The Future of Roman Catholicism (Part I) :: By The Gospelist
Those who claim that the Roman Catholic Church is the woman who rides the beast in Revelation are often accused of hatred of Catholicism. Those who believe the Roman Church is this woman usually have no reason to feel animosity toward this church. They have simply noticed that this future religious institution behaves in the same way that the Roman church has behaved in the past.
Using the proper interpretation of Scripture and an uncensored understanding of history, we can reveal the secret identity of Mystery Babylon and what the future holds for this church.
This article will reveal that the Roman church started fornicating with the emperors of Rome about 300 years after its inception. This is relevant since it should be obvious to anyone who is paying attention that the Vatican is in bed with the tyrannical Globalists and their totalitarian agenda that is unfolding before the very eyes of this generation. It will be shown that the Roman church has, since that time, cozied up with the tyrants of the world in order to gain temporal power.
It is said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The reality of the situation is, because of the innate sinfulness of the human condition, we are always doomed to repeat it. It is not the intellect that is going to save us from making the same mistakes over and over; only a change in our spiritual condition can do that.
After all, how many nations keep giving socialism one more try?
With the above in mind, let us examine one of the greatest mistakes that the church, namely the Roman Catholic Church, has ever made. That mistake was coveting the desire to unify church and state in an effort to exercise spiritual and temporal power over the nations and the entire world.
According to scripture, the church began in Jerusalem and then spread out over the Roman Empire. As the Apostles were scattered about, along with their followers, they began to establish churches. Each time a church was established, a bishop was appointed to oversee it. The bishop would then establish a hierarchy over that particular church.
In its infancy, the church began to disperse due to the persecution of the Jews in Jerusalem. It is clear that it was always Jesus’ intention that the church should move beyond Israel and take his message to the Gentiles.
As the church spread out, persecutions of the pagan Gentiles quickly followed, beginning with Nero, then Domitian, and several others up to the great persecution of Diocletian. The persecution of Diocletian concluded the ten main persecutions of the Roman Empire against Christians. These ten persecutions occurred sporadically over a 250-year period.
According to Eusebius, Paul established the church in Rome, and he was its first bishop. Peter was allegedly the second bishop and, when he was allegedly martyred by Nero, he was followed by Linus, then Anencletus, then Clement. (However, there is no historical evidence that Peter ever went to Rome or that he was martyred by Nero.) At this time, the church of Rome was merely one church among many.
As time passed, new leaders and teachers began to arise in Christendom. Some were fairly solid teachers of the faith, while many others were false teachers who attempted to corrupt the faith. Others were a combination of the two.
Origen (185-253) was an ascetic, scholar, and theologian who taught many Christians the ‘allegorical’ method of interpreting scripture. He was both heralded and criticized for giving himself an Orchiectomy (removed his own testicles) in an effort to ‘fulfill the Savior’s words.’
Apparently, the one thing he did take literally was when Jesus said, “There are those who made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake” (Matthew 19:12).
Origen would later become prosperous, great, and esteemed and developed a cult following among many Christians. It soon came to pass that his was the dominant theology in Christendom, and those who opposed him were considered heretics. He was a great intellectual in his day, and even the Greeks considered him a great philosopher. He found secular and philosophic studies of prime importance when studying the scriptures.
He was the first Christian ‘intellectual’ and may be considered the father of systematic theology. He was highly valued over the earlier ‘church fathers’ as he moved away from ‘moralizing’ about the faith and instead turned to ‘contemplation’ of God.
It is common among intellectuals at that time and today that they turn away from ‘moralizing’ to ‘contemplation.’ When this occurs, the first of Christ’s commands that they jettison is the calling of sinners to repent and be forgiven in the name of Jesus. This calling is of first importance, and when it is abandoned, the Holy Spirit abandons these people not long after. For the intellectual, the shipwrecking of their faith is not far off.
Some of the teachings of Origen, which involved ‘misguided contemplation,’ included:
- Teaching that God’s first human creations were the Logika, rather than Adam and Eve, but they were not created in time.
- These Logika were created to explore the divine mysteries of God and spend time in endless contemplation. They fell apart from God into an existence on their own terms of their own free will.
- There is no eternal suffering in hell. Everyone, including Satan himself, will achieve salvation, but it will take innumerable ages before this occurs.
Origen was the most popular ‘Christian’ teacher of his age. He was sought out by the Christian intelligentsia of his time and became a dominant force in the faith. His students then began to gain power and influence and used this power to force all ‘heretics’ out of Christian fellowship.
One of his students, Dionysius, was called ‘the great Bishop of Alexandria.’ No one knows if he gave himself this title or if it was assigned by someone else, but it is clear that by claiming this mantle, he lacked the humility that is characteristic of a true man of faith.
Imagine Paul referring to himself as “the Great apostle to the Gentiles.”
Dionysius’ The Great’ believed he was a stalwart defender of the faith and that he was appointed by God to correct heresies. According to Eusebius, he received an extra-biblical revelation in which God commanded him, “Read everything that comes to hand since you are able to test everything, which is why you came to faith.” Since the Biblical canon was closed with the death of John the Apostle, we can assume this was a false revelation.
If this dream was from God, we should add this vision to holy scripture as the sixty-seventh book of the Bible. That, of course, would be more idiotic than the false theology that would come to dominate the Christian faith.
Some of the foolishness that he taught, according to Eusebius, was:
- The Book of Revelation was not written by John the Apostle.
- The Book of Revelation was allegorical and should not be taken literally.
- There will be no thousand-year reign of Jesus on the earth.
There can be little doubt that it was this kind of overintellectualized nonsense that most likely led to the Great Persecution of 303-313 AD. When proclaiming the Gospel takes a back seat to ‘contemplation of God,’ the church has fallen into very serious error. It is clear that the faith was going off the rails, and if it was not corrected, the whole world would have fallen into apostasy.
Jesus said that the gates of hell would not prevail against his church, and he meant it.
The Great Persecution was brought to an end by the emperor Constantine. In 312 A.D., he was at war and about to engage in an important campaign called the Battle of Milvian Bridge. Prior to this battle, he claimed to have had a vision of a cross of light. He claimed that he saw the first two letters of Christ’s name (the chi and the rho) and heard the words, “By this sign you will conquer.”
After winning this battle, he began to give greater credibility to the Christian God, and the Great Persecution started to wane. This led to the “Edict of Milan” in 313, and it commanded that all Christian persecution come to an end. It proclaimed, “all who choose that religion (Christianity) are to be permitted, freely and absolutely, to remain in it, and not to be disturbed in any way, or molested.”
With this edict, Christianity was ‘elevated’ to be on par with all of the other religions of Rome. Constantine claimed to have become a Christian, and his conversion was accepted by Christendom at that time. Everyone was relieved that the terrible persecution was over, and they celebrated the Roman emperor who brought it to an end.
The church erred grievously in this instance. There is no question that Constantine did not become a Christian since he was still a polytheist. He believed that the Christian God was only one of many gods. There is much evidence that he saw God as an avenue to worldly power rather than the only ‘Spirit’ to which he was required to submit.
In 325, a false teaching by Arias became prominent among the churches. Arias, a Libyan priest, was falsely proclaiming that Jesus was a created being in opposition to sound Biblical doctrine. This false doctrine was causing discord in the church and in the Roman Empire as well.
At that time, the Roman Empire was in crisis as it was being pressured on many fronts by the Persians and other enemies who threatened to overrun it. Constantine decided that the church needed the ‘sovereignty of a protective savior’ to bring order to the empire. It needed a ‘Bishop of all things outside the Church’ to bring stability to the church and the realm.
At the Council of Nicaea, the controversy was resolved, and sound doctrine was re-established. However, there was one severe consequence to this council that would reverberate from this time through the last days of the church age and into the end times.
The church was well aware that it was not to follow false prophets. When Constantine had his ‘vision,’ he became the overseer of church councils and declared himself “Bishop of all things outside the church.” This office was never authorized by God. His vision allowed him to take on the role of a ‘dreamer of dreams’ in the church.
The church should have remembered the teachings of Moses when he wrote:
“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass [as Constantine’s great victory at the Battle of Milvian Bridge came to pass], and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. For the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
“You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him [rather than Rome] and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery, to make you leave the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from your midst” (Deuteronomy 13:1-5).
Constantine never renounced his worship of the Roman Sun god. He built monuments to it even after he allegedly became a Christian. Sol worship allowed him to identify with the sun god because identifying with Jesus was not going to bring him worldly power.
The Christians at that time did not have the power to purge Constantine from their midst, nor did they try. Eusebius wrote glowingly about him as if he were a defender of the faith. The leadership of Christendom was extremely foolish to allow him to exercise such great power over Christ’s church.
With this ruling, the Roman state and the church in Rome had merged into one flesh, with the emperor playing a significant role in the church and the church a significant role in the empire. The first council set the precedent for the State to involve itself in the mission of the church in Rome and, by extension, all other churches that would be established.
The Roman church began fornicating with the kings of the earth at the Council of Nicaea.
After a few hundred years, the power relationship would begin to reverse. The Roman church would grow weary of playing the submissive whore to the emperors of Rome. At that time, every new bishop of Rome was required to present himself before the emperors to receive their approval. This ritual was like a rich suitor reviewing the adequacy of his bride to be.
The Roman church was anxious for the day that the emperors would need their endorsement to rule rather than the other way around.
In 366, the death of Liberius, who was a bishop of the church in Rome, led to a division in the church there. A competition arose and factions formed to determine who would achieve his prestigious position. One faction supported Ursinus to replace him, while the other supported Damasus. Both men were elected as the bishop of the Church of Rome, by two different groups of the congregation, at the same time.
Being the bishop of Rome was a coveted position, and Damasus was willing to go to any lengths to obtain it.
This dissension climaxed with a riot by a mob hired by Damasus that led to the deaths of 137 people and the rare intervention of Emperor Valentinian I to uphold public order. Damasus prevailed, but only with the support of the city prefect. He was also accused of murder before a later prefect (regional governor or magistrate), but his rich friends secured the personal intervention of the emperor to rescue him from this humiliation.
The reputations of both Damasus and the Roman church in general suffered greatly due to these two ‘unseemly’ incidents.
It did not take long for the fruit of this public fornication to blossom. After his ‘victory,’ Bishop Damasus (305-384) attempted to expand papal primacy and the Roman See to assert authority over the other churches.
This effort was made by invoking the ‘Petrine Texts’ in which it was posited that Peter (and his successors) was the supreme authority over every church. In neither of Peter’s epistles is Rome’s primacy insinuated in any way. The fact that his ‘lovers’ were the Roman emperors helped him to overcome this deficit since the Bible was of no help whatsoever in this venture.
Many in both pagan and Christian society saw in Damasus a man whose worldly ambitions outweighed his pastoral concerns. His entertainments were infamous for their lavishness. A wealthy aristocrat called Praetextatus, who was a priest in the cults of numerous gods, is reputed to have said jokingly to Damasus, “Make me bishop of Rome, and I will become a Christian.”
Some of his critics used to call him (Damasus) “the ladies’ ear-tickler.” An accusation of adultery was laid against him in 378 in the imperial court, but he was exonerated by Emperor Gratianus himself.
Fornication with the emperors of Rome had its privileges.
The fornication of the Roman Church with the kings of the earth began with Constantine but was perfected under Damasus. The bishop of the church in Rome demonstrated time and again that he would prostitute himself to Rome to achieve wealth and power.
From Damasus onwards, there was a marked increase in the volume and importance of claims of authority and primacy from the Roman bishops. These claims were not based on the Bible; they were based solely on the fact that the Roman church was achieving worldly power by fornicating with the Roman emperors.
The church became very unstable when it abandoned its mission to proclaim the Gospel and instead sought worldly power. Due to poor teaching, obvious false doctrines were beginning to emerge that needed to be silenced by the church. Unfortunately, the church found it more convenient to allow the emperors to silence these people with threats of violence rather than sound Biblical teaching.
To create stability in the church, the Roman emperors issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380. This Edict stated (with my commentary in bold):
EMPERORS GRATIAN, VALENTINIAN II, AND THEODOSIUS I AUGUSTI. EDICT TO THE PEOPLE OF CONSTANTINOPLE.
It is our [the emperors] desire that all the various nations which are subject to our Clemency and Moderation, should continue to profess that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter [who was likely never in Rome], as it has been preserved by faithful tradition, and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus [who does not meet the Biblical qualifications for Bishop] and by Peter [who would have condemned Damasus as a heretic], Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity [The Nicaean Creed].
We [the emperors] authorize [as the church is under our supervision] the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians; but as for the others [who teach that Christ was a created being], since, in our judgment, they are foolish madmen [which is true], we [the emperors] decree that they shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give to their conventicles the name of churches [the emperors will determine who can be called the church].
They will suffer, in the first place, the chastisement of the divine condemnation and, in the second, the punishment of our authority [which will lay the groundwork for the inquisition, the greatest evil ever perpetrated against humanity] which in accordance with the will of Heaven [as if the Roman emperors knew the will of heaven] we shall decide to inflict [Because the Christian Saints, who will one day judge angels, are incapable of handling important issues that are better left to those who have no standing in the church].
GIVEN IN THESSALONICA ON THE THIRD DAY FROM THE CALENDS OF MARCH, DURING THE FIFTH CONSULATE OF GRATIAN AUGUSTUS AND FIRST OF THEODOSIUS AUGUSTUS
Pope Leo I (400-461) “The Great” continued to build on the doctrine of the supreme authority of the bishop of Rome. Leo’s rationale for the absolute control and power of the Roman bishop was founded on the idea that Peter was still present and active, like the Holy Spirit, in his successors. Therefore, all ecclesiastical authority should be mediated through the Roman bishop. The Roman church, as an ecclesial monarchy, was supposed to rule supreme above all churches. It was Peter, and his successors, who were to rule the universal church.
Of course, none of these doctrines are found in the Bible. Paul was the main apostle to the Gentiles, but he was never appealed to as the initial founder of the church in Rome. He is conveniently excluded from this doctrine because he did not serve the purpose of bringing worldly power to the church.
Eventually, the Roman church had grown so corrupt due to its fornications that simony [the buying or selling of any spiritual benefit or office] became rampant. People were buying offices in the church to achieve these coveted positions. The Council of Chalcedon was called in 451 to address this issue, but it was not a serious attempt to stop it. Those of higher rank who were caught engaging in simony could eventually be reinstated, while those of lower rank were completely anathematized.
The Roman Empire fell in 476 when the Germanic barbarian king Odoacer unseated the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire. After the Vandals sacked Rome, the next few barbarian leaders oppressed the church, and it lost its position as a political force.
However, this eventually changed when Hildrich (523-530) granted the church religious freedom, and it was able to operate with less hostility from the government. The leaders of the Roman Church never forgot the lessons they learned from the emperors, and it used its newfound freedom to assert itself in the civil discourse of its new political leaders.
The Church of Rome was forced to submit to the authority of the barbarians until it could eventually begin to establish spiritual supremacy. When the Byzantines (Eastern Roman Empire) attempted to retake Italy, they had much success, but they could not completely reconquer the nation. They did, however, begin to weaken the hold of the Vandals on Italy.
As the Bishop of Rome was the largest landowner and most prestigious figure in Italy, he began to take advantage of this weakness. He was able to assert ruling authority that the Byzantines were unable to project around the city of Rome.
The bishops of Rome allegedly began to be referred to as Popes at this time, and the Duchy of Rome became an independent state ruled by the church.
As the power of the Byzantines started to weaken, the papacy began to take a larger role in defending against the Lombards (one of the various Germanic tribes). Its power grew through diplomacy, threats and bribery, and the ‘papal states’ began to emerge in 756. These were states that the papacy could exercise not only spiritual power over but civil power as well.
As their political power grew, the popes began to increasingly see themselves as the granters of spiritual and governmental legitimacy as Christ’s representative on earth. They came to believe that they were to exercise temporal and spiritual power in this world and over purgatory in the next world.
As the Roman church struggled for civil power, there developed an ongoing political battle between church and State. This battle was to determine whether the king could rule without the popes blessing or if the Pope could rule without the approval of the Holy Roman Empire. The Pope saw the ruler as subordinate to his authority, and the emperor saw the Pope as subordinate to his.
Pope Nicholas I (858-867) made no bones about where he stood on this issue:
We [the Popes] alone have the power to bind and to loose (Matthew 18:18), to absolve Nero and to condemn him. and Christians cannot, under penalty of excommunication, execute other judgment than ours, which alone is infallible.
People are not the judges of their princes [and a bishop is even greater than a prince]; they should obey without murmuring the most iniquitous orders; they should bow their foreheads under the chastisements [as if they were Christ] which it pleases kings [who themselves are under our authority] to inflict on them, for a sovereign can violate the fundamental laws of the State, and seize upon the wealth of the citizen, by imposts or by confiscations; he can even dispose of their lives, without any of his subjects having the right to address to him simple remonstrances.
This was an ongoing political battle wherever the Roman church attempted to assert the authority of the Pope over the State. The problem with this is that not even Jesus attempted to assert authority over Rome. He proclaimed, “Give to Caesars what is Caesars, and to God what is God’s.” Christians were to obey the political rulers of Rome unless they came into conflict with the commands of the Lord.
It was the Roman Church’s lust for political power that led to its fornication with the kings of the earth. The popes worked hard to develop a number of false doctrines designed to enrich themselves and gain the obedience of the populace.
Two of the more egregious of these false doctrines were elevating Mary to divinity and the doctrine of purgatory.
Epiphanius was a bishop of Salamis in 377. He is noted as having said, “How will holy Mary not possess the kingdom of heaven with her flesh, since she was not unchaste, nor dissolute, nor did she ever commit adultery, and since she never did anything wrong as far as fleshly actions are concerned, but remained stainless.”
The fact of the matter is that Mary was not holy, nor was she sinless. However, the church of Rome, through ‘contemplation,’ would begin to argue that she was ‘the Mother of God.’
Jesus made it very clear that Mary was a sinner and was not to be venerated or worshipped in any way in his church. He also made it clear she was not ‘the Mother of God.’ In fact, on two occasions, Jesus corrected anyone who attempted to elevate her beyond her humanity.
“As he [Jesus] said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!’ But he said, ‘Blessed rather [than my mother] are those who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:27-28)!
“While he [Jesus] was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, ‘Who is my mother [she is no greater than anyone else], and who are my brothers?’ And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers [These are my family]! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven [is my family] is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:46-50).
The elevation of Mary to divinity was a violation of the First of the Ten Commandments of God. These types of errors occur when a church turns to ‘contemplation’ and away from obedience to God’s Gospel and his holy scripture.
Regarding Purgatory, Pope St. Gregory “the Great” can be credited with getting this false doctrine off the ground in 594. His contribution to the effort is below:
Each one [who dies] will be presented to the Judge exactly as he was when he departed this life. Yet, there must be a cleansing fire before judgment because of some minor faults that may remain to be purged away [Christ’s sacrifice was insufficient].
Does not Christ, the Truth, say that if anyone blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, he shall not be forgiven “either in this world or in the world to come” (Matt 12:32)? From this statement, we learn [or embellish] that some sins can be forgiven in this world and some in the world to come. For, if forgiveness is refused for a particular sin, we conclude logically that it is granted for others. This must apply, as I said, to slight transgressions. (Pope Saint Gregory the Great, Dialogues, 4:39 (A.D. 594)).
History shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Roman church was fornicating with the kings of the earth, trading the Gospel for political power, and creating false doctrines to secure its worldly authority. It created false doctrines like purgatory and elevating ‘Mary’ to Mother of God to gain this power. It continued to do this for the first 700 years of its existence.
In fact, the Roman church’s fornication with the kings of the earth continues to this day.
History also shows that this problem became much worse over the next 1,000 years. As a result of its lust for temporal power, fornicating with the kings of the earth would not be enough.
Soon it would soon become drunk with the blood of the saints.
The post The Future of Roman Catholicism (Part I) :: By The Gospelist appeared first on Rapture Ready.
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