Bercot completed his theological education at the University of Cambridge and was subsequently ordained as an Anglican priest before joining fellowship with Conservative Anabaptists, whom he believed to best embody the practices of early Christianity.
[10] In 1989, he wrote the book, Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up, which sets forth some of the teachings and lifestyle of the early Christians.
[5][15] Today Bercot is a lecturer and author who emphasizes the simplicity of Biblical doctrine and early (ante-Nicene) Christian teaching versus what he would call the complex body of theological understanding that has built up over the centuries in churches and academia, which has come to be thought of as orthodoxy.
[17] According to Bercot, before the publication of his work, the only practical way to determine what the early Christians believed about any given topic was to read the actual writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers themselves.
After the publication of A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs, the Evangelical Review of Theology stated: “David Bercot has done the church a great service in providing an accessible point of entry into the extant writings of the pre-Nicene church.”[18] The Conservative Theological Journal stated: “This is a must text for everyone interested in modern theological trends in general and especially historical studies.”[19] Other popular books that Bercot has written are Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up, published originally in 1989, and The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down (2003), and Will the Theologians Please Sit Down (2009).