“Neither for these only do I pray, but for those also who are believing on me through their word.”

‘I pray'. Literally, the verb means ‘make request'. This encompasses the many believers who had already responded to Jesus and His Apostles and all those who would do so in their future. As the later ‘early church' emphasised, true faith must be a response to Apostolic truth. The Apostles were unique. They were chosen to lay the foundation for the church of God by their understanding and revealing of the truth, and it is by that truth that true believers must be tested. It is not transferred to anyone, whether church or individual. Church tradition has no intrinsic guarantee within it. Each church, each tradition, each individual, must be tested against the truth revealed through the Apostles, in other words by the New Testament.

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