 300 years would have to pass before they ever came to be bound together in one authoritative canon.
The Holy Spirit was present in the early Church to guide genuine believers into all truth. Yet no Orthodox Christian today believes that the Spirit does this guiding independently of the Bible. We rightly insist that individuals must test their private spiritual insights against the written Word of God. Who or what filled this crucial role in the first century Church, where the Word of God for Christians would not be fully known for literally centuries? What kept the Body of Christ from collapsing into doctrinal chaos in a world where most believers lived their entire lives without even knowing what the New Testament was?
The answer is deceptively simple but for those in the first century, it would have been the plainest fact about the matter:
"This man was with Jesus of Nazareth." (Matthew 26:71)
In short, Jesus' public ministry had been just that - public. And though He was much more than a mere rabbi, the "Rabbi" Jesus did follow the established rabbinical practice of the day by publicly committing His teaching to disciples. Just as Paul of Tarsus had been personally discipled by the great Pharisee Gamaliel (Acts 22:3), so Peter of Galilee, along with the rest of the 12 had been personally discipled by Christ.
Back in the 1st century, the first question the public asked about any workman - butcher, baker or Hebrew theologian - was the same: Who had been his master? If the founder had gone on, people wanted to know which men were carrying on his traditions. A pagan Roman had simply to pose the traditional question: Which men had been with Jesus? That fact alone, once established, banished all doubts. Summarizing this understanding in the early Church, Tertullian wrote the following simple but penetrating words:
"If the Lord Jesus Christ sent the Apstles to preach, no others ought to be received except those appointed by Christ: For no one knows the Father except the Son, and him to whom the Son gives a revelation (Mt 11:27). Nor does it seem that the Son has given revelation to any others than the Apostles, whom He sent forth to preach what He had revealed to them"
This claim could not be made by Simon and his Gnostics. To counterract this fact, we know from Irenaeus that Simon and his followers referred to represent themselves as "improvers of the apostles". After all, were these simple fishermen not plain, unlettered peasants? Would it be so surprising if such men had been unable to grasp fully the subtleties of their Teacher's message? Accordingly, the Gnostics maintained that the Galileans had "preached before they possessed perfect knowledge" and "intermingled the things of the law with the words of the Savior". They themselves, on the other had, were "purer and more intelligent" and had "discovered more than the apostles", rescuing "the unadulterated truth" that had eluded these ignorant and carnal Jews.
Bob, this posting has run longer than I would have preferred but I hope it helps you to envision what life was like during the early years of the Church. You commented:
When we eliminate the scriptures as our litmus test we have given the devil an opportunity to entice us to partake of the forbidden fruit.
How does that apply to these first century christians who, according to Mark 3:14; 16:15, following the command of our Lord to preach the Gospel. Jesus gave no commandment to the apostles to write, and gave them no indication that the oral apostolic word he commanded them to communicate would later die in the fourth century. If Jesus wanted Christianity to be limited to a book (which would be finalized four centuries later), wouldn't He have said a word about it?
Thank you for taking the time and patience to read through this very abbreviated account of the early Church. The first converts were brutally persecuted for their faith - a faith orally communicated - by being covered with tar and turned into human torches to light the Coliseum. They went to their deaths chanting hymns - all based on oral Tradition.