HISTORY OF APOSTASY
The history of apostasy is the history of the world. It has been the natural process of things since the beginning of the world. Each culture has their own myths of the First Man and First Woman. The nature of myth is to evolve over time. It is the process of the Broken Telephone Game. This simple game demonstrates the principle in action of the evolution of messages and stories from one telling to another.
Revealed Truth
The only Truth is revealed Truth. It comes by revelation from God, the source of all Truth. As Philosophers have postulated from the earliest stages of history, KNOWLEDGE IS IMPOSSIBLE. Human Knowledge, that is. Our senses deceive us, people deceive us, and our poor memory deceives us. Confidence in human ability, even our own, is misplaced. The only sure word of knowledge is that which comes to us by Revelation. This is why all the prophets who ever lived genuinely wished to help the people to anchor to the sure word of prophecy, and to become prophets themselves. Only impostors wished to use religion as a means of control, to control both people’s thoughts and actions. Even the desire to maintain the purity of a tradition (orthodoxy) is misplaced because it is anchored to Fear and not Faith. Faith knows that when a person gets ego and selfish thoughts, even those that seek security, out of the way, each person will be able to anchor directly to the root of Truth, which revelation. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and people do not transform into perfection overnight. We learn “line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little, until we come to a fullness of truth.” This means that people experimenting upon the word will make mistakes along the way, and those mistakes are in lockstep with where they are in their spiritual journey, how much personal fear and personal interests they cast aside to boldly follow wherever the Spirit of God leads.
We know that orthodox teachers change the written form of the Word of God from time to time. Jeremiah 8:8 says that we do not even have a pure Law or Torah because the “lying pen of the scribes has dealt treacherously with it.” Therefore it cannot be said to be a false belief that all traditions and even scriptures have gone through corruption. Many believe, against what Jeremiah says, that “God would not allow his word to be corrupted by human beings.” While the True Word of God cannot be corrupted, which is His Spirit, the written form of it can and is corrupted from time to time and needs Restoring, which is what Moses, Jesus and all the great Restorers of Revealed Religion have done in each major dispensation. But each of us has the gift of the Spirit of God to know for ourselves and be taught. Jesus never said that he would send books to teach us, but he said he would send the Spirit of Truth to “come upon us and reveal the truth of all things, and bring all things to our remembrance” John 14. The Holy Spirit, God Himself, is the Great Teacher, and He says He will “bring all things to remembrance” because the Truth of All Things was formerly known. The same Laws and Commandments that Jesus gave were also given to Moses, Noah and Father Adam, the First Man. God, after all, is the Eternal and Unchanging, and therefore it cannot be otherwise.