Do you know who I am? That question was posed to Poly carp. Poly carp was the great early church

Bishop. He was faithful right up to the very end and was one of the early martyrs for the faith.

And he had an interesting encounter with another very well-known figure in the early church,

but this figure is not well-known for the good things that he has done, but he is well known for the bad things that he has done.

And he met Polycarp on one occasion, and he apparently was very impressed with himself and so being very impressed with

himself he went up to Poly carp and he approached Poly carp and he looked him

right in the eye and he said do you know who I am?

And Poly carp would have none of this posturing,

and he looked him right back in the eye

and quickly retorted,

yes, I know you very well you first born son of the devil. Well that was

Poly carp's estimation of the figure that we will be looking at on this

episode of five minutes in church history.

This time we will be looking at a figure known as a heresy arc

that is to say an early church father of a heresy. And the heresy arc in question is none other

than Marcion. Marcion has different dates for his birth. I've seen dates ranging from 85 all the way up until 110. We do know

that his death was around 160. He was the son of a Bishop in Turkey and he himself Marcian was apparently in the shipping

trade and did very well for himself accumulated significant wealth and around 140

made his way to Rome. He was actually intending to buy

influence in the church and so he turned over a significant amount. One figure I read said 20,000 coins that he turned over to the church

at Rome to buy some influence.

Well, early on, however, it was seen that this was not a good guy and not a good

...