PART SIX: The Early Church: 0-499 AD
Spiritual Degeneration 500-1599
Before too long, Satan began revealing "secret knowledge" to some in the Church, fostering heresies in order to distort the truth of Christ's person. These heresies were added to the belief systems of the various religions which preceded Christ in order to explain Him away. It would probably be safe to say that most of these religions and heresies are prominent in today's New Age movement.
Israel had been set aside by God, and He would not look back for them as a nation until the end of the age. Christ had come as promised, but the devil had laid his groundwork. All that the devil had established up to this point in time would be renamed and shuffled and fed to humanity under new names through cults and religions and philosophies down through the centuries. His power was in diversity, something for everybody. At the end of the age, he would gather them all together for a world religion of devil worship.
There would be nothing new under the sun from this point on. The groundwork had been laid. The plan to set up the Catholic Church as the world church was in the wings, the Babylonian practices of goddess and sun worship were ready to be dumped into its system.
25 Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, 26 But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith:
Paul shook the Mystery religions with these two verses he wrote to the Roman Christians. These other philosophies had their initiations, their rites, their offerings to unite themselves to a god, and Paul came along and said, "The Blood of the Lamb, the Son of God, has been shed. A man is risen from the dead. Heaven's door is open. Come on in!" He traveled to the known world, spreading the Good News. He was beaten, killed, hated, wrote epistles into the night, went from synagogue to synagogue spreading the gospel, established churches wherever he went and then visited then to share more of Christ so they would come to maturity. He labored to mature the Church in the now-revealed ways of God because he knew persecution would come.
10 Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will 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 (Revelation 3).
There was reason to hold fast. The world was about to experience a variation of religion like it never had before, and it began with a mixture of beliefs from the Ancient religions - Gnosticism - while the young Church struggled to get its feet planted on solid ground.
"A religion of beliefs coming from Zoriastrianism, formed about the same time as Christianity. The theory is that mankind originated in the celestial realms where only pure spirits dwell. Man now has taken on a material body, binding her or himself to the material world, its values and motives. Mankind can evolve back to the celestial realms through the superknowledge he or she receives from etheric [spirit] world intelligences who communicate with them regarding the etheric [spirit] world, psychism, metaphysics and control of the mind. The word Gnosis means 'mystical and spiritual knowledge, seeking to know that which one cannot perceive with one's five senses.'"
New Ager Elaine Pagels wrote a book called "The Gnostic Gospels" in which she discusses her side of the question of Gnosticism versus Christianity in the early Church. She said the Gnostics believed that if Jesus came to reveal the secrets of the Kingdom, and the apostles were told the secrets of the kingdom, and Paul received mysteries and secrets hid since the beginning of the world, then this secret knowledge was the key to encountering the risen Christ and realizing our destiny. The resurrection wasn't something only to be believed, but something to be experienced, so the mysteries of the kingdom could be revealed to the seeker directly from the spirit realm, or from the Christ Spirit itself. Christianity said the apostles were the standard because they held to the word of God, the faith once delivered to the saints. But the Gnostics proposed what has now been heard from John Wimber: "God is bigger than His word." In Christianity, the revelation of Christ was complete, but in Gnosticism, all had not been revealed, all was not yet known. Further revelation was needed.
The Gnostic was one who had transcended rational knowledge and faith in what he heard. He believed man needs to know himself, which would bring to him a knowledge of where he has been and where he is going, and, in the process, thus come to know God. Such knowledge could not be known from a belief system that served as a standard of truth to be obeyed. Such knowledge could only come personally and intuitively within, and if the experience went beyond the bounds of the word of God, then the seeker had simply encountered another secret of the kingdom Jesus had spoken of and revealed to His chosen twelve. In the process, who Christ was was changed. He was not the one who died for sin and was risen to give the Spirit to those who believe so they would be united to God and complete in Him. Christ became one who had to be sought by men so they, too, could understand the secrets of the kingdom by having them revealed to them in experience. Experience became the final criteria, not God's final revelation as revealed to Paul and placed in His written word. We have the same situation today as the Church is stalking off into the darkness after an experiential, counterfeit Jesus. Alice Bailey, the Mother of the New Age, said,
"What the orthodox theologian and the narrow doctrinaire have to offer no longer satisfies the intelligent seeker or suffices to answer his questions. He is shifting his allegiances into wider and more spiritual areas. He is moving OUT FROM UNDER doctrinal authority AND TO direct personal, spiritual experience AND COMING UNDER the direct authority which contact with Christ and His disciples, the masters, gives."
Bailey knows her Gnosticism, and she sees what is happening in the Church better than members of the Church do. The Gnostics cry is, "How can you have the true faith when you are divided into so many Christian sects and denominations?" Thus, the denominations become Babylon, and Gnosticism focuses on all being visibly one. In the second to third centuries, the Catholic Church hierarchical system rose and set the standard: if you didn't belong to the one true church, then you were a heretic. The only problem was, through conquest, the standard changed, and the word of God was mixed with an assortment of traditions and mystical experiences apart from Scripture. While the Church declared Gnostics heretics, it , too was slowly adding the unbiblical experiences of the saints and the doctrines established by those experiences to its bin of so-called truth. How was something to be determined Gnostic or not, truth or not? The test was whether it conflicted with the now contaminated faith of the Catholic Church. Today, as the non-Catholics take on more distorted Scripture, traditions and experiences of their own, they are only conforming to the real Catholic way of life, though the terminology and appearance may seem different. Almost all of the Christian world is now pursuing the unity of all believers based on traditions, experiences and the perversion of Scripture. Today, we have "new revelations" just as the Gnostics of old had experiences based on revelation beyond the word of God. God is once again the God who is bigger than His word. Gnosticism is winning the battle for the souls of men while Christianity is marching the streets for Jesus and pulling demons down from the heavenlies, shouting Victory in Jesus' name.
"The [Montanist] movement was conservative, claiming to return, as so many scholars since have done, to what were considered to be the practices and beliefs of the primitive Church, and also asserting that a new or at least renewed dispensation of the Spirit had arrived. At his baptism the Holy Spirit spoke through Montanus in tongues, thus reviving the charismatic emotionalism and practices of such churches as that of New Testament Corinth and reacting against the coldness and formalism which were allegedly creeping into contemporary Christianity."
"Believers in Mithras observed Sunday as well as Christmas. Consequently Constantine placed Sunday under the protection of the State and spoke not of the day of the Lord, but of the everlasting day of the sun. Furthermore, the Church tolerated the cult of the emperor under many forms. It was permitted to speak of the divinity of the emperor, of the sacred palace, the sacred chamber and of the altar of the emperor, without being considered on this account an idolater. From this point of view Constantine's religious change was relatively trifling; it consisted of little more than the renunciation of a formality. For what his predecessors had aimed to attain by the use of all their authority and at the cost of incessant bloodshed, was in truth only the recognition of their own divinity; Constantine gained this end, though he renounced the offering of sacrifices to himself."Not only Gnostics and other heretics, but Christians who considered themselves faithful, held in a measure to the worship of the sun. Leo the Great in his day says that it was the custom of many Christians to stand on the steps of the church of St. Peter and pay homage to the sun by obeisance and prayers (cf. Euseb. Alexand. in Mai, "Nov. Patr. Bibl.", 11, 523; Augustine, "Enarratio in Ps. x"; Leo I, Serm. xxvi). When such conditions prevailed it is easy to understand that many of the emperors yielded to the delusion that they could unite all their subjects in the adoration of the one sun-god who combined in himself the Father-God of the Christians and the much- worshipped Mithras; thus the empire could be founded anew on unity of religion. Even Constantine for a time cherished this mistaken belief. It looks almost as though the last persecutions of the Christians were directed more against all irreconcilables and extremists than against the great body of Christians."
Nicaea, First Council of: dispelled Arian heresy, which stated that Christ was a creature distinct in essence from God. I got this very simple explanation of the Council of Nicea on the Internet and I think it explains the situation back then in a few words. What made this Council important was the Church was still in its early formation and false doctrine could easily get a foothold. The summary I found is this:
"To the credit of Athanasius, he saw clearly that the most dangerous of existing heresies was precisely the heresy announced by Arius. It was a very simple heresy. All Arius said was that if the Father begat the Son, then the Son must have had a birth, and therefore there was a time when the Son of God did not exist. He had come into existence according to the will of the Heavenly Father, and therefore he was less than the heavenly Father, though greater than man. [But] Christ was and Christ is absolute God."
Constantinople, The Second Council: condemned Appollinaris heresy that Christ's human spirit was replaced by the Logos. We know now that this doctrine is one of the major doctrines concerning the Christ of the New Age.
Other Councils would be held as the Church fought it out with heretics and Gnostics concerning who Christ was.
The use of the round wafer was instituted in the Catholic Church, the same wafer the Hislop quote described in Part Three:
"In the fourth century, when the queen of heaven, under the name of Mary, was beginning to be worshipped in the Christian Church, this unbloody sacrifice also was brought in. The very shape of the unbloody sacrifice of Rome may indicate whence it came. It is a small thin, ROUND wafer."
While saying the bread and wine are turned into the literal body and blood of Christ, the Catholic Church also states that the concept of the Eucharist is founded on the "unbloody sacrifice" Hislop speaks about. In "Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma," we read this definition:
"The Eucharist is that Sacrament, in which Christ, under the forms of bread and wine, is truly present, with His Body and Blood, in order to offer Himself IN AN UNBLOODY MANNER to the Heavenly Father, and to give Himself to the faithful as nourishment for their souls" (caps mine).
Below is a picture of the host with IHS on it (Isis, Horus, Seb), which Hislop said was almost undeniably the round wafer of the Egyptian mysteries:
"In this silence of the white host, carried in the monstrance, are all His words; there is His whole life given in offering to the Father, for each of us; there is also the glory of the glorified body, which started with the Resurrection, and still continues in heavenly union" - Pope John Paul II, Angelus Address, June 17, 1979.
During this period, Satan raised up more versions of his Eastern religions while exalting reincarnation over the resurrection. The worlds of occultism and psychism prospered as the use of the Scriptures deteriorated after being completed only 150 years before. This prepared the soil for Satan's seed of belief that the answer to man's spiritual thirst must be found, not in the word, but within himself in the realm of spiritual experience.
CANON I.-If any one denieth, that, in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ; but saith that He is only therein as in a sign, or in figure, or virtue; let him be anathema [condemned].CANON lI.-If any one saith, that, in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denieth that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood-the species Only of the bread and wine remaining-which conversion indeed the Catholic Church most aptly calls Transubstantiation; let him be anathema.
"There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which no one at all can be saved."
"My beloved son receive this scapular for your Order. It is the special sign of a privilege which I have obtained for you and for all God's children who honor me as Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Those who die devotedly clothed with this scapular shall be preserved from eternal fire. The brown scapular is a badge of salvation. The brown scapular is a shield in time of danger. The brown scapular is a pledge of peace and special protection, until the end of time."
At the same time, members of guilds began to gather to sing canticles in the evening after work in honor of the Blessed Mother. In particular, the singing of the "Salve Regina," composed in the 11th century, became popular in these devotions. The "Salve Regina" is a Catholic worship song to Mary. These evening services were called "Salat" in France. The Queen of Heaven had to have her worship and tied herself to the adoration of the round wafer, the sun god. Over the next two or three centuries, these two services seem to merge. The faithful would gather, usually in the evening, for chanted prayers, particularly in honor of our Blessed Mother. The Blessed Sacrament would be exposed, more prayers would be chanted or recited, and the service would end with benediction. Interestingly, benediction is still known in France as La Salat. These services are universal today.
Go to this web site for a complete report on the monstrance, and then click "Back" to return to this page: http://www.aloha.net/~mikesch/monstr.htm#
"We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff" - Pope Boniface VIII, IN the Bull Unam Sanctam.
"[The Holy Roman Church] firmly believes, professes and teaches that none of those who are not within the Catholic Church, not only Pagans, but Jews, heretics and schismatic, can ever be partakers of eternal life, but are to go into the eternal fire 'prepared for the devil, and his angels' (Mt. xxv. 41), unless before the close of their lives they shall have entered into that Church; also that the unity of the Ecclesiastical body is such that the Church's Sacraments avail only those abiding in that Church, and that fasts, almsdeeds, and other works of piety which play their part in the Christian combat are in her alone productive of eternal rewards; moreover, that no one, no matter what alms he may have given, not even if he were to shed his blood for Christ's sake, can be saved unless he abide in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church."
"The great chastisement will come when carriages go without horses and many accidents fill the world with woe. It will come when thoughts are flying around the earth in the twinkling of an eye, when long tunnels are made for horseless machines, when men can fly in the air and ride under the sea, when ships are wholly made of metal, when fire and water great marvels do, when even the poor can read books, and when many taxes are levied for war."
Nostradamus 1999 Web Page: "Nostradamus was born in 1503 in Saint Remy, France. He is without question the most famous and successful prophet of all time. In his writings, Nostradamus made over 1000 predictions about the future, many with stunning and incredible accuracy. Nostradamus predicted that in the year 1999 during the seventh month of July, a great king of terror would come from the sky. Is Nostradamus predicting the END OF THE WORLD? Or is he predicting a great global catastrophe to be followed by some new world order?"
