What If Your Faith Was Inherited? | Worldview & Bias Persecuted Ep. 1

The Persecuted Volume 1 Jesus to Constantine 

PURCHASE/READ HERE: https://www.amazon.com/Persecuted-Jesus-Constantine-Mark-Baker-ebook/dp/B0GTWMVXWP

Visit: persecutedproject.org 

This episode begins our study through The Persecuted: Jesus to Constantine by Mark Baker—a limited-distribution work that is not widely circulated in mainstream Christian publishing.

Because of that, it raises an important question:

What happens when ideas shape the Church—but aren’t widely examined?

In Episode 1 (pp. 4–18), we explore the foundation of the entire series:
worldview, inherited belief, and theological blind spots.

Using the “blind men and the elephant” framework, this episode shows how people don’t simply see truth—they see through filters formed by culture, family, and authority.

This becomes critical when applied to Christian history.

If bias is inherited, then distortion can be inherited too.

And that leads directly into one of the most difficult realities in Church history:
the tension between Christianity and antisemitism.

This episode does not approach that tension as condemnation—but as necessary examination.

* History becomes a mirror (revealing distortion)
* And a lamp (guiding correction)

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This book matters because it operates outside mainstream visibility.

* It is primarily available in limited digital distribution
* It is not widely discussed or systematized in typical church teaching
* It forces engagement with uncomfortable historical questions

That combination creates something rare:

👉 A chance to examine ideas before they are filtered, simplified, or ignored

For the Christian seeker exploring:

* the Jewish roots of the Bible
* the historical continuity of Scripture
* and the formation of early Christian thought

This study provides a necessary starting point:

Before you understand persecution… you must understand perception.

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🎯 WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

* Why worldview determines how truth is interpreted
* How beliefs are often inherited, not examined
* The danger of partial truth becoming total certainty
* How modern media reinforces theological blind spots
* Why Jesus’ command to love is often blocked by bias

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📚 WHERE TO READ

* Available primarily via Amazon (Kindle edition)
* Not widely distributed in print or major retail channels

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Modern Mind, Ancient Book, Walk Away.

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Did you know that worldviews and biases are the roots of division? My name is Roger. I'll be your host today. Welcome to another Modern Mind Ancient Book. We finished the Bible, the New Testament, and the Old Testament, and now uh we're getting actually ready to go back to move forward. We're gonna go back to the first books um and start a whole nother process. But before we do that, we're gonna do a review of a book called The Persecuted, Jesus to Constantine, Volume 1, published by Refocus Publishers in the United Kingdom. It's a work by Mark Baker of Focus on Israel in the United Kingdom. He is a friend of the ministry, and we are well aligned with Focus on Israel. If you'd like to learn more about what they're doing and what the purpose of this book and this series is, please visit www.persecuted project spelled out P-R-S. No P-E-R-S-E-C-U-T-E-D P-R O J E C T Persecuted Project.org. We are Modern Mind Nature Book. We're going back to move forward. We're finding a love for the law, the prophets, and the writings. We're placing Jesus in the historical reality of what he knew and believed so that we can know him more. If you'd like to reach out to us, Modern Mind Nature Book.org. We are using this book as our sort of delve into history. After some camp careful examination, uh, we determined that we'd rather just talk about the Bible than the history of Christianity. So we wanted to use this book to get us to Constantine because that's where we feel the real change took place. So without further ado, let's get started. Episode one, Worldviews, Bias and the Roots of Division. Today we began reviewing the book The Persecuted, Volume 1, Jesus to Constantine. The book introduces a large historical project examining Christianity, Jewish history, antisemitism, and the relationship between theology and persecution. The stated goal of the work is not to attack Christianity, but to honestly confront historical truths. The author argues Christians cannot understand the future without examining the past. The opening chapters frame the series around worldview, inherited belief systems, interpretive biases, and the dangers of unexamined assumptions. The book repeatedly emphasizes history shapes perception, perception shapes behavior, and behavior shapes civilization. History, when approached honestly, can be more than a record of past events. It can be a mirror. The book opens with an ancient parable. Several blind men touch different parts of an elephant, each concludes something different. Wall, rope, spear, a pillar. A point, partial truth, mistaken for total truth, creates conflict. The book uses this as a metaphor for religion, politics, social systems, and historic interpretation. Humans interpretate interpretate. Humans interpret reality through limited frameworks, but often defend those frameworks absolutely. Is conflict usually caused by total ignorance? No, of course not. Conflict is caused when somebody is sure they know something, but they don't know the nuances of it. Information and truth, oh my goodness, these are contested realities. There are people that believe up is down, down is up. And the thing is, is we're not often humble enough to admit that we don't know enough to be so sure, at least as sure as we are. And this is one of those things where in the biblical world, in the world of Christianity, we could really use some humbling. At the very best, most of us are aware of what happens in our church. I believe attendance at this point is almost two times a month on average for the average person. There's four weeks in a month, so at best you're 50% knowledgeable about your church, if that's you. There's a whole scholarship, a whole bunch of scholarship, a whole world of scholarship involving the Bible. And people with PhDs don't speak on other issues that aren't related to their PhD because they know they don't have the information for it. Boy, would we be well served to remember that Jesus said, love your neighbor as yourself, to treat people as you would like to be treated. We don't need to argue over the vast majority of the things that we do, and we certainly don't need to be so certain. Because most of the arguments over many things are because of incomplete understanding defended with certainty. The book defines worldview as the interpretive lens through which humans understand reality. We all have one. But I was born into a system that has Jesus. It took me a while to recognize him, but I'm thankful for that. If I was born in Afghanistan, my life would have been a lot harder. And those people didn't get to choose either. But this program does reach into Afghanistan. So we're thankful for that. We pray that Afghanistan, that everybody there comes to find and know Jesus, that they lay down their arms, that they lay down the regret of revenge, that they lay down Islam, that they come to Jesus because his burden is light and his yoke is easy, or his yoke is easy and his burden is light. The interpretive lens that we live our life is the result of what's around us. And it defines our morality, religion, politics, identity, and what we call truth. Mark Baker, the author, he's arguing that most worldviews are inherited before they're examined. And that they come from your family, your culture, your religious institutions, your education, the people that you admire, the people in authority over you, and what you watch on TV or watch on your phone or on your computer. People rarely realize how much the worldviews control their interpretation of events. For instance, take the current state of affairs in Israel and the Palestinians. Whose side are you on? Most people are picking a side and they're vehemently fighting for that side. But you know what's really true? What's biblically true? People should not be murdering one another. There should be no war crimes, there should be no wars. These are people who are fighting their own image. We're all in the image of God. We should all worship God in spirit and truth and not murder each other. That's what's real. There's no side except for the kings. Jesus is coming and he's gonna fix that. Don't pick a side. Live under the kingdom who's king is true righteousness and true peace. Because he's coming and he's gonna fix it. One of the strongest illustrations is in chapter three. It's when you view a painting through invisible painted glass. If the filter changes, the perception changes. You know that colors when they mix produce other colors, right? And that's because your eyes can be tricked. The author argues entire societies inherit filters subconsciously. Your national identity, your social prejudices. They're trying to get us to fall into that all over the place. Do you believe that skin color makes a difference? You know it's just an organ, right? That's like saying I hate that kind of liver. That that that kind of spleen, ugh, ridiculous, that spleen. That's the kind of foolishness you engage in when you pick up a social prejudice like racism. Don't be a fool. God created all men, and all men are created in his image. See people for what they are and treat them like Jesus told you to treat them. Do you have religious hostility? And I understand that not all religions are created equal and that some are violent. But Jesus, while he was being crucified, said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. He also said, Revenge is God's. If anything, we should be reaching out and praying for hope and repentance for people, not despising them for what they believe. Have mercy before judgment. We also have inherited distrust. Okay? Our family, our churches, our surroundings, our politics, they teach us things. Who who leads your kingdom? Is it the UK? Is it the Indian government? Is it the Israeli government? Is it the government of the United States, North Korea, China? Is it the Japanese government? Is it some local municipality? No, no. It's Jesus. It's King Jesus. It's his kingdom and it's his way and what he wants will be. When our worldview remains unexamined, we mistake partial truth for the whole picture. Partial truth are the things of this world. The whole picture is King Jesus. How much of what we believe in is examined versus inherited? How much time have you spent in your private time in prayer and in your life carefully reading the Bible? First to get the stories, then to learn the details and thinking of these things and talking about these things with the people around you, comparing ideas and living in God's ways, the things you learn, do you do? Because that's what an examined life ends up with. Change. If you've inherited something and you've never questioned it, you've never examined your life. So can people sincerely believe false things because of cultural inheritance? Yes, they can. I would say I did in my senior paper on the Jesus of Islam. The Jesus of Islam is well defined. He's well defined 600 years after he lived, and one of the definitions is that he wasn't crucified. Well, empirically he was. Not only is there witness in the Bible, but there's extra biblical witnesses that unequivocally state and show that he was crucified. Islam has a lot of false things that are called true because of a very long time period. Fifteen, sixteen hundred years of history, if it's bad history, doesn't ever make it true. How much of that are you living with personally? How much am I living with? I try very hard to read the Bible with ancient eyes, because I want to be corrected by the king who gives true wisdom. I pray that's true for you. The book, The Persecuted, it then shifts into modern concerns, okay? Algorithms, AI systems, curated information feeds, echo chambers. The author argues that modern technology intensifies worldview isolation. Platforms feed people. Well, they they tell you what you want, they reinforce your opinions, they give you things to react to emotionally because they want you to continue watching their programming. And they do it with hooks. There's a whole advertising system. I use it for Modern Mind Ancient Book. And they provide for you ideological comfort. You know that the AI system, your favorite AI system, that it reads you, it reads what you ask, why you ask it, how you ask it through systems, through psychology, through advertising systems. All these things are programmed into it. And then they tell you, it tells you what you want to hear. If you don't believe me, change the rules. You can tell your AI that you want outcomes, output, data that looks a certain way, and then everything that you ask, it'll give you it through that lens. If you don't believe me, give it a try. You can set rules. Exposure to opposing perspectives decreases in that ecosystem. The system is designed to give you more of what you want. That's how programming happens. You know, most of the stuff that you see on TV is propaganda, right? Maybe not intentional, maybe intentional, I'm not sure. But I know that once your phone hears you talk of something, it'll give you the advertisement for it, and it'll give it to you repeatedly. You're constantly being programmed. The ecosystem is producing for you what you want and what you think you want and what you like to hear. In order to escape that, you have to examine your life. If you don't, you can expect to be polarized. You can expect to be confused and call it fact. You can expect to have shallow analysis because everything you look up, it gives you what you want. And in the end, you're going to have emotional tribalism. You are going to be tied to the worldview that has been cultivated for you. There's an interesting historical comparison. Ancient societies were isolated geographically. You didn't have much outside information, you couldn't travel too far because there wasn't easy means to get to places and communication wasn't widespread. But modern societies are isolated algorithmically. So if you're in China, you don't get the same information you get in the United States. It's all controlled. You're being programmed. In Modern Mind Ancient Book, and Focus on Israel, Mark Baker, the author, Roger Ferguson, your host today. I'm asking you to be programmed by the Bible, by Jesus, by the ancient minds, the many lifetimes that were spent to compile that book. We're asking you to be thoughtful meditators on the word and to love Jesus and walk in his ways. That's better than this world. Turn away from this world, give it up, throw it away. Come under the kingdom of Jesus. In the modern days, are people becoming more informed or simply reinforced? That's a question for you to answer personally. This book is now going to transition into section five, which is about religion, love, and failure. We're going to talk about Christianity. It asks, why have religious communities failed to embody teachings about love? Why are there $40,000 denominations? Why can't we agree? Why do we fight over baptism? Why can't you take your shirt off in the pool? Why can you take your shirt off in the pool? Do you bapt when you baptize? Do you sprinkle or dip? Do you do the Eucharist? Is it consubstantiation or transubstantiation? If not, you're a heretic. We can't love our neighbor because we believe too many things against our neighbor. Jesus said, Love your neighbor and love your enemies. He said, Bless those who persecute you. What's the tension? These teachings exist, yet our history contains division, hatred, and persecution. Worldview bias can overpower moral teaching. Humans often reinterpret religion through fear, tribal identity, inherited prejudice. I'm reminded of how in Japan Christianity was gaining a foothold, it was becoming popular. They had kind of cozied up to the emperor. I think I believe it was the Catholics there at this time. But then they started really kind of focusing on European look, feel, act. And the emperor saw this as a threat to his power, and it was summarily kicked out of Japan. Listen, Jesus is not European. Jesus was a Jewish sage in the first century. That's how he died, and that's what he rose as the king of Israel, the lion of Judah. We don't need to go around making people look like him because the Spirit will make them look like him. What we need to do is love your neighbor, love our enemies, and bless those who persecute us. But instead we broke up into 40,000 denominations and we hate each other over trivial and small things. This worldview discussion, it's not random philosophy. It prepares us, the reader, for the main historical question. How did Christianity and Judaism become so hostile toward one another? Jesus practiced Judaism. Historical antisemitism cannot be understood without examining inherited theological assumptions, assumptions, examining interpretive traditions, and institutional narratives. When the church came to power as an institutional organization over states, things really changed. The chapter closes, and this is chapter six, by preparing readers for the role of Jesus, the New Testament, the early church, and the rise of anti-Jewish interpretation. Now here's the thing. There's no reason for us to interpret the Bible in any other way than that Jesus was a Jewish sage in the first century, and that he taught, lived, acted as the people did in the first century. And I understand that he was the God man, that he was God himself, that he was the word in the very beginning. I understand. But what we must also understand is that the same God man, the angel of the Lord, who looked like a human and accepted worship and all this kind of thing. Well, he appeared to Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, you know, Joshua, Gideon. I mean, all these things, right? To the Jewish people. I don't understand why we would turn away from that which Jesus practiced. For instance, we we just actually just did um a teaching about Passover and Easter. Well, it was traditionally, historically, at first celebrated as Passover, and then eventually the day changed to Sunday instead of the you know holy Shabbat um start and then you know the miraculous eighth day, which is the Sunday, the new day, that kind of thing. Um why why did we do that? Historically, there's a reason for it. And it's that the people became less inclined to like Jewish people because the early church patristic fathers, that's what we call them, the fathers, the church fathers, they started to speak very harshly of Jewish people and to divorce the system and the people from the very place that it came. And it's just not the way. That's not the way. We're not supposed to divide, we're supposed to come together as one person. So it goes back to men. So this is an excerpt from the book on chapter six. Men like Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and Polycarp of Smyrna stand out as key figures during the transition period, meaning after John died. They worked diligently to preserve the purity of the faith while shepherding Christian communities through a time of expansion. The church was entering a pivotal stage of development. While the early church still maintained many elements of Jewish synagogue structure and continued to uphold the teachings handed down by the apostles, it was increasingly being shaped by the cultures and context of the Gentile world. As the gospel spread through the vast expanse of the Roman Empire, crossing languages, customs, and social classes, it encountered not only receptive hearts but also the complex realities of Greco-Roman philosophy, political power structures, and pagan religious practices. These cultural encounters could be seen as both a benefit and a challenge. On one hand, it allowed Christianity to become a truly universal faith, not limited to just one ethnicity or region. On the other hand, it raised urgent questions. How should the church adapt? Why what should be preserved? And what could be reinterpreted? And not the least of all, what was the church's relationship with mainstream Judaism? By the end of the first century, Christianity stood at a crossroad. The eyewitness generation had gone. Jerusalem had lost its influence over the church, and the burden of carrying the faith forward now rested on those who had never seen Jesus in the flesh. Their task was not merely to maintain the teachings that had been passed on to them, but to present and embody the Christian faith in ways that remained faithful to its origins while also resonating with an increasingly diverse and hostile world. It's undeniable that significant theological differences arose between the early followers of Jesus and the mainstream Jewish community. These differences grew as the Christian movement began to define itself in contrast to Judaism. However, despite occasional intensity and public confrontation, these disagreements did not lead to formalized anti-Semitic policies. There was just tension, right? Now, what's important to understand is that eventually anti-Semitic tensions led to a problem. As Christianity began to spread beyond its Jewish roots and gained increasing acceptance among Gentiles, a significant shift took place within the broader religious landscape of the world. Both rabbinic Jews and Christians across the diaspora, that means the people who were kicked, they were kicked out of Israel, out of Jerusalem as because it fell, were frequently facing persecution and being confused by other Roman communities as one and the same thing. Because they were. This is like Romans 2, uh, or I'm sorry, Revelation 2.9 and 3.9. Christians, I was actually just talking to an Armidian Christian, the first institutionalized state to accept Christianity. He was telling me that Revelation 3 calls all Jewish people the synagogue of Satan. That's not loving your enemies. That's not praying for them. That's hatred. Guys, people, please, I I pray for you. That we could return to the one new man, that we could see Jesus in the true light of who he was. That he was a rabbi. And that he's our teacher too. And that we would see Jewish people as our brothers and sisters, just like we would our neighbor next door, whatever country or state you're in, just because they're more similar to you. We have to let go of our biases and we have to see Jesus for who he truly was and love the real Jesus. That's the contention of modern mind ancient book. Early in the Christian faith, there were factions that were developing. Gnosticism. This conceived of a dualistic universe of spirit and matter, and denied the humanity of Christ. Docetism was suggested that Jesus only appeared to be a human and sufferer, that he was just fully God. It's this hypostatic union argument. If you don't know what that is, it's the unity of both the flesh or the earthly man and the divine man, the spirit, that Jesus was both God and man. That arose from this argument. There was Marcionism, which rejected the Hebrew scriptures and portrayed the God of the Old Testament as inferior to the God revealed in Jesus. Jesus never quoted from the New Testament. In fact, he taught from the book of Ruth and Deuteronomy. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. That's like Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Oh, it's it's unbelievable the lengths that we'll go to redefine something to make ourselves appear okay. The Nicolaitans, they were a group that was criticized by Jesus in the book of Revelation for just doing what you will should be the whole of the law, kind of thing. You know, where there's forgiveness, there's opportunity to continue sinning. Among the emergence of these divergent and at times heretical teachings, the second century proved to be a vital period in the intellectual and theological thinking of the early Christian church. Christianity was no longer a marginal sect within Judaism, yet at the same time it was still no means secure. It faced both internal fragmentation and external opposition. Roman persecution on occasion persisted, and external forces infiltrated the church with deviant thinking and foreign cultural practices. So the church found itself in a precarious position. It had new leadership that was mostly Gentile. The temple was gone. The Jewish people held on to the fact that, you know, one day it'll be restored. But the new emerging Christianity would say, no, we're the church and we're Israel, and there is no millennial period. It just very difficult to see all these things happen. Because we didn't need to do those things. What we needed to do was continue to be humble before God, who opened the doors to Gentile people to come into the way, and to the Jewish people who had to relax their way in Acts 15. There were only three things given to us at that time. We weren't required to be fully Jewish, right? Because Jesus opened the door, the Spirit was coming to us, but then we usurped the kindness that was given to us and made them have to be fully Gentile. It really is a foolish thing. We went from having to worry about Judaizers to worry about Gentilizers as the church continued. The Epistle of Barnabas, well, that contends that the covenant that God made with Israel had been annulled and replaced. And these are early writings. And it's attributed to Barnabas, Paul's companion. But it's just a name that was given to grand apostolic authority. I mean, this is about the time when we started these lists of, you know, the I was taught by this person kind of thing. But that was already anticipated and it was argued against. Jesus is the only one who matters. I mean, I highly advise for you to read this book because you're gonna read the words of the church fathers and how they just took offense to Jewish people and wanted to turn away and didn't want to maintain unity. And I'm telling you, in Jesus' name, that all he wants us to do is be unified as one new man. He wants us to worship him in spirit and truth. And he wants us to not hate each other and to give ourselves up for the benefit of one another so that we might live. We would forgive so that we could be forgiven. The main idea of this episode is that humans interpret reality through worldviews filtered by an unexamined belief system, and that that creates division, it creates divisional information systems, and they reinforce identity. And religious communities are not immune to bias. I want to remind you that it was the Jewish people, their religious authorities, that hated Jesus because Jesus' purified Judaism wasn't compatible with their law-based, rule-based, heavy burdens. And they weren't willing to be humbled, but instead they wanted to kill him. And that it was the Gentile ruler, Pilate, who put Jesus to death. We're all implicated. When you know you're right, you're probably wrong. We're not immune to bias. Our worldview shapes our history. Before examining the persecution to come in this book, before being willing to persecute, we must examine our own perception. Are we governed by the laws that Jesus gave us by the fruit of the Spirit? Because if you're not, you'll never see the kingdom. Next week we'll continue on to episode two, titled Jesus: The New Testament and the Anti-Semitism Question. Please feel free to uh reach out to Mark and those guys at Persecuted Project.org. My name's Roger. It's been a pleasure to be your host. I pray the Lord bless you and keep you and make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. That he turn his face towards you and that he bring you peace. Shalom, thank you for spending your time with us. If you'd like to reach out to us, modern mind ancient book.org. Bye bye for now.