JENNIFER: In the Didache itself, it gives its title, The Lord’s Teaching Through the 12 Apostles for the Gentiles. And so the Didache is aimed at giving these new Gentiles believers a good foundation because, eventually, the Gentiles outnumbered the Jews in the early church. But these were men and women who walked in passion, purity, and power. They turned the world upside down. The halos we see in the paintings, the old paintings of them, this is because the glory of God rested upon them and was visible upon their countenances. No wonder John Wesley looked back to the early church as the gold standard for Christianity. I don’t know about you and I don’t know about those of you who are watching, but I want a Book of Acts church.
SID: I can see it, a need for the new believers that come in. But by the way, I think history’s repeating itself. These new believers are at the same level. These young people and even older people that are going to come into the kingdom, they’re at the same level as the early pagans, even the Jewish people. I mean, the Jews and the Gentiles, there’s such darkness in society today. I happen to believe just as Esther said, “You’ve been called to the kingdom for such a time as this.” This revelation of the lost teachings of the apostle was called to the kingdom for such a time as this because there is going to be a billion-soul harvest. Even those that are mature believers… Just briefly, Dennis, why is this important for someone that’s been a believer forever to master?
DENNIS: Yeah. Well, primarily what we saw… We’ve always been disciples. We’ve always been a how-to people because we saw a weakness. Even those coming out of Bible schools and what have you, we saw a weakness in their foundation as far as knowing basic foundational holy living. We saw them come to the place where we had to almost go backwards and say, “You know what. We’ve got cracks in the foundation.” I gave them examples even out of the Didache to my church. I found out that seasoned believers, 30, 40 years in the faith, all of a sudden were getting convicted by lesson one in the Didache.
SID: Listen, how would you like to sit under the teaching of the first apostles? I have a question for you. What did John Wesley know that Billy Graham did not? Wesley’s revelation changed an entire nation, the nation of England. Right back.
SID: I want to make something very clear to you. Billy Graham is the gold standard of evangelist. But, Jennifer, what did he say in his book?
Billy Graham: It’s not our goal. Our goal is to obey God. Our goal is to do the will of God. Our goal is to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.
JENNIFER: He said that he regretted that so many of the people he led to the Lord were converts and not true disciples. The Didache is an extension of the great commission because Jesus himself said, “Go into all the world and make disciples.” The Hebrew word for disciple there is [foreign language]. Those are disciples of a rabbi. Just like the original disciples that Jesus walked with in his earth walk, they studied with him. They ate with him. They listened to instruction from him. Their aim was to become the kind of man their rabbi, their master, was. It’s not an instant thing. It’s like absorbing, it’s like becoming totally transformed. This is what the Didache produced, disciples who looked like they’d been with Jesus.
