R. HAZELTINE
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 13
Names and Dates to 600 A.D.
Andronicus
Junia Apostles Rome 34 (41-54) 60 A.D.
They were apostles from St. Peter's revival (Acts 2:4). Started the first church at Rome but it backslid into paganism. They were banished from Rome by Claudius but returned after his death. The first church would not receive them back so they started the second church.
Priscilla
Aquila Disciples Rome 34 (41-54) 60 A.D.
Started the second church at Rome with Andronicus and Junia. They worked with St. Paul in Asia from 41-53 A.D.
St. Peter Apostle Babylon 60-64 A.D.
He was at Jerusalem 34-41-44-51 A.D. He finally joined St. Mark in going as a missionary to the remaining Jews at Babylon on the Euphrates.
St. Paul Apostle Asia & Rome 34-62 A.D.
Jerusalem-Damascus. Prisoner many times for Christ. Wrote Epistles to the churches of Asia, Rome, and Greece. Started third church in Rome.
Titus Emperor Rome 70 A.D.
Took golden candlestick from the temple at Jerusalem with the altar of incense and put them in museum on River Tiber.
St. John Apostle Patmos 98 A.D.
Teacher of St. Polycarp. Took Mary, mother of Jesus, to care for. Had school for copying Scriptures in Greek. Banished to Patmos but was released to place last book of the New Testament with the other New Testament Epistles and Gospels. Only apostle who did not suffer martyrdom. Cared for Mary, mother of Jesus, as long as she lived.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 14
Ignatius Bishop Antioch 33-107 A.D.
Clawed to death by beasts in arena at Rome.
Polycarp Bishop Smyrna 69-150 AD.
Early father of Evangelical Church. Went to Rome to try to persuade Anicetus to turn back to Apostolic Passover. Did not accomplish his purpose. He was a mighty Holy Ghost evangelist. Martyr to first Roman church and Emperor at Smyrna.
Hadrian Emperor All over 76-138 A.D.
Second destroyer of Jerusalem 132 A.D.
Anicetus Bishop Rome 151-? A.D.
Tertullian Advocate From Rome 155- 230 A.D.?
to Carthage 207 A.D.
Became Bishop of Montanist. Prolific writer but many of' his treatises destroyed because they revealed the decay of the first church at Rome and its pagan bishops.
Irenaeus Bishop Lyons France 177-212 A.D.
A true follower of Christ and Apostles. A worker of miracles. Much hated by first Roman church bishop, Victor.
Albinus General France 197 AD. Died
An evangelical general of the troops of France. He protected the evangelical bishops from the emperors and the first Roman church bishops. He protected Irenaeus. Albinus was martyred by Emperor Septimius Severus in 197 AD. at the instigation of Victor, bishop of the first Roman church.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 15
Septimius Severus Emperor Rome 193-211 A.D.
In his time as emperor, we find the history of the first Roman church and the emperor. 202-208 A.D. proscribed in this time. Irenaeus was martyred 202 A.D. also the father of Origen in Alexandria. But this time in history is blank.
Origen Theologian Alexandria 185-2654 A.D.
Mighty man of God. Wrote treatise exposing corruption in the first Roman church. Wrote mighty refutation of bishop of Rome claims of power to forgive sin.
Victor Bishop Rome 89-198 A.D.
Bishop to backslidden first church at Rome. Tried to excommunicate Asiatic Metropolitan Polycrates who refused to accept and follow the pagan feast of Astarte (Easter).
Zephyrinus Bishop Rome 198-217 A.D.
Slothful bishop proceeding Callistus Took bribes and forgave sin but exacted a reward for so doing. He had images and sun worship and moon goddess worship.
Sabellius Theologian Rome 198-222 A.D.
True disciple of Christ. Africa to Rome. Was put out of the first Roman church because he taught the true gospel. Had great following in and around Rome from then on.
Hippolytus Bishop Rome 207-235 A.D.
True Christian-Greek scholar. Wrote biography of the wicked pagan bishop Callistus of Rome.
Callistus Bishop Rome 177-222 A.D.
A renegade slave and ex-convict. Used by Victor to tear down evangelical bishops. Aid to Victor and Emperor Septimius Severus.
Pontian Bishop Rome 230-235 A.D.
Bishop of first Roman church. Exiled with Hippolytus by Alexander Severus.
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Fabian Arch Bishop, Rome 236-250 A.D.
Evangelical. Consecrated Novatianus.
Novatianus Arch Bishop Rome 250-270 A.D.
Consecrated by Fabian an evangelical. Called 'Heretic' by first Roman church.
Cornelius Bishop Rome 251-253 A.D.
Bishop of Rome same time as Novatianus. Placed in line of Popes.
Eusebius Historian Caesarea 260-340 A.D.
Bishop of Caesarea and Constantine's spiritual adviser. Baptized Constantine.
Aurelian Emperor Rome 270-275 A.D.
Took Antioch church from Paul of Samosata (an evangelical) and gave it to the first Roman church.
Paul of Samosata Bishop Antioch 260-272 A.D.
Banished. Bishop Paul of Samosata put first Roman bishop in his place.
Constantine Emperor Constantinople 286-337 A. D.
Good emperor. Council of Nicaea. Arian Evangelical
Damasus First Pope Rome 304-384 A.D.
First Pope of first Roman church. 126 Christians slain in the bloody contest for the "Chair of St. Peter." Sanctioned by Valentinian I.
Melchiades Bishop Africa to Rome 310-314 A.D.
Thrust into Palace Church (Lateran) at Rome by Emperor Constantine.
Arius Alexandria 275-336 A.D. ?
Defamed by Roman Church. "Misrepresented" (Fragm, in Mansi, XIII, 316. Eusebius to Bishop Alexandria.)
Donatus Bishop Africa 311-375 A.D.
Evangelical. Augustine disliked Donatists.
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Frumentius Ethiopia 307-380 A.D.
Translated Scriptures for Ethiopia. No Roman connections.
St. Martin Bishop Tours France 315-400 A.D.
A genuine Holy Ghost Bishop and Apostle. Started Bible School at Marmoutier-les-Tours. Resisted bad first Roman church policy.
Ambrose Milan 340-397 A.D.
A genuine Holy Ghost Bishop anti Apostle of Milan, North Italy. Resisted bad first Roman church policy.
Theodosius Emperor Rome 346-395 A.D.
Caught in Damasus net. Rebuked by Ambrose. Reclaimed by Ambrose for pure evangelical Christianity.
Gratian Emperor Rome 359-383 A.D.
Son of Valentinian I. Good Christian emperor taken off the throne by Damasus, Pope of Rome and Maximus, Emperor cats paw for Damasus.
Sulpicius Severus France 360-410 A.D.
Christian lawyer. Secretary of Bishop Martin of Tours. Wrote a 'Best Seller' The Life of St. Martin. Martin's healing and miracles infuriated clerics of Rome.
Julian Emperor Rome 361-363 A.D.
Apostate. Thought Paganism better than the sham practices of the first Roman church.
Valentinian I Emperor Rome 364-375 A.D.
Father of Gratian. Said Bishops could not take patrimony of widows. Recognized Damasus as Bishop of the first Roman church.
Priscillin Bishop Spain 359 -385 A.D.
Burned at the stake (Spain). He was Holy Ghost Evangelical Bishop who refused pagan worship of first Roman church. Ambrose and Martin pled for his life but lost.
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Pelagius British Evangelical missionaries
Coelestius Irish to Rome 360-420 A.D.
Pelagius attended St. Martin's school. Two western (British) missionaries to Rome and Africa. 'Pelagians" were sympathizers with Evangelists. They were hated by popes and also by Jerome and Orosius.
Julian Evang. Bishop Apamea 360-420 A.D.
Jerome Bethlehem 340-420 A.D.
Once knew the Lord but got caught in the first Roman church net. Translated Bible. Disliked Vigilantius who ridiculed false worship that came out of Rome (relics, images).
Rufinus Translator Jerusalem 345-410 A.D.
Old friend of Jerome but later rejected by Jerome because he would not condemn Origen (then dead) and his writings and translations.
St. Augustine Africa 354-430 A.D.
Got only a half close of religion under good Ambrose. "Predestination" his folly. Recanted many false teachings in his last days.
Pammacius
Marcella Rome 370-410
A Pammacius was a senator who got Valentinian I to proclaim Damasus Pope. Marcella was an aged widow. Friend of Jerome.
Orosius Sp. Latin Hist. 390-430 A.D.
St. Patrick Arch Bishop Ireland 372-461 A.D.
Evangelical Protestant missionary. Nephew of St. Martin and graduate of Martin's school. Was means of converting all Ireland to Christ before he died.
Maximus Emperor Rome 383-388 A.D.
The "cat's paw" of Pope Damascus. An Usurper. Killed Gratian and Priscillin and seven Spanish evangelical bishops.
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Theodoret Theologian Antioch 390-475 A.D.
Famous theologian. Wrote Ecclesiastical History. and one of the "three Chapters" that revealed first Roman church false claims to supremacy through St. Peter.
Arcadius Emperor Rome 395-408 A.D.
Honorius Emperor Rome 395-423 A.D.
Two "cats paws" for first Roman church. Banished those caught with Origen's works that Rufinus translated from Greek to Latin.
Leo I Pope Rome 461 A.D.
Called "The Great" because he connived to pull much prestige the first Roman church. Valentinian III we; his "cats paw" and his church c claimed appellate court for world of churches.
Justinian Emperor Rome 483-565 A.D.
Married a harlot Theodora who "wore the pants." This team was caught by nuncios from first Roman church went "gunning" for true history "The Chapters."
Columba Bishop Ireland 421-597 A.D.
A true apostle of Christ. Signs and miracles followed his ministry. Founded Evangelical Christian colony on island of lone. His school was best after sack of Rome.
Gregory I The Great Pope Rome 590-604 A.D.
A great politician. Life work planned at Council of Toledo. Sent mission to Britain to condemn Protestants and churches. Proscribed "Three Chapters". Tried to subject Istra to his Roman church.
Augustine 590-604 A.D.
Roman Catholic Apostle to England. sent by Pope Gregory I to subdue that island. Created 1st Arch Bishop of Canterbury by Pope of Rome.
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Mohammed Mecca 576-652 A.D.
Sought for any religion that actually practiced what they preached. Roman church worshipped images. Had pagan festivals and sun worship and moon goddess worship. So Mohammed created his own religion.
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I have always asked myself the question, "How Did It Happen that the one church at Rome became so different from all the other churches in the world when every church sprang from the one church that Jesus started on the day of Pentecost ?"
It was a coincidence that my eye fell many times on the word 'Heretic,' and when I looked at the definition of the word I came to realize that I was a 'Heretic' according to the first Roman Church standards. Hence the beginning of my research became a game of chasing the name 'Heretic' wherever I found it.
I reasoned that there must have been a time in church history when the great separation of the two existing bodies began.
Hence my task
As I searched in many different Encyclopedias, the reports were varied. I could see that it depended on the man of woman who had contributed the article. I could see that the coloring of the data was by the personal opinions of the writer. Hence, before I read an article I looked up the background of the contributor.
The historian Merrivale has expressed my views exactly so I ask permission of the publishers of his General History of Rome to forgive me for the following I quote:
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 22
"It is to be regretted, indeed, that many able writers of this period of church history were too subject to the ecclesiastical influences of the Roman church, and allowed themselves in many ways to overstep the true line of moderation both as to the Christian system they commended and the Christian systems they depreciated.
It has been my aim to trace institutions to their real foundation, and to distinguish between the accounts we can accept as true and those that are bound to be rejected as fictitious of imaginary; I have collected, compared and sifted the authorities, full as they are of inconsistencies and contradictions; I have analyzed and criticized them at every step, and while obliged to advance my own conjectures, I shall try to explain the ground on which I base my opinions and show the means by which they may be defended."
I have used the process of deduction in compiling this work.
This book; will be put on the banned list that is issued from the Vatican, because it will open past ecclesiastical histories that were suppressed by the Roman church; I mean the histories of the Roman church in the first, second, third and fourth centuries.
It is my belief that the true church followed the Scriptural pattern, and the Roman church substituted dogmas and made traditional dogma the guide from the first century.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 23
I really believe if St. Peter were to enter Rome today and preach a sermon like the one he preached at Jerusalem he would be cast out of the city.
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Christ breathed on His disciples and said to them, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost," St. John 20:22. He told them He was going away and He would send the Holy Ghost to them. When He said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost," He meant, "When I send Him, welcome Him." It is as if we were going away and we say, "When I get to the place I am going, I will send someone to take my place. When He comes, please receive Him."
He commanded them to "Go back and wait for the Holy Spirit at Jerusalem." This was the enduement of Power making man the vehicle of the third person of the Trinity to carry the Gospel.
After Jesus' ascension the disciples eagerly returned to Jerusalem, joyfully awaiting the arrival of the Holy Ghost. The disciples were all with one accord. The Holy Ghost did come and they did receive Him into their bodies (temples). Acts 2:4.
They were now God's representatives on earth. They were Christ's vicars; as such they had all authority, the same as He had. This was the church, and it came into being on the day of Pentecost. (Acts 2)
Christ will quicken your mortal bodies by His spirit dwelling in you. Romans 8:11. The early church now knew for certain that Christ was living and His words were absolute truth, for they had received this quickening power that He had promised. They knew Him as the resurrected Christ and also as the ascended Christ. They knew that He was living and seated at the
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 25
right hand of the Father in Heaven and that the Holy Ghost (Divine Afflatus), even the Logos Himself had now come from Him and had entered into their mortal bodies. There was a shout in the camp."
They went everywhere carrying out Christ's commands proclaiming His eve lasting Gospel. They found that when hen they did what Jesus told them to do He confirmed the Gospel they preached with signs following. (Mark 16:17) The Divine Afflatus always followed the preaching of the Word.
________
We hear St. Matthew saying over and over, "Ye have heard that it hath been said by them in old time . . . BUT I SAY UNTO YOU. But I say unto you ---."
The ceremony of the Jews in creating leaders in the schools for Rabbinical learning is used to illustrate what Christ is doing and saving. When the Jews installed a man in office as was the custom in making Rabbis, they all shouted the name of the one elected and repeated it. The Christians in Rome carried this into their reception of new members, for when someone from the Pagans of Jews joined the Christian Church he first made his public confession and then the whole multitude shouted his name. It was not until he actually appeared and was recognized and his name shouted aloud by the crowd of witnesses that Rome could believe in so signal a conversion. (Page 605 - Merrivale. Victorinus the Grammarian.)
Jesus used this phrase, "And I also say unto you. He was referring to what the Jews had said (in calling the names of the newly elected Rabbis). So Jesus says, "And I also say unto you -- (I also am using my right to call your name in making you one of my Rabbis). And I also say unto thee that thou art Peter.
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Saint Matthew was careful not to leave out a word of Jesus in order to show that the new ceremony was like the old ceremony in the ritual of creating rabbis to fill the vacant places in the Sanhedrin.
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The Church Promised: with a harmony of the Old and New Testament Scriptures used by Jesus Matthew 16:13 where Jesus speaks to His disciples at Caesarea Phillipi.
As we read Matthew's gospel, we hear him say, "Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time.. but I say unto you." This was his way of expressing Jesus' teaching to the Jews. (Matt. 16). The phrase, "And I say also unto you," is the key that takes us back to the old ceremony of creating Jewish Rabbis.
Saint Matthew is very particular not to omit the Jewish angle that Christ is using in ordaining Saint Peter as a Rabbi in His new dispensation church.
We read in Matthew, the sixteenth chapter, thirteenth verse, where Jesus gathered His disciples around Him at Caesarea Philippi. Here He showed His princely authority (or His Rabbinical authority) in the founding of His Church. Christ and the disciples were gathered together after a wonderful revival where thousands of people were fed with a few small loaves and fishes. St. Matthew 15:32.
Matt. 16:13
The disciples were still reveling in His last miracle. Christ asked, "Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?"
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Matt 16:11
Matthew realized that this question was put to the candidates of old at the temple in Jerusalem. When the ruler of the temple asked the candidate, "Who do men say is God?" the young Rabbinical candidates would reply, "Some say He is the sun, of moon, of stars; of perhaps a cow, of mud turtle (idol)."
[i][See illustration 28a]
MUD RAIN GOD OF THE PUEBLO INDIANS
(A rain god was supposed to come into this pottery image) This rain god tortoise was given to Mary Snyder Hazeltine in March 1881, by Miss Perry, a missionary to the Pueblo Indians of Laguna Pueblo. It had been given to Miss Perry by a converted Indian who had used it as a god to pray to when the land needed rain. It was more than a hundred years old when Mary Snyder Hazeltine got it. (Mary Snyder was one of the first missionaries of New Mexico.) It was given to the author of this book in 1935.
Matt. 16:44
How much this was like the answer the disciples gave Jesus when He asked, "Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?" They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, of one of the prophets."
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Matt. 16:16
Then, following the old ceremony, the ruler of the council of ordination would say, "But whom do you say is the God of Israel?" To which they would reply, "She-ma yis rael" of "The Lord, our God. The Lord is One." And when Jesus asked the same question of Himself, "Whom do you say that I am?" Peter, the spokesman for the rest, replied, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God."
Matt 16:17
Again referring to the old ceremony of the Jews, the leader would say, "Blessed art thou (Gamaliel of Samuel), for no man showed you this; but the Father in Heaven has revealed it to you, because you are His." And Christ said, "Blessed art thou Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven."
[ii][See illustration 29a]
Matt. 16:18
" We go back again to the old ceremony at this point where all those assembled at the (†) Semikhah would chant the name of the candidate saying "Thou art Gamaliel. Thou art Gamaliel.
________
(†) Shema--Yisroel -- Refer to British Museum letter, next page.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 30
THE BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON, W.C.I
Department of Oriental printed Books and Manuscripts
TELEPHONE June 29. 54
Museum 8621
Dear Madam,
The Keeper of the Department of Oriental Printed Books, and MSS. has asked me to reply to your letter of June 16th.
The ceremony of ordaining a Rabbi seems in Rabbinic times to have consisted of the following five stages:
1) the laying on of hands (Semikhah);
2) proclamation of the ordained as Rabbi by word of mouth;
3) his investiture with a special mantle;
4) festivities, including the rhythmical praise of the newly ordained Rabbi by the assembled scholars;
The other stage is the celebration for the young candidate (Rabbi) which included great festivities. We are most interested in the second stage which is the proclamation of the ordained as Rabbi by word of mouth: "Thou art Peter, thou art Peter." (also step 4)
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"Thou art Gamaliel." And so we hear Jesus saying in His "Ceremony," "And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter."(†)
Matt. 16: 18
Again referring to the Jewish ceremony as a pattern for His procedure, we hear the Rabbi say, "Upon this confession that the Lord God is the Rock(‡) will we establish and govern all tribes of Israel." And so we have Jesus Christ saying to Peter, "And upon this Rock (your belief that I am Christ; the Son of the Living God) will I build my Church."
[iii][See illustration 31a]
In Deuteronomy 32:3, 4, Moses said, "I will declare the name of the Lord. . . He is the Rock."
________
(†) Page 605, Merrivale's General History of Rome also tells of Victoranius' confession of Christ the Rock. His name was shouted by the witnesses before the church body.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 32
Matt. 16:18
Going back to the old Jewish ceremony again, we hear the Rabbi say, "No nation shall prevail against you as long as you believe that the God of Israel is the Rock, (Deut. 39:4) and every place the soles of your feet shall tread shall be yours." So we hear Jesus say to Peter, "The gates of Hell shall not prevail against it." (This Church that I will found.)
[iv][See illustration 32a]
Secondly, Others, by this rock, understand Christ; "Thou art Peter. thou hast the name of a stone, but upon this rock, pointing to himself, I will build my church." Perhaps he laid his hand on his breast, as when he said, Destroy this temple (John ii. 19), when be spoke of the temple of his body. Then he took occasion from the temple, where he was, so to speak of himself. and gave occasion to Rome to misunderstand him of that; so here he took occasion from Peter to speak of himself as the Rock, and gave occasion to some to misunderstand him of Peter. But this must be explained by those many Scriptures which speak of Christ as the only Foundation of the church; see I Cor. iii. 11; I Pet. ii. 6. Christ is both its Founder and its Foundation; he draws souls and draws them to himself; to him they are united, and on him they rest and have a constant dependence.
Thirdly, Others by this rock understand this confession which Peter made of Christ and this comes all to one with understanding… [Text from a commentary--Ed.]
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[v][See illustration 33a for letter interpreted below]
Ministere
De
L'EDUCATION NATIONALE Paris le 9 Juilet 1954
MUSEE DE CLUNY
4 place Paul Painleve
Tel. ODEon 24- 31
Madame,
2 The tabernacle portable in chiseled silver N.cf the Inventory:Cl.12 239 H.O. 56 size 0.20:depth 0,15. Ste'reotype:photo from Archives. O A A 449 B.
This rectangular Tabernacle with 2 doors either German of Austrian of the l8th century. It also comes from the Strauss collection. 3 of the catalogue, and It also figures In the Jewish Encyclopedia. (Vol. II, p. 126 This tabernacle contains also the rollers of the Law with a band embroidered by inscriptions. It also has a suitable key, but very simple On the photo O.A.449 B, showing the open tabernacle a part of the embroidered band is visible, and one can see the key in the lock. These two things have not been photographed separately, and it seems difficult to photograph the whole band because of its length.
3. Portable tabernacle of gilt wood. N. of the Inventory CL.13.331.
Matt. 16:19
At this point the old Rabbis showed the young candidates keys that would unlock the chests that held the Sacred Scriptures. (See picture of key and letter from Paris; also the clipping) [vi][See illustration 33b] These Scriptures were to be searched in order to know what was right, and what was wrong, according to God's Holy Word. Then the young candidate could unlock; the chests and take out a scroll and
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 34
read it and interpret it. So Jesus said, "I will (a future time) give unto you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven." (Which meant the keys of power by the Holy Spirit to open the understanding of His Word.)
Those scrolls were written and given to the Children of Israel after they had already been written in the books of Heaven and established there. "Thy Word, oh Lord, is settled forever in Heaven," said David. But Jesus said, "I speak only those things that I have heard from my Father." He knew that God had settled His own Word in Heaven and it was written in the Book of Heaven before He gave it to Moses
[The following quotations were taken from a commentary--Ed.]
…whole counsel of God, use these keys well, Acts xx. 27.
Some make the giving of the keys to allude to the custom of the Jews in creating a doctor of the law, which was to put into his hand the keys of the chest where the book of the law was kept, denoting his being authorized to take and read it; and the binding and loosing, to allude to the fashion about their books, which were in rolls; they shut them by binding them up with a string, which they untied when they opened them. Christ gives his apostles power to shut of open the book of the gospel to people as the case required. See the exercise of this power, Acts xiii. 46; xviii. 6. When ministers preach pardon and peace to the penitent, wrath and the curse to the impenitent, in Christ's name, they act then pursuant to this authority of binding and loosing.
(2 ) The key of discipline, which is but the application of the former to particular persons, upon a right estimate of their character and actions. It is not legislative power that is hereby conferred, but judicial: the judge doth not make the law, but only… 233
…is here expressed by the delivering of the keys, and, with them, a power to bind and loose. This is not to be understood of any particular power that Peter was invested with, as if he were sole door-keeper of the kingdom of heaven, and had that key of David which belongs only to the Son of David; no, this invests all the apostles and their successors with a ministerial power to guide and govern the church of Christ, as it exists in particular congregations of churches, according to the rules of the gospel. Clara reyni calorumi in Christ's conference.
B. Petro apostolo cuncti susceptimus sacerdotes --All we that are priests, received, in the person of the blessed apostle Peter, the keys of the kingdom of heaven; so Ambrose De Dignit. Sacred. Only the keys were first put into Peter's hand, because he was the first that opened the door of faith to the Gentiles, Acts x. 28. As the king, in giving a charter to a corporation, empowers the magistrates to hold courts in his name, to try matters of fact, and determine therein according to law, confirming what is so done regularly as if done in any of the superior courts; so Christ, having incorporated his church, hath appointed the office of the ministry for the keeping up of order and government, and to see that his laws be duly served; I will give thee the keys. He doth not say, " I have given them." of "I do now; but " I will do it," meaning after his resurrection, when he ascended on high, he gave those gifts, Ephes. iv. 8; then this power was actually given, not to Peter only, but to all the rest, ch. xxviii. -19, 20; John xx. 21. He doth not say, The keys shall be given, but, I will give them; for ministers derive; their authority from Christ, and all their power to be used in his name, I Cor. v. 4.
Now, 1. The power here delegated is a spiritual power; it is a power pertaining to the kingdom of heaven, that is, to the church. [Text of the commentary ends here--Ed.]
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 35
and also to Christ. That is why Jesus referred to His Words as the authority of the Kingdom of Heaven. And that is why He said to Peter, "I will give you the Kingdom of Heaven," which really is the ability to unlock the hidden meanings of His Words.
Going back in the old ceremony, the next step is where the young Rabbi is handed the keys to the chests that hold the Torah(†), with authority to unlock the chest and take out the precious scroll. He removes the cloth wrapper and finds the scroll bound with a band, which he removes. This is to "loose (‡) the scroll. The scroll is placed on the reading stand and then opened to the place where the law is written that
[vii][See illustration 35a]
________
(†) Word of God to Moses. First five books of the Holy Scriptures.
(‡) Jesus said of Lazarus and. "Loose him and let him go," for he was bound with grave clothes.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 36
will judge right of wrong. When the search is finished and judgment is made, the young Rabbi gives his decision from the old scroll. Then he rolls the scroll together and takes the binder of a strong cord of ribbon, and with this he binds the scrolls, signifying that the decision is made. The next step is to wrap it up in a piece of linen of other cloth, meaning that the case is settled. "Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples.(†)
________
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[viii][See illustration 37a]
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 38
_____________________________________________________________________
The old ceremony of obtaining teachers The new dispensational ceremony of
ordaining teachers
Old and young men sat in two rows. The old
Rabbis in one and the young men chosen to Jesus with His disciples at Caesarea Philippi.
study for the priesthood in the other. When a Jesus was the 'High Priest' of the new
seat was vacated by an old Rabbi. one of the dispensation.
young men as chosen and ordained to that
chair. He was consecrated in a definite
ceremony.
The Rabbinical body that consecrated the
Rabbis was composed of the High Priest and
the Sanhedrin.
______________________________________________________________________
The Candidate is questioned by Jesus the High Priest Questions:
the High Priest
Q. Who do men say is God?" Q. "Who do men say that I the Son of Man
A. Some say the sun, moon, stars. am?"
Others say a beast or snake or a mud turtle. A. Some say that thou are John the Baptist,
etc. some Elias and others Jeremias, or one of the
prophets.
Q "Whom do you say is God ?" Q. "Whom say ye that I am?"
A. She ma yis reel.(†) (The Lord our God. A. Thou art the Christ the Son of the living
The Lord is one.) God.
________
(†) She ma yis reel--"The only Jewish confession
of faith found among all classes and sects of
Jews."--Webster
_______________________________________________________________________
High Priest says: Jesus says:
Blessed art thou Samuel or Gamaliel for no Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh
man has revealed this to you. You have seen and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but
God do miracles like parting the sea, bringing my Father which is in Heaven.
water from the rock, making the sun stand still.
etc. This is how you know He is God.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 39
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High Priest says: Jesus says:
I say unto thee that "Thou art Gamaliel, thou "AND I ALSO . . . And I also say unto thee,
art Gamaliel." And the 12 Rabbis repeat "Thou that thou art Peter." I also am conducting my
art Gamaliel. thou art Gamaliel." (Calling the ceremony. "I also say unto thee, thou art
name of the newly ordained Rabbi.) Peter."
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Upon your confession of God as the Rock, And upon this ROCK will I build my Church.
you may govern the people of Israel. God will and the pates of hell shall not prevail against
guide you and lead you in the way you should it. "I will declare the name of the Lord . . . He
go. (Deut. 32:3,4) "I will declare the name of is the Rock. Deut. 32:4 " The Rock was
the Lord. He is the Rock." Christ.'' I Cor. 10:4
No nation then shall be able to stand before
you.
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The High Priest gives a set of keys to the "And I will give unto you the keys of the
young Rabbi who is now allowed to unlock kingdom of heaven: whatsoever thou shalt
the chests of sacred Scriptures. (The arks) bind on earth shall have been bound in
The young man takes the scrolls out and heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on
removes the wrapper. Then he finds the scrolls earth shall have been loosed in heaven."
have been bound with a thong (binder) which (Greek active past. Worrell's Tr. N.T. )
he also looses. He then places the scroll upon
the reading stand and unrolls it. The keys to unlock the meanings of the Holy
The priest says: "You may take the scrolls Scriptures Key to the Scriptures. Key of
out and search them for they contain every Truth.
rule that governs the people of God."
After you and the other governors of the
sacred scrolls have found the place in the
Torah that relates to the offense committed and
have come to a decision, you may bind the
scroll with the binder. This means that the
decision is made from the words of God to us
through Moses in the Torah.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 40
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God had written these words in heaven "The words that I speak unto thee, the same
before He gave them to Moses. They judge shall judge you in the last day." Jesus said. "I
all the tribes of Israel. speak only those things I hear God speak to me
"Thy word is settled forever in heaven." so my words are from the kingdom of heaven,
Then you may place the wrapper on the and have already been established there. I speak
scroll and put it away in the ark. This signifies of myself.
that the case is settled.
And you have the right to use the keys in any
future trial of a condemned person.
Remember your decisions must be accurate
for these words came from the Kingdom of
Heaven. Your decision must agree with the
words of the Torah.
What could a pagan or a philosopher of the third century understand about the revelation of the old Jewish dispensational ceremonies? These had to be explained by a Jew. In the first two centuries when the Jews were Christian disciples they helped the Church to understand the true Gospel the way St. Matthew explained it. It was a sad day for the Church when the Jewish Christians left.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 41
Now we go back to Jesus, to His "ceremony of ordination in founding His church, and He says, "Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall have been(†) bound in Heaven." What did He mean by this? It is simple enough to understand from the old ceremony that He was saying, "When you govern my Church, you make decisions using My Words as the law or torah for the new church." For He said, "I have not spoken of Myself. The Words that I have spoken unto you, the same shall judge you in the last day." And just as they had bound up the scroll after making their decisions, Jesus was trying to tell them, "What you shall bind on earth, shall have been hound in Heaven." These words are very important; I mean the words "shall have been" which the Greek brings out. All these judgments and decisions already settled and established in Heaven; and Jesus brought them down to us in His spoken Word, and they will judge us. They will never pass away.
"The Bereans were more noble, in that they had searched the Scriptures." Acts 17:11
________
(†) Greek active past from Worrell's New Testament
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 42
[ix][See illustration 42a]
[The text of illustration 42a follows--Ed.]
18 And I also say to you, that you are Peter, 2 and upon this rock 3 I will build My assembly, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. 19 I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; and whatsoever you shall bind on the earth shall have been bound in Heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose on the earth shall have been loosed in Heaven.
20 Then He charged the disciples that they should tell no one that He was the Christ.
HIS DEATH FORETOLD.
21 From that time began Jesus to show to His disciples, that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and high priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised up. 22 And Peter, taking Him aside, began to rebuke Him, saying, "God be merciful to Thee! this shall not be to Thee." 23 But
2 Gr. Petros, a stone detached. 3 Gr. Petra, a fixed rock.
18 You are Peter. Petros is a detached stone, a small power and authority. If this included the Gospel, then Peter used the keys very successfully on the day of Pentecost. (See Acts 2:41; 4:4.) Shall have been bound; the things that God's people bind on earth are first bound in Heaven. There are things that God chooseth to bind through His people, and whatever He binds through them on earth He first bindeth in Heaven. The same is true of loosing.
From Worrell's New Testament (Greek active past)
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When a lawsuit has been judged and dismissed from the United States courts the lawyers say, "WRAP, IT UP.(†) This comes from the time when Israel's judges tried criminal cases in the Jewish courts. We read in the Scriptures, Micah 7:3, about a case where the judge said, "WRAP IT UP." This statement is a part of the routine of court procedure which is far back in history. It refers to the manner of handling the law books which contained the ancient laws of Moses (the Torah).
These scrolls were kept in a locked chest and carefully guarded lest they should be destroyed, for they were handwritten and very precious. When a case came before the courts the judge would call for the scrolls and the attendant would be handed a set of keys to the chests which he would unlock and remove the scrolls. These were placed on a reading stand in front of the judge's seat. The judge commanded them to he unwrapped, so the young Rabbi took off the wrapper which was perhaps a linen cloth wound many times around the scrolls, like the linen wrapper for the Dead Sea Scrolls.
When the scrolls were exposed they were tied with a thong called a binder. The judge said, "Loose them." That was done by taking off the binder. Then the
________
(†) Micah 7:3 "That they may do evil with both hands earnestly, the prince asketh, and the judge asketh for a reward; and the great man, he uttereth his mischievous desire; so they wrap it up."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 44
scrolls were opened to the particular place where the rules were written that judged that particular case. The lawyers of old read and gave their opinions to the judge and while the judge was pondering the case he said, "Bind the scrolls." Then the judge gave his decision and said, ''Wrap it up," which meant it was finished.
The scrolls were returned and locked in the chests for further use.
[x][See illustration 44a]
This is a picture of a wrapped scroll. In the olden days the wrapper was not as beautiful as this one but was a piece of cloth (probably linen) which was wrapped around and around and tucked in at the ends. It was much like the winding of the grave clothes of the dead, or the swaddling of a baby.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 45
In the Old Testament we read in Exodus 22:9 of the law that governed a case that was brought into the courts.
A certain man had lost his sheep, and the one who found it knew whose it was but refused to return it. So the man who owned the sheep, brought the case into the court. The judges commanded the second Book of the Torah to be brought from the chests. The young rabbi was handed the keys to unlock the chests and when the scroll of the law was read it proved the man guilty of breaking the law of God because he would not return the sheep to its lawful owner. The judge then asked, "Will you now return the sheep to his owner?" and the man said, "Yes." Then the judge passed the sentence, "Your sin is forgiven," (or remitted) but had the man refused to obey the law, the judge would have said, "Your sin is retained."
John 20:23
Jesus said, "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." But these sins were only to be judged by the written or spoken words of God and His Son. Jesus said, "The words that I have spoken, the same shall judge you in the last day."
We know that no man can forgive sin unless he has sought for the laws of the Savior to see how Jesus would act in a similar case.
What would Jesus do if He were standing in our presence? If any man uses the Word of God as his
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 46
basis for forgiveness, he obeys God. The Roman church claims the right to forgive sin, but they have gone by dogma and false interpretations and not by the Holy Scriptures.
Tertullian said, "It could hardly follow, that a man who is ladened with gross sin could officiate in any office of Christ to forgive sins of others." "For God heareth not sinners." John 9:31.
Tertullian also said if a man can perform a miracle, he might be able to forgive sin.
There will be many die and awaken in hell who trusted in the forgiveness of a Roman Catholic priest.
"If we sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous," and Jesus said in Saint John 4:14, "If ye shall ask anything in my name I will do it." Jesus would rather forgive you than do anything else on earth, for Jesus said, "Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out."
"There is one mediator between God and Man, the man Christ Jesus."
"If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
There is no priest who has confidence in his own power to grant forgiveness. He knows in his heart that he, as well as all other priests, has hidden unconfessed sin.
Hebrews 7:23
"Wherefore He (Christ) is able to save them to the uttermost that come to God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them."
Hebrews 11:6
"But without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him."
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Romans 8:34
"Christ, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us."
Pardon a personal incident--
I once handed a Roman Catholic priest a tract I had written. He withstood me asking, who authorized the writing of the tract?" I said, "I wrote that, and I am one of the 'Whosoevers' Jesus spoke of in St. John 3:16. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." I then added, "I believe in Jesus, so I am a 'whosoever'.
This led to my confession in my testimony of forgiveness of sin.
"I was taught that Christ had accepted me when I accepted Him. He said, "If we sin, we have an advocate with the Father who said, 'If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.' God convicted me of sin when I was alone in a strawberry patch. I remember what Jesus said. I prayed, 'Dear God, please forgive me, in Jesus' name.'" St. John 14:14.
The heaven opened and over me came a warm cleansing. I knew God had forgiven me."
The priest's eyes filled with tears as he said, "I wish I could have the same experience."
I said, "God is no respecter of persons. Seek Him alone and He will do the same for you."
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Jesus had promised those disciples who followed Him closely that He was going to send them Power from on high which would enable them to carry out His gospel. He called this power the Holy Ghost
Acts 1:4
He told them at the time of His ascension, to go back to Jerusalem and wait there for this promised Holy Ghost which said He, "Ye have heard of me."
There had been a lovely little nucleus of believers those who had followed Him very closely even as Elisha had followed Elijah.
They were the ones to first receive the mantle of the Holy Ghost that would enable them to do the work that He did, and spread the message of Salvation.
As the disciples waited in Jerusalem they did not have any idea just how this Holy Ghost or power from on high would be given to them.
But they obeyed Him and went back; to Jerusalem and waited.
But the Word of God says they were continually in the Temple blessing and praising God.
Luke 24:53 "prayer and supplication"
Acts 1:14 "With one accord"
That is a good attitude for those who are seekers after God (continually blessing and praising God). "Prayer and one accord."
The Word of God says in the Acts of the Apostles, second chapter, verse four, there came a sound from heaven as of a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the
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whole place. Also cloven tongues of fire came and it sat on each of them. All the 120 Apostles began to speak with tongues as the Holy Ghost gave them utterance. This was the initial incoming of the third person of the Trinity which took possession of their bodies. He used their vocal organs and began to speak with other tongues. This was the way the Holy Ghost announced His presence and possession of their physical beings.
I Peter 1:21 Isaiah 28:11,12
We wonder why He used that method and not some other. But we know that the Spirit of God took possession of the Old Testament prophets speaking through them as He chose but in their own language, not in tongues. God had them write as they were moved by Him. They did this in their own language in which they had been born and raised. But when the Holy Ghost instituted the New Testament church He did not speak in their own language but spoke in other tongues. The prophecies in the Old Testament foretold that the Holy Ghost's operation in-human beings would be with stammering lips and another tongue. And God said it would be "a rest and a refreshing (to speak with tongues) wherewith we may cause the weary to rest."
We wonder why He used that method of an unknown language.
It is a refreshing to be so filled with God's Holy Ghost who is the third person of the Godhead that He can speak as He chooses in a different language than we have learned or studied. This was the first miracle in the Church. God showed them that He could so possess them that He could move their tongues and their bodies even as He did Lazarus' body when He raised him from the tomb.
It was such a sudden break from their natural language that they could not doubt the possession of God's supernatural power.
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Some have talked when under the power of the anesthetic ether, but God's power was not some overpowering anesthetic. It was the Holy Ghost Himself from within impelling the speech muscles and moving them at His will.
No wonder the Apostles were "set on fire."
There was not a shred of doubt as to what God had done.
Had He used their own language when He filled them with the Holy Ghost, and had the Holy Ghost used their vocal organs and spoken their own language in which they were born, they might not have noticed the break between their own impelling speech and that impelling by the Holy Spirit and they might have doubted that this was done by the Holy Ghost.
Acts 2:16
But when He used the disciples' vocal organs and began to speak with other tongues and magnify God, there was no doubt that 'This was that' spoken of by the prophet Joel. They acted like drunk people. It was an unusual experience, but this was the way God chose to initiate the real Apostolic Church.
The comments of the crowd saying that they were drunken called forth a wonderful sermon by Saint Peter.
The Apostles must have acted drunk, staggering and falling on the ground and shouting and crying and doing many other seemingly hysterical things.
Acts 2:12-15
"And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this?
Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine. But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day."
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This was that. This was the final consummation of all that God was going to do for the world and all of its inhabitants.
There was nothing else that He could do to redeem them.
Sabellius said in his statement of belief, Mankind who had fallen could only be redeemed by God placing His own Spirit within them by an act of hypostasis. He said that the divine logos would come into their bodies and energize them with ability to act as Jesus acted.
That is what happened on the day of Pentecost when the church was originated.
The Holy Ghost came in and energized them. He gave them holy boldness to preach the Word of God with power and to teach all nations to observe all things whatsoever Christ commanded them. It made them live according to God's holy commandments and Christ's words.
They were to baptize all nations in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever Christ had commanded them.
There were 120. We do not know how many followed Him out to the Mount of Olives but we do know that this little nucleus was the first Church.
It says in the Acts of the Apostles, "There were added unto the church that day such as were saved."
There were some 3,000 souls added to the church. The word church was used to signify Christ's followers.
This little group, was called the Church, even "The church of the living God."
As we read through the Acts of the Apostles we find the progress of this little body. This is the Church that was first established. All the following organized assemblies got their name and pattern from it.
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The pattern was given by the Lord and that pattern was to be followed.(†)
From this little nucleus of 120 we see the Christian Church begin to expand. The disciples and apostles spread into all the world.
Some went north, some east and south and west. They went with the same power that Jesus had and told every one that they, too, could have the same experience if they would obey the commands of Jesus.
________
(†) The gift of the Holy Ghost comes with the Holy Spirit's utterance in other tongues. The gift of tongues should follow the church assemblies of every generation of believers. It was one of the gifts of the Spirit and is supposed to go along with the other gifts in order to have a perfect church body.
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In the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Romans, verse seven, St. Paul sends his greetings to Andronicus and Junia. He says they were in Christ before him and he calls them Apostles.
This appellation 'Apostles' is not a common title and indicates that these two were more than ordinary Christians. They could have been in Jerusalem in 33 A. D. and might have been in the group of 120 obedient Disciples who were gathered in the upper room on the day of Pentecost. Acts 2:4. This seems to be the only way one can single them out and call them apostles. We know Christ chose twelve, then seventy and so this lot of about 120 faithful followers could just as well be called Apostles, for they were waiting for the Promise of the Father in company with the 11 and 70. Roman Jews at Jerusalem were called sojourners. Acts 2:10. They had proselytes and we have the right to believe that they took the gospel back to their own people. These apostles could have established a church in Rome for some of them met St. Paul at the Three Taverns when he arrived in Italy.
When the reign of the Emperor Claudius was past, 54 A.D., we read that those Christian Jews who had been expelled from Rome filtered back into the city. They wanted to continue in fellowship with the church in which they had once labored.
Thirteen years had allowed the infant church at Rome to revert to the old pagan ways. They had no use for the Jewish background which was vitally
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necessary in order for the converts to understand the prophecies concerning Jesus in God's plan of redemption. These Christians in the first Church at Rome had lost the essence of the Gospel but retained Christ's name. They called themselves The Christian Church.
The ancient Dead Sea Scrolls spoke of the sons of light and the sons of darkness.
There were two such groups in Rome in the years 41-54 A.D. The Christians who were drawn back into the old Pagan worship had lost the true light of the world. They were sons of darkness.
St. Paul speaks of them in this chapter of Romans 16:17, 18. St. Peter also writes of them in II Peter, Chapter 2. In the City of Rome after the year 54 A.D. the Christians had to bypass the first Christian Church and so Priscilla and Aquila and Andronicus and Junia started all over again and established a second church in Rome. Phoebe was sent to the second Church at Rome which was truly the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We have only to look at the progress of the first established church of Rome in later years to see them acting like pagans whom they emulated. Lies, murders, forgeries, supremacy claims, etc.
They looked so much like a pagan temple with their images and adornments of the sun god that the Emperors favored them but persecuted the pure evangelical churches of the empire. This is why the first church at Rome became so large. With the approval of the emperors they arose rapidly. We can see that it was this branch of the church only that could have overthrown the Roman Empire. They used the pagan tactics. It took "fire to drive out fire" as the old adage says.
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[xi][See illustration 55a]
CLAUDIUS
Emperor 41-64 AD.
(As Jupiter, whose Eagle is at his feet)
Claudius made orphans of Rome's First Church Christians
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The ''Dispersion" is a general title applied to those Jews who remained settled in foreign countries, after the return from the Babylonian exile. The mixed assemblies from which the first converts were gathered on the day of Pentecost represents each division of the "Dispersion." Acts 2:9-11. Later we read St. Peter's letter from Babylon addressed to the ones scattered abroad (the Dispersion). St. John makes reference to those of the dispersion in the seventh chapter, verse 35 of his gospel.
After the dispersion of the Jews which took place many years before Christ, there was always a longing in each heart to return to Jerusalem at least once in his lifetime to worship in the old temple that Solomon had dedicated in the sacred city.
These visits to Jerusalem were usually planned so that the traveler would be there during the feast of the Passover and Pentecost. Thus we see many Jews of the 'Dispersion' at Jerusalem during the most important Passover celebration since the first Passover in Egypt.
This special time was the great feast when our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ became the Passover Lamb. St. John said of Jesus, "Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world." We believe that Andronicus and Junia (Romans 16) as well as Priscilla and Aquila were among those Jews who heard St. Peter preach his great sermon, and were among those who were added to the church after the day of Pentecost.
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The Apostles insisted that these new converts of the 'Dispersion' of the Jews tarry at Jerusalem until they also received the gift of the Holy Ghost.
St. Paul came to Corinth (Acts 18:1) and found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla (because Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome.
Aquila having been born in Pontus showed that his ancestors were of the dispersion (or those Jews who did not return to Jerusalem, after the Babylonian Captivity but settled in Pontus).
There were many such Jewish settlements all over the world at that time. Some of these Jews had a large quarter in the city of Rome.
Rome was a very large city at this time. The wall was seven miles around. The population was estimated at over two million people counting the slaves and the suburban settlements outside the walls. There were 400 pagan temples and also a Jewish quarter at the foot of Mt. Janiculum.
When Priscilla and Aquila got to Rome about 36 A.D., they found that Andronicus and Junia had already started a church. Priscilla and Aquila joined them as teachers. They pointed to Christ as the Messiah, who, by becoming a willing sacrifice, fulfilled the Jewish prophecies, and was the Jews' Passover Lamb. The pagan converts who had come into the group knew nothing about the Old Testament law and prophets. Priscilla and Aquila took time to explain the Word of God to them.
The Jewish Christian teachers had the Pentecostal enduement of power. What they could not teach in persuasive words of man's wisdom, they demonstrated by the Spirit's power, by healing the sick and performing miracles just like all the other apostles.
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The members of the little church at Rome although a mixed body of pagans and Jewish Christians, had sweet fellowship with each other. God had filled their hearts with supernatural love when He gave them the gift of the Holy Ghost. This divine love of Christ in their hearts was the bond that broke down all differences between them.
Some of the new converts were slaves, who heard them gladly. Priscilla and Aquila gave them an equally sound foundation in the Scriptures.
The Old Testament teaching was made to point out the miracles that God wrought among His children before Christ's time. They also brought the true prophecy of the coming of the Messiah (Jesus), who wrought miracles and fulfilled every word of prophecy concerning Himself. The pagans watched the Jewish Christians lay hands on the sick and saw them recover. This was Christianity in action.
These four made inroads into the big Jewish quarter of Rome which was at the foot of Mt. Janiculum. Even as St. Paul went to the Jews first and then to the Gentiles, so Priscilla and her husband and Andronicus and Junia went to the Jewish quarter and made many converts.
The Orthodox Jews in the Jewish quarters made war on the little church. They considered it a terrible disgrace for any Jew to become a Christian, and were so bitter that they would do most anything to revenge the loss of one member of their family. The strife was so great that the police had to intervene.
Emperor Claudius came to the throne in the year 41 A.D. Religious disturbances among the Jews seemed to be his major trouble.
Priscilla and Aquila kept winning Jewish converts, and Emperor Claudius had so much trouble
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that he resolved to dismiss all the Jews from Rome. Priscilla and Aquila went to Corinth and joined St. Paul in his ministry in Asia Minor.
The baby church at Rome was around seven years old at this time. It was now left without Jewish mothers and fathers in the Lord. The church that had been a mixed congregation now became a totally gentile pagan Christian group. This made Christian orphans of the pagan members of the church at Rome.
There was no other Christian church in the world that had such a devastating experience as Rome had at this time. The other churches of Asia continued to be a mixed congregation and grew in the love of Christ. The pagan Christians at Rome were of varied degrees of experience. Some had had more training than others, but the main body of the church was unlearned and weak enough to backslide into pagan rituals the minute the Jewish teachers were gone.
This pagan Roman church was beset by the inroads of the old pagans as well as the inward doubts of its own members.
If ever there was a need for strong spiritual leadership in the church of Rome it was now, but with the departure of the Jewish Christians it seemed as if all was lost.
The Jews had held to the apostolic teaching and had kept the pagans seeking for the enduement of God's power that would enable them to be true to Jesus in such a time as this.
Andronicus and Junia were thrown into prison but Priscilla and Aquila hurried away to Corinth where St. Paul was laboring.
When these four staunch leaders were taken out of the church of Rome, the less spiritual Christians
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had to take over. They were like a brood of chickens when a fox had snatched the mother hen away.
The pagan population of Rome rejoiced.
It was not long until the weaker members were going back into the pagan temples of Rome.
They now organized into a group of just pagan Christians and elected a man to take the place of Andronicus who had been the chief bishop,. They called this new leader of the flock 'Father' instead of bishop.
It seems as if the pagan Christians had secretly resented the Jewish domination because some of the newer Jewish converts from the settlement at the foot of Mt. Janiculum had not been as kind and loving as Andronicus and Junia and Aquila and Priscilla. Now that they were gone, the pagan Christians instituted their own order in the services. It was not long until little pagan practices began to spring up in the church.
The first change was a simple innovation suggested by those who had come over from sun worship. These sun worshippers composed the largest section of the congregation. They asked the 'father' if they could face the east when they prayed, as they had worshipped in the temple of the Sun. This was the simple beginning and to all it seemed quite harmless. It was not long until the Eucharist took on a pagan aspect. The sun worshippers asked to change the form of the bread used in the Eucharist into an entirely round cake. This was placed on the altar where most of the ornaments were round. It was another reversion to Sun worship.
We remember that in the worship of the sun, the drink offering was poured out.
Jeremiah 7:18
"The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.
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Jeremiah 44:18
"But since we have left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things and have been consumed by the sword and by the Famine."
In the Eucharist the round cakes were given, but the cup (of which Christ said to drink ye all of it) was withheld. This was almost an exact representation of the worship of the sun god.
Andronicus and Junia had a copy of the Old Testament which they loved. They had made a great sacrifice in allowing the Church of Rome to keep this sacred copy of the Scriptures. But the church had no Jewish interpreters, so there was no one who could teach from it. It was laid aside.
Later, Claudius' soldiers found these Jewish writings and burned them. The last shred of Apostolic teaching seemed to be destroyed with the burning of that old.
The orphans of Rome were like a ship that had lost its rudder.
Priscilla and Aquila knew that Claudius could not live forever and they were constantly watching for the time when they could return to their beloved Christian family at Rome. Andronicus and Junia spent most of Claudius' reign in prison. There was much rejoicing when these four Christian warriors could again join Christian forces to combat pagan Rome.
The first place they went was to the church they had guided from babyhood. The services they attended made their hearts sink. Their beloved church where they had worked for seven years and taught the Apostolic doctrine looked like one more pagan temple.
This church had retained the name, 'First Christian Church,' but as Christ had said to the backslidden churches of Asia, "Thou hast a name that thou livest but art dead." This could now be said to this first Christian Roman Church.
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These four apostolic leaders of that once pure Christian Church were horrified when they saw images of St. Peter and others had been placed around time church. The members gave their money to these statues and prostrated themselves before them in worship.
Andronicus and Junia and Priscilla and Aquila admonished this church that they had left their first love, and they needed to repent. The reproof fell on deaf ears.
There was nothing left for these four to do but to bypass the old group and start a new Christian church in Rome where the precepts of the Christian fathers and the doctrines of the Apostles could again be taught.
This became the second church of Rome, but it was evangelical. It was probably from this group that the brethren welcomed St. Paul when he arrived later.
Had St. Peter gone to Rome, he would have been expelled along with Priscilla and Aquila, 41 A. D. When Claudius came to be emperor, he made all Jews, Christians and Orthodox, leave Rome. But the authentic dates of St. Peter show him to have been in Jerusalem in the years when Priscilla and Aquila were working with St. Paul in Corinth. This was 41-54 A. D. The Word of God says that at the time of the stoning of Stephen, 34 A. D., the disciples left Jerusalem. (All except the Apostles left.) The Apostles remained in Jerusalem and that group included St. Peter, St. James, etc. The Scriptures say that they guided the church in Palestine and Syria. These apostles did not get out of Jerusalem until Hanan the prophet began his prophetic warning to the Jews.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 63
We know that St. Peter had such a firm Jewish background that had he gone to the city of Rome to evangelize, he would never have allowed his converts to revert to the old pagan customs in worship.
All other Christians broke fellowship with the first church of Rome because it would not repent and give up the pagan practices. But that first church grew rapidly in numbers. The church had only nominal Christians and among these were a few renegade Jews. When that church was ostracized, it acted like a bad boy who would not take correction. It used every sort of philosopher to originate new ideas that would outsmart the second and third churches of Rome.
The only point in which they excelled was that they were the first church established in Rome. They declared they had priorities on the name church and they doggedly held to this point to try in every way to counteract the fact that they were proven by Scripture to be 'off the beam.'
The idea of supremacy never left them. They knew it was the only point that could make them approved spiritually in the eyes of the spiritually ignorant. Supremacy was their point of prestige so it was magnified at all times, and helped to compensate for their chagrin because of their loss of "face." This hid their secret hurt and they became jealous and envious. Secret schemes began to arise among them and in their childish way they sought for revenge.
When the second church had its councils they made a point of sending sophists to heckle the speakers
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 64
33-67 A.D.
Today we can see from authentic dates of St. Peter's movements that he did not go to Rome to start a church.
Acts 8 1 Apostles stayed in Jerusalem ------------------------- 34 A D
Acts 8:14 He helped the church at Samaria to get hold--------- 34 A.D.
of the Holy Ghost
----------------------------------------------------------- 7 yrs.
Acts 10:25 He visited Cornelius-------------------------------- 41 A.D.
Acts 9:34 He healed AEneas at Lydda------------------------- 41 A.D.
Acts 9:36 He raised Dorcas at Joppa-------------------------- 41 A.D.
----------------------------------------------------------- 3 yrs.
Acts 12:11 He returned to Jerusalem from Joppa-------------- 44 A.D.
and was put in prison
----------------------------------------------------------- 7 yrs.
Acts 15:7 He was at the first council in Jerusalem--------------- 51 A D.
----------------------------------------------------------- 9 yrs.
I Pet. 5:13 He went to Babylon on the Euphrates--------------- 60 A.D.
When did he go to Rome?
If Peter had gone to Rome 41 A.D. according to Catholic historians, he got out quickly--because Claudius' edict expelled all Jews from Rome and Peter was no exception. Claudius reigned 13 years.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 65
All these proven dates conflict with Rome's claims that in 41-67 A.D. St. Peter was the first Pope of Rome.(†) Acts 8:1 says all except Apostles left Jerusalem 31 A.D.
We ask ourselves, ''Who, then, did start the first church at Rome?" The earliest truthful martyrologies of Rome were suppressed. One historian states that before the years of Hippolytus and Origen the lists of martyred bishops of Rome do not include the names of St. Peter nor St. Paul. We know St. Paul did go to Rome according to the Scriptures but there is no record of his having been martyred in Rome as the Roman fables tell. Those who were martyrs in Rome were listed by Eusebius. This list was tampered with by later popes and emperors and the name of St. Peter was forged as first pope. All the writings of men like Origen who died about 235 A.D. including the writings of Tertullian and Hippolytus of the same age were sought for by later popes who had the emperors burn them. All allusions to the truth that St. Peter was not the first pope of Rome were crushed when Theodoret's Ecclesiastical History came out, it had 'Three Chapters' that the popes of Rome wanted to get their hands on. It told the truth about the beginnings of the first Roman church and St. Peter's name was not given as the first Bishop of Rome. All the emperors from Honorius, including Justinian(†) hunted for these writings that would expose and nullify Rome's claim of supremacy.
Thousands were killed and banished if they were caught with these exposing writings.
Cunning fables were written making St. Peter crucified with his head down. This created sympathy that hid the truth. This fable and others like it swept
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(†) Webster. A Biographical Dictionary. pub. 1951, pg. 1685.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 66
over the nation and in a few generations this fable --"Quo Vaudis"--became a true fact.
_________________
The only claim of the first Roman church that St. Peter was ever in Rome is substantiated by the Roman statement that when St. Peter said he was in Babylon, he meant Rome. The Word of God says that those who make or love a lie shall never get into heaven. Rev. 22:15.
So St. Peter would never have made a lie by calling Rome 'Babylon' when he was really in Babylon on the Euphrates, and not Babylon (Figuratively Rome). Douay footnote for I Peter v. 13. "Cryptic names of cities were never used in the New Testament Epistles." They were used in the prophecy of Revelation as they were in many of the Old Testament prophecies. The church of Rome was first started by such lovely Apostles as Andronicus and Junia and Priscilla and Aquila who were expelled in 41 A.D. They became the heads of the second church of Rome spoken of in the sixteenth chapter of the book of Romans. St. Paul was writing rising to the group of Christians who returned to Rome after Claudius died. These who had returned to Rome wanted to again mother the first group they had started. But this paganizing flock would have nothing to do with the Christian Jews mentioned in the sixteenth chapter of Romans.
This lovely group formed the second church of Rome, and we read their names in the last chapter of the book of Romans. They were probably the brethren mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles in the passage that describes St. Paul's arrival in Italy from (Caesarea) Rome Judea--Acts 28:15.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 67
We have sufficient proof that St. Peter had been in and around Jerusalem ever since the day of Pentecost. The miracles which followed him in the beginning were wonderful. But in the years just after the first council at Jerusalem in 51 A.D., St. Peter noticed a great lack of these miracles. He wanted to see these signs follow his ministry again.
St. Mark, his 'son,' kept reminding him that most of the other disciples and apostles who had gone into all the world, but returned to Jerusalem for occasional visits, reported mighty signs following their ministry.
Years passed and most of the Jerusalem apostles and disciples had congregated in the little stone church in the garden of Aramathea. When persecution came, they had a safe retreat in the Catacombs under the city of Jerusalem. These underground passages were formed like those of Rome but instead of tuffa being removed, these underground tunnels had been the quarries from which Solomon took the stones to build his Temple at Jerusalem.
The meetings in this little church were much like those of the Essenes in the hill country where Mary went to visit her cousin Elizabeth. ((†)Today's excavations in Aramathea's garden disclose this little church with its circular baptistry.) The apostles might have had the first council meeting in that little church, 51 A.D.
________
(†) See the "Defender Magazine," Gerald Winrod, Editor, Wichita., Kansas, March to October, 1955 Issues.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 68
But in 52-54 A.D., the services were being much disturbed by a prophet named Hanan (page 508 Merrivale's General History of Rome).
He told of the soon coming destruction of Jerusalem and at last St. Peter knew he could no longer reject what he knew to be the message from God through Hanan. St. Peter had felt the lack of the apostolic manifestations of the Holy Ghost in his ministry to the extent that he thought God had deserted him. So a time of fasting and prayer brought St. Peter to the place where his own words (Acts 2:35 and 43) echoed in his ears as well as those of his son Mark.
"These signs shall follow them that believe, they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover." Mark 16:14-20. The two spoke of the dirth of the old-time power. St. Mark said, "And they went forth."
Mark 16:90. St. Peter asked Mark if God had revealed anything to him. All that St. Mark said was, "And they went forth." It seemed God's time to move.
All the assembly in the little stone church seemed to be of the same opinion. Migration was planned.
First they would go to Pella. This was on the same route that was taken to Babylon, at the time of the Jewish captivity. At Pella, there was a like congregation of Christian believers. They could believe the resurrection of Christ, but the virgin birth was rejected.
St. Peter knew this must be corrected. He preached mightily to the congregation at Pella and God healed and filled with the Spirit as in the beginning of his ministry.
Some of these Jewish Christians resented St. Peter's and St. Mark's preaching, so these two moved on to Berea.
Here they found a colony of Jewish Christians who took the whole truth about Christ, beginning with
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 69
his virgin birth. But still St. Peter felt as if he must press on toward the land of the old captivity. He wanted to preach to those Jews who did not return to Jerusalem when Cyrus let them go back. "After all," said Peter, "I am the apostle to the Jews." Galatians 2:19. As the disciples who went with St. Peter and Mark pressed on their journey, they preached in the little settlements along the Euphrates. The closer they came to Babylon, the more old-time power and grace was poured out. Peter knew it was a confirmation of obedience to Jesus' commands.
"It is just like old times," said St. Peter. And St. Mark said, "I told you so. Didn't the Lord say to go and He would confirm the gospel with signs following?" St. Peter knew now that it was so.
As the years drew on to the time of 60 A.D., St. Peter asked St. Mark to write to the Christian Jews dispersed all over Asia Minor. St. Peter had known these precious Jewish Christians of the dispersion since the day of Pentecost, and he loved them as his own children in the Lord.
His lovely epistle started, "Grace to you, and peace be multiplied." And he closed his letter with the words, "The church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you, and so doth Marcus my son."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 70
"Having shorn his head in Cenchrea: for he had a vow." This verse is the key to the long imprisonment of St. Paul in Jerusalem. This imprisonment lasted over two years and was spent in the prison at Caesarea which was on the coast of the Mediterranean. It was a Roman prison in which St. Paul would be safe from the Jews.
We find no reference to a dungeon experience for St. Paul, because according to the Roman law, under which he had found shelter, he had done nothing that would have put him in such a place. He was practically free in the city of Rome.
"And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him."
________________
The long imprisonment of St. Paul at Caesarea(†) was a terrible loss to evangelism. About five chapters of the Acts of the Apostles report no conversions, no healings and no miracles. I believe that the record of the lack of the signs following St. Paul during these years has been the cause for many Bible students to say that the signs were only to get the early church started. Whereas the Word of God says if in any generation
________
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 71
one will go and preach the Gospel to every part of the world, "These signs shall follow them." Mark 16:17. This does not limit the age in which this Scripture may be fulfilled. It says, "Them that believe," and if you believe, the Scripture is for you.
As we follow St. Paul in his journeys throughout the world, we come to his last visit to Jerusalem.
There is a story in the Acts of the Apostles that can tell us why St. Paul did not go back to Jerusalem after the last visit in 58 A.D. When this godly saint was facing Jerusalem for the last time, he chose his itinerary so that he could visit all the little churches he had founded and established.
As we follow him from Cenchrea (Acts 18:18) there is a hidden lesson we can learn from his actions. In Acts 19:21 we read that Paul purposed in the Spirit to go to Jerusalem. The previous verses in Acts 18:21 say, "I must by all means keep this feast that cometh in Jerusalem." Acts ·20:16; tells us this feast was Pentecost.
________________
St. Paul's conversion was a miracle of God. He was a chosen vessel but God wanted him in certain places and not in others. God wanted to teach Paul that when He spoke to him and gave him warnings by the Holy Spirit through His prophets, he was to obey. God had chosen him to preach to the Gentiles.
The disciples at Caesarea besought Paul not to go to Jerusalem because Agabus (Acts 21:11) had foretold of his captivity.
St. Paul was very brave, but he would have done well to heed the warning of the prophet of God. Acts 21:4 says certain disciples told him through the Spirit that he should not go up to Jerusalem.
These warnings were no man-made statements for the Word of God says they were given by the Holy Ghost. This made them imperative.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 72
As a result of not obeying the Spirit, God withheld His grace from St. Paul. There were five chapters of the Acts of the Apostles from this point of St. Paul's life that were without the gifts of the Spirit. The signs that might have followed him were not forthcoming when God withheld His wonder-working grace.
God's grace is the power from on high working healings, miracles, conversions, and the supply of every need for the believer. St. Paul said later, "If any man is justified by the law, he is fallen from grace." How well he knew this when he had been a prisoner so long in Caesarea--sometimes called Rome Judea.
When Agrippa should have turned to the Lord he shook and said, "Almost thou persuades" me to be a Christian." Almost but lost. St. Paul did not see answers to his prayers for when Timothy was sick, Paul recommended a physical cure.
There was a note of despondency in his letter when he said, "Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm." II Tim. 4:14. "The Lord reward him according to his works."
These statements show that Paul did not have the victorious grace that brought the power of love and forgiveness. You will notice that these epistles were written in prison.
________________
We must turn back and consider the condition of the Judaizing believers at Jerusalem. They were zealous for the Law. They were not the recipients of God's grace that would work miracles. They were just existing under the name Christian, and we might call them unbelieving believers, if there could be such.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 73
Every time St. Paul returned to Jerusalem, he was drawn back into bondage by these nominal believers. He noticed the dearth of spiritual gifts as well as the lack of the grace of God. The city seemed dead. This was his last visit because God had warned him. He was mobbed when he went into the Temple to pay his vows. This was the beginning of his imprisonment that lasted over two years at Caesarea (Rome Judea).
None of the Jerusalem saints are recorded as visiting Paul at Caesarea. Those long years were the school that weaned St. Paul entirely from the old Jewish Law.
God had created in St. Paul's heart such a horror of the old Law and its bondage that he would never return to the Temple at Jerusalem.
God was going to destroy Jerusalem because He did not want the apostles to go back to the old roosting places. He wanted them to "go into all the world."
We must remember also that God had told St. Paul that He was sending him far hence to the Gentiles. Acts. 29:21.
When St. Paul was finally taken to Italy and Rome to see Caesar, he got back on Gentile soil. As the journey by boat took him closer and closer to Rome, God's grace again returned to this beloved saint and healings and miracles were again wrought in the name of the Lord.
Do you remember the time St. Paul was put in prison in Philippi? He was on Gentile soil and God worked a miracle (by an earthquake) and set him free. This imprisonment was carried out by the devil, but when St. Paul was imprisoned at Jerusalem it was allowed by God and St. Paul always says, "I, the prisoner of the Lord." He was in God's school of correction.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 74
[xii][See illustration 74a]
ROMAN ARMIES APPROACHING JERUSALEM
When God through Jesus made possible the overcoming of Satan and his works through the believer, He was disappointed in the Christians to whom He had given this enduement of power and Christian authority. It was 18 years after the day of Pentecost. At Pentecost most of the Christian Jews thought, "Now God will bring an earthly kingdom and we will be the chosen few to govern it." But they were very much disillusioned when God changed the old order and said that this Kingdom had to include "all people."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 75
The Jewish apostles were still hovering around Jerusalem since the birth of the church and there was a sufficient number to enable the group to hold a council at Jerusalem in the year 51 A.D.
God's message through Jesus was, "Go ye into all the world," but still in those twenty years since the Holy Ghost had hypostasized Himself in the bodies of the believers, this glorious power within them was being spent entirely on Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. St. Paul went to Antioch later, and this drew the Jerusalem apostles out from home base. But that was not until just before 51 A.D.
Christ stated definitely, "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel." St. Peter had remained as sort of head of these apostles at Jerusalem, and had a voice in the first council. God was disappointed that they had tarried so long at Jerusalem so He withheld His grace from these apostles around Jerusalem because of their lack of obedience.
This diminished power and the lack of healings, caused the apostles to fast and pray for the old-time power.
God knew that these apostles had considered Jerusalem as their home base. They were like chickens who had roosted in one place for a long time. A new roosting place seemed impossible to them.
Twenty-five years after St. Paul's conversion there were thousands of Christian Jews at Jerusalem who were still zealous for the Law. They didn't believe nor accept the virgin birth of the Lord, but they did accept the resurrection because the prophets of old had raised the dead. The bones of a prophet had caused a dead man to come to life when he was hurriedly thrown against them in burial.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 76
The virgin birth seemed unbelievable to them because they were probably some of John the Baptist's disciples who had only gone as far as repentance and water baptism. They did not have the experience that the apostles received on the day of Pentecost, which made true believers of those 120 who had tarried "until" at Jerusalem and felt the quickening power of the Holy Ghost in their bodies. The divine Afflatus and the incoming of the Logos that the disciples had received on the day of Pentecost was a necessary beginning for anyone who would become a genuine believer. It took the supernatural enduement of power to make them believe in the supernatural.
These apostles around Jerusalem were not getting very far with the genuine Christianity. They had no signs following them and the reason for this was that God was withholding the signs because they had not obeyed Jesus' command to "GO." He knew that this supernatural power of the Holy Ghost could not be put into old "wineskins."
In the years before 70 A.D. God even sent a prophet to these believers who were zealous for the Law, to tell them that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed.
The wisest and more spiritual Christians like St. Peter and St. Mark and the other twelve, began to migrate. The first city they reached was named Pella, which was east of the Jordan and south of the sea of Galilee.
Before they left Jerusalem they hid the copies of the sacred scrolls that were too heavy to carry with them. They hoped to recover them later when they could return to their homes. But as they moved farther and farther from Jerusalem the old-time signs and miracles returned and graced their ministry. They kept right on their journey, not stopping to look back
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 77
68 A.D.
as Lot's wife had done. So from 68 A.D., we find St. Peter located in Babylon and the other apostles scattered in different directions. After God had gotten the apostles safely out to other places preaching the gospel He impelled Titus, a Roman general, to sack the beloved city.
Merrivale's account of the siege of Jerusalem:
"In the first instance Titus had attempted a conciliation and sent Josephus to the gate with an offer of honorable terms. But the enthusiasm of the city had driven away his envoy with arrows."
"He now repeated his offer with no better success Then at last he determined to proceed to extremities. He besieged the city. Famine began to prevail among the Jews. The soldiers required to be served first and the rest of the citizens suffered the direst horrors. Children were eaten by their parents. The terrors of the people were excited by the report of prodigies. The fanatic Hanan traversed the streets repeating the cry, 'Woe to Jerusalem', till at last exclaiming 'Woe to me also' he fell by a blow from a Roman catapult. The Romans affirmed that the gates of the Temple had burst open of their own accord, and a voice more than human had been heard exclaiming 'Let us depart hence."(†)
70 A.D.&132-135 A.D.
After the destruction of the city, when Titus had left, the Jews who had evacuated the city began to return and try to rebuild it. There was a man in Jerusalem at that time who was an impostor. He claimed to be the Messiah. His name was Bar Cocheba. He was a leader of insurrections who was war-like and stubborn.
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(†) Page 507--Merrivale's General History of Rome, 1879. Harper Bros., N.Y. (pub.)
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 78
In later years God sent Emperor Hadrian of Rome to destroy it again.
This emperor was a great builder. He intended to erect a Roman capital at Jerusalem.
He had an enormous army of builders who were also his troops of war. As they approached the city, the Jews noticed that one of his divisions had a wild boar's head as its mascot on the shield. This insulted the Jews. They barred their gates and again an all-out war started. The Jews offered a frenzied resistance. Hadrian was victorious. His armies totally demolished that part of the city that was rebuilt after Titus' time and also made a thorough destruction of every shred of Jewish religious tradition.
He forbade the ordination of Rabbis in Palestine. It was a death penalty if a Rabbi was caught performing the ceremony.
There were buildings outside the first wall of Jerusalem. One was a solid stone church in the garden of Joseph of Aramathea. It was not as easily destroyed as other structures because it was one solid piece of stone out of which this place of worship was cut. This construction had slanting walls and they could withhold tons of weight.
The Hill of the Cross was behind it and it was so close to the place where Christ was crucified that a pebble dropped from the top of Skull Hill (Calvary) would drop on the roof of the church.
The only thing to do was to completely cover this stone building with dirt shoveled from Mount Calvary.
The church building is close to the Garden tomb of Christ. It is 33 feet 4 inches wide and 56 feet 8 inches long and has a circular baptistry ten feet in diameter and five feet deep. From the floor to the top of the roof is 30 feet and it had eight windows, now closed and cemented. Many believe that the first council of the church could have been held there.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 79
This stone structure was buried at least 20 feet below the surface of the ground. That last meeting place of Jewish Christians of Jerusalem was covered to be hid for nearly two thousand years.
135 A.D.
If, by chance, there were any Christians hiding there they probably went down into the old quarries from which King Solomon took the stone to build the Temple at Jerusalem. There is an opening to these underground passages about a quarter of a mile from this church. These were the Jerusalem catacombs, but instead of being made by removing tuffa, as the Roman Catacombs were, they were made by removing the stones used by Solomon in building the house of God.
Perhaps the disciples were familiar with these underground passages and could easily seclude themselves in a time of persecution.
There were many crusades by the first church of Rome that had as their object the taking of the city of Jerusalem from the Turks. They captured it but most of the crusaders did not know what sacred spots to look for in the city. One encyclopedia report says one crusade thought the heathen temple that had been built on the rock dome was the old temple. Little did they know about the authentic data in the Holy Scriptures because they were not allowed to read them. They did not know about the Tomb of Joseph of Aramathea "near at hand" and possibly would never have known which hill was Calvary.
Thus God chose to preserve the authentic shrines of our Lord for genuine Christians such as Field Marshall Allenby to recover. Allenby had a prayer meeting
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 80
of all his troops the night of December 8, 1917 before he attempted to capture the city from the Turks. History records that there was not a shot fired and the Field Marshall entered the city by gates that were opened to him by the rulers of Jerusalem, and he took possession of the city for England, a Christian country.
This was God's way and His time. He hid these sacred shrines and preserved them for those who will do His will in love.
In the year 1881 a man by the name of Gordon discovered the Tomb because he knew it could not be far from the Hill of the Cross. It was named Gordon's Tomb. Later a man by the name of Turnbull again renewed the idea and he bought the garden of the tomb and placed a man named Joseph Mattar (a converted Arab) as custodian.
No one guessed at that time that there was a stone church completely buried 21 feet beneath the surface of the ground.
One day when the water of an underground cistern ran out, Mr. Mattar discovered that what he thought to be an underground cistern was a stone church, now used as cistern for the Garden of the Tomb.
This place is the most important spot on the whole earth today. Excavations have been halted for some reason but it is hoped this underground church will reveal the past history of the Christian Church in Aramathea's Garden.
It could be that the real church history of the apostles could be in some vault near these and who knows but that the Ark of the Covenant might also be seen there. (Revelation XI:19)
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 81
St. Matt. 37 A.D.--90-100 A.D.
As the years went by, the eve-witnesses of Christ's ministry, who had heard His commands and practiced His sayings, felt the great necessity for writing down the Gospel so that it could go on when they were no longer on earth.
God has His chosen vessels for every task He needs carried out. So, He raised up some of the apostles to write down His biography. The apostle, St. Matthew, was possibly the first one to begin to write, in the year 37 A.D., or about four years after Christ's ascension.
Then, when Saint John was well on to one hundred years old, he drew many Greek writers about him who were filled with the Holy Ghost. This became sort of a school where the chief task was to write and copy the Scriptures. These Scriptures had been written by eyewitnesses, for Jesus had said, "When I am gone, the Holy Ghost will bring to your remembrance all things that I have said unto you." (St. John 14 :26)
The writing of the Scriptures was a happy task, but as usual Satan was trying to hinder, He came now in the form of an emperor named Domitian, who was extremely suspicious of anyone who had wealth or influence, or one who was educated. He came upon St. John's school of writers and after he had interviewed St. John, he decided that this apostle knew too much, so he banished him to the Isle of Patmos. But
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 82
[xiii][See illustration 82a]
PATMOS
he could not stop the writing. The school of writing went "underground," and continued the work that John had begun.
After three years' reign, in which many noble people were destroyed, Domitian was killed.
Then St. John came back to Ephesus and wrote the last book of the Bible with an introduction in these words, "I, John, was in the Isle called Patmos for the Word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ." It was while he was in exile, that God gave this wonderful last book of the New Testament, the Revelation of Jesus Christ. After Saint John got back to his school, the writing was very prolific, and many copies were made. We do not know how long John lived after this, but we do know that these copies of the Scripture went wherever the disciples went. Scriptures were counted precious
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 83
as gold. They were carefully guarded and so respected that they were counted more valuable than any other earthly possessions, and the disciples would rather lose their lives than to give them up to be burned by the pagan rulers.
Between the dates of John's death and the year 150 A.D., these Scriptures were working, convicting the world of sin. They were also revealing the way of life by the Power of Christ.(†)
Everywhere they went, new churches were begun, and those churches were Scriptural churches. The Word of God proved itself over and over to those who practiced it. The promises of God were 'yea and amen' to them that believed. Signs and wonders followed just as they did in Jesus' time and in the early days of the apostles in Jerusalem.
When the disciples preached the Gospel and the people believed it, they were healed and demons were cast out and God's power worked for the humblest believer.
As we study the history of the Church, we find that all the things that God said would follow the Church have always followed believers. Mark 16:15-18 "And He said unto them, 'Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.'"
The Acts of the Apostles reveals the miracle working power for obedient Christians. This miracle
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HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 84
working power raised the dead as well as opened prison doors. Everywhere and in every age, where the written Word was taken and people were willing to believe and obey it, they got the same results: miracles, healings, and casting out of devils, and speaking with other tongues.
When John was on the Isle called Patmos, Jesus gave him a message for the churches of Asia, a warning from God. Ephesus was the first church that God spoke to John about when he was exiled. Jesus told St. John to tell Ephesus that the church was very lovely and they were loving and patient, but he said, "I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember, therefore, from whence thou art fallen and repent and do the first works or else I will come unto thee quickly and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent."
"To him that overcometh, I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God." All the churches of Asia were backslidden. They were no better than Ephesus, so he tells them all to repent. There was great need for a revival.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 85
90-150 A.D.
As we look back through the ages, we take a peek into the place where St. John and his transcribers were sitting on the ground each with a shaved vellum before him. His pen was a sharp pointed instrument much like an ice pick of today, but shorter. Beside him was a pot of black ink.
One was sitting in the midst, dictating the precious words of the Scriptures, and as the speaker stopped dictating, the writers arose and rested for a minute, then each took the seat of the writer at his left hand. There before him is the other writer's sheet. He sits down and then the dictator begins at the beginning of the writing just spoken. As each man listens, he watches for mistakes. When he finds one, the whole school rests a minute, and the original copy held by the reader is used to correct the mistake. When the mistake was corrected, the man who corrected it had to place his initials beside the correction. In this way, no mistakes were left in the Greek Scriptures.
NOTE: Eusebius, one of the historians of the first 300 years, says, "The immediate successors of the apostles who did great miracles by the assistance of the Holy Ghost and performed the work of evangelists in preaching Christ to those who had not yet heard the Word, made it their business when they had laid the foundation of that faith among them to deliver to them the writings of the Holy Gospels."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 86
"These Gospels were written by the will of God to be the pillars and foundation of the Christian Church."
"In Justin Martyrs' time, 140 A.D., history shows that the four Gospels were then well-known by the name Gospels, and were read by the Christians in their assemblies every Lord's Day. They were sometimes called Memoirs of The Apostles.' "
________
[xiv][See illustration 86a]
The tiny booklet this picture came from was given to the writer's mother December 16, 1869. It is entitled, "Eastern Manners and Customs," and was published the year before (1868) by Nelson and Sons, New York.
The materials used for books by the Hebrews and Arabs, as by the Romans and Egyptians were various; but the latest and most permanent was parchment or vellum. In the Jewish law we find strict directions that the skins used for this purpose should be the skins of clean animals. The ink employed was made by dissolving lamp-black in gall juice, or gall and vitriol. The parchment was not cut into sheets and leaves, and folded. as with us, but made into a roll (or volume), secured by a seal and tied with a 'binder'."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 87
THE GREEK TESTAMENT
[xv][See illustration 87a]
From Suppl. to the Comp's Commentary, Edited by Wm. Jenks, DD
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 88
Whereas the Scriptures were prolifically written in the Greek as early as 100 to 150 A.D., the Latins of Italy had little Scripture in their own tongue.
Think of the great advantage the Greek churches had over the Latin.
Many Greek bishops spread over Italy in the first two centuries A.D. but it was not until Damasus had Jerome revise the Itala and the Vulgate, and translate from Greek into Latin that Italy had half a chance to progress spiritually.
It was not until the year 382 A.D. that Rome first had a partially correct copy of the Gospels in their Latin language.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 89
[xvi][See illustration 89a]
The Seven Churches of Asia
Revelation 2,3
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 90
Written around 100 A.D.
9. I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle called Patmos, for the word of God,(†) and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.(‡)
10. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet,
11. Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, what thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.
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(†) St. John was writing the "Word of God" so future generations could read. Acts 8:30, Psalms 147:15
(‡) St. John had been banished by Domitian who required all his subjects to call him "my Lord and my god."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 91
[xvii][See illustration 91a]
SITE OF EPHESUS
1. Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks;
2. I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars:
3. And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted.
4. Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.
5. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.
6. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, (†) which I also hate.
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(†) The Nicolaitans held a community of wives, "Harem." Page 156a Vol. XII, 1911 Enc. Brit., Gnosticism, "Unbridled prostitution is essential part of cult."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 92
7. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.
[xviii][See illustration 92a]
CASTLE AND PORT OF SMYRNA
8. And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive;
9. I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews,(†) but are the synagogue of Satan.
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(†) Since Christ's time the Jews are indeed God's chosen people if they have chosen God's Messiah, even Jesus Christ our Lord, as Saviour.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 93
10. Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.
11. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.
[xix][See illustration 93a]
SITE OF PERGAMOS
One of Three great cities--Ephesus and Smyrna the other two Revelation 2:12-17
12. And to the angel of the church in Pergamos write: These things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges;
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 94
13. I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat is:(†) and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth.
14. But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.(‡)
15. So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, which thing I hate.
16. Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.
17. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.
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(†) The temple of AEsculapius, the worship of the serpent. Smith's Dict. of Bible, 1871, p. 710, "Pergamos"
(‡) Balaam hindered (or tried to hinder) God's people in their march to Canaan. Just so the modern Balaam's help young Christians to get back into pagan rites and ceremonies--Temple of Venus, which was closed by Constantine (See chapter on pagan worship).
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 95
[xx][See illustration 95a]
SITE OF THYATIRA
18. And unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write; These things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass;
19. I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience, and thy works; and the last to be more than the first.
20. Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.(†)
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(†) Those wicked who have infiltrated into the true assembly, and seduced others. They look lightly on the breaking of the commandments. They justify the wicked. (Malachi 2:14-17)
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 96
21. And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not.
22. Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds.
23. And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.
24. But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this doctrine, and which have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak; I will put upon you none other burden.
25. But that which ye have already hold fast till I come.
26. And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations:
27. And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father.
28. And I will give him the morning star.
29. He that hath an ear,(†) let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
________
(†)"Unto you that hear, shall more be given." As we obey simple things of Christ, we are given more difficult tasks; this is how we "grow in grace." Mark 4:18, 24. If we obey what we know (hear) of Jesus' commands. God will enable us to hear more (to hear to understand). Bro. Giles, one of St. Francis' brothers said. "If thou doest the good thou understandest, thou shalt enter into the good thou understandest not."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 97
[xxi][See illustration 97a]
SARDIS AND MOUNT TMOLUS
1. And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works,(†) that thou livest, and art dead.
2. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God.
3. Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou
________
(†) It has been said that Noah had two carpenters who helped him build the Ark. But all their work on God's project availed them nothing, for they did not get into the Ark of safety. Many do much labor to build churches, establish schools of religious training, and orphanages, but do not obey Christ's command. "Ye must be born again," "Tarry until ye be endued with power from on high." The labor or fruit Jesus wants is the kind of labor and fruit He brought forth--which was souls, to believe in God and do His commandments.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 98
shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.
4. Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy.
5. He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.
6. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
[xxii][See illustration 98a]
PHILADELPHIA (Macfarlane's Apostolic Churches).)
7. And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write; These things saith he that is holy, he that
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 99
is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth;
8. I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word,(†) and hast not denied my name.
9. Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee.
10. Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I will also keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.
11. Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.
12. Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name.
13. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
________
(†) Jesus wants people to keep His word. The traditions of the fathers are not accepted with God if they do away with God's word.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 100
[xxiii][See illustration 100a]
SITE OF LAODICEA
14. And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God;
15. I know thy works,(†) that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
16. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
17. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:
18. I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment,(‡) that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame
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(†)No real works for God--only motions--only playing church.
(‡) Rev. 19:8, White robes are the righteous acts of the saints.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 101
of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint shine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.
19. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.
20. Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
21. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne. even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.
22. He that hath all ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 102
"In the second century of the Christian era, vessels were frequently sailing to the savage shores of Britain from the ports of Asia Minor, Greece, and Alexandria. Among the merchants would occasionally be found a few pious men from the banks of the Meandre (a river in Asia Minor) or the Hermes (another river in the neighborhood of Ephesus) conversing peacefully with one another about the birth, life and death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and they were rejoicing at the prospect of saving, by these glad tidings the pagans to whom they were going. It would appear that some British prisoners of war having learned to know Christ during their captivity, bore also to their countrymen, that knowledge of their Savior. It may be, too, that some Christian soldiers, the Corneliuses of those imperial armies whose advanced posts reached the southern parts of Scotland, desirous of more lasting conquests, may have read to the people they had subdued, the writings of Matthew, John, or Paul. It is certain that the tidings of the Son of Man, crucified and raised again under Tiberius spread through these isles more rapidly than the dominion of the emperors. And before the end of the second century, many churches worshipped Christ beyond the walls of Adrian (Hadrian).(†)
________
(†) This wall is still standing in part (1957 A.D.).
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 103
And those mountains, forests, and western isles, which for centuries past the Druids had filled with their sacrifices, and on which the Roman "eagles'(†) had never swooped, churches were formed after the Greek eastern type."
All these churches in Britain and France were well organized and running according to the apostolic pattern of Christianity. The apostles started as early as the time St. Paul went to Rome.
In the years 119-123 A.D., a space of about four years when Hadrian built the wall between Solway and Firth, he must have used many Christian slaves from Rome who were good stone masons. Merrivale the Historian says, (page 533, General History of Rome) "Hadrian had no purpose in insulting the Christians whom he recognized as loyal citizens distinct in creed and political feeling from the Jews. He discouraged the local persecutions to which they were occasionally subjected." (page 534) "Hadrian asked the Christians to address him as 'Truth Seeker'." The same historian wrote, "None of our princes ever traversed so rapidly so large a portion of the world."
Hadrian liked the Christians so much that he built churches for them in the provinces he visited. The Christians who worshipped in these small buildings went by the Gospel and the Apostle and obeyed the Sermon on the Mount the best they could. They were fond of the good emperor Hadrian and often prayed for him. Hadrian found a large colony of Greeks who had migrated to Lyons about a fourth of a century B.C. It was to this colony that Iranaeus went as a missionary in the years around 177 A.D. But Iranaeus found that a strong colony of the apostolic type had been founded in Lyons long before he got there. They
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(†) First Roman Church legates.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 104
could have been founded by the apostles and disciples who were in Jerusalem and fled at the time of the stoning of Stephen. They might have been the direct pupils and admirers whom Peter had added to the church when he preached that mighty sermon on the day of Pentecost.
This Gospel that they brought to Lyons was of the purest sort because it came directly from the apostles who had walked with Jesus. It was what we call a Puritan Christianity and was naturally filled with a lot of love.
(Iranaeus had been a student of Polycarp who in turn had sat at the feet of the beloved St. John and heard him tell about the Master. Hence, this church at Lyons was highly favored because of this beloved bishop. It grew in wisdom and fervor as the years passed.)
It is quite possible that St. Paul left Rome and went to Lyons after he said that he must "see Spain also," because Lyons is on a water route from Rome. (There is no Scriptural nor true secular data showing St. Paul to have been killed in Rome. That story is a fable which became a first Roman church dogma. The earliest authentic martyrology 329 A.D. does not have his name nor that of St. Peter as having been martyred in Rome.)
The Christian churches in the early days of Italy and Lyons and Britain were simple gatherings perhaps in a home or one of Hadrian's small church buildings. They had no adornments like wooden crosses or statues. Some had not even a place to sit and the people squatted on the stone slabs of the floor. For hours they would sit this way, listening to some godly man expound the Gospel and the Apostle. The meetings were truly after the apostolic pattern and were full of Christian fervor by the Holy Ghost. The thing that typified their meetings
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 105
was the way they prayed. The glory of God filled the rude buildings and the Divine Afflatus swept over the congregations.
They never used altars because that was the practice of the heathen. They were afraid to install any adornments for fear the simple converts would worship objects, and lose sight of Christ. The Christian objectives were to worship God in spirit and truth as Jesus had instructed them. They always had "these signs" following them.
Acts 16:16
St. Adaman described the way they worshipped in Ireland (in his life of St. Colomba vol. i page 37). He tells us how the brethren after listening to a sermon by St. Baithene "still kneeling, with joy unspeakable and hands spread out to heaven, venerated Christ in the holy man."
In these early days their meeting places were much like that room in the upper chamber where the apostles lived. It was a simple structure. But as long as God was there the building was lost sight of. They wanted to be enveloped and indwelt by the Holy Ghost in its life-giving presence. They loved the divine Afflatus.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 106
The feasts of the Jews were carried over into the Christian worship when Jews accepted Christ and joined the groups of believers.
One feast in particular was never lost sight of and that was the feast of the passover or "pasch."
This feast has meant so much more to the world since Jesus Christ became the passover Lamb.
Jesus walked in obedience to His Father, coming right up to the time of the old Jewish celebration of the passover. He ate with His disciples in the last passover supper (Luke 22:7) in a large furnished upper room.
Recently I went into a Jewish Synagogue where women were preparing the passover feast. They were frying chicken and I saw all sorts of good things. It was Monday before Easter and I asked "When is the Passover?" She said, "It begins tonight at 6:30."
This custom has never changed dates among the Orthodox Jews. We might ask ourselves (who are Gentiles), "What meaning has this feast of the Passover to us?"
The answer: much every way.
All the ordinances of the Old Testament are types of the new dispensational fulfillment of the Scriptures.
The Passover lamb became the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom John the Baptist said, "Behold the Lamb of God."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 107
As I spoke to the Jewish lady about the Passover I said, "We have Jesus as our Passover. You have no more shedding of blood nor the sacrifice of the Lamb on Passover since Jesus came. When Jesus was sacrificed an earthquake tore the veil of the Temple that kept the Holy of Holies from the view of the congregation. This veil was torn from top to bottom showing that it was God's doing. It revealed that the Holy of Holies was empty. The Ark of the Covenant which had the Mercy Seat where the blood of the passover was placed was gone. It had been missing since the time of the captivity of the Jews at Babylon. The high priest had fooled the Jews since that time, making them believe that the old custom of the sacrifice of the Blood of the Lamb had been legitimate. You know, that since that time, the Jews have not had the shed blood of the Passover Lamb in their feast of the Passover."
This she acknowledged.
________
As the Jewish disciples of Christ evangelized, they always kept the pasch in every assembly they started.
They kept it at the same time as the old Jewish feast, but it was a time to remember the passion of our Lord, and His blood shed to free us (not from Egypt) from the power of Satan.
There was much rejoicing at this Christian feast. The last supper was commemorated and the Christian thanked God for Jesus the Lamb of God. The agape, or love feast became a part of the Passover feast.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 108
[xxiv][See illustration 108a]
One cannot imagine in this enlightened age, how an organization called 'Christian church' could ever take on the worship of a pagan goddess and substitute her feast for that of the ancient Jewish feast of the Passover or Pasch as it was called in Rome during the first century. Pasch always carried the Agape or Love feast in the church of Polycarp as well as the other seven churches of Asia, that were started by the apostles St. John and St. Paul and Barnabus, etc. We have already seen (Chapter 'Orphans of Rome') that the first Christian organization reverted to all the pagan worship which included the worship of Baal (Sun God) and his companion Goddess Astarte (Ishtar who was Moon goddess and queen of heaven, and mother of the Gods). This pagan worship began when the Jewish apostles were forced to leave the little group at Rome to the pagan wolves, for thirteen years, 41-54 A.D. If the Israelites, who were so
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 109
carefully guarded lest they worship the sun, moon and stars, were recorded as pagan worshippers by Judges 2:13 which says, "And they forsook the Lord and served Baal (the sun god) and Ashtoreth (the moon goddess Astarte or Ish-tar), then what could we expect from these pagan Christians of Rome. Judges 9:14 says, "And the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel," then what about the Romans who had "tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away." (Hebrews (6:6)
From 41 to 54 A.D. the worship of Astarte and Baal grew to such great portions that when the Christian Jews who were their spiritual mothers and fathers returned, these reverted pagans repulsed them.
Finally the idea of the feast of Astarte as a substitute for the feast of the Passover became prevalent only in this one first Roman church. It gained the approval of the paganizing churches year by year and the few remaining Jewish Christians who wanted to hold to the Passover were overpowered by the pagan members.
There were also many pagan customs springing up in other churches but these were soon culled out by a time of fasting and prayer. The old feast of the Passover, which was an apostolic tradition, was kept very sacred.
The pagan feasts of Baal and Astarte became so well established that it would have been impossible to turn the tide of pagan practices back to the apostolic pattern of St. Paul or St. Peter.
Can you imagine St. Peter sanctioning such worship, when he was such a staunch Jew? This is one convincing proof that St. Peter never taught at Rome nor did he set his foot in that pagan city.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 110
189-198
In the years when Victor was bishop of that pagan church, he was so imbued with the idea that his assembly was right and all the other churches were off the beaten path of the apostles, that he even tried to get the pagan feast established in other Christian churches. But they repulsed him. Victor was now so deep in pagan practices that he could not even reason from the Holy Scriptures as to the right or wrong of Passover.
Jesus spoke of the immoral condition at Tyre and Sidon. which must have been very corrupt. History says that at Tyre the feasts of Astarte were accompanied with unbridled prostitution and Astarte was said to have lived as a prostitute in Tyre ten years.
(Ref. Manual of Martyrology by Alexander Murray, 1946, Astarte, Pp. 90, 240, 272--Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop, pp. 307-310--Chambers Encyclopedia, vol. I p. 368)
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 111
In the early days of organized Christianity little church innovations indicated whether they were cleaving to the teachings of the apostolic fathers, or reverting to pagan ideas and pr practices.
The first church at Rome seemed to be causing the other orthodox bishops of the world quite a bit of anxiety. This was from the time of St. Paul to the time of the lovely bishop Polycarp, or the years 60 A.D. to 160 A.D. Since the time of St. Paul that church had kept adding more and more of the pagan ways and dogmas.
There was trouble in almost every Christian group because the "enemy" of pure Christianity was trying to disrupt the work of God.
At Polycarp's time the chief wrong doctrine of that once or orphaned church at Rome was the switching from the old feast of the pasch (or passover) to the feast of the goddess of Spring that came about the same time.
The feast of Astair or Ishtar evolved into what we now call Easter. One might reason that any certain day one wished to celebrate the resurrection of the Lord made very little difference to God. This might be true: however it was not the actual change that disturbed the more consecrated bishops. The underlying motive for the change was detected by spiritual bishops who could see the tendency in the hearts of the more popular bishops to please the public. Whatever the crowd wanted, "That was the custom." And the pagan crowd wanted pagan feasts and ceremonies.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 112
But Christianity and the Gospel that Christ died to establish did not come from the people. It came from God. The Jewish prophecies foretold Christ's coming and ministry.
There was no excuse for changing from the old feast of the Passover to the feast of Astarte.
41 to 54 A.D.
It was only in the first church of Rome that this occurred because that church had been off the doctrines of the apostles since the time of Claudius.
This backslidden first church of Rome was not the repository of the true apostolic teaching of the fathers. It had lost them and taken pagan customs.
Bishop Polycarp was one of the bishops who had the closest contact with the Lord because he sat at the feet of the apostle St. John who had leaned on the breast of Jesus. John could ask Jesus questions that the other apostles wanted to know. Polycarp also probably knew Mary, Christ's mother, whom Jesus gave to John at the cross.
In very early life, Polycarp was chosen head over the church at Smyrna. Polycarp was born shortly after St. Paul dropped out of sight, and lived to see the rise of Montanus.(†)
This beloved bishop was so filled with the Holy Ghost that he could detect the slightest variance from the true Gospel. He was very wise because he would not even talk with Marcion and Valentinian who were the great Roman leaders of false doctrines at that time. He had the Scriptures which were written in his day.
We hear so much emphasis these days on the fact that the Bible was not written in the first century. (They refer to the New Testament) They say the
________
(†) Montanus might have been saved as the result of Polycarp's ministry. We think Montanus might have seen the martyrdom of Polycarp when he came to see the annual pagan festival at Smyrna.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 113
Church was the only repository for the oracles of God. This is true, but it depended on the fundamental doctrines that the churches were keeping.
There was a lovely epistolary communion between the different church bodies and these epistles were circulated among the Christians and later collected into the New Testament epistles that we have today.
When Polycarp heard about the change of the feast of Pasch that was actually practiced by Anicetus the bishop of the first church of Rome, Polycarp decided even though he was nearly 90 years old, to go to Rome and have a talk with this bishop. This journey was more than 1500 miles by land and sea and it would have seemed impossible had not the different Christian churches along the route insisted that he spend some time with them. A wonderful revival came to every city where Polycarp, stopped. Healing and miracles accompanied the preached Word.
He had many Christian young men who insisted on going with him and attending, his every need. They carried his books and prepared his food and bed. They vied with each other to see who would be the one to wait on him.
People brought the sick from great distances so Polycarp could play for them. Miracles and wonderful healings accompanied his ministry. His reputation preceded him. Masses of people were waiting for him in every province he entered.
It was a joy for Polycarp to see the Lord working miracles. It renewed his body and spirit and he seemed not to tire even though the pressure was great.
It seemed as if Jesus were again walking the earth with Polycarp. The Christian people of Greece were happy and jubilant when he entered their provinces.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 114
When this wise man got to Rome he went to the bishop of the second church at Rome. Here he quietly ministered and many sick were healed and demons cast out.
Polycarp had heard of the images in Anicetus' church, and the sun worship. He found the congregation utterly absorbed in the old pagan practices.
He would have left, but he wanted to talk to the bishop of that first church of Rome to see if he could convince him of the errors of that assembly; so he attended the worship.
As the service continued, the Eucharist was served. Polycarp sat in the front with Anicetus. He watched the members of the congregation come in, take a candle and light it, then place it before a statue of St. Peter, prostrating themselves.
The table was set with all round dishes, and the bread was a round wafer in honor of the sun god.
The wine that symbolized the shed blood of Christ was poured out as a libation and the bishop drained the cup by drinking the last portion. After service, Polycarp spoke kindly to Anicetus about turning back to the apostles' teachings concerning the Lord's supper, but Anicetus said, "We are too far gone to turn back." Polycarp quietly withdrew and called a council of the second and third churches of Rome. God spoke these words to Polycarp: "Ephraim is married to his idols, let him alone." (Hosea 4:17)
The council inaugurated a mighty revival and soon the city of Rome was alive with the electrifying news that people were being healed and the dead even raised.
Rome had never seen such a revival and did not witness another from that time. Polycarp was responsible for bringing back the straying Valentinians and the Marcionites to the true Gospel paths they had missed.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 115
It gave the evangelical churches such a lift that they had to form new groups of churches in outlying districts.
A full Copy of the Holy Scriptures was gotten and carefully kept as a guide for the evangelical churches but the first church of Rome decided to make her own rules or dogmas and let the Scriptures go.
The time came for Polycarp to return to Smyrna. The whole Roman Empire was very conscious of this new religion and the pagans and Jews were very revengeful. They were angry because the people were leaving the temples and not sacrificing to the gods.
"The method I have observed towards those who have been denounced to me as Christians is this: if they confessed it I repeated the question twice again, adding the threat of capital punishment; if they still persevered, I ordered them to be executed.
"Those who denied they were or had ever been Christians, who repeated after me an invocation to the Gods, and offered adoration, with wine and frankincense, to your image, which I had ordered to be brought for that purpose, together with those of the Gods, and who finally cursed Christ--none of which acts, it is said, those who are really Christians can be forced into performing--these I thought proper to discharge.
"Persons of all ranks and ages and of both sexes are and will be involved in the prosecution. For this contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread through the villages and rural districts; it seems possible, however, to check and cure it. It is certain at least that the temples, which had been almost deserted,
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 116
begin now to be frequented; and the sacred festivals, after a long intermission, are again revived; while there is a general demand for sacrificial animals, which for some time past have met with but few purchasers."
--Loeb Classical Library
For this they blamed Polycarp. They said, "You have told our people not to sacrifice to our gods."
The Jews also hated him because he had taken away many of their members.
In Smyrna it was the time of the bloody gladiatorial combats. Ten of the saints of Philadelphia had been dragged to Smyrna to battle the wild beasts in the arena during the pagan festival. Thousands were gathered at Smyrna and the life of Polycarp was demanded. At first he was urged by his church to hide, but finally he offered himself a willing sacrifice because the lives of many of his purest members would be taken if he did not show himself. The wicked Jews and pagans ran around and gathered much wood and soon the beloved Polycarp was burned to death. The pagans would not allow his disciples to have his corpse because they said the disciples would claim he had revived and raised from the dead like the Master (Christ) at Jerusalem. So they flayed the flesh from the bones, then ground the bones to powder and cast the ashes over a running stream.(†)
That little church at Smyrna had peace for a while, but at the time the flames were leaping upon the body of Polycarp God was raising up a pagan priest from Phrygia who would take up the torch of Christianity and carry on. He was Montanus.
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(†) Eusebius Pop. Hist. p. 180
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 117
After Anicetus completed his term as bishop of the first church of Rome, that whole church was well imbued with the idea that they were able to change the ritual of every church in Christendom and make their own celebration of Easter the great feast day in every church of the world.
Little did the first Roman church know of the soundness of the apostolic practices of the Greek Asiatic churches. This idea of changing the feast of the Passover to the pagan feast day of Astarte had been tabooed by Asiatic bishops since the time of Polycarp and Anicetus.(†)
Polycarp had been the father of the Asiatic churches and the Greek churches looked to him as the essence of Christian perfection in matters of faith and doctrine.
Polycarp had not been idle after he returned to Smyrna from his visit to Anicetus. He wrote many epistolary letters to all the Asiatic churches warning them of the great apostasy of the first church of Rome. Anicetus was decidedly condemned for allowing the first church at Rome to continue so many of the pagan rituals. The substitution of the feast of Astarte for the feast of the Passover revealed an entirely pagan church at heart with only the name 'CHRISTIAN'.
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(†) The Two Babylons or The Papal Worship: EASTER. page 103 By the late Rev. Alexander Hislop.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 118
Being a Greek scholar, Polycarp wrote in the Greek language and his letters were not known to the Latins of Rome until many years later unless they were translated.
When Victor wrote to the Asiatic churches requesting that they change the celebration of the Passover and make it come on the pagan feast day as his church had done, he was thoroughly repulsed by every Asiatic bishop. Most of the Greek Asiatic churches had such disdain for Victor that they scorned his proposal. They had all the past history of the reversion of that one Roman church since the earliest times and they did not even count it a Christian church.
The feast of the Passover was a feast that had been set by God. It was like the Sabbath Day. It was established in the beginning as a set feast and none of the genuinely converted Christian Jews ever changed it. Christians accepted it as a time to celebrate the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
The time when the death angel passed over the houses in Goshen reminded the Christian Jews of the time that Jesus' blood was taken (as the blood of the lamb had been used on the door post and lintel) by faith and placed over their hearts as a saving power in the days since Christ. The Word of God speaks continually of Christ, the Passover Lamb.
To substitute this feast for a pagan ritual was a great sacrilege. One needs only to follow the history of the pagan feast of Easter, to see the great rioting and drunkenness with the excess of passion that it carried with it and to know how far the first Roman church had degraded itself. The Asiatic churches all refused to change their blessed feast of the Passover (or Pasch) and wrote Victor to this effect.(†) One bishop
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(†) The Two Babylons or The Papal Worship! pages 103-7 by Rev. Alexander Hislop.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 119
even went to Rome to try to bring the truth to bishop Victor who retaliated by rejecting him as well as the rest of the Asiatic churches.
In the language and ideology of Rome to date, we find the encyclopedias saying, "Victor excommunicated" the Asiatic bishops. Irenaeus wrote that Victor cut himself off (excommunicated himself) from the communion of all the other churches.
It is certain that the worship of the pagan goddess Astarte was not originated with Victor, bishop of the first Roman church.
He fell heir to this practice which had grown from the time of Anicetus. (150 A.D. See Polycarp) The worship was well established in the time of Anicetus and passed on to the later bishops of this one backslidden Roman church.
Victor had lived in this pagan atmosphere so long that the refusal of other churches to accept this pagan feast day seemed a great affront to him and his first Roman church.
This accounts for his trying to excommunicate certain Asiatic bishops over whom he had no power or domination.
________________
About this time there was a heathen philosopher named Praxeas who had been cast out of the new movement of Montanism in Asia and he ran to Rome to stir up trouble and thwart the Montanist movement there. He did not need to go that far because the first church of Rome was so far away from the apostolic doctrines that it could never have understood the working power of God and the Holy Ghost as it fell anew on those who wanted reality. Praxeas fanned Victor's hurt feelings and from this time the first
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 120
Roman church began to develop a system of its own. It was at this time that the first church of Rome began to hatch up the idea that because none of the other churches agreed with her she was right, and they were all wrong. She really believed that she was the chosen church of the whole world.(†)
It was the rebirth of the old pagan lust for power and supremacy. The other churches kept clear of Victor's church. Therefore they did not see the innovations that the philosophers brought in. The first church not only was pagan, but it was now becoming a philosophical assembly, still retaining the name of Christ. It still called itself "The first Christian Church of Rome."
By this time the bishops of the first church of Rome were gaining favor with the emperors. Victor and his church could ask favors of the emperor and receive them. The irony of this combination of bishop and emperor was that the first Roman church could now persuade the emperor to persecute those evangelical Christians who would not "string along" with the first church program.
"AUDAEUS or AUDIUS, a reformer of the fourth century church suffered much persecution from the Syrian Clergy for his fearless censure of their irregular lives. He was expelled from the church and afterwards banished to Scythia where he gained many followers. Died 370 A.D. at an advanced age.
The Audaeans celebrate the feast of Easter on the same day as the Jewish Passover."(‡)
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(†) Story--"Everybody's out of step except Johnny."
A mother watched a lot of soldiers marching, and her Johnny was in the group. Johnny was out of step, so she turned to a bystander saying, "Everybody's out of step but Johnny."
(‡) Enc. Brit. Vol. III 1892. page 69BB, R.S. Peal Co., Chicago, with American Revisions and Additions by W.H. DePey DD LL.D.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 121
Few books tell us the exact way the pagans worshipped their idols. Merrivale's history of Rome tells us of the apostate Emperor Julian who could prostrate himself before the statue of Apollo and imagine that the imaginary god Apollos had actually come into that image made to represent him.(†) "Palladius, governor of the province (Alexandria) by sect a heathen, and one who habitually prostrated himself before the idols."(‡)
Prostrating himself before the idols was the preliminary step to the form of worship that pagans practiced. Those pagans thought (if they would bring valuable presents to the god) that this god would condescend to come down and jump into the statue.
This was hypostasis. To hypostasize is to perform an imaginary act in thought. Funk and Wagnal's dictionary says, "Hypostasis--to ascribe substantial or personal existence to: to assume to be real; to treat as an actual or as a personal being."
It is something like Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthey who is the dummy into which Bergen hypostasizes his voice.
The pagans believe that idols may he indwelt (hypostasized) by the god they have called down into them.
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(†) Merrivale's General History of Rome, pp. 666. pub Harper Bros., N.Y., 1897.
(‡) Nicean and Post Nicean Fathers, Vol. XI. Chapter 19, pg. 121
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 122
A man named Porter wrote a thesis 'Nature versus Man.' On page 39 of that thesis, 1871 (D.M. ETC.) he says, "This tendency to hypostasize abstractions into real agencies has prevailed in all ages."
The Pueblo Indians made an image to the rain god which was a hollow clay shell representing a mud turtle. These Indians imagined that when they made an offering (perhaps by fire) to this clay mud turtle, the imaginary rain god would come into this shell and listen to their requests for rain. The pagans thought that these gods must be bribed with an offering, so they burned some animal. The smoke would go up into the air and finally they thought it would reach the nostrils of the god and coax it to come down and jump into the idol where the people were waiting. This was the imaginary god hypostasizing itself in the inanimate object or image.
In the Word of God He says, "God dwelleth not in temples made with hands." We know our real God doesn't come into these images or statues, made by hands. To believe this is to go against all of God's teachings and principles from the beginning of time.
Col. 1:27
We know that God does come and (by His Holy Spirit) hypostasize Himself in our bodies. "Ye are the temples of the Holy Ghost," and God dwells in you unless you are reprobates. God has created mankind and says, I will come into him.
Acts 2:4 & Romans 8:11
God started this hypostasis in the beginning when he formed his church and "They were all filled with the Holy Ghost" and when God's Holy Ghost got into the bodies of the 120, He used their lips moving them at will to speak in other tongues as He chose. God showed He was an activating force. "But if the spirit of God dwell in you, this same spirit will also quicken in your mortal bodies."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 123
But the pagan minds were possessed with the idea of their ability to make the god they wanted come into their images. Rome was full of temples. There were 400 of them in this one city of Rome. Each one had a different god that they could call into a particular statue.
The act of calling the god or goddesses into the statues was much like some practices you see today in the Roman Catholic church which has (as they say) "never changed," but we know it inherited those pagan practices which the members of the first Roman church took on in the times of Claudius (54 A.D.).
_________________
The actual routine of the worship in the temples of the gods was first to go into the temple and pay the priest a sum of money or give him an animal.
The priest would give the worshipper an unlit candle which he would light at the fire on the altar of the god enshrined there. Then the worshipper returned to the statue and placed the lighted candle on the pedestal at the feet of the image. Perhaps they thought that the imaginary god could not see its way and find which statue it was supposed to get into unless there was a light.
After this lighted candle was placed at the foot of the statue, then the worshipper would go back a few steps and prostrate himself before that statue and there he would mentally work himself up until he actually imagined that the god before whose statue he bowed down, had actually come into that statue. This was hypostasis. At this point, he would rise and go over and sit at the foot of the statue where the pagan priest of the temple had placed a drink offering and a food offering and there he would take a
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 124
little of the food and after sipping a little of the drink offering, he would pour it out on the base of the statue.
This was absolute communion with the imaginary god in the statue. Then he would talk to the statue and tell it what he wanted it to do. This was the essence of pagan worship. Each god was supposed to bestow a special gift like the tutelary gods of the first Roman church in the 16th century.
Numbers 25:4,5
In the Old Testament we have records where the children of Israel had intermingled with the heathen around them and slipped into pagan worship of the sun god, Baal. Moses commanded the heads to be strung up before the Lord so the rest of the people could see how God abhorred paganism.
Moses had seen the miraculous power of God too many times to countenance the worship of the sun or moon god. Almost every pagan worshipped the sun god Baal and Ashtoreth (Astarte) the moon goddess. This temple of the sun god, Baal, was in Rome when the Christians got there. Everything on the altar was round. The cakes they made to use in their worship were round. Often the bronze disc representing the sun was so polished that it would look like a blaze of fire when the rays of the sun struck it.
Jeremiah 44:15-29
The prophet Jeremiah in the days of Israel remonstrated with the Jewish women who were making cakes to worship the sun god and were pouring out the drink offering. Jer. 7:18. They said that when they stopped offering worship to the sun god, their crops had failed, but Jeremiah said it was because they had forsaken God and worshipped Baal. Jeremiah reminded them that they forgot that God said you should not make any images in the likeness of the sun or moon or stars and you should not bow down or worship such images.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 125
This sun god, Baal, was an associate with Astarte or Ishtar, the goddess of fertility. Judges 2:3
The membership of the first church of Rome now consisted mostly of nominal believers from the pagan ranks of sun worshippers who had gotten into that church by just a nominal confession of Christ.
The Jewish apostles had the New Birth that Jesus said was necessary for the believer to get into the kingdom of heaven, but it was set aside by this church as not important. The church membership was obtained by just a public confession of Christ. We believe that was a big step for them.
It was these nominal Christians in the first church at Rome who now being a mixture of sun worshippers, Ashtoreth worshippers and others who might institute most any pagan custom in that church.
These members asked the heads of the first church at Rome, if they could not modify the way the Eucharist was celebrated, so as to please the sun worshippers. They said this would attract more of the pagans to their church. They needed numbers in order to gain a place of political prominence in Rome.
The leaders having been pagans themselves could not see any wrong in substituting their way of worship for the old apostolic pattern.
Since the time the temple at Jerusalem had been destroyed the pagan Christians of the first church of Rome thought that God was through with the Christian Jews. There were no Jews who worshipped with them, and so no one would he upset if it was changed.
The pagans did not realize that the Old Testament worship was to be embodied in the new worship in Spirit and Truth. The ten commandments had not been done away with and the old ways of Jewish worship had to be translated in the light of Jesus, the Passover Lamb. "I came not to destroy but to fulfill." The pagans
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 126
did not realize how important the feasts of the Passover and Pentecost were since the transition into the spiritual worship of the New Testament church. The apostolic Jewish segment in the early Christian church had been happy to carry over these feasts.
The sun worshippers substituted the round wafer for the broken bread and the cup from which all were to drink was poured as a libation to the sun god.
The cakes were made round.(†) The pagan Christians now had a round wafer into which they hypostasized the body of the Lord Jesus Christ just as they called the gods into the statues in the temples.
They knew Jesus had said, "This is my body," so they believed this round wafer was now the actual body of Christ. The cup likewise became the actual blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
________________
In order to have a proper receptacle for the body (round wafer) of Christ, they made the likeness of a sun burst called the Monstrance and into the opening in the center of this they placed this round wafer that had by hypostasis become the actual body of the Lord.
This monstrance was now lifted, (elevation of the HOST) and the congregation today worships the Lord Jesus Christ who is that wafer (to their way of thinking).
Believing this to be the actual body of the Lord Jesus Christ is transubstantiation.
The form of worship by the priest whom Jesus obeys by coming down and jumping into that round wafer, is thus: (The Ceremonies of the Roman Rites Described by Adrian Fortescue, pub. Burns Oates Washbourne Ltd. London MCMLIII pg. 49) Consecration of the bread . . . he now bows over the altar saying, "HOC EST ENIM MEUM."
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(†) The Two Babylons by Hislop, pp. 162-163
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 127
[xxv][See illustration 127a]
This resembles the old pagan worship described by Merrivale in the first part of the chapter, "Julian the Apostate Emperor."
From the Western Jesuit magazine. "The Dignity of the Priest" June 1953 page 10, we glean: "It is the priest who consecrates the bread and wine and changes them into the body and blood of Jesus Christ." Page 11 of the same book: "God Himself is obliged to abide by the decision of His priests." "He is a man almost divine since a God obeys him."
This monstrance rests on the Altar.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 128
Sometimes the priest consecrates the round wafer and leaves it on the altar over night. The people are made to believe that they must come to church to meet God because this monstrance with the round wafer is actually Christ or God. But we know that God dwelleth not in temples made with hands," and we also know that God dwells not in the round wafer on the altar because it too has been made by hands.
Matthew Henry's comment on this statement of Jesus as found in St. Matthew 26:26:
"Believing carries all the efficacy of Christ's death to our souls. This is my body spiritually and sacramentally. This signifies and represents my body. He employs sacramental language like that in Exodus 12:11, "it is the Lord's passover; Upon the carnal and much mistaken sense of these words, the first church of Rome builds a monstrous doctrine of transubstantiation, which makes the bread to be changed into the substance of Christ's body when only the incidents remain. This offends Christ and destroys the nature of the sacrament and gives a lie to our senses.
"We partake of the sun not by having the bulk of the body of the sun put into our hands, but the beams of it darted down on us. So we partake of Christ by partaking of His grace and the blessed fruits of the breaking of His body.
"This cup gave He to His disciples, with the command: drink ye all of it. Thus He welcomes His guests to His table and obliges them all to drink of this cup."
As Christ and His disciples attended the last supper, Jesus took the bread and broke it saying, "This is my body," and yet His body was sitting right there. He also said, "This is my blood which is shed," and still His blood who as at that time flowing through His veins. To this day the Roman Catholic clergy cannot tell why they serve only one species in the Eucharist. The congregation does not get the wine.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 129
We realize the beginning was so far back that no one seems to remember. It is quite evident that it grew out of reversion to pagan sun worship. They poured out libation.(†)
One commentary remarked: "The round wafer which was said to be Christ, was ground by the teeth of the faithful or left on the altar for the mice and rats to carry away."
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HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 130
Fifty years had elapsed since St. John was on the Isle of Patmos. The written Gospel and Apostle from his Greek school at Ephesus had spread into all the Christian Greek colonies.
Polycarp of Smyrna, who had sat at the feet of the beloved apostle John, had won his crown of martyrdom but left many converts who had formed assemblies of the pure Christianity. Their groups were dotted all over Asia Minor, which included Phrygia.
Wherever the copies of the written Scriptures went, a revival of Christian Pentecost was set in motion. Pagans and Jews alike succumbed to the preaching of the pure Word of God. One was Montanus.
This pagan priest did not get a half dose of Christianity. He was thoroughly possessed by God's Holy Ghost. Like St. Peter, he became a great preacher "over night." He had no formal ordination but began to tell the Gospel story, and as he preached, God wrought mighty signs and wonders through him.
157 A.D.
It was in the year 157 A.D. that he appeared on the border of Mysia and Phrygia, and God honored him even as He had the first apostles at Jerusalem. Signs and wonders followed him as he went from town to town. This was a second Pentecost.
Like Jesus, there were two women in his party (named Prisca and Maxmilla) who, like Joanna and Suzana, ministered unto him. The young men who followed him carried his books and ministered to his physical needs.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 131
Prisca and Maximilla's gift was that of prophecy. The mighty messages they gave under the anointing of the Holy Ghost brought a Divine Afflatus over the congregations. Many were swept to the ground by the powerful Spirit that God sent to convince men that He is the same yesterday and today and forever. Heb. 13:8.
In the beginning of the Church at Pentecost, we read that the rabble around Jerusalem stigmatized this Divine Afflatus, calling those 'drunk' who were thus controlled by the Holy Ghost. Peter and the rest were so over-powered that they probably could not walk straight when they got out of that Upper Room and faced the mob. They were undoubtedly laughing, crying, shouting and clapping their hands, saying, "Glory to God! He is so wonderful!"
Acts 2:4
Montanus, who had received the Holy Spirit it in like manner as the apostles, acted the same way. Many of the Greeks believed and received the same experience.
The organized churches in that day were not as kind as the heathen. They had settled down to a formality that was deadening. They had nearly lost what Christ wanted them to keep.
Revelation 2:4
Christ had spoken to the churches of Asia through Revelation, saying, "Thou hast left thy first love."
It had been about 100 years since these churches were founded by the apostles, and they had settled down thinking only of themselves and their organization. They had lost the spirit it of the first apostles.
How much they were like sleeping men who wanted to sleep on. So when Montanus came along, they resisted him.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 132
He went from town to town evangelizing and leaving new assemblies that bypassed the old churches. All through Asia, Africa, Palestine or Greece, and Italy and in the Greek colonies around Lyons, France, Montanism caught like wild fire.
The attitude of Eleutherius, bishop of the first church of Rome, shows us today just how backslidden he had become. He got all the bishops he could to condemn Montanus.
However, God has His jewels that can be gathered from the dark corners of the world, and He picks out those most precious, through His instruments like Montanus.
Acts 2:4 176 A.D. Jude 4
In Rome, a presbyter of the second church assembly, named Tertullian, had made an exhaustive study of the Scriptures, even memorizing them. He was a lawyer and many times he sat at the 'bench' pleading for the lives of the condemned Christians who came to him for help. When this bachelor heard Montanus preach from God's Holy Word, the deeper recesses of his soul responded. According to the Scriptures, he knew the doctrine was right. He accepted the preaching of Montanus and waited before God for the experience of Pentecost the gift of the Holy Ghost. With this enduement of power, Tertullian did all he could to bring the revival into all the Roman churches. But a certain philosopher named Praxeas, who had crept into the first assembly unawares, persuaded Eleutherius to reject the doctrine of a fresh out-pouring of the Holy Ghost. Tertullian had prayer meetings in his home, and from these meetings, the Montanistic fervor spread all over Italy and Africa and France. Those who repented and did the first works, were filled with the Holy Ghost in like manner as the apostles in Jerusalem. A reformation thus began in Rome.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 133
Bishop Eleutherius was like Saul of old, when David found favor with God and the multitude. He turned on Tertullian because of the feeling of being set aside for Montanism. Tertullian was so sure he was right that no opposition from the first church of Rome and Eleutherius could stop him.
Like a drowning man, Eleutherius grasped at a straw to try to save himself. But many of his most spiritual members left and went with Tertullian. God had set Eleutherius and the first church of Rome aside. He had removed their candlestick (office) and placed that office in the new movement of Montanus.
207 A.D.
A Montanistic group (church) that was approved by God was started in Rome. Eleutherius did all in his power to stop its progress. Eleutherius and Praxeas, in 177 A.D., got the emperor to start a persecution against Montanism.(†) Tertullian accepted the charge of the Carthage Montanistic churches as bishop.
177 A.D.
From that time, God's approval had vanished from Eleutherius. God gave him a chance to return to the old way, but he was too far enmeshed in the dogmas and traditions of his church. Praxeas and Eleutherius ran to the secular power (the emperor) and persuaded him to start a persecution against all evangelical groups like Montanus'. It was at this point that philosopher Praxeas and his philosophy took over Eleutherius' church.
The Patripassian philosophers soothed Eleutherius into believing that if he wanted his church to be the best and first church of Rome, he must introduce their philosophers as teachers, so he did.
What a state that church got into!
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(†)Enc. Brit., 9th Ed. 1888. Vol. XVI. "After the year 177 A.D. a persecution of Christians from some unexplained cause. broke out simultaneously in many provinces of the empire."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 134
The first church of Rome, with Praxeas' help, made fun of the ecstasy of the Montanists. But they did not know that many of the apostles, even St. Peter, were 'drunk' when they came out of the upper room at Pentecost.
All the enemies of Montanism whether the first church of Rome or the learned Egyptians wrote copiously against the movement. They condemned the speaking with tongues.
Acts 8:18
On the day of Pentecost, the rabble did not understand what God was doing and neither did Praxeas. They said these Christians were speaking the language of devils. But the opposition was mostly from a class like Simon, the Sorcerer, who thought the action of the ones on whom Peter laid his hands was brought on by one of the demonistic arts practiced by the magicians of that day.
Vol. V. pp. 430. Chambers Encyclopedia--Montanus
"Believed in the constancy of supernatural phenomena within the church. The miraculous element, particularly the prophetic ecstasy, was not removed; on the contrary, the necessity for it was greater than ever. He considered those only to be true or perfect Christians who possessed the inward prophetic illumination of the Holy Spirit--they were the true church; and the more highly gifted were to be looked upon as the genuine successors of the apostles, in preference to the more outwardly consecrated bishops. '
"The treatise written by Tertullian after he became a Montanist furnishes the most copious information--about its later phase. All reports about Montanism must be used with utmost caution because even the earliest Orthodox writers give currency to many misconceptions and calumnies."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 135
Enc. Brit. 9th Ed. 1888, Vol. XVI pp. 775.
"Prisca and Maximilla like Montanus, uttered in a state of frenzy the commands of the Spirit, which spoke through them,"
This was prophecy--and we believe they (like Finney) spoke forth words (sounds) they did not understand. They were unknown tongues.
By the end of the third century there were hundreds of Montanistic churches along the trails that Montanus had taken years before. Later this Pentecostal movement was absorbed into other evangelical movements, such as Novatians, Nestorians and Donatists.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 136
185-254
Origen was from Alexandria. His father was a martyr in the early church. He was also a martyr for Christ at Tyre under Emperor Decius. (254 A.D.).
The church at Alexandria was considered an authority on the conduct of church bodies because this saint Origen, was a teacher there. The Bishop Demetrius of Alexandria sent him into many churches to teach and admonish in the discipline and rules laid down by the revered Apostles St. Peter, St. Paul and others. In that time the Scriptures were the only rules followed in all the Greek churches.
211 A.D.
The church at Alexandria had been hearing about the further backsliding of the First Church at Rome, and so Demetrius sent Origen to try to get this church back to the Scriptural basis for governing its church body. This was in the year 211 A.D. and right after Tertullian had left Rome for Carthage.
It was a good thing that Origen did go to Rome, because he saw the way Zephyrinus conducted his church. He also met the Deacon Callistus, who actually became a bishop later.
When Origen got to Rome he visited the various church congregations. He saw Zephyrinus 'take bribes,' which became a system of blackmail. The women who came to him to confess their sins woke up to the fact that they had been betrayed into this act of confidence which the Bishop used as a 'club' over their heads, and asked large sums of 'hush' money to keep their sins secret.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 137
There was a bright spot, however, in Origen's visit to Rome. It was then when he met Hippolytus. He had gone into the Portuensis church in Rome when Hippolytus was preaching and found his congregation walking worthy of the calling of Christ which they professed. Hippolytus was preaching "Holiness unto the Lord." At the same time Zephyrinus and Callistus were starting the traditions of their own making in the church that is now claiming to be the only church that has supremacy over all the world.
Origen was delighted with Hippolytus. They had many wonderful times in sweet fellowship. Origen's heart fairly bubbled over with springs of living water, when he heard Hippolytus preach. It was a time of refreshing from the Lord.
In Hippolytus' book of the writings of that time that was found in the scrolls from Mount Athos, Greece, a thousand or more years later, it says of Zephyrinus that he was a slothful bishop and that he took bribes. He would grant forgiveness to people if they would give him enough money.
Hippolytus could not stand Bishop Zephyrinus because of his careless handling of the First Church at Rome.
Hippolytus' writings have come down to us today as proof of his spirituality. We have nothing that was written by Zephyrinus or Callistus, but the writings of Origen, Hippolytus, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria remain as proof of their spiritual contact with God. (†) (‡)
There were many Christian churches in Rome, with its population of two or more million people at this time, and it seems very ironical that one from this
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(†) Enc. Brit., 1911 Vol., p. 490.
(‡) Nicean and Post Nicean Fathers
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 138
group of churches should grow into the great spectre that we have today in the so-called Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Origen decided that he would send all the information about the First Church of Rome to his transcribers so it could be relayed to all the other genuinely Christian Greek churches who were in the Epistolary Communion. But when Demetrius read this information he called Origen home, because he feared for his life, and besides, he had heard of the trouble in a church of Achaia so Origen was sent there to see if he could draw those Christians back together.
It is written in Bunsen's book that the church differences at this time were not settled in councils, but in the spirit of love and meekness and the words of Christ.
This was an impossibility in Rome, because the church of Zephyrinus would not take the Scriptures, but held their own opinions which were traditions of their early fathers like Anicetus, Victor and those of the First Roman Church (which was backslidden since 54 A.D.).
There was nothing left to do except to openly expose the corruption of this one Roman church in a treatise or history sent to all the other Greek evangelical churches through the writings of Origen, from his eye witness reports.
Origen said, "Rome did not wish to retain the Scriptures in their hearts, so God gave them a strong delusion that they might believe a lie," Romans 1:28, II Thessalonians 2:11. This delusion was the Noetian philosophy.
Greek copies of Origen went out to the churches of Constantinople, Palestine, Edessa, and the seven churches of Asia, but not to the First Roman Church.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 139
No church of Asia had gotten the idea of supremacy or any Apostolic succession. They knew such a claim was unscriptural.
This history that Origen wrote of Zephyrinus and Deacon Callistus (Callistus was an arch deacon at this time) was that Zephyrinus was old and doddering, and Callistus took almost the whole charge of the business matters of the church. He was very clever in managing the congregation. Zephyrinus allowed Callistus most of the power while he lazily sat back and enjoyed the adoration of the people. One thing Origen left for the churches was a martyrology of bishops for Rome from 41 A.D. and St. Peter's name did not appear on the list.
Origen also wrote many things from the Scriptures that would refute the practices of this one church. He wrote about the untruthfulness of the bishop's claims to be able to forgive sins of the people. Very unclean conditions in the church were caused by the plural marriages, but the greatest treatise he wrote at the same time, was the marvelous Scriptural doctrine of the resurrection, hoping to offset the false forgiveness practiced by the Bishop Zephyrinus.
Origen knew the Scriptures. He wrote that any who sinned and came to a man and paid that man to absolve him would never have forgiveness from God. He quoted from the Scriptures that the time would come when all would come out of their graves and stand before God in the last day.(†) Then the deeds of their lives that no man knew, except themselves, would come before God.
Origen claimed that the Bishop had no power to forgive sin if he had not fulfilled all of the contract with God, who gave the sanction for such power. The
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HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 140
covenant with God had been broken by sin and the office was taken away. "Be ye holy that bear the vessels of the Lord!"--Hebrews 2:1.
Origen wrote that a man who got only the forgiveness of man and not the genuine forgiveness of God would have to die unforgiven. He quoted the Scripture where St. Peter said, "Repent every one of you." Jesus also admonished the seven churches of Asia to repent.
In a few years Origen died a martyr at Tyre and the Christians who loved him buried his remains near their church. All the Greeks mourned him, and immediately his writings became very precious. They were kept with the copies of the Greek Scriptures and honored second only to the Word of God.
These writings contained the history of the First Church of Rome, from its beginning to 211 A.D., and as such they were left buried, so to speak, because they were written in Greek, which the later Latins could not read, but the Greek churches had Origen's history of the early church at Rome. (†)
As the First Roman Church advanced, they became more and more imbued with the supposition that they were the supreme church, and the other churches should acknowledge them as head of all churches and obey their commands.
It was after the time of Damasus, 384 A.D., or around 390 A.D., that a man named Rufinus, who knew both Latin and Greek, was challenged to translate this Greek history of the First Roman Church by
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(†) Origen in the year 211 A.D. had the knowledge of the founding of the Roman Church and the names of bishops up to his time. It was seven generations and in that time there was not the slightest thought of St. Peter's being the head of the list of bishops of Rome. Hippolytus, Tertullian, Clement and Origen all refuted Rome's claim of supremacy through St. Peter.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 141
Origen. The copies of the treatise containing First Roman Church history by Origen was accompanied with his matchless treatise of the truth from Scripture, explaining the resurrection in the last day, and refutation of the supremacy that the Roman Church was already professing. (†)
The copies of these Latin translations of Origen were scattered over Italy as far north as Istra. and to the Latin speaking people in Dalmatia and Islands in the Aegean west of Greece.
Just when the Latin church of Rome was making rapid progress and seemed to be pressing forward to world supremacy, they were rudely awakened by the truth in Origen's church history, and his treatise that told how far off the first Roman church was from the Apostolic teaching. What consternation the translations of Origen caused when they were circulated in Italy, especially at Rome. It was like the exploding of a bombshell.
Origen's works were the most popular reading of the time among the Christians. The little churches around Rome welcomed them, for these churches had been lorded over by the bishops of the First Roman Church, until they scarcely dared to express an opinion of their own on the meaning of the Scriptures.
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(†) Enc. Brit. Vol. XIX. pg. 487, "Popedom" 9th Ed. popular reprint, N.C. pub. Henry G. Allen & Co., N.Y.
"The question whether or no St. Peter was designated for preeminence among the apostles resolves itself, it is evident, into one of New Testament criticism; but from the time of Origen, who visited Rome early in the 3rd century, when the theory first began to be put forward, there has always been a certain section in the universal church who have distinctly repudiated the affirmative assumption.
"For if." says Origen. "you hold that the whole church was built by God on Peter alone, what will you say concerning John, the son of thunder and each of the other Apostles." ( Migne. Patralogia Graeca, XIII, 397)
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 142
The members of the First Roman Church came to the Pope and showed him the copies and said, "Either these writings of Origen are the truth and I am unforgiven, or they are not true and you have the power to forgive sin." (absolution)
Origen's history of the Callistan church was a shock. It tore down the pretensions of this First Roman Church and put it in a precarious position. The popes did not know what to do. They had no possible way of refuting the charges except by the Holy Scriptures, and they did not have copies enough to suppress the tide that arose against them.
The popes ran to the Emperors Honorius and Arcadius and got them to make an edict stating that anyone possessing Origen's writings, or found reading them, was to be put to death by burning, and their property was to be taken away from them. Even Augustine sanctioned this edict.(†)
This tide was stemmed by cruelty and bloodshed, and with great effort Origen's works were almost suppressed. The First Roman Church went forward again, sailing under the protection and sanction of the worldly pagan Emperors and the traditions of the "Father" Callistus and the "Apostle" Noetus.
The years passed with mighty visitations on Rome from God. The peoples of the north headed by Alaric , and later by Vandals, sacked Rome. But still the old unscriptural dogmas were cherished and kept as the true governing traditions of what was called "The First Christian Church at Rome."
As Origen said, "There will be a resurrection(‡) at the last day and all will give an account of the deeds done in the body. Those who repent and come to God in Jesus' name may be forgiven. If they believe
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(†) Chambers Encyclopedia, "Augustine" or see chapter on Augustine
(‡) The lovely treatise of Origen on the resurrection and final judgment were destroyed by Emperor Justinian.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 143
in the shed blood of Christ for their redemption from the final punishment for sins they have committed, they will go free. But those who have trusted in a man's forgiveness will have to spend eternity separated from God."
"In James 5:14 it is ordained that, if any believer is sick, he shall call for the elders of the church; and they shall pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.
"Origen reprobated medical art on the ground that the prescription here cited is enough; modern faith-healers and Peculiar People have followed in his wake. The Catholic Church has more wisely left physicians in possession, and elevated the anointing of the sick into a sacrament to be used only in cases of mortal sickness, and even then not to the exclusion of the healing art."(†)
Enc. Brit. Page 700 Vol. 71911--"Council (401 A. D.) summoned by Theophilus of Alexandria prohibited the reading of the works of Origen" Page 5 --Quotations from Rufinus and Jerome.
Church at Cyprus--Page 701: In 1821 all the Greek bishops and many of their flocks were put to death by way of discouraging sympathies with the Greeks.
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(†) Enc. Brit. 1911 Ed. Vol. X page 89 Origen--on healing By Frederic Cornwallis Conybeare MA D Th. (Gressen)
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 144
WE READ THESE THREE WORDS 'Not now extant' in the writings listed in the biographies of such men as Origen, Tertullian, Sabellius, Dio Cassius and later writers of renown.
The phrase simply means that like the "Three Chapters" or the hidden six years of history in the years 202-208, that have been deleted by the popes and puppet emperors, that only half the truth of Christian Church history has come down to us. One writer said, "Half the truth is the blackest of lies."
It is like the testimony of a criminal who said, "He fell into the ditch and drowned," but withheld the other half of the truth, "I pushed him in "
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 145
207 Carthage 155-230 A.D.
When Polycarp was bishop of Smyrna, Montanus was a baby in Phrygia. At the same time a baby was born in Carthage. His name was Tertullian.
The written Scriptures in Greek had been going out into the Christian assemblies that dotted the countries of Asia Minor and Greece.
St. John had been gone for 25 years, but his Greek school of transcribers carried on the writing of the Gospel and the Apostle.(†) Many Greek bishops had established little churches all over Italy, and in spite of satanic resistance, evangelical Christianity was holding its own.
When Tertullian was old enough his father, who was in public office in Carthage, sent him to Rome to be educated as a lawyer.
This boy had a wonderful memory, which was a great advantage when he had to recall some law that would free his client. He became a master of the laws of Hadrian and was successful at the bar. This made him very popular and especially among the Christians whose cause he espoused.(‡)
Tertullian's practice brought him into close contact with the Christians who were ever alert to gain a new convert and wanted especially to influence this
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(†) The written Scriptures from St. John's school were called "Gospel and Apostle".
(‡) Enc. Brit. Vol. XXIII Page 196 Ed. 1888
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 146
young man. The pure lives and noble deeds, as well as the way they suffered, won the admiration of Tertullian.
These pure Christians of the second church of Rome induced him to read the Holy Scriptures. It was not long until he was baptized into that church.
He was the hero of the young men who attended his church, and his influence over their lives caused many of them to become outstanding Christians. One of these was named Novatianus. The two were seen together constantly.
When Tertullian was a presbyter of the second church of Rome, Montanus came to that church and preached from the Holy Scriptures. Tertullian's heart was open to the messages because they were preached from the Scriptures he had read. He found himself entirely won over to the truth preached in this Holy Ghost revival. It was at this time that this lawyer passed from unconscious Christianity to conscious. His deeper experience with God made him a 'doer' of the Word. This fresh outpouring of the life-giving water changed him completely and he now had a new understanding of true discipleship.
He knew that the gifts of the Holy Ghost had not ceased with the apostles because he saw Montanus and his followers doing the same miracles and healing the sick.
Tertullian early in the third century testified that Glossolaly (tongues)(†) still went on in the Montanist church which he had joined. Tertullian wrote in De Anima, chap. IX: "There is among us, at the present time, a sister who is endowed with the charismatic of revelations, which she suffers through ecstasy in the spirit during the service in church. She converses with angels, sometimes with the Lord, and both hears and sees mysteries."
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(†) Tongues--a miraculous faculty of talking strange languages without having previously learned them.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 147
Conybeare(†) said:
"The same--trance utterances recur in Christian revivals of every age, (e.g.) among the medicant friars of the 13th century, among the Jansenists, the early Quakers, the converts of Wesley and Whitfield, the persecuted Protestants of the Cevennes, and the Irvingites."
He knew now, that "THIS IS THAT," as Peter had said.
The spiritual impact of this fresh outpouring of the Holy Ghost seemed frenzy to the nominal church members. They had gotten into a rut of forms and ceremonies. And not only this, a renegade philosopher named Praxeas had gotten into Eleutherius church (the first church of Rome) with his Patripassians philosophy, and modalistic monarchism, and when this outcast philosopher influenced Eleutherias to condemn Montanism, it broke Tertullian's heart. Tertullian begged Eleutherias to reconsider, but it only made the spiritually dead bishop mad and caused strife.(‡)
There was one church in the suburbs over which a Greek bishop was shepherd. His name was Hippolytus and he was a real father to Tertullian, because he also had continued on Scriptural lines. His church was a fundamental organization of the most spiritual people in Rome. It was to this godly man that Tertullian took his problems. He told Hippolytus that he had been asked to become bishop of one of the newly organized Montanist churches in Carthage, and this bishop of Rome advised him to accept it.
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(†) Enc. Br it. 1911 Vol. XXVII Pp. 10a Tongues F. C. Conybeare MA D.Th.
(‡) Tertullian's writings condemning Eleutherias' actions have come down to us today. Pp. 430. Chambers Enc. Vol. V
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 148
207 A.D.
So he left Rome and its church struggles behind. He was around middle age and had never been married, so God rewarded him with a lovely Christian wife.
In the course of time Novatianus visited Tertullian who advised him, "When you must make important decisions, ask yourself, 'What would Jesus do if He were making the same choice?'" It is needless to say that Novatianus also became an apostolic Christian for he too received the Pentecostal gift of the Holy Ghost at one of Tertullian's prayer meetings. This changed his whole life.
211 A.D.
In 211 A.D. Tertullian was visited by the wonderful writer, Origen, from Alexandria. He said the archbishop, Demetrius of Alexandria, had sent him to find out about the condition of the first church of Rome. He said that he was going there to see if there was any hope of pulling it back into the apostolic Christianity, by pointing out the Scriptural pattern.(†)
Tertullian said, "Our beloved Ignatius admonished the Christians from the arena at Rome, to 'Obey the Bishop.' " But he would in no wise recommend the Christians at Rome to obey bishop Eleutherias of the first church at Rome because he was very far from the apostles' doctrine.
When Origen stopped at Carthage on his return journey, he reported a worse condition than he had supposed could have existed in any Christian church. He said that the first church of Rome had reverted to so many pagan customs, that St. Peter would never own them. He said they were trying to say that St.
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(†) Because of Origen's exhaustive knowledge of the Scriptures, Archbishop Demetrius of Alexandria sent Origen to churches where there was a schism. This godly theologian brought many back into the old paths and the schism was healed.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 149
Peter came to Rome and started the first church. Zephyrinus said St. Peter was the chief apostle, so their bishops who followed in succession have the right to be the only successors of Christ through St. Peter.
"We find again Tertullian, who during his residence in Rome had acquired a certain practical knowledge of the administrative Characteristics of its church, implicitly intimating his disapproval in his treatise DE PUDICITIA (sec. i) of the assumption by the Roman bishop of the titles of "pontifex maximux" and ''epicsopus episcoporum"; in another of his treatises (DE VIRGIN. VELAND; Migne, PATROL., pp. 767-8), he distinctly impugns the claim made by ZEPHYRINUS (202-218) of a certain superiority in the Roman see derived as a tradition from St. Peter."(†)
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No pagan emperor dared to lay his hands on the mighty lawyer Tertullian. He was so persuasive in his art of pleading for men's lives that every Christian went to him for protection.
We know that every church of those early days had the right to judge whether or not a person was a heretic. But there was only one church that could not pass right judgments on any spiritual matter, and that was the first Roman church.
They had lost the essence of the pure Gospel of Christ by substituting the pagan dogmas for the pure Word of the Living God.
They got so they called anyone a heretic was who would not accept their traditions and man-made dogmas.
When Tertullian became a Montanist he was called a 'heretic' by the bishops and presbyters of the first church of Rome.
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(†) Enc. Brit. "POPEDOM" ' Page 489 D 1888 9th Ed.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 150
The first church of Rome had good standing with the emperors Commodus, Septimus Severus and other military despots who were 'cat's paws.' The proscription that the first Roman church bishops and presbyters caused the emperors to enact were not against the backslidden members of their church, but were against the Asiatic bishops and those few evangelicals who dared to conduct their churches in the city of Rome. Bishop Victor had shown his reversion to paganism and perhaps his worst enemies were from the ranks of such evangelicals as Tertullian and Hippolytus and Irenaeus.
History says that Irenaeus was martyred by Septimus Severus, 202 A.D. He had perpetually resisted Victor and bishops of Rome like Zephyrinus who were "wallowing in the mire." II Pet. 2:22.
Tertullian believed with the other evangelical bishops, that Christ's church should be a body of clean and holy people, zealous for good works. But when Tertullian went to France to plead for Irenaeus' life, he realized that he too might be marked for death by the pagan emperors who did the bidding of the first church of Rome.
There was a vast difference between the treatment of the heretics by the Roman church and those heretics rightly called by the evangelical bishops.
The first Roman church demanded burning of the heretics they created while the evangelicals just shut off the heretic from their communion.
The first Roman church treatment of the heretics called for a treatise from Tertullian called Praescriptione Haeriticorum.
Proscription was a terrible thing. The Roman law says that those who came into disfavor were proscribed. Anyone could kill them. Their property was confiscated.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 151
If one's reason is unbiased he knows that Jesus would never proscribe anyone. He knew if He let them alone they would force themselves to Hell by their own deeds. He said, "Ye are of your father the devil, for his works ye do. He was a murderer from the beginning."
The emperors were murderous and the bishops of the first Roman church loved it so. Jesus said that those who delivered Him to Pilate were worse than Pilate, and had the greater sin. St. John 18:15
This mighty theologian also wrote against Callistas who would get the emperor to proscribe any who resisted him and his vile administration.
Tertullian as a jurist, had great influence with the magistrate so that few dared to touch him. He might have perished along with Irenaeus in 202 A.D. had he not been careful.
Many of his writings that exposed the unscriptural actions of the bishops were proscribed in later years, and burned, because they revealed the unscriptural practices of Rome.(†)
Tertullian influenced Novatianus, a pure bishop, and the Novatians influenced the Donatists in Africa. "The home of Tertullian was the birthplace of Novatianism and Donatism."
These were the sects at that time who were carrying on the pure evangelical Gospel. But that one church at Rome was growing in numbers and political power with the aid of the emperors.
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(†) His writings, like those of Origen, probably survived if they were written in Greek.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 152
[xxvi][See illustration 152a]
Up to the time of Callistus it seemed impossible for the first Roman church to get farther off the apostolic Christianity. Pagan forms had almost entirely engulfed the worship of God in spirit and in truth in that first church of Rome.
Sun god worship replaced the Lord's Supper. The bowing down to the images of the saints and Jesus and
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 153
His mother had taken the place of seeking God in prayer and supplication for the sins of the people.
Forgiveness was said by the mouth of an ungodly bishop, instead of the witness of the Spirit Himself within a man's heart that God had forgiven all his iniquities.
God's faithfulness was supplanted with the works of man's hands. There was no personal contact with God. It was the Bishop of the First Roman Church who took God's place.
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"The Skeleton in Rome's Closet" is about "Hippolytus and His Age," and it comes from that book by Baron Bunsen, second edition, volume 1, page 395.
I hunted in many histories and failed to find any word about Callistus who was listed as the 16th Pope of Rome. It was necessary to get something about him because he came at the same time as Hippolytus. The county librarian of Santa Cruz, Mrs. Geraldine Work, got these books by Bunsen, called "Hippolytus and His Age," and about a month or more was spent reading them and making notes. What I am giving you is the 'kernel' of the truth about this man Hippolytus, and his age.
This information is from a genuine treatise by Bishop Hippolytus of Rome, 230 A.D.
Bunsen wanted to find out what happened to Hippolytus also. In the histories he found three men (in Roman history) made out of one man, Hippolytus. But the only and rightful man, Hippolytus, was a martyr. He was banished to the Island of Sardinia with another bishop, Pontian of Rome, for the cause of Christ, and died there about 235 A.D. His name
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 154
appears in the earliest martyrologies of Rome, but St. Peter's and St. Paul's names are not included.
Hippolytus served in his church at Rome while this man Callistus was serving in the first Roman church. They were both bishops of churches in Rome, Hippolytus in his church and Callistus in his.
I quote from the article about Callistus in Bunsen's book, Hippolytus and His Age, second edition, Vol. 1, Pg. 391, 1850 A.D.:
"The story belongs to an age of bigotry and general decay. It has just now by chance been revealed to us," says Bunson.
He refers to the writing of Hippolytus discovered by a French government agent named M. Menas, in a monastery on Mt. Athos, Greece, 1842.(†) It was published in 1851 at the expense of the University of Oxford, England.(‡)
The following was written by Hippolytus:
180-192 A.D. "When Commodius was emperor and Victor was bishop of Rome a good Christian soul of this time named Carporphorus had had a Christian slave named Callistus. To help him on Carporphorus gave this slave charge of a bank which he kept in (Priscinsus Publica). Many brethren and widows trusted their money to this bank having great faith in the Christian character of Carporphorus. But Callistus turned out a rogue; he made way with the funds trusted to him; and when the depositors wanted their money it was gone. When their complaints came before Carporphorus he asked for the account, and when the fraud could no longer be concealed Callistus made his escape. He ran down to the
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(†) The monasteries on Mt. Athos have been there for centuries. They allow no females in this monastery; neither animals nor humans.
(‡) Chambers Enc. Vol. IV Page 459--Hippolytus
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 155
harbor Portus(†) some twenty miles from Rome, found a ship ready to start, and embarked. Carporphorus was not slow to follow him, and found the ship moored in the middle of the harbor. He took a boat to claim the criminal. Callistus seeing no escape threw himself into the sea, and was with difficulty saved, and delivered up to his master, and delivered him up to the domestic treadmill of the Roman slave-holders. (The Pistrinum.)
[See illustration 155a]
Some time passed and, as is wont to happen (says Hippolytus) some brethren came to Carporphorus, and said he ought to give poor Callistus a fair chance of regaining his character, or at least his money. He pretended he had money outstanding, and that, if he could only go about, he could recover it. "Well," said good Carporphorus, "let him go and try what he can recover: I do not care for my own money but I mind that of the poor widows."
So Callistus went out on the Sabbath (Saturday) pretending he had to recover some money from the Jews, but in fact resolved to do something
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(†) Now the harbor Ostia. Pictured here.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 156
desperate, which might put an end to his life or give a turn to his case, he went into a synagogue and raised a great riot there saying he was a Christian, and interrupted the service. The Jews were, of course, enraged, at this insult upon them, then beat him and carried him before Fucianus the prefect(†) of Rome. When this judge, a very severe man, was hearing the cause, somebody recognized Callistus and ran to tell Carporphorus what was going on. Carporphorus went immediately to the court and said, "This fellow is no Christian, but wants to get rid of his life, having robbed me of much money, as I will prove."
The Jews, thinking this was a Christian stratagem to save Callistus, insisted upon having him punished for disturbing them in the lawful exercise of their worship. Fucianus therefore sentenced him to be scourged, and then transported to the unwholesome parts of Sardinia so fatal to life in the summer. (Strabo, V. 28, 8)
There was a woman in Rome named Marcia who had married the captain of the guards(‡) and was believed to have exercised a great influence on the emperor. She knew that people who were exiled (page 391, Hippolytus and His Age) to the Island of Sardinia were Christians. So some time after, says Hippolytus, Marcia wishing to do a good work, sent for Bishop Victor asking him what Christians had been transported to Sardinia, adding she would ask the emperor to release them.
The bishop made out a list of them; but being a judicious and righteous man, omitted the name of Callistus knowing the offense he had committed.
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Marcia obtained a letter and Hyacinthus (an eunuch of the service of the palace undoubtedly, and a presbyter of the church) was dispatched to the governor of the island to claim and bring back the martyrs. Hyacinthus delivered his list: and Callistus, finding his name was not upon it, began to lament and entreat and at last moved Hyacinthus to demand his liberation also by using the name of Marcia.
When Callistus made his appearance Victor was very much vexed and sent him off to Antium (Por d' Anzo)(†) and gave him a certain sum a month. Hippolytus thinks that it might have been here that Callistus fell in with Zephyrinus.
Carporphorus died and soon after Zephyrinus became bishop of Rome. He was very stupid, says Hippolytus, and ignorant and took bribes. He made Callistus coadjutor (assistant) and let him take over the management of the clergy. In fact Callistus had the government of the affairs so much so that when Zephyrinus died, Callistus stepped into the Bishopric of Rome.(‡) "This was what Callistus coveted," says Hippolytus.
Soon debates of doctrines began to arise and as there were many sects at Rome, Callistus fell in with the Noetus sect and threw off Sabellius as not orthodox. He established a school in which the doctrine of Noetus (or Cleomenes) was taught, as Hippolytus says, in opposition to the church.
(He did worse than that.) To the satisfaction of many who for misconduct had been removed from communion of the church, Callistus' church was filled with people who were out of communion with the church and with God.
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(†) 33 mi. south of Rome on west coast of Italy.
(‡) Enc. Brit. 1888, Vol. X 17;, p. 489, Col. 2b.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 158
"It was at this time that Callistus actually set up the doctrine of the Bishop forgiving sins of the people. He forgave the sins of all, and that was not all; he also laid down the principle, If a bishop commits a sin, be it even a sin unto death, he must not be deposed (or obliged to abdicate) for all that." (†)
Hebrews 7:17
The philosophers got their logical sequence for saying that the bishop could not be put out of office from the half finished Scripture, "Thou art a priest forever." The philosophers made a syllogism from this.
Callistus established the phrase that has come down from that time, "It's in the office." This statement has been a deadly weapon in the hands of the clergy. In speaking to a Roman Catholic Jesuit one day I asked, "How can you claim that you have the sanction of God for your succession of Popes? You know that any chain is no stronger than its weakest link. You know there were wicked Popes. We know God would not sanction the lives of those Popes in the church of His Son Jesus Christ." He said to me, "It's in the office. It does not make any difference what kind of a man officiates, it's in the office."
This reminds me of an illustration. If the devil would come in and consecrate the bread bringing Christ down into the round wafer and then lift the monstrance, it would not make any difference to the congregation because 'It's in the office,' even if the devil is officiating.
There is another illustration that serves to clear this one fact. The Lord has provided the bread of life for His children (even the Word of God) and He wants the bishops to handle this Word of Life and give it to
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(†) "Hippolytus and His Age" by Bunsen.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 159
the people unadulterated. But it is like the man who gave a wonderful banquet. The food was perfect and clean. The dishes were clean, but the people who handled the food and waited on the table had smallpox, diphtheria and tuberculosis, and were coughing over the food. Yet if anyone said anything to them they said, "We have the office of waiting on the table. It's in the office."
Some people are not rational in reasoning when it comes to the spiritual things of God. So we have this dogma that came by the tradition of father Callistus, "It's in the office."
"Bishops, Presbyters and Deacons were received into orders after being married twice or even three times. Even he who married when already in orders might do so undisturbed." I Cor. 7:13
The Scripture verse that is God's implicit instructions is Ephesians 5 :29--Christ wanted a 'church without spot or wrinkle or any such thing,'--a clean church. Callistus' statement was "Did not the Saviour say, 'Let the tares grow with the wheat,' and were there not unclean beasts in the ark." But there were no unclean men in the ark. There were only eight clean souls saved from the flood.
Bunsen says,
"These and like Scriptural arguments were brought forth by Callistus."
"He favored single ladies of rank who wished to have a substitute for a husband in the form of a slave and who might prefer to have no children."
"Callistus' school flourished and his followers were called Callistians, by Theodoret in his Ecclesiastical Church History under the name of 'Noetians'."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 160
Gleanings from Hippolytus and His Age from Bunsen's Preface(†):
"Concerning the church, the canon of the New Testament was settled in the churches (up to Origen) with some slight differences which disturbed no one." 211 A.D.
"The idea of reading prayers seemed to be particularly repugnant at this time."
"The life of the true church in the world at this time was guided on the basis of the words of Christ and the injunctions of the apostles, by certain rules and practices that had been formed in the different churches, (but the Roman church from Constantine to Theodosius worked out their own system in their own interests with a truly Roman spirit)."
The historian, Shaff, says:
"The historical basis for canon law is forged. Cannon law came down from the Callistan Noetian time."
Bunsen in his preface records Hippolytus as saying,
"The bishops lost by ignorance or wickedness the office given them by God as well as Balaam lost that of a prophet and Caiphas that of a high priest." Acts 1:20
Page 26, preface,
"Bishop Hippolytus felt as an honest man: he despised Zephyrinus (‡) and thought him incapable of governing his church because he was ignorant, and greedy for gain. An ignorant and selfish man could not, he thought, (in reality) conduct an episcopal government. He was a bad bishop, though canonically he was a good bishop."
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(†) Preface of Vol. I. 2nd Ed. "Hippolytus and His Age" by Bunsen.
(‡) Zephyrinus preceded Callistus.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 161
As for Callistus, Hippolytus begins his biography by saying, (page 204),'
"He was versed in wickedness and adroit in seduction."
"After referring to his erroneous theological systems, it is expressly for his corrupting morality that he condemns him." Page 299, lines 60 on.
Hippolytus regards Callistus as an heretic along with the rest in his treatise.
________________
Callistus needed Scriptural correction, but he would in no wise be corrected. Scripture says "If anyone called a brother, be a fornicator, covetous, idolater, reviler, drunken or extortioner, do not even eat with such a one. Put away the wicked man from among yourselves." I Cor 5:7-11.
When other bishops like Hippolytus from the purer churches of Rome saw Callistus falling far below the Scriptural standard required of a bishop, they spoke to him and pointed out the Scriptures that he had not taken to heart.
Hippolytus brought along the Scriptures and read:
1. "This is a true saying, if a man desire the office of a bishop he desireth a good work.
2. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;
3. Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous;
4. One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity;
5. (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)
6. Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he falleth into the condemnation of the devil;
7. Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and a snare of the devil." --I Timothy 3 :1-7
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 162
Callistus listened to Hippolytus' reading of the Scripture and he said, "I am the manager of this church, and I intend to do as I please. You manage your church the way you want and let me alone."
Now Zephyrinus, whose place Callistus took, had been a very lax bishop, and Callistus had seen people give large sums of money to Zephyrinus and ask him to forgive them of their sins, and he would wink at the sins and tell them that he had forgiven them.
Callistus had never paid attention to Zephyrinus' sermons, for he was too busy keeping an eye on the coin box. Even if he had listened he would probably never have heard a sermon with the text taken from the Scriptures which said, "Follow after holiness without which no man shall see the Lord." Heb. 12:14.
Callistus remembered the powerful preaching of Origen and he was under such conviction he could not sleep, for thinking of the Lord's coming back to earth and the awful judgment to follow. Origen also preached that there would be a day of judgment when every one would have to stand before God and give an account of the things he had done.
Callistus hated Hippolytus because he was telling people to attend other churches where they could hear sermons from the Scriptures.
________________
It was undoubtedly these philosophers with Callistus' sanction who put "skids" under the Roman Catholic church and helped it on its downward journey.
We remember that Noetus had been a heretic philosopher who advocated the patripassian heresy
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 163
at Smyrna, and was excommunicated there at the close of the 2nd century. His views were also condemned at the Council of Alexandria, 261 A.D.
Funk and Wagnall's definitions: Funk & Wagnalls Dictionary (Unabridged 1913. Page 1681)
Noetus taught in opposition to the Logos Christianity.
Noesis is a word which was coined at that time from Noetius.
Noesis is the logical doctrine of axioms or laws of Thought.
Webster says, "Noesis. . .is purely intellectual apprehension.'' This is known as Gnosticism.
Noetic truth is given to purely abstract or intellectual reasoning."
It is "the science falsely so called." I Tim. 6:20
________________
If anyone had a new doctrine in those days he went to Rome to try to pawn it off on the people.
Not only were new doctrines propounded but also all the old philosophers who had failed to make an impression in other cities drifted into Rome. It was this way at Smyrna where the blessed Polycarp had been bishop. The church there was so well grounded in the Scriptures that they could easily detect false teachings.
From this multitude of outcast philosophers Callistus picked out the sect called Noetians. They had a Stoic background and lived very self-denying lives, so to Callistus they seemed the very ones to help him. The basis for all their philosophy was mental.
They practiced logic and combined it with the first axiom of geometry, vis - "Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other." They abandoned the Holy Scriptures for the study of geometry.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 164
From Eusebius(†) (‡) popular history I quote:
"The sacred Scriptures have been boldly perverted by them; the rule of the ancient faith they have set aside, Christ they have renounced, not inquiring what the Holy Scriptures declared, but zealously laboring what form of reasoning may be devised to establish their impiety.
"And should anyone present a passage of divine truth, they examine whether a connected or disjointed syllogism can be formed from it. But they abandon the holy Scriptures for the study of geometry, as being of the earth they tell of the earth, and know not Him that cometh from above . . . these men adulterate the simplicity of that faith contained in the holy Scriptures by the wily arts of impious men; . . . For this purpose they fearlessly lay their hands upon the holy Scriptures, saying that they have corrected them."
This axiom of Geometrical logic held true as far as measuring the earth was concerned, but when it was applied to spiritual things, that the Noetians did not know, they made very great blunders.
They juggled tiny bits of Scripture to make a meaning that God did not intend.
Callistus was so blind spiritually that he took these philosophers for real Christians because they acted like he thought Christians should. The Word of God described them. "These are they that have a form of godliness denying the power thereof."
To Callistus they seemed more godlike than those who accused him.
He invited these Noetians to come into his church and be the teachers of his congregation. This was the beginning of the second ending of the First Christian Church at Rome.
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(†) Eusebius Popular History Page 215 Baker Book House, Grand Rapids. Mich. (Pub.) 1955
(‡) Jerome, who is given credit for having translated Eusebius, added to it--as well as taking away certain truths.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 165
These philosophers gave Callistus all his dogmas for governing his church. The first false dogma that they brought in was one they had tried to use in Smyrna when they were cast out. They said, "If Christ suffered on the cross, and He was God, then God suffered on the cross." The devil had an unseen hook in every bit of reasoning.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 166
When Praxeas ran over to Rome from Asia he hoped to head off the Montanist movement in that great city.
He is listed as a Montanist in Asia but he could not be a heathen philosopher and a Montanist at the same time.
He brought with him the seeds of the most devastating philosophy the world of Christianity has ever known. It is known as the
This philosophy was mixed with a definite formula of logic called
These long words are simple when you take them apart. MODALISTIC, HAS THE WORD 'MODE' IN IT. It just means a mode of juggling words. LOGIC and the first axiom of geometry made the dogma. MONARCHIANISM; is just making God the monarch and having the Son and Holy Ghost swallowed up in the MONARCH.
Let's put the two together and see what we get. It means that if Jesus said He and the Father were one, then Jesus was God. Then if Jesus suffered and died on the cross, God also suffered and died on the cross.
Can you imagine God as dead, even for three days as His son was? Patripassian simply means Father (Patri) Passians (Suffered).
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 167
Hence we have the great monster of the Modalistic Monarchianism under the cover of Patripassians philosophy, which was called 'Science.' It was a heresy that Praxeas got established in the first Roman church.
Three earmarks of the philosophy of Noetus and Praxeas: The mode of Logic was (1) possibility, (2) probability, (3) logical conclusions.
About philosophers in the third century; the Noetians especially:
These philosophers had been ejected from every true church.
They were the agitators of "The Science So Called --"
The genuine Christians like Polycarp would have nothing to do with them, so they were ever on the alert to overthrow Christianity by getting into the churches that were having schisms.
This was what St. Paul was warning Timothy and the Phrygians about. I Timothy 6:20 "Avoid oppositions of science falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith. '
St. Paul warned the church at Thessalonica, II Thessalonians 2:10, 11 "Because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie." This Scripture foretold the fate of the first Roman church. They accepted Praxeas patripassian philosophy which was a strong delusion and they believed the lie.
St. Paul also adds "That they all might be damned, who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." II Thessalonians 2:12.
And another admonition in the 15th verse says, "Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 168
Modalistic Monarchianism embodies Patripassian Philosophy. Praxeas was about the first to introduce it to Rome, 15)9-205 A.D.
New Schaff Herzog Enc. Vol V. pp 249 "Hippolytus was much opposed to Callistus for his lax discipline as for his monarchianizing theology."
Below are many of their chief dogmas that have persisted in the First Roman church to this day. They explain the axioms that were brought forth to support their logic.
When Callistus got into trouble because he did not know the Scriptures, he called a council of these Noetian philosophers and said, "You must help me out."
Here is the philosophy of Noetus and Praxeas:
The true Christian churches of Rome said to Callistus, "You do not have a Christian church. It is full of bad people. The philosophers gave Callistus the formula: "Did not Christ say, 'Let the tares grow with the wheat'? So must they be in the church." But Callistus' church had all tares.
1. MARY, THE MOTHER OF GOD.
Jesus said, "I and my Father are one," and so Jesus is God. If Mary is the mother of Jesus, then Mary is the mother of God.
2. THE FORGIVENESS OF SIN.
Christ said to Peter, "Whose sins ye forgive they are forgiven." You are a bishop of Christ's church. So as bishop you have the right to forgive people's sins.
3. THE SANCTION FOR STATUES IN THE CHURCH
When the children of Israel came out from Egypt they borrowed all that was costly (money in jewelry) so the Christian church must borrow from the pagans (all the money-making devices), Statues, etc., etc.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 169
4. THE ACTUAL PRESENCE OF CHRIST IN THE COMMUNION
Jesus said, "This is my body," and so you must believe that as the gods came into the statues, so Christ comes into the bread on the altar.
5. THE PERPETUAL PRIESTHOOD
The philosophers said, "In the Scriptures it says, 'Thou art a priest forever', so being a bishop you are a priest and you stay in the office forever and no one can put you out.' 'It's in the office.'
6. THE SANCTION FOR MORE THAN ONE WIFE
Abraham was a man of God and he had more than one wife, so the Christians have the right to have more than one wife. The philosophers said that after Christ died, the disciples had all things in common, and that included their wives. This is what Jesus called Nicolaitans in Rev. 2:6. 7.
7. The impure philosophers said:
"Were there not clean and unclean beasts in the ark; so must there be in the church."
There were clean and unclean beasts in the ark--but there were only eight clean people, and no man had more than one wife. These eight people populated the whole earth.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 170
History does not tell us when Sabellius came to teach in the first church of Rome.
We are led to believe that when Tertullian and Origen saw the need for a spiritual teacher for that church (211 A.D.) that they asked the bishop Zephyrinus (198-217 A.D.) to invite Sabellius to be one of his teachers.
Sabellius was from Africa and was a thorough theologian. Callistus who was arch deacon eyed him many times probably wishing the day would come when he could get Sabellius out of that church.
The treatise of Hippolytus says that Callistus threw off Sabellius as soon as he became bishop of that first church of Rome.
The phraseology in the reports of the Roman Catholic church today say that Callistus "excommunicated Sabellius." Can you imagine Callistus being able to excommunicate anyone?
After this great theologian left the church he stayed around the city of Rome and many of his former pupils followed him. This annoyed Callistus, so he got the Sophists to start a smear campaign. They said that Sabellius' theology was not Scriptural. The lies spread all over Italy and Greece. But we have Sabellius' own words for his true doctrine preserved from the archives of the ancient writings.
"The 'energy by which God called into being and sustains the universe is the 'LOGOS', after whose image men were created; but when they
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 171
had fallen from perfection, it became necessary for the 'LOGOS' or Divine Energy, to hypostasize itself in a human body, in order to raise and redeem them; hence in the man Christ Jesus dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily; while the same Divine Energy, operating spiritually and impersonally in the hearts of believers, is the 'Holy Ghost'."
This is not, perhaps, so very heretical after all.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 172
53-150 A.D.
Up to the time of Clement I who was bishop of a church in Rome 90 A.D. there was no quarrel among the Christians. Priscilla and Aquila and the other Jewish Christian Saints who could not sanction the reversion of the first Roman church to pagan practices, just withdrew and formed their own Jewish Christian assembly which we call the second church of Rome or Evangelicals. This was during the years between 53 A.D. and 69 A.D. then St. Paul formed the third church of Rome in his own hired dwelling.
From the time of St. Paul to the time of Clement I, 90 A.D. these three churches were too concerned about their own business to interfere with each other's affairs.
The two evangelical, mixed Jew and Gentile assemblies were gaining ground daily, bringing the inquirers to a definite born again experience. St. Paul never left penitents half converted.
But the first Roman church that had thrown off the Jewish Christian leaders, had only a nominal congregation which was drawn from the Gentile ranks only.
As long as this church had nothing spiritual to offer its members, it had to create pagan rituals to give the nominal believer something to do.
In that first Roman Church there was no genuine repentance or forgiveness of sin through the shed blood of Christ.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 173
It was quite natural that this pagan faction, (that still called itself the first Christian Church) created an entirely pagan background of their own, and refused the Old Testament Scriptures such as those that prophesied of Christ's coming and sacrifice to redeem us. They did not accept the Old Testament which contained the Scriptures that Philip interpreted to Candace's eunuch. They were able to save to the uttermost those who came like the Ethiopian. But they had to he explained by the Jewish Evangelical Christians. The Old Testament was the background for the church during the years until the New Testament Scriptures were written by St. John's school at Ephesus.
There was little friction between the three churches up to 100 A.D. But from that time there was jealousy and envy in the hearts of the bishops of the first Roman Church because like King Saul who was jealous of David, the first Roman Church felt the loss of every vestige of Spiritual uplift that God bestowed on the other churches to show His approval. From now on it was to be a deadly race between the spiritual armament and the counterfeit Christianity practiced by the first Roman church.
Fifty years of emulating the practices of pagan worships had built this first church of Rome into a veritable pagan temple.
It is also not surprising that they wanted to change the apostolic feast of the Pasch.
The feast of Astarte gained momentum from this time and when Polycarp tried to bring the bishop of this first Roman church back to the Jewish background of St. Peter and the Apostles, the pagans rebelled and claimed that their feast was the correct one
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 174
for the Gentile church. St. Peter, whom they now claim as their founder, would never have given his sanction to such worship--for he was a Jew.
This very bold acceptance of the pagan feast revealed just how far that Roman Church had gotten from Christ and His precepts. It was just one bad practice that had come to universal light.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 175
Hundreds of years have passed since those days in the early beginnings of Christianity.
The struggles of one faction to establish its own feast days and then force them on the ones who had different convictions, provoked a split in the unity of the Christians and caused them to create new sects which would conform to the Scriptures and the Apostolic teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ.
When one Christian group considered themselves the superiors of the other churches of Christ, and they started a doctrine the others would not accept (because it was contrary to the Apostles' teaching), it caused a schism. There were minor points over which an easy compromise could have been effected but the dogmatic first church of Rome refused to bend.
There was one unscriptural change which the first church of Rome created. This church wanted to throw off as many of the old Jewish teachings as possible and substitute its own religious pagan background in order to please the pagan sector of that first Roman Church.(†)
As it sat there in the midst of a pagan population there was a great tendency to copy many of the forms of worship around them.
It as this tendency that led the bishops before and after Anicetus to effect the change of the celebration
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HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 176
of the death, resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ and work it into the feast of Astarte or Easter. Pasch or Passover was a feast day in the apostolic churches that was kept in Asia among the churches that St. John and Barnabas and St. Paul had begun and then established. They were mostly Gentile churches but they gladly accepted the feast of the passover as the time they would commemorate the passion of their Lord Jesus Christ.
But the first Roman church that was early ostracized by the evangelical group at Rome, sat alone in its parish, creating any notion that came into its pagan mind.
In this way they decided to change the celebration of the passion of our Lord. They decided on a feast day that the pagans celebrated to the Syrian Goddess Astarte (which came near Passover.)
They knew the pagan background of this imaginary goddess and the corrupt practices that accompanied this cult, but in spite of this they moved over into her feast, and dropped the name passover, and called it Easter (from Astarte).
The cult of Astarte carried the practice of "unbridled prostitution" and the pagan legend of the Syrian Astarte tells how she lived for 10 years in Tyre as a prostitute. She was the mother of gods and as such lived a very adulterous life.
The Greek Christian assemblies that were started by the Jewish Apostles bound the Old and New Testaments together in such feasts as the Passover. It was celebrated in a new way in the Christian church because Christ became the Christian's Passover.
When Anicetus came out boldly and changed the feast of Pasch to the feast of the adulterous Astarte it was more than bishop Polycarp could stand. He rightly disapproved and he was only one voice among all the other bishops, of the churches of the Empire.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 177
Anicetus became so incensed at Polycarp that he asked Marcus Aurelius to kill him. (†) The emperor probably ordered the killing. But when Anicetus found all the bishops of France and especially of Lyon against him he enlisted the services of the emperor, who took troops and went to Lyon, killing Photinus the bishop in 177 A.D. Septimus Severus was with Aurelius on this expedition against the opposing evangelicals of France.
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(†)Enc. Brit. 11th Ed. 1911 Vol. XII pp. 156 "Gnosticism"
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 178
[xxvii][See illustration 178a]
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 179
193-211 A.D.
The Evangelical The First Roman Church
Hippolytus. . .Chief Bishop of Rome. Marcia . . . Concubine back and forth
Evangelical. between palace and first Roman church.
Albinus . . .General of armies of France. Leatus . . . Captain of praetorian guards.
Evangelical.
Irenaeus. . .Bishop of Lyon, France. Callistus . . . Protégée of Victor Bishop of
Evangelical martyr 202 A.D. first Roman church.
Origen. . .Theologian of Alexandria. Early Hyacinthus . . . Eunuch of the palace and
evangelical. His father a martyr, 202, under member of the first Roman church.
Severus-Emperor.
Sabellius. . .Theologian at Rome 217 A.D. Victor. . Bishop of the first Roman church
Evangelical. and benefactor of Callistus.
Demetrius. . .Metropolitan of Alexandria; a Zephyrinus . . . Bishop of first Roman
peacemaker. Evangelical. church after Victor died.
Carporphorus. . .Second church of Rome. Plautianus . . . General of reorganized
Evangelical. praetorian guards. Could make or break an
emperor.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 180
177-202 A.D.
It was in Irenaeus time (which was Septimius Severus' time) that most of the Apostolic church of France had all the gifts of the Holy Ghost.
Irenaeus church members of Lyon spoke with tongues. It was not uncommon to see some one dead brought to life.
Healing was an every day occurrence in all the evangelical churches everywhere. Miracles were frequent. In fact those churches were never without a miraculous manifestation of God's presence either by visions or the suspension of the elements of nature in a miracle to remind the evangelical Christians that they were His beloved disciples.
But from the histories of the past we cannot glean a single instance of raising the dead in the first Roman Church.
In fact that church had none of the gifts because they had not the Giver in their hearts.(†) He had left them when they reverted to the pagan forms and ceremonies.
Jesus said, "Ye are of your father the devil, for his works ye do. He was a murderer from the beginning. He is a liar and the father of lies."
The Holy Spirit had withdrawn when pagan worship supplanted Him.
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HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 181
If God dwelleth not in temples made with hands he would certainly not dwell with wicked men and give them the precious gifts that he promised His own children.
Gibbon stated that in the early churches such as Lyon the confirmation of their genuineness was displayed in their power to cast out demons.
Now how could the pagans of the first Roman Church cast out demons they worshipped and wanted to keep?
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 182
The period between the years 100-300 or thereabouts is known as the century of Soldier Emperors and they were military despots.
In that time the pope of Rome (or bishop, as he was called then) was very clever and learned that many times he could manage the elections of those emperors.
There were so many intrigues and plots hatched by those who wanted to gain political advantage.
The world of Christianity was divided into two camps. The spiritual as against the political.
The spiritual armament was paying no attention to the political world around them. Like Jesus, they contended that His kingdom was not of this world.
But the political group that had lost its Christian way of life still clung to the name Christian, as an organization, but all their efforts were based on gaining power over the secular government so that they could rule the world.
The spiritual group was called Evangelicals, of whom Jesus said, "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." Their whole aim was to get people born into the kingdom of God so they could know the heavenly joys.
But the worldly group sought only the material gain and most times it was all gain. They were striving for something they could not take with them when they died, but had to lay down with their lifeless body.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 183
The political or worldly group of the church at the time of Emperor Septimius Severus had many powerful politicians whom they won to their side in one of the most crucial times in the history of Christianity. In this group were
1. The emperor, Septimius Severus
2. Captain of the Praetorian Guards, Plautonius
3. A concubine named Marcia
4. Victor the bishop of the first church of Rome
5. Callistus(†) the world's most noted criminal outside of the Devil himself
The captain of the praetorian guards could make or break an emperor and so he was the political 'Boss' of the emperor as well as the church, once he got in.
A concubine is a terrible influence when she chooses to be.
The bishop of the first church of Rome controlled most of those who accepted his particular form of religion because he asserted that he could either forgive their sin or consign them to hell.
Callistus could slip into situations and cause public opinion to turn one way or another.
The emperor was a 'cat's paw' for the power that put him in office and kept him there. In Severus' case he was kept on the side of the first Roman church for eighteen years. He saw Victor come and go. He also came into the clutches of the first Roman Church during Zephyrinus' time.
There are six years (902-208 A.D.) of the reign of Septimius Severus where history had a black out. No Latin historian was allowed to record those six years because they reveal one of the most corrupt years of the first Roman church. When they finally became known to the Latins in Greek histories, those Greek histories were collected by popes and 'Cat's
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(†) He is known as Natalis in Eusebius popular history. Eccl. Hist. Edition 1955 Page 214
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 184
Paw' emperors and destroyed. But we are glad a few have missed such proscriptions.
There is one description of the wire pulling of the first Roman church in Chambers Encyclopedia found in the Biography of Emperor Theodosius that may be used as information, for all ages, on the modus operandi of the popes of Rome.
First the legates of the first Roman church popes were sent as nuncios to the court of Theodosius and they finally won this emperor to their side.
Next they convinced him that their church should be the first and ruling church off the realm because it was situated in the city of Rome.
Then they convinced him of the lie that St. Peter was the chief apostle and that he founded their church.
Next they convinced him that the pope of Rome was the vicar of Christ and chief of the whole Christian armament and successor of St. Peter.
This same pattern has been handed down since the time of Marcus Aurelius and the bishop Anicetus of the first Roman church.
From that time this false propaganda has been used on every puppet emperor and this was how Septimius Severus was drawn into the first Roman combine because he believed the lie of the first Roman church.
These Soldier Emperors (who were good men) became military despots from the time they were drawn over on the side of the bishops of the first Roman church.
They would never have killed evangelical Christians if they had not gotten into the political combine of that first Roman church.
We see a definite change in the disposition of Theodosius after he joined the first Roman church. He was a kind emperor but became a military despot.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 185
At the instigation of Damasus' legates he killed 7000 evangelicals in one day at Thessalonika.
"Like the massacre at Thessalonika his despotic deeds were the result of a sudden access of savage passion, CAREFULLY FANNED BY HIS INTERESTED ECCLESIASTICAL ADVISERS.
"He passed the sentence of death on the Christians who kept the apostolical feast of Pash(†) instead of the first Roman church pagan feast of Astarte.' (‡)
Good men who became emperors but would not bow to the first Roman church bishop were soon eliminated by martyrdom like the good bishop Fabian.(±)
Septimius Severus had served under Marcus Aurelius(§) when, (at the instigation of Anicetus, bishop of the first Roman church) Aurelius went to Lyons, France, and persecuted the evangelicals who helped Polycarp put down their pagan feast of Astarte and practices." They called the evangelicals 'quarto-decimans.' In 177 A.D. Aurelius killed the bishop Pothinus who was only one voice among hundreds of bishops all over the world against having the feast of Astarte brought into their churches.
Septimius Severus was the logical man for emperor, when Marcus Aurelius died in 180 A.D.
For five years after that he was seeking for the truth. As he wandered through the temples and streets of Rome he met and took as his concubine a woman named Marcia.
Marcia was like the woman at the well in Christ's time who had five husbands, and in Septimius Severus'
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(‡) Chambers Enc. Vol. VII, 1894, page 612.
(±)We have a very scanty biography of him, that was saved for us by Greek historians.
(§)Enc. Brit. 1891 Vol. 111 Page 77
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 186
time she was like the woman who got John the Baptist's head on a charger. She could ask favors of the emperor and get what she wanted.
It was at this time that the first Roman church bishop freely forgave the sins of all and this was very attractive to this scarlet woman.
In their search for truth, Septimius Severus and Marcia had enjoyed going in and out of many temples of Rome. The pagan forms of the first Roman church attracted them. They saw the holy water and the incense and people were taking their lamps to the 'priest' of the temple and lighting them from the fire on the altar.
The images were gods and goddesses named St. Peter, St. Paul, Mary, Jesus, and others before which members prostrated themselves in a true pagan fashion.
As bishop Victor watched the two he made it a point to be on hand whenever they came to the church.
They grew very fond of him and it was not long until Septimius Severus became imbued with a certain sense of his responsibility as protector of that church.
Soon he was elected emperor by the soldiers.
As was the custom he eliminated every other rival emperor. But there was a general of France named Albinus whom he had not met. Albinus supported Irenaeus and all the other bishops of France for they were evangelical.
Victor was afraid of Albinus and his rising power because the people of France had made up their minds that the pagan emperors of Rome should not persecute them. They amassed 150,000 troops.
Victor saw to it that Septimius Severus had an equal number of troops and after four years of preparation Septimius Severus began war on this general of France.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 187
Septimius Severus had been properly conditioned by Victor with his 'pep' talks, Victor wanted the death of Albinus so bad that he coaxed Severus to see to it that he personally destroyed this man. Severus who never fought on the field, rushed madly back and forth among the troops and when he found Albinus he killed him. He cut off his head and left his lictor, Callistus, to supervise the pagan rite of dismembering his body.
Like Huss in the years before the reformation, the body was left out in the weather for seven days with a strong body guard, for Victor had cautioned them to not let the body get out of their sight.
Callistus was very faithful in carrying out Victor's command because Victor had bought him when he returned from Sardinia. It was at that time that Callistus was made a protégée of Victor.
The rites performed on Albinus, which were pagan, consisted of flaying the flesh from the bones and giving it to dogs. Then the bones were ground to powder and the dust thrown over the running water of the Rhone River.
Victor said that the evangelicals always boasted of a bodily resurrection and so he would make sure Albinus' body was treated so there would be no possibility of its coming back to its original form.
When the emperor reached Rome, there was a triumphant procession made by Victor and the head of Albinus was carried at the top of a pole. Then Septimius presented his trophy to Victor but the ghastly eyes haunted him. It was then placed half way between the church and the palace as a warning to the evangelicals as well as anyone who might try to usurp the throne of the empire. This was in the year 197 A.D.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 188
But Victor began to decline in health and died in 198, and Zephyrinus became bishop.
It is notable that none of the members of Victor's church were affected by the persecutions that followed in the city of Rome. The persecutions were aimed only at the evangelicals.
While Severus and Zephyrinus were eliminating most of the evangelical Christians, the others fled to unknown parts. It was at this time, 202-208 A.D., that Tertullian escaped to Carthage where he became the head of the Montanist Churches there.
When there were few evangelicals around Rome the bishops of the first church urged Severus to canvass the whole realm and stamp them out.
So many of the secular historians who wrote during that time have had their works burned along with those of the evangelical Christians and this is why in our time we find such reports as the following:
"In the years 202-208 A.D. our historians desert us . . . and leave us for the most part to the important but dim defective conclusions to be drawn from the abundant monumental records of the reign."(†)
But from the records of secular historians like Dio Cassius and Herodianus who were eye witnesses of the struggles of that time we glean certain information from the parts that have not been deleted and burned by later popes and their puppet emperors.
They say that Irenaeus was a martyr, 202 A.D. under Severus and Zephyrinus.
Origen's father was also a martyr with the many evangelicals in Africa under Severus.
Later ecclesiastical historians like Origen and Theodoretus have dug up Dio Cassius' history with
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(†) Enc. Brit. 1891 Vol. XXI Page 733
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 189
some of the evangelical bishops like Hippolytus and placed them in the Ecclesiastical Histories. Later popes and 'Cat's Paw' emperors have gathered them and burned them. The first Roman church has used great puppet emperors to submerge the true history of the years of Severus' reign.
The first Roman church kept up her killing of evangelicals whose ranks were filled again and again.
The two divisions of the church that Christ died to redeem kept growing farther and farther apart.
________
1. Latin
Dio Cassius- History written in Greek. He was an eye witness 202 to 208 and wrote unwarped history. His works have been proscribed by the Roman Catholic Church.
2. Greek
Herodian- Greek historian in Italy 186-238 A.D. whose history was used by Gibbon, "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" Book I 45-245 A.D.
NOTE: There is one vital factor in the long life of any history or manuscript written 202-208 A.D.
Those written in Greek like Dio Cassius' and Herodian's were protected by the language difficulty.
Rome had elected Latin as the universal language. Hence Greek could not be read by most of the Latins. Therefore the Greek historical texts were not exposed to the barbarous proscriptions of the Latin popes and emperors until a much later period.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 190
202-208 A.D.
1. Latin
Tertullian- He found life very uncertain in the city of Rome so he moved to Carthage in 207 A.D. He gave up law practice and became bishop of the Montanist church in Carthage.
2. Greek
Origen- Origen visited Rome in the year 205 and wrote a history as an eyewitness, which was proscribed in the years of Jerome 386 A.D. It was this history and not Origen's theology that the first Roman church hated.
3. ?
Sabellius- Sabellius was an evangelical theologian who dared to teach the truth of Christ to Zephyrinus' congregation at Rome. Later he was called a heretic by the first Roman church and kicked out. He taught and had many followers all over Asia as long as he lived.
4. Greek
Hippolytus- Hippolytus was a powerful Greek bishop (called chief bishop of Rome). He opposed Victor and
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 191
Zephyrinus in their pagan practices. He became a martyr to the bishop of the first Roman church and emperor of his time.
5. Greek
Evangelists- Many Greeks were bishops of the evangelical churches in Italy 202 to 208 A.D.
6. Greek
Irenaeus- He was a staunch bishop of Lyons, France, who fought the first Roman church.
7. Greek
Theodotus- He was a bishop of Byzantium who rebuked Victor when he tried to create a universal Easter festival which was pagan, but he was only one resisting voice out of thousands.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 192
Epistolary communion was a most important factor in unifying the universal churches of the first century. Up to 100 A.D. the only communion between Church bodies was through exchanged letters (Epistles).
When God gave a revelation of truth to one church member he could not rest until he had given it to his own assembly and then he was impelled by the Holy Spirit to get it written so other churches could benefit by it.
These epistles were sent to other assemblies whose bishops read them to the church. Most times they were copied and passed on to other churches that read them, then copied again and so they passed from church to church in what we call Epistolary Communion.
The epistles of the New Testament were all written before 100 A.D. St. John collected all he could and had them copied. These form a good part of our New Testament.
The copies of the "Gospel and Apostle" came out from 100 to 150 A.D. From that time Epistolary Communion consisted mostly of warnings against the heresies that were fast springing up.
The more spiritual bishops did not want the pure churches to be contaminated with false doctrines.
Ignatius who was led from Antioch to Rome (107-110 A.D.) made valuable use of every moment by writing letters of encouragement to the struggling
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 193
churches who had been a blessing to him on his journey. These letters are called 'Ignatian Epistles.' They were written after the "Gospel and Apostle" had been put together by St. John's school of Ephesus.
A good definition of Epistolary Communion is: Epistolary-Belonging, or suitable to correspondence by letter; Communion - interchanged fellowship of thoughts and feelings in confidential and sympathetic intercourse.
Epistolary Communion made possible the oneness of the churches of the world. What one church knew all the churches of the evangelical Epistolary Communion knew.
In 54 A.D. when the first Roman Church had slipped back into the idol and sun worship she was left out of the Epistolary Communion.
When St. Paul wrote to Priscilla and Aquila who had returned to Rome his letter did not go to the backslidden first church of Rome, but to the second church that Romans 16 tells about.
St. Paul describes those Christians of the second church at Rome (Romans 16:10) "approved in Christ."
The backslidden first Roman Church had no members of whom it could be written ''approved in Christ" because they rejected the Jewish Apostles, Priscilla and Aquila and Andronicus and Junia.
When St. Paul got to Puteoli and found the brethren, he sent word to the second church of Rome (which Priscilla and Aquila and Andronicus and Junia governed) that he had arrived at last.
St. Paul would never have affiliated with the members of the pagan first church. He was a Jewish Christian and would correct them.
He started the Third Church of Rome in his own hired dwelling and that church grew for two years. (Acts 28:30) This church also wrote letters that came through the Epistolary Communion.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 194
Polycarp heard of the first Roman church reverting to the feast of Astarte so he went to help that church back, but found it impossible.(†)
He took up his pen and wrote a letter telling the apostasy of the first Church of Rome, and it was passed around in the Epistolary Communion. As we look back we can easily see how the first Roman church could revert to the celebration of Astarte the mother of gods and forsake the Apostolic tradition of the Passover for Easter. That first Roman church had none of the lovely teachings that came in the Epistolary communion.
189-198 A.D.
That first Roman church had been out of communion with all the other churches so long that should one go from one to the other it would be like going into a different world.
The pagan tradition had developed for over 100 years in the first church of Rome. The Scriptural teaching was almost forgotten.
Victor was practically lord over his nominal congregation. Any suggestion he made was quickly carried out.
Victor wanted all Christendom to revert with him to the pagan feast of Astarte and do away with the
________
(†) Polycarp knew all about Astarte, the pagan goddess or mother of gods. One pagan Syrian legend says she lived for 10 years as a prostitute in Tyre. She was the goddess of spring with its yearly cycle of reproduction. Her cult practiced unbridled prostitution. The feast as Polycarp saw it was far from the feast of Passover which commemorated the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 195
Apostolic habit of celebrating the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord at the feast of the Passover (called Pasch in Jewish Christian worship).
St. Peter, being a Jew would have refused the change from Pasch to Easter.
Victor was humiliated when not one Asiatic or French bishop would do as he requested.
If there were 318 bishops at the council of Nice there were at least 300 bishops of the Epistolary Communion who resisted this pagan first church when the Epistolary Communion informed them of its pagan worship.
Victor allowed a personal resentment to make him try to "excommunicate an Asiatic bishop over whom he had no power to act in such capacity.
Irenaeus said that Victor just shut himself off from all future Epistolary Communion with evangelical bishops. In other words he excommunicated himself from 300 godly bishops of the Epistolary Communion of evangelicals.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 196
202-235 A.D.
The true history of Hippolytus comes to us in a very unusual way. The history of this saint of the Ecclesiastical body of the Roman church was not allowed to come out in its true form until almost a thousand years after his death.
So let us skip way over in history to the time of the Reformation and see a tiny bit of unearthed evidence that will give us our first clue as to who and what this bishop Hippolytus was to the Christianity of the late second and early third centuries of Rome. It happened this way. ''
We recognize the so-called Orthodox church of Rome as the first Roman church. That church had been challenged by the Reformers as to their unscriptural practices and lack of obedience to Christ's commands. The first Roman church dogmas and traditions were brought in question by the scholars at a college in Germany named Wittenburgh.
Hence the first Roman church popes called a council at Trent to figure out just what they did believe. While this Council was in progress, one of the Reformers went to Rome and brought back the news that he had seen a statue of a bishop in the chair of St. Peter in Rome,(†) and this statue was of none other than 'The forgotten man,' Hippolytus.
This news spread, and it was not long until some of the Reformers went to Rome to try to locate the
________
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 197
church which this saint had governed. The years 217-222 were the years in which the first Roman church had said that in their line of popes a man named D. Callistus had been chief bishop of Rome.
The inscription at the base of St. Peter's marble chair in which Hippolytus sat was inscribed 'Hippoliti,' and the church at Portuensis, as his see, and then the year of the paschal cycle when he occupied that chair.
They found the ruin of the Portuensis church at the gate in the Roman wall from which the Via Portuensis follows the Tiber river to its mouth. But so many hundreds of years had elapsed that little information could be gotten.
The next information we have about Hippolytus and his time is recorded by Baron Bunsen of Prussia, who was in the Embassy at Rome for 20 years.(†)
He had seen the statue and had to endure the false histories that the first Roman church had forged about this man. When he looked in the records at Rome he found mixed reports and learned that the Roman church had jumbled this name, 'Hippolytus,' and made three men. The one who was a martyr on the island of Sardinia in 235 A.D. was the right Hippolytus, bishop of Rome.
The greatest desire of Bunsen's life was to find some evidence that would lead to the true history of this Saint Hippolytus.
He wanted to get out of Rome so he would be free to conduct an intensive search for this Chief Bishop of Rome named Hippolytus. He was recalled to Prussia.
This was what Baron Bunsen wanted. He had heard rumors that there were many old manuscripts by the early church fathers in a monastery on Mount Athos, which had been carefully guarded for over a thousand years.
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(†) Chambers Enc. "Hippolytus" Vol. IV Page 459
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 198
When back in Prussia he was again appointed Ambassador to England, and it was while in this office that he persuaded a French government official to go to Mount Athos and persuade the Greek monks to let him have some old manuscripts. A treatise of Hippolytus was in the collection. The French official's name was Menas. When Bunsen got this document he knew it was what he had been longing for. It was written in Greek, for Hippolytus was a Greek bishop who served in this suburban church of Rome at the same time as the ex-convict Callistus.
The thesis of Hippolytus was edited by Emanuel Miller, who also recommended it to Oxford for publication because it would throw much valuable light on the history of the time of Callistus and Hippolytus.(†)
When this treatise was printed and copies were made, the first Roman church said it was written by either Origen or Tertullian or one of the Novatian heretics who lived about the same time.
But it was proved to be written by Hippolytus! and it is my great pleasure to give the contents in the chapter, "The Skeleton in Rome's Closet."
There is a little sequence to this chapter.
Hippolytus was a prolific writer and every Greek church wanted to get hold of anything he wrote.
217-235 A.D.
You wonder how these copies of a Roman bishop could get so far away as to be hidden on Mount Athos in Greece. A little geography will refresh your memory.
In the time of Emperor Trajan a harbor was built at the mouth of the Tiber. The road via Portuensis which ran along the north bank of that river ran to that harbor.
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(†) Chambers Universal Enc. "Hippolytus" Vol. IV Page 459
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 199
At the time of Hippolytus most of the trade from the outside world came to Rome by this harbor called the harbor of Rome; and via Portuensis. This traffic passed through a hamlet in which the church of Hippolytus was situated, and it was named Portuensis.
The Greeks had many natural ports and were Christian merchantmen of their time. All the Greeks who carried on trade with Rome were sure to stop at Hippolytus' church when they were there and they listened breathlessly to the wonderful sermons he gave them. They were food for their souls we know, because the small writings we have of his today thrill our souls with ecstatic joy when we read them. One is about Christ being like the Ark, "overlaid and inlaid with pure Gold."
These Grecians would beg for a written sermon or treatise to take to the other churches on their routes. Hippolytus' writings went all over the Mediterranean and to the ports where Greek churches were located. They were called Epistles.
In this way this unearthed manuscript of Hippolytus was preserved on Mount Athos. The reason why it had not been destroyed by the first Roman church popes and pagan emperors was because from generation to generation the evangelical Greek monks of that Christian stronghold passed on to future generations the keeping of these sacred scrolls in that monastery. They were like the Dead Sea scrolls reserved by God for later ages.
________
Note: See Enc. Brit., Popular reprint of ed. 9, Henry G. Allen and Co., N.Y., Pub. 1888. Vol. XIX, Page 488, Col. 2, "Martyrologies."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 200
Hippolytus, bishop, of Portus, wrote a Chronicon which contained the names of the Bishops of Rome (from the beginning) and it is evident it did not place St. Peter as the first bishop of Rome.
This information was embodied in Catalogue Felicianus (the oldest existing version of Liber Pontificales) so called because it was compiled in the episcopate of Liberius, who succeeded 352 A.D., but even this bishop was not to be trusted.
We have also two other Latin lists of some authority in Augustine, Epistle 53, Migne, Patrol, XXXIII Page 195 and in Opatus De Schism, Donatists ii; 3. There are many discrepancies in the foregoing lists but we believe that some of Hippolytus' works having come under the fires of Honorius as well as Arcadius and Justin were not left in their first form to us unaltered. We are hoping that some suppressed copies of martyrologies by Hippolytus and Origen have been kept like Hippolytus' treatise.
Knowing the aversion to any such scheme which would be brought forth by pagan philosophers on the supremacy of St. Peter, Hippolytus' and Origen's martyrologies would prove that St. Peter never set foot on Italian soil.
There were too many men like Jerome (Eusebius) who thought nothing of forgery to create the supremacy.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 201
189-253 A.D.
Listed as Antipope 251(†)
When we see a list of popes of Rome that gives the names of the Antipopes we know there was a great fight at the time, which led the first Roman Catholic church of later times to make their list to appear as if the man they placed as pope was the right successor of St. Peter.
But from past history we learn that one pope they placed in their line of popes was not of the first Roman church faction but was a good evangelical Holy Ghost bishop Fabian. It is possible that there was a lacuna (vacancy) in the Roman succession at that time so they chose Fabian as a substitute to fill in their 'Unbroken'? line of succession.
It is because Fabian was a martyr that we know he did not belong to the first Roman church, because the pagan emperors never killed those who followed the pagan forms of that first church.
We know also that Novatian was an evangelical Christian who opposed the pagan forms of the bishop of the first Roman church and that is why the first Roman church blackened his character (in history) by every misrepresentation of his theology and church government.
Novatian was a pure evangelical bishop. He conducted his church on Scriptural lines and as was the
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(†) Chambers Enc. Vol. VI 1894 Ed. (Collier Pub. N.Y.) Page 366
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 202
manner of the times with the evangelical bishops, God bestowed many miracles even to raising the dead. The speaking with tongues as well as prophecy often took over the services. (The pagans called it 'Frenzy.')
Tertullian wrote that the gifts of the Holy Ghost were all active in his Montanistic church at Carthage about 220 A.D.
These Spiritual gifts were the greatest proof that the evangelicals were ordained of God as the true worshippers.
The gift of casting out demons was the most convincing proof to the heathen that the God of the evangelicals was the right God. Gibbon wrote:
"The Christian Church from the time of the apostles and their disciples has claimed the uninterrupted succession of miraculous powers, the gift of tongues, of visions and prophecy, the power of expelling daemons, of healing the sick and raising the dead."(†)
"The divine inspiration, whether it was conveyed in the form of a walking or sleeping vision is described as a favour very liberally bestowed on all ranks of the faithful--on women as on elders, on boys as well as on bishops."
"When their devout minds were sufficiently prepared by a course of prayer and fasting, and vigils to receive the extra ordinary impulse, they were transported out of their senses, and delivered in ecstasy what was inspired, being mere organs of the Holy Spirit just as a pipe or flute is of him that blows into it."
"The expulsion of daemons from the bodies of those unhappy persons whom they had been permitted, was considered as a signal, though ordinary,
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HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 203
triumph of religion, and is repeatedly alleged by the ancient apologists as the most convincing evidence of the truth of Christianity."(†)
Irenaeus Adv., Heresies 1, ii 56-57 - Ivc6 concludes,
"the second century was still more fertile in miracles than the first."
297 Gibbon, Vol. VI:
"From the last of the popes a succession of bishops, of saints, of martyrs, and OF MIRACLES, IS CONTINUED WITHOUT INTERRUPTION."
As we look into the present day history of Novatianus we can see the great camouflage that the pagan first church of Rome has spread over him. Their chief blanket had been the controversy of readmitting the lapsed. It had been made so great that the Christians have been side tracked from the main issue, which was the marvelous power of this evangelical bishop who ran in opposition to the pagan first church of Rome.
That first Roman church was deficient in every Christian virtue and gift because it was cast off by God.
Novatianus started churches all over the empire and they too were evangelical.
One statement that is recorded in the Nicean and Post Nicean fathers (if correct) concerning Novatianus states that when Cornelius' members would come to him wanting to join his second church of Rome he would take them in after a period of probation and repentance and required that they promise him they would never go back to Cornelius' church.
Concerning the Lapsed, note 325, Gibbon, Cyprian 'De Lapsis' and note 148 told of the Novatianus manner of dealing with the Lapsed.
This was practiced by all the evangelicals for they emulated Christ and obeyed His command "Seventy times seven."
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(†) Gibbon "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" 296 Vol. VI
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 204
"The admirers of antiquity regret the loss of this public penance" (like Ambrose required of Theodosius) (†)
"Humbled by a public confession, emaciated by fasting, and clothed in sack cloth, the penitent lay prostrate at the door of the assembly imploring with tears, the pardon of his offenses, and soliciting the prayers of the faithful."(‡)
But the first Roman church freely forgave the lapsed and filled its church with thousands of unregenerated members who rejected miracles and spiritual gifts of ecstasy as frenzy. The Bishops of the first church called on the emperors to suppress this ecstasy and 'Frenzy.'
Thus Novatian and his flock had to flee Rome. It was God's way of getting the evangelical Christianity to the far corners of the empire.
Tertullian said, "Christian faith had penetrated into parts of Britain inaccessible to the Roman Arms." And Tertullian, having seen the persecution on the evangelicals by Septimius Severus in France, when he spoke of 'Christianity' he meant that brand that was not propagated in the pagan first Roman church.
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(‡) Caves Primitive Christianity.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 205
236-250 A.D.
Fabianus came to the Roman churches twelve years after Callistus. The only record we can find of this man is in the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, Volume X page 113:
"The Christians having assembled in Rome to elect a new bishop, saw a dove alight on the head of Fabian, a stranger to the city, who was thus marked out for his dignity, and at once proclaimed bishop, although there were several famous men among the candidates for the vacant position.
"He is said to have baptized the emperor Philip and his son, to have done some building in the catacombs, to have improved the organization of the church of Rome, to have appointed officials to register the deeds of the martyrs, and to have founded several churches in France.
"Although there is very little authentic information about Fabian, there is evidence that his episcopate was one of great importance in the history of the early church.
"He was highly esteemed by Cyprian, bishop of Carthage.
"He corresponds with "Novatianus refers to his 'Noblissimae memoriae'."(†)
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(†) Eusebius Eccl. History VI 29
Note: See the article on Fabian by A. Harnack in Herzog-Hauck's Real encyklopedadie, Band V. (Leipzig 1898)
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 206
For a man who was revered by most of the church men of Rome and elsewhere, it seems as if his fourteen years of service as chief bishop of Rome should call for as great a biography as any early church father.
But in our time we can only glean a little here and there. His name and all the things pertaining to him have been submerged in obscurity by the Roman Catholic historians, lest their line of popes would be brought in question.
We know that the name of Hippolytus was also buried. (Three men of the same name having been brought forth to confuse the reading public lest someone would learn the truth about the right man who served as chief bishop of Rome 217-235 A.D. Even Dio Cassius' 150-235 history of this time was proscribed because he wrote an unwarped history.(†)
Dio Cassius' life span was from bishop Anicetus through the time of Pontian (who became a martyr). His period of activity placed him in a time when he could see what was actually going on in Rome. He served during the period of Tertullian, Origen, Sabellius, Callistus and the philosophers Noetus and Praxeas, as well as Hippolytus and Cyprianus of Carthage.
________
(†) "Dio Cassius not great enough to have personal motives for warping the record."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 207
253-269 A.D.
This period was the time of Soldier Emperors, who were military despots.
However Fabian baptized Emperor Philip and his son who were killed by military depots in order to take over the government of Rome.
The next Soldier Emperor who attracted much attention was Aurelian, who became the "cat's paw" to pull Bishop Felix's chestnuts out of the fire.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 208
The evangelical churches over the empire had about righted themselves after the bloody purge of the inquisition preached by Zephyrinus and carried out by Callistus and Septimius Severus in 202-208 A.D.
The great desire for supremacy was growing stronger with every new bishop who came to that first Roman church.
It is logical to deduce that a church like that first Roman organization that had been "off the beam" for so long could not understand an evangelical body of pure Christians.
By the time Felix came to be bishop of the first Roman church, 269 A.D., much water had run under the Roman "bridge."
That church had made much headway since Septimius Severus had been won to the side of pagan Christianity. Most of the super evangelical bishops had been killed and things looked brighter for the political first church of Rome.
But if there ever was a prize that the first Roman body wanted it was that very stubborn evangelical church of Antioch. They wanted it in their combine. Every time an invitation was given to the bishop of Antioch, to join with the bishop of the first Roman church (who claimed his church was the one that should be the head church because Peter came to Rome) the Antioch bishop would say, "St. Peter came to our church first and taught here." That statement would deflate the ego of Rome for a while, but with the next bishop it would flare up again.(†)
________
(†) Between Callistus and Felix time there were ten new bishops in 47 years and 15 new emperors.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 209
When Felix became bishop of the first church of Rome in 269 A.D. he made up his mind to subject the Antioch church to the dominion of his first Roman church if he possibly could. He craved to make them recognize him as the only vicar of Christ on earth.
The evangelical bishop Paul of Samosata had raised the dead and had performed many miracles. He had followed Christ's pure gospel so long that he not only had the gifts of healing and miracles, but he had the gift of discernment. He could detect a lie told by those who came pretending to be Christ's apostles but were not. The first church of Rome had lost all the gifts of the Holy Ghost since it had reverted to pagan practices. All it had was the gospel of man which was killing and hatred and envy and covetousness.
Covetousness was a Roman trait, and Felix was Roman through and through. He brooded over the fact that Antioch could boast of equal, if not greater prestige than his church and the Holy Scriptures said "The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch."
Felix served as bishop for a year under Emperor Claudius II, who was a good emperor.
Aurelian became emperor a year after Felix became bishop. He was a man of humble origin but was a brave soldier and a thorough pagan. When he came to Rome as emperor and made a tour of the city he was surprised to see an imposing building sitting among the temples. When he went into this 'temple' Bishop Felix met him and introduced himself as priest of the first Christian church of Rome.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 210
Aurelian saw the statues and watched the people prostrate themselves before them. He also saw the round cakes (to the sun goddess) on the altar. In fact it looked so much like the other 400 pagan temples in that city that he could not tell the difference. Its congregation was composed of the more wealthy class of people and even a senator or two belonged. The crowds that came in were very impressive.
Felix made remarks about the Antioch church being unwilling to accept the lordship of the first church of Rome. In fact Felix said, "They do not even send us letters like they do the Greek Asiatic churches."
Felix impressed Aurelian with the idea that the supremacy belonged to that Roman church, telling the same lie that earlier bishops had told the earlier emperors, "St. Peter founded the Roman church and it should be the head of all churches."
Aurelian had also visited the Antioch church and had seen the Syrian Queen Zenobia gracing it with her presence. (He did not like Zenobia and she did not like him.) The church was beautifully adorned. Bishop Paul was an ordinary looking man. There were no images, no candles, no round wafers, no altars, and he saw people come in and bow to an unseen God. The peace they had in their hearts reflected in their faces. These evangelicals had something Aurelian wanted but he was not willing to pay the price.
Bishop Paul did not know that Felix had set a sophist named Malchion in his church and the unsuspecting people had even elected him a presbyter.
Paul had been warned by God about Malchion but he pushed the warning aside. He did not dream that this sophist was put there to undo him and his fine congregation.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 211
A sophist is a person who is like a criminal lawyer. He twists a witness and makes him contradict what he has confessed to be the truth. Another name for a sophist is "liar." He is a quibbler.(†)
In about a year Aurelian was back at Antioch with Queen Zenobia as his captive. He found the church in a schism. So he banished Paul and gave the church buildings to a bishop who would be in communion with Rome. His name was Domnus. He also banished all who took sides with Paul.
Then he took Zenobia to Rome and made her a spectacle in his triumphal procession as well as dragging General Tetricus, who had been proclaimed emperor of France and Britain by his evangelical soldiers. Zenobia did not like Aurelian because he took the church that had been Apostolic for over 200 years and made it into a first Roman church satellite.
"When emperor Aurelian having defeated Zenobia, and anxious to impose upon Syria the dogmatic system fashionable in Rome, he deposed Paul and allowed the rival candidate to take his place and emoluments. Thus it was a pagan emperor who in the momentous dispute, ultimately determined what was orthodoxy and what was not."
"Aurelian's policy was the recognition of the Roman Bishop's pretensions to be arbiter for the whole church in matters of faith and dogma."
Later Historians write:
"Paul of Samosata represented the high water mark of Christian speculation, and it is deplorable that the fanaticism of his generation and those following have left us nothing but a few scattered fragments of his writings."(‡)
This evangelical church at Antioch that was overpowered by the first Roman church combine had all their past histories and Scriptures burned.
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(†) The modern man of letters. A man who disputes cleverly but fallaciously--Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary.
(‡) Paul of Samosata Enc. Brit. 1911 Vol. XX Pages 957-8.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 212
We at this age are left in the dark as to what they did believe and preach and practice. Any reports by their enemies tell lies about them to throw the reading public off the track of their doings. One reliable encyclopedia said of such a report, "you must sift the data because it was written by those hostile to the sect it was writing about."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 213
Donatus' years of service began right after Felix was bishop of the first church of Rome, but we do not hear of him until he comes into conflict with Constantine I The Great in later years.
Ever since the move of Felix in Antioch when he connived to pull that church "under the wing" of the pagan first church of Rome, things began to get very tense between the African churches and the bishops of Rome. The Carthage synod of Stephen's time had so differed with Stephen, (Rome's bishop) that there was quite a breach between the African and Rome churches. (†)
Since Callistus' time there was no telling what intrigue would come out of this one Roman Church.
Ever since Novatius started evangelical assemblies in Africa there were many evangelical church groups who had to break away from the once pure churches Cyprian had once held.
The most formal churches had held on to a set form of worship and stagnated as far as Christ's gospel was concerned.
Donatus of Carthage was trying to keep the African church from falling a prey to that dogmatic influence now called "Orthodox."
Aurelian had forever established the Callistan Dogmas for those churches who were forced into the communion of the Roman first church.
________
(†) Enc. Brit., 1911, Vol. V, p 431, colt 2. "Carthage Synods."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 214
At Donatus' time the church of Antioch was lost to the evangelical Christianity but Paul of Samosata carried on the pure Christianity no matter where he went. But it was now Africa's turn to be overcome by the pagan first church. When Carthage had to warn the first Roman church to recall her legates,(†) (sent by that church) and not to send others, it was because that Roman church was underhandedly working to overpower the evangelical churches and replace their own system of pagan orthodoxy.
Novatius had evangelized in Africa and left a lot of churches that were made up of the same kind of people Jesus walked among "The poor heard Him gladly." Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
These were the many hundreds of evangelized followers who had instituted small churches among the wheat harvesters. They were called Circumcellion, and were like the Negroes of our South who harvested the cotton. They had 'brush arbor' meetings and sang the songs of Zion under the clear African sky. All they had of the gospel of Christ had been presented by such men as Tertullian, Novatian and Donatus.
They rebelled at the sight of altars, and images and candles that the first Roman church, under protection of a pagan emperor, now thrust upon them.
Donatus had in these Circumcellion, a faithful following who were like the Lollards of Wycliffe's time nearly a thousand years later.
________
When Constantine became emperor he had letters from the churches who were in communion with the first Roman church, as well as letters from such men as Eusebius and every evangelical metropolitan.
His mother, Helena, knew how to guide her son when he became emperor. She wisely advised him
________
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 215
to keep his hands off the evangelical bishops, so he decided to choose a mediator named Melchiades (an African) and made him moderator of the council in 310 A.D. which was held at Rome.
When this wise emperor had made the Edict of Milan which proclaimed religious freedom to all Christians, the first church of Rome had a decided setback in her progress. That one pagan church in Rome actually complained to the emperor that she had the right to force her pagan forms of worship on the rest of the churches.
Constantine knew that it was time to get all the churches of the empire together and let the bishops thrash out the questions involved.
In the council of Rome when Melchiades officiated he became aware of the underhanded tactics worked by the pagan bishop of Rome so knew that he could not trust councils to judge a man.
From that time Constantine allowed the Donatists to evangelize unhindered. Whereas he had taken away their churches and given them to the Roman churches he now commanded that they be returned. They remained open for the rest of his term of office.
But when Circumcellion reclaimed these buildings they pulled the altars out and burned them. They said the pagans had altars and so did the first church of Rome. They took out the candles and also the images thrust upon them by the legates of the first Roman Church and destroyed them. Later on the first Roman church established their own assembly in Alexandria and placed Theophilus as bishop. This was a toehold for paganism.
Some have contended that the Circumcellion left the wheat harvesting and roamed along the coast of North Africa like the Lollards, and Egypt being the 'Bread basket of the world,' Rome felt the impact. It
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 216
was probably the first 'strike' on record in Christian history. Some think the impact of this strike actually won the 'war'.
In the years after Constantine's reign there were over three hundred Donatists churches in Africa as well as in Italy and France. But later these churches became the targets of the military despots and were gradually absorbed in the purer church bodies of the realm. Some of them like the Novatians became Cathari of whom we shall hear more later.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 217
In the 3rd and 4th centuries Roman Rings were made engraved with Christian symbols.
[xxviii][See illustration 217a]
The illustration here shows two silver rings of the latter part of the fourth century which were found in 1881 concealed in a hole in the pavement of a Roman villa at Fifehead Neville, Dorset, together with some coins of the same period. Both have the monogram of Christ and one has a dove within an olive wreath rudely cut on the silver bezel. These rings are of special interest, as Roman objects with any Christian device have rarely been found in Britain.(†)
However, there were many evangelical Christians who fled from Rome and France when the combination of bishop-emperor or connived to destroy those who would not join with Bishop Felix of the First Church of Rome in celebrating the pagan feast of Astarte.(‡)
________
(†) Enc. Brit. 1888. Vol. XX. p 651.
(‡) Geikie "Life of Christ" Vol. I, p .53 (1880). "In Tyre, the old worship of Baal and Astarte--The Sun and the Moon--retaining their preeminence, with a Greek colouring of the idolatry.'
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 218
This feast was in opposition to the Apostolic feast of Pasch which was and is celebrated to this date in the Greek churches. These fleeing Christians always used this sign. It was carved on a tombstone in the graveyard of Callistus at Rome in the year 269 A.D. when Felix became Bishop of First Church of Rome and was possibly even used before this date as the emblem and sign of the evangelical Christians. It was an abbreviation of the flame of Christ, especially suitable for carving on stone. Its widespread and official use as a Christian symbol dates from the time of Constantine who used it on his banners and shields of his soldiers. Thus, after the Edict of Milan, 313 A.D., its use naturally multiplied.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 219
Emperor 306-337 A.D.
The various commentaries contain much better biographies of this wonderful emperor than I can write. But even in these biographies I find lies, and intrigues about this Christian man who dared to try to make the Christian churches work together.
Along with the reports on the "Donations of Constantine," which were forgeries by the first Roman church propagandists, we read that in his last days he was riddled with a disease and that he killed his wife Fausta. This report says that Sylvester, bishop of the first Roman church, baptized him, so he donated much land and power to this first Roman church to keep forever. But true history says that Eusebius the Arian Bishop, baptized him, so with the knowledge of at least one lie, this biography has to be discredited. It was first Roman church propaganda.
The most wonderful thing he did was to issue the Edict of Milan, which allowed no more killing of the Christians. This put a stop to the persecutions brought on by the first Roman church and carried out by the pagan emperors(†) who were "cats paws" of the church bishops to pull its chestnuts out of the fire.
Constantine had a godly evangelical mother, Helen, and she greatly influenced him in making right decisions about the Christians.
________
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 220
It is written that as soon as this emperor got into office he began to receive complaints from the bishops all over the empire. Many of these letters came from brilliant theologians of Alexandria and Carthage and Rome and Greece.
The smaller churches of Rome complained that the first Roman church was lording it over them, and St. Peter said not to do this. (I Peter 5:3).
The first church of Rome complained that the other churches would not sanction her action in changing days and feasts to please the pagan Christians. The pagan first Roman church also said that the other Asiatic churches and many of the churches of Italy and Thessalonika were fighting them and would not allow them to use their districts for branches of their pagan first church of Rome. Almost every evangelical church complained that the first church of Rome had no Scriptural teaching that would allow images in the church buildings.
There was a pack of letters in Constantine's hand when he entered the council hall at Nice and these still had the unbroken seals of the senders. The assembly watched him go to a brazier and place the letters on the open fire with the remark that he was disgusted with all the petty bickerings and wanted the peace of all the churches.
Before the council of Nice he had called the council of Rome which was held in the lovely council headquarters, which was the Lateran palace that he and his wife, Fausta, had given all the churches of the world as a meeting place for the councils that met to iron out church difficulties.(†)
After Constantine was dead the First church of Rome usurped that Lateran Palace and made it into a church for their individual organization.
________
(†) Page 1392, Funk & Wagnalls Dictionary (Lateran)
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 221
He had placed a wonderful mediator named Melchiades from Africa as head of this Lateran Palace. But Melchiades lived to serve only five years. This bishop was by no means a successor of St. Peter at Rome. He was thrust into office by the Emperor.
The council at Rome was to have settled the Donatist controversy. But the Donatists being a Holy Ghost sect were not to be controlled by a man-made organization under an emperor.
Even the Bishop Sylvester of the First Church of Rome did not go to the Council of Nice. (He said he was too old, but he lived to serve as bishop of the First Church at Rome for ten years after that council.) There were many bishops older than Sylvester who wanted the peace of the churches so much that they were willing to go to the council even at the risk of their lives to help bring peace among the churches.
When the seat of the empire was removed to Constantinople it was so far away from the First Church at Rome that almost in silence that church gained advantage over the city and was almost as powerful as the secular government.(†) They assumed the leadership in temporal matters and it was not long, as we know, until they effected the downfall of the Roman Empire.(‡) It took a man-made church like the First Church of Rome to be able to cope with the secular government of Rome. The First Church of Rome had become a pagan organization with only the name Christian. It had developed unobserved by the emperor Constantine. Constantine died in the year 337.
________
(†) John Farrow "Pageant of The Popes" 1942 N.Y. "The long miles between Constantinople and Rome proved healthy for the Papacy" page 23.
(‡) Gibbon's History of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 222
The freedom he gave the churches of the empire was taken advantage of by the First Church of Rome who had built up a powerful organization.
We ask, 'What were the second and third churches of Rome doing all this time'.
They had been browbeaten into silence by the Emperors so long that they moved out and established new churches in France and Britain where they could work unhindered for a time at least.
But even in the western provinces like France and in Thessalonika in the North they were not able to carry out their own freedom of evangelization because from time to time the Popes of Rome (like Leo who got the aid of emperors) reached out and encroached on their God given freedom by telling them what they could and could not do.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 223
This is from Nicean and Post Nicean Fathers, Volume III, on The Council of Nice,
"The position of the Christian church 325 when Constantine called the Council of Nice presented a very bad picture to the heathen world. Disputes and contentions arose in every city and in every village, concerning theological dogmas.(†) The common people looked on and became judges of what was said on either side and some applauded one party and some the other. These were indeed scenes fit for the tragic stage over which tears might have been shed.
For it was not as in bygone days when the church was attacked by strangers and enemies but now the natives of the same country who dwelt under one roof and sat down at one table fought against each other not with spears but with their tongues.
And what was still more sad, they who thus took up arms against each other were members of one another and belonged to one body.
The emperor who professed the most profound, wisdom having heard of these things endeavored as the first step to stop up their fountainhead. He therefore dispatched a messenger to Alexandria with letters in the endeavor to extinguish the dispute and expecting to reconcile the disputants.(‡) But his hopes having been frustrated he
________
(†) It was mostly first Roman church heckling in the Asiatic church synods--John Farrow's Pageant of Popes.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 224
proceeded to summon the celebrated Council of Nice, and pledged his word that the Bishops and their officials should be furnished with asses, mules and horses for their journey at the public expense. When all had arrived at Nice, he went thither himself both with the hope of seeing the multitude of the bishops and the burning desire of maintaining unanimity amongst them. He at once arranged that all their wants should be liberally supplied. 318 bishops were assembled.
The bishop of Rome, Slyvester, was absent but he sent two presbyters to the Council with authority to agree to what was done.' (†)
________
"At this period many individuals were richly endowed with Apostolic gifts. And many like the holy Apostles bore in their bodies the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ. James, bishop of Antioch, a city of Mygdonia, which is called Nisbis by the Syrians and Assyrians, raised the dead and restored them to life, and performed many other wonders. Paul, bishop of Neocaesarea, a fortress situated on the banks of the Euphrates, had suffered from the frantic rage of Lycinius. He had been deprived of the use of both hands by the application of a red hot iron by which the nerves that gave motion to the muscles had been contracted and rendered dead. some had the right eye dug out, others had lost the right arm. Among these was Paphnutius of Egypt. In short the Council looked like an assembly of Martyrs, yet this holy and celebrated gathering was not entirely free from the element of opposition."
______________
"When they were all assembled the emperor ordered a great hall in the palace in which sufficient benches and seats were placed and thus having arranged that they should be treated with becoming
________
(†) Slyvester lived until 335 or ten years after the Council.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 225
dignity he desired that the Bishops should enter in and discuss the subjects proposed.
"The emperor with a few attendants was the last to enter the room. Remarkable for his lofty stature and worthy of admiration for his personal beauty and still more for the marvelous modesty which dwelt on his countenance."
______________
"A low stool was placed for him in the middle of the assembly, upon which, however, he did not seat himself until he had asked permission of the bishops. Then all the sacred assembly sat down around him.
"Then forthwith rose the Great Eustathius, Bishop of Antioch, and crowned the emperor's head with flowers and panegyric and commended the diligent attention he had manifested in the regulation of ecclesiastical affairs."
"The excellent emperor next exhorted the bishops to unanimity and concord. He recalled to their remembrance the cruelty of the late tyrants and reminded them of the honorable peace which God had in his reign and by his means accorded them.
"He pointed out how dreadful it was, that at the very time when their enemies were destroyed and no one dared to oppose them they should fall upon one another and make their amused adversaries laugh, especially as they were debating about holy things concerning which they had written teaching of the Holy Spirit."
______________
And Constantine said,
"For the gospel, the apostolical writings and the oracles of the ancient prophets clearly teach us what we ought to believe concerning the divine nature. Let all contentions and disputes then be discarded and let us seek in the divinely inspired Word the solution of the questions at issue."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 226
"These and similar exhortations he like an affectionate son addressed to the bishops as to fathers laboring to bring about their unanimity in the apostolical doctrines. Most members in the synod won over by his arguments established concord among themselves and embraced sound doctrines."
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 227
I want to report on the creed that contained the Arians' doctrines. It was formulated by them at a council at Nica Trace. I have not been able to see what great difference there is between this Arian creed and the Nicean creed which was drawn up at Constantine's great council at Nicaea.
"We believe in one only true God, Father almighty, of whom are all things. And in the only begotten Son of God, who before all ages and before every beginning was begotten of God, through whom all things were made both visible and invisible: like the Father that begat Him, according to the Scriptures. Whose generation no one knoweth except only the Father that begat Him. This only begotten Son of God, sent by His Father, we know to have came down from heaven, as it is written, for of the Holy Ghost and the virgin Mary, as it is written, according to the flesh, dead, and buried, and descended to the world below, at whom hell himself trembled. On the third day he arose from the dead and companied with his disciples forty days. He was taken up into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father, and is coming at the last day of the Resurrection, in his Father's Glory, to render to every one according to his works. And we believe in the Holy Ghost, which the only begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, both God and Lord, promised to send to man, the Comforter, as it is written, in the Spirit of Truth. This Spirit He himself sent after he had ascended
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 228
into heaven and sat at the right hand of the Father, from thence to come to judge both the quick and dead."
But the word "the Substance," which was also simply inserted by the Fathers, and that not being understood by the people, was a cause of scandal through it's not being found in the Scripture, it has seemed good to us to remove and that for the future no mention whatsoever be permitted of "Substance" on account of the sacred Scriptures nowhere making mention of the substance of the Father and the Son."
Nor must one "essence" be named in the relation of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. And we call the son like the father as the Holy Scriptures call him and teach; but all the heresies both those already condemned and any if such there be, which have arisen against the document thus put forth, "Let them be Anathema."
"This creed was subscribed by the bishops. Some being frightened and some being cajoled, but those who refused to give in their adhesions were banished unto the most remote regions of the world." (Nicean and Post Nicean Fathers, Book III, Ecclesiastical History of Theodore. page 82.)
This creed of the Arians was anathematized by Rome and the Arians anathematized Rome because they would not subscribe to this Creed. It was like the writer of those days said that it was just "words, words, and controversies." The essence of the creed of Christ is not to anathematize, for He said He came "not to destroy men's lives, but to save them." To anathematize a person means to condemn him and, in their minds, to keep him out of Heaven. This was what was going on all the time among the churches: The first Roman church against the Arians, Arians against the first church of Rome.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 229
All men who were supposed to be Christians called each other heretics because they wouldn't agree to certain words of their creeds.
All this time Rome was working for her supremacy. Many of the Christ-loving bishops did not want to condemn the other bishops of other churches because they realized that Christ's disciples came to him and said, "we saw one casting out demons in Thy name and we forbade him." And Christ answered, "There is no man that can do a miracle in my name that can lightly speak evil of me"
Some of the men at the Council of Nice were performing miracles. I am sure those men were the ones who were not quibbling about creeds, about dogmas, and about words and controversies, but were so filled with the love of Christ that they wanted to obey His commands. For He said, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to the other." Oh, how lovingly we should cover up the slight differences that exist between us. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved."
"We believe in one God, Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father; only begotten, that is of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made both in heaven and on earth: who for
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 230
us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate, and was made man; He ascended into heaven, and is coming to judge both quick and dead. And we believe in the Holy Ghost."
"When they had set forth this formulary, we(†) did not leave without examining that passage in which it is said that the Son is of the substance of the Father, and consubstantial with the Father."
Here was the "bone" of contention between the Orthodox and Arian Creed. The word "consubstantial," if we search for the true meaning of the word is con, with; substantial, substance; and when we use the word substance in its right sense, it turns out to be that substance is a reality, something real, not imaginary. Consubstantial means "with reality."
We can see the difference between the Holy Ghost bishops at Nicaea for they possessed the reality which was theirs through the indwelling Holy Ghost. They had the same power as the Son and the same power as the Father. They performed miracles of raising the dead.
Jesus said, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do: because I go unto my Father." (John 14:12)
This shows the true meaning of consubstantial.
The Holy Ghost (after He has come into our mortal bodies) operates in the same way as He does in the Son and the Father. All three are living realities. Saint Peter said, "It is joy unspeakable and full of glory." (I Peter 1:8)
We feel sure those quibbling bishops did not possess this joy unspeakable, because they did not obey I Peter 1:22, "Seeing ye have purified your souls
________
(†) Meaning the first Roman church representatives.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 231
in obeying truth, through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently."
What good is it to have a form of godliness and deny the consubstantiation (or reality of the transforming power of the Holy Ghost)?
"A form of godliness and deny (not accepting) the power thereof." Power to make us One. Jesus prayed (John 17:11), "That they may be one even as we are."
This is real consubstantiation. And the word essence signifies that we must be like Him. "Whom to know aright is life eternal."
If the Arians wanted to leave out these two words because they were not in the Scriptures, they were justified because God likes a Scriptural Christian.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 232
What this troubled old world needs
Is less of quibbling over creeds,
Fewer words and better deeds.
Less of "Thus and so shall you
Think and act, and say and do."
More of "How may I be true?"
Less of shouting: "I alone
Have the right to hurl the stone."
More of heart that will condone.
Less of dogmas, less of pretense,
More belief that Providence
Will sanctify our common sense.
More of chords of kindness blent
O'er the discords of dissent.
Then will come the great content.
"Just to be good and to do good."
Simple, plain, for him who would--
A creed that may be understood.
Wilbur D. Nesbit
________
(†) This creed was graciously offered for this chapter by Clint and Lucy Starr of Santa Cruz, California. I thank Mr. Nesbit.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 233
The first Roman Church was outnumbered by an 18 to 300 vote. They had their bishops from the Antioch church that Aurelian had taken from the evangelicals as well as other satellite churches we have not yet discovered. Sylvester of Rome was afraid to attend, feigning infirmity yet he lived ten years longer to serve as bishop of that church at Rome.
When it came to a vote, the evangelicals condemned the first Roman Church practices such as:
1. Sun worship (facing the East when they prayed).
2. The Celebration of the pagan feast of Astarte.
3. Homage to "Mary the Mother of God."
4. The substitution of philosophical dogmas for Scripture.
4. The Eucharist that gave only one species to the laity (the bread) (The poured out libation (the wine).
6. The worship of images.
7. The worship of "Sun" day
In the Council of Trent a thousand years later these first Roman Church bishops doggedly persisted in their man-made dogmas and traditions.
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 234
The great preeminence given to the creeds that came out of the Council of Nice (325 A.D.) was used by later historians of Rome to camouflage main issues of that Council.
The great conflict was not over creeds but as it appears today it was over great points of difference in church practices between the first Roman Church and the Evangelical churches all over the empire.
First Roman Church Evangelical Churches
1. Worship of images 1. No image worship
2. Celebration of the pagan feast of Astarte 2. Celebration of Christian Jewish feast of
Pasch
3. Sun worship 3. Worship of Christ only
4. Dogmas and traditions as guides 4. The Holy Scriptures only guides
5. The Roman church contention for 5. Christ only to have the first place. I Peter
supremacy 2:1
6. Ceremony substituted for working power 6. No forms but Spiritual gifts in action. I
of Spiritual Gifts, I Cor. 12 Cor. 14:26
7. Emperors as secular aids to endorse 7. Trust in God's instigation, propagation,
dogmas and protection
8. The prohibition of the congregation 8. The use of the Agape (love feast) as
participation and reception of both given by Christ at the last supper. Both
elements. (Blood emblem removed from elements received by laity.)
9. The day of worship--"Sun Day" 9. The seventh day used as a day of
worship by most of the Greek Evangelicals
HOW DID IT HAPPEN? -- Page 235
After Constantine had come to the Close of this great Council, he saw a great need for the churches. From his contact with the 318 members of the Council, he discerned a great difference among the members especially in the love of the brethren.
The Christian love of the bishops who had had copies of the Gospel and the Apostle as their spiritual guides, far excelled those bishops who had cast them aside for dogmas and traditions of the fathers that had sprung up from year to year in the first Roman Church.
The powerful love that the living martyrs displayed convinced this emperor that it was absolutely necessary for the different metropolitan sees to have at least one copy of the Holy Scriptures among them so they could copy them and get them out over the world.
So at great expense, Constantine ordered fifty copies of the Scriptures to be made on the best vellum and brought to him. You can imagine what these fifty copies on this heavy vellum would weigh. They might have weighed over a ton. So a strong cart was ordered and in this conveyance these precious copies were delivered to him.(†)
Some have thought that the Codex Siniaticus which is now in the British Museum is one of these copies. But can you imagine what just one copy would mean to a city like Rome with a population of over two million people?
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(†) Records of Council of Nice.
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Besides, the first church of Rome had let the Scriptures alone since the rein of Claudius and formed their own dogmas on the traditions that were gathered from year to year. The Holy Scriptures were foreign to them, in their entirety. They had only bits of the Scripture which the Philosophers had changed by logic and syllogisms. Later Emperors collected these Scriptures and burned them at the instigation of the Popes of Rome.
But the members of the evangelical groups of the city of Rome who could read Greek (the language of the scrolls) were so glad to get a copy. The first church of Rome cared little for the Scriptures in Greek, but the next offer made by the Emperor was quickly seized upon by the First Roman Church.
Constantine said that as long as the pagan emperors had demolished the church buildings of the Christians, he made a proclamation that every church was to be rebuilt at the expense of his government. All materials needed were to be gotten and the bills sent to him. The bishops hurried back to their native places and a feverish building program began.
However; the First Church of Rome had few, if any, church buildings demolished. The Pagan emperors had not destroyed them because they had been so much in league with each other. It was the truly evangelical church, whose buildings had been either given to the First Roman Church by the emperors,(†) or demolished by them. But the First Church of Rome got money and materials to spread out, and enhance the buildings already standing.
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(†) Chapters on Aurelian. Antioch, Samosata
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It was not until Alaric came along that the First Roman Church was visited by God's wrath. The First Roman Church had an aggressive program of war on the evangelical Arians from this time.
The First Roman Church sat at Rome while the evangelical groups forwarded the pure gospel in France Germany, Britain and Ireland.
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FOUR YEARS LATER 329 A.D.
Translated by Jerome(†)
In the proscribed writings of Origen and those copies of Tertullian as well as the writings of Theodoret(‡) (that the later popes and emperors condemned) we feel sure that their martyrologies did not have the names of either St. Peter or St. Paul as having died in Rome.
We know that St. Paul was in Rome for two years but we have no record of his death there.
In fact we do not know where he died. But he did start a church in the city of Rome. It was the Third Church of Rome.(±)
The Holy Scriptures record St. Peter as being in the city of Babylon in the year 60 A.D. But the popes record him as having been in Rome at that time.
The best biographers of the reformation (one named Fabricius) say that the earliest lists of the martyrs of Rome made by men like Hippolytus and Origen and others, do not record the names of St. Peter or St. Paul.
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(†) Jerome changed Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History. He added to or took away what would please Pope Damasus.
(‡) Enc. Brit. 1911, Vol. XX, page 327.
(±)The first church of Rome was the one that backslid into paganism. The second church of Rome started by Priscilla and Aquila was the evangelical church. The third church of Rome was started by St. Paul in his own hired dwelling and carried on two years by the apostle himself.
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The book of ecclesiastical history written by Eusebius, is, also, not to be trusted as authentic, because it has passed through so many hands that have at least wanted to place the names of these two saints on the list, and especially the name of St. Peter. The later translations have actually embodied these two names. The First Roman Church wanted to substantiate their unfounded claims to the supremacy of their Church by making St. Peter the first Pope.
It might be that the original martyrology of Eusebius (329 A.D.) omitted the name of St. Peter as the first Pope of Rome, and was the cause of most of the contention and deadly strife between the first Church of Rome, and the evangelicals.
However the First Church of Rome has been noted for forgeries like, "The Donations of Constantine," "False Decretals," etc. So that in this age we do not accept their claim to supremacy because from all appearances it, too, has been forged.
"Eusebius' biography of Constantine shows what distortions of fact the father of church history permitted himself."
"An even greater influence was exercised by Eusebius Chronica. Through Jerome's translation and additions, this scheme of this world's chronology became the basis for all medieval world chronicles."(†)
The great desire to have St. Peter as the first Pope of Rome made the writers like Jerome of the First Roman Church actually create that incident. It was not a factual event.
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(†) Enc. Brit. 1911 ea., Vol. XIII, page 529. Col. 2b. "History"
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life Arch-Bishop 371--of Tours 399
In God's Word we find a statement by the beloved St. John concerning answered prayer: "The things we ask we receive of Him because we keep His commandments and do those things pleasing in His sight."
One man said, "If anyone else is getting more answered prayers than I am, I shall study that man's life and find out how he does it."
I have never read of a miracle being attributed to St. Augustine nor one performed by Damasus, but the life of St. Martin of Tours and that of St. Ambrose of Milan have these wonderful signs of the believer following them. They laid hands on the sick and they recovered, they cast out demons and raised the dead, etc.
St. Martin's spiritual life started with a miracle. He was out one cold night and saw a beggar (with no coat) so he gave him part of his coat. That night Jesus appeared to Martin dressed in the part of the coat he had given to the beggar. This proved to Martin that inasmuch as he had done it to one of the least of these he had done it unto Jesus. This Divine Afflatus put this young man on the right path to heaven and as he pressed forward to the prize of the high calling God gave him other divine revelations and urged him on to the way of holiness.
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But there had to be a beginning, and this beginning was Martin's obedience to the great need of the beggar and the compassion of Christ working in his soul. He was taken under the 'wing' of a godly bishop of France named Hillary of Poitiers, and although he had been given a partial education in the Bible school of Padua, still St. Hillary helped him and encouraged him to press on.
Hillary was a man of letters and one of the great Doctors of the western church that was not under the influence of the first church at Rome.
He had the 'Gospel and Apostle' as guides and one writer of our day says that wherever the 'Gospel and Apostle' went (as the sole guides of the churches) miracles and signs followed the ministry.
In going west many times the journeys took missionaries through brambles and swamps, but they thought so much of the Scriptures that they carried them on top of their heads lest they get ruined.
St. Martin was a Scriptural Christian.
Sulpicius Severus said that "Salvation was preached to the world, not by orators, but by fishermen," and St. Martin was a fisher of souls.
It was a great miracle that such a man as Hillary could become so humble that God could use him to carry on the gospel that 'fishermen' started.
It has always followed that the churches who went entirely by the written Word of God (in the Holy Scriptures) had the reward of miracles and healings following their ministry.
When Martin was well grounded in the pure faith he went back to Pannonia and was the means of converting his pagan mother and sister to the pure Gospel.
He brought his sister back to Tours with him and she married a deacon in a church in Britain and they worked for the Lord on the Bonny Banks of Clyde
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until they moved back to Brittany. It was about this time their son, Sucat, (St. Patrick of Ireland) was kidnapped.
The name of St. Martin's sister was Conchessa and her husband was Calpurnius(†)
St. Martin was listed as the Arch Bishop of Tours. He was not canonized by the first church of Rome, but he was truly canonized by God, the same as St. Ambrose of Milan.
He built a monastery or school at Marmoutiers and from this school went great men like Pelagius and Coelestius of that famous missionary party that went to Rome in the years just preceding the sack of that city by Alaric, 410 A.D.
St. Martin also built a retreat (or monastery) on the banks of the river, Loire. Here he had time to be alone with God and intercede for the right and for power to go forward in the authority and name of Jesus.
We see the results of his praying and fasting in the many healings and miracles that followed his ministry.
On one occasion when he was demolishing a pagan shrine and was about to cut down the sacred tree standing near it, the pagans remonstrated. He said, "If I am not a man of God you can soon learn if you will tie me in the spot where this tree will fall." They worked with fervor and completed the task; but God made the tree twist as it fell and it landed on some of the workmen.
Martin was once called to a child that was dead. He stretched himself on the child and prayed and God restored life.
He went to the emperor at Treves, the western Capitol of the Roman world, and asked to be admitted.
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(†) D'Aubigne Vol. V, page 21.
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The Emperor knew this godly man had come to make him reverse some decision to kill some of the Holy Ghost Bishops who would not do as Pope Damasus demanded (according to the first Edict of Theodosius). At the request of the ungodly emperor's wife he would not admit St. Martin. This godly saint lay at the gate in prayer and fasting until the Lord of Creation told him to go in to the emperor. The gate swung open by itself and he walked straight in to the presence of the emperor who was not respectful to Martin. He would not rise in the presence of the godly bishop. But God sent a feeling of burning fire and it scorched the seat on which this proud man was sitting. He soon arose.
There were intrigues and false conceptions of the Church of the living God in those days, and bad men were always trying to promote the first church of Rome. Martin would have nothing to do with these, and were it not for the fact that he had such power with God, he too, would have been burned at the stake at the request of Damasus like many of his fellow bishops.
The Roman church had lost her Apostolic Power to heal and perform miracles. But such men as Ambrose and Priscillin and Martin kept so close to the pure Scriptural teachings that they had power with God.
The man-made creeds of Rome had physical force and power at the hands of the pagan emperors but the First Roman Church had lost the office that Christ had given for the performance of His miracles.
St. Martin continued in the Apostolic doctrine. Jude said, "Earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the Saints."(†) This was what the missionaries (who carried the Scriptures wherever
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they went) continually worked to do. They contended in prayer and fasting and God gave them the desires of their hearts.
God's word says, "The things we ask we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things pleasing in His sight." I am sure it did not please God to see Spanish bishops urge the burning of Priscillin and his Holy Ghost followers. I am sure it was not pleasing in God's sight to have the First Roman Church set statues in its church and make it like a Pagan Temple. God hated it.
Also, I am sure God saw when the Spanish bishops bore false witness against Priscillin because God's Holy Commandments say, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."
The First Roman Church under Damasus had broken fellowship with God in three things: 1. false witness, 2. killing, 3. lies.
St. Martin stayed in God's holy presence so much that he was never harsh or upset in any situation.
One day a beggar came to him asking for a garment. He was busy in prayer, so he sent him to the Arch deacon. The beggar soon returned without a garment. The Arch deacon came in a very excited state and said, "The congregation of people have been waiting for you in the chapel." But Martin said calmly, "Please bring me a garment for the beggar." The deacon did not return soon so Martin took off his own garment and handed it to the beggar. The deacon returned with an inferior garment and threw it at the feet of this beloved saint who put it on and went in to the multitude of waiting people. All through the service a golden glory light rested on him.
Jesus said, "Blessed are the merciful," and when He looked out on the multitude of hungry people, whom He fed with the two small fishes and five loaves of
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bread, "He was moved with compassion." No amount of preaching or church forms and ceremonies can substitute for the great compassion that the Holy Ghost gives the believer to minister His works and Word.
Martin's life was one constant miracle.
He traveled over three hundred miles of rough road to reach Treves, where Priscillin was accused of heresy by the Spanish bishops, Ithacius and Idacius. How many of us would either walk or travel on the back of an animal for that distance to save a life? He pled with the Emperor Maximus, "These Bishops have done nothing worthy of death." But Maximus was a "cat's paw" of Damasus--Pope of Rome.
Martin was much loved by the