From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   - Malachi 3:10 -   
      
       Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my   
   house. Test me in this," says the LORD Almighty, "and see if I will not   
   throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you   
   will not have room enough for it.   
   ____________________________________________________________________   
      
   The Lord promises great return on our investment in His work, which include   
   our time, talent and treasure - our entire life! Sometimes it comes in the   
   form of financial prosperity, More often, it will be through greater   
   intimacy with Him, peace of mind, harmonious relationships with others, and   
   satisfaction of spirit. These blessings are of far greater value than   
   anything our material world has to offer.   
      
      
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   June 28th - Saint Irenaeus (Ireneo) of Lyons   
      
   Died c. 202.   
      
   "Give perfection to beginners, O Father;   
   give intelligence to the little ones;   
   give aid to those who are running their course.   
   Give sorrow to the negligent;   
   give fervor of spirit to the lukewarm.   
   Give to the perfect a good consummation;   
   for the sake of Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen."   
      
   --Prayer of St. Irenaeus.   
      
   Irenaeus was probably born around 125. As a young man in Smyrna (near   
   Ephesus, in what is now western Turkey) he heard the preaching of Polycarp,   
   who as a young man had heard the preaching of the Apostle John. Afterward,   
   probably while still a young man, Polycarp moved west to Lyons in southern   
   France. In 177, Pothinus, the bishop of Lyons, sent him on a mission to   
   Rome. During his absence a severe persecution broke out in Lyons, claiming   
   the lives of the bishop and others. When Irenaeus returned to Lyons, he was   
   made bishop. He is thus an important link between the apostolic church and   
   later times, and also an important link between Eastern and Western   
   Christianity.   
      
   His principal work is the Refutation of Heresies, a defense of orthodox   
   Christianity against its Gnostic rivals. A shorter work is his Proof of the   
   Apostolic Preaching, a brief summary of Christian teaching, largely   
   concerned with Christ as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. An   
   interesting bit of trivia about this latter book is that it is, as far as I   
   know, the first Christian writing to refer to the earth as a sphere.   
      
   One of the earliest heresies to arise in the Christian church was   
   Gnosticism, and Irenaeus was one of its chief early opponents. Not all   
   Gnostics believed exactly the same thing, but the general outlines of the   
   belief are fairly clear.   
      
   Gnostics were dualists, teaching that there are two great opposing forces:   
   good versus evil, light versus darkness, knowledge versus ignorance, spirit   
   versus matter. Since the world is material, and leaves much room for   
   improvement, they denied that God had made it. "How can the perfect produce   
   the imperfect, the infinite produce the finite, the spiritual produce the   
   material?" they asked. One solution was to say that there were thirty beings   
   called AEons, and that God had made the first AEon, which made the second   
   AEon, which made the third, and so on to the thirtieth AEon, which made the   
   world. (This, Gnostics pointed out to the initiate, was the true inward   
   spiritual meaning of the statement that Jesus was thirty years old when he   
   began to preach.) As Irenaeus pointed out, this did not help at all.   
   Assuming the Gnostic view of the matter, each of the thirty must be either   
   finite or infinite, material or non-material, and somewhere along the line   
   you would have an infinite being producing a finite one, a spiritual being   
   producing a material one.   
      
   The Gnostics were Docetists, from the Greek meaning "to seem." They taught   
   that Christ did not really have a material body, but only seemed to have   
   one. It was an appearance, so that he could communicate with men, but was   
   not really there. (If holograms had been known then, they would certainly   
   have said that the supposed body of Jesus was a hologram.) They went on to   
   say that Jesus was not really born, and did not really suffer or die, but   
   merely appeared to do so. It was in opposition to early Gnostic teachers   
   that the Apostle John wrote (1 John 4:1-3) that anyone who denies that Jesus   
   Christ is come in the flesh is of antiChrist.   
      
   Gnostics claimed to be Christians, but Christians with a difference. They   
   said that Jesus had two doctrines: one a doctrine fit for the common man,   
   and preached to everyone, and the other an advanced teaching, kept secret   
   from the multitudes, fit only for the chosen few, the spiritually elite.   
   They, the Gnostics, were the spiritually elite, and although the doctrines   
   taught in the churches were not exactly wrong, and were in fact as close to   
   the truth as the common man could hope to come, it was to the Gnostics that   
   one must turn for the real truth. They remind me very much of the   
   Rosicrucians. When I mention this, I often get blank stares, but not many   
   years ago many popular science magazines carried their advertisements, with   
   assertions that Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo da Vinci, Plato,   
   Archimedes, and so on had all been members of a secret society called the   
   Rosicrucians, and owed their achievements largely to this fact. Was there   
   any evidence of this aside from the traditions of the group itself? Of   
   course not! They were a secret society. Why were they secret? "Because our   
   wisdom would be misunderstood by the common man, and so must be reserved for   
   the tiny handful of mankind in every generation who are spiritually advanced   
   enough to appreciate it. So send us twenty bucks and we'll spill our guts."   
      
   In opposition to this idea, Irenaeus maintained that the Gospel message is   
   for everyone. He was perhaps the first to speak of the Church as "Catholic"   
   (universal). In using this term, he made three contrasts:   
      
   He contrasted the over-all church with the single local congregation, so   
   that one spoke of the Church in Ephesus, but also of the Catholic Church, of   
   which the Churches in Ephesus, Corinth, Rome, Antioch, etc. were local   
   branches or chapters.   
      
   He contrasted Christianity with Judaism, in that the task of Judaism was to   
   preserve the knowledge of the one God by establishing a solid national base   
   for it among a single people, but the task of Christianity was to set out   
   from that base to preach the Truth to all nations.   
      
   He contrasted Christianity with Gnosticism, in that the Gnostics claimed to   
   have a message only for the few with the right aptitudes and temperaments,   
   whereas the Christian Gospel was to be proclaimed to all men everywhere.   
   Irenaeus then went on to say: If Jesus did have a special secret teaching,   
   to whom would He entrust it? Clearly, to His disciples, to the Twelve, who   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)