The Paulicians Would Have Been Continuing Church of God Members, If They Could Have

Our most highly esteemed prophet sent by God in this violent end times age is once again trying to prove his ties to 1/2/3 century Christianity. He needs that to validate his reason for starting up a splinter group — as if the Churches of God needed another one! The Great Bwana will find anything in history that he thinks matches his convoluted ideas and latches on to them as his proof.

“Paulicians” were a label that Alexandrian and Roman supporters apparently labeled certain opponents with. Apparently those who were labeled as Paulicians did not accept the authority of the Bishops of Rome, were opposed to Sunday as the designated day of worship, were opposed to idols, eschewed certain Roman rituals, seemingly had binitarian views of the Godhead, considered that those who took up the title Pontifex Maximus took a title that would be associated with Antichrist, kept Passover on the 14th, and they were persecuted. 

 

Many, because of persecution and economic pressures apparently compromised, and some apostasized to the point of engaging in carnal warfare. While those who did that were not truly part of the Church of God, there were apparently some of the faithful amongst those labeled as Paulicians. 

 

And that is how it is even today. While we in the Continuing Church of God, for example, are not Protestant, Roman and Eastern Orthodox Catholics tend to lump us in with the Protestants as we do not accept the various doctrinal compromises that the Greco-Roman Catholics have made. (for documentation, please see the free online book: Beliefs of the Original Catholic Church: Could a remnant group have continuing apostolic succession?). While we, like the Protestants claim, do believe in sola Scriptura, do not endorse the use of statues in worship, and eschew certain ritualistic aspects of the Greco-Romans, this does not make us Protestant any more than having Church of God doctrines made people “Paulicians.” 

 

But it could be properly stated that we in the Continuing Church of God count among our spiritual ancestors some who were called Paulicians. And we believe that we have faithfully been carrying out the original Christian faith as was practiced by the original apostles and their most faithful successors.

The Great Bwana to Africa and his 100 Caucasians are competing with the Baptists in claiming a direct link to the Paulicians. Their link to the Paulicians would be considered far more legitimate than some little Armstrongite upstart from America.

Another group of our Baptist ancestors were called Paulicians. That there were some radicals among them we do not deny. Nor do we deny that there are radicals among the people called Baptists today. We again maintain that among the Paulicians we find the true churches of Jesus Christ just as we find the true churches of our day among the people called Baptists. 

 

In my research of the Paulicians it was found that the charges of heresy against them came from two men, Photius and Siculus. A great number of historians have followed these two men. These two men were Roman Catholics and bitter enemies of the Paulicians. I tell you of these two men before giving the history of the Paulicians, so the student may beware of those church historians who follow the prejudices of these two "enemies of truth."

And then Baptists mention this:

Paulicians Were Baptists

In giving the principles of the Paulicians, Orchard quotes several authorities: "In these churches of the Paulicians, the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, they held to be peculiar to the communion of the faithful; i.e., to be restricted to believers" (Jones). 

 

"The Paulicians or Bogomilians baptized and re-baptized adults by immersion" (Robinson).
"It is evident", says Mosheim, "they rejected the baptism of infants. They were not charged with any error concerning baptism." 

 

"These people were called Acephali, or headless (from having no distinct order of clergy, or presiding person in their assemblies) and were hooted in councils for re-baptizing in private houses, says Robinson, and holding conventicles; and for calling the established church a worldly community, and re-baptizing such as joined their churches." Baptist History Homepage

The Great Bwana proof-texts history and church history as he does the Bible. Anything he can find that fits his confirmation bias is legitimate fodder for him to claim as his own. 

He conveniently misses the fact that they introduced the Demiurge god to Christianity.

Paulician, member of a dualistic Christian sect that originated in Armenia in the mid-7th century. It was influenced most directly by the dualism of Marcionism, a gnostic movement in early Christianity, and of Manichaeism, a gnostic religion founded in the 3rd century by the Persian prophet Mani. The identity of the Paul after whom the Paulicians are called is disputed, with sources commonly citing either St. Paul the Apostle or Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch.

The fundamental doctrine of the Paulicians was that there are two principles, an evil God, known as the Demiurge, and a good God; the former is the ruler of this world, the latter of the world to come. From this they deduced that Jesus did not take on human flesh because the good God could not have become human. They especially honoured the Gospel According to Luke and the Letters of St. Paul, rejecting the Letters of St. Peter and all of the Old Testament, except possibly the Septuagint. They also rejected all or most of the sacraments, as well as the worship and the hierarchy of the established church. Paulician

The Demiurge: 

The demiurge (Greek demiurgos,[1] “craftsman”[2]) is the being who created the world in Gnosticism. The Gnostics identified him with the god of the Old Testament. The Gnostic scriptures portray him as ignorant, malicious, and utterly inferior to the true God who sent Christ to earth to save humankind from the demiurge’s evil world. 

 

The demiurge is given many names in the Gnostic scriptures, but the three most common ones are Yaldabaoth (also spelled “Ialdabaoth”), Samael, and Saklas. “Saklas” comes from the Aramaic word for “fool,” and “Samael” is Aramaic for “Blind God” or “God of the Blind.”[3] The meaning of “Yaldabaoth” is uncertain. The Gnostic text On the Origin of the World fancifully translates it as “Youth, move over there,” but no word or string of words that sounds like “Yaldabaoth” meant that in any ancient Mediterranean language.[4] “Yaldabaoth” is somewhat close to “child of chaos” in Aramaic, but that’s still a stretch,[5] as is the intuitively plausible suggestion that it could be a condensed form of “Yahweh, Lord of Sabbaths.”[6] 

 

In the Gnostic creation myth, Heaven – which the Gnostics called the “Pleroma,” “Fullness” – was all that existed until a divine entity named Sophia tried to conceive on her own, without the involvement of her heavenly partner or the consent of God. Sophia gave birth to a son that was the product of the rebellious and profane desire that had arisen within her. 

 

This son of hers was the demiurge. The Gnostic text Reality of the Rulers describes “him” as an androgynous being, an “arrogant beast” that resembled an aborted fetus in both appearance and character.[7] The Secret Book of John adds that he had the body of a snake and the head of a lion, with eyes like lightning bolts.[8] (In ancient Greek philosophy, the lion was frequently a symbol of irrational passions. The Gnostics were steeped in the Greek philosophical tradition, so their description of the demiurge as having a lion’s head was probably intended to show that he was a being who couldn’t or wouldn’t control his base urges.[9] That certainly fits the demiurge’s personality as described in their texts.) 

 

When Sophia saw the horrifying, twisted being that had come from her, she was deeply ashamed and afraid. She disowned him and cast him out of Heaven. 

 

From his lonely position where his madness and conceit could go unchecked, the demiurge gave birth to the archons (“rulers”[10]), beings who were like him and could help him administer the material world. He then created the material world, which, like all creations, was a reflection of the personality of its creator. 

 

The demiurge then created Adam and Eve and imprisoned divine sparks from Heaven within them. He told them that he was the only god and issued the Ten Commandments, even though he himself broke each and every one of those commandments. For example, he lied when he claimed to be the only god and that Adam and Eve would die if they ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; he insulted his mother and father by refusing to acknowledge their existence; he made a graven image of the divine when he modeled the material world on his corrupt and ignorant misunderstanding of Heaven; and he committed adultery by attempting to rape Eve.[11] The Gnostic Demiurge

The Great Bwana Bob may be closer to the Gnostic Christian heresies than any true Christian teaching he claims.