THE EARLY CHURCH

There is a "veil of sanctity which has been thrown over the early church as a whole," and the church fathers with their beliefs are appealing more and more to multitudes. It is often the case that one will hear another say, "we need to return to that good old religion that the early church fathers had." The thing that prompts this is the assumption that because of the their nearness to the time when Jesus Christ lived and the times His apostles did their ministerial work, they had little errors and had most of the "religious stuff" right.

"Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and [by] our gathering together unto him, That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand."

"When Paul was at Thessalonica, he preached to the people about the second coming of the Lord.

After he had gone away, he wrote to them a letter in which he said more about this same event, and in his writing he made it so much of a reality, and his hope was so centered in the event that apparently he put himself among those who would see the Savior come, and wrote as though he and others would be alive at that time.