Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history.

On this episode we'll be going back in time, back to visit the church fathers.

In fact, we're going to do two episodes together,

this episode in the next. We're going to be looking at two

particular church fathers, both fascinating that they have links right to the

New Testament itself. The first person we'll be talking about is Ignatius. Ignatius was Bishop

of Antioch. That's a city that of course factors significantly in the New Testament itself. That city was the place where those who

were the followers of Christus were first called Christians. And Ignatius was the

Bishop. We're not sure when he was born, but we do know that he died in the one

tens and in fact Ignatius died a martyr's death. He was martyred in Rome by the Emperor Trajan. On his way to Rome, Ignatius had the opportunity to visit

various churches and he even was able to write letters to these churches.

And so we have some wonderful pieces of literature in the early church

of these letters from Ignatius.

Now what makes Ignatius so significant? Ignatius was from the city of Ephesus and as a young man he was actually

disciples by the apostle John. So here we have Ignatius, a bishop in the early church, who is a direct link back to the New Testament itself.

Well, Ignatius wrote these various letters to the church because there were some serious problems in the church.

John himself writes about these problems in his epistles.

He reminds the church, or maybe we should say he warns the church,

that there will be false teachers who come and these false teachers

are going to be teaching that Jesus did not truly come in the flesh he only

appeared to come in the flesh not only were they plaguing the churches in John's Day, they continued to plague

the churches in the 100s. So Ignatius, in most of his letters, addressed these folks

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