Tracking Down the True Church of Christ: A Modern Day Revelation of True Christianity as Manifested Through New Testament Scripture

By Shell Abegglen

According to the Global Christian Encyclopedia, there are forty-one thousand different denominations of Christianity in the world. Since there was only one true church of Christ at the time that he and his apostles originally organized the primitive church, why are there now forty-one thousand variations of his church? Where on earth did all these separately organized religious establishments of Christian worship come from, and more importantly, which one of them embodies the precepts of Christ's original church? The overall "falling away" and inevitable decay of the original primitive church was definitively prophesied by Isaiah, the apostle Peter, the apostle Paul, and even by the Savior himself, as is outlined in this book. The purpose of this book is not to stir up controversy or to disparage any particular church but only to direct sincere Christians back to the true doctrines of the Gospel and to track down the true church of Christ.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781496973955

Shell Abegglen

The author was born and raised in a rural area of North Eastern Utah on a dairy farm. His early years were naturally oriented in the philosophies of the prevailing religious community. However, after five years of college, a stint in the US Army, eleven years as a professional petroleum geologist, twenty years as a public school teacher, and five years as a geology instructor at a small university in an adult education program, he feels confident that he is neither naive nor worldly in his thinking. Philosophy has piqued his interest from time to time ever since he took a philosophy class in college to fill a humanities requirement. Now, after authoring two books on religion, he has decided to try his hand at trimming down the thoughts of the world's greatest thinkers to a level where ordinary people can at least have a taste of what those great minds were thinking. His goal is to see interested readers find enjoyment, new knowledge, and a good, healthy taste of provocative thinking through the discipline of philosophy.

Book preview

Tracking Down the

True Church of Christ

A Modern Day Revelation of True Christianity

as Manifested Through New Testament Scripture

The Little Book That Will Wake Up The Christian World And Set It Upon A Luminous New Path

AS IT BRINGS TRUE BELIEVERS BACK INLINE

WITH THE TRUE TEACHINGS OF CHRIST

SHELL ABEGGLEN

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© 2015 Shell Abegglen. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

KJV

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Published by AuthorHouse 3/6/2015

ISBN: 978-1-4969-7394-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-7395-5 (e)

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Contents

AUTHORS NOTE

PART ONE

TRACKING DOWN THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST

CHAPTER ONE Forty One Thousand Denominations

CHAPTER TWO The Great Apostasy

CHAPTER THREE The Basic Doctines of the True Church Of Christ

CHAPTER FOUR The Other True Precepts of Christ’s Church

CHAPTER FIVE The Sins of the Flesh

CHAPTER SIX Further Enlightenment

CHAPTER SEVEN Organization of the True Church

CHAPTER EIGHT Martyrdom of the Apostles He that Loseth His Life for My Sake

CHAPTER NINE The Absolute Phenomenon of Christianity

PART TWO

THE FAITH BUILDERS

CHAPTER ONE The Miracles of the Nazarene

CHAPTER TWO Finding Wisdom in the Parables of Jesus

CONCLUSION

AUTHORS NOTE

I suppose that there will be many who are skeptical, but never the less, I feel strongly that the unofficial commission to write this book was influenced by inspiration. I am convinced that this book was meant to be read by the many believers in Christ who are teetering on the edge of doubt, who may have had some disappointment with their unsatisfactory involvement in some of the traditional churches, and so are still seeking after something they can genuinely believe in. I hope that they will find something in this book that will retrieve and verify their deeper faith and finally satisfy fully that underlying desire to be an obedient and loyal follower of Jesus Christ.

I would like to think that I have gained some wisdom in my golden years, despite the dubious smiles of my associates. Coming off the farm going directly into college, I was nothing if not naïve. After a stint in the military, fourteen years of doing geology in the oilfield, twenty years in a classroom full of rowdy Junior High hoodlums, and six years teaching part time in a University adult education program, I am no longer naive, but neither do I feel worldly. As I immersed myself into the extensive study of the New Testament, which came by circumstance and not by my specific intention, I have found it to be a great treasure of knowledge, insight, and wisdom, but more importantly, a faith builder, a fierce wind of testimony bearing witness to the divinity of Jesus Christ as it blows through one’s mind and soul. Yes, of course, I am being a bit melodramatic, but it’s hard to describe it in any other way.

When you superficially cruise through the New Testament like any ordinary book, it is akin to cruising through a National Park without stopping to see the sights and really seeing the true beauty of the park. To experience all the wonders, delights, and magnificence of Yellowstone, one must make many stops; one must get off the road and on to the trails, and look for and study the beauty in the details of its nature. And so it is with the New Testament. I strongly encourage every Christian to get better acquainted with Jesus Christ and become closer to their Savior through a serious study of the New Testament. -Shell Abegglen

PART ONE

TRACKING DOWN THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST

CHAPTER ONE

Forty One Thousand Denominations

I’m going to begin this book by making some statements of facts and then posing some questions regarding Christianity that could be construed as controversial or at least, quite provocative. If the following statements and questions offend your sensibilities, or to you they seem somewhat ridiculous as to their relevance in today’s world of religion, then your mind is most likely already set on an undeviating path, and there isn’t much need of you to read any further in this book. On the other hand, if your mind is open to new ideas and facts that you may not have heard of before, and in addition you think that my statements and questions in the following paragraphs have some merit, then continue to read on to be enlightened like you have never been enlightened before.

Nearly one third of the citizens of the entire world say that they are Christians, which is about 2.18 billion followers according to the latest statistics for the year 2010. Referring to the references from The Global Christian Encyclopedia, the Center of Global Christianity website, and Wikipedia.com, we find that there are over 41,000 different denominations of Christianity in the world. Even if we take in to account the monumental difficulties in verifying the existence of all these denominations, as well as removing some churches from the count because they overlap in their basic tenets but not in name, it is still an implausible quantity to take into our comprehension. Certainly it is not easy for us to understand why there is such an incomprehensible number of distinct and varied churches that worship Christ.

Since there is only one true Church of Christ as He and his apostles originally organized it, why are there now 41,000 variations of His church? Where on earth did these 41,000 differently organized religious establishments of Christian worship and their various teachings come from, and more importantly which one of them embodies the precepts of Christ’s original church? The reader must ultimately answer that last question for him or herself after they have obtained a somewhat comprehensive understanding of Christ’s original church and valid scriptural enlightenment enhanced hopefully by a degree of genuine divine religious inspiration. However, the answer to that first question, which was where did all these denominations come from, can be answered through a profusion of theological ideas and by a number of different real world factors.

Lets begin this closer look into the origin of the many differences and inconsistencies of Christian teaching throughout the thousands of Christian denominations, with a look at the basic seeds that brought about the many variances in these religious organizations. Lets start with the incomplete record keeping in the early days of the Christian church, and the imprecise, subjective, and even arbitrary nature of men’s historical writings that left much of the original doctrine in mystery or at best vague. These problems have been magnified by a profusion of translation errors that have occurred in the Holy Scriptures, and also in other religious texts and historical records, which have muddied the waters even further.

Anyone who has taken a serious look at the early history of Christianity has to wonder how on earth the Christian religion ever survived. Yet it did, so one has to believe that God must have had a hand in the matter of the Christian Church’s survival. Right now, just for a moment, try to hang in there with me for a few minutes, while we take a step back into the early days of the Christian religion and marvel at the survival and miracle of what we call Christianity.

In those early days of the church with its growing pains, its many trials, and its unjustified persecutions, the Christian church began basically as a single Christian church, and the first Christians were primarily ethnic Jews or Jewish converts. After the Apostle Peter’s illuminating vision, concerning the acceptance of gentiles into the church, there were now several nationalities involved, each of them having their own ways in the expression of their new religion. Shaped by their customs and culture, they displayed their Christian faith with their own geographic, political, and religious differences, which naturally led to the organization of several different churches among the many peoples who claimed to be followers of Christ.

In spite of the intense persecutions, the Christian religion continued to spread throughout the Mediterranean area. There is no one explanation of how Christianity managed to spread so successfully, except that Christianity triumphed over paganism mostly because it improved the lives of its followers in a number of positive ways, not the least of which was a better and more defined theological idea of charity and the warm comforting aspect of an acquired spirituality.

The new Bishops who came into leadership after the death of the Apostles, reportedly knew and studied under the apostles personally and were called Apostolic Fathers. Ordained assistants to the bishops were called Presbyters, and especially in rural areas, the presbyters took on more authority and responsibilities as they exercised a religious model of being presiding priests. The main role of the Bishops in the early Church was to judge and maintain their correct beliefs, and to refute other opinions known as heresies, rather than participating in local ministering. There were many differing opinions among the bishops concerning new questions, and then there was also that problem of deciding what was orthodox and what wasn’t. These things would keep the Church leaders busy for some time, and inevitably the Christian church would evolve in many different directions.

Many historians have put the blame of the major detours and divergent paths that occurred in Christianity on the subtle but deleterious Greek philosophy, and the influence of Gnosticism. Gnosticism during A.D. 100’s to the 700’s was a philosophical and religious movement that adopted pagan, Jewish, and Christian ideas. In general, they believed that the people could attain salvation only by acquiring gnosis, from the Greek word meaning knowledge. Unfortunately, many of the Christian churches assimilated bits and pieces of Gnosticism, as well as a good deal of Greek philosophy into their own religious precepts. (See GNOSTICISM- World Book Encyclopedia.)

Arianism was an early Christian theological view taught by Arius, a priest of Alexandria, Egypt, who claimed that Christ was not truly a God and was inferior to God the Father. About A.D. 318, Arius and his followers rejected outright the doctrine that the three persons of the Christian Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, were equal and of one essence. This would eventually become a major point in dividing Christianity.

The Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, gave the Christians followers under his powerful rule the freedom of worship in 313 A.D. Feeling that Christianity needed some agreement in its basic precepts, he called the first ecumenical council, of the Nicene Councils of the Christian church, which was held in Nicaea in 325 A.D. in what is now northwest Turkey. The purpose was to make the doctrine uniform throughout the empire. The council adopted a statement known as the Nicene Creed, which said among other things that Jesus Christ was of the same substance as God, He being of one substance with the Father, or that they were only one divine being. This council also condemned their religious adversary, that of Arianism, entirely. Remember, Arianism was the very sect that insisted on the heretical view that Jesus was not completely divine or in reality even a god.

Beginning in the 400’s, the Eastern churches began to drift away from the authority of Rome and the mainstream establishment of the church in the West. During the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D., the Western church condemned the teachings of the Eastern Church, and especially their Byzantine Bishop in Constantinople, Nestorius, who insisted Mary was the mother of Christ but not the mother of God. This particular Bishop had significantly different doctrines than the Western Church, all of which would eventually cause the two sides to totally separate. The gulf widened further among the Christian churches after the Council of Chalcedon held in Turkey in 451 A.D. where this Council’s church leaders from Rome and Constantinople asserted that Christ had two distinct separate natures, and while they were at it, they also came right out and condemned the powerful Coptic Christian leader in Alexandria Egypt. This caused the Armenian Church, the Coptic Church of Egypt, the Ethiopian Church, and the Syrian Jacobite Church to all break away from the churches that accepted the teaching of the Council of Chalcedon. Pope Saint Leo 1, who emphasized that Popes were the successors to Saint Peter, was instrumental at the Council of Chalcedon in developing the basic doctrines of the divine and human nature of Jesus Christ.

As the persecution of Christians gradually began to cease and Christianity began to prosper, the priestly monk replaced the martyr as the Christian ideal. In the sixth century, Saint Benedict of Nursia established monasteries for monks and nuns, and for the next 500 years, most of the monasteries in Europe would belong to the Benedictine religious order. The Benedictines helped spread Christianity throughout Western Europe.

The division of the basic factions in Christianity finally came to a head in 1054 A.D. when Pope Leo IX excommunicated the authoritarian leader of the Eastern Church, who was the patriarch of Constantinople in Turkey. In a return move, the Eastern Patriarch condemned Pope Leo in the Christian church in Rome, and consequently they officially divided into the exotic East Greek Orthodox Church and the great Western Roman Catholic Church, and so that was the way it was to be for the next thousand years and continues even today.

In the early 16th century, two theologians, the German born Martin Luther and the Swiss born Huldrych Zwingli, began their protestant movements aimed at the Catholic Church. These two reformers stood out from previous reformers because they considered the root of church corruptions to be in the very doctrine, and not just simply in moral weakness or lack of church discipline. And so they did aim to change church doctrines to be in accordance with what they perceived to be the true gospel. The beginning of the Protestant Reformation is generally identified with Martin Luther who posted 95 theses papers on the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany. He was very opposed, among other things, to such corruptions as the buying and selling of church offices and the sale of indulgences. This condemnation of Catholicism then began a whole new movement and a new Era in Christianity, which came in the form of the proliferation of Protestant churches that were going to multiply and spread through out the world.

Unfortunately, the varied religious doctrines and their influence from those seminal highly skewed interpretations of scripture, which were born of the different ecumenical councils in the early days of Christianity, persist in most Christian churches today.

(For more information see the World Book Encyclopedia - Roman Catholic Church - NICENE COUNCILS; ARIANISM, TRINITY- POPE SAINT LEO I, and also Wikipedia.com - History of Christianity) **

As time went on in religious history, in addition to the major disagreements among the ancient leading churches, the human weakness factor, which plays no small part, comes into the bigger picture. These things would include such items as the capricious nature of very loose interpretations of scripture, uninformed opinions, prejudicial judgments against ecclesiastical leaders and established denominations, the very personal agendas of many so-called spiritual leaders, and most specifically, the weakness of men in seeking divine inspiration. If a particular idea, principle, or doctrine of the original church, didn’t suit the ideas of a particular religious group created by men, then they modified it, extracted their own abstract meaning out of it, and twisted the interpretation of the doctrines of Christ’s original church until it did satisfy their own personal desires and personal views. As time went on, countless other groups of so called believers would proceed to tweak and tinker further with those changes that had already been made until it suited their specific ideas, their uninformed opinionated thinking, and their self-gratification, and so on and so on. So then it was that most of Christ’s original church gradually became unrecognizable, and we end up with the philosophies of men mingled with scripture. All these human weakness factors combined with the capricious nature of men’s philosophical ideas, most certainly contributed in a big way to the myriad of beliefs and teachings that we have today among the 41,000 Christian denominations.

Even the apostle Paul marveled at how quickly the followers of Christ strayed off the path even after they had been taught in the true ways of Christ. Galatians 1:6 I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel:

**

Unfortunately, we find that when the unintentional errors in the interpretation of scriptures or the deliberate skewing of the original Christian doctrine becomes solidly ingrained into the traditions of a particular religious community, it becomes very nearly impossible, or at the very least, a monumental task to correct and redirect that particular community or sect back on to the correct path of Christ’s original church. This is a grievous, frustrating, and a discouraging fact, but an historical truth.

Much of the time in past history and even now, the people who have changed the doctrine of Christ’s original church, were fooling themselves into believing that God was actually going along with it all. I find this kind of thinking and activity strangely disrespectful to our Savior Jesus Christ and to his original church, and in most respects, even contrary to the building of the Kingdom of God.

I believe that it is the duty of all sincere Christian religious leaders that truly care for their followers, to be spending their valuable time here on earth trying to serve their fellowmen by teaching them the correct principles and doctrines of Christ’s original church and teachings, and to humbly and enthusiastically prepare their followers to return to that Heavenly Father that created us all, so that each of us might return to Him in good standing.

Some will say, Any church that practices any kind of belief in Jesus Christ is better than none. I can’t say that I have a good solid argument against that idea in principle, and I suspect that nearly all of the 41,000 denominations have some remnants of the original expressions of Christ’s Church, but why settle for only a piece of His full teachings and a much diluted portion of His true gospel? Why eat a dry commercially baked cookie with artificial sweeteners and flavoring, filled with a lot of questionable preservatives, when you could be eating a fresh original, healthy, homemade cookie baked by the best of all bakers? I suggest that once you have really tasted the homemade cookie, or in other words, sampled Christ’s true gospel, you will know the effort to find it, is worth it and you will settle for nothing less.

So exactly what does the original church, metaphorically baked by the Savior and his apostles, look and taste like, anyway? To find the answer to this intriguing and very important question, I have spent many hours, days, and months that have ran into years, systematically going through the New Testament in the King James Version of the Holy Bible, page by page to dig out the traits, the doctrines, and the principles of the true original Church of Christ.

Even though I attended church regularly as a youth, I have never attended any theological seminary, or studied Latin in some Divinity School, and I have had no official formal religious training, and so there are those who would say that this would be a distinct disadvantage in any discussion of religious doctrine, and therefore how can there be in validity in my words? However, I have found that the lack of formal religious training is just the opposite of being disadvantageous. Instead, I find it to be an actual benefit in that the old baggage of those preconceived erroneous doctrines, and the historical false precepts and teachings do not encumber or adulterate my study of the New Testament. I am therefore able to read, learn, and study the New Testament intimately by leaning on my strong desire to dig out that true and original church of Christ from its pages, and to discover in wonder and awe that peculiar gospel that delineates the ways of the Savior’s original church.

By the way, you should know that although the King James Version of the Bible isn’t perfect, most scholars and experts consider it as being the most valid and correct translation of the original Hebrew scrolls and codices, Aramaic Targums, and the Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate sources for the translation of the Holy Bible. King James I of England authorized and commissioned this version of the Bible to be translated by an eclectic committee of 54 specialized scholars, each one being an expert authority in his own right in a particular area of scripture translation. King James insisted that it should be the best and most correct translation ever written. It all happened in the years from 1604 to 1611, and since that time, it has become one of the most widely used and trusted English translations of the Holy Bible in the entire world.

I find myself decidedly unreceptive to the efforts of those who alter the King James Bible into what they call modern English, or to those who in any way try to reshape the Holy Bible into more easily read literature of simple every day English, or any other biblical work that changes the original wording of the King James Bible.

Although they most assuredly mean well, fully intending to facilitate an easier reading of the Holy Bible, there is something lost in these revised versions. Not just the original spirit and feel of the Holy scriptures, but there is a legitimate danger of misinforming unsuspecting readers with erroneous re-interpretations, uninformed opinions of vague gospel truisms, and the indiscriminate tweaking of definitions to obtain an easier reading comfort level for the average reader. I must say that I am not even comfortable with the extensive work of the NIV, and its one hundred translators that put together The New International Version.

Seemingly subtle differences in wording that deviates from the King James Version can sometimes make a significant difference in the original intent and the spirit to be conveyed by the original biblical authors. Sometimes the strict exact literal translation of the scriptures doesn’t thoroughly convey the intended meaning and spirit of those sacred words.

Yes, I do understand that like most other bibles, the King James Version is also a translation from the original codices into English, never the less, there are many hundreds of millions of believers around the world who truly believe like I do, that the King James Version is the one and only inspired version of the Holy Bible.

Having taken a good look at the many centuries of the history of Christianity and the great depth and breadth of its many and varied doctrines that have evolved over a couple of millennia, I certainly find it very presumptuous of myself to come off looking like I have all the right answers, and maybe just a bit arrogant on my part to think that I should have the great wisdom and superior discernment to cast a shadow over the teachings of centuries of Christian clerical leaders. Yet, I am simply amazed at how so many Christian churches and their leaders can seem to completely ignore or misinterpret the obvious meaning of the plainly written black and white scripture of so much of the original doctrine that