Re: The Early Christians: In Their Own Words

By the end of the second century, there was every reason to look for 
protection from the influence of false prophetic spirits. From Hellenistic

and oriental religions, a stream of pagan mysticism flooded into the
church 
communities, with philosophic speculations and the spell of magic rites. 
The institutional church saw an hour of temptation and unprecedented peril

in this wave of Gnosticism. It could be compared only with the crisis 
caused by Jewish legalism, which Paul had overcome in his day. Nobody in 
the church or in the Montanist movement wanted to be associated in any way

with that satanic brew. In the name of a false spirit of knowledge 
(recognized just in time), the church communities were all but destroyed 
and driven into the hands of demons. It is re****ted that the aged Polycarp

often exclaimed, “Dear God, for what times hast thou preserved me, that I 
should endure these things!” He even went so far as to call a leader of
the 
Gnostic movement the firstborn of Satan. Under no cir***stances would the 
Christians recognize anything “Christian” in this “Gnosis” or “mysterious 
knowledge,” not even as another version of Christianity. The slightest 
contact with these counterfeiters was considered to be dangerous beyond 
measure. In Ephesus John fled from a building, afraid it would fall in on 
him because one of those enemies of the truth was inside.