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Scripture itself tells us to heed the traditions of the early church! (general)

posted by bibleprobe(R) Homepage, Mass., 10.30.2009

Scripture itself tells us to heed the traditions (apostolic traditions) of the early church!

2 Thessalonians 2:15: Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.

You keep saying "man's traditions". Just the same way a Seventh Day Adventist does. You didn't answer my question. Are you an SDA?

Bash the Critics is what the Seventh Day Adventists do. In this case the "critics" are the apostles of Jesus and those early church fathers that they taught and walked with.

Seventh Day Adventists will always go out of their way to try and minimize and downgrade the extreme importance of "Apostolic Traditions" passed down to us through the centuries. Why? Because their own made up doctrines such as "no Infant Baptism" and "Saturday Sabbath" (Sabbatarianism) (See Colossians 2:16) was NEVER taught in the early church, or at any time up till the era of the Anabaptists (for no infant baptism). In the 1,500 years from the time of Christ to the Protestant Reformation, the only bonafide opponent to infant Baptism was the heretic Tertullian (160 - 215), bishop of Carthage, Africa.

Personally, I think it is a shameless, cruel act - the withholding of Baptism from Infants. Infant Baptism had been practiced in each generation since Christ’s command in the Great Commission (Matthew 28: 18-20) to baptize all nations irrespective of age. There is simply no good reason why infants shouldn't be baptised. They can do it again later if they like. But infants need the protection of Baptism.

Trusting in what the apostles taught and did like baptising infants -would blow the whole Seventh Day Adventist "business model" away. Because these contradict apostolic tradition. An offshoot of Mormonism called the Community of Christ also denies infants baptism in defiance of apostolic tradition.

"Cults" will always defend their lies and deviations by claiming something like what they disagree with "are only traditions of men" anyways. Always some half truth or lie from a cultish group/church will attract and "tickle the ears" of millions of Christians who have little or no groundings or education about their Christian Faith.

Cyril of Jerusalem
"Fall not away either into the sect of the Samaritans or into Judaism, for Jesus Christ has henceforth ransomed you. Stand aloof from all observance of Sabbaths and from calling any indifferent meats common or unclean" (Catechetical Lectures 4:37 [A.D. 350]).

Ignatius of Antioch
"[T]hose who were brought up in the ancient order of things [i.e. Jews] have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord’s day, on which also our life has sprung up again by him and by his death" (Letter to the Magnesians 8 [A.D. 110]).

"Traditions of men" is what SDA's call "apostolic traditions". I think they feel this gets them off the hook for their new anathema doctrines. It has always been a good way to fill up numbers in a splinter church. Just create your own doctrine and call everyone else a "bonehead" for not agreeing with your brand spanking new dogmas. Then remember to keep telling each other "we are the good ones" and those over there are the "bad ones". It guarantees to snatch Christians who know nothing about apostolic tradition. At the recent SDA General Conference Session, Bert Haloviak, the SDA Director of Archives & Statistics reported some alarming statistics: "...nearly 1.5 million left membership in the SDA church during the time period 2000 to 2005. 'The bottom line for this quinquennium is that for every 100 accessions, more than 35 others decided to leave,' he told delegates.

The "cult" can normally be spotted rather easily, because it goes about building up its "empire" of followers, built on half truths and outright lies. It will always get caught in their lies when they directly contradict Jesus, as Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, and Christian Science do. A cult will also have some other "revelation" outside holy Scripture that they rely on, which creates their dogmas. Mormons do (John Smith), Christian Scientists do (Mary Baker Eddy), Jehovah Witnesses do (their own made up Bible), Scientology does (L. Ron Hubbard) Islam does (Muhammad); and so do Seventh Day Adventists. SDA's rely on writings of Ellen White.

You scream "Scripture alone". But have you stopped to think, it was the Catholic Church who decided what you call Scripture? They gathered, protected and Canonized the books you know in the Bible. What they rejected you reject. What they accepted - you accept as gospel. What the Catholic Church decided was divine, you accept as divine.

It is this thinking that Scripture is all you need that has caused these theological errors such as no infant baptism and Saturday worship (Sabbatarianism) which some sects teach - and which the apostles of Jesus and their immediate followers (early church fathers) never taught.

This faith, according to Irenaeus, is found in the Scriptures and summarized in the Rule of Faith. The proof that this is the true faith is that the "Great Church" could point to a visible succession of teachers, presbyters, and bishops who taught the same things throughout the world: This is the teaching common to all apostles and the churches founded by them. The leaders of many of these churches had been taught by the apostles themselves, or disciples of the apostles, and they "neither taught nor knew of anything like what these [heretics] rave about." Reference: Christian History & Biography, Fall 2007, page 32

For anyone lost to these arguments, below are some reference pages at BibleProbe.com

Related

Learn about Seventh Day Adventists here:
http://www.bibleprobe.com/SDA.htm

Learn about Infant Baptism in the early Church here:
http://www.bibleprobe.com/baptism-infants.htm

Augustine

Augustine (354 - 430), writing about this time in De Genesi Ad Literam, X: 39, declares, "The custom of our mother church in baptizing infants must not be . . . accounted needless, nor believed to be other than a tradition of the apostles."

He further states, "If you wish to be a Christian, do not believe, nor say, nor teach, that infants who die before baptism can obtain the remission of original sin." And again, "Whoever says that even infants are vivified in Christ when they depart this life without participation in His sacrament (Baptism), both opposes the Apostolic preaching and condemns the whole church which hastens to baptize infants, because it unhesitatingly believes that otherwise they cannot possibly be vivified in Christ."

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