It is not new—it is a false doctrine. It is contemporary with the apostles themselves. Already in their time there appeared many false apostles, who tried to take on the guise of the apostles of Christ, and about the true apostles of Christ they were taught that they did not preach the word of Christ purely (2 Corinthians 2:17; 12:13). This false teaching was especially sharply expressed in the writings of Celsus, a pagan, the worst enemy of the Church of Christ, as early as the second century.

Meanwhile, this heresy destroys one of the fundamental dogmas of Christianity, the dogma that it is impossible to separate our Lord Jesus Christ, as the head of the Church, from the body of the Church in general, and, secondly, from the prophets and apostles. Such a separation is contrary to the clear, precise, repeatedly and variously repeated teaching of Jesus Christ Himself and to the entire mind of the undoubtedly authentic historical teaching of the holy apostles.

If the Gospel testimony seemed insufficient to confirm the truth that the Holy Apostles only continued the preaching of Jesus Christ Himself, without inventing anything of their own that did not agree with it, then here is a whole series of striking proofs of the same truth in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, written by the writer of the Third Gospel, the Holy Evangelist Luke. For example, Jesus, after His resurrection, commands the Apostles "not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the fulfillment of the promise of God the Father, of which you have heard from Me," the resurrected Lord told them, just before the ascension. "After a few days, you have to be baptized with the Holy Ghost. And when the Holy Spirit shall come upon you, ye shall receive power, and ye shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even unto the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:4-8).

And they set up two, Joseph and Matthias, and prayed, and said, "Thou, O Lord, Knower of the hearts of all, shew one of these two, whom thou hast chosen to accept the lot of this ministry and apostleship. And they cast lots for them" (Acts 1:21-26). So, what did it mean to accept the lot of the apostleship? It meant to accept the assignment – to be a witness, a preacher, on the basis of personal testimony, of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and all His deeds and teachings during all the time that the Lord Jesus dwelt and dealt with the apostles, from the baptism of John to the day on which He ascended from them before their eyes to heaven. Then, throughout the book of Acts, this idea runs that the holy apostles were witnesses of the life, deeds and teachings of Jesus Christ. In this calling of witnesses they recognize themselves and constantly declare that they are witnesses, and declare exactly what they themselves are personal witnesses.

Thus, immediately after the descent of the Holy Spirit. The chief Peter, having preached his first sermon to the great assembly of the people, concludes it thus: "This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses. Then He, having been lifted up by the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, poured out that which ye now see and hear" (Acts 2:33-44). A few days later, the chief Peter affirmed the same thing in his speech to the people and in the temple of Jerusalem: "Men of Israel! The God of your fathers has glorified his Son Jesus, whom you have betrayed; you have denied the Holy and Righteous, you have killed the Author of life. This God raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses" (Acts 3:12-16). The same is expressed by the chief Peter in his speech before the Sanhedrin, when the Jewish leaders forbade them to teach about the name of Jesus. Peter and John answered and said to them: "If it is righteous in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, judge you. For we, who have seen and heard, cannot not speak" (Acts 4:19-20), — not to bear witness to what we have been eyewitnesses and witnesses. "And with great power," concludes St. Acts (Acts 4:33), "the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. When the apostles were set up in the Sanhedrin for the second time, the high priest asked them, saying: "Have we not firmly forbidden you to teach about this name? And behold, you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching," Peter and the other apostles answered and said: "We must obey God rather than men. The God of your fathers raised up Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him with His right hand to be the Leader and Saviour. In this we are witnesses to Him, and the Holy Spirit, Whom God has given to those who obey Him" (Acts 5:27-32). When Samaria received the word of the Lord from Philip, and when the apostles who were in Jerusalem, after the murder of Stephen, hearing that the Samaritans had accepted the word of God, sent Peter and John to him, these apostles, having arrived in Samaria, testified, — as the Holy Synod puts it. Acts 8:25), and there they preached the word of the Lord, then they went back to Jerusalem, and in many villages of Samaria they preached the gospel. The supreme Peter proclaims the same thing in the house of Cornelius the Centurion: "God," preaches St. Peter, "sent a word to the children of Israel, preaching good news to the world through Jesus Christ; This is the Lord of all. You know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning with Galilee, after the baptism preached by John, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and power, and He went about doing good and healing all that were possessed by the devil; because God was with Him. And we are witnesses of all that He did in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, and that at last they killed Him by hanging Him on a tree. This God raised up on the third day, and gave Him to appear, not to all the people, but to witnesses who had been chosen by God, to us, who ate and drank with Him after His resurrection from the dead, and He commanded us to preach to the people, and to bear witness that He is the Judge of the living and the dead, appointed by God. Of Him all the prophets bear witness, that whosoever believeth in Him shall receive forgiveness of sins in His name" (Acts 10:36-43).

St. Peter writes the same thing in his second epistle (2 Peter 1:16-18) that "we proclaim to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, not following cunning fables, but being eyewitnesses of His majesty." And then he tells us that Christ the Lord received honor and glory from God the Father Himself, when the following voice came to Him from majestic glory: "This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased. And this voice, – adds the holy Chief Apostle, – brought from heaven, we ourselves heard, being with Him on the holy Mount of Transfiguration." And what the apostles themselves saw and heard, they preached the gospel by the Holy Spirit, sent down upon them from heaven. Not only the apostles, but also the prophets preached the gospel by the Holy Spirit, namely by the Spirit of Christ, who dwells in them. "The prophets foretold," writes St. Peter (Pet. 1:10-12), as indicated by the Spirit of Christ who is in them, Who foretold through them the sufferings of Christ and the glory that would follow them; It was revealed to them that it was not for themselves, but for us, that which has now been preached to you by those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit (the apostles), sent from heaven. Prophecy was never uttered by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke it, being moved by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21). In particular, also about St. Paul, St. Peter testified that Paul wrote his epistles according to the wisdom given to him by God (2 Peter 4:15).

In the same way, the Holy Evangelist John, at the end of his Gospel, declares that he is only a disciple-witness of what the divine Teacher did and taught him (John 21:24-25), that he who has seen it bears witness, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he speaks the truth (John 19:35). "We bear witness to you," John begins his first epistle (John 1:1-3), "that it was from the beginning, that we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have beheld, and what our hands have touched, concerning the Word of life (for this life has appeared, and we have seen, and testify, and declare to you this eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested to us),  "Of what we have seen and heard, we tell you these things, and we write to you. We are witnesses, and you know that our testimony is true," John concludes his third epistle (3 John 12).

The Evangelist Luke also testifies that he writes his Gospel "about the events that are perfectly known among us," and writes in such a way "as those who from the beginning were self-seers and ministers of the Word handed down to us." And at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, the holy Evangelist Luke defines the content of his book, i.e. the Gospel, as follows: "I wrote the first book of all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day in which he ascended, having given commands by the Holy Spirit to the apostles, whom he had chosen, to whom he also manifested himself alive after his suffering, with many sure proofs, appearing to them for forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God" (Acts 1:1-3). What we are all witnesses to, all the apostles could say about themselves, and could also say at the end of their apostolic preaching, as they said at the beginning (Acts 2:32).

To Paul the Apostle, the Lord Himself, at His very first appearance to him, said: "For this reason I have appeared to you, "to make you a minister and a witness of the things which you have seen, and which I will reveal to you" (Acts 26:16). At the same time, sending Ananias to Paul, the Lord Jesus testified about him that he was "My chosen vessel, My chosen instrument, to declare My name before the nations and kings and the children of Israel. And I will show him how much he must strive and suffer for My name's sake" (Acts 9:15-16). Ananias, appearing to Paul at the same time, declares to him that "the God of our fathers has chosen thee, that thou mayest know His will, that thou mayest see the Righteous One, and hear the voice out of His mouth: for thou shalt be a witness unto Him before all men of the things which thou hast seen and heard" (Acts 22:14-15). St. Paul also calls the other apostles witnesses of Christ. Thus he calls Stephen, for example, (Acts 22:20), saying in visions to the face of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself: "The blood of Stephen Thy witness was shed..." This is also the name given to the other apostles in his speech to the Jews in Pisidian Antioch, defining the content and nature of their preaching in the following way: "The inhabitants of Jerusalem and their rulers, not recognizing Jesus, fulfilled the words of the prophets. And not finding in Him any guilt worthy of death, they asked Pilate to kill Him. And when they had fulfilled all that was written about Him, they took Him down from the tree and laid Him in the tomb. But God raised Him from the dead. He appeared for many days to those who went out with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, and who are now His witnesses before the people" (Acts 13:27-31). The Lord Jesus calls Paul's ministry a testimony, saying to him in a vision: "As thou didst bear witness of Me in Jerusalem, so it behoveth thee also to bear witness in Rome" (Acts 23:11). In a similar way, Paul himself calls his apostolic ministry a witness. "Do not hesitate," he says to the elders of Ephesus, "teach you before men and from house to house, bearing witness to God by Jew and Greek, repentance and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, that I may end my course with joy and service, which I have received from the Lord Jesus, to bear witness to the gospel of the grace of God" (Acts 20:20-24). "To this day I stand," says Paul in his speech before King Agrippa, "bearing witness to the small and the great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would be, that is, that Christ had to suffer, and rose first from the dead, and proclaimed light to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles" (Acts 26:22-23). Likewise, about the last period of St. Paul's activity in Rome, St. The writer notes that he "taught the Jews in Rome, bearing witness to the kingdom of God and assuring them of Jesus (giving testimonies and certifying them of Jesus) from the law of Moses and the prophets" (Acts 28:23).

The general attitude of the apostles, as well as of the prophets, as well as of the whole Church, not only of the New Testament, but also of the Old Testament, to the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. To the Spirit and to the divine truth flowing from Them, St. Paul, like the other Apostles, presents in the following form. All believers in Jesus Christ are members of the one body of the Church. The earthly, New Testament, contemporary, militant Church is kindly connected with the Church of past times, with the Church of the Old Testament, with the triumphant, heavenly Church, even with the world of heavenly heavenly spirits. This entire great assembly of heavenly spirits and departed souls, the triumphant heavenly and militant earthly Church, the Old Testament and New Testament Church, the Church of past and present times, is bound together in a single knot, in the person of the God-Man, the divine Archangel of the heavenly hosts, our Lord Jesus, as its Head. In Him and through Him, the whole body of saved and saved souls is adopted as sons of God the Father and dares to call Him their Father. All this totality of saved and being saved souls is spiritualized by the Holy Spirit, by the Spirit of God, by the Spirit of Christ. It is this Spirit that instructs the entire body of the members of the Church into all truth, and in particular and primarily enlightens the holy men of God, the prophets and apostles, the pastors and God-ordained teachers of the Church, since in the living body of the Church different members have from God different ministries and purposes, gifts and powers.

One Spirit breathes in the one body of the Church. The Lord is one above it, and the God and Father of all is One. We are all imbued with the One Spirit. Each of us is given the grace of Christ. No one can even believe in the Lord Jesus and acknowledge Him as Lord, except through the Holy Spirit. The whole Church is enlightened and taught by the One Holy Spirit. "All believers," according to the words of John the Theologian (1 John 1:10). 2:20-27), have the anointing of the Holy One, and know all that is necessary for their salvation. And the anointing which they have received from Him abides in them, and they (all together) have no need of anyone to teach them; for this very anointing teaches them all things, and it is true and not false, and they have only to abide in what it has taught them." Nevertheless, in the church, although "the same Spirit," as St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, "His gifts are different. And the Lord Jesus Christ is one and the same, acting all in all, but the actions are different. Each is given a different manifestation of the Spirit for the common benefit of the body of the Church. Each of us is given grace, but according to a different measure of the gift of Christ. To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit. To another is faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit. To some miracles, to others prophecy, to others different tongues. Yet all this is done by the One and the same Spirit, dividing to each separately by his own authority, as He pleases. For as the body is one, but has many members, and all the members of one body, though they are many, constitute one body, so Christ God arranged the members, each in the composition of the body, as He pleased. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you; Or also the head of the legs: I don't need you. On the contrary, the members of the body, which seem to be the weakest, are much more necessary. And you are the body of Christ, and members separately. And others God has appointed in the Church, first, apostles, secondly, prophets, thirdly, teachers; further, to others He gave miraculous powers, also gifts of healing, and various tongues. Are all the apostles? Are all prophets? Are all miracle workers? Does everyone have the gifts of healing? Does everyone speak in tongues?

Are they all interpreters? Be zealous for the great gifts, for love, which is the height of perfection (1 Cor. ch. 12). And the Lord appointed some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, — with a special purpose, in special forms — namely: for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of service for the edification of the body of Christ, until we all come to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; so that we may no longer be infants, tossed about and carried away by all the winds of doctrine, by the cunning of evil men, by the cunning art of deception; but through true love they returned all things to Him Who is the head, Christ" (Ephesians 4:7-16). From this it is revealed that although all the faithful are enlightened by the spirit of God in the knowledge of the saving truth of the Gospel; yet God has deliberately sent and is sending apostles, prophets and evangelists, pastors and teachers, so that the faithful would not be babes who wander and wander with every wind of doctrine in human lies. The mystery of Christ was not proclaimed to all generations of the sons of men as it was revealed to the holy apostles of Christ and prophets by the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 3:5).

Let the true prophets, like the apostles, be enlightened by the Holy Spirit and expound their writings under His divine inspiration. But how to distinguish true prophets from untrue ones? How can we distinguish true apostles from false ones? How to distinguish true prophetic and apostolic writings from false ones?

Carefully preserving the purity of Christ's gospel, the true apostles of Christ pointed out by their actions and writings a multitude of persons and common principles that did not agree with Christ's teaching. Both the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles and all the Apostolic Epistles, as well as the Apocalypse, are filled with these indications. There is no need to enumerate them (e.g., Rev. 2 and 3; Titus 3:9-10; 2 Tim. 4:14, etc.). It is worth reading the Epistles of James, Peter, John, and Jude in order to see how steadfastly, vigilantly, and vigilantly the holy apostles stood on guard, guarding the purity of Christ's gospel. "There are false apostles," warns St. Paul of Corinth (2 Corinthians 11:13-15), "evil workers who take the form of apostles of Christ. And it is not surprising, because Satan himself takes the form of an angel of light; It is not surprising if the servants of Satan also take the form of servants of righteousness. There are people who trouble you, – warns St. Paul of Galatia (Gal. 1:7-12), – who want to stop preaching the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you any other gospel than that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so now I say again: Whoever preaches to you other gospel than that which you have received from us, let him be accursed. This is because the gospel which I have preached is not of men. For I also received it and learned it, not from man, but through the revelation of Jesus Christ. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching of Christ, do not receive him into your house, and do not say that you will rejoice in him," commands John the Theologian (2 John 10). "Guard yourselves from dogs," warns St. Paul of the Philippians, "guard yourselves from evil workers, guard yourselves from division. Imitate me, brethren, and look at those who walk in the image which you have in us. For many, of whom I have spoken to you, and now even with tears I speak, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ" (Phil. 3:2-17-18). The holy Apostles even watched over one another, so that their prudent adaptation to circumstances and to the tolerant views of men, according to the apostolic canon, should be all things, that they might save everyone, so that such adaptation would not cause temptation and harm to the weak (Gal. 6:11-15; Acts 21:15-25); so that even the true, but mysterious, incomprehensible apostolic preaching would not be distorted and turned into a pernicious error (1 Peter 3:15-17; James 2:14-26).