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GNOSTICISM: WHAT WAS OLD, IS NOTHING NEW

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What is Gnosticism?  

Gnosticism, was/is (‘was’, in the sense of  its origins, and ‘is’, in the sense of what it still is today) set of heretical views set against Orthodox Christianity which began in the late 1st, early 2nd centuries.  Gnosticism comes from the Greek word ‘gnosis which means “to know.”   During the early years of Christianity form the late 1st to the 2nd Century, people began to form their own views of who JESUS was, and the message HIM and the Apostles taught.  These views were heretical, to outright full blown apostacy.  Like cancer, it spead which eventually paved the way for the Canon of Scripture.  

Gnostic’s, as they were called, claim to possess a higher knowledge of the truth about GOD and Our LORD.  They claim that Our LORD JESUS’ word contained secret knowledge, only known to the initiated.  They even wrote what they claim to be ’inspired’ scripture supporting this supposed higher knowledge (see explanation of Gnostic gospels).  What they wrote in no way resembles any biblical treatise on atonement, salvation, justification, etc… 

@ it’s very basic level, salvation for the Gnostics was this:  being able to  decipher what JESUS said in the gnostic documents, in order to escape the cycle of endly ignorance from this existance upon the death of the individual in which what it really amounts to, is reincarnation.  They attribute to HIM esoteric sayings, that if one was to figure out what they meant, or gnosisthen that individual could enter into the pleroma(more details on pleroma) upon death.  This knowledge was acquired on some mystical higher plain of existence, by being able to decipher what JESUS really meant.  So Gnostic’s see themselves as a privileged class elevated above everybody else by their higher, deeper, mystical knowledge of God, and foregoing Scripture entirely for this knowledge…….

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