Does the church teach Jesus message accurately? If not, how can we find what Jesus originally taught? Tough questions, to which careful research provides revealing answers.

Many know of terrible excesses committed by the Church using quasi military forces to carry out numerous purges over many centuries. Estimates of those professing to be Christian, tortured to death, burned at the stake or literally torn to pieces range from 30,000 to 300,000 under the Spanish Inquisition alone. Empowered by adoption as the state religion of the Roman Empire, religious dogma was enshrined in law - so disputing dogma attracted legal penalty. The law gave the Church full control over individual lives, dissent threatened this and triggered decisive action. Strenuous efforts were made to stamp out views deemed heretical - anyone believing such ideas and any texts containing such ideas were ruthlessly destroyed.

The destruction of early Christian texts was indiscriminate - the earliest New Testament we have, the Codex Vaticanus dates from c325, some fragments of individual books have survived dating back as far as 150. The oldest surviving manuscripts have sections with controversial verses removed to obliterate original beliefs. We do know that there was a thriving range of commentary and dozens of gospels used by the early churches - but, we only have their titles and some phrases quoted in the writings of early church fathers. Why were heretical ideas stamped out with such fanatical zeal - what inconvenient truths were being hidden?

The Church continued inventing dogma until some insiders rebelled, triggering the Reformation. The pathway to Truth lies in understanding the heresies and finding which link back to Jesus teaching as shown by the few ancient texts recovered in the past century.

For information & maps on this series: truthpublications.co.uk