Church history reveals that after three centuries of incessant attempts to destroy the Church through persecution and burning all copies of the Word of God, the Church was so powerful that she supplanted paganism as the state religion of Rome in 312 AD. At this point Satan stumbled on his most effective tool - indulgence or endorsement. During the next 13 centuries the Church gradually lost her light and spiritual power by adopting some of the satanically inspired practices of paganism contrary to the Word of God. As these practices increased, Bible light decreased, bringing on what is called the Dark Ages. No jailer ever kept his prisoner more confined than did the Church of Rome keep the Bible for hundreds of years. Not until the Reformation were people again exposed to Gods word, but again Satan made an attack. The superstitious concepts of the Roman Catholic Church, which by this time were little more than modernized pagan thought, turned many intellectuals during the Age of Enlightenment against Christianity. History affirms that many skeptics and rationalists were educated in Jesuit colleges. Being thus exposed to a characterization of Christianity through Catholic dogma and never exposed to the living Christ, these men turned to atheism and a resultant humanism that has deified the human race as proud and arrogant. The difference between John Wycliffe, John Calvin, Martin Luther, William Tyndale, and other Christian intellectuals and such men as Voltaire, Rosseau, Weishaupt, Mirabeau, and other atheistic thinkers is the Word of God. Had the latter group been exposed to the living Christ through the pages of the Bible, history may well have been different and the world today a far better place in which to live. The city of Rome around 320 AD was filled with temples, idols, and shrines to almost every god in the pantheon of pagan religions. Turning these temples over to the Christians proved to be the worst thing Constantine did and the worst thing to happen to the early church. It is said the church retained much of the statuary in the pagan temples; it simply rededicated them to Christianity, then chiseled off the names of the pagan deities and replaced them with the names of the apostles, Jesus, and Mary. Gradually the pagan practices and teachings of Babylon began to worm their way into Christianity. These included prayers for the dead, making the sign of the cross, worship of saints and angels, instituting the mass, and worship of Mary - which in the Church of Rome was followed by prayers directly to Mary, leading to the 1950 doctrine of her assumption into heaven and in 1965 to the proclamation that Mary was Mother of the Church. As pagan teachings increased, biblical authority decreased. Just over one hundred years after Constantine, the brilliant Augustine came along with his brand of Greek humanism and introduced mans wisdom along with Gods wisdom, further paving the way for more pagan thought and practice. Although he did not intend it, his spiritualizing of Scripture eventually removed the Bible as the sole source of authority for correct doctrine. At the same time, the Scriptures were kept locked up in monasteries and museums, leaving Christians defenseless against the invasion of pagan and humanistic thought and practice. Consequently, the Dark Ages prevailed, and the Church of Rome became more pagan than Christian. In the Middle Ages and in pre modern times true believers were subjected to martyrdom on an incredible scale It is estimated that as many as 40 million persons were killed during that period when Babylonian mysticism controlled the church. France the most advanced country of the 17th century, is an example of the effects of Babylon on the seven hilled city of Rome. Consider how the pope and Catholic authorities worked with the Catholic kings of France to produce the St. Bartholomew Square massacre, in which forty thousand born again Christians were killed in a single day. That was followed by other massacres that eliminated up to 4 million Huguenots, who would be called evangelical Christians if they were living today.
Posted on: Fri, 26 Sep 2014 09:02:46 +0000