Why isn't this book on every evangelical seminary's guidebook to help us avoid many of the false teachings of the modern cults and churches? After studying in seminary and being mostly influenced by Dallas Seminary's Lewis Sperry Chafer and majority of trusted pastors of the last 150-200 years (Charles Spurgeon, Charles Swindoll, Graham, Kenneth Wuest, D.L. Moody, Matthew Henry, G.Campbell Morgan, J. Vernon Mcgee, and host of other popular writers), this is the first time I have known that we have actual writings of the early church pastors in such an easy to read guide format.

How the faithful looked at their impending martyrdom is beautifully seen in "the letter of Ignatius to the Church in Rome" and in Pastor Polycarp's martyrdom written down by the faithful for our edification. It is amazing how their view of faith included trust in Christ all the way to the end, just like John Wesley taught.

It is awesome to know that the early Church always baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity as I read in the last pages of this book, in "teachings (didache/gk) of the apostles".

It is awesome to read that worshipping Christ as God was a normal practice of faith among early Christians from the beginning and how much these trusted pastors exalted our LORD's words and life, death and resurection as the foundation for all Christians.

Surprisingly, our early church also saw great significance in the life of Christ as they saw our imitation of Christ's Perfect life to be a holy goal of every Christian every day of our lives. They did not interpret "be ye perfect as your Father in Heaven is" allegorically or as pre-Grace-dispensational in any way. To them, good works of Love motivated by Faith in Christ's Perfect Life and passionate suffering at the Cross, with His victory over satan through death and Resurrection, was a much stronger emphasis of the basis for our Salvation than simply saying a "magical" 4 laws or sinner's prayer to welcome Jesus in our hearts. The early Church's view of God's Grace is clear: "By Grace you are saved, not by your own doing, but by the will of God in Christ Jesus" spoken by Polycarp, the trusted disciple of John called and appointed to lead the Church in Smyrna. However, it is also true that they took Paul's words in Galations 5 as Holy Scripture and took all of Christ's words inline with James' letter, rather than show an adverserial relationship between Christian good works and our faith in Christ. To them, Christ's calling to holiness, His perfect obedience through the pains of the cross, revealed faithful calling of the Christian to live holy lives as part of our salvation, rather than as a separate past/present/future salvation message that I have heard by majority of our teachers in the past 200 years.

I was surprised to read that John Calvin, Martin Luther, and John Wesley, honored many of these early Christian writings and always taught reading them for edification and Biblical understanding as PART of our sola scriptura belief, and they never intended that anyone should read the scriptures and privately interpret it against the writings of all these early church pastor's teachings. No wonder all Christians everywhere agreed for majority of the first 1800 years of our faith on the significance of Baptism, Holy communion and hosts of other early church practices and beliefs and none of them tried to use "saved by Grace unto good works" as beyond what the early church taught, that there are jewish cereminial laws we were freed from unto Christian good works in Love.

The view of humility in Ignatius truly is humbling against majority of our teaching in the western culture, since he would never want any believer to independent of the Apostolic Christian Church to exalt oneself above the honest teachings of the Apostles and trusted pastors of the early church.

I would highly recommend this translation. Easy to read and follow without liberal antiChristian slants from some other early church books. The print material is also easy to read unlike the glaring papers used by Meier's Eusebius edition and there is not much antiChristian antihistorical Christian bias one finds in some of the early church translations.

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Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers