Three Resurrections – 2
This event would explain the massive discontinuity between the apostles and the church fathers. James Jordan writes:
The true Fathers of the Church are Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Jeremiah, Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John, and the other Fathers in the Bible. These men, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, created the apostolic deposit from which the Church always grows. The men who came after them, in the first and second and third centuries, are not Church Fathers but Church Babies. We may think that because these men lived right after the apostles, they must have known a lot. Remarkably, this is not the case. Anyone who reads the Bible, climaxing in the New Testament, and then turns to the “apostolic fathers” of the second century, is amazed at how little these men seem to have known…
It is clear that there is some significant break in continuity between the apostles and these men. What accounts for this? I can only suggest that the harvest of the firstfruit saints in the years before AD 70, which seems to be spoken of in Revelation 14, created this historical discontinuity. (I’d say the firstfruits Church was the Pentecostal (grain) harvest of the third month; we look toward the Tabernacles (fruit) harvest of the seventh month.) Thus, the Church Babies had to start with the Bible and grow from studying it and learning about it.
Excerpt from Thinking About Church History
James B. Jordan www.biblicalhorizons.com
3REZ
