SEVENTEEN: THE GREATEST DECEPTION of the AGES
(so far)
c. 300 A.D.
Pagan Rome rises and falls. Its history is clearly heralded by many. And as a true child of Babylon it plays its part well. Its hatred of and persecution of both Jews and Christians is well documented. Rome's mysteries I have already mentioned. They coincide with those of the beginner of all the mysteries, ancient Babylon.
Satan has had an unbroken chain of success in deceiving mankind. But even with all of his force, his intoxicating doctrines, his confusion, he sees that instead of defeating the purposes of God, the people on God's side continue to multiply. Through the resurrection of the Christ that Satan tried to avert has come a veritable shower of life, claiming many of Lucifer's followers.
The Roman Empire, aptly described by Daniel(chapters 2 and 7) in the most horrific of terms, has not scared off God's people after all. Quite the opposite, as there is unparalleled growth of the Kingdom of God.
Serious problem here. When you've given it your best shot and you're failing, what next? Shoot again. But with what? If the Empire cannot crush the fledgling church, what can? There is a sinister smile on Satan's face as he decides on a totally different tactic for the Christians: acceptance.
The higher the authority that accepts a human, the better that person feels about himself, and the more beholden he becomes. If Satan's bunch actually "accept" the church, will she yield to those pressures, when the threat of violence and death made no dent at all?
To help answer that question, I introduce now the next player in this drama, would-be Emperor Constantine.
Here again I need your undivided attention. Listen to this scheme of all schemes with the horror due it.
After more than 300 years of burning, torturing, demeaning Christians, there is a lull in history. Constantine allegedly sees a vision of a cross, and is told that he must now conquer in that sign. I say "allegedly" because I was not there, and the witnesses are not of the caliber of Spirit-inspired Bible-writers. I trust you will forgive my hesitancy to accept the standard story.
In fact historians have debated as to
1) whether he even saw a vision
2) exactly what he saw
3) who gave the supposed vision
It's an interesting question, the answer to which has absolutely nothing to do with what follows. What did the vision produce?
Facts agreed upon:
1) After the "vision," the soldiers of Constantine had an emblem that they took to stand for Christ placed on their shields, and with these shields facing their enemy( another would-be emperor) they won.
2) Constantine prayed to his sun-god, Mithras, before the battle.
3) He in fact prayed to that god until the day of his death, on which day he is alleged to have received "baptism".
So, Constantine, a Caesar, pro-Christ but not of-Christ, lifts the church from its obscure dungeons, and brings it to the light of day, at least the Babylonian day of Pagan Rome.
Freedom is sweet to the persecuted church. Had you and I been there, we would have done what that early church now does: honor the man who brings you out of suffering.
Honor and attention are what Constantine thrives on. Many of his subjects are Christians, and the vision is well-timed, whatever its origin. As Pharaoh of Egypt, he does the "smart" thing and averts a potential revolution of a growing people.
And Constantine's bondage of servitude is of a kinder, nobler sort. All he wants for rescuing the Christians from persecution, death, and the other things that the early church has come to accept as normal (after all, didn't Jesus promise all this?), all he wants, I say, is complete control of the church.
It is tempting to say nice things about Constantine. All the books do, you know. He was a great man, after all. He did, like Lincoln, "free the slaves." Oh, our flesh loves him. I mean, can we imagine the great burden of stinking prisons, bloodshed, unequaled torture suddenly removed? Can we not weep with joy with the early believers, as their chains fall off, and say, "THANKS, Constantine "?
Consider, from our present vantage point, what has really happened. Constantine, you have unwittingly wedded your Babylon to the Bride of Christ, purified by hundreds of years of fire. The ultimate act of prostitution is here committed by the Pimp of the ages, Lucifer.
Oh, Satan! Kings and princes of all times you have deceived and lured into your bed, but the Virgin of Christ! How low can your adulterous mind bring you?
Through Constantine, the mother of harlots conceives and bears yet another loathsome offspring. The seed of Satan penetrates the womb of the young church yet again, in a far more harmful way than the false teachers who were, in the main, recognized and expelled. In Constantine, a benefactor, the church is caught unawares, and settles down to be raped.
The representative of Babylon places himself at the head of the church and calls for a council. His purpose is to end all the factions of Christianity. And as in our day, there are many variations on the theme "Christian."
The Roman way is the "Pax Romana," the enforced peace, visibly uniting all diversity, allowing for no dissident voices. What is good for the Empire will be good for the church. There are to be no factions. Period.
The subsequent meetings of the Council of Nicaea cannot be written off totally because of Constantine's usurpation. We can believe that the voice of the Holy Spirit was echoed in many true followers of Christ. But the false was there also. The true and the false are here forced into union, and have remained in the harlot religion from that day to this.
Halley, in his Bible Handbook, a Christian classic, mentions that certain false teachings, such as Arianism, are condemned at this Council, and that the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch are given full jurisdiction over their provinces, as Roman bishops over Rome. (No hint in this meeting that the various provinces are subject to the Roman Church.)
But what is a Roman Emperor doing at the head of this Council? And from whose urgings is the church made to "agree."?
March, 321 A.D., Constantine orders the "venerable day of the sun" (we call it Sun-day, too), to be celebrated as a day of rest. The Christians comply since Christ has been raised on that day, and it seems the "right thing to do." Here, though, is one of those weddings of true and false.
Constantine then allows the construction of "church buildings." Reminiscent of the Jewish synagogues, and pagan temples, Christians begin to enjoy making these visible expressions of their inward faith. But whence the directions from God on this matter?
One wonders, as we digress a moment, just how far the church would have advanced throughout the world if more congregations had been visiting houses instead of building them, if more church leaders had been on the street instead of at the building site. What if all the dollars put into ornate "centers of worship" had been given to the preaching of the Gospel in unreached lands?
One just wonders, of course. But it does seem proper to suggest that the concept of a temple of worship where people go to find God is strictly Babylonian, supported by Pagan Rome and her descendants. The Jewish temple was built to picture the true, which true Christians recognize to be the people of God, and our own bodies, both houses of the Holy Presence of God. These are the only hallowed structures God honors. Why did we ever think otherwise? Part of the answer is found in studying this Constantine "thing."
The good Emperor begins to favor Christians in every way. Halley (p. 759) says he
"filled chief offices with them, exempted Christian ministers from taxes and military service...made Christianity the religion of the court..."
Sounds so wonderful! But what has become of the cross, the shame related to knowing and following Christ, the warning, "beware when all men speak well of you"?
Church of God, what are you doing?
Church of God, can you not see that Babylon is about to swallow you whole?
Constantine gives the Lateran Palace on the north of the Vatican Valley, to the church, as a headquarters (though we know that the Head of the Church has always resided in Heaven) which was used as such until the 1300's. The palace he built on the supposed site of the tomb of Peter is the present seat of authority, the Vatican Palace.
Bounded by the Hill of Mary and a hill honoring Janus, the Vatican State was once home to the Circus of Nero, thus the graveyard of many early Christians. Even farther back...
"There is a road that runs along this valley, the ancient Via Cornelia, a road lined with tombs and adjoined by a hill and wooded ranges where sacrifices were made to the Phrygian goddess Cybele, and where, in the earliest times, the Etruscan soothsayers or vates had their oracles. It was from them that the hill derived its name, the Collis Vaticanus, 'oracle hill'..."
So says Friedrich Gontard in his Chair of Peter.
It looks as though Babylon is about to be born all over again.
EIGHTEEN: THE CHURCH AS PERSECUTOR
Constantine, favoring Christianity, but by no means clinging to Christ alone, becomes much opposed to the paganism of the Roman aristocrats and decides to move east and start a "new" Rome. Here are the beginnings of the "other leg" of Daniel's vision. (See Part I)
This new city is at various times in history known as Byzantium, Constantinople (after its founder), and, as today, Istanbul. You will find it in Turkey. It is interesting to note on a map of Europe how Italy and the Grecian peninsula (not far from Istanbul and forming a central bulwark of its power) form two "legs" that jut into the Mediterranean Sea.
Before the church's plunge into idolatry, witchcraft, and world domination , there is a relapse, and more persecution comes upon the people of God. A final purification, perhaps a final warning NOT to be a part of the Babylonian system that can enslave people at will, set them free when convenient, honor that which is false, condemn the true. The Emperor Julian, raised Christian, turns against the Christian faith, perhaps for the same reasons that moderns spurn her, namely, the lives of her "saints". When he comes to power he reverses the tide of blessing so recently showered on the church. Not outrightly murderous, still he takes away many privileges, and once again champions the cause of paganism, which has by no means died. How will God's people respond?
Unfortunately, the church has tasted power. Not the power that comes from the Throne of God, but man's power, called authority.She does not repent, at least the historical surface group we have come to know as "the church" does not repent. We must assume that many of God's remnant got the message. As for the rest,when that authority is once more offered, the church once more takes it.
It is given to Emperor Theodosius to bring upon the church its "worst calamity," according to Halley. (p. 760 ff) He it was who
"made Christianity the (enforced) State Religion...and made church membership compulsory...undertook the forcible suppression of all other religions...under his decrees, heathen temples were torn down by mobs of Christians...there was much bloodshed."
Halley is eloquent here, and I can do no better than to continue quoting:
"Christ had designed to conquer by purely spiritual and moral means. Up to this time conversion was voluntary, a genuine change in heart and life.
But now, the military spirit of Imperial Rome had entered the church. The church had conquered the Roman Empire. But in reality the Roman Empire had conquered the church, by making the church over into the image of the Roman Empire.
The Church had changed its nature, had entered its great apostasy, had become a political organization in the spirit and pattern of Imperial Rome, and took the nose-dive into the millennium of Papal abominations.
The Imperial church of the 4th and 5th centuries had become an entirely different
institution from the persecuted church of the first 3 centuries. In its ambition to rule it lost and forgot the Spirit of Christ.
Worship, at first very simple, was developed into elaborate stately imposing ceremonies having all the outward splendor that had belonged to heathen temples...ministers became priests..."
To this agrees non-Christian H. G. Wells in Crux Ansata:
"Christianity early...entangled itself with archaic traditions of human sacrifices, with Mithraic blood-cleansing, with priestcraft as ancient as human society...The gory entrail-searching forefinger of the Etruscan pontifex maximus presently overshadowed the teachings of Jesus." (p. 12)
"Pontifex Maximus", you say?
Yes, sadly, that term is soon to be applied to Christ's ministers. Gibbon fills in some detail:
"Theodosius...assumed the merit of subduing the Arian heresy and of abolishing the worship of idols in the Roman world...he dictated a solemn edict...:' It is our pleasure that all the nations should stedfastly adhere to the religion which was taught by St. Peter to the Romans; which faithful tradition has preserved; and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus...We authorize the followers of this doctrine to assume the title of Catholic Christians; and, as we judge that all others are extravagant madmen, we brand them with the infamous name of Heretics; and declare that their conventicles shall no longer usurp the respectable appellation of churches. Besides the condemnation of Divine justice, they must expect to suffer the severe penalties which our authority, guided by heavenly wisdom, shall think proper to inflict upon them.' "
Did Church and State ever have a purer union?
But we were speaking of the "Pontifex Maximus" or Supreme Pontiff. In about 378 A.D. , prior to Theodosius, the Emperor Gratian, whose rule also co-existed with Pope Damasus, was offered, as all emperors, the office of supreme pontiff, the one who heads the pagan priesthood, offers its sacrifices, intercedes for the people. But, according to Gibbon, and the witness of all historians, he "sternly rejected those profane symbols." He was a Christian.
The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1967, p. 572 informs us that
"The office of the Pope is described in the annuario pontifico(official directory of the Holy See) by the following titles:
"Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Chief of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the State of Vatican City.
"...the term pontifex, used in classical Latin of the members of the college of high priests, began to be used of bishops late in the 4th century."
Indeed it did! To be specific, with one Pope Damasus, who reigned(yes, that's the proper word now) from 366-384. In the year 378, in a petition to Emperor Gratian, who has refused the pontifical title on Christian grounds, Damasus applied the term to himself!
In that same year, the same Pope referred to his Roman diocese as the "apostolic see", that is , the head of the Christian religion. Catholic histories of this man praise him as having been the first to apply strongly the case for his own, and Rome's, supremacy, based on the "You are Peter" passage explained in Part I.(Matthew 16)
This is a Pope whose entry into office was contested by another, and whose men murdered 137 of the challenger's forces to ensure his place on the Papal throne. It was Damasus also who told men to leave their wives if they were to follow Christ perfectly. Accused year after year of murder, and even of adultery, somehow he maintained his position.
Such power. Such stamina. Such evil. Is this man now receiving help elsewhere? He is, after all ,the successor , the link to, the ancient Chaldean mysteries?
Or is he just an ordinary man, caught up in the struggles of the flesh, as we all are? After all, he did much good, didn't he? Assumptions aside for the moment, we know this much: A convictable murderer sits on a throne wearing the title of "chief priest" of the mysteries, a title well-known to every Roman school child of the day. And that seat of authority is said to be the throne of Christ. No one else in his world wears this title, not even a Roman Emperor. What else can we believe but the obvious?
This did not all happen overnight.
"Like many great historical changes, this one was gradual and entailed such changes of outlook that it was not really perceptible. The Christianization of the Empire and the corresponding Romanization of the church took several generations. " (Vamberto Morais, p. 83, A Short History of Anti-Semitism.)
Hislop poses this imaginative question:(p.218)
"What would...the old Pagan priests say, who left the stage of time while the martyrs were still battling against their gods, and, rather than symbolise them, 'loved not their lives unto death,' if they were to see the present aspect of the so-called Church of European Christendom? What would Belshazzar himself say, if it were possible for him to ...enter St. Peter's at Rome, and see the Pope in his pontificals, in all his pomp and glory? Surely he would conclude that he had only entered one of his own well-known temples, and that all things continued as they were at Babylon..."
Gibbon(op cit., pp 902-903) follows with a similar query:
"If, in the beginning of the fifth century, Tertullian...had been suddenly raised from the dead, to assist at the festival of some popular saint or martyr, they would have gazed with astonishment and indignation on the profane spectacle, which had succeeded to the pure and spiritual worship of a Christian congregation. As soon as the doors of the church were thrown open, they must have been offended by the smoke of the incense, the perfume of flowers, and the glare of lamps and tapers, which diffused, at noonday, a gaudy, superfluous, and, in their opinion, a sacrilegious light. If they approached the balustrade of the altar, they made their way through the prostrate crowd, consisting, for the most part, of strangers and pilgrims, who resorted to the city on the vigil of the feast; and who already felt the strong intoxication of fanaticism, and, perhaps, of wine. Their devout kisses were imprinted on the walls and pavement of the sacred edifice; and their fervent prayers were directed, whatever might be the language of their church, to the bones, the blood, or the ashes of the saints, which were usually concealed by a linen or silken veil from the eyes of the vulgar. The Christians frequented the tombs of the martyrs, in the hope of obtaining, from their powerful intercession, every sort of spiritual, but more especially of temporal, blessings. They implored the preservation of their health or the cure of their infirmities; the fruitfulness of their barren wives or the safety and happiness of their children. Whenever they undertook any distant or dangerous journey, they requested that the holy martyrs would be their guides and protectors on the road; and, if they returned without having experienced any misfortune, they again hastened to the tombs of the martyrs, to celebrate...The walls were hung round with symbols of the favours which they had received; eyes, and hands, and feet, of gold and silver; and edifying pictures, which could not long escape the abuse of indiscreet or idolatrous devotion, represented the image, the attributes, and the miracles of the tutelar saint...it must...be confessed that the ministers of the Catholic church imitated the profane model which they were impatient to destroy. The most respectable bishops had persuaded themselves that the ignorant rustics would more cheerfully renounce the superstitions of Paganism, if they found some resemblance, some compensation, in the bosom of Christianity. The religion of Constantine achieved, in less than a century, the final conquest of the Roman empire: but the victors themselves were insensibly subdued by the arts of their vanquished rivals."
This same Gibbon in another place refers to the ruin of paganism as "a singular event in the history of mankind." He seems here overawed by the progress of Christianity, failing to take into account what he later confesses, that the Christians were themselves ruined.
A man may try to stop smoking (in the power of his own will), and start eating a lot instead. A person can try to control his angry outbursts at home, only to find that at work he is angrier than ever. Contractors can destroy a building, but the bricks are still present. Paganism, Satan's Kingdom, "disappears," but reappears inside the church.
The fact is, hordes of unregenerate unbelievers filled the church, with no desire to change. As Hislop points out (p.251),
"In exact proportion as Paganism has disappeared from without the church, in the very same proportion it appears within it. Pagan dresses for the priests, Pagan festivals for the people, Pagan doctrines and ideas of all sorts, are everywhere in vogue...Pope Damasus saw that, in a city pre-eminently given to idolatry...if, bearing the title, around which, for so many ages, all the hopes and affections of Paganism had clustered, he should give its votaries reason to believe that he was willing to act up to the original spirit of that title, he might count on popularity, aggrandisement and glory..."
With first one, then another, religion in power in the Empire,
"...both religions had been alternately disgraced by the seeming acquisition of worthless proselytes, of those votaries of the reigning purple who could pass, without a reason and without a blush, from the church to the temple, and from the altars of Jupiter to the sacred table of the Christians." (Gibbon, p.741)
So, what is conceived by Constantine now seems to be born and quickly maturing, more and more looking like its mother, Babylon, yet having characteristics of a Jerusalemite. What a sad child!
At first glance it seems that the church is as powerless to resist fortune as it has been to withstand hellish persecutions. But looking closer we must agree that it is by an act of the will that the Roman organization takes upon itself the trappings of power and royalty. Let none of us claim that royalty is thrust upon us.
In a pronouncement of Damasus's Roman Synod in the year 382, the primacy of Peter, hotly contested itself, turns into the primacy of Rome.
"The Holy Roman Church takes precedence over the other churches, not on the ground of any synodal decisions, but because it was given the primacy by the words of our Lord, ' Thou art Peter.' Peter and Paul dedicated the Holy Roman Church to the Lord Christ and gave it unique precedence over all other cities in the whole world by their presence and by their venerable triumph. The Roman church therefore is the first see of the apostle Peter, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing."
The growth of the myth. What first-grader in the things of God does not know of the prominence of Jerusalem in God's Word? If there is ever to be a city honored over the whole earth, and there is, surely it is the city of David, the city where Christ is crucified, the city where the Spirit falls for the first time. And it is of the New Jerusalem of which God speaks when He looks to the final situation of world politics.
Let me insert here a reminder that Constantine has vacated Rome, and his descendants are likewise ruling from the "New Rome." The power vacuum in the old city is filled by leaders of the "church."
In A.D. 431, the "keys" are mentioned by the ruling Pope, to give visible "proof" of his authority. Now, the "keys" of Cybele and Janus, Roman gods, were long known by Pagan Romanists. But Papal Rome identifies these keys with Peter, and so strengthens itself in its claims.
Yes, Peter had been given some keys, that is, the means whereby the door of Heaven was opened to both Jews and Gentiles, messages from God which are in fact recorded in Acts chapters 2 and 10. The key to God's Kingdom is the preaching of Jesus, not an authority trip.
So, it is in Pagan Rome that the church first feels a flush of power, and in Rome will be the Eternal City, the City of God, which will rule in the name of God over the world. A vision shared by Augustine in his classic City of God. This little manual was used by ruling popes to verify their newborn dream.
Their prophetic notions are not without backing in God's Word. John, you will recall, also saw a city that reigns over the kings of the earth. He was not overly impressed with it, though.
