This book is the third small volume in his Early Church Father Series, which Greg hopes will encourage modern believers to learn more about the roots of our ancient faith.
WILLS POINT, TX – Greg Gordon, the founder and curator of SermonIndex, one of the largest Christian sermon sites on the internet, has recently published a book exploring the life and writings of one of the early Church leaders.
This book is the third small volume in his Early Church Father Series, which Greg hopes will encourage modern believers to learn more about the roots of our ancient faith. He says, “My goal is to make the writings of these early Apostolic figures easily readable by abridging those writings and adding Scripture references to show their love for Scripture. I hope that others will rediscover the great history of the early church and the writings of the godly men whom Christ used to help spread His glorious Gospel.”
He goes on to say, “Over the last seven years I have spent considerable time looking into early Christian history, with a particular focus on the first four hundred years of the Church. In my findings, I am seeing an authenticity, a vibrant reality, and a strong message which sadly is lacking in some of the modern pulpits, in Western countries especially. I believe modern believers will benefit from picking up these short books. Imagine being able to sit down with one of the Apostles themselves or those they ordained as the next leaders! This new book shares some of the writings of St. Ignatius. The volumes have been made available for free download in ebook format for wide distribution.”
The easiest way to read this book is to download it on Amazon in Kindle format. (Due to the book being made available at no cost, readers are encouraged to leave a review on Amazon.) If you are looking for other formats such as .pdf, you may visit the author’s Smashwords page.
From the book preface:
“Today in the Body of Christ, especially within evangelicalism and other modern expressions of the Church, there is an increasingly urgent need to reconnect with the foundational precepts of the ‘faith once for all delivered to the saints.’
“Ignatius writes while bound in Rome, ‘From Syria even to Rome I fight with wild beasts, by land and sea, by night and by day, being bound amidst ten leopards, even a company of soldiers, who only grow worse when they are kindly treated.’
“As the cover of this book shows Ignatius being devoured by two wild beasts, this was his fate and faithful martyrdom.
“So here we are 2000 years later, and able to sit down with St. Ignatius, to hear his heart, his passion for Christ, and his love for the Church. Let us glean a view of truth from his writings to see the Bible in a new light and be bolstered to continue on in the faithful continuance of the ‘One Faith’ given to the Church.”
With the constant influx of so many new Christian books on various subjects, the writings of the earliest Christians are well worth considering. Perhaps by exploring the past, we will find the way to the future. This book might be the first step for many to dig and find those ancient wells of faith that literally “turned the world upside down.”
Has there been a reluctance on the part of many modern believers to explore these older Christian writings?
Greg says, “Yes, there are some who are scared of anything written ‘after the Bible’ but before the Reformation of the 1500s. It is actually pretty sad for me to think about how we are missing so much of Church history and its riches due to fear of the unknown. We are living in a faith that is over 2000 years old, and the Church has weathered many storms. We are much stronger understanding this and learning from the past. The first few centuries of the Church built the foundation for what we are enjoying today, namely even the canonization of Holy Scripture! It was not the Scriptures that gave birth to the Church but the Church gave birth to the New Testament Scripture. The lives of martyrs and godly men preserved the message in word and deed for us. We have again much to learn. I wrote an article called ‘A Survivalist Guide to Christianity’s New Dark Age‘ in which I allude to the fact that the evangelical Church has entered a new Dark Age. Part of the solution is to look back and learn from early Church history.”
Yet, overall, Greg is optimistic and believes that books like these, distilled for modern readers, will help open up a dialogue that will enable us to begin to understand more of the authentic faith we need to have displayed in our day. His hope is that in bringing the testimony of the early Christians to light, modern-day believers can be strengthened and encouraged in their faith.
About Greg Gordon
Greg Gordon is the founder of SermonIndex.net, which was established in 2002. Over 100 million audio sermons have been distributed freely all across the world. Literally, almost every country in the world has accessed this resource. Hundreds of volunteers have helped make this resource possible being an effort of the larger body of Christ. He is also a contributor to many online Christian news sites and periodicals: ChristianPost, HelloChristian, EvangelicalFocus, to name a few.
Name: Greg Gordon
email: sermonindex@gmail.com
phone: (404) 981-1557
website: https://greggordon.home.blog
https://www.facebook.com/gregjgordon
