and then sought to destroy any Sacred texts which did not support their views and goals of domination, the Gnostics celebrated the message of Christ in all its forms including the few Gospels that remain within the New Testament.

Not content with burning the priceless knowledge within the library of Alexandria, soon those calling themselves "Orthodox" began to destroy Christian texts, and even to edit the very texts they themselves deemed sacred, or to add texts to their collection which could be used to promote fear and thereby legitimize their authority.

It was not long before the Orthodox looked upon humanity as intrinsically evil and sought in every way to crush the joy from the soul of their followers and along with this the principles of Freedom and Respect for life and others which had been taught by Christ.

The teachings of Gregory of Nyssa:

For the image is not in part of our nature, nor is the divine gift in any single person ... but this power extends equally to the whole race; and a sign of this is that the mind is implanted alike in all; for all have the power of understanding and reflecting .... they equally bear within themselves the divine image. ~ Gregory of Nyssa, 16, De Hominis Opificio 16, 17.

give the public the ultimate right of government rather than the emperor.

This led to the theological conflict between John Chrysostom who concurred with Gregory of Nyssa and early church leaders that people were equally endowed with both freedom and rights, versus Augustine who propounded a new teaching that humanity was enslaved by sin and thus the imperial government and the state sanctioned Orthodox church were tasked to keep people in line by force.

The sacred teachings of all the other Christian groups were denigrated by denial and repudiation with the excuse that people must be freed from "heretical teachings," meaning any teachings which were not their own. It literally took hundreds of years to destroy every text they could find, even more as new Bishops came along with new ideas regarding censorship.

Iraneus and other "Orthodox" Church Fathers despised the Gnostics who taught their followers to question everything. They deplored the Gnostics --- at times for asceticism, then at other times for sensualism.

Once the flush of victory was upon them, they moved quickly to burn any and all Christian Gospels which did not agree with the select few which they had chosen; the conquest was to be repeated again and again until every Gospel which did not agree with their new form of Romanized Mithraic Christianity had been destroyed.

[Unknown at the time this text was first published (1910), a cache of Gnostic texts would be discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945 which would bring to light the diversity and magnificence of early Christian Culture.]

The "Orthodox" Christians sought a full and final victory by the weapons of fabrication and denial to throttle the full truth contained within the vital teachings of Christ. They hoped fervently that through their distortions and destruction, the other early schools of Christianity would be forgotten, and trusted that their new ideology would take its own course.

Although the stupidity and absurdity of such destruction is obvious, unholy actions of that kind are likely to be repeated, gentle reader, unless we encourage our brothers and sisters to awaken.

The Gnostics practiced psychic healing, and so successful were they that their ranks swelled until they had well nigh swept the whole Christian church, and it took two hundred years for the "Orthodox" to regress the principles of thoughtful dialogue and discussion with their newly synthesized imperial doctrines. The Orthodox would use time and force to promulgate their inadequate and vicious philosophy upon the people.

It is said that Iraneus himself rewrote Paul's Epistle to the Colossians in order to disparage the teachings of the Gnostics. John's first epistle was likewise extensively edited.

Verse 7 does not appear in any version of the Greek text prior to the ninth century. While the main themes of the epistle are fellowship and love of God, the government sanctioned hiearchy felt it was necessary to "redraft" the Epistle in order to better support their new doctrines and include doctrines from the Mithrean faith popular among the Roman elite at that time.