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The Truth Which Sets Free

by Peter Dunstan

320 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #02-0610; ISBN 1-55369-797-9; US$26.50, C$30.50, EUR22.00, £15.50

The Truth Which Sets Free is a lively examination of Christianity from its origins in the Early Church, including its Councils and Fathers, to the present day. Comparing nearly every doctrine revered by Christians with Scripture it reveals them to be a religious body parallel to but very different from the first apostles and disciples of Christ. Churchmen are nothing like what the Word of God describes as "those whose names are written in the Book of Life from before the foundation of the world," the elect whom Christ came to ransom.

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About the Book

"He who has ears let him hear."
Jesus said those words many times. What did he mean? He also declared, "The truth will set you free." Which truth? Free from what? This book will tell you in no uncertain terms, a message to be stapled on the world's bulletin board for any who pass by, and in particular for those who have the "right ears." It is a thorough explanation of the astonishing freedom won by Christ for his elect and the devastating implications this has for all world religion and philosophy, especially Christianity. It will shatter the myths underpinning many long cherished beliefs and rock the Church to its foundations. Along with many other surprises you will discover that the word "church" is not even in the Bible!
This investigation covers most aspects of the Church with special reference to its origin in early times: fathers, councils, creeds, buildings, names and titles, saints, priesthood and clergy, celibacy, ordination, confirmation, sacraments, tithes, sabbaths, festivals, gospels and media, assurance, second-coming and ecumenical beliefs. All these are weighed against Scripture, namely the teachings of Christ, the apostles and prophets, and found to be either non-existent, obsolete, not the same thing or quite the opposite! However, these concepts did not materialize from nothing; all came from someone, somewhere. The revelation of each source will be quite a shock for readers who thought they had a handle on the facts. Well-documented and researched but written in dynamic style, this presentation is often moving and alarming.
This is the truth which sets free.

About the Author

Peter Dunstan was born in Kolar, India. After attending schools in India, Jamaica and England, he studied at University College London, receiving degrees in Architecture, Planning and Building. He also attended courses in Anthropology, discovering two life-long pursuits and associated interests, the archaeology of ancient cultures and the faiths of the world. Spending countless hours in the libraries and museums of London, he researched original texts of the scriptures of major religions, examined the artifacts of the great civilizations, and pored over exhibits in the halls of natural history and science. He has taught at the tertiary level and given lectures on empires of the past.
Traveling extensively in all six continents and living in four of them, he has explored whenever possible the relevant ruins, from Egypt to Peru, India to Mexico, including many off the beaten track. During a working stay in Israel he spent every free day analyzing historical sites from northern Galilee to the Dead Sea, and made similar investigations while serving as a relief aid worker in Muslim countries. Using local transport and hiking across southeastern Europe, from Italy through Greece and Turkey, he traced the footsteps of the apostle Paul, examining the remains of ancient Rome, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, Pergamon and Laodicea. Also in support of his writing he has researched pertinent antiquities in the museums of Greece, Rome, Cairo, the tombs of Egypt, the Paris Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City and several aboriginal museums in Canada, Australia, Central and South America.

Sample Excerpts and Table of Contents

CONTENTS
1. Church or Elect?
2. Wrong Place, Name & Body
3. The House of God?
4. Right Word, Right Place
5. Early Church Fathers
6. Early Christian Councils
7. Christians?
8. Clergy & Saints
9. Creeds, Confessions, Catechisms
10. Church Sacraments
11. Authority & Confirmation
12. Church Sabbath
13. Church Festivals
14. Sheep & Goats
15. Church Gospels
16. Christian Books, Music, Film
17. Church Rapture?
18. Church Planting or Assembly?
19. Church Assurance
20. Unity or Ecumenism?
21. Church Judgment
22. Separation & Destruction

ADDENDUM
God & Evil
Raising the Dead
Spirit of the Living God
Amazing Grace
Harlot Babylon

Acknowledgements
Index

5. Early Church Fathers

Turn your attention now to the founders of Christianity, called the "Church Fathers," the Christians who were indeed the fathers of the Church. Probably the best source to examine them is in the writing of Eusebius of Caesarea (263-339 AD), sometimes called the Father of Ecclesiastical History, servant of the Church and friend of Emperor Constantine I (also called the Great, c.274-337AD). His accounts of the early church are the prime proof that they were a completely different body from God's chosen, far removed from apostles and disciples, but always using the name of Jesus. Space does not permit to examine them all but even a cursory reading of their history reveals a group dedicated to lording it over each other, vying for priestly positions, breaking away and forming ever more new churches, calling councils to issue decrees which bade men to conform to them, excommunicating and condemning each other. Their lives were nothing like those of the Lord's first disciples whom He taught to serve each other and those early goats knew it. Their antics to cover up the difference were no different from churchmen of today. Eusebius and others revised the history of the apostles in their own image, to suit the church picture, a fraudulent model for all doomed goats to follow thereafter. Note this introduction from one unwittingly drooling over the error of Eusebius.
"A study of Eusebius' pages...shows inescapable proof that the Church of the first generations of Christians was one in which an Anglican of our day would recognize most of the ideas and practices to which he is accustomed...the same line drawn between clergy and laity...same practice of episcopal ordination and consecration, the same insistence on the Apostolic succession...presided over and ruled by bishops...Did not James, the Lord's brother, within a few years of the Savior's death, sit on the episcopal throne of Jerusalem and officiate in sacerdotal vestments? Was not John the beloved disciple a sacrificing priest wearing the mitre? There may have been a short period when services were held in private houses, but as soon as possible churches began to rise, then cathedrals...Truly that generation and this are one." (Introduction by G. A. Williamson to: Eusebius, History of the Church, Dorset Press, 1965)
Yes indeed, this present generation is entirely one in falsehood with that brood. It is simply not credible that James or John betrayed the Lord in this way. Note here that this is James the son of Mary and brother of Jesus who became a leading apostle in Jerusalem (Galatians 1:19; Matthew 13:55), not James the brother of John who was in the original twelve with Christ and later killed by Herod Agrippa I. (Acts 12:1,2) James replaced Peter as leader when the latter had to flee from Jerusalem. (Acts 12:17) It would have been completely at odds with their teachings in the Bible if these men later created a beast in the image of the one Jesus had just destroyed, building temples, offering sacrifices or putting on priest's garments. If James, John or Peter had created a Judeo-Christian priesthood then they would have committed apostacy against their Master's teaching and their own writings. But the church fathers, like Clement of Alexandria and Hegesippus (c.180 AD), spread stories about James as though he were no better than a Hindu fakir steeped in eastern style "holiness", a vegetarian, not shaving or washing himself, even becoming an early Christian priest whom the Jewish priests allowed to enter the Holy of holies in the obsolete Jerusalem temple, later killing him for that same faith in Christ. (Eusebius, Tiberius to Nero) The story is ludicrous. Clement told a tale, also repeated by Eusebius (History of the Church, Enemies), of the apostle John consecrating a young man and entrusting him to a priest, saying he would return, like the Lord to the vineyard, to collect him when his church training was complete. On his return the young man had gone wildly astray, so John, now very old, outran the lad across the country to catch him and bring him back, saying he would lay down his life like the Lord to redeem the young man's soul. This is pure nonsense. The real John would never have turned anyone over to the church, let alone claimed any powers that belonged to Christ alone. It reads as a silly myth, far from the tone of the scriptures, and numerous historians have complained of such "embellishments" by Eusebius or "untrustworthy references in the writings of the early Church Fathers (e.g., Clement of Alexandria) and some Gnostics..." (Encyclopedia Britannica, Sacred Rites and Ceremonies, Std.Ver.1999)
These fables are standard fodder for goats supplied by church fathers and the churchmen lapped it up. Others tried to counteract the teaching of the apostle Paul, even counterfeiting letters in his name to confuse the elect. "When his converts in Thessalonica began to be persecuted they mistook their sufferings for the first tribulations of which Paul had spoken. Forged letters, as if from the apostle, encouraged their mistake. There were other false alarms in the following centuries, and a constant spate of Christian forgeries..." (Pagans and Christians, Robin Lane Fox, Oxford University fellow and lecturer in ancient history, p.266, Knopf, 1986) There were hundreds of these forgeries, embellishments and cover-ups, and they neither read nor feel anything like Scripture. Consider the Infancy Gospel of James or Protovangelion (c.150 AD, long after James was dead), which is the earliest mention of virgin veneration and the claim that Jesus was born in a cave. Or the equally out of date Acts of Peter and Acts of John (c.150-200 AD), probably written by Leucius Charinus, with tales of Peter's marvels, making a dog talk in witness and raising a smoked herring from the dead, John converting the Ephesians and destroying the Temple of Artemis. Or the Gospel of Mary (c.120-180 AD), supposedly written by Mary Magdalene and superior to the apostles' teaching because she was closer to Christ as his "girlfriend," a text almost identical to the Hindu myth of the world being an illusory chaos in which each soul must discover its own true nature. These forged fables are so corny they would be laughable if there were not hundreds of million Christians today who believe the same kind of tripe. (Space does not permit to cover all these inane documents. For those who have the time to waste here are four sources: The Complete Gospels, ed. Robert Miller, San Francisco, Harper Collins, 1994; The Apocryphal New Testament, ed. J. K. Elliot, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1993; Early Christian Writings, ed. Maxwell Staniforth, NY, Penguin, 1987; The New Testament Apocrypha, Schneemelcher, Westminster and Knox Press, Louisville, 1989). Eusebius himself admitted that he suppressed anything that might tend to the disgrace of Christianity and Augustine likewise justified concealing whatever was deemed necessary to defend his religion. Critics have pointed out that his treatise, On Lying, was made just before his "conversion" but even after he was bishop of Hippo his essay Against Lying was no better. This love of fanciful myth or half truth (what the Word calls lies) is a hallmark of early churchdom and, as we shall soon see, every Christian on the planet today is quite happy to bathe in comparable superstition.
Whole schools were devoted to the creation of this new religion. Their centers were primarily in Rome, Antioch, Jerusalem and Alexandria. Here councils and synods met to argue about exactly how to fast at the Easter Festival, and whether their Eucharist should be celebrated on Sunday or only at Jewish Passover, while Christ had not taught his disciples such specific fasting nor to keep his ordained bread-breaking on any particular day or month, certainly not at the Festival of Ishtar. Another site of critical importance to the foundations of Christianity was the city of Ephesus. Its bishop, Polycrates (c.190 AD), was the one who sowed the absurd story that the apostle John "became a sacrificing priest, wearing the mitre." (Eusebius, Marcus Aurelius to Severus) From this same sect in Ephesus came the fables about Mary being Theotokos ("Mother of God") and her resurrection and ascension from Ephesus to become the mediator between Christ and men (suiting the pagans of that city, who worshipped the great mother goddess Diana, as well as the Christians). All this was classic Christian strategy: to wait for the elect to die and then claim them as their own, revising history to suit the church plan (Rome is doing this right now regarding the Protestant Reformers). Eusebius acknowledged the problem of fake documents being confused with the writings of the apostles, and even such key scriptures as the book of Hebrews being openly rejected by early bishops. And no wonder! That majestic scripture is the very death knell to church and priesthood. Even a cursory reading of this great epistle reveals that the church by comparison is a fake. Christianity is neo-paganism in the name of Christ.
Jesus had strictly commanded his apostles to "not be called teacher," and "do not be called master," but above all, "Do not call anyone on earth father: for One is your Father, He who is in heaven." (Matthew 23:8-10) As Lord, he would have known exactly what error was soon to come and he would not have his elect fall into this trap. But the early Christians were bent on using these terms as soon as possible, giving such names to their "divines" and "patriarchs" and eventually hatching the emergence of the great padre or grand-papa of them all, the Pope. That particular "Holy Father" is neither holy nor father, at least not to the elect. To churchmen he is indeed their father. Consider some of these men called early church fathers and what they believed. Unlike the apostles, many of them were fixated with a pathological desire to be martyred. All of them were in totally in love with the Church they had created. All of them believed that their priestly utterances at their sacraments could, as in the parallel pagan mystery cults, literally turn bread and wine into the body and blood of their god, so that they could feast on him. Their other "miracles" were likewise preposterous. Here is an account in a letter from the church of Smyrna regarding Polycarp (69-155 AD), the last living link to the real apostles, who was supposedly condemned to die by fire. The alleged slayers, on seeing that the flames formed a protective arch around him and that he instead glowed and smelled like perfume, "perceived that his body could not be consumed by fire, they commanded an executioner to go near and pierce him through with a dagger. And on doing this there came forth a dove, and a great quantity of blood so that the fire was extinguished." The story reads exactly like a Greek fable or Roman Catholic marvel; it completely lacks the ring of truth of any of the great works of the New Testament.
Irenaeus (c.120-200 AD), bishop of Lugdunum (Lyons, France), wrote of the authority of the church fathers and listed the bishops which became the doctrine of "the apostolic succession," even emphasizing at that early date the unique position of the bishop of Rome. Tertullian and other "fathers" are supposed to have recorded that Peter was the first bishop in Rome. This was another masterly fabrication. "There is no historical evidence that St. Peter was the first leader of the church of Rome nor that he was martyred there during a persecution of the Christians (c. AD 67). By the end of the 1st century, however, the See of Rome seems to have been accorded a place of honor among the bishoprics claiming apostolic foundation, perhaps because of Rome's claim to the graves of both Peter and Paul, its many martyrs and defense of what has triumphed as orthodoxy, and its status as the capital of the Roman Empire." (Encyclopedia Britannica, Papacy, Std.Ver.1999)
The following are extracts from the seven short letters of Ignatius of Antioch (died c.110 AD), early English translations by C.H. Hoole (1885) and J.B. Lightfoot (1891). (A comprehensive text may be found in A Commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch, William Schoedel, Fortress Press, 1985). These selections display the two driving themes of his doctrine, his absolute love of priestly lordship and the church obsession with the Eucharist. "Respect the bishop as a type of the Father, and the priests as the council of God and college of Apostles. Without these it cannot be called a Church...Do nothing without the bishop...let all men reverence the deacons, and the bishop likewise, even as Jesus Christ, and the presbyters as the council of God...he who is within the altar is pure, he who does anything apart from the bishop and presbytery is not pure." (Letter to the Trallians) "The bishop sits in the place of God...submit yourselves to your bishop." (Letter to the Magnesians) "Run in harmony with the mind of the bishop, that by our submission we may give ourselves to God...be careful not to resist the bishop...plainly, we ought to regard the bishop as the Lord himself...obey the bishop and presbytery without distraction, breaking one bread, the medicine of immortality, the antidote that we should not die." (Letter to the Ephesians) "...one Eucharist...one altar...one bishop." (Letter to the Philadelphians) "...wherever the bishop appears...there is the catholic church." (Letter to the Smyrnaeans) As we shall see in greater detail, this is precisely the spirit of "antichrist" (subsitute-christ) which the apostle John said was appearing during his own lifetime, and the "falling away" Paul predicted was just around the corner. John wrote that the elect in Ephesus had "tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars" but had "lost their first love," and that "he who has an ear" should repent quickly. (Revelation 2:1-7) He also revealed that both Smyrna and Philadelphia were infiltrated by "blasphemy" and a "synagogue of Satan" and would be put to a severe test. (Revelation 2:9,10; 3:9,10) This is a direct pointer to the likes of Ignatius and the coming church. Ignatius even allowed himself the name Theophoros (Greek, "God Bearer"). Except for the untrustworthy Eusebius, there is not a shred of evidence for the Christian claim that Peter confirmed this man to teach. If he had ever met him, he would have thrown him headlong out of the door. Most likely, Peter or another apostle did just that and Ignatius "planted churches" instead. Today he is a "patron saint" to whom millions of Orthodox Christians pray for "intercession."
Ignatius was the first in Christian literature to use the expression "catholic church" and was noted for his yearning for martyrdom with wild beasts in the arena. "I shall coax them to devour me...if they are unwilling and refuse, I will compel them to do it...tearing apart of bones, hacking of limbs, crushing of the whole body, tortures of the devil come upon me, if only I may attain to Jesus Christ." (Letter to the Romans) This demented death-wish theology was not uncommon amongst early Christians (and crazed sects today) but is not found in Scripture. The apostles' natural preference to be with Christ in glory did not include such twisted reasoning, and Jesus told Peter that he "would not wish" to go to the death that awaited him. (John 21:18,19) This is almost incredible because the apostle John could still have been alive while the unbalanced Ignatius was formulating the dogmas of this fraudulent body, the kyriakon or "church." That is how quickly it all happened. Hippolytus of Rome (170-236 AD) expounded on the Easter Festival, teaching the priestly ability to "eucharist" bread and wine into real flesh and blood. Athanasius (295-373 AD), a notable Christian father who attended the Council of Nicea, and also formulated an important church creed named after him, described the sacraments in as directly pagan terms as possible, even describing the Christian priests as a rebirth of the Jewish priesthood which Christ had abolished...
To read more about the contents of this book see www.destiner.com/destiner_titles_free.htm

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