Welcome back to Chavez-Popri. I'm Joe Heschmire, and I have to apologize in advance. I'm losing my voice a little bit, so this may be a little raspier than usual.

But I wanted to reply to Dr. Gavin Ortland's recent video about bishops in the early church and a controversy over the meaning of the didiquet.

So does the earliest Christian evidence disprove Catholicism on the papacy, or does it actually disprove the belief many Protestants have

that the early churches were governed simply by elders and deacons? Now, as part of his case against

the papacy, Gavin argues that the bishop of Rome couldn't be the pope early on, because there was

no bishop of Rome in the early days of the church. He makes other arguments, but I've only been

focused on this one line of argumentation.

And one of the ways he supports that argument is that he claims that the Didicate testifies to

there being only two offices in the church. So this confirms the picture we get from the New Testament

and from the Didacay, another important first century testimony, that you've got two offices

in the church. Herein lies a problem. On screen, there's a citation claiming to be the new Advent version

of Didicate 15 that mentions bishops and deacons. It looks very much like it says there's just two

offices. But as I pointed out in my prior video on this, when you go back and read the text,

it actually talks about bishops and deacons as well as prophets and teachers

in that sentence. Now, that matters because Zedicate doesn't define what the roles of these

prophets and teachers are. And it certainly at least complicates what looks at first like a clear

picture of a simple two-tiered church government. Now, I'm going to explain more about all of that

in a moment. But when I pointed this out previously, Gavin responded by claiming that I had accused him of altering the text. He's responding to my video on the papacy, but he's specifically focusing on, is there a single bishop in Rome in early on, like in the first century, for example. And the first thing he covers is the didake. He makes the claim I'm altering the text.

So let me say in no uncertain terms. This is flatly untrue. Not only did I not claim that Gavin was the one who

altered the text, I actually took pains not to say that or anything that would insinuate that.

I simply pointed out that the text in question has been altered, which it has been.

And I stress that all I know is that this happened somehow.

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