How The Church Got To Where It Is Today

Fred Whitman is a missionary supported by our local church. He is the Founder and president of a fundamental radio station in Italy. He also planted and pastors a Baptist church there as well. The following is a booklet that he wrote and gave away to those who wanted it. I am presenting it here essentially untouched and unedited. It may take several installments. My hope is that others will find his thoughts insightful and be blessed. Pray for Brother Fred and his family as they ministers to those in Italy.

In His fellowship,
Brother John

How The Church Got To Where It Is Today

by Fred Whitman

In A.D. 29, the Lord died on the Cross and rose again, and the Church was founded at Pentecost. You say, "29 A.D.? Why is that? I thought the Lord lived 33-Vi years of earthly ministry." Well, He did, but the fact is, a Friar in about the 5* century, who was trying to figure out the exact date of things, calculated the length of emperors and kingdoms and so on to come up with the exact date, because we can really pinpoint very closely the time when Jesus was born according to what is in the Bible. (Everybody thinks they can just change their calendar for the day when Jesus was born and start at zero.) The only problem was that the Friar had made a mistake of about four years. So Jesus was born 4 B.C., according to our calendar, the way we have it today.

In the first three centuries of Christianity, there was terrible, terrible persecution. It is interesting; in the book of Revelation, John talks about ten days of persecution, and it is very easy to look at those ten days in respect to ten Roman emperors starting with Nero. Nero was unbelievably wicked. To illuminate his garden parties on the Palestine Hill above the Forum, he would snatch up Christians and hang them up there and cover their bodies with pitch and burry them, and that is how he illuminated his garden parties. This was Nero. He was responsible for Paul's martyrdom by decapitation and probably Peter's martyrdom by crucifixion.

And we come to 313, Emperor Constantine. In Galatians 1, the Apostle Paul says something very important. He was very concerned about the Church and its future and the temptation that it would be to add new doctrines to the Church. In Galatians 1, he says that if an angel from heaven or even one of the apostles should give you a new doctrine that is not what we have taught, then let them be anathema.

So we have to say that from the closure of Scripture/ God is not speaking through specific Revelation, so when Constantine, in 313 saw a cross in the sky, and he heard a voice that said, "In this sign you will conquer," I personally do not believe that was his conversion to the Lord Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Because what happened at that point? At that point, the "Church" became united to politics, Church-State together, and we know that was NOT the teaching of the apostles. At that point things started to move in a wrong direction, and I look at that as the beginning of the end of the organized Roman church as far as it being the Church of Jesus Christ.

That united the church and government. Actually, about 150 years later, there was a Pope who took the title Pontefix Maximns, which means High Priest. This was the title that was given to the pagan High Priest of Rome. There was a pagan religion in Rome and there was the "Christian" religion in Rome, and at this point, the two merged. Talk about Ecumenism! That was the beginning of it right there.

There were good people all throughout history. Around 450, a man by the name of Jerome lived in a cave outside of Bethlehem with his pet lion. For 19 years, by candlelight, he translated the O.T. Hebrew into Latin and the N.T. Greek into Latin. That translation came to be known as the Latin Vulgate. That translation has been the basis for the Roman Catholic Bible ever since. In fact, later on, the persecution against a lot of reformers was not so much on the doctrinal factor that was important, but their major problem was that they had translated the Bible into the language of the people, and although that's what Jerome had done in the 5th century, successively the Roman church did not Want the Bible put in their language.

Around the year 900, the Rosary was invented. By that time the Roman Church was teaching salvation by works. A part of these works were the prayers said for penance. And you had to keep track. The Rosary was developed. One Our Fatter, ten Hail Mary’s, one Our Father, ten Hail Mary’s, and so on the prayers go. But the Rosary wasn't designed by the Roman Church. Three centuries earlier, the Muslims had developed prayer beads. You can sometimes see, in the Mid-East, ladies standing outside with little prayer beads; they're not Catholics. Some of them could be nuns, but most of them are probably Muslims. They have prayer beads like the Rosary, and that's where it started.

(to be continued)