When I was a Christian—focused heavily on end-times theology and Christ’s first time on earth—I carried a rosy picture in my head about what happened after Jesus’ death. I imagined a mostly unified group of faithful followers who carried his message forward in relative harmony once the Gospels ended.
That illusion didn’t survive a full, cover-to-cover reading of the Bible during my “rediscovery” phase—the read it for comprehension, not confirmation phase. Everything after the Gospels felt flat, confusing, and often contradictory. The rosy picture I had grown up with turned out to be anything but roses and rainbows.
The Framework I Grew Up With
In the Worldwide Church of God, Christ’s time on earth was taught as purposeful and orderly. Broadly speaking, it went something like this:
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Christ came to provide direct access to God and spiritual truth. Before that, access to God came through the temple system and rabbis. Jesus came to tear down that old structure.
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He brought a message that did not abolish the old law, but fulfilled and enhanced it—offering a new covenant and direct access to God through the Holy Spirit.
(WCG did not believe in the Trinity. God was the Father, Jesus was the Son, and the Holy Spirit was a mysterious force or vessel—not a distinct person.)
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Jesus died for our sins, washing away original sin.
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He modeled how to live under both the old covenant and the new.
There’s a lot to unpack in those four points, and that’s not the purpose here. This is simply the mental framework I inherited and carried with me as a Christian.
What I Didn’t Know
What I didn’t know—what no one ever told me—was that the decades following Jesus’ death were marked by turmoil, disagreement, and outright conflict. Christians argued over nearly everything:
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Why did Jesus come?
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Who exactly was he?
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Why was he crucified?
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What did his death accomplish?
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And even: what or who is God?
There were fractures and splinters long before there was anything resembling an organized Christian religion.
Conservative scholarly estimates suggest:
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50 years after Jesus (c. 80 CE): ~4–6 major streams
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100 years after Jesus (c. 130 CE): ~6–10 identifiable movements
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200 years after Jesus (c. 230 CE): dozens of sects within 5–7 theological families
In other words, there was no single, unified church—and it shows in the mixed messages found in the writings that follow the Gospels.
Paul is often credited with shaping early Christianity, but even he was not addressing a unified movement. He largely ignores or argues against other factions, and the version of Christianity most people inherit today reflects his theological lineage—because that lineage eventually won.
Four Competing Versions of Jesus
While there were many groups, their beliefs generally clustered around four broad interpretations of who Jesus was and why he mattered.
1. Jewish-Christian Groups (Jesus as a Fully Human Messiah)
Often identified as Ebionites or Nazarenes, these were Torah-observant Jews who believed Jesus was the promised Messiah of the Old Testament. He was a man, a prophet, anointed by a single God—not divine in essence.
Why they lost:
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They rejected Paul
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They were too Jewish for an increasingly Gentile movement
2. Adoptionist Christianity (Jesus Becomes Divine)
Groups like the Theodotians believed Jesus was born human and became divine at his baptism or resurrection. He modeled obedience, love, and faithfulness, and God exalted him for it.
This view was widespread early on and may reflect some of the earliest Jesus traditions. It was later condemned as heresy.
3. Gnostic Christianities (Jesus as Divine Revealer)
Valentinians, Sethians, and Thomas Christians believed Jesus was fully divine and came to reveal hidden knowledge—gnosis—that allowed believers to escape the flawed material world.
They rejected rigid creeds, emphasized spiritual enlightenment over literal resurrection, and threatened emerging church authority. They, too, lost.
4. Proto-Orthodox Christianity (Jesus as God and Man)
This group believed Jesus was both fully divine and fully human. He died for sins, defeated death, and established church authority. Over time, this view evolved into Trinitarian theology.
This version was not original. It became dominant through organization, suppression of rivals, and eventually state support in the fourth century.
They canonized the Bible.
They defined orthodoxy.
They wrote the story.
Why This Matters
If God personally authored the Bible—guiding its message, protecting its transmission, and ensuring correct doctrine—we would expect clarity and consistency from the beginning.
Instead, the first two centuries of Christianity are filled with disagreement over the most basic questions imaginable:
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Who was Jesus?
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Was he human, divine, or something in between?
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Why did he come?
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Which writings counted as scripture?
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Which God was he even talking about?
These were not minor disagreements. They were debates over the essence of Christ, the nature of God, and the means of salvation—issues modern Christianity claims were divinely settled all along.
Bart Ehrman summarizes this reality bluntly:
“Early Christianity was remarkably diverse, with different groups holding views that were later declared heretical, even though many of those views were older than what became orthodoxy.”
What survived did not do so because it was clearly revealed from heaven, but because it was better organized, more politically aligned, and eventually backed by institutional and state power.
For me, learning this was deeply unsettling. During my de-conversion, I had no idea these other Christian movements existed at all. I wasn’t rejecting Christianity—I was discovering that I had only ever been shown one curated outcome, long after the debates were over and the winners had written the rules.
At a high level, this reframes the Bible not as a message delivered from above, but as a library shaped from below—by people, communities, disagreements, and power struggles. The canon reflects the theology of those who prevailed, not a clear divine fingerprint.
Seen this way, the development of Christianity looks less like divine orchestration and more like something profoundly human: people forming identities, arguing over meaning, defending authority, and suppressing rivals.
The messiness isn’t a flaw in the story.
It is the story.
And once you see it, it becomes difficult to argue that this process required a guiding deity at all.
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