Well, in 312 AD, we have a man by the name of Constantine the Great.
He was an emperor of the Roman Empire, and there's many accounts of what happened with
this emperor.
The story goes that he has a vision.
He sees a cross, he sees a burning cross in the air, he sees a banner over it, it says
by this symbol, ye shall conquer.
And keep in mind, the Roman Empire has been for years now trying to destroy Christianity,
trying to stop Christianity.
So Constantine the Great, he basically takes this approach where he says, if you can't
beat him, join him.
So he decides, when he goes down in history as being the first quote unquote Roman Emperor
who converted to Christianity.
Constantine wanted to use Christianity, Christianity so called, as his way to maintain control
over the Roman Empire.
Now if you read what Constantine the Great believed and what he said salvation was, the
guy did not get saved.
What he believed was not true Christianity, but he basically converted to a false religion
of Christianity, a false belief system.
And he decided, hey, let's make Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire.
Let's make Christianity the religion of the one world power.
And he decides to have a meeting and he convenes this meeting where he calls all Christians
to this meeting where they're going to gather together and they're going to figure out how
are we going to make Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire.
What they did is they invited all these bishops and basically said, if you don't follow what
we're putting together here, then you're cast out and basically called a heretic.
When a government leader sets up a meeting and says, hey, I want to make Christianity
the religion by law of all of Rome, people are going to have to convert to Christianity,
they're going to have to be Christians, we're going to legislate Christianity, and I want
you guys to help me set that up, here's what you need to understand.
No true Christians are going to show up to that meeting.
Because you know what true Christians believe?
They believe that you can't legislate Christianity.
There was a group of Baptists, Baptistic people, I'll say, the Anabaptists, the Paulicians,
the Waldensians, the Albigensians, who during that first meeting of churches at Nicaea,
they had taken the position that we, churches should not sacrifice their autonomy, they
should not be organizing themselves into a hierarchy, organizing themselves into a network,
an association, or convention as we would call them today, but rather we should continue
under the headship of Christ for each church and the Holy Spirit administration of each
church and that will be our unity and leave the work of the ministry and the ministry
work, mission work, up to the Spirit of God as he leads.
So when Constantine the Great had this meeting to try to bring Christianity into the Roman
Empire, no true believers showed up to that meeting, but you know who did show up?
Who did show up was that group that was already from the time of Paul corrupting the Word
of God, bringing in false doctrine, bringing in false belief system.
They showed up and they set up what they referred to as the Roman universal church.
Now they called it the universal church because of the fact that Rome was the universal empire.
It was the empire that ran the world.
They called it the universal church.
Now the word universal in Latin is Catholic.
What they set up was the Roman Catholic Church and Constantine the Great goes down in history
as being the emperor who sets up this Roman Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church began its official existence in 313 AD with Constantine calling a council
of Christian leaders in his realm.
He didn't want there to be any bickering or fighting amongst Christians.
He wanted all Christians to be united as a political force that would just help him come
to power, maintain power.
So it was in his political best interest that they don't fight amongst themselves, that
they coalesce and be a force that he could use to further his agenda of taking over the
whole Roman Empire for himself and having all that power.
So he called a council together and said that basically they were going to hash out their
differences and all come together and agree on things so he formed that official church
structure that would later become the Roman Catholic Church.
Constantine had pulled together and sanctioned a meeting of churches and as a result of that
Catholicism was invented.
Catholicism meaning universal.
The Catholic Church formed based on Constantine.
He was what we would consider today in sociological history, he was the first converted emperor
of Rome to accept Christianity.
Now whether he understood it, unknown.
Whether he embraced it, unknown.
There's a lot of myths out there, there's a lot of truth out there but what you have
to go back and understand about Catholicism is without Constantine there is no Catholicism.
What happened with the organization of Catholicism was it broke away from the true lineage of
churches and they organized a man-made structure which became quite powerful throughout the
Middle Ages and we know as Catholicism today and then eventually the Protestants.
And understanding some of this history might shed some light into what we see today.
Before Christianity the Roman Empire was just a pagan empire.
They were polytheistic, they believed in multiple gods, they had all this Eastern mysticism
and when they basically united Christianity to their Roman pagan belief system all they
did was they intermingled their Eastern mysticism with Christianity.
So where before they used to worship a female deity, they just exchanged that female deity
with Mary.
Now they're going to worship Mary.
They had all these multiple polytheistic gods where they just exchanged all their polytheistic
gods that they used to pray to.
Now they're just going to pray to saints.
You ever wonder why the Roman Catholic does all these weird like Eastern myth?
I mean they're lighting candles, when you go to their funerals they're lighting these
scents and they got like, I don't know what they've got, some bag like a vacuum bag that
they're like dusting out, you know, and you say, where do you get that from?
Because look, you don't get that from the word of God.
You don't get that Eastern mysticism from the word of God.
But you say, where did it come from?
It came from the Roman pagan worshipping Jupiter and it came from that Roman Eastern mysticism
being just kind of thrown in with Christianity.
If you look at the origins of the Roman Catholic Church, what you have is pagan Romans being
converted to Christianity many times against their will as Christianity became the official
religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century.
So you have a marriage of paganism and Christianity because you're bringing in all these pagans.
A lot of them aren't even really becoming a Christian because they want to.
They're just doing it because it's now the official religion.
They have to.
So they bring in all kinds of pagan ideas and then that mixes with Christianity.
So that's where you get a lot of the hocus pocus elements of the Roman Catholic Church is from all
these pagans that came in when it became the official religion of the Roman Empire.
True believers that descended from that were saved by that were connected to the true believers
that came from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Those believers always maintained autonomy from this Roman Catholic Church and as a result,
they were persecuted.
See, once the Roman Catholic Church was established, there was still persecution of true believers.
Now it went from the Jews to the Roman Empire to the Roman Catholic Church.
Once they started the Catholic Church, you know, you weren't allowed to do anything else.
So that kind of leads into where other Christians, true Christianity, started to be persecuted.
Not only by, you know, they're already persecuted by the Roman Empire and now the Roman Catholic Church
became a persecutor of Christians also.
And the Roman Catholic Church is the church that has more blood on its hands for killing saints.
I mean, have you ever heard of the Dark Ages?